The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History (71 page)

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 explain 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.