by Kate Quinn
“Vix.”
A voice.
“Vix—” A woman’s voice. “Look at me.”
I didn’t want to look at anyone. I wanted to die.
“Vix, please listen to me. Go to Hadrian.” Her words came tear-clogged. “Vix, he won’t let anyone touch Antinous’s body. It has been four days, and he won’t let any of us touch it.”
Four days. Four days? How had it been four days?
“Four days in this heat. Please, Vix. Go to him. Make him see reason. Make him send Antinous to the gods. Please.”
My eyes opened, but Sabina’s bruised and pleading face was just a hovering blur.
Four days in this heat, I thought, and then somehow I was sitting up. Sabina looked at me through tear-swollen eyes. “Vix?” She reached out, but her fingers dropped before they touched my arm. I would not have touched me either. I was filthy, unshaven, and sticky, and in my head there was still a resounding howl of utter agony. My eyes burned tearless. My voice was a croak.
“Take me to him.”
* * *
The Emperor of Rome just stared at me as I banged into his private quarters. It was night, the indeterminate blackness between the fall of the sun and the rise of dawn, but he didn’t look surprised to see me appear unannounced. He stood barefoot and wild-haired in the same sleeping tunic he’d worn when they first hauled Antinous from the Nile, beard untrimmed and stubble growing down his neck, and his eyes were vacant pits. “Vercingetorix,” he said vaguely. “I felt you coming.”
I looked about the chamber for my son’s body, but it was not there. I heard the doors close behind me—neither Sabina nor the other Praetorians dared follow me inside. “Where is my son?” I demanded.
The Emperor ignored that. “I always know when you’re near me. Something about the mortal enemy side of things. You put the hairs up on my neck. Probably because you’re looking for a chance to cut it.”
“I almost did cut it,” I said. “On the lion hunt. Where is my son?”
“In my chamber next door, laid out on my sleeping couch beneath a sheet of gold cloth.” The Emperor flung himself down on the nearest couch, draping one leg over its arm and not seeming to notice that all the cushions had been torn off. Antinous’s dog had made a nest of them, sleeping uneasily in the corner. “Sit.”
There was no room anywhere to sit. His private chamber was a wreck. I looked around the morass of torn hangings, spilled wine, and toppled statues, and finally perched on a carved chair with a splintered leg. Hadrian pushed a silver cup at me. “Drink. I’m tired of drinking alone.”
There were no slaves, so I mixed the wine myself. I filled Hadrian’s cup as well, and we tossed it back in identical sharp swallows. My tongue burned, and my stomach growled. How long had it been since I’d eaten or drunk anything? My throat was scratchy and dry, demanding more, and suddenly the stench of the room rushed in on my numbed senses. I smelled the sharp sourness of the wine, the tang of sweat and tears, the reek of urine from Antinous’s dog pissing in the corners—and something ranker, riper.
That smell. That smell. I kept my eyes stubbornly on the carpet, away from the door at the chamber’s other end. His bedchamber, where my son lay under a sheet of gold.
Four days in this heat. I looked up at Hadrian’s haggard face. “Let me have Antinous’s body,” I heard myself saying in my raven’s croak. “Let me lay him to rest.”
Hadrian poured more wine for us both. “What gives you the right to do it?”
“He was my son.”
“Not by blood.”
“No. My wife bore me girls—and do you want to know the truth, Caesar? She hated Antinous for it.” No, I thought even as I said it. Not hated. Resented. Envied. But my world had become a black and absolute place and had no room for any feelings but absolutes. Hate. Love. Pain. Death. “I didn’t sire him, but that makes no difference to me. I loved him more than my life.”
Hadrian looked at me over the rim of his cup with those pitlike eyes. “So did I.”
“So get another lover,” I flared. “An emperor can always get another bedmate. A father can’t get another son.”
“You think love is something that can be replaced?” Hadrian bolted down his second cup of wine. “If you sired another hundred sons, they would never replace the one you lost. If I took another hundred lovers, not one of them would be my star. No one can ever replace Antinous.”
