One was of a sleek, rangy muscularity, the other of powerful weathered toughness. One possessed the finely-honed contours of a practiced athlete; the other showed the well-knit tissues of a seasoned fighter, hunter, and working soldier. Erections announced their mutual admiration.
Antinous took a fresh initiative. Impulse drove his heart. He moved close to Hadrian's side where hip touched hip and flesh touched flesh. He drew the emperor's arm around his waist, and tilted back to invite a face-to-face response. Hadrian took the invitation and grasped his jaw in one hardened palm to hungrily devour the Bithynian's mouth, lips, tongue, and saliva. Antinous happily assented to the aggressive urgency.
He felt himself yielding to the grasping hands and arms, the tightly pressing torso, the intimately provocative pelvic thrust, and the fierce probing by a searching tongue. He then responded to these gestures equally fervently.
In a flurry of discarded clothes, linens, leathers, buckles, and boots the two collapsed in an intertwined coupling to the stony tesserae of the mosaic floor. Their limbs interlocked in alternating strategies of domination, submission, and rude intimacy above the floor's mosaic design of Greek hoplites at battle with scantily-clad Amazons.
Antinous was now enveloped in an increasing wildness. His bodily resistance to his grappling combatant was waning. This was no concession of defeat; it was his recognition of the exhilaration of close proximity to someone thrilling. He vividly imagined he was melting inexorably into the other's flesh as they bound tightly together. He was besieged by the rough caresses and wet urgency of Hadrian's mouth, felt the brush of trim bristles graze his jaw, and inhaled the salty aroma of a day's sweat. Yet he gave as well as he received.
While wrapped together in abject intimacy he discerned the rigid shaft at his partner's groin searching the nooks-and-crannies of his limbs to locate a susceptible portal into his interior being. Its determination in sliding ever closer to its intended target was tenacious. He felt his pursuer's lust press relentlessly forward towards its goal.
The driven urgency was so unashamedly flattering, his resistance willfully relaxed to open his defenses to the incursion. It was a gift to his companion's previous generosities with a dash of prurient curiousity.
Hadrian's resolve pressed his arms and limbs apart to hold him firm to the mosaic tiles. The militant strategist maneuvered a forward assault at the intended target. The younger man threw caution to the winds as he opened his heart and body to the incursion. What the heck, he thought.
A myriad mixed feelings, thoughts, needs, fears, and bodily sensations swept Antinous as he realized his body was happily succumbing to a very intimate corporeal invasion. His partner held him firm by a feigned wrestler's hold whose determined power maneuvered him to utter vulnerability. Yet it was a consensual vulnerability which happily savored its own helplessness.
Hadrian spat several times onto his palm and applied the lubricious balm to his member. Antinous emitted a surprised gasp as the penetrating organ found its target and eased into its intended berth. Yet the zealous invasion was a careful, benevolent assault.
Antinous was overcome with contradictory feelings of victory and submission, joy and discomfort, honor and shame, as Hadrian engulfed him in a carnal embrace. He also realized he had succumbed to the driven power of another man's lust, while equally recognizing he was strangely untroubled by it.
After tense moments of wary expectation the Bithynian gradually perceived a spreading sensation of elation coupled with inner serenity suffusing his organism. An entirely unfamiliar feeling of bodily wholeness was aroused and acknowledged by his perception. He had to concede he felt pretty good.
Antinous hadn't experienced such a novel sensation since the time several years earlier when he first stumbled upon the cascading sensuality of self-induced orgasm. But no brief, excited spasms at the hand of his more lurid fantasies bore comparison with this new experience. Its glow pervaded his entire being, head to foot, as he subsided into a mysterious rapture emanating from the dark inner world at his body's center. It thrilled his mind, it enlivened his muscles, and it pleasured his organs. It induced whimpering, toe-curling contentment.
The feeling automatically cemented a convergence with his all-engulfing companion. Their face-to-face, eye-to-eye proximity invoked an enclosing cocoon of radical intimacy. While Hadrian's rhythmic bodily action undulated above him, Antinous's natural inner solitude acknowledged how he was now accompanied in his sense-of-exile by a like-minded fellow explorer.
