by Kyle Onstott
He climbed into the bed, putting his cold feet against the warm calves of the other. Hierocles half awoke, pulled Antoninus to him contentedly then, fully awakened, pushed him away.
“What are you doing here, beloved? This is no place for you.”
“This is the only place I want to be.”
“Granted, but you must not stay. You have abandoned two wives, now let Rome see that you have really married this one.”
“But Hierocles,” Antoninus began to sob again, “I can’t do anything with her. Oh, Hierocles, what shall I do and how shall I do it?”
Hierocles gently pushed him further away. “I cannot advise you, little Caesar. This time you are involved in something in which I cannot help you.”
“Then return with me. Annia Faustina herself suggested it. Come hurry, Hierocles.”
Hierocles swung his legs over the side of the bed and got up. He spoke to Antoninus as a man speaks to a child.
“Get up, Antoninus! I’ve never denied you anything you ever asked me but this one thing I do deny. Were I to return with you now, all Rome would know it tomorrow and all Rome would say that any child that might be born to Annia Faustina was fathered by me instead of you. Rome would never believe it was yours. Antoninus, go back at once, and the guards who saw you come will think you came only to answer the call of nature.”
“Oh, let me stay here,” Antoninus was wailing again. “What do I care what Rome thinks or says? This is my life and you are my life and I can’t go back to bed with Annia Faustina.”
Hierocles was adamant. Gently but firmly he pulled the Antonine from his bed, took him by the arm and led him to the door, opened it and gave him a little push out into the hall. The guards looked up. They were different ones from those who had been there when the Antonine had entered. The midnight corridors outside the imperial apartments stretched endlessly vacant except for the two Praetorians which stood guard at the doors. Antoninus caught the smirk that passed between them as he closed the door behind him but he chose to ignore it. He felt strangely alone, faced with the awful possibility of passing the remainder of the night with the panting Annia Faustina.
Slowly and unwillingly, feeling sorry for himself, he dragged his feet along the corridor, hating each step that separated him from Hierocles, yet too proud to return and assert his right as Caesar to share his own bed. With each reluctant step, his displeasure rose, until he had managed to build up a towering case against Hierocles, blaming him for this luckless marriage, this forlorn wandering, this lonely vigil.
He wouldn’t return to Annia Faustina! Of that he was sure. Let Rome talk if it would! He’d slip out of the palace and go to the Suburra! He’d get Cleander and spend the night in the baths. He’d coax one of the Praetorians into an empty room—yes, into the room where Glamus was—the room that harbored the gilded and perfumed rack. That is what he would do! He would! If Hierocles could turn him out so easily, then he would seek someone else. Let Hierocles be jealous. He wanted Hierocles to rage and stamp his feet and yell at him—call him all the vile names he had learned as a charioteer. Yes, he’d find someone else tonight. What about Glamus with his narrow slanting eyes that hinted at strange and unknown pleasures, and his wide shoulders that promised prodigious strength? He’d have Glamus put him on the rack. That would be something new.
Before he could turn to go back, he heard footsteps approaching and sought the deep shadows of a marble pillar. He waited until the footsteps drew nearer then looked out from behind the pillar.
The Fates had played into Antoninus’s hands!
It was the Tribune Agrippa!
Antoninus gathered the long folds of his nightgown around him and sidled out from behind the pillar, directly into the path of the oncoming Tribune. The purposeful pounding of military boots stopped. Agrippa recognized
Caesar and saluted him, grim-faced and unsmiling as usual.
Antoninus smiled and drew his robe even closer, hitching it up provocatively with one hand.
“You guard me well tonight, Tribune Agrippa. Do you guard me through love or duty?”
“It is my duty to guard you well, Great Caesar.”
