She was three feet tall.
The wedding ceremony was unorthodox. Caligula, as high priest, clumsily contrived to combine tender love poems with crude references to the participants' differing heights and there were none of the formalities that would normally accompany such an occasion: no flame-red veil, nor knot of Hercules.
At first Rufus felt he was watching the proceedings from somewhere above, as if what was happening was actually being experienced by someone else. But there came a moment when the reality of it hit him like a hammer blow. He was being cheated. Aemilia should have been here by his side, not some . . . some . . . For a moment he thought he might faint, but he forced himself to concentrate. He studied the Emperor as the latter performed for his audience, and wondered at the change seven days had wrought. Where was the composed and softspoken young man who rode Bersheba with him? Where was the concerned ruler now, who talked so passionately of his people? This Caligula's eyes were filled with an unnatural brightness and his face was the colour and complexion of well-kneaded dough. When he laughed it was the cruel laugh of a despot.
Slowly but relentlessly the resentment Rufus felt was replaced by anger. Yes, he was a slave and subject to his master's whims, but even a slave should not be asked to suffer this humiliation: paraded for the vicious entertainment of the crowd and as helpless as a chained bear baited by hounds. He raised his head and found himself staring into the Emperor's face. The mocking eyes locked on his and the lips twisted into a sneer, and suddenly, for the first time, Rufus knew true hatred. I could kill this man, he thought. I could put my hands round his neck and squeeze until the last breath was driven from his body. He saw the mocking eyes narrow, the glacial blue becoming shadowed, and he realized with a shock that Caligula was reading his mind – was challenging him. In that instant, the rage he was experiencing changed to a mindless, reckless exhilaration. The guards lining the walls seemed irrelevant and the crowd faded into a background haze. There were only two people in the room and one must die.
His mood was interrupted by a gasp from his side. He looked down to see the girl grimace in pain and realized he was gripping her hand so tightly he must be close to breaking her fingers. She stared back, her eyes filled with a desperate appeal. She had sensed the violence between the two men, and she knew it would be the death of her. He hesitated, but only for a second. How could he place this fragile creature in danger? He allowed himself a sad smile and saw the tension leave her. Caligula saw it too and roared with laughter. The moment was gone. He was a slave again.
It was a relief when they were led from the palace before the night's feasting began.
When their escort left they sat in silence in the shabby little room behind the elephant house. The girl was hunched on the cot as far from Rufus as was possible in that tiny space, and she looked more like a frightened child than ever. Rufus knew he should talk to her, reassure her in some way. Another man would surely vow to protect her and keep her safe. But somehow he could find no words that would not sound hollow, no promise that he could keep. It was as if he had been followed home by a stray street urchin who refused to be sent away. She was undoubtedly pretty, but it was impossible to forget she was a . . . he struggled for a word that wouldn't make him as cruel as his Emperor, but gave up. He had no feelings for her beyond sympathy. She hadn't said a single word to him. He realized he didn't even know her name.
'Livia,' she said, as if she had read his thoughts. Her voice was soft and she had a lilting accent he found difficult to place.
'I am Rufus, keeper of the Emperor's elephant.'
'So that is the smell? I feared someone had spilled a pot of night soil.'
She turned to face the wall and curled up tighter, wrapping her arms protectively around herself. For a moment he was overwhelmed by a mixture of pity and concern and rose with the intention of joining her on the cot and giving her what comfort he could. But there was something terribly forbidding about that turned back and he stopped halfway. Instead he opened the door that linked the room to the barn, and spent his wedding night alone amongst the sweet-smelling soft hay and relentlessly crawling insects beside Bersheba.
In the morning he fed and watered the elephant and exercised her in the park. When he returned to the barn he saw the tiny figure of Livia watching from the doorway and led Bersheba towards her.
'No,' she said, backing away with a cry of fear.
'You are safe with Bersheba,' Rufus assured her. 'She may be big, but she's harmless. She won't hurt you.'
'What would you know of hurt?' she snapped and retreated inside the house, slamming the door behind her and leaving him wondering at the contrariness of women.
They spent that day, and the following one, in a sort of silent battle that could have no victor. He sensed there were things she wanted to say which pride or stubbornness stopped her from saying. This was his home, familiar and comforting in its humble way. For her it was an alien world filled with strangeness and potential dangers, not least the massive beast who shared their living space. But silence, like promises, only exists to be broken. It is impossible for two people forced to live together in a confined space not to communicate, at least by gesture, and gesture was eventually followed by words.
On the third day, they were taking their evening meal together when she began to talk about herself, and Rufus discovered in quick succession that she had been born in the province of Achaea, was probably about twenty years old, had lived the life of a nomad, and was now principal acrobat in a troop of dwarf entertainers.
He continued to sleep in the barn, where at first he dreamed dreams of Aemilia. But there came a point in his nocturnal reflections when Aemilia's heavy-bodied softness was replaced by a smaller, more delicate frame. He sensed a change in Livia, too, and on the night when she reached out to touch him as he turned to go to his straw mattress he was almost expecting it.
