Boy Caesar (7 page)

He had been warned that his hands would be tied from the start, and he had agreed to announce an amnesty for all the slanderous things said about both Caracalla and himself by every division of society.

People kept coming at him until he felt he had been put through a juicer. He disliked them all and intended to stick with his own. He would rather appoint rent boys from the docks to positions of power than the unscrupulous individuals who queued for his ear. He wondered, anyhow, what they thought of him choosing to wear a
Persian tiara and makeup for his entrance to Rome. He felt sure that no other Roman emperor had ever presented himself in this way, and that word would soon be out all over town about him being a pretty boy.

Although he considered state affairs of secondary importance to religion, he knew himself to be suitably well informed of the problems facing Rome to hold his own with his advisers. The damage done to the empire was largely irreversible, and he could see it in the people and smell it in the air. The city was imploding like a quasar. History had told him that the great plague of 167 had made permanent inroads on productivity, and this, combined with Commodus’ extravagance, the ambitious enterprises of Severus and Caracalla’s desperate liberality to the Army, had radically depleted the economy. Macrinus had exacerbated the issue by way of his unsuccessful war with the Parthians. Unable to defeat the enemy, he had burdened the state with the double expense of maintaining an offensive as well as buying peace from the enemy. The impostor who he had defeated had done further irreparable damage by abolishing the taxes which Caracalla had imposed on inheritances and manumissions and so had further depleted resources. Heliogabalus felt like he was the principal performer in a burning theatre and that he would be lucky to escape the flames. Emperors, he knew, were always in the spotlight. The power invested in being caesar carried with it the downside of being vulnerable to the assassin’s mark.

All he wanted to do was to withdraw into the privacy of his rooms and discuss the day’s events with his mother and intimate circle. He felt a victim of overexposure to the crowds. Reading Seneca had taught him in advance of his years that everything had been said before and done before and that all human aspirations were cut short by death. Mortality provided no re-entry routes, only a very clearly lit exit sign. He understood that being in his teens differed little in terms of absolute values from the problems common to every age in life. He had dared to take himself on to a stage where the price of survival was usually paid for by murder.

Complaining of exhaustion, he eventually won the right to withdraw. There was a naked youth, lying face down on the couch, but
he wasn’t in the mood, and he threw the boy out, telling him to come back later. His head felt like it was about to explode.

Symiamira, he noted, was delighting in the attention given her by a train of hangers-on. She was being looked over by women and by boys half her age. Food had been prepared in abundance, and a bronze donkey stood on the sideboard holding panniers of green and black olives. There were delicacies, such as dormice rolled in honey and poppy seed and supported on little bridges soldered to the plate; there were hot sausages laid on a silver grill and under the grill damsons and pomegranate seeds.

He amused himself with the chichi
hors d’æuvres,
preferring to look rather than taste. He was attended by servants and a personal valet who fussed over his needs. The sheer volume of food presented seemed sufficient to feed an entire tenement in the suburbs. He found it like tasting the concept of empire: an addictively ruinous obsession.

When the second entrée arrived, its novelty quickly won his attention. A round plate was carried in with the twelve signs of the zodiac set in order, and on each one the artist had laid food proper to the symbol. Over the Ram, ram’s head pease, a slab of beef on the Bull, kidneys over the Twins, seafood over the Crab, African figs over the Lion, a sow’s paunch over Virgo, muffins and cakes in Libra’s scales, sea fish over Scorpio, a bull’s eye over Sagittarius, lobsters over Capricorn, a goose over Aquarius and grey mullet over Pisces. It had all been prepared with loving attention to detail for his eye. Never before had he been presented with such an inexhaustible variety. He went for the fish in blue sauce, preferring, ever since he had read the teachings of Pythagoras and his disciple Apollonius of Tyana, to avoid meat. It was something he used in sacrifice but abstained from eating. But more interesting by far than the food laid on was his valet. The young man was tall, well defined, possibly Ethiopian and without a doubt gay. His eyes were attentively kind and seemed without the capacity to be duplicitous. There was a sensitivity in his manner that set him apart from the other servants, most of whom seemed downright obsequious. He could see that the man was artistically inclined but probably lacked the education to
promote his talents or simply was denied the encouragement that Heliogabalus himself could supply.

