“Perhaps, if I could see this letter with my own eyes, I could judge for myself. I am capable of reading—”
“The letter is not permitted to be taken from the archive, and no woman is allowed inside, so you know that would be impossible.”
As the old couple’s argument increased in volume, Porphyry and Zenobia exchanged looks of mock alarm, and could barely contain their laughter. How bemused the two of them must be, thought Gnaeus, his face turning hot, to find themselves surrounded by a family of such intellectual lightweights. He looked at his sister to see her reaction. Pinaria was gazing at Zenobia with almost worshipful admiration.
Irritated by his parents’ verbal sparring, Gnaeus reached for his sister’s hand, reflexively, to calm himself. Pinaria took her eyes from Zenobia and gave him a warm smile. After the deaths of their spouses and children, each had become the helpmate and comforter of the other. Now Gnaeus had remarried, but what of Pinaria?
Looking sidelong at his parents, who continued to argue, he said to Pinaria in a low voice, “Not the best advertisement for marriage, are they?”
“They love each other madly,” she whispered back. “They must!”
“And what about you, sister? Has the time come to think again of marriage? You’re still very attractive, and young enough to have children. Do you not want your own household? Keeping you here, I feel I’m robbing you of a woman’s greatest pleasure and purpose, to bear children and to be mistress of her own household.”
The question seemed almost to embarrass her. “Oh, Gnaeus, don’t be silly! I’m perfectly happy here. I have all I need. And if I did leave the House of the Beaks, who would take care of our dear parents?”
“Perhaps your hypothetical husband would agree to take them under his own roof,” said Gnaeus.
Their mother overheard these last words, and clucked her tongue. “Trying to get rid of us, are you, son? You should remember the primeval debt that every Roman owes to his mother—going all the way back to Romulus and Remus and that she-wolf who suckled them!”
“Trying to replace me as paterfamilias?” said Titus, matching his wife’s pretense of dismay. “Want the House of the Beaks all to yourself, do you? Are the old folks getting in the way of your new marriage?”
“Father, Mother, you know I have no desire to…” Gnaeus became tongue-tied, chagrinned at being teased by his parents in front of his new wife and the city’s leading intellectual. His befuddlement caused his parents to tease him even more, with Pinaria joining in. Zenobia and Porphyry looked at each other and chuckled.
Gnaeus was not amused. Everyone else was having a fine time, at his expense. The evening had not gone as he hoped.
* * *
Later, after Porphyry had departed and the others went to their bedrooms, Gnaeus ascended the stairs to the roof terrace and paced under bright moonlight. The streets of the city were pits of darkness, but from various directions came distant sounds—bursts of laughter, a shouted name, snatches of a drinking song.
In his fantasy, he had thought that Zenobia would be so pleased by his efforts to bring her a kindred soul, Porphyry, to comfort and amuse her, that she would be properly grateful, and amenable to his advances. But when he had moved to embrace her in the hallway leading to their adjoining bedrooms, she had insisted that the evening’s full moon was not propitious for the production of offspring. She withdrew to her own chamber and closed the door behind her.
Going over the events of the evening and brooding on his bitter disappointment, Gnaeus became increasingly agitated. It was absurd that he, a Roman husband—a senator!—should be rebuffed under his own roof, by his own wife. It was more than absurd, it was wrong—morally, legally, and in every other way wrong.
He found himself back in the hallway, loitering outside Zenobia’s door. This, too, was absurd, and wrong, that he should have to skulk, that in his own home there should be any door he could not freely open, any room he could not immediately enter.
He finally raised his hand to rap on the door, then heard a noise from the room beyond. It was a moan of some sort. It had to be Zenobia, but he did not recognize her voice at all. Was she having a nightmare, or was she in physical pain? Had she hurt herself? His pulse began to race. His greatest fear since he married Zenobia was that she might follow the example of her ancestress Cleopatra and kill herself. He had tried to make her happy. He had done everything he could think of. Was she that miserable in her captivity?