It was Livia who took the initiative. She held his hand and led him to the bed, where she gently pushed him backwards. Then, never meeting his eyes, she shrugged off her dress and stood before him.
He was entranced. He had never seen anything so perfect. Her beauty took his breath away – and terrified him. The moment Caligula understood what he had given two mismatched outcasts, he would separate them.
Livia, meeting his gaze for the first time, read his thoughts in a glance. 'Come,' she said. 'We must make good use of what time we have.'
They lay together, cheek against cheek, her body tiny and vulnerable, but soft and tantalizing, against his. He reached for her, drawing her still closer, and bent his head to kiss her. She put her hand to his lips.
'First there are things you must know,' she whispered. 'I have sold my body. Men have sold me. Despite my size, perhaps because of it, men have always desired me. I have been used in ways that disgust me and would sicken you. If we are to be together, and stay together, you must first know this.'
He could feel the dampness where her cheek met his, and a tear rolled from the corner of his eye to mingle with hers. And as the grey of the early dawn began to show through the thin cracks in the wall, it was her head that came to his and there was no barrier to the kiss.
At first, he treated her like a fragile doll, afraid his size and strength would cause her pain. But she soon made him aware that, in her own way, she was as strong as he, and that she found his size, in every sense, a source of great pleasure. She taught him things, about her body and his, he would never have discovered for himself in a lifetime.
Rufus would remember the weeks that followed as the eternal summer of his life. Each day brought a new reason to be thankful, each night a new source of wonder. Livia was full of contradictions. He discovered that, although she wanted to be loved, she could not bear to be smothered. If he tried to help her with the household tasks she would snap at him with her teeth bared like an angry terrier. Yet minutes later another Livia would be revealed, the Livia who craved affection and could combine passion and compassion in a way that left him
weak and bewildered.
She was determined to prove herself as a wife as well as a lover. She attacked the squalor he had been happy to live with, brushing like a tiny whirlwind, and did what she could with their meagre resources to turn the room behind the barn into a home. Only one thing came between them.
'Why must we live with that stinking animal?' she asked one evening as they lay together. 'You have the Emperor's favour. Surely you can ask for another position.'
'But Bersheba is my charge. She –'
Livia put a hand to his lips and rolled astride him, laughing. 'Do you love the elephant more than you love me?'
Rufus hesitated only for an instant, but an instant was enough.
'You do love the elephant more than you love me!'
Nothing he said would change that opinion. His only option was to prove her wrong, and it was an exhausted Rufus who staggered from their pallet the next morning. At least Bersheba was less complicated.
But an elephant used to regular habits, who has found herself abandoned, is apt to be moody.
Bersheba ignored Rufus when he greeted her. Perhaps she was hungry; he should have fed her an hour ago. Turning his back on her, he began to pitch sheaves of hay into her feeding area. His thoughts returned to the hours before and the velvety softness of Livia's flesh and the way her small teeth had bitten into his lip as they both reached the height of their passion at just the right mo –
Why was he lying on his back on the packed earth floor with the crossbeams of the barn spinning sickeningly above him?
As the spinning slowed, he tried to stand, but only contrived to struggle as far as one knee before being overcome by nausea and sitting back with his head in his hands.
The next time his whirling head allowed him to look up, Bersheba stood over him, ominously close, her trunk swinging rhythmically. He thought she might be going to hit him again, for he realized now that what had felt like the roof falling in on him was a blow from that fivefoot length of solid muscle. But the swinging stopped and instead she gently curled it round his arm and pulled him to his feet.
Rufus shook his head ruefully and went to where the fruit was stored. 'I apologise, mighty Bersheba.' He placed a bruised apple in the bowl formed by the end of her trunk. 'It is going to be more difficult than I had realized to look after my two ladies in the manner they deserve. But I have learned my lesson.'
Bersheba snorted her acceptance and went back to her hay. Rufus opened the big double doors to allow the sunlight of a glorious morning to stream inside, cutting through the thin clouds of dust rising from the elephant's straw floor. His heart filled with the simple joy of living as he stepped out into the clean air of the park. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs until they could take no more.
'Is the honeymoon over so soon?'
XXV
Lucius, the officer who had delivered Rufus to Drusilla's bedroom, sat on the damp grass a dozen paces up the slope towards the palace. He seemed in no hurry to rise, but lay back, staring at the sky with a contented look. Rufus walked over to him, stood for a while, until he realized how foolish he must appear and took his place on the ground beside the young soldier.
'Everything is so clean and pure on mornings like this, don't you think? Whatever happened yesterday is gone for ever and the day ahead holds nothing but promise. It reminds me of the hour before a battle when one sees everything much more vividly and each breath is precious because it might be among the last you take.' The words were directed at Rufus, but Lucius's eyes never left the solid blue dome above them.
'Have you fought in many battles then?' Rufus didn't try to hide his scepticism. Lucius had the kind of face that would always look boyish. It was impossible to imagine him in combat.
