White Lotus Read online

  “Your couch, Good Man.” The blue-robed slave directed Iadmon to his place, a couch placed very near Xanthes’ own, covered in scarlet cushions.

  But the couch was not empty. A young woman, not much older than Doricha, lounged across its foot, leaning back on her hands and swinging her gold-laced sandals so the music. Her black hair was combed through with a shiny oil, redolent of rich spices. The oil was applied so thickly that it made each long, curled lock hang in a distinct and perfect ringlet. The girl was dressed in the old Egyptian style, with a topless gown of berry-red, held up by a turquoise-bead strap around her ribcage. Another strap ran up between her bare breasts and over one soft-brown shoulder. The linen of her gown was so finely woven that it was quite transparent, concealing nothing from the eye. Yet she had pushed the hem of her dress up anyway, exposing her smooth thighs well above the knee, as if she couldn’t countenance that any part of her should be veiled from public view. The dark-haired girl cast a long, rather arrogant stare at Iadmon, then turned her attention back to the musicians without even offering a bow. Her heavy-lidded eyes were thickly lined with kohl, which only served to emphasize their startling blue color. Those pale eyes in an otherwise Egyptian face spoke of some northern, perhaps even Greek, blood.

  “Good Man Iadmon.” A familiar voice cut across the room, deep and booming. Doricha’s spine prickled, but she turned when her master did to greet Xanthes, a smile fixed to her face. The host, still as bullish as ever, was making his way across the andron, turning sideways to sip between tables, bending toward his guests with quick apologies and excuses as he went. When he reached Iadmon, he offered his forearm to clasp in friendship; Iadmon did not hesitate to take it, though Doricha could feel her master bristle subtly beside her. She kept her eyes lowered to the floor, hoping she would have some respite, some time to get her bearings in this new house before she was thrust into the furnace of Xanthes’ attention.

  “I told them off specially to seat you near my own couch,” Xanthes said, “so that we may talk. It has been too long since we’ve had a good conversation, eh?”

  “Indeed,” Iadmon replied smoothly. “You were most gracious to invite me. It looks to be a fine party already.”

  Xanthes’ huge, too-warm hands closed suddenly on Doricha’s shoulders. She stifled a squeak of surprise and looked up into his broad, fleshy face.

  “This night will be all the more enjoyable when we get to see this one dance. Your pale little flower, Iadmon—how glad I am you’ve brought her. You honor me with the gesture; I know you’ve refused her loan to many a man’s party before now. But enough for the moment; there’ll be time enough later to watch the white lotus dance. I am hungry—aren’t you? Let’s have something to eat!”

  Xanthes gestured to his household staff, standing at attention along the curved walls of the andron. As he and Iadmon settled on their couches, the first courses were carried in. The dark-haired girl in the red dress rose gracefully, making room for Iadmon, but as soon as he had arranged himself comfortably, she perched lightly beside him once more. Doricha, slave as she was, remained standing near the head of her master’s couch so that she might serve him as needed. She couldn’t help staring at the girl in the red dress. Who was she? And why was she sitting with Iadmon?

  Xanthes nodded toward the girl. “Do you like this one?” he asked Iadmon. “She’s not the newest of my hetaerae—a few are more recently acquired—but she is the youngest.”

  The dark-haired girl glanced back over her own shoulder, showing Xanthes one dimple of a half-smile. Her blue eyes nearly closed in an expression that might have been sleepy, if it hadn’t seemed so mocking.

  Doricha’s own eyes widened at the girl’s display of cheek. She expected Xanthes to shout at the girl, to punish her. Instead, he laughed.

  “Archidike,” Xanthes said, by way of introduction. “The youngest in my stable, but by far the most adventuresome. You’ll like her, Iadmon.”

  “She is a very lovely woman.” Iadmon’s comment may have been for Xanthes, but he looked directly into Archidike’s blue eyes as he spoke, bending his neck urbanely.

  Doricha curled her toes in her sandals to distract herself from her own surprise. She had never seen Iadmon bow to a woman before. But of course, this Archidike wasn’t just any woman—she was a hetaera. She had achieved the great goal; she had become what Doricha most wanted to be, and would be, if the gods were good.