Hadrian's searching eyes hovered above him to monitor the minutiae of his sensory responses. The younger man's entire organism radiated waves of exquisite delight from his inner core. Hadrian sported patiently, teasingly, adventurously, with these sensations to fine-tune their playfulness.
He manipulated himself this way and that, slowly entering and withdrawing in leisurely alternation, slowly pressing ever deeper or holding still in steadfast confirmation. He toyed deliberately with the febrile responses of tissue, muscles, nerve end, interior node, and the conscious psyche too, to exact maximized gratification. Both parties smiled knowingly to each other's responses.
Hadrian lifted the young man's frame high for greater penetrative power, or doubled him over to bring himself into closer eye-to-eye intimacy, all the while playing his physicality with inventive pleasurings. Antinous was consumed by an animal relish which compelled him to emit plaintive squeaks of sublime delight. His habitual, protective, impassive guard was being demolished as a newfound openness to personal connection was rebuilt on its foundations.
In the process he began to appreciate facets of his father's revelations of a few months earlier. This intense closeness to a person for whom he held such high regard created an unanticipated concord within him. Hadrian was engaged upon an active, radical intimacy far more deeply personal than anything Antinous had ever practiced upon himself. Now two decades of emotional curbing, restraint, discretion, and conscious personal distance were being crumbled away in a rush of acute physical sensation. Antinous felt Hadrian and he had melded into a single human organism.
Is this, he wondered, what Achilles and Patrocles, or Alexander and Hephaestion, had experienced? Is this what they call love?
His friendly tormentor's rhythmic pacing increased in tempo and ferocity. The pulsing rise and fall of the interlocked bodies grew in ardor and heat. Beady sweats on glistening surfaces shone wetly beneath the chamber's flickering lamps. Muscles distended, limbs became malleable, bodies entwined aggressively. Antinous heard himself sigh his companion's name again and again. His companion reciprocated.
Eventually and inevitably, the torrid fervor burst in a shower of exclamations, gasps, shudders, and cries of delighted anguish. The two collapsed across the mosaic tiles in a pile of exhausted energies and spent body moistures.
Antinous felt becalmed in a manner unlike any previous occasion of his life. His abyss of solitude had dissolved into memory.
Minutes passed in silence before one retrieved a wine cup to share between them. They sipped alternating draughts.
'You learn quickly, Ant,' Hadrian rasped breathily.
Antinous raised himself on one elbow to eye his sweaty, naked companion lying outstretched beside him. He smiled his most ingratiating, calculating, charmer's smile. It was loaded with intent.
'Yes, I do Hadrian. But it's your turn now,' he murmured softly.
The maturer man baulked. He looked to his companion questioningly.
'A ride there for a ride back,' was the immediate response.
'Are you sure you have a sufficient lion-heart to do it? And so soon, Ant?'
'Yes I do, Hadrian. Turn over.'
Hadrian's lazy smile widened into a knowing, if faintly insecure grin.
'You do learn quickly,' he said.
Antinous good-humouredly grasped his companion's pelvis at the hips and mock-pressed him to roll over onto his belly. It was time for the assailant's driven fury to be turned back onto itself."
Ge
ta fell silent once more to sip his wine. His eyes returned to Surisca more often than seemed necessary, Suetonius sensed, as he conveyed his testimony to the group of listeners in the morning sunlight. He began his account again.
"You may wonder how I know all these intimate details, gentlemen — and Lady Surisca. I learned most of them from Herodes' steward who kept watch outside the shuttered andron so Caesar's needs would be immediately provided if demanded. He kept an eye on things through a join in the shutter leaves, but has kept his tongue to himself ever since, except with me. I learned of the others from Antinous himself over wine in later conversations.
But I was now to personally witness the next development in this occasion. Should I continue with my tale, gentlemen?"
"Do so, Geta."
"The clatter of horse hooves on flagstones followed by muffled whispers at the house portal told the two dozing bodies dawn had arrived. As first light peeped through the andron window Antinous awoke to hear Herodes' villa's great door being unbolted to allow entry to arrivals.
