The Londinium File Page 5

  ‘Will that be all?’ he asked hopefully. ‘Master?’

  Antinous shook his head. ‘Wait there,’ he instructed. He unrolled a scroll and peered at it, running his finger along the lines of writing and muttering under his breath. He looked up. ‘Can you read? Yes, of course you can, you must be able to; you work for the Tabularium, don’t you?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Flaminius, wishing the boy would let him get back to his work. ‘I can read.’

  Quite what he was going to do now, Flaminius didn’t know. He had to find some way of picking that lock when the librarian wasn’t around, but then there was that chasm to cross. So he also had to find some way to operate the mechanism that controlled the drawbridge… He glanced out of the window. It was getting dark. Something about that worried him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  Antinous thrust the scroll into his hands. ‘Read it to me,’ he commanded. ‘I’m supposed to be studying this dreary drivel. It’s better if someone reads it aloud.’

  Flaminius unrolled the scroll, wondering why Antinous didn’t have slaves of his own to do this. Surely he did. So why pick on him? Resignedly, he began to read Plato’s Symposium, his mind elsewhere. Wrestling with the conundrum that faced him.

  ‘…I rather fear, Socrates, said Aristodemus, lest this may still be my case; and that, like Menelaus in Homer, I shall be the inferior person, who to the least of the wise unbidden goes,’ he read out. ‘But I shall say that I was bidden of you, and then you will have to make an excuse. Two going together, he replied, in Homeric fashion, one or other of them may invent an excuse by the way. This was the style of their conversation as they went along...”

  ‘Yes,’ Antinous interrupted crossly, ‘and very tedious it was, too. I really haven’t a clue what these old bores are talking about. Have you? Except that bit about two going together sounds a bit smutty. Disgusting!’ He leered. ‘Everyone knows what Socrates got up to…’ He yawned. ‘Put the scroll away, Ganymede.’

  ‘Yes, master.’ Flaminius carefully rerolled the scroll and replaced in its case. He hovered meaningfully, waiting for the youth to dismiss him. But Antinous was giving him an unnerving look.

  ‘Will that be all, master?’ Flaminius said after a moment longer.

  Antinous sighed, and stretched luxuriously on the couch, then rolled over onto his side to get a better look at the slave. ‘Strip for me,’ he said.

  Flaminius swallowed. This young fellow was taking one too many liberties. If he hadn’t been the emperor’s protégé, Flaminius would probably have punched him on the jaw. Slave or no slave, he wasn’t willing to accept this kind of treatment from him. It was one thing to be ogled by a superannuated old strumpet like Rhoda. This was quite another.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Antinous asked softly. ‘Do you want to be flogged?’

  Gritting his teeth, Flaminius took the hem of his threadbare tunic and hauled it over his head. A slave wore little more than that and the sandals he stood up in. He dropped the tunic on the mosaic at his feet, covering the face of Apollo, to spare that god’s blushes, if nothing else.

  Antinous reared to his feet. ‘By Hermes, you’ve not only worked in public records,’ he said admiringly. He walked all around Flaminius then stood right in front of him. ‘So many scars!’ he said. ‘And what’s this, this tattoo? Are you a Thracian or a Scythian? This brand between your brows… A slave brand? Surely you were a gladiator! Tell me you were a gladiator!’

  ‘If I was a gladiator,’ said Flaminius, ‘I’d either be dead or free. Gladiators don’t work in libraries.’

  Crushed, Antinous gave him a pout. ‘But you’ve lived a tough life, I can see that,’ he said. ‘Were you a charioteer? No, same argument. But Publius doesn’t have nearly so many scars, and he fought in the legions when he was younger.’ He put a hand over his mouth. ‘Oh! I shouldn’t really call him “Publius” to a slave. You would know him as his imperial majesty.’ He shrugged. ‘Hadrian.’

  The door to the passage opened quietly. ‘You’re quite right about that, my dear. You should not be speaking about me in that manner in the presence of a common slave.’

  Flaminius’ head shot up in dismay. Standing in the doorway, flanked by two brawny, toga-clad Praetorians, was a bearded man in his late forties, dressed resplendently in a purple dalmatic. They had met before, though it had been some years ago, and in a very different situation. Hastily Flaminius dropped his gaze.