  Iadmon and Xanthes tasted the evening’s first dish and fell deep into conversation, while Doricha peered around the room. It seemed as if Xanthes had provided a special entertainer not only for Iadmon, but for every one of his guests. Each supper couch in the andron was bejeweled with a woman. Some stretched languidly beside their male partners, joining them as they nibbled at the first course. Some had seated themselves demurely on the couches, sipping wine while they talked with the men. Doricha stared at each woman in turn, hungrily searching their faces, their bodies, their every manner and gesture for a sign of what she must do to join them. Every hetaera was beautiful, glittering with gems at wrist and throat, wrapped in a sheen of silk or displayed, as Archidike was, in fine-woven linen. They moved with the grace of river reeds swaying in the wind. Many of them were of an age with Archidike—little more than girls, still shy of their twentieth year. But plenty of the women had sailed gracefully beyond their youth. Those older hetaerae, so deliberate and practiced in every movement, in every smile and melodious laugh, shone with a patina of refinement that was even more alluring than the fresh charm of the youngest.

  How can I ever hope to be like them? Doricha wondered. She watched as one of the women, an Egyptian beauty with a slender, almost boyish figure, took her place in the center of a group of couches. Lamp light sparkled in the golden combs that held her black hair; it caused the draped white silk of her gown to glow like the Dog Star in the evening sky. The woman sang a few lines of some sweet, lilting song in the Egyptian tongue, in perfect harmony with the chords the musicians strummed. Doricha did not understand the lyrics, but she felt the delicious ache and wistful longing conveyed by the singer’s voice. The men who watched her raised their cups in salute, and she accepted their praise with a confident nod of her jeweled head. I’ll never look so fine, never command attention that way, Doricha thought dismally. Reckon Iadmon made a mistake in buying me, after all.

  A few lines of her master’s conversation pulled her abruptly from that morose reverie. “Won’t you have some wine?” Xanthes said to Iadmon.

  Doricha’s face flushed hot; she flicked her eyes back toward her master, watching and waiting tensely. Xanthes was gesturing to a passing slave, who bore a wine pitcher glazed in the bright, reflective blue-green of Egyptian faience. Doricha swallowed the sudden lump in her throat, wondering if she ought to speak up—and how she might safely deflect Iadmon from his host’s offer.

  But to her relief, Iadmon turned Xanthes aside with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I must disappoint you by asking for watered wine, my friend. Your feast promises to be such a fine affair; I want to keep my head clear well into the night, so I may enjoy every minute.”

  Xanthes’ smile was all good-natured acquiescence, but his narrow-set eyes gleamed in a way that made Doricha feel wary. “Surely, Good Man Iadmon, that makes you the wisest man in attendance.” He snapped his fingers, summoning a different slave, who carried a less potent drink in her pitcher.

  As the paler red of the watered wine flowed into Iadmon’s cup, Doricha allowed herself to relax—but did so little by little, loosening one knotted muscle at a time, so Xanthes would never notice her shift in mood. It wouldn’t do to let him see how the prospect of Iadmon in his cups had worried her. That might give him some unfair advantage over Iadmon, and Xanthes was shrewd enough to spot such an advantage and act on it at once. Iadmon’s show of good sense was a comfort to her. It seemed the master had taken Aesop’s advice to heart; he was mindful of his wine now, and would make an effort to maintain a clear head, rather than letting the spirit of
festivity carry him beyond his depth. She would keep a keen eye on his wine cup, and would do whatever she could to prevent Xanthes the crocodile from interfering with Iadmon’s composure and good sense.

  The next course of the meal was borne into the andron: roasted geese, artfully presented on wooden platters lined with fresh grape leaves, which had been cut to resemble feathers. Balls of soft cheese, rolled to the size of goose eggs, completed the theme. Xanthes exclaimed over the cleverness of his cooks, then took the choicest portion of the roast goose. He spooned a thick plum sauce over the meat steaming in his supper bowl.

  “Brought down by my fowlers last week,” he said, gesturing with his knife toward the goose. “Aged to perfection in my kitchen. I swear, the Pharaoh himself can’t have better cooks than my own. You must try the goose, Iadmon.”

  “Certainly. I’m a man who appreciates a well-roasted fowl. We ought to go out hunting someday, Xanthes, you and I.”

