Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [39]
He awoke shortly before dawn and lay for a while, stroking his memories. 'I've got all sleep's secrets hidden in my bag,'
he muttered, smiling at the pleasant, warm touch of the slowly rising sun on his arm, banishing the gooseflesh. Then the bedroom door opened again and Ian closed his eyes with a groan of disappointment. Would this awful woman never take a simple no for an answer?
Thinking lurid thoughts, he opened his eyes to find not the expected, unattractive noblewoman looking for a bit of rough, but a girl in her late teens, dressed in a short, white, and delightful one-piece dress and carrying a bowl of scented fruit.
'Smells like a tart's boudoir,’ Ian offered, sitting up and exposing his bare chest again. The girl's eyes widened just as the lady Jocelyn's had earlier. 'Good morning,' Ian said brightly, covering himself with a silken sheet. 'I'm Ian, how do you do?'
The girl giggled, flirtatiously, and laid the fruit on a small table at the foot of the bed.
'I am Felicia, handmaiden to my lady Jocelyn:
`We've met,' Ian noted, bluntly, and the girl had to place a hand over her mouth to stifle the giggles that followed. Ian didn't like the nuances of Felicia's amusement one little bit.
Too coquettish, by half. Good gracious, did nobody in this household think about anything other than sex? 'Could you possibly inform housemaster Drusus that I'm awake? I have a few questions that I'd like answered.’
Felicia nodded, though she hovered for a long and lingering moment, tugging at the hem of her skirt in an act of open provocation that Ian had seen a thousand times in a thousand crush-driven schoolgirls.
'Now, please,' he continued with a slow-and-measured voice that tried not to give away how unnerved he was by the whole encounter. 'I'd hate you to get into trouble.'
Almost comically, Felicia seemed torn between throwing herself onto Ian, pinning him to the bed with her shapely thighs and making wild and passionate love to him until he begged her for more, and obeying his commands without question. Ian felt a bit sorry for her, but rejection was rejection, probably not something that the women of this villa had encountered a great deal of. Even the slaves, seemingly, got what they were after. ‘Hurry,' he shouted, and Felicia ran from the room, her face a picture of scowling disappointment.
Briefly, Ian wondered why he had suddenly become a magnet for every woman in Byzantium. 'Looked in the mirror lately, pal?' he asked aloud, as he puffed out his chest and let his pride swell significantly. 'Nice work if you can get it,' he mused as he dressed, ready to face whatever else this place had to offer.
Drusus and Erastus were eating a breakfast of bread and cheese when Ian was shown into the servants' mezzanine, overlooking the main hallway of the Villa Praefectus. It was clear that both men had been discussing Ian, from the sudden silence that accompanied his arrival.
`Thank you,' Ian told the young serving boy who had brought him to Drusus. He sat, without being asked, beside the housemaster and the cadet trainer and smiled at both men. 'Lovely morning for it,' he noted.
`For what?' asked Erastus with an irritated snarl.
Òh, a bit of this and that, you know? Ducking and diving.'
Drusus attempted to change the subject but Ian brought him to a juddering halt.
`You both think I'm a Jew spy, don't you?' he asked casually, taking a small bite of cheese as they digested this.
Erastus looked uncomfortable, Drusus merely curious.
'Well...?'
Ì'm not.' said Ian, as if that would be enough. 'Any chance of a little wine to go with this? It's somewhat dry.'
Two hours later, after a drinking session of which Ian hadn't seen the like since Friday nights in the West End with his friends from teaching college, everyone's position was much clearer. Drusus, he freely admitted, naturally distrusted everyone, it wasn't anything personal. In his position it always helped to keep an open mind about the allegiances of those who claimed to be one thing. 'Because they are frequently something