  This reaction was still in character; a slave would hardly keep his head up high in so august a presence. But there was another reason why Flaminius did not want to show his face. Memories flashed through his mind: their last meeting in the Villa at Tibur[6]... Their first meeting—same place, but under even more dramatic circumstances. This was the man he had served, at first as an auxiliary tribune attached to the Ninth Legion, then as an imperial agent. The man whose life he had once saved. His imperial majesty, the emperor Hadrian.

  ‘Guards, dismissed,’ Hadrian said, and the two Praetorians withdrew into the corridor, closing the door behind them.

  The emperor crossed over to Antinous, who was staring at his visitor like a frightened doe. Hadrian placed his imperial posterior on the edge of the couch and rooted through the heap of scrolls. He opened the one Flaminius had been reading.

  ‘And how are you getting along with the Symposium, my dear?’ Hadrian asked.

  Antinous pouted sullenly. ‘It doesn’t seem much like any symposium to me,’ he said. ‘I remember the one you held when you came to Claudiopolis!’ He grinned enthusiastically. ‘Now that was a symposium! Wine, music, dancing… These pompous old Greek windbags don’t know how to enjoy themselves.’

  Hadrian clicked his tongue disappointedly. ‘You are a Greek yourself, my dear,’ he reminded the boy. ‘Do not renounce your heritage.’

  Antinous flounced. ‘But it’s so boring,’ he raged. ‘Why are you always making me read this boring rubbish? If I have to read Greek authors, why not Homer? There’s plenty of action in the Iliad. Why not Chariton, while we’re about it? I saw a copy of Callirhoe in the library! I once heard a storyteller reading it out in the marketplace in Nicomedia. At least it’s got a plot. This Symposium is pointless.’

  Uncomfortably Flaminius witnessed this lover’s tiff, wishing he was a thousand miles away. Even the wilds of Caledonia were better than this.

  ‘Please don’t call Plato’s finest work on love pointless,’ Hadrian said indignantly. ‘And never mention a writer of romantic rubbish like Chariton in the same breath as the divine Homer! I must speak to your tutor. Surely he has taught you better than this.’

  ‘I hate it, hate it, hate it!’ Antinous bawled. ‘I don’t know why you’re allowed to go out hunting and having fun while I have to stay in the palace bored rigid by Plato! It’s so unfair!’ Tears ran down his face.

  ‘Antinous, Antinous please,’ Hadrian said soothingly. ‘I am trying to ensure that you have the best education you can have!’

  ‘I don’t want the best education I can have, I only want to enjoy myself! I didn’t even get to see the races today except out of the school windows!’

  Hadrian bristled. ‘Is that why you’ve got this slave in here, stripped naked? You want to enjoy yourself? What did you intend to do? A good thing I came in when I did. Have you not read what Plato says about carnal love?’

  Antinous was seething with rage. ‘That’s just typical of you and your filthy mind, Publius!’ he shouted wildly at the ruler of the world. ‘This slave, I was… studying him! You want me to study sculpture, don’t you? Anatomy? Well, I’ve never seen such a fine specimen. Besides, I think he’s wasted in libraries. He should be sent to the arena. He’d have his work cut out for him.’

  Stricken, Flaminius looked up. Hadrian was gazing in obvious pain at his tearful protégé. It was clear who held the whip hand here.

  ‘Send him to the arena?’ Hadrian barely looked at Flaminius’s face, but his eyes took in the tribune’s physique, much as he might examine a promising
steed. ‘Is that really what you want, my dear? Maybe you’re right. A fine specimen indeed, if a little battered. He’s clearly wasted here. If that’s what you want, he’ll be sent to the Colosseum training school at once.’

  Flaminius’ blood ran cold.

  —6—

  He had fought in the arena before, and even survived, obviously, but that had been in the provinces, where travelling troupes of gladiators, mainly freemen, fought to first blood, but very rarely to the death—it was simply too expensive. But in Rome, at the Colosseum, the mob expected blood, and copious amounts of it. Being sent to fight in the Colosseum as a slave was tantamount to a death sentence.

  Antinous turned to look thoughtfully in his direction. Hadrian followed his gaze. A frown creased the emperor’s face.

  ‘Where did you say he was working? The library? He looks familiar… I can’t quite place him.’