He tried the handle, but the door was latched. In a sudden panic, he forced the door open with his shoulder and stumbled into the room.
On Zenobia’s bed he saw not one person, but two. They were naked, and their naked bodies were entwined in a most suggestive configuration. At first, Gnaeus thought it must be one of the household slaves with his wife, and he felt a sharp sting of outrage. This was truly the stuff of Roman comedy, that an upright senator should find himself cuckolded by a lowly slave! He would throttle the wretched fellow with his bare hands, and make Zenobia watch.
But … the body entwined with that of his wife was not a man, he realized. It was a woman, with sumptuous hips and quite large breasts. And it was not one of the slaves, either.
It was his own sister who abruptly turned her head and stared back at him.
For a long, strange moment, he saw what he saw, and yet did not see it. It was so confounding that his mind could not make sense of it. It was like seeing a person walk upside-down on the ceiling. The eyes beheld, but the eyes were surely at fault, for no such possibility existed.
Zenobia and Pinaria were making love. Passionate, sweaty, moan-inducing love.
Gnaeus stood speechless and frozen on the spot, at a complete loss as to what he should do or say. Or think, for that matter—though the one thing he most certainly felt was jealousy, that his wife should refuse to be intimate with him and then, minutes later, engage in such activity with his own sister!
Pinaria made a stifled, mouse-like squeak and averted her eyes. She snatched up her sleeping gown and fled, brushing past him as she ran out the door.
Zenobia, on the other hand, seemed not at all embarrassed or ashamed, merely annoyed that he had interrupted them. “Husband, did you have to barge in? And just when I was very near to reaching the climax—a pleasure that you, husband, have never been able to provide me, in case you hadn’t noticed during all your huffing and puffing on top of me.”
Gnaeus wrinkled his brow. “Huffing … and … puffing?”
“What would you call it?”
“I would call it trying to make a son!”
She snorted. “Why not a daughter, to follow in her mother’s footsteps?”
“Into defeat and captivity, do you mean?”
Now he had angered her. Zenobia stepped from the bed, naked but for her jewelry with her dark hair all astray and her black eyes flashing. The sight of her stunned him. It was as if he had never actually seen her before. He felt a sudden, aching heat in his loins. At the same time, he felt almost afraid of her. He staggered back, then turned and left the room.
His heart was pounding. He could not seem to catch a breath.
In the vestibule, the slave on night watch was leaning against the wall, just nodding off. Gnaeus rapped his knuckles against the man’s forehead. The brute gave a start, rubbing his eyes.
“Come with me,” said Gnaeus as he unlatched the door. He was not such a fool that he would walk the dark streets without a bodyguard. “Stay behind me. Keep your distance. Don’t talk to me.”
Where the light of the full moon fell, all was bright and bone-white, but where there was shadow all was pitch-dark. Striding quickly through dim streets lit only by occasional lamps or faint lights from houses and taverns, he remembered a line from Juvenal, or rather, remembered roughly what it said: no woman performs cunnilingus on another woman, whereas countless men fellate and take it up the backside with other men.
“Well,” he said aloud, “apparently Juvenal didn’t know everything!” He glanced ove
r his shoulder. His bodyguard probably thought his master had lost his wits.
His pulse racing, his head on fire, he aimlessly walked the streets—or perhaps not so aimlessly after all, for eventually he found himself approaching the great Temple of Sol Invictus built by Aurelian. Even at this late hour, braziers flickered at either side of the open doors, and the soft glow of lamps shone from within. The bodyguard stayed on the porch as Gnaeus stepped inside the sumptuous space of marble and gold, newly finished and wonderfully pristine, unlike so many of the ancient temples that had become shabby and neglected. The temple was adorned with armaments captured from the generals of the many nations who had served Zenobia, and booty from Palmyra—not only jewels and paintings and sculptures, but fantastic garments from the East encrusted with gems and dyed with a purple previously unknown to Rome.
