"There's a tress of hair inside, pale in color, and a name is engraved on the interior, sirs," Strabon weakly called.
"What name, scribe?"
"The engraved name is Antinous."
Minds across the chamber raced to interpret the cryptic quatrain and the Bithynian's relationship to it. Why would Caesar's retired eromenos retain such a quaint phylactery? Who was the King? Who was the lackey? What was it all about?
One particular possibility dawned on some in the assembly, something unthinkable, something utterly inadmissible. Was Caesar some form of cinaedus, they wondered? Surely not?
It is not feasible for an admired Princeps to be a cinaedus, these would reason. Such behavior is not within an Imperator's lexicon of attributes. Great dishonor lies in that direction. Cinaedi are objects of derision for their lack of self-control. Surely Caesar is not a cinaedus?
Suetonius again recalled how so few of Hadrian's reported sexual exploits were with women. In fact, to his knowledge, not a single one he could remember. This was despite the tacit assumption an emperor has his unrestrained pick of life's more pleasurable opportunities, of any gender including the female.
Did this mean Hadrian's taste is strictly for his own gender? Fine. This has no real concern in Rome's phallocentric sexual code as long as the maturer contender is strictly the active partner in sex. They who penetrate are virs; those who are receptive are femina or pathicus. To take the passive role is a woman's, a youth's, or an adult pathic's contemptible fate. Even a fellator with males, or a male cunnilinctor with women, are equally unmanly in this code.
For a man to prefer these roles is to invoke the pathicus status. As a pathic cinaedus, he is a shame to his gender and Roman custom.
Suetonius realized the quatrain had added a new elliptical dimension to Hadrian's profile, and done so in full public display. The prospect now tenderly arose that it may have been Antinous who performed the male phallic function, unless the relationship had been a mutually carefree ride there for a ride back in which sexual favors were reciprocated?
Once again Suetonius recalled how outsiders are unlikely to fathom the inner mechanisms of other people's relationships.
But now it was time to determine precisely what fate had befallen Antinous.
"Priestess!" Suetonius demanded, "Show us your lip paint! Open your urn before Caesar and our assembly!"
Macedo carried the terracotta pot to the priestess and pressed it into her unwilling grasp. Perenna looked around at the surrounding assembly of observers whose eyes were fixed upon her and her pot. Reluctantly, she grasped the amphora and strained at the wax-sealed stopper, her eyes gleaming in fierce resentment. The plug broke away after some effort. She held the open urn forward brazenly towards her interrogators for inspection.
Governor Titianus beside her leaned towards the mouth of the jar and peered inside. He withdrew smartly as its odor stung his nostrils.
"Blood. Rotting blood. Pints of it. Must be several days old. Goes off quickly in this climate. Smells of a battlefield or an arena's sands. Repulsive stuff!"
A mournful groan rumbled across the chamber while the priestess Perenna stood her ground in fierce feral belligerence. A defensive stoop descended upon her posture as her eyes blazed from behind their mask of ashen pallor.
"What blood, Perenna? Whose blood? The youth Antinous?" Suetonius called in an increasingly pained voice.
The priestess raised the jar high and hurled it bodily across the space towards him. The urn flicked splashes of wine-colored, viscous slush as it hurtled downwards and crashed to the flagstones at Suetonius's feet. Its terracotta shell fractured into a dozen shards as its contents splayed-out across the granite. Once again a ripely-sour stench exuded through the sanctuary.
Titianus raised a slight finger gesture to Tribune Macedo. The Praetorian commander nodded to his cohort nearby. The guards stepped forward and positioned themselves around the priestess.
"Whose blood, Perenna?" Suetonius repeated. "Whose is it?"
The priestess struggled and hissed vehemently at all around her but spoke no words. Julianus called aloud to his lictors. One delivered some objects which had been concealed out of sight. They were a bronze basin stained with a dark-colored dry scale, and a similarly stained bronze surgeon's scalpel. He held them before him to display to all.
"These were lying behind a curtain. They look recently used. There were two more terracotta amphorae, also containing fluid," he offered as he stared at the dark ooze spread across the flagstones.
Several in the assembly realized Antinous's very life itself lay spilled out onto the temple stones.