Military-booted footsteps approached the andron across the atrium's tiles towards the chamber's shutters. A soft knock upon its cedars announced callers were waiting.
'Come!' Hadrian called.
Servants pressed the panels apart to reveal two Horse Guards and myself standing to attention outside. Scorilo, Godron, and I absorbed the scene before us with keen interest.
A potent charge of the musky scents of body sweat, wine dregs, stale incense, and the miasma of hard sex exuded from the space. Sex has its own special sweet aura, and it steeped the andron like a charged storm cloud.
Cushions and blankets lay across an impromptu bed arrangement with other pillows scattered across the floor. Assorted tunics, cloaks, belts, and boots were littered elsewhere, while crumpled toweling with dank stains were flung carelessly over chair backs. A small urn holding a deeply-scored emollient had rolled to one side across the floor.
Hadrian sat upright at the edge of the double-couch arrangement bare to our view but holding a corner of a rug across his privates. He scratched his head and rubbed early morning eyes.
Antinous lay lengthwise along the couch behind Caesar propped lazily on one elbow to casually eye the intruders. His sun-bleached mane was in wild disarray. Only a small cotton compress attached to his left cheek covered his buck-naked frame. My eyes were drawn to the pale-straw lightness of his underarm fluff and pubic hair. A hickey adorned his frontal upper throat.
The guards and I instantly recognized the vestiges of the energetic activities which had been enacted in that place. The tell-tale debris of the night's couplings was self-explanatory.
'Caesar, it is dawn. I am instructed to attend you,' I announced, my eyes scanning the room, its detritus, and its implications before settling upon the finely drawn figure of the naked ephebe lying behind the emperor. His free hand idled lazily at Caesar's crutch.
'And good morning to you too, Antinous of Bithynia,' I added diplomatically.
He responded with a languorous nod, his jaw resting on his clenched fist and no attempt to cover his nudity.
Palaestra nudity is a given in the life of young men of the elite classes in Greece. Nakedness possesses shame only in the eyes of our older Romans, some colder clime barbarians, and certain weird religious eccentrics. But in Athens it is a commonplace.
'I hope you slept well, my lords, after the night's festivities?' I offered very politely. Antinous probably realized I had elevated him into the ranks of a lord. I guess he wondered whether 'festivities' referred to the Dionysia revel or the bedchamber antics?
I was to learn much later how the night's engagement had been a revelatory experience for Antinous. The intensity of their mutual passion and the fierce aggression it incited had astonished both parties. I gather neither was especially vexed by this fact though.
'Call the servants, Geta, I must dress,' Hadrian commanded. 'I'll wash at the Household.'
I clapped my hands and two of Herodes' servants came scuttling to the chamber. They immediately set about retrieving the emperor's clothes and re-dressing him.
'I bring news, Caesar.' I took my opportunity as Hadrian was being clothed. 'Senator Lucius Ceionius Commodus and his companions departed the Household villa before dawn to reach Piraeus and sail on the earliest tide to Corinth.'
I sensed both Antinous and Hadrian prick up their ears.
'Commodus's steward said his party must return immediately to Rome from Corinth,' I added, 'because he had received news his mother had taken ill, so they left early to hire passage.'
'Has he left a note?' Hadrian asked.
'Not that I'm aware of, Caesar. He was eager to depart at some speed.'
Hadrian was silent as the servants arranged his dress to a suitable degree of comportment. Meanwhile Antinous contemplated the effectiveness of Herodes' handling of Commodus.
But not at that time knowing these details, I took an initiative.
'Will Caesar wish to pursue his friend by sea or overland? The Praetorian horse network could speedily deliver Caesar to Corinth, before his vessel arrived or at least before he could negotiate a further passage to Italy?'
Hadrian was silent again as his laced boots were drawn on. When he turned his back while being buckled I noticed two distinct bruises at the back of his neck above his right shoulder. They were already pale purple and told of an infliction of passion on the emperor's flesh.