  As he spoke, Iadmon lifted his shallow supper bowl and extended it toward the servers, but Archidike sprang up from the couch and took the dish from his hands. “There, now,” she said briskly to the servers. “A slice from the breast, from the other side. Plenty of skin, just like the piece you served to Master Xanthes. Good Man Iadmon is his most esteemed guest.” Her voice crackled with a rough, gravelly edge, yet somehow it still managed to be feminine—just high enough to border on sweetness. “Come on, plenty of sauce. It’s the best part, isn’t it?”

  Doricha wavered uncomfortably on her feet, torn between remaining where she was—for Iadmon had given her no orders—and serving her master with her own hands. Wasn’t she his slave, not Archidike? Was it a breach of etiquette, to allow another person to serve her master, when he had brought her, Doricha, especially to this feast? As she hesitated, her quick mind sorted frantically through all the lessons on service and propriety Aesop had ever taught her, but she could find no answer to her questions. All she could do was stand there, blushing and flustered, caught between duty and a strange new social climate she did not yet understand.

  Archidike turned away from the servers and presented the filled bowl to Iadmon. She set it on his table with exaggerated care. Her small, firm breasts only seemed to grow rounder and more appealing as she bent over. Then she lifted one finger, red with plum sauce, and slowly sucked it clean.

  Iadmon smiled tightly at the hetaera, but did not otherwise respond to her bold advance.

  Too bold, Doricha thought sourly. Reckon she is just as young as Xanthes says. None of the older women would be so forward. It isn’t—well, it isn’t dignified, like. A man can get that kind of thing from any common porna. A woman as privileged as a hetaera ought to be more refined.

  As the men resumed their conversation, Doricha watched Archidike as surreptitiously as she could manage. She was at once fascinated by the young hetaera and repelled by her—intrigued by her coarse, raw, unapologetic sexuality, and faintly offended—on behalf of all hetaerae and hetaerae-to-be—by Archidike’s complete disregard for propriety. The other women in the room moved with grace and dignity, holding their heads high with the certainty of their own value. But Archidike lolled and shrugged, and cast invasively direct stares about the room, using those strange blue eyes like weapons. She seemed drawn to everything at once, like a child set loose in a room full of toys. She reacted to everything that entered the wide orbit of her interest—passing servants, a shift in the music, the conversations of men at some other group of couches. She laughed at jokes neither Iadmon nor Xanthes made, turning away from the men she was supposed to be entertaining as if they mattered to her not one bit. She shouted a greeting across the room to one of her friends, then licked her thumb and trailed it along the linen-clad buttock of a slave as he walked by. As Xanthes and Iadmon talked sedately, she heaved a sighed in a sudden show of boredom, then flopped back to lie flat along on Iadmon’s couch. There she lay, moaning—and Doricha couldn’t decide whether the sound was one of annoyance, or some barely restrained passion. Archidike resembled nothing so much as a spoiled house-cat: slinking and cunning, spoiled and petted, thinking and acting only for herself, and no one else.

  No, not a cat, Doricha thought. She watched as the prone Archidike arched her back, thrusting up her naked breasts with a beset-upon, horribly fascinating groan. If the other hetaerae are jewels, then Archidike is a little piece of broken pottery. You find it in the mud, and it’s all caked with dirt and foulness. But you can see where it was painted with a scene of a man and a woman together, doing what they do—and even though it’s not worth a thing anymore, still you can’t keep yourself from looking at it.

  Course after course, the extravagant supper was served, and as each new platter arrived at the master’s couch, Archidike rose to serve Iadmon from her own hands. She kept his cup full, too—with the watered wine, relieved Doricha noted. She noted, too, how hard Archidike worked to find some path into Iadmon’s affections. The hetaera was observant enough to understand that her initial, more brazen displays had not suited Iadmon’s taste. But every new dish she presented gave Archidike another opportunity to refine her approach. By the time the sweet rose-water biscuits were offered to Xanthes and his most distinguished guest, Archidike had hit upon the right way to tickle Iadmon’s fancy. She knelt gracefully beside the couch, proffering the biscuits up to her patron-for-the-night with a soft, feminine smile and an air of gentle promise. At last, Iadmon seemed to take real notice of her. He lifted his hand to sample a biscuit, but then he paused with the delicacy halfway to his lips. His eyes roamed over Archidike’s face, taking in her undeniable beauty and the faint shimmer of mischief behind the pleasant, very proper smile. His free hand lifted slowly, as if under an enchantment, and drifted to her bare shoulder. He stroked her gently, then caressed her smooth face.