'You mean have I always been a princess's lapdog? Then the answer is no. I have locked shields with my brothers and felt the power of the barbarian horde as they broke upon them. I have tasted barbarian blood on my lips, heard the screams of the dying and smelled the shit from bowels ripped by a blade.' He shrugged as if it was of no consequence, but Rufus heard the pride in his voice. 'But that was a long time ago in another place, in another life. I enjoyed campaigning. All you had to do was follow orders and look heroic even when your guts felt like ice.' He laughed and picked himself up, dusting the grass from his back. 'Perhaps it is not so different here after all. My orders now are to take you to a certain lady.'
Rufus followed him along the covered walkway connecting the Emperor's palace to that of his predecessor, Tiberius, but soon they turned north and into a small enclosed garden near the Palatine library. Broad-canopied trees of a type Rufus didn't recognize threw wide circles of shade on the manicured grass, where a peacock, its brilliant rainbow-fan tail thrown proudly wide, shrieked its displeasure, and a herd of tiny deer grazed peacefully. Life-sized statues lined the paths, their stony gaze still focused on some epoch-making event a hundred years before. They were perfect, these toga-clad patricians; each face an individual, each marble cloak styled slightly differently from the others. Rufus quailed beneath their stern gaze, and wondered why he was here. What could she want from him she had not already taken?
She was waiting for him by a fountain in the centre of the garden. Lucius waved him forward and walked off to stand out of earshot beneath one of the trees.
Drusilla was cloaked and hooded, and stood with her back towards him. She seemed smaller than he remembered, somehow diminished. But perhaps that was a trick of the early-morning light.
'Walk with me.' The words were the merest whisper. She set off slowly towards the far end of the garden where he could see the redtiled roof of the temple of Apollo rising above the trees. He kept pace just by her left shoulder.
'Do you fear me, puppy dog?' The words sent a shiver through him. Her voice was stronger, but he had to lean forward because it was muffled by the thick cloak which still hid her face from him. 'You should fear me. A single word from me would bring a dozen guards to cut you down and they would not stop to question why.'
She walked a little further before she spoke again. 'But the real question is, puppy dog, whether I should fear you. When I had you brought to me you were just another handsome morsel to be tasted. A tender piece of flesh to be enjoyed then discarded. How could it be otherwise? You are a slave and I am destined to be a goddess. You should be nothing to me.' She shook her head under the hood. 'Yet, since our meeting, my mind has been filled with your face and your body and your touch. I have pined for the sound of your voice and the feel of your hard flesh under my hands. At first, I believed it was weakness on my part, and I fought it, but in the fighting I have become weaker still. Then I understood. You had bewitched me. And now,' she swept the hood back from her face and turned towards him, making him step away in fear, 'I must decide whether to accept my bewitchment or to break the spell by having you killed.'
Rufus heard the words and understood their significance, but what she said was overwhelmed by the horror confronting him.
It was as if her beauty had been sucked from her like the moisture from an overwintered apple. The skin of her face was deeply wrinkled and the colour and texture of parchment, blotched with patches of darker, more lifeless flesh. Her yellowing eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. It was the face of death.
She laughed at his confusion, and he gasped at the ruin that was her mouth. The lips he had kissed were covered with weeping ulcerous boils and she had lost several teeth, while others dangled loose in her gums. And she was bald, or almost so. Only tufts of the silky auburn mane remained, standing out like sparse stalks missed by a careless harvester.
'Am I not beautiful?' she rasped, echoing the question that had greeted him in the room with the discus thrower. 'Am I not the treasure you always desired?' Then, more harshly still, 'Is this your gift to Drusilla, slave? Did you betray me?'
'No, mistress,' Rufus pleaded, hoping it was true, but remembering his words to Narcissus. Was this some sorcery of the Greek's? What was it he had said? 'I don'
t think Drusilla will harm anyone again.' Was there a terrible certainty there he had missed? His mind raced. He understood he was fighting for his life and he groped desperately for the words that would save him.
He found himself babbling, a near-incoherent jumble of inanity which, for some reason, appeared to please her.
'You gave me your love and I was grateful for it. For a few short hours you placed me among the gods and I was blinded by the glories I discovered there. When it was past, you left me in a shadow world where the darkness comes from within. I waited in vain for your call. I thought I had failed you in some way and that knowledge made my life worthless. I would give anything for this not to be. Kill me if you must, but know you have bewitched me as much as you say I have bewitched you.'
He dropped to his knees, not daring to look into her face. He knew he risked everything by offering her his life, but something in the memory of the time they spent together made him believe she wanted it to be so. He didn't see the single tear that ran down her ravaged cheek.
'You were the last of my lovers, Rufus of the elephant. Some would say you were the last of a vast legion, but believe me when I tell you it is not so. Drusilla was discerning in her choice of puppy dogs, at least give her that. And you did please her.' There was an infinite sadness in her words and the way she spoke them. She was talking of herself in the past tense, as if she were already dead, and even in his fear for his own life, Rufus could not help being moved. 'But Drusilla must ask herself if that is enough to save you? Would it not be fitting if you were to join her on her funeral pyre, in the manner of some terrible Babylonian queen in the texts of Herodotus, taking her most coveted possessions with her into the next world? I will think on that.'
Rufus felt the touch of her chilled fingers, and he rose awkwardly to find the sunken eyes piercing him.
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