The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History by George Gardiner Read Free Book Online

only just learned of it,” Suetonius lied. “May I ask in what manner?” he whispered. “Was it honorable?”
    This question poses the primary issue in a Roman death. Is a death noble, is it honorable, is it worthy of the deceased’s character? Is a death praiseworthy? Anything less is either an act of spite by the gods or a careless mismanagement of one’s fate.
    Clarus leaned forward to murmur in his ear.
    “ The boy was found at the Nile’s edge this morning tangled in the reeds. He has apparently drowned. Some fishermen came across him, they say, underneath their boat as they were setting out from their moorings. The tide stream had swept him to the river bank. They raised the alarm. We have them under guard until we sort out what has happened. They will meet torture to test their truthfulness.”
    It was Suetonius’s turn to lean forward to ask the most obvious question. “So how did Antinous come to be in the river in the first place?”
    Both Clarus and Macedo glanced towards each other knowingly.
    “ That might be your chore to find out,” Macedo confided.
    The sobbing from within ceased. Moments passed in frozen silence as those in the marquee eyed its entrance. Eventually Geta, Hadrian’s personal assistant, emerged from within.
    “ Gentlemen,” Geta uttered softly in his barbarian-intonated Latin, “Caesar awaits your company. This moment now might be opportune. Caesar is, is, is … composed .”
    Geta is not Hadrian’s secretary nor major-domo, let alone a servant or slave. He fulfills a more important but undefined role. He turned and strode back to the chamber entrance. The four patiently followed.
    Beyond a veiled vestibule lay a larger inner chamber where only a single multi-lamp candelabra cast illumination across a dim space. Incense burned in a brazier emitting its lazily wafting coils into the dark cavern. Remote in the gloom, Hadrian was seated upon a chair, doubled over, holding his sides with crossed arms and swaying rhythmically. He was dressed in a crumpled under-tunic furled in a purple cloak trimmed with gilded eaglets.
    His hair was disheveled, his feet bare. He was quietly snuffling into the cloak’s folds. He had put aside his sobbing for a while. Even in the somber light the five intruders could see he was pale, with red rings beneath his eyes.
    Across the chamber within range of the faint glow lay a large open divan. It was enveloped from above by a sheath of gossamer mosquito netting. Water was being finely sprayed onto the nets by a beefy Nubian slave who was simultaneously wafting a voluminous ostrich feather fan at the filmy drape. The fan’s faint breeze on the dank net aimed to cool the air around the bed beneath. In the dry, warm Egyptian climate this is sometimes an effective way to cool a sleeping person.
    Lying face upwards on the divan was a well-proportioned young man. He was utterly naked as though lazily indulging himself in the hot room of a public bath house. It was Antinous.
    He was immobile, yellowingly pallid, crinkle-skinned from water exposure, and quite visibly dead. Even at his distance from the screened bed, Suetonius detected how river parasites may already have devoured the eyeballs beneath the young man’s lids and nibbled at the edges of his extremities. His pallor was unusually waxen and drawn.
    A depression in the divan indicated where Hadrian had been lying beside his friend, probably weeping. To one side on the tiled floor lay an ornate set of ceremonial armors and weapons. The white enamel inlays of the workmanship reminded Suetonius how their owner had been the Bithynian lad. It was his formal horse parade uniform as a Companion of the Hunt, Caesar’s hunting team. Antinous was a championship horseman.
    Geta and the four stood before their ruler in silent respect. Hadrian took some time to concede the group’s presence. Geta took the initiative.
    “ May I speak, Caesar? Senator Septicius Clarus, Suetonius