The Bow of Heaven - Book I: The Other Al - By Andrew Levkoff Page 0,22

away from him, her ice blue eyes on fire. Realization dawned on the master and he apologized deeply, with only his enthusiasm to blame. She turned once again to face him, standing an arms-length apart, formally erect. All became terribly still as Tertulla bent and placed the baby at his feet. It squirmed uncomfortably, its swaddling picking up bits of gravel, but did not cry out.

If the paterfamilias walked away, the child would be taken to the outskirts of the city and abandoned. A father could legally do this if the babe were female, deformed, or if the idea of another screaming mouth in his house were just too tiresome to bear. The practice was the same in Athens.

No such thing would happen to this child. Crassus swept him up in his arms, lifting him high over his head. “I give you Publius Licinius Crassus!” he cried. “Io Saturnalia!”

“Io Saturnalia!” we all shouted in response, I less enthusiastically than most of the others. I mean, honestly, it was freezing. Truth to tell, Pío returned little Marcus to his mother’s arms with remarkable tenderness. I would be moved, if I cared a whit for these strangers. What were they to me?

I looked over at Sabina. She had removed her cap. We began to follow the family back into the house. I waited for Sabina to pass but when I tried to speak to her, with eyes averted she mumbled that she was needed by the master and hurried past.

***

One son of Marcus Crassus would marry and grow old with little to remark his passing. There was, however, one disturbing exception: he became, for a time, quaestor to Julius Caesar. It was one of life’s small, ironic blessings that Crassus did not live to see his progeny in the service of his enemy.

The other child was doomed to die a hero’s pointless death.

***

Before I could reenter the domus, I was waylaid by Ludovicus. He was five years younger than Sabina, a hard man with a soft center. I always liked him. Except on that day, when he threw an extra cloak over my shoulders and led me into town. Somehow he had come by the knowledge that when it came to women, I had none. He had taken it upon himself, in a festive, holiday mood, to rectify what was, in his opinion, a dreadful oversight. I don’t care how smart you are, he told me cryptically, you’ll never understand how little you really know till you’ve had a woman.

I do not wish to speak of the incident, only to tell you that it was a failure of less than spectacular proportions. By which I do not mean to employ a double negative, nor to imply that it was in any way a success. We arrived at a house with which Ludovicus was well-acquainted and his custom well-received and appreciated. My guide through these dark waters even supplied the coin to tip the ferryman. Which only made matters worse: is a man who does not pay for his whore less of a man? If he is twenty-three, terrified, and the cerebral sort who cannot help but take this simple, single string of reasoning and obsess about it till he has built a smoking Vesuvius, then yes, he is less of a man. And being thus diminished, by definition, therefore, he is less capable of performing this manliest of acts. Why couldn’t we just go home? I looked in vain for Ludovicus, but he had already paired and departed for the bounteous paradise of his favorite Ligurian, leaving me to my personal Hades.

The longer you keep your virginity, the harder it is to get rid of it. If you are male and past a certain age, the more concerned you become that nobody wants to relieve you of it. Which makes it more difficult to perform when given the opportunity. Which confirms your original supposition. Which makes you still more afraid that nobody wants it. And so on.

For a young boy who has not spilled his first seed, sex is a frightful and abhorrent thing to contemplate. As a young teen, it is the only thing worthy of prolonged consideration. A visit to the brothel or an early marriage quickly dissolves both tension and ignorance. But what if chance, lack of opportunity or becoming a spoil of war interrupt the natural progression into adulthood? Then, the difficulty of the mathematics of prolonged virginity rises exponentially with age. Until you solve this equation, it