Antoninus said, “The Augusta is ill—perhaps too much wine at the wedding feast, and her women attend her. The other Caesar is sleeping soundly and I have not the heart to waken him. My mother shares her apartment with the High Priest Aegenax. Tonight it appears that Caesar has no place to sleep. I was about to seek a couch in an anteroom near my apartments. Perhaps you would accompany me there, Tribune Agrippa.”
“Gladly, Great Caesar. I shall go as far as the door with you and I will take up guard duty there myself.”
“Such devotion. Tribune! Yet could you not guard me better inside. I do not feel sleepy and I would talk with you. I would like to know you better—you and your religion of Mithras. Does it still keep you a virgin, Tribune?”
“Hardly a virgin, Great Caesar, for I was not that when I embraced Mithras, but since that time I have kept myself pure for him.”
Antoninus had turned and was retracing his steps along the corridor that led to his own apartments. The Tribune followed, a step behind.
“And do you enjoy this noble purity that you have enforced upon yourself?” Antoninus asked sweetly.
“It has come to be my life, Great Caesar, the most precious thing in the world to me, something which nobody can take from me.”
“You underestimate the power of our Roman girls, Tribune Agrippa. ’Tis said that some of them could excite a marble statue.’’
“They present no problem to me.”
“Or the Greek boys. I have heard of one Apollonius who, ’tis said, gets one thousand sestercii an hour. If the girls can excite a marble statue, it is said that he can make a bronze one stand upright.”
“He would have less charm for me than even a girl, Great Caesar. My religion has come to be my life. It is all that matters to me.’’
“Then perhaps I should try it. Are you certain that the reward is sufficient?” Antoninus stopped before a small door, almost hidden in the marble wall, opened it slowly and beckoned Agrippa to follow. “Let me hear more of your faith, Tribune Agrippa. If you were this night to convert Caesar to Mithras you would be doing your god a service, and methinks Rome too.”
Agrippa hesitated on the threshold but followed Antoninus into the room. His eyes burned with the missionary zeal of the men of Mithras when they scented a convert. Inside the room, one small lamp burned on a low table beside a couch, throwing only a small circle of illumination on the floor. The rest of the room receded into darkness. The air was heavy with the cloying scent of dying flowers. Somewhere in the heavy smell of tuberoses and acacia, there was a movement. Antoninus heard it and called out.
“It is all right, Glamus. Do not leave. I may have need of you.” And to Agrippa he explained, “My slave Glamus who sleeps here.”
Agrippa peered into the darkness but could see nothing except what looked like four golden wheels whose spokes dimly reflected the waving flame of the lamp. Antoninus indicated the narrow couch.
“There seems to be nothing else to sit on,” he deprecated the paucity of the room’s furnishings. “Will you sit here beside me, Tribune Agrippa, and talk to me? Perhaps you would start by telling me why you do not like me. Am I so evil that you hate me?”
Agrippa sat down on the edge of the couch. He watched the lamp flame for a moment as he formed the words of his answer. He turned to Antoninus who was beside him but in the shadows beyond the circle of lamplight.
“I do not hate you, Great Caesar. You are Rome and I cannot hate Rome.”
“But you do not love me, Tribune Agrippa?”
“I know not what you mean by love, Great Caesar.”
“There is only one meaning to the word,” Antoninus inched a little closer and Agrippa moved further away.
“I must be going, Great Caesar. It is not fitting that the Tribune in Command be away from his men. Should one have something to report to me, he
could not find me.”
“Yet he could have nothing to report except Caesar’s safety and Caesar is here with you, Tribune. Safe here beside you.” Antoninus squirmed on the bed until his hand reached the bare flesh of Agrippa’s thigh above the brazen greaves and below the leather kilt.
This time Agrippa did not move and encouraged by his silence, Antoninus’s hand crept upwards. Agrippa brushed the hand roughly aside and stood up. His right hand reached for his sword and his left hand clutched at the thin stuff of Antoninus’s gown.