He picked at the food like a seasoned gourmet. The mélange continued to excite and reminded him of much that he had learned from Apicius in his book
De Re Coquinaria.
Reading the celebrated author on the subject of food had been the trigger to cultivating his own culinary tastes. At home he had learned to cook and was, despite being warned away, a regular in the kitchen. There was no occupation too feminine for him, and he intended to continue with his love of cooking, even if he was emperor.

Wines from Marseilles and the Vatican were served between courses, as well as a Falernian with a label stating the vintage. Given his exhaustion, he felt drunk by the time the roasts were carried in. The well of the dish contained peacocks and sows’ bellies and in the middle was a hare given wings to look like Pegasus. Fish done in a blue, spiced sauce created an overlapping fringe. He was unusually slim amongst a company used to gorging on multi-decked courses and was determined to keep his figure. Already guests who were physically exhausted from cramming down an overload of food were being conducted to red-hot baths or to chill-out rooms where they continued drinking.

He sat there conscious of his isolation in the room. Nobody expressed interest in him as a person or seemed the least curious about his opinions. He realized that what he had brought with him from Syria was a condition of acute loneliness and that, rather than diminish on arrival at Rome, it would in all probability grow worse. He wondered if it was his appearance put people off or the more obvious reason that he was a foreigner and lacked connections in the capital. He was quickly learning that people were almost wholly self-interested and that the Roman aristocracy excluded even an emperor thought to lack patrician blood.

After the roasts had been demolished, the chef sent in the dessert. The confectioner had made a figure in the form of Priapus, holding up every kind of fruits and grapes in his wide apron. The colour-coding was an achievement in itself, and Heliogabalus was shocked by the rapacity with which the arrangement was so quickly
shredded. There was not the slightest observance of the chef’s meticulously constructed
objet d’art,
only the greed of the privileged stoppering their mouths to excess. Most of the women invited into his company had quickly realized he was gay and had given up any attempts at attracting his attention. Instead, they had regrouped into a gossipy, competitive list of rivalries, concerned with their hair and the line of an expensive gown.

All he wanted to do was sleep and to bury the memory of his illness and the year-long journey. He was also anxious to wipe out the faces of the anonymous lovers he had known at every stop of the journey. The memories when they returned were too painful and hallucinatory. The awareness that he would never encounter any of these boys again rooted in him with a deep sense of loss. And there was the undiagnosed virus he had caught, which his doctors suspected was sexually transmitted. It still recurred some nights in the form of high fever, with lumps occurring in the lymphatic region under his arms. He had heard it rumoured that gay people all over the empire were going down with a form of plague said to have come out of North Africa. He hoped he was free of it but couldn’t be sure.

When he fought free of the last of his minders he was grateful of the chance to be alone. A big wind had risen outside, and he could hear it thrashing through the trees, like trampling elephants.

He slept as if he was on the high seas, the current of his dreams washing him with turbulent rhythm. He woke once to find his mother trying to fit herself to his body, and it took real force on his part to kick her out of his bed.

He awoke to discover that the wind had died out, and the view from his windows was one of spectacular blossom. For all the pink and white cushioning of the trees, he could sense the manic graft of the city on the other side, and all the crazy night-and-day excitement it offered. The first thought in his mind was that he would have attendants search the bath-houses and gymnasiums for youths who were well hung. He intended to make it clear from the start that his preference was for solid genital muscle. It meant nothing to him that his obsession might be frowned on by the prejudiced.

But before the day began he was to be visited by his personal hairdresser, whose job it was to layer and curl his hair in the style originally adopted by Nero. The day’s busy agenda was also to include an introduction to the Senate, the body politic he despised without ever having met.

