Jewellery-laden hands began roving over silky bellies, seeking a passage downward, traversing the ever-so-fine down that glistened in the light as eager fingers moved through the triangles of hair between the thighs, damp and soft from the oil, to find the hot, welcoming wetness waiting below.
The diners were now utterly enthralled by the unfolding spectacle, and even the curmudgeonly Lepidus and Claudius were staring in unabashed fascination at the display of concupiscence.
All of the dancers gathered together in one writhing mass; a slithering serpent-coil of sultry sensuality, all tongues and bites and roving fingers, probing and parting and pressing – and penetrating.
The musicians stopped playing, all except the drummer, who began to steadily increase the tempo and volume of his strokes as the dancers began to rub and delve and massage and penetrate and lick with ever-increasing intensity. Soon moans and gasps of pleasure – feigned or otherwise – were resounding through the hall, and every eye on the room was locked on the carnal performance. The drumbeat was changing, turning into a faster and faster roll which eventually reached a maddening crescendo … which then stopped abruptly, just as all of the dancers, entwined in an orgiastic mass of sweaty, frenzied activity, collapsed into a shuddering heap on the floor.
For one moment the hall was absolutely still and the only sounds to be heard were the gasps and pants of the dancers. Then Batiatus stood up and started clapping his hands, and he was soon joined by a chorus of many other palms, striking their salacious enthusiasm against one another repeatedly in a crashing bout of applause.
‘And now,’ Batiatus shouted gleefully above the din, ‘now comes the second act! Enter the stallions!’
The applause subsided and the band started playing a new tune as a number of young men entered the hall. All of them wore rams’ horns upon their heads, sported goatees upon their chins, and had chaps of fur strapped to their thighs, the overall effect of which was to give them the appearance of fauns.
Once more the music changed, and it had an eerie, almost hypnotic quality to it. The women on the floor got up and each sashayed over to one of the fauns until all were paired up. Once this had happened, the music once again began to build in volume, pace and intensity. Soon the women and the fauns were dancing a hypercharged samba of dripping sexuality, and the men did not take long to become fully aroused. As the music started to reach a dizzying level of fervour, the dancers started to copulate. Each pair assumed a different and evidently well-choreographed position, for the bodies, all churning and rolling and twisting together, created a spectacle that was not unlike watching the gears and wheels of a vast machine spinning in complex unison.
Faster and faster the men thrust and the women rode, and with concomitant avidity the music sped up, becoming ever more chaotic and atonal. Then the partners detached themselves from one another and each fell into the arms of a different partner, and then with desperate haste resumed their lovemaking. Sweat was beading now not only on the nude bodies of the performers, but on every human body in the room. It seemed to have become noticeably hotter in the hall, and inside his suit of steel armour Lucius was beginning to perspire with a vehement discomfort. He too had his eyes locked on the copulating couples, and for the moment his attention had wandered from the mess of anxiety, worry, rage and plotting in which it had previously been mired. A heavy throbbing was stirring in his own loins as he watched the vigorously thrusting hips of the muscular youths and their nubile female counterparts; his senses of hearing, sight and smell were not the only physical aspects of his being that had been greatly enhanced and intensified by his mysterious animal magic.
The song began to descend into primal chaos, the tune twisting and warping and falling into dissonance, the drums hammering and thrashing as the bodies heaved and pumped and bucked and gasped and moaned in a throng of orgiastic heat, sweat and dripping fluids. Then, just as the cyclonic madness of the song reached its climax, so too did the performers, all of the men withdrawing in unison from their partners’ orifices to shower the gasping females with their ejaculate.
The instruments stopped playing, and a sweaty, hormone-soaked silence fell upon the hall. Inside his suit of steel, Lucius found himself breathing heavily, the locus of his attention centred on his pulsating erection, which was pushing painfully against the cool steel of the armour.
Slaves dashed in and extinguished almost all of the torches, now plunging the hall into near-pitch black. Lucius, with his animal-enhanced senses, heard the padding of bare feet on the polished marble floor, and with his partial night vision he saw the nude performers hurrying about the hall and exiting through a side door. After they had gone, the slaves rushed back in with burning torches and lit up all of the lamps, illuminating the shadow-thick hall.
‘Well now,’ Batiatus boomed, ‘was that not a performance worthy of applause? Give thanks to the gods and pray for them to bless my nephew and niece with a son! Surely after such a show we will have pleased the god and goddess Liber and Bona Dea, no? Come on, show me that you appreciated such a scintillating display!’
Applause and a riotous chorus of cheers rocked the marble pillars and stone walls, and Batiatus took in the sight of all the excited guests around him with a grin of smug satisfaction smeared across his countenance.
‘And now we will bring you more wine –