“You . . .” In his anger he could not form the words. “If you were not Caesar I would kill you, and perhaps Rome would be better off if I did. You want to know why I do not love you as a soldier should love his Emperor? Because you are what you are! Because of what you have just tried to do! I cannot love a man I cannot respect and how can I respect any man, even the Augustus of Rome, when he is nothing but a bath-boy. No, worse than a bath-boy for those boys sell themselves for money to live, and Caesar needs no money. By Mithras, I shall kill you, you . . .”
He never finished the sentence. Out of the darkness two gigantic arms clasped tightly around his neck, choking his words. The Tribune was a strong man but he had been taken off guard and he was no match for the strength of the arms which encircled him. Their vicelike grip caused him to drop his sword, their pressure forced him to his knees.
Antoninus jumped from the couch. “Do not strangle him, Glamus. It is well that he lives, even though he threatened my life. Secure him, Glamus. He will be court-martialed in the morning.”
‘‘I’ll hold him, Caesar, but reach under my apron. You will find a length of leather thong there.”
Antoninus found the thong and with one arm still around Agrippa’s throat, Glamus forced the Tribune’s arms slowly backward so that Antoninus could secure them. He wrapped the thong tightly around Agrippa’s wrists. Glamus forced the Tribune to his feet and produced another thong which Antoninus bound around the man’s feet.
“You heard him threaten me, Glamus?”
“That I did, Great Caesar.”
“It looks as if it were a plot to kill me, Glamus. Perhaps we should make him confess. Light the lamps.”
Glamus took the solitary lamp and went around the room, lighting a great tree of lamps which hung from a high bronze standard. Now, with the sudden illumination, the gilded wheels of the rack stood forth, proclaiming its purpose.
“There is no plot, Great Caesar,” Agrippa spoke dispassionately. “It was only a personal difference between the two of us, not as between Caesar and a subject but between two . . .” he hesitated “. . . two persons.”
Antoninus grinned. “You were about to say two men but then you thought me unworthy to be called a man. No, Tribune Agrippa, I am not a man, at least not such as you. To the rack with him, Glamus. Strip him of his armor and his clothes. Cut them from him. Surely Caesar has the right to know who desires his life.”
“It is forbidden by law to torture a Praetorian, Great Caesar. Kill me if you must. My sword is on the floor and your executioner is strong enough to do it in one swipe. Kill me you may, but you cannot torture me.”
“Cannot? You forget there is but one law in Rome and I am it. Glamus, get to work!”
A sharp knife severed the leather straps which secured the Tribune’s breastplate, greaves and sandals. A quick slash with the knife to cut the waistband of the leather kilts. Another rent the linen tunic, and Glamus slashed a piece of the linen, forced Agrippa’s mouth and stuffed the cloth in:
Agrippa did not struggle as Glamus wound the violet leather straps around his ankles and spun the wheels to take up the slack. With his feet elevated and his body on the floor, Glamus cut the straps at the wrists and fastened the others. Again the wheels spun and Agrippa’s body rose in the air and tautened. Glamus ran his hand over biceps and thighs. He moved each wheel until he heard the ratchets click twice. His experienced hands told him that he had given the man all the stretch he could stand. He nodded at Antoninus.
Antoninus was poised expectantly, clapping his hands together in glee. “I’ll hear the confession in private, Glamus. Stand outside the door and permit nobody to enter. When I summon you, release the Tribune and give him his clothes to cover his nakedness, and see that he returns to the camp.” He waited for the door to close. His fingers followed the same path as Glamus had charted along the tense hard muscles but where Glamus’s had been professionally impersonal, Antoninus’s were tender and caressing.
“Tribune Agrippa,” he whispered. “Instead of converting me to the stern ascetism of Mithras, tonight I shall convert you to the wonderful pleasures of Elah-ga-baal.”
The Tribune’s head shook violently in negation.