“No,” I said, and as fast as that my anger died.
“You’re the only one on this boat to love him as much as I did,” Hadrian said, and toasted me. “Maybe that’s why I’m drinking with someone who nearly cut my throat.”
We made a bitter toast to that. The wine roiled in my stomach like poison. “I cut his hair, the night he died. I’ve been cutting his hair all my life—it’s something a father does. So won’t you let me tend his body, Caesar? Because a father should do that, too.”
Hadrian gave a sharp shake of his head. “You repudiated him, and so did the world. Everyone but me. In death he is mine.”
“So for the love of God, put him on a pyre and burn him!” I could smell my son rotting in the Egyptian heat—rotting, all his golden beauty. It would drive me mad. “Send him to the gods, Caesar!”
“I will.” Hadrian sounded fierce. “But not by fire. Not on a pile of wood like an ordinary mortal, to be reduced to common ash. He’s to be mummified. His body preserved, wrapped in gold and resin. Then I’ll build a great tomb, and erect a statue of him as tall as a god, and every day I live there will be offerings at that statue. At the tomb of Antinous.”
“Mummified?” I said, stupidly.
A wave of the Emperor’s hand. “I’ve sent for the priests from Hermopolis. The ones who know how to do it.”
“Doesn’t it take months?” I had no idea, really.
Hadrian was indifferent. “Then we stay here for months. Rome can burn for all I care; I will not put him on a pyre.”
More silence. We drank, and through the shutters sealing in the room’s stale stench, I saw a sliver of moon. Waning now, its fullness disappearing. My last glimpse of Antinous had been under that ripe moon, every line of him etched in its silver light. My last glimpse, before I’d seen him wax-pale and dead in the Nile’s waters. How could that be? How could he be so vibrantly alive one moment, warm in my arms, his hug crushing me with its force, and then be . . . gone?
My eyes stung. If I could weep then perhaps I could rest, but I deserved neither.
“Lucius Ceionius tells me a new star has been spotted in the heavens,” Hadrian said, his gaze drifting after mine to the shutters. “A star of Antinous, he says. A sure sign that he has risen into the heavens, to blaze with eternal light like all the other heroes of lore.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I think Lucius is a flattering fool worth no more than his embroidered tunics,” Hadrian said. “But I will name the star after Antinous, anyway. Why not? He deserves a star.”
We clinked cups again, drank again.
“You know when he first made love to me?” the Emperor asked softly. “It was in a grove of lemon trees just outside Athens, after the Mysteries. Gods know what excuse I made, to get you away and him alone. He wore a blue tunic, and he looked at me with such clear eyes, and the sight of him made me tremble like a boy.”
I curled my fingers tight around the wine cup, feeling its carved acanthus leaves bite into my flesh. “I don’t want to hear how you and my son made love.”
“I could hardly summon the courage to touch him,” Hadrian said as though he had not heard me. His eyes stared blind into the past, a warm Greek day all fresh and fragrant with the scent of lemons. “I looked at him and I tried to tell myself he was just another plaything. Unworthy of me. Something pretty to be used and tossed aside.”
I bolted to my feet. “I said, I don’t want to hear—”
&nbs
p; “But he looked at me and he smoothed my hair and he laid me down under the lemon trees,” Hadrian said, “and I knew I was the one unworthy.”
I flung the wine cup across the room with a clatter. “If you were unworthy, why didn’t you leave him be?” I snarled. “A madman like you, drawing him into your nest—”
“He was my chance for light.” Hadrian looked at me. “My one chance.”
“And he died for it!” I roared. “God damn you, Caesar! God damn you! He died because of you—”
“Did he?” Hadrian came off his couch in a sudden leap, fingers digging into my shoulders. “Was it because of me, Vercingetorix? I know he had his dark moments; I know he dreaded going back to Rome. He thought death marked me, and he said after the lightning strike that he’d told the gods to take his life if they would spare mine—”
I hesitated.
