My mind clouded by love and hatred and jealousy, I conceived my plan. I would wait. I would wait until the boy begged for death, and I would offer him that, and life everlasting. And then he would be mine. Mine forever, companion of my dark hours. And Hadrianus? Hadrianus would either be tormented with the knowledge of what this, his dearest dear, had become, or he too would beg me for life in death, or death in life.
I would win, I would be avenged. And I would have him. The coveted favorite of the ruler of half a world.
This plan took me after them to Alexandria where they rested for two months, and then to the banks of the Nile, where they planned a cruise upriver. It was the season of floods, a time when only Hadrianus, old and gray but impetuous still, would brave the ancient river. The oracles at departure foretold the river would claim a life from the party. This deterred them not.
I followed the barge from the banks. In full possession of my powers, I could run like no human ever had. I could be near them and watch torches and lanterns nightly transform the immense pleasure boat into a lighted feast; I could listen to songs and poems, the dances and the laughter, the musical laughter of Antinous.
I became obsessed, mindless. I longed for nothing but that spicy blood I had once smelled so near, for that touch of mint, that hint of cinnamon, that life so strong in his perfect body.
I forgot to feed. For nights on end, I forgot to feed, until I was nothing but thirst. Until thirst twisted my body, shriveled my throat. Until my body was heavy and dead and painful.
Then one night I saw the boy leave the barge. Alone and unattended, if you can believe it. He slipped off by himself long after a party where wine had flowed freely and lulled servants and retainers into dreamless sleep. He took one of the small boats and rowed ashore, then walked along the river, head down, hands at his belt, pensive. His hair fell, a soft, unruly mass down his shoulders. His tunic of fine silk thread moved in the night breeze, now delineating his body, now veiling it. His feet were laced into sturdy, thick-soled sandals. He carried no cloak.
I followed him. His steps took him to a small riverside shrine to Osiris. Ever pious, even to foreign divinities, Antinous knelt before the stone altar with its painted wood statue and bent his head in prayer.
I stepped out from behind the bushes that had hid me and greeted him, as a passerby might greet him, in the Greek I had learned in Athens.
He looked up, smiled, returned the greeting, surprised at finding a fellow countryman in this foreign land.
I told him I was in Egypt to study religion. He told me his friend, too, had come here in search of religion, of answers about death from these people who had so long been in love with it. I inquired after his friend and he smiled, a rueful smile that told me what I need not ask. Even if I didn’t see a cooling to their love, he felt it cooling or imagined it so.
I told him the same tales that had lured me, oh so long ago. I promised him a changeless body, with never-fading, hairless skin, smooth enough to keep his lover’s interest forever. I told him I, myself, was well over thirty now. I assured him of eternal life.
But he smiled and shook his head. Not, understand, that he didn’t believe me, but—alas—he was not a boy from the Suburra but a Greek from the Eastern colonies, half in love with the idea of a tragic destiny, of a fate he couldn’t avoid. And besides, surely this miracle would have a price. Too high a price for one who didn’t own himself.
I told him the price and he recoiled, mistrusting. Hadrianus had told him of my death or my life, as you please. He didn’t want it, he told me. Not at the expense of human life. Not if he would have to kill daily just to keep mere animation. He had seen mummies, he told me. Mockery of life, he called them. He would not become a living mummy.
He was strong, muscular, from hunting and riding and keeping up with Hadrianus’s restless wandering. But I was hungry, I was starving, I was a beast howling in the wilderness, and we were alone and the night was deep and the sleeping people in the boat would not be roused by his screams.
I held him fast on Osiris’ altar. Osiris who was dead and resurrected, a god like myself, in my image and semblance. I held him and pulled back his dark hair and tore at the white skin beneath with impatient teeth. His life, sweet and inebriating, poured out onto my tongue. Sweeter than honeyed wine, stronger than the best spirits, spicy and warm and fine. Worth waiting for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight years.
His eyes opened wide, terrified, his heart beat fast, fast, fast. His muscles twisted in futile protest, under my arm that pinned him to the altar.
His heart pounded more ardently than any music he ever played, than any dance to which he’d ever given himself. From now on, I thought, his blood on my tongue making me drunk, from now on he would dance for me in the clearings of the night, by the light of the moon. For me, for me alone.
Night stretched and shrunk. I knew the true meaning of euphoria. Drinking Antinous’s life I no longer regretted anything, not my lost childhood, not my squandered fate. For that brief moment I was omnipotent, the lord of the world, the equal of gods.
“Antinous.” This call, so gentle it was no more than a faint, surprised remark, startled us both long enough for the boy to fight free of me. He stood, uncertain, drawing breath in painful gasps.
I turned, my lips stained with his blood.
Adriano stood by in the moonlight, barefoot on the muddy river bank. Imprudently alone, thoughtlessly unguarded, wearing a short tunic that wasn’t as becoming as it once had been. This way, awakened in the middle of the night, with none of his regalia, none of his insignias of power, without the subtle artifice of his hairdresser, he looked very little like an Emperor or even the virile hero I had loved. He had grown fat, with a protruding stomach; his red hair and beard had turned gray and his eyes were circled by small wrinkles and underlined by loose flesh folds, from too much drinking and living and loving.
“Antinous,” he said again, concerned, surprised. He looked at me, a brief glance, and then back at his favorite. “I woke up and you weren’t there. I saw the rowboat by the shore. I took one myself and I came to see-”
“You came too late!” I said. My voice was mad with triumph. Antinous’s blood filled me with an intoxicating happiness. “You came too late. Now he can only live by becoming like me. And you’re not a necrophiliac, you’re not a necrophiliac, remember?”
Adriano’s eyes didn’t stray. They stared at the boy and filled with pain, slowly, slowly. And each drop was indefinable sweetness in my mouth, singing joy in my heart. “Child!” the Emperor said, in soft chiding. “Antinous.”
“I didn’t want it,” the boy said, torpidly, painfully, through lips already growing stiff with death, with the poison of undying death I had put in his body. “I don’t want it.”
They stood there, I don’t know how long. They stared at each other as lovers separated by an abyss.
“Antinous…” Adriano said.
“Only sun and water, I remember you told me,” the boy whispered. “Only sun and water…. Not age, not time…. now I shall never change…” And he stared at the Emperor with hopeful eyes.
But all the Emperor said was, “Antinous,” again, in that even, tender whisper, as one who reproaches a child for a minor folly.
That was the moment of my triumph, the sweet moment of my triumph, when I knew I had won and the boy was mine and Adriano would beg me
Then, abruptly, Antinous moved with a light quickness that should have been impossible to him, stepped closer to the torrential, rain swollen river. “A sacrifice,” he said. And smiled impishly. “A sacrifice for your Imperial health, your Imperial life.” For a moment, he lingered on the side of the river, then laughed, “May you live long, may your life be lengthened by the years that should have been mine.”