I think my eyes and eyebrows fluttered slightly at the sight of the love bites when I calculated the direction of their reception. They would have been applied from directly behind. This possessed a significance about the nature of the act underway during their imposition. My eyes may have widened in astonishment at this realization, I guess.
Antinous detected my fluster from his recumbent position on the bed. Our gazes crossed fleetingly, but I flicked away in embarrassment. Antinous was smiling to himself. It was an enigmatic smile suggesting triumph. It communicated notions I had not anticipated about Caesar, nor for that matter about Antinous.
'No, Geta, I won't follow Commodus,' Hadrian resolved. 'I've tired of the young man's impetuosity. Perhaps it's time he returned to Rome. We'll see him later in the year.
In the meantime, Geta, I've told Antinous how he and his companions will enter the Imperial contubernium, our living arrangements for the Household. Both they and their attendants will accompany us on our forthcoming tour of Achaea. We will be visiting historical sites, making awards, visiting troops, hunting a little, and so on across the Peloponnese this summer before we sail to Italy.
Antinous is likely to sleep in my chamber regularly, but he and his household are to have their own independent apartments wherever we travel. Is that clear?'
'It is indeed, Caesar!' I declared.
My wide-eyed gaze returned to Antinous. I suppose it conveyed an unspoken message akin to awe at the lad's extraordinary accomplishment. He responded with a serene, knowing grin. He exuded the cool confidence of an arena's victor, and he let me know it. Decurion Scorilo of the Horse Guard too would have comprehended the circumstances from his own perspectives.
Antinous's arrival in Caesar's sphere now cemented many of the questions of what my own role was to be in Caesar's life. I had spent my lifetime under Hadrian's aegis, so perhaps it was time my own ambitions should at last find a satisfactory resolution too?
'Leave us for a moment,' Hadrian commanded, as he shooed the servants and the guards beyond the andron's closing doors. Only I stayed in attendance.
Hadrian kneeled over the twin couches to lift Antinous's chin within close reach by a single fingertip. Their eyes were only an inch or two apart. He smiled at the sleepy Bithynian.
'We enjoyed ourselves through the night, didn't we Ant?' the emperor charmed as he leaned closer. Noting Antinous's gesture of one hand modestly cupping his genitals, I perceived he had sensed his bloodstream stir to life once again.
'We did, Hadrian,' was his reply, unexpectedly using the special no
men in my presence. This was new from his lips and told me something they each perceived about their relationship.
'We'll do those things again tonight, my strong-willed Lion-heart.'
'Yes, we will Hadrian. And much more too I expect."
"Lion-heart? So what are we to read into this account, Dacian?" Clarus demanded.
"You must use your imaginations, gentlemen," Geta responded, still with his eyes firmly settled upon the Syrian courtesan.
"All I see is an opportunist using his wiles upon our Princeps?" Clarus opined. "Yet Caesar takes what he wants from the engagement."
Suetonius took the reins of the interview to shift the perspective away from matters which troubled Clarus.
"A further question, Dacian, tell us here honestly, plainly, between us only, are you suggesting there are things about Hadrian's relationship with Antinous we should know? Are there facets of their five years together which could compel recent events, in your view? We must know all. Think hard about it, Dacian."
"I don't know what you mean, Special Inspector? I've told you all I know," the Dacian uttered believably. "It's enough, I'd say."
"Then, Dacian, tell us where were you yourself on the night of Antinous's death?"
Geta smiled thinly.
"My lords, I was engaged in providing services to Caesar in the company of the Western Favorite throughout the entire evening, and slept in close proximity to Caesar's chamber after," the courtier replied.
"All night and morning? With witnesses?" Suetonius demanded.
"All night and morning. With witnesses. I must leave you now."
Suetonius and Clarus looked to each other in silent foreboding after he departed.
Surisca spoke up in a quiet voice. "Masters, may I offer some words?"
"Only if you have something worthy to contribute, woman," Clarus huffed. Suetonius nodded approval to the veiled figure seated some distance behind him.
"Masters, Geta the Dacian spoke of Pachrates. I too have witnessed this priest perform his magical arts."
A Forbidden History.The Hadrian enigma Page 30
