Solar Wind. Book one - страница 24

Marcus felt excited, he came down from the high bed, crawled up to the woman from behind. Oh, it was a brain-burning desire! It touched the woman, penetrated her body and began to move faster and faster. It seemed to him that he was about to explode with furious convulsions of pleasure.

It must be Benedicta, he believed. She came to him in the evening and stayed. But how? Was she sent from Tibur by Emperor Hadrian, who was in Syria? That was impossible! It was impossible!

“Marcus, what are you doing?” suddenly a stern, imperious voice sounds.

The woman turned her head. Oh, gods, it was Empress Sabine! He recognized her thin lips, her strict dark eyes. Recognized the diamond necklace around his neck. She was like that in the pool when he saw her naked with her mother—strict and domineering.

“Marcus, what are you doing?” voice again, it was not Sabine, it's his mother Domitia Lucilla. He was with his mother! A cold sweat broke over Marcus—this dream, a terrible dream that made the soul shudder, he must one day stop.

Marcus opened his eyes and found himself in an empty dark bedroom. On the sides of the bed were braziers, spreading even heat around the room. The lamp on the table did not burn—before going to bed it was extinguished by a slave Antiochus, a big, lazy man. He was now sprawled near the door and snoring desperately loudly. Antiochus would not let anyone in to him, neither Benedicta nor his mother.

Thoughts gradually filled his head. There were a few days left until the Ides of March. After them there would be a fun celebration which was called Liberalia, and he would put on the white toga of an adult citizen, finally becoming an adult and making his own decisions, to do responsible actions. Not all solutions, of course, full adulthood would come only in twenty first year. But Baebius Longus and Fuscianus would envy him, not to mention Victorinus. They’d be adults in three years.

And yet what was the meaning of this dream? So wrong, disgusting and nasty. First Sabine, then his mother. Marcus tossed and turned, he was hot, he could not sleep, and he remembered the artist Diognetus. He, like Hadrian, taught himself to subordinate his feelings to himself, to manage them, to be able to look at himself from the outside. Well, he looked: a young man who had mastered the empress, and then his mother!

His face burned with shame, and he thought about how good it was that it was night, dark, and everyone was asleep. No need to explain why he wasn’t asleep, why his cheeks and forehead were red. He suddenly remembered that his mother has a book by Artemidorus from Ephesus, which she often looked into because it was called “Dream interpretation.” Mother discussed her dreams with him, with friends, with Regin, because dreams, as well as signs, the Romans used to unconditionally believe.

It was necessary to look into it, he decided, to make sure that nothing bad would happen.

In the morning, not enough sleep, sluggish, Marcus went to the tablinum, where along with important family documents were kept scrolls of books. That's how he found the dream book. What he needed was described by Artemidorus in the first part. He did not look for Sabina, but about his mother… Possess a mother from behind was not good, he read, which meant that the dreamer would turn away their mother, or reject their motherland, or would fail.