"How many trunks do you need, Tinou!"

By his estimate, thirty-five. He took an inventory of all of his tunics, shoes, boar pelts, jewelry, his scrolls, tabula and assorted games, not to mention trinkets and gifts.

It looked like a cyclone had torn through their bedchamber.

"You can buy most of these things on our travels, you know."

"Would I be able to buy this Parthian cat that Orodes himself carved for me from driftwood?"

"Why on earth would you need to take a Parthian cat? You don't even like cats."

He held the figurine to his chest scandalized. "I love cats. Cats are my favorite thing."

Hadrian looked up from his desk and suppressed a smile.

"What do you think?" Antinous asked the slave.

"Don't encourage him, Orodes!"

The slave placed the figurine in one of the trunks. "Take the cat."

"Must you two always conspire against me? I'm an old man," the Emperor mused as he reached for a scroll. They were neatly stored in pigeonholes above his desk with identifying tags. He unfurled a map from its leather sleeve and dipped his quill in ink.

They were weeks away from departing and Antinous had a million things to prepare. He was so afraid of forgetting something, he decided to take everything. Most important among these objects was the gifts he had procured for his family. He bought his mother the finest perfume of aromatic blossoms.

She wasn't a vain woman. Fragrance was her only vice. She picked flowers and made her own sweet-smelling potions at home with a mortar and pestle but none so fine as those in painted glass bottles from the market in Seplasia.

He could not wait to see to see her again. When he was a boy he would try to escape her arms as she smothered him with kisses. Now he was counting down the days until she would hold him. He was a good deal taller since he last saw her. He would be the one holding her! This put a smile on his face.

His stomach growled at the thought of eating her delicious artos dipped in stew. Romans had conquered half the world yet they still couldn't figure out how to bake a decent loaf of bread. He made a mental note to tell her this. It would make her laugh.

When Antinous tired of packing his trunk he started on Hadrian's.

"You should bring your old armor!"

"This is a diplomatic trip. We're not fighting any battles." Then he paused. "It's not that old."

Antinous held it up to the light. "The badges have rusted."

Hadrian pulled the boy away from the trunk and secured him on his lap. "Enough packing!"

Antinous turned his attention to the map on his desk. Their route was dotted with black ink and their destinations marked with a circle. He noticed there was a circle around Nicomedia but not Claudiopolis.

"You missed one."

Hadrian continued circling islands in the Aegean.

"We have to go to Claudiopolis. You promised we could visit my mother."

The Emperor wound a hand around his waist. "I think it's best we sail to the Cyclades from Nicomedia."

"You promised."

"No, I didn't."

Antinous wriggled out of his hands and stood beside the desk. "I want to see my mother."

"You can't."

"Why not?"

"It's not on our route."

"The city is only a day away on horseback. I'll ride with an escort while you attend to your diplomatic duties on the coast."

"No, I won't allow it."

"Why!"

He grew agitated and refused to look at the boy. "Because I said so."

"And I say, I'm going to see her, even if I have to hire ox cart and travel there myself."

"I forbid it!" he thundered.

"WHY?"

"YOUR MOTHER IS DEAD."

Orodes dropped the glass goblet in his hands. It shattered into a thousand pieces. Hadrian angrily dismissed him.

"You're lying," Antinous said, blood frozen in his veins.

"I didn't mean for you to find out this way."

"I would have known. I would have read it in my father's letters."

"I concealed them from you."

"No, it's not true."

Hadrian went to his locked trunk and removed the key from his toga. Carefully, he pulled out a stack of letters and a small wooden sword.

Antinous dropped to his knees. It was the sword he gave his mother before he left home. He remembered placing it in her hands, her bruised eye watching him with sadness.

The accompanying letter from his father was dated three years prior.

"You kept this from me for three years."

The Emperor's eyes misted and he buried his face in his hands. "I was waiting for the right time to tell you. It never came. You know I can't bear to see you suffer!"

And how his mother must have suffered. He read his father's words. "A farming accident.... She fell beneath the plow." She did not fall. His father did this. All she had was his little sword to protect her. He should have been there. He should never have left her alone with him.

His chest swelled with rage, at his father, the Emperor, himself.

"You lied to me. You're a liar."

"It was a lie by omission to keep you happy. Telling you the truth would not bring her back. She is your past. I am your future!"

Hadrian reached out to him.

