Read Online Wolf Whistle by Marilyn Todd - Free Book Online Page B

comfort and he would move on, skimming the ridge of the hill in his search for juicy reptiles.
    Arbil would not have been among the buzz of humanity caught in the scan of the eagle. The weather was invariably foul and he spent all of the winter and much of the spring closeted indoors, swaddled in a long woollen mantle over numerous ankle-length robes. There were times when he would have swapped half his fortune for a Babylonian drought, even the odd swarm of locusts would have been more comforting than this bloody damp. Why go out in it? He had men for that. Overseers. Physicians. Managers for the various wings. Eunuchs to look after the girls once they reached puberty. Arbil had enough to do without supervising the supervisors. In fact, his whole organization was structured round routine, and that included his personal life.
    First he would summon his wife and make love to her (twice, if he could manage it). Next he would bow to the rising sun. Then he would pray to Marduk. So powerful was this patron god of Babylonia that Arbil’s bedroom was devoted entirely to his holy symbol, the dragon, and it was from the dragon Arbil drew his strength. He patted his ample girth and smiled. His stamina, now! That came from the goddess Ishtar, whose eight-pointed star he’d had inlaid with ivory over his bedhead and it was to Ishtar that he turned every morning. (Twice, if he could manage it.)
    After breakfast, he would bathe, for without his body perfumed and massaged, without his rebellious straight hair crimped in the traditional style and his beard snipped and curled as he liked it, he was in no fit state to reel in one of the many tentacles of his organization and absorb the latest news from the city. After all these years away from the motherland, he still baulked at mingling with men who wallowed like hippos in communal bathwaters and who worshipped gutless pagan gods.
    He must have been daydreaming, maybe he’d even fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew was his wife saying ‘Arbil, Arbil! Are you all right?’
    ‘What?’ His vision was fuzzy, his mouth was dry. ‘Of course, I’m all right.’ He looked round. How did he come to be in his office? Wasn’t he in his bedroom just now? He never came into this, his favourite room, painted blue like the night sky to show up the gold in the lamplight, before his ablutions were complete.
    ‘I brought you flowers for your desk. Marigolds.’ Arbil looked up. Apart from a mist around the margin of his vision, he could see her doe-like eyes, her blue-black hair swishing when she walked. How old was she now? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? After twelve years in the marriage bed, no blemish had yet marred her olive skin, no wrinkle, not so much as a droop to those delicious breasts. Yet today wasn’t the first time he’d not been able to get it up… Shit.
    ‘Yes, Angel, very nice,’ he said, shooing her out of the room with the back of his hand then tipping the pathetic little bunch in the bin when she’d gone. He mightn’t remember coming into this office, but by Marduk, he didn’t intend to start work without his hair being crimped. ‘Fuck me!’ His hair was crimped! Arbil peered into the mirror. And his beard? Curled in at the tip. He sniffed his forearm. It glistened with oil and smelled of pine and spice. His favourite unguent. What the fuck happened this time? Dazed and trembling, surrounded by the bulls of Adad, artefacts of gold, horses of stone, Arbil realized that the time he had lost must have been close to an hour. Sargon would be waiting… Hell, he’d have to wait a moment longer. He daren’t let his son see him like this.
    His antiques orientated his befuddled mind, especially the free-standing zodiac tiled in lilypad green, which was his favourite. Money box excepted, of course! Above the locked chest and nailed to the dark blue plaster hung the calendar which, being Roman, told him that today was the Festival of Luna. Despite his aversion to the