Thais and Lysias walked hesitantly to the pool of dark muck and lowered themselves to their knee at its edge. Thais was quietly weeping. Lysias was visibly mortified. He dipped one fingertip in the pool to examine its consistency. He fell to sobbing.
"Antinous?", he called aloud plaintively, his pain audibly startling the assembly. Hadrian raised himself from his seat, his eyes wide and fixed upon the pool of sludge across the granite.
"We have one further matter to address, Great Caesar!" Suetonius declared aloud.
"What could that possibly be, Inspector?" Hadrian replied in rasping tones redolent of abject despair.
"I wish you to ask one of your Guard for an inspection of their purse, Caesar."
"Their purse?" Hadrian asked impatiently. "Why so, Tranquillus? What's important about a purse?"
"I wish you to command Decurion Scorilo to open and empty the contents of his belt pouch to our view."
"Decurion Scorilo of the Horse Guard? Must I ask one of my most senior and best officers to degrade themselves here, Inspector? Your enquiry is getting out of hand, Tranquillus!"
"I believe I must ask, my lord. It is necessary. If I am mistaken in my reasoning you can dismiss me from your service and prosecute me for the insult, Caesar."
Hadrian faced toward Scorilo and gave the order.
The tattooed German was initially hesitant, but then unlaced the purse-pouch at his sword belt. The investigating team's hearts were in their mouths, with their eyes on the pouch. Had Suetonius erred in his gamble?
"Show us the contents, Decurion," Hadrian instructed. Macedo moved forward to have a closer view and announce the findings.
Scorilo poured baubles from the pouch onto his large, broad, warrior's hardened palm. He silently offered the items to view. Macedo read out the list of debris.
"One gold aureus, two silver denarii, some bronze coins, two ivory dice well-worn, a bone toothpick, a small ball of black resinous substance wrapped in a leaf, and a man's jeweled ring. The ring!" he repeated excitedly. "Quality silver; well worked; set with a deep blue lapis lazuli stone carved with the figure of the deity Abrasax, I think. It is surrounded by mystic symbols and antique inscriptions! We have seen this ring before!"
Hadrian rose bolt upright. His eyes had cleared, his stoop dispersed, and his physical energy was restored.
"Scorilo! My protector Scorilo! Where and how did you attain that jewel? How did you come by Antinous's special gift from me? You are no thief, are you? Surely not? That ring is a rare magical talisman of great value. Do you rob the dead? Account for yourself, Decurion!"
Scorilo remained firmly silent. Anna Perenna's voice began to rise to a shout from her guarded position. The priestess's cries were becoming feverish with recklessness.
"Scorilo! Brother Scorilo!" she crowed loudly. All heads turned abruptly from the decurion to Perenna and back again.
"Brother, the time for Zalmoxis has come! It is over! The oath is fulfilled! Zalmoxis will reward us for all eternity. The Iron King's loved one is sacrificed. His life blood was forfeit! We have tasted that blood. The God has absorbed his victim's arete from his gore. The gore is now putrid, it has been absorbed. It's over and done. We too can now go to the Underworld of Zalmoxis and join our ancestors at last!" The priestess was exultant.
The assembly broke into uproar.
"Will someone ex
plain to me what is happening here!?" Hadrian bellowed over the cacophony. Geta stepped forward and assumed vocal command of the assembly.
"Silence all! Stand in place! Listen!" he commanded in the stentorian style of his father's distant memory. "The truth now comes to me! I see into my remote past as a child at Dacia.
The woman Perenna and the guardsman, Scorilo, are sister and brother. I see into my childhood days. These two are the daughter and son of the high priest of Dacia, old Dicineus the Sacrificer, who was my father's advisor. I see the woman called Anna Perenna when she was a child my own age. We were acolytes of Zalmoxis at the killing of Iron People captives. I forget her name but I recall her zest for the killings.
Her priestly father Dicineus and his family relished the sacrifices. She too had the marks of Zalmoxis tattooed on her face, the insignia of the priestly class and its bloodline. Her brother Scorilo was much older. He was already a young Wolf Warrior proven in combat. He was one of my father's fiercest bodyguards and has the victor's tattoos to prove it. He was one of the horsemen who escorted my father and mother, with my sister Estia and I, into the forests of Dacia to escape the pursuing Iron People.