"Don't touch me!" he hissed.

The ground seemed to shift beneath him. Up was down. Left was right. Everything he held as truth was false. All of those nights when he looked up at the stars thinking his mother was looking at the same stars, she was dust on pyre.

He retrieved his cloak from the head of a bronze satyr watching menacingly in the corner. He fastened it around his shoulders and swept past Hadrian to the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to the temple to make an offering to Adonis. My mother's patron god. Don't you dare send someone to follow me."

Only Antinous could speak to the Emperor this way and not be killed on sight. Hadrian had the power of ten thousand legions. He was afraid of no man or god. But Antinous' grief terrified him.

The Emperor bowed his head. He watched him leave and held back his guard, instructing them to let the boy take a chariot unattended. He stole his childhood and his manhood the least he could do was let him mourn his mother in peace.

🌿

The cult of Adonis was small in Rome. There was only one mossy temple dedicated to the god tucked away behind the dilapidated tenements of the Subura.

Five stories tall, the tenements were windowless and built with wood as flimsy as twigs that often went up in flames. The wealthiest tenants lived on the ground floor. The poorest lived on top and would burn with the building in the event of a fire.

Women swept the paving stones by his feet. Children with muddy faces stepped over each other to grab at his clothes and horse. His head was covered by the hood of his cloak but anyone could see from his jewelry and chariot that he was either a noble or a noble's pet.

Brothel owners called out to him from the doorsteps of their seedy establishments, offering the most nubile virgins, fresh from the pillaged countryside of Gaul. He shuddered with disgust.

There were many Greeks living here who were either brought to Rome as slaves or came to seek fortune and found only poverty and disease. The Subura was home to the lost souls of the Empire. Freeborn citizens were like slaves without masters. Anyone would prefer the whip to the ugliness of these streets.

He entered the temple. The priestess, an older woman with tangled white tresses down to her waist, lit the braziers. She addressed him in Greek. "You've come to make an offering."

He took out the perfumes from a pouch in his tunic. "These... I was going to give them to my mother but..."

She held the bottle up to her nose. In the hazy lamplight he could see a thick white film covering her pupils. The woman may have been blind but she was staring into his soul.

"Irises. She must have been very dear to you."

She placed the phials beside other offerings. Small statuettes, coins, ashes from sacrifices animals. They would be on display in the temple for some time and then priestess would bury them.

Blood from a sacrificed lamb was still fresh on the altar and incense burned, a plume of smoke coiling up to the stone beams where rats scuttled from one end to the other.

Despite its poor upkeep, this place reminded him of the temple in Claudiopolis. He did not know why he felt so comforted by the stone altar when he himself was once sacrificed upon it.

He could still feel his mother's arms cradling him and hear her murmuring soft incantations in his ear. His father thought he was a bastard and accused his mother of infidelity. At the time he thought it was just another excuse for his father to beat her. But perhaps he was right. Perhaps Antinous was the son of Adonis.

He could not go back to the villa. How could he possibly face Hadrian after the man had concealed those letters and the truth. He may have done it out of love, but one does not hide the truth from a man whom he respects. A part of him believed the Emperor's intentions were good. But another more cynical part knew that he was an instrument of pleasure. Hadrian wouldn't risk breaking his toy in case he didn't work quite the same way again.

Antinous was sure he would never be the same again now that the person who loved him most in this world was gone, the person who took countless beatings so he would be spared, the person who sent him to Rome to have a better life even though her life would be worse for it. He was alive because she had protected him. With his mother gone he asked himself, was he worth it? How might he make the life that she gave him mean something?

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and rose to leave the temple, yet he had nowhere else to go.

The priestess had some parting wisdom before he left. A prophesy: "The River Nile will carry you to the destiny you seek."

"Yes, I'm travelling with the Imperial Retinue to Egypt."

Somehow he knew that wasn't what she meant.

🌿

The streets were crowded, Rome's homeless bumping into him to beg for a sestertius then moving onto the next man who might open his purse.

He took another look at the brothel, its swinging doors, men coming and going, when he spotted a familiar face. The large gladiator from the games called Ingulf. He appeared to be drunk even though it was midday, and stumbled past the owner with a mirthful laugh.

Antinous did not know what came over him but he followed the man.

The brothel was dark. The shutters were closed so no one could peer inside.

