Read The Hunger for Free Online

at Athens’ gates, when her blue-sailed ships called at all the ports of the East. In such a place as that — or this — Miriam could most easily go about her business.
    Against the expectations of her physicians the swelling subsided and the fever declined. Soon he could raise his head for wine or broth of Aspergillus, or the boiled blood of chickens and pigs. She knew his name from his ramblings of his delirium, and one day when she called “Eumenes,” he smiled.
    She spent hours gazing at him. As his wounds healed he became more and more beautiful. She taught her cosmetician to shave him and, when he was well enough to sit up, went out and bought him a body servant and a boy of his own.
    Slowly a new feeling began to fill her. She ordered artisans in to mosaic the floors and paint the walls, just to give the house a fresh appearance, to fit the new mood. She clothed Eumenes in the finest silks, like a Babylonian prince. She dressed his hair with unguents and applied ocher to his eyes. When he was strong enough she converted the whole Peristyle into a gymnasium and hired professional trainers for him.
    Her own beauty blossomed as never before. Her male slaves became awkward and silly in her presence, and if she kissed them they blushed.
    No household in Rome could have been happier, no woman more gay. Soon Eumenes was strong enough to walk, and they began to venture from the Insula. Pompey filled the Flaminian Circus with water and ordered mock sea-battles for the entertainment of the public. They spent a day in a private box, drinking wine and eating cold meats: peacock and dove and pork seasoned in the Euboean manner. It was now September and ice had begun to appear for sale in Rome — at fifty sesterces a pound. She bought some and they took their wine cold, laughing at the mad luxury of it.
    She watched Eumenes fall in love with her. It was, from beginning to end, a triumph. His ordeal proved his extraordinary strength and his intelligence could not be questioned; he was the third son of an Athenian academician, sold into slavery to ransom his father’s library after the Roman conquest.
    “I’ve got to go to Babylon,” she said one day to test him.
    The announcement stunned him, but he recovered himself. “I’ll accompany you,” he said.
    “I’ve got to go alone.”
    For a day her announcement hung heavily in the air between them. Outwardly all was as before, but the strained moments, the increased silence of his contemplative nature, told her that he could not forget what she had said.
    Finally, he entered the trap. In the small hours of a morning he came to her, moving softly through the sleeping house, his passage causing oil lamps to gutter in their pots, coming swiftly to her bedside. “I dream only of you,” he said, hoarse with need. She received him with a cry of joy that echoed through all the years. It was a love that she remembered always, even after time proved her father’s theory wrong.
    That first extraordinary night, his passion, the intensity of his hunger, his pounding, relentless sexuality, that first night had been unforgettable.
    She had searched eternity for a better moment.
    She remembered the avid love in his eyes, the smell of his skin, sour and hinting of her own perfume, and his humid breath mingling with hers.
    All of the tragedy and despair of subsequent years did not quell the remembrance of that moment, or of the joyous times they had shared then.
    She remembered mostly the flowers and evenings, and the limpid beauty of the night sky in the imperial city.
    Also, she remembered his initiation. She had imbued herself with an authority she did not feel, drawing him on. She invented a goddess, Thera, and called herself a priestess. She spun a web of faith and beguiling ritual. They slit the throat of a child and drank the salty wine of sacrifice. She showed him the priceless mosaic of her mother Lamia, and taught him the legends and truths of her people.
    They lay together,