Who are the Iron People? The Iron People are us, we Romans. I too am now an Iron Person. I too am a Roman.
My father discharged his guards to allow them to flee before the enemy could overtake us. But he demanded an oath of revenge, the oath to Zalmoxis. He sent my mother, his queen, and then himself to Zalmoxis. Before he killed himself he demanded we swear an oath to destroy the Iron People king's loved ones too, in reparation to Zalmoxis. It was a fearful oath of dire consequences!
I too swore it. I was very young. I swore to kill the Iron People king's loved one too, in vengeance. But I failed in my oath, I am pleased to say. The children of Priest Dicineus the Sacrificer did not! They killed the king's loved one, Antinous."
Geta slumped against Caesar's throne, exhausted.
Hadrian spoke in a disbelieving voice to Perenna and Scorilo.
"Is it true you are the children of Dicineus, that murderous priest?"
Neither responded.
"The Bastarnae were one of the tribes of the Dacian Confederation, yes?"
Again silence.
"Is it true the blood on the stones here is that of Antinous?" he asked further. Again no response.
Hadrian grew gray with distress.
"Why, Dacians, why? Why would you bleed such a gracious man, such an innocent, for your pointless obsession?" Hadrian's eyes were riven with pain.
Perenna struggled ineffectually in her captor's grip, her eyes wild, her body writhing with feverish energy. The kohl lines had begun to melt down her cheeks in her body heat; the ashen powders of her face were corroding from her skin; the hue of her oiled lips was smeared across her mouth. In her disorder she projected the energy of a wild forest creature or ghoul seething with savagery, an alien demon bent upon havoc.
Suetonius, Clarus, Strabon, and Surisca whispered together as one, "The She Wolf."
"The oath is fulfilled!" Perenna cried aloud across the sanctuary, her haughty disdain resounding off the temple stones. "The loved one of the Iron People's ruler has been sacrificed to the god of the Dacians! His face was daubed in his own blood! We dipped our fingers in his gore to lick and taste his arete. We drained his carcass of its arete to offer to Zalmoxis the life-juices of the precious loved one of the Iron People's King!
Our priestly father's strangling at Rome is revenged. The Decebelus's honor is restored. The blood debt of our warriors in the arenas of Rome is paid. The faithful devotees of Zalmoxis have exacted bitter retribution!"
Perenna, or whoever she was, was spiraling into delirium.
"How did you persuade Antinous to participate in his own slaughter, priestess of Zalmoxis," Suetonius called to the deranged creature before him.
"The fool was a willing victim! His desire was urgent. He craved to exchange his lifeforce for the lifeforce of his erastes, this King of the Iron People. This king is diseased, he told us. The king is affected with a dropsy of the internal humors. He is dying, he bleated in tears. He wished to give the king renewed life, his youth's fresh life! He wished the Imperium to receive his hero's gift and to exchange his years of health for the king's declining lifespan!"
The assembly was enthralled by the escalating frenzy.
"The youth had witnessed those wizards who claim to revive a beheaded man. He knew how return from the Land of the Dead was feasible with the proper sorcery. At least that's what he thought. He was taught Queen Alcestis had been brought back from Hades' grasp by Hercules. He had been taught the heroes who sacrificed their lives in antiquity's wars live on eternally at the Isle of Achilles across the Black Sea. He learned how the followers of Chrestus revere their executed founder because he was magically reborn, resurrected to life again. And he saw with his own eyes how Great Alexander Divus lies intact still after four hundred years, preserved by a potent magic.
This year's Isia was his opportunity to become Osiris, restored from death to life. He took his opportunity. I used his need and his love for his erastes, and told him how Anna Perenna too can exchange the energies of one life for another by her incantations. I said she too can revive the dead. He believed me, the fool…"
"Cease talking, Hagne!" Scorilo suddenly called to the priestess. "They'll indict you for murder or worse. The penalty is vile, Sister. Cease now!"
Surisca whispered to Suetonius and Clarus, "Is the Bastarni guardsman then the wolf?"
Perenna continued unabated. She was on a roll.