  Archidike now seemed satisfied—assured of her patron, confident in her approach. She resumed her place on the couch, pressing close beside Iadmon, who seemed to welcome the contact now. He was still engaged politely in his conversation with Xanthes. But his left hand moved in a slow, insistent rhythm up and down the length of Archidike’s thigh.

  The hetaera grinned up at Doricha. “So this,” she said in that oddly growling voice, “is the very Doricha in the flesh, the famed dancing slave-girl of Good Man Iadmon.”

  Doricha was at a loss for words. She wasn’t even certain she ought to speak to a hetaera. It was permissible for a slave to speak to men inside the andron, of course, if she were there as entertainment or was serving food or drink. But Doricha had never been so close to a hetaera before. She had never encountered one in this way—lying beside her master, and talking to her… actually talking directly to her! Was Archidike mocking her, or was her interest in Doricha real? She bit her lip and hesitated, not knowing what she should do—what she could do, given the circumstances.

  The hetaera continued smiling up from Iadmon’s couch, never taking her eyes from Doricha’s face. Doricha thought perhaps the older girl’s attention should be interpreted as encouraging, perhaps even friendly. Having finally succeeded in attracting Iadmon’s attention, perhaps Archidike was more inclined toward fellowship with the girls around her, even if the nearest girl was a slave. What other reason could she have for acknowledging Doricha now, more than an hour into the feast?

  “Can’t you speak, dancer?” Archidike said—teasing, not unkindly. “Or doesn’t your master allow it?”

  “’Course he does. It’s just that I never spoke to a hetaera before.”

  “We don’t bite.” She paused, considering. A dimple appeared in her cheek again as she half-smiled. “Not unless the men pay us to, anyhow. Do you think your master likes it that way?” She snapped her small, sharp teeth together. “Of course, you don’t know anything about that. Not yet. The pristine condition of Iadmon’s precious, red-haired lotus-flower is legendary. I do believe he guards you more watchfully than he guards his silver.”

  Doricha felt hot all over with some wild emotion she couldn’t identify
. Was it shame? Anger? Before she could think of a rejoinder, Archidike sat up suddenly and called out to a group of men and their languid hetaerae, gathered on the nearest couches.

  “Hekabe, Iola! And you, Good Man Teris. Who do you think we have here? Look—it’s the dancing-girl Doricha!”

  “Isn’t she a pretty little thing,” one of the women said warmly to Doricha.

  “That hair,” the other agreed. “If you ever lose your wits and decide to sell it, dear, let me know. I’d pay a fortune for a rose-gold wig.”

  The men laughed good-naturedly. “You can give up that dream now, Hekabe,” one of the men said. “Iadmon will never permit you to shear his favorite slave.”

  “But don’t you think her hair would look dazzling with my complexion?”

  Doricha’s hands flew instinctively to her mound of neatly styled hair. Her cheeks burned.

  “What a little sweet-cake you are,” the other hetaera said fondly. “The way your cheeks color—you can’t hide a single thought, can you? It’s terribly charming.”

  Hekabe’s laugh was musical. “Look lively, Iadmon. Iola wants to steal away your slave-girl and raise her like her own daughter. Mother Hen, always fluffing up her feathers!”

  “I’ll peck you hard if you try to cut off my little darling’s hair,” Iola said. “A wig, indeed!”

  Archidike called out again—louder this time, so that all across the andron men and their hetaerae looked up expectantly from their supper and their conversations. “Iadmon won’t let you have his favorite slave’s hair, Hekabe, but he might let us all have a dance.”

  “Yes, yes!” someone shouted. “A dance!”

  Soon the andron rang with shouts of “A dance! A dance from Iadmon’s famous girl!”

  Doricha burned with mingled embarrassment and eagerness, so hot she felt she could rival the flames of the oil lamps. The hetaerae nearest to Doricha encouraged her with applause and with their glittering wine cups, raised up in their jewel-covered hands.