  ‘Apparently he works in the Tabularium,’ said Antinous loftily. ‘Public records. But I found him when I was in Tiberius’ library and thought he looked strong enough to carry all the books on my reading list. And he can read, too, really well! He does all the different voices, it’s just as good as going to the theatre. Better, even! So I had him read from the Symposium, to make it more exciting. Then I got to thinking how good he’d look as a gladiator. Those muscles, oiled, glistening in the sun… Though I don’t really like watching gladiatorial games, they turn my stomach. I prefer chariot racing.’

  ‘As a good Greek, so you should,’ said Hadrian absently. ‘But, by Jove! We can’t possibly send this slave to the arena!’

  ‘No?’ said Antinous. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why, he’s public property,’ Hadrian exclaimed. ‘He belongs to the state, if he works in the Tabularium, the senate and people of Rome. What would the consuls say if I were to consign a public slave to the Colosseum? High handed behaviour worthy of Tiberius himself.’ He shook his head. ‘You must put him back where you found him. At once!’

  ‘But he’s helping me with my studies…!’

  ‘Philosophy is what you are studying at the moment, my dear,’ said Hadrian dryly. ‘Not anatomy.’ He looked pensive. ‘Very well, if he has been of assistance with your reading, then he shall continue until the first watch of the night is done, and you are permitted leisure time. But first I must speak with him.’

  He clicked his finger and beckoned to Flaminius.

  The erstwhile imperial agent followed his former employer out onto the balcony overlooking the Circus Maximus and the City beyond. The evening air was chill on his skin, but Hadrian seemed not to notice his trembling.

  ‘Antinous is destined for great things,’ he said, hands behind his back, eyes on the lights of Rome. ‘Do you know, when I first saw him in that hovel in Bithynia, I knew it, recognised it, saw him for what he was, for what destiny had in store. A mysterious, numinous future awaits him. But first he has to be moulded, melded, by a superior man.’ He turned to look at the slave. ‘Who better than the emperor of Rome?’

  Flaminius knew a rhetorical question when he heard one, he’d had a classical education himself. He kept quiet.

  ‘I am his Socrates,’ the bearded man added; ‘he is my Alcibiades.

  ‘Yet his sublime essence is trapped within mortal flesh,’ Hadrian went on, ‘and it is not yet that his spirit shall be freed to join the gods above. And that flesh is as fallible as yours or mine. Sadly, the young Antinous is as prone to carnal lusts as any other young man of his age; as indeed was Alcibiades. That is why I urge him to study the works of Plato, the Symposium above all. The love that lifts us up above the mutable mortal world is what he should aspire to, not animal desire.’

  Hadrian raised his hands and nodded his head. ‘Very well, I myself am no stranger to carnality. But Antinous must be preserved for a better fate, a higher destiny. He is quite taken with you, I can see that very well, and it is understandable. If I were his age, I would seek to sate my lust in the body of a slave such as you.’ He nodded again. ‘Oh yes, even the emperor is not averse to what the mob refer to as “Greek love”. But I would have you draw him on to more intellectual loves, through literature and philosophy.’

  The emperor leaned nearer, lifting Flaminius’ chin to look at him closely. So closely the latter was afraid Hadrian would finally be able to place him. But no. It did not cross the emperor’s mind that this abject slave could be anything other than what he seemed.

  ‘I would have you report to me if he shows any more tendency towards carnality,’ he murmured. ‘Read the Symposium to him until the first watch is over. Do your best to bring it to life for him, as he says you have already done. Then you may return to your own work. Do you understand me?’ He let go of Flaminius’ chin and Flaminius nodded. ‘If he makes any advances on you, slave, you must report it to me.’

  He led Flaminius back into Antinous’ chamber. The youth sat sullenly on his couch, face flushed, hands behind his back. If Flaminius didn’t know any better, he might have thought Antinous had just sat back down there after eavesdropping, but Hadrian was sublimely oblivious.

  ‘Very well, my dear,’ the emperor said. ‘This public records slave has agreed to continue reading to you until the end of the first watch. Then he will return to his duties, and your study will be over for the day. I will see you in the dining chamber.’

  Hadrian rapped on the door and it was opened at once by one of the Praetorians, who had evidently been awaiting him in the corridor. The emperor swept out, turning to give Antinous one last meaningful look; then the door closed as he marched off down the corridor, followed by the two Praetorians.

