The maid shot a look to her serving companion and suddenly both women had Nilla by the arms. 'The domina must. My late mistress would have insisted on it. This is her house. This is her room.'
'Let go of me.' Nilla struggled against them. 'Let me go!'
The women dragged her to the side of the bed and pulled the undergarments from her.
'It ensures the birth of a boy child, domina. Your virginity is the treasure most cherished by the god, and he is generous with his rewards.'
The curved phallus was enormous, dull black and ugly. 'Don't make me do this,' Nilla screamed. 'Please!' The tip nudged against her unbroken cleft, seeking to enter her. 'Oh gods!' The tears sprang from her eyes. 'Oh gods!'
Ahenobarbus whipped the thing away just as the servants began to lower her. Shocked, the old maid turned on him. ' Domine — you cannot interfere here!'
Wielding it like a spear, he thrust the thing in her face. The second maid shrieked. Ahenobarbus thrust again, forcing the phallus into the old woman's mouth. She choked and spluttered.
Nilla seized the advantage. 'Get out! Get out!' she screamed at the two women.
Disgorging the fertility tool, the old maid staggered to the door, her companion pulling her outside. Nilla kicked the doors shut behind them, her hand at her breast to steady her heart as she tried to find her breath. At last she turned to face her husband.
'Thank you,' she whispered to Ahenobarbus.
The tall mute said nothing, the light from the oil lamp making his strange, pale skin glow like marble. They stared at each other. The wedding ceremony had been the first time Nilla had been permitted to see him since the announcement of their betrothal. She knew nothing about him at all, except that her body was now legally his to employ as he would. This she could not fight as she had the foul phallus.
She waited for him to make any kind of move towards her but Ahenobarbus remained where he was, standing on the other side of the connubial room. Nilla moved quickly to the bed and slipped under the linen, pulling it under her chin and never taking her eyes from him. Still he didn't move, although he kept his eyes upon hers.
'Are you mute through choice, husband,' she whispered, 'or have you never spoken?'
Ahenobarbus said nothing.
'I think it must be that you have never talked,' she said, 'and have never been able to talk due to some affliction. No one would cease speaking of their own accord.'
She waited. Ahenobarbus moved forward and her heart leaped to her throat. Would he take her now in the way that the phallus would have? But his violence had gone. He sat at the edge of the bed. Yet Nilla saw with apprehension that he was becoming aroused. She grasped at the hope that by continuing to speak to him, the inevitable might be delayed. 'It must be such a cruel thing to suffer, silence. Yet you must have found the means to communicate with the world. How do you do it, husband?'
He reached forward and touched her thigh beneath the linen.
'Do you write your words down so that others might read what you want?'
His hand journeyed towards her belly and Nilla's eyes darted about the room to see if a wax tablet sat anywhere. 'Is that your method, husband? To write it all in wax?'
His penis rose from the corner of her vision, but she would not let her eyes leave his. And she knew how badly they must be betraying her fear.
'Why don't you write it for me, husband? Tell me how you feel about our union. Tell me how I might be a good wife to you.'
Ahenobarbus's hand brushed the nipple of her breast and she blushed to realise it had hardened. Was this desire she felt? How could it be?
Ahenobarbus stood up, his erect penis before her face for a moment until his back was turned to her and she realised he was leaving the room. Gratitude overwhelmed her. He had listened to what she said. He was going to find a wax tablet. 'I will wait here for you,' she whispered after him, and then felt foolish. What else would she do?
Somewhere in the rooms below Nilla heard a water clock chime that the hour of Concubia had come. It was very late. Then, after what had seemed like minutes, she heard the hour of Intempesta signalled and she realised she had fallen asleep. The oil lamp was out. Ahenobarbus had not returned. The doors to the connubial room remained ajar from when he had left her. Nilla crept from the bed and stood at the threshold, peering into the blackness of the corridor.
'Husband? Are you there?'
'It's just as well you spat the phallus from your sex, domina.'
Nilla stifled a scream. The aged maid sat huddled on a pallet near the door.
'It is just as well, for the deity would have choked in your hole once he'd sniffed what had been there before him.'
Nilla went white. 'How dare you use such words!'
'You disgust this house,' said the maid. 'And you'll disgust all Rome when the truth gets out.'
Nilla reeled. 'I am a virgin bride.'
'If that's true, then you've sewn up your hole to become one.'
Enraged, Nilla drew back her hand to strike but the old woman snatched at her wrist, twisting it. 'Slave- fucker,' she hissed. 'You and your little slave. He polluted you for the master — polluted you for this house. The torments of the fallen Aemilii are made unending with this marriage. You are a punishment for us!'
Nilla pulled her arm free. 'Burrus is dead,' she sobbed. 'Drowned!' She could have died herself for even mentioning his precious name to this gorgon. 'I never slept with him. Our love for each other was chaste,' she tried to add.
The old woman's spittle struck her cheek. Blinded by grief, Nilla lurched away, fleeing down the corridor towards the stairs to the floor below. She didn't see the descent until too late and her foot slipped in the darkness, throwing her forward to strike her head against the ancient stone. She rolled and fell the full length of the steps, just as Aemilia of the Aemilii had done years before. Nilla came to rest on the cold stone floor at the bottom, slumped like a broken doll.
Sounds of enjoyment awoke her. A man's pleasure, perhaps, or a woman's sensual moans; it was difficult to be sure. The sounds drifted to her ears from somewhere deep in the house as she slowly climbed to consciousness again. Nilla tried to move her limbs. Nothing was broken, only grazed and bruised. Her head throbbed from where it had struck the edge of the stair. She managed to stand.
From the gloom of the cobwebbed atrium, Nilla could see that the curtains dividing that space from the tablinum had been pulled aside. The private study for the master of the house was a shambles, long neglected and thick with dust. Her hand pressed to her bleeding temple, Nilla stood at the room's edge and looked through to the peristyle garden beyond. Years before, the girl Domitia had picked winter flowers for her condemned mother there. The flowers were long dead too.
Ahenobarbus lay on a pallet in the soil, his loins thrusting upwards and down. Astride him was a girl no older than Nilla, her small, pointed breasts glistening in the moonlight as she moaned again in pleasure, riding him. It was Albucilla, the drowned minnow that Ahenobarbus had revived on Capri. She plucked the lit stub of a candle and waved the flame before her nipples, letting it lick her like a tongue. Ahenobarbus echoed her moan and Nilla heard the only noise she would ever know from his throat. Whether they knew she was there, she couldn't tell, so focused were they on the gratification of their bodies. They achieved climax together, gasping with it, clutching at each other's mouths, as Albucilla let the candle wax drip upon her skin.
The hand that reached for Nilla's was warm. It enfolded her palm and fingers in a manner that felt comforting and familiar, before her wits returned and she jumped with fear. The hand let go and she span around. At the other side of the atrium the front door of the house was open, admitting a warm breeze from the street. The room curtains stirred but Ahenobarbus and his lover were oblivious, slumbering where they lay.
The aged maid shut the door, stilling the breeze, before shuffling away to the shadows.
'How could this be?' Nilla whispered. 'How is this possible?'
Burrus pressed his lips to hers and the taste of him was salty. He enfolded her in his strong young arms, browned by the sun and the sea. 'You know better than anyone how well I swim, Lady.'
If patrician marriage was what she had been given, then this union with an accursed house came with features all of its own. The wordless husband had a lover, a whore, with whom he cavorted under the roof that
