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The prostitute straddled him without a word. Those were always his instructions: "Don't speak." Primo could only enjoy a woman if she was nameless—and even then it wasn't really enjoyment, more of a need.
Letting the prostitute do all the work, the veteran of military campaigns and a hard life decided that his crack archer, a Bithynian named Zipoites, would be best for gathering intelligence along the journey—he was solidly built enough to look fat under merchant's robes, no one would suspect his strength or that he was a trained fighter. Yes, Zipoites would be the one to send ahead to settlements along the road, to visit taverns and talk with the local men. Zipoites could hold his wine where other men's tongues loosened. He was adept at getting information out of—
"Ungh." Primo gave a cry as he climaxed, and then he lay motionless for a few moments while the whore wordlessly removed herself from the bed and slipped into a robe to cover her nakedness. Outside, the city of Babylon bustled beneath its usual din as citizens hurried to and fro in the narrow streets, their minds concentrated upon their own immediate worries, fears, hopes, and yearnings. They were preparing for the coming week of summer solstice celebrations, which also meant they were preparing for a season of heat and dust. Many were unemployed, and so their thoughts were on food and the gods.
But Primo didn't care about this city or its people. His job was to see that his master, Sebastianus Gallus, reached China safely and that their diplomatic missions to the East were a success.
And there was the secret job, commanded by Nero Caesar himself ...
As he slipped back into his clothes—the old soldier's costume of whitetunic, leather breastplate, military sandals laced to the knee—Primo spat on the floor. He wished he had not been recruited into Nero's spy-ring. He would obey, of course. His loyalty might be to his employer and the man who had saved him from a life of begging in the streets, but a greater duty compelled him, as a soldier, to uphold his allegiance to Emperor and Empire. Even if it meant betraying the man he loved.
As he left, he reached into the leather pouch at his waist in which he carried money and his lucky talisman—a bronze arrowhead that had been dug out of his chest by a military surgeon who had declared Primo the luckiest man on earth, as the German arrow had missed his heart by a breath. Primo pulled out a coin and threw it down. It had a Caesar on it, so the whore knew it was good. Primo didn't look at her face. They never looked at his.
As Primo walked along the Street of Harlots, he realized that, more and more of late, he was coming away from his paid women with diminished feelings of satisfaction. Physically, they satisfied him. Primo had no difficulty getting erect or coming to orgasm. But, increasingly, he was leaving whorehouses with little gratification.
And he found himself thinking of a woman he had met long ago, the one woman in his life to whom he had given his heart.
Primo and his regiment had been passing through yet another small, nameless village when his Centurion had sent him ahead to find the local blacksmith. It was spring, Primo recalled, with a blue sky dotted with white puff clouds, the scent of blossoms in the air, the breezes fresh and full of promise. His boots had stamped over cobblestones as he had entered a narrow alley and found himself suddenly surrounded by a group of angry men. They carried clubs and daggers, and seemed intent upon using them.
Hatred of Roman soldiers was universal throughout the empire, especially in newly conquered regions, and so Primo knew the anger in these men was fresh and sharp. They would mindlessly attack and only ponder the foolishness of their actions later, as they were nailed to crosses. It had briefly entered his mind to try to warn them off—for surely they meant to kill him, and he was greatly outnumbered—when a young woman appeared. "Wait," she called, and the villagers stopped advancing upon the lone soldier.
She drew near, and Primo saw that she carried an infant close to herbreast. Her head was veiled, but an exquisite face was exposed to the spring sunshine.
One man growled, "This is none of your concern, daughter of Zebediah. This is men's business."
"And is it men's business to make widows of their wives and orphans of their children? Shame on you."
"Rome is evil!" shouted another. And they began to press forward again.
But she placed herself in front of Primo, so that he caught a sweet fragrance from her veiled hair, and she said, "This soldier is not Rome. He is but a man. Return to your homes before it is too late for all of us."
They shifted on their feet. They fingered their clubs. They looked at one another and then at the infant sleeping in her arms until finally they turned and drifted away.
The young woman faced Primo and said, "The fault is not yours, Roman. You are only doing your job. Go in peace."
And Primo, the soldier whose heart was the size and hardness of a pebble, fell in love.
He watched her walk away, a slim figure draped in a long blue veil, as if she had descended from the sky, and he stood frozen in that moment of time, as if the world had come to a standstill and he and the young mother were all who inhabited it. She had not smiled at him, but she had not looked upon him with revulsion either, though he was indeed ugly. She had simply looked at him—he had seen lovely features, heard a gentle voice—
Even now, simply from the memory of it, Primo was rocked with intense emotion. She had intervened on his behalf. Although she had done it to spare her neighbors from Rome's wrath and the punishment of those who did not obey their new masters, she had looked at him with clear brown eyes and told him it was not his fault. And in that moment he had fallen in love, irrevocably and without condition. He had also known in that moment that he would love her for as long as he lived, and that he would never, for the rest of his life, love another woman as he loved that young mother.
A powerful stink suddenly washed over him, bringing him out of his nostalgic reverie. He wrinkled his nose and turned in the direction the stench was coming from. Rotting corpses hanging on the city walls. Mosthad their hands cut off, or their genitals, indicators of their crimes: thieves and rapists. Justice in Babylon was swift. A thief suffered having his hand cut off, and then he was strung up by his ankles and left to die. Sometimes it took days. To Primo, it seemed an extreme punishment. Most likely the thief had stolen from a rich man, because who cared if someone stole from a poor man?
Such was justice in the world in general. It was a rich man's world, no doubt of that.
And an emperor's.
"You are to watch Gallus's movements," young Nero had said that night in the room at the back of the imperial audience chamber. "You are to commit to memory his words, observe how he presents himself and Rome to foreign potentates. We ca
Thinking of it made Primo scowl on this smoke-filled morning, making his face appear even uglier than it normally was. He would do the job, but he wouldn't like it.
"Sir!" came a shout from the end of the lane. Primo recognized a slave from the caravan. The man was breathless from ru
Primo looked at him in surprise. And then, thinking it was about time, broke into a sprint and headed toward the Enlil Gate.