Among these glittering wonders he found himself standing before a shrine that had been dedicated by Aurelian himself to Apollonius of Tyana, adorned with images and relics of the holy man. Gnaeus purchased a bit of incense from a priest and lit it. He whispered a prayer to Apollonius to give him wisdom and fortitude, and to relieve him of his burning, painful, unrequited passion. But no miracle was immediately forthcoming, and Gnaeus felt like a fool—like a love-smitten lad in some ridiculous Greek novel, pining for a girl he could never have. But Gnaeus was not a callow youth, and Zenobia was not an inaccessible princess. She was his wife!
He left the Temple of Sol Invictus and began walking again. Eventually he found himself approaching a portion of the great wall that had been built by Aurelian—it seemed the hand of the emperor loomed wherever he went. Gnaeus suddenly found his way blocked by a huge pile of debris, the remains of one of the many buildings that had been demolished to make room for the wall.
He tried to remember what building used to stand there, but the wall had so altered the area that he couldn’t recall. Much of the pile was shapeless rubble, but there were also bits and pieces of architectural details, some of them quite substantial—beautifully carved marble decorations and column drums and pedestals.
He drew a sharp breath when he saw among the rubble a group of tondi, large round medallions of marble carved with life-size images in high relief. Once these massive sculptures had been brightly painted, to make them stand out on the demolished building they had decorated, but the paint had long ago faded and the images appeared in stark white and black under the full moon. Why were these tondi here, lying in the open? They were surely too precious to destroy, but perhaps too difficult to move until a proper place could be found for them. The things one saw in Rome—artwork that would dazzle even a Persian emperor, lying abandoned amid rubble!
Looking closer, he recognized the nearest tondo, and then recalled the building it had adorned. There were eight tondi, all depicting the emperor Hadrian. One image showed the famous incident, immortalized in verse—Gnaeus knew the poem by heart—when Hadrian and Antinous were hunting, and the emperor used his spear to save his young lover from a stampeding boar. The starkness of the moonlight gave the image a dreamlike quality, so beautiful it took his breath away.
The moment was uncanny. Gnaeus reached out and touched the face of Hadrian, and then the face of Antinous, and felt a warm, tingling sensation that began in his fingertips and then swept through his entire body.
His seemingly aimless steps had led him to the family’s two most venerated demons—beings who were mortals once, but were now immortal. Would Antinous be of more help to him than Apollonius? The Divine Youth was no stranger to passion. There had always been people who considered Hadrian’s obsession with the boy to be frivolous, not understanding that Antinous had drowned in the Nile so that Hadrian might continue to live. Antinous represented not only youthful perfection but also the power of undying love and loyalty. What would Antinous have thought, had he come upon Zenobia and Pinaria that night? Would he have run from the house in jealousy and confusion? Or would he have felt some innate understanding of what was happening under Gnaeus’s roof, indeed, under his very nose?
Gnaeus experienced an odd epiphany—an experience he would never be able to put into words. It was more a feeling than a thought, but it was very powerful, very comforting—exactly the thing he had been seeking on his nocturnal quest.
From the corner of his eye, he saw that his bodyguard was kneeling before another of the tondi. As his master had done, the slave reached out to touch the face of Antinous, and whispered a prayer. Master and slave both felt compelled to worship. The power of the demon Antinous was very strong that night, in that quiet, unforeseen moment in an unexpected, neglected place.
* * *
Gnaeus slept that night in his own room. In the morning, as early as he dared, he ventured to knock on Zenobia’s door, which stood slightly open, its latch broken. He spoke her name. After a long silence, Zenobia called for him to enter.
She was sitting up in bed, wearing a modest gown and no jewelry. This was quite a contrast to his last sight of her, naked and imperious, but if anything she looked even more formidable, and braced for an argument.
But an argument was not what he had come for. Quite the contrary.