A bell chimed and a parade of women were summoned to the anteroom wearing diaphanous stolas that were completely transparent and slipping off their birdlike shoulders.

The owner was pleased to see him. If he recognized Antinous he had the discretion not to mention it. Brothel owners knew it was as important to protect their patrons' reputations as it was their whores'.

"Welcome, welcome. A fine man like yourself must be here for my Marcella." He pulled the most buxom girl from the line. "Innocent as she is beautiful. Look her in the eye and she'll blush like a rose. Touch her hand and she'll tremble like a dove."

The girl yawned with boredom, her pink nipples pushing against the sheer panels of her stola. He doubted any man had ever made her blush. Though he was sure she'd made plenty of men tremble.

Antinous was not here for pleasure but he walked around the girl, examining her figure, until he was on the other side of the room, shoulder to shoulder with the gladiator. He nudged him discretely. Ingulf was choosing between two girls before ultimately deciding to spend his monthly wage on both.

He narrowed his eyes at Antinous. "What, may I ask, is the Emperor's favourite doing in the armpit of the Subura?" Then his face broke into a toothy grin. "We all have our predilections, I suppose. Who would have guessed the princeling's taste was so cheap, though, to be fair, I've seen cheaper whores than these—"

He raised his hand. "I need an address."

The gladiator led him to an alcove with a rushing fountain where the girls and their master could not hear them.

"The man you were speaking to at the Emperor's villa in the baths."

Ingulf's eyes widened. "Leonides."

"You know him. Where does he live?"

"Sly dog... Wait." He raised a thick finger in the air. "I shouldn't be telling you this."

"And I shouldn't be asking the question."

The girls came back to coax him to their rooms, either forced by their master or else eager to get the deed over with.

"I should like a third girl today. Nicabar's whores are delectable but I have a large appetite." He held his belly.

Antinous dug into his purse. He placed ten sestertii in his hands for the information and another ten for his silence. "Buy yourself four and never speak of this again."

His eyes widened at the coins. "Palatine. Beside the old Domus Augusti, overlooking the Circus Maximus. I have not been there myself, but I've heard him speak of it."

"Thank you, Ingulf."

"That cocky legionnaire is the one who should be thanking me," he snorted.

Antinous gave an apologetic nod to Nicabar. He stepped out of the brothel and ran to his chariot. Miraculously his gelding had not been stolen.

🌿

This was dangerous. Possibly the most dangerous thing he had ever done. His heart beat wildly as he rode out of the Subura, past the forum to the bottom of the hill.

He knew the House of Augusti well. It had burned down some time ago and was later rebuilt as a state house. It was small for the domus of the first emperor of Rome, a testament to Augustus' modesty or at least the modest face he chose to present to the empire.

Palatine couldn't have been more different than the Subura. It was quiet but for a few swallows dozing in the trees and on sloped roofs. Girls were a paragon of virtue, averting their eyes when men walked past. Men, presumably senatorial secretaries or tutors moved languidly with various scrolls and young pupils in tow. The tiny boys held hands and chattered politely in the careful Latin of the educated, upper classes.

Leonides must have been staying with his father. Only a senator or a noble could afford to live here, not a man on a legionnaire's wage.

There were several houses beside Domus Agusti. Any one of them could have been the house that Ingulf described. He panicked. The most powerful men in Rome lived on these rose petaled streets. Someone could recognize him at any moment and these men could not be bought with a few sestertii like Ingulf.

Then he saw a girl with golden hair carrying a basket in the crook of her arm and whistling. He knew at once from her pluck and graceful gait that she was a relation of Leonides.

He removed his hood and kneeled beside her. "Excuse me, girl, do you have a brother?"

She turned a deep shade of red at being addressed directly by a man, dropped the basket and ran like mad into the nearest house. He was terrified that he had offended her. He did not know who she was or who she would tell but was relieved to see that he was right for Leonides soon appeared at the door bathed in sunlight and barefoot, donning a soft blue tunic.

"Antinous, what are you doing here?"

"I didn't know where else to turn."

"Come."

Leonides hurried him inside.

A/N: To be continued... I've split this chapter into two parts so I can make the scene in Leonides' house longer.

Did you guess from the previous chapter that something had happened to Antinous' mother?

Should Hadrian have told Antinous about his mother's death? Or was he right to protect his feelings? 

The chapter title Veritas Odit Moras means 'Truth hates delay.'

Part two, coming soon 👀

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