After he had washed he was dressed by his Ethiopian servant. The man, who gave his name as Antony, was anxious to please without being in the least subservient. Sensitive to a degree that palpably flinched from the possibilities of being hurt, his manner combined tact with genuine concern. Heliogabalus assumed the man was in his mid-twenties and had probably been raised as a servant. He had mint-green eyes, and his body was slim to the point of self-conscious definition. But what made Antony so particularly special was the selfless, self-deprecating way in which his desire to please was without the expectation of gain. It was a quality absent from the servants he had known at home and one he had not counted on finding in Rome.

For a moment he wondered what it would feel like to fall in love with him. He let his eye track the curved rondure of the man’s buttocks before taking up with the shapely outline of his thighs. The compact tightness of his body contrasted with the soft expression in his eyes, creating the exact combination of masculine and feminine energies he found irresistible. He felt a catch in his heart as Antony attended to his personal needs, and was at the same time acutely aware that society would refuse him the right to love this man, no matter the truth of his feelings.

He listened as Antony told him of the large number of public readings currently on in Rome. Poets and philosophers used recitations not only as a means of propagating their work but also as a valuable form of income. There was to be a series of readings that afternoon at the Athenaeum, its auditorium having been converted into a platform for the city’s revolutionary poets. According to Antony, most of them performed to backing bands, the music working in tandem with the lyrics.

He took time in putting on his jewellery. He eventually settled for a number of pins in his hair and a selection of glitzy sparklers on
his knuckles. The Senate was unlikely to approve, but that was half the fun. Defiance and the refusal to conform were coded into him like a blood type.

Antony’s eyes bumped up at the sight of the rings, his slightly arched eyebrow signalling that they were a little too
outré,
while his silent amusement was a clear indicator that he had given them his personal approval.

Heliogabalus still felt road-lagged and secretly dreaded having to attend the Colisseum later in the day to witness the gladiator shows put on in the amphitheatre as part of the celebrations. The barbaric blood-letting cruelty of the displays were renowned for their savagery. He had heard that animals and humans were carved up like meat in the arena. It wasn’t something he relished seeing, and the enthusiasm expected of him would have to be faked in the interests of pleasing the crowd.

When Antony came up close to make a final check on his appearance he traced a finger lightly along the small of his back and met with no resistance. There was no sudden tensing or movement away on his part. The naturalness of his response told him that there were no obstacles in the way of their having sex later that night. Already he could feel the fit of their perfectly matched bodies.

He picked at a fruit bowl before wandering out to the sunlit terrace. His strappy sandals were bound to cause a sensation, but he didn’t care. The Roman light was clear, busy and atomized with charge. The whole scented parkland rose to his nostrils. When his mother came out to join him he could read in her dissolute features the years of heavy drinking and sex to which she was addicted. She ran a finger playfully along his smoothly shaved jaw, reminding him at the same time of the necessity for him to continue with his education. He was to resume studies with Serge and was to be taught etiquette, history and some law as a means of consolidating his position.

He was full of his own immediate plans to build a temple to his god and told Symiamira of his intention to visit the Senate in a carriage drawn by naked youths. The gesture would shock, but it was all part of his image. He had come to Rome to subvert the existing
hierarchy and intended to do so with style. He was determined within a month to call a convention of all the city’s prostitutes, male and female, and to preside over the meeting in a warehouse on the docks. He had planned the whole thing during his time on the road; and now it was simply a matter of feeding it into his agenda.

Downtown he found the streets infested with people. They stopped in their tracks to watch him pass, and already he could see the look of disapproval in their faces. While the youths who carried him looked festively camp and wore ostrich feathers around their necks and waists, the message was nevertheless clear. He could hear laughter and disparagement interspersed with the general popularity his presence excited. Rome was alive, and its cosmopolitan inhabitants were all purposefully headed for their groove in the city. Part of his pleasure lay in sighting faces that he considered attractive. They came from every nationality, although it was the distinctive Roman boys to whom he paid attention. Making a note of the local boys was important, for he intended to have sex with as many of them as his energies permitted.