"The boy wanted it! He pleaded for it! He was impelled to exchange the surging lifeforce of a healthy youth with the fading energies of his imperial erastes. He wouldn't cease his pleading. He said he was so utterly indebted to Caesar and committed to Caesar's cause as ruler!"
Hadrian slumped heavily back into his throne, disconsolate. He was overwhelmed by her words.
"So you helped him to do it, Hagne?" the Special Inspector asked coolly as Strabon scribbled speedily at his notebook. Suetonius used the barbarian name Scorilo had called. "Tell us Hagne, how was it done, priestess of an alien god? Tell us all."
The woman began burbling with zealous, righteous enthusiasm.
"Brother Scorilo and Centurion Urbicus had befriended the youth for our purpose. They taught him tricks of swordsmanship and other warrior's skills. They persuaded him to come to The Alexandros to my sanctuary to effect the transfer. He was to come under another name to deflect attention. I wrote an invitation note in the name of one of his friends, Lysias, to ease him past the sentries without his real identity being noted. He suspected nothing, he was so trustful of us.
He was to wear his ceremonial uniform beneath his cloak, this was to be a formal rite of great majesty. He did so without fear. He believed how in nine days after his journey through Hades' domain he would be restored to life, but at the cost that his youth's lengthy lifespan would be exchanged with Caesar's shorter span. Meanwhile, Caesar would live and rule!"
The woman was trembling in exultation and fervor. She was triumphant.
"Why would Antinous believe such a thing? He is no fool!" Suetonius called.
"Fool? Love is a great persuader. Fools do remarkable things for the sake of Love!"
"And then?"
"We performed a ceremony honoring Rome's Anna Perenna of old, and the youth voluntarily drank my infusion of opion and kannabis in wine. He believed it to be my magical potion to effect the transfer of energies. He swiftly drifted to sleep.
My brother and I then performed a rite to Zalmoxis and burned a lock of the victim's hair for the God to receive as smoke signaling his impending spiritual presence.
I lanced his wrist veins, inserted a surgeon's bleeding spigot to siphon, and proceeded to drain him as our priests do when they slit the throats of offerings. With time, our basin collected enough blood for three amphorae jugs.
Blood is the food of Zalmoxis. Blood carries the arete of a man.
&
nbsp; I anointed the victim's face with his own blood, the ultimate insult of the God. Over the following days Zalmoxis consumes his entire arete by fermenting the blood to an odious filth. This is our way."
The woman's delirium was assuming a dire maenadic aspect. There were vestiges of some ancient ritual frenzy betrayed in her behavior. She had become a wild creature.
"And, Hagne, what more — ?" Suetonius resolutely pressed.
Perenna/Hagne assumed a soberly circumspect demeanor.
"It was nothing personal, just honor's revenge," she smiled.
A crushing silence now weighed the sanctuary.
"The lad died. It was late at night. Pressing out the blood for Zalmoxis had taken much time. While it was still dark, Scorilo and Urbicus tumbled his body through a starboard port into one of the Alexandrine runabouts roped at the stern readied for sailing.
I stored the amphorae for consecration to determine if I had inherited my father's power of regeneration of the dead. Priest Dicineus, my father, had been a practitioner of theogia. He tested many victims, but with what success is unknown to me. I aspire to similar prowess. I was to devote nine days to the necessary incantations and rites. But now we'll never know, will we?
At the very earliest light we three pushed off to sail the craft downstream to an inlet close to Urbicus's tents. The two placed the body at the river's side where we knew it might soon be discovered. There was already movement about, so Urbicus stayed at the inlet to rejoin his detachment. Scorilo and I eventually maneuvered the runabout back to The Alexandros. The rest is known to you. Our victory was complete."
"You've told us about Scorilo and yourself, but why was Urbicus involved?"
Hagne of Dacia, nee Anna Perenna of Rome, laughed a raucous, quavering laugh whose shrillness spoke of triumph and insult. The She Wolf was savoring her kill.
"Urbicus is one of my inamoratas. The poor darling will do anything I ask. And all for a little bodily titillation. But I keep him on a tight rein, the dear. Those Mauritanians and Numidians, they'll do anything for sex. The desert wilds of Africa must be very lonely at night."
A Forbidden History.The Hadrian enigma Page 50