He stood at the foot of her bed. “Do you love my sister?” he asked quietly.
She took a long moment to answer. “Perhaps. I’m not used to being asked such an intimate question, by anyone.”
“I understand. But is it your intention to continue … carrying on with her in the fashion … in which I saw the two of you last night?”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t see why not.”
He bristled a bit—was she deliberately provoking him?—but took a deep breath and steadied himself. “Very well. As you wish.”
Zenobia sensed that a bargain was being proposed, and awaited the catch.
“But in return for my acquiescence—cooperation—turning a blind eye—whatever you wish to call it,” said Gnaeus, “you will sleep with me on every night when your cycle makes it likely that you might conceive. I expect at least five such nights a month.”
“Consecutive nights?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “Very well.”
“Even after you become pregnant, I will expect you to accommodate my desires on a similar schedule—as often, but no more often, than before. Until, of course, your pregnancy precludes such activity.”
“You seem very certain that we will conceive a child.”
“I am certain. Because last night I prayed on the matter, and received wisdom from the Divine Youth. I heard him speak, as clearly as I hear you now. We will have a son, and when he comes of age, he will wear this.” He pulled off his tunic, baring his chest, and showed her, for the very first time, the fascinum, worn on its necklace. “I put this aside for a long time, but Antinous told me to start wearing it again, because … because I will have a son to give it to.”
“Step closer,” said Zenobia. She reached out to touch the fascinum and studied it. “A phallus with wings?”
“The features are much worn by time.”
“Even so … I feel its power.”
Gnaeus drew a deep breath. Her fingertips, holding the amulet, gently touched his chest. “And also…” he said.
“Yes?” She lowered her voice and stiffened her jaw, bracing for some unreasonable demand.
“When we make love, Zenobia, you will show me … that is, instruct me … in whatever practice or technique it is that induces your greatest pleasure. I mean to say, if my wife is to experience what last night you called ‘the climax,’ I intend for her to experience it … with me.”
Zenobia smiled. “Very well, husband. If you insist.”
V
THE SCEPTER OF MAXENTIUS
(A.D. 312–326)
A.D. 312
It was the twenty-seventh day of the month of October. Like a multitude of birds flocking to a single tree, from all directions came the citizens of Rome to gather in the Flavian Amphitheater—or simply the Amphitheater, as most Romans called it
even in formal speech, since hardly anyone in the city, except the most educated, could have named a Flavian emperor or said when the amphitheater was built. It was not an amphitheater, but the Amphitheater, and it had been there forever, the living, throbbing heart of the empire—or so it seemed to the people of Rome.
These were the days of not one but of four emperors, ever since Diocletian had divided the imperial power between himself and three others. The Roman Empire had become too big and unwieldy, some of its institutions too decrepit, and the menace on every border too great, for any single man, or even two men, to rule the whole of it.
This day was a celebration of one of those four emperors, Maxentius, the only one who actually resided in Rome. This was the eve of the anniversary of his reign. He had been emperor in Rome, ruling over Italy and Africa, for six years.
But the mood of the city was not entirely celebratory. There was something manic about the gaiety, an air of festivity and giddiness but also of unease and even panic—because there happened to be an invading army, just to the north of Rome, poised to lay siege to the city, the most formidable force to do so since Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and sent Pompey running.
Before going to the Amphitheater, Marcus Pinarius Zenobius, who had grown up in the House of the Beaks and had lived in Rome for all of his thirty-seven years on earth, put on his senatorial toga and prepared to take his fifteen-year-old son, Kaeso, on a tour of the city. At this critical moment, with the future of the Pinarii and that of Rome itself hanging in the balance, he wanted to remind his son of all the buildings and monuments the Pinarii had helped to construct and to decorate over many generations. After a low point in their fortunes, his own father, Gnaeus, had reestablished the family business by building the walls of Aurelian—fortifications that might be about to receive their first substantial test.
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