“You hate me,” Hadrian pleaded, husky-voiced. “Hatred doesn’t lie. Hatred doesn’t tell soothing stories. You’ll tell me true. Did he fall into the Nile by accident? Or did he jump?”
I still hesitated.
“Tell me,” Hadrian begged, hanging on my arms. “Tell me. And if he killed himself for me, to spare my life from the Fates or to spare my reputation from the gossip, then give me that sword of yours and I’ll fall on it.”
I had another chance, then. The Emperor’s eyes were full of fire, his voice clotted with anguish; he gripped me as though he’d break me—but I could break him, and with just one word. Yes, I thought. Yes, he threw himself into the river because of you. Say it, Vercingetorix. The Emperor dead, my old enemy, the man who had debauched my son, whose death would probably even free a rejoicing province of Jews. Say it.
“No,” I said. “No, Caesar. He didn’t die because of you. He died because of me.”
Hadrian didn’t even hear the last words. His face crumpled in agony and in relief, the moment I said no, and his head came forward against my shoulder as he wept. I put my arms around his shoulders to keep him from falling, my eyes burning again like salt and fire as I remembered that last night with Antinous. His wistful voice echoed in my ears.
Anyone who throws themselves into the Nile will save the life of a loved one, did you know that?
Why hadn’t I paid closer attention? He’d said himself how worried he was for the Emperor, for his health, his headaches and his fevers, for his reputation once he returned to Rome. But I’d been so cocksure, telling him to make his choice like the man he was. Thinking he chose between life at Hadrian’s side and life at mine. Never thinking he might have chosen no life at all.
My son, fearing for Hadrian’s good health, his good name, his life. My last glimpse of Antinous alive on this earth, and he had been gazing out at the Nile’s seductive waters. Perhaps he stood there a long time after I was gone. Or maybe he dropped into the water and let the currents take him before I was even back in my pallet that night.
My fault. Mine alone. I wasn’t going to hang that about Hadrian’s neck, good as it would have felt. He’d loved Antinous. I’d been the one to fail him. I’d failed him again and again and again, until he died.
Hadrian pushed away from me with a sudden shove, digging at his weeping eyes as though he wished he could gouge them out. If he wanted to, I wouldn’t stop him. “Not just a tomb,” he said savagely. “Antinous will have more. Games in his honor, held on this site.”
“Yes.” Maybe I should give myself up to fight in those games. Die as a gladiator in my son’s honor; die in blood on arena sand with my heart speared on a trident fighter’s triple prongs. It had a certain fitting ring; my wasted manhood ending as it had begun. Full circle.
“And not just games.” The Emperor was ranting, striding up and down the room on a weaving path. Antinous’s dog whined from its pile of cushions. “I will make him a city here, opposite Hermopolis. He will have an entire city raised to his glory, a city to rival Rome. Antinoöpolis. I will see the foundations laid before I leave Egypt, laid in stone and marble for all time—”
No, I mused, not a gladiator’s death. With my luck, I’d probably survive Antinous’s games. I needed something more certain than a gladiator’s end, some better way to make sure I died howling and bleeding and battling. Rebellion ought to do it. Go home, join Simon and his friends, and let their firestorm of liberation kill you. Mirah could at least live on with the dignity of being a martyr’s widow.
“A temple,” Hadrian was saying, his hands building pillars and columns and domes in the air. “A temple in his name, to grace the center of Antinoöpolis. And another temple in Rome to the glory of Antinous the God—”
“The god?” My wine-fuddled thoughts swam hazily back to the dark room, the fetid air, the Emperor looking at me with his wild beard and his glittering eyes. “My son is a god, now?”
“He was my god,” Hadrian said, and all his manic grandiose energy seeped out of him. His legs gave out and he dropped to his couch again.