  Slowly Antinous rose from the couch, fixing his emerald eyes on Flaminius. They blazed like fetid marsh gas seen from afar. His hands were still behind his back, as if he was aping his imperial master.

  ‘So!’ he spat. ‘You’re going to help me in my education, are you, Ganymede?’ This question was not rhetorical.

  Flaminius nodded, eyes downcast. ‘Such is his imperial majesty’s command,’ he said.

  On the whole, he had got off lightly. Hadrian obviously didn’t recognise him as the imperial agent who had rescued him in the Tiburtine Villa five years ago[7]. From such Olympian altitudes, the faces of such minor functionaries must all look alike. Now all Flaminius had to do was read Plato to this stripling and then he could return to the library and make a second attempt to get into the secret archive…

  Antinous made a face. He brought his hands out from behind his back and Flaminius saw that he held a short wood handled whip, its three ox-hide thongs knotted with pieces of iron.

  ‘So, you’re the emperor’s spy,’ he said viciously.

  ‘You were listening, then,’ Flaminius said, eyeing the vicious scourge.

  He had seen slaves being whipped. Each stroke drew blood, removed skin. The thrashings he had received from his tutor when he was Antinous’ age would be mild by comparison. Even the flogging of recalcitrant legionaries was as nothing to the punishment of slaves and criminals.

  ‘Yes I was,’ said Antinous. ‘And I was the one who saved you from being sent to the arena, Ganymede! If I hadn’t told him that you were a public records slave, Publius would have consigned you to the Colosseum. Your life would be short.’ This wasn’t quite how Flaminius remembered it.

  ‘You ingrate!’ The boy lifted the whip high. ‘Now you’ll taste the lash, more than you can stomach!’

  As he swung it with all his force it curled around Flaminius’ loins with swingeing force. Quick as lightning, Flaminius seized the thongs, disregarding the blood that ran down his side, and hauled on them, dragging Antinous off his feet. He grabbed the youth by the wrist and twisted the scourge from his hand, then sent it flying into a dark corner. Antinous struggled in his grasp, sobbing, wailing, pounding on Flaminius’ chest with his free hand until the imperial agent caught that too.

  ‘You can’t do this to me,’ Antinous sobbed hysterically. ‘You’re a slave, Ganymede! You have to do what I say! Give me that whip!�
��

  Flaminius shook his head. ‘His imperial majesty told me that I was to read to you,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you’re not!’ Antinous said. ‘You’re hurting me.’ Flaminius’ grip on his wrists was tight. ‘He also told you to spy on me! And you agreed, you worm.’

  He looked up into Flaminius’ face. ‘I admired you, Ganymede,’ he panted. ‘Your body is superb!’

  Flaminius wished people would stop admiring his physique. All it took was five years of constant terror and struggle, on top of an active life in the legions. Even before that, he had been something of an athlete. Pheidippides, his friends had called him for his skill in running. All that gymnastic practice had helped immeasurably in his recent career.

  He lifted Antinous struggling off the ground and dropped him down on the couch, then retrieved his tunic from where it lay on the mosaic floor and shrugged back into it. Then he picked up the scroll from the table. Unrolling it, he found the passage where he had left off, and began again.

  ‘I enjoyed wrestling with you,’ said a bored voice. Flaminius had barely got to the end of Apollodorus’ dialogue.

  Flaminius looked up wearily. ‘Please let me finish, master.’

  Antinous sat up, simpering. ‘You really are terribly strong, Ganymede,’ he said, rising and putting his arms around Flaminius’ neck. ‘Let me rub some unguent into that weal.’

  He produced a medicine chest and took out a small glass bottle. Removing the stopper he took out a dab of unguent and took a long time about slathering it on Flaminius’ weal. He allowed the tunic to flop back, then rose.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘We’re all friends now. You’re not going to tell Publius anything, are you? You really are so very handsome.’ He scowled. ‘I always have old men drooling all over me, it’s not fair. Why am I never allowed to take an interest in men? You’re only a slave, after all. If I want to have you, I should be allowed to.’

  Flaminius picked up the scroll again. Antinous clasped his hands in his own and pushed it gently back down. ‘I can think I know how we could have so much more fun, Ganymede,’ he whispered.