were very proud of the fact that they were Christians, regarding the religion as a badge of true civilisation and Romanitas. Genseric also had some kind of pearls or even a pearl necklace draped round his head, and he had his slim, languid arm round a girl who was giggling and looking across at Attila from under lowered eyelashes.
‘My,’ she said softly, ‘look at your scars. How barbaric!’ She spoke as if scars excited her.
She was perhaps eighteen or nineteen, with wide blue eyes and very long, straight black hair. She wore bright red lipstick like a harlot on the street, and thick dark kohl round her eyes, and a white tunic which was slit right up the side of her thigh, and hung half off her shoulder, just revealing the roundness of her breasts.
Genseric let go of his girl and flopped onto the couch opposite. ‘God’s bollocks,’ he said. ‘I’m finished.’ He leant his head back and gazed at the ceiling, and sighed, and murmured under his breath a couplet from Martial.
‘“ Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra, Sed vitam faciunt, balnea, vina, Venus.”
Which is to say,
“Venus and baths and wine, they say, corrupt us, but they make life taste so sweet – wine, baths, and Venus.”’
Then he raised his head and grinned across at Attila. ‘This is Lollia,’ he said. ‘Lollia – Attila. May the evening see you better acquainted.’ And he winked over Attila’s shoulder.
Beric laughed and burped.
Lollia went over to the blonde girl and started to kiss her on the lips. The girl responded drunkenly, and their lips and tongues intertwined. They ran their fingers through each other’s wigs and emitted theatrical little moans. The two Vandals looked on and grinned.
Attila eyed the knives.
Then Lollia detached herself, and he felt her walk round behind him. She stopped, laughing silently, perhaps. Her hands closed round his face and covered his eyes from behind. They were damp with perspiration, but he could smell her perfume, too. He felt her hair on his cheek, tickling him softly, and her lips nibbling his ear, the tip of her tongue flicking back and forth, and he pulled away and looked down, his cheeks burning with shame.
‘Aw, the lickle boy’s shy!’ shouted Genseric.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never…?’ said Beric.
He longed to get up and go. He longed to run. But something held him back.
Lollia was flopping down on the couch beside him, and resting her head on his shoulder. She sighed and stretched out, and her slit skirt left her legs bare up to the tops of her thighs. So bare and brown. Her toenails were painted the same colour as her lips, and her sandals were no more than delicate strips of soft leather, studded with silver, and laced almost up to her knees – which made her legs appear more naked than ever. The boy tried to look away but he couldn’t.
She reached out for a goblet of wine on the table and drank a little, then she turned to him and held the goblet to his mouth and made him drink from it, too. She forced it back between his lips, and laughed when it ran out over his chin. She set the goblet down, turned back to him and licked the wine from his chin.
‘Juno’s tits, I think she likes you, boy,’ drawled Genseric.
Lollia’s hands were stroking and circling his bare knees now, sliding by slow degrees up the inside of his thighs. He pulled away abruptly and leant forward.
‘Aw, lickle boy shy,’ said Genseric again, watching them through red-rimmed, half-closed eyes.
‘Aw,’ said Lollia, even more softly. She caressed his hair and trailed her fingertips down the side of his neck. He felt a scintillating thrill run up his spine and his skin broke out in goosebumps. He imagined cool mountain streams that caught the sunlight in He pushed her away again. Lollia sniffed crossly.
‘Maybe you’d prefer something more like what the Huns are supposed to,’ slurred Beric, grinning stupidly at him.
Attila glared at him furiously.
‘And what’s that?’ asked Lollia.
‘A horse!’ cried Beric.
The three of them, Lollia and the two brothers, found this hysterically funny. The blonde girl had fallen asleep now, pinkish saliva dribbling from the corner of her mouth and onto the fine silk covering of the couch.
Beric prodded her harshly. ‘Oi, wake up you stupid tart, we’re not paying you to sleep.’
But the girl slept on.
‘You know nothing about the Huns!’ hissed Attila. He could feel his blood pumping furiously. But no one was listening to him.
‘And they tie up the horse’s back legs first, so it won’t kick!’ shouted Beric.
‘Oh, that’s how you do it, is it?’ laughed Lollia. ‘I must remember next time. I got awfully bruised in the stables only last week.’
‘Then they roll it on its back,’ said Genseric, ‘and they’re away – these funny little yellow men, pumping away between the huge thighs of their favourite mare, like Cupid giving one to his mummy, Venus.’
‘It’s true – I’ve seen pictures of it,’ declared Beric.
They almost choked with laughter.
When the hilarity finally subsided, Beric collapsed into the couch. Lollia turned back to the angry boy by her side and began to whisper sweet nothings in his ear. His fists were bunched but he managed not to strike her. And after a few moments, even against his iron will, he began to relax again. Her warm fingers began to sidle up his thighs and under the hem of his tunic. And this time, although he hated her, hated them all with a fury – he couldn’t stir, but only close his eyes. The wine was beginning to make his heart beat faster and faster, as if he were running. He felt unable to move. Then he felt where her soft hand had reached to, and he gasped.
‘Ganymede’s arsehole,’ added Beric, ‘I think she really likes you.’
The boy closed his eyes.
‘Talking of Ganymede and his delectable… you know what,’ said Genseric.
Attila opened his eyes and saw the two brothers exchanging leery looks, and Genseric nodding towards the darkened chamber at the far end of the room.
‘Right you are,’ guffawed Beric, staggering to his feet and draining his goblet of wine. ‘Hold on to your ears, boys. I’m a-coming in!’
A few moments later, Lollia took Attila’s hand a little more firmly and pulled him to his feet.
‘Let’s go back there too,’ she murmured.
Bewildered and thrilled and terrified, he allowed himself to be pulled over towards the darkened chamber. ‘But, but… Aren’t… I mean, isn’t Beric already…?’
But the girl just glanced back at him, and smiled wickedly at him from under her long black eyelashes. ‘The more the merrier,’ she said.
They were at the doorway of the chamber. At first he could see nothing in the gloom. He felt Lollia’s arm round his waist, and she turned to him and he felt her warm breath against his ear. ‘Can you see what I can see?’ she purred. ‘Can you see what wicked things are going on in there? I bet you like to watch. I know I do.’
But he was more agitated now. For inside the chamber he could see that there was nothing but one huge bed, and on the bed he could dimly discern shapes moving about. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw that there were two more girls upon the bed, both of them naked, and making soft noises to each other, and taking it in turns to kiss Beric, who had disrobed as well. But although Beric was taking it in turns to kiss each of the naked girls, Attila could see that there was another figure underneath him as well. And then he realised to his horror that the fourth figure was also a boy, his face pressed down into the bed, and wearing nothing but a gold chain round his waist, and pearl bracelets around his ankles. Like a girl. Like a helpless slavegirl, dressed by her leering master. The boy on the bed raised his head and glanced up from under his horrible, cheap wig of flaxen curls, which they had made him wear so that he would look like Ganymede, and Attila saw how young he was…
‘No!’ he cried, pulling violently away from Lollia.
‘Honey,’ she said, losing her sensuous purr, ‘what-’
‘Get off me!’
He started to run back towards the door, but Genseric had lurched to his feet, laughing hysterically, and was standing in front of the door, blocking his exit.
‘Aw, lickle boy don’t like it? Lickle boy too young!’