I moved more slowly, creaking back to my own chair like an old man. God knows I felt like one. “Antinous the god,” I said, sounding it out. “He was just a boy, Caesar. A good boy who grew into a fine man—”
“And do you know how rare that is? Goodness. True goodness. He even made me good.” The Emperor ran a hand through his hair. “You will never know how hard I worked to be worthy of him.”
“You failed,” I said.
“But he never knew I failed.” I heard a fragile pride in Hadrian’s voice. “The performance of a lifetime, and he never knew it. To be emperor I made myself look like a good man, on the outside. But for him, Vix, I wanted to be a good man.”
Vix. Hadrian had never called me Vix. Just Vercingetorix, or before that, the ever-mocking “Tribune.” I gave a bitter bark of a laugh, and we clinked cups again. We were drinking it straight by now, not bothering to mix water in, and it was fire on the tongue.
“And now,” Hadrian went on, musing, “I’ve gotten used to it. Pretending to be a good man. First for my Empire, and then for him.” Hadrian turned his cup upside down, watched a drop of wine collect on the silver rim and fall to the floor. “But why should I bother anymore?”
“Antinous would want you to carry on as you were—”
“But I don’t want to!” Hadrian flung his wine cup across the room in a clatter of metal. The dog flattened his ears. “I don’t care if Rome burns. I’d light it on fire myself and lay it on Antinous’s tomb as a tribute. Burn it all with him.”
I wasn’t afraid. I should have been, but I wasn’t. I looked at the Emperor and I just repeated, “But he wouldn’t want that.”
“I know. Oh, I know. So I’ll build a city for him instead of burning an empire. But, gods—” Hadrian closed his eyes with a shudder. “I pray someone tries to kill me. I pray someone tries to plot against me. I pray someone makes war on me. Because it’s not in my nature to build and preserve, and gods know you’re aware of that even if Antinous never was. I have a black soul, and I feel like giving it free rein.”
I stared at him, at his set face and his pit-dark eyes and the fist clenching and unclenching in slow rhythm at his side, and dread mounted in me like a wall, brick by remorseless brick.
I pray someone makes war on me.
Oh, no, I thought. No—
Hadrian moved unsteadily toward his chamber. His small tablinum, where I presume he curled up to sleep since my son occupied the bedchamber. “Need sleep,” Hadrian said not too clearly, and struck open the door. I paid no attention. I was echoing all over with dread.
I pray someone makes war on me.
Well, Hadrian was about to get his wish. But I didn’t think Simon would get his wish, for a free nation of the Jews.
Mirah had mocked Hadrian as a coward who didn’t fight. Simon judged him better, as a practical man who would not fight without good reason. We make Judaea too much trouble, and he will let us go, Simon had said. But that
was when my son had been on hand to temper Hadrian’s darker urges.
I didn’t see the stone-faced madman in this room weighing practicalities if he heard Judaea was in open rebellion. I saw him burning the whole province to the ground.
You’re drunk, I told myself. You’re drunk, and your son is dead, and you’re seeing doom in every corner. That’s all.
“Vercingetorix,” Hadrian said, and my eyes jerked up to meet his. He hadn’t closed the door of his chamber yet; he stood swaying on his feet, but his gaze on me was steady. “What was your old legion? The one Trajan gave you, as commander?”
The dead legion, I almost said. Because if rebels like Simon didn’t level the men of the Tenth, Hadrian would when he threw them into the fight. “The Tenth Fidelis,” I said instead, hoarsely. “Stationed in Judaea.”
“I give it back to you,” he said. “It’s yours, Legate.”
I was on my feet, and I didn’t know how I got there. “What?”
“You aided me tonight.” His eyes were unblinking. “For that I owe you. I don’t like owing you. I’d rather hate you.”
“You can’t make me legate,” I said, dry-mouthed. “You stripped me of rank for debauching your Empress; the Senate won’t—”
“The Senate can piss down their own throats,” Hadrian said clearly. “And I don’t care if you bedded my Empress. I don’t care about anything. The Tenth is yours, Legate. Good night.”