“Oh, yes.” Antoninus’s voice was low. “Tonight you sacrifice to Elah-ga-baal, and in spite of your wishes to the contrary, you will not be able to help yourself. Tribune Agrippa. You will not be able to resist. No one has ever successfully resisted me, Tribune. You are a man, and as a man you will succumb. The longer you resist me, the longer you shall remain on the rack. But have no fear, Tribune Agrippa, you will not lose your life, but only something you foolishly consider more precious than your life. Have you anything to say to me, Tribune Agrippa?” Antoninus took the linen wad from the Tribune’s mouth.
“Only this, Great Caesar! Tonight you are making a grave mistake. You would be wise to kill me, Great Caesar, for I shall never forget nor forgive it.”
Antoninus stuffed the gag back. “But, oh how you will enjoy it? I shall not kill you because Elah-ga-baal does not demand a blood sacrifice. He demands only joy from his sacrificants and when I have finished, you will have become converted to him. You will see how much more my god has to offer you.”
The Tribune raised his head with difficulty and glared at Antoninus. His eyes burned with a fierce hatred. When the strained muscles of his neck could hold his head erect no longer, it fell back. Antoninus knelt beside the rack.
The stones were cold to his knees but his hands were warm with the heat of Agrippa’s flesh. The minutes sped by and one by one the lamps flickered out, leaving only the scent of dead flowers, and a silence that was broken by the straining gasps of air from the man on the rack. Antoninus stood up. His hand lingered on the panting chest of the Tribune.
“Tonight I have given you great joy, Tribune Agrippa, but in so doing I have made an enemy of you. Tonight you hate me as a vile creature who has robbed you of your purity and caused you to break a solemn vow to your god. But I do not hate you, Tribune Agrippa. Perhaps I should regret what I have done, and what I have caused you to do. But I do not. We are flesh, Tribune Agrippa, and no god can say that we cannot enjoy this flesh. Neither of us shall ever forget this night. I do not fear you, for one does not fear that which one desires and which one has enjoyed. Glamus will be here in a moment to unrack you.” He pulled the gag from Agrippa’s mouth. “Cannot you answer me one word?”
With a mighty effort the Tribune raised his head and stared at Antoninus. His breath came in fitful gasps. He closed his lips, worked his jaws and then opened his mouth and spat in Antoninus’s face. His head sank back.
Antoninus rushed from the room, stumbling over Glamus who slept stretched before the door.
“Release him.” Antoninus kicked Glamus, jumped over him and ran to the door of his own room. Without waiting for the guards to open the door, he pushed it open and slammed—it behind him. Once inside, he threw himself into Hierocles’s arms and between hysterical sobs, he confessed. His uncontrolled hysteria mounted to a frenzied delirium in which Hierocles could only console but not punish. Not until daybreak was he able to quiet the raving lunacy of the boy beside him.
28
After the episode with Agrippa, from somewhere down in the hidden depths of his personality, Antoninus managed to dredge up the remnants of a conscience, and with his usual ability to dramatize every emotion, he chastened himself for everything that he had done in his life, and particularly for what he had don
e to Agrippa! First he decided to allow Alexander to live. The prospects of his obtaining an heir of his own had vanished during the first night he spent with Annia Faustina and he now realized it would be a physical impossibility for him to produce a son. In order to acquaint himself with various techniques whereby others had achieved it, he had commanded special exhibitions staged that he might watch. Although he became familiar with the methods, he was never able to accomplish them himself.
His impotence with women had affected his former desires, for apart from Hierocles, he had eyes for nobody else. Annia Faustina also filled an important place in his life; she was the mother he had never had. Annia had been wise enough to know that she could never hold Antoninus as a husband but she realised that he needed a mother more than a wife. Soaemias had not been able to forget her own desires long enough to mother Antoninus. Annia Faustina did. He went to her apartments every morning, while Hierocles was busy with the government of Rome and her ample bosom cradled him as it would a little boy. Together they chose her clothes, her jewels and her perfumes. Together they discussed the latest gossip in Rome. He felt free with Annia.