The Empress's Lover

Transcript

My hand glides over your bare stomach, and I ask you if there is any pain. It is a curious relationship the physic has with his patient, in some ways more intimate than any romantic partner. I have seen the veins beneath my patient's skin, the organs of generation that concern this very visitation.

And when you gaze into my eyes, there is a pause before you answer, very much like a lover considering a suitor's strange request. I offer you a wry smile in response, yes, we have been here before, and yes, I know your answer. But the princeps demands it, and as a citizen of the empire, I serve at the pleasure of its emperor, as does my empress.

You tell me there is no pain, and turn your eyes to your young husband, whose very word can sentence worlds to die. He makes a disgusted sound and snaps his fingers. A dozen attendants leave the room, mostly slaves, but also bodyguards and the men of his inner circle.

When the chamber doors close, we are left with a more modest crowd, the two slaves you have kept since childhood, and the daughter of your first marriage. As I wash my hands in a basin and your women dress you, you ask me, what is the purpose of this pantomime? Is this not the same examination I have rendered thrice before? Your daughter is kind enough to hand me a towel, and I nod to you both.

The emperor was keen on observing firsthand. His latest hobby is medicine, and he is adamant that he can cure your infertility once he has mastered the basics. You give me a look that could rock a marble statue from its pedestal, and I suppress a laugh.

Empress, I know you trust every soul in this room, so I will speak candidly. You are a healthy woman, with a proven record of fertility, two children born of your first marriage, both of whom were strong and free of illness, and you are still capable of bearing fruit. There are doctors who will tell you this is the will of the gods, that they have put a stay on your womb for some fateful reason, which may be revealed in time.

You thank me for my candor, and ask Terentia to take your daughter to her poetry lesson. I busy myself with my tools as the elder woman ushers the girl from the room. It leaves just you, me, and Calpurnia, who silently glides away to sit beside the door.

You draw your knees up upon the sofa, and fix me with that marble-rocking gaze, with eyes I have adored in both tempestuous and tender moods. Your voice is low, near a whisper. It is my husband, you say.

I nod. The Augustus is not alone in this. Emperors have often struggled, siring heirs.

It does have a whiff of the gods about it, but perhaps he is simply unlucky. For as much as he spreads his imperial seed around the house slaves and concubines, no bastards have taken root, and neither of his previous wives could coax a pregnancy to term. It is your turn to nod, but it is a dour reflection of mine.

The emperor is not a patient man, boy. His frustrations with his last wife culminated in her bleeding out beneath my helpless hands. I was not there when he started kicking her.

I was there when he stopped. I stand two arm lengths from you and watch fear creep through your face, perhaps for the first time. You have always been strong.

You have always done what is best for your family, and you are skilled enough at manipulation that you could tame this wild emperor. I have seen your way with him, and I know this is true, but you can do nothing so long as his legacy remains in doubt. You do not need my arms around you, and I am a great fool for wishing them there.

You ask me what I would do in your place. I say nothing. So many of our conversations have proceeded like this, in silences, in nods, with our eyes open and lips pressed tight.

And then you ask me about my wife and my child. He was a boy, I say, three years younger than your daughter is now, when last I saw him. Always smiling, very bright, not a good walker, but a good talker.

And my wife, you ask. She was a midwife, I say, much more skilled than me, but then she did honor the gods with more regularity. You don't ask me how they perished, for you know that story well.

The plague that swept through the city took the lives of every fifth man, woman, and child. Slaves, patricians, it made no difference. Few were exempt, even the healthiest of children and wives.

And will you marry again, you ask me. Perhaps, but I have only loved twice and I don't expect to survive the second. I have kissed you once before this.

We were passing in the hall of the palace, Calpurnia and Terentia at your sides, and a rush of kitchen slaves running amongst us. We had almost passed one another when I felt your hand on mine and I looked and your lips touched mine just as our eyes met. And then Terentia pulled you away and I was left stumbling in the wake of the banquet.

This time I kiss you first. I know what is in your mind and yet it still surprises us both how it begins. I sweep the hood of your pallor and touch your hair and you grip me to you with a surprising strength.

You tell me to speak no words of love for this is only what must be done and I refuse you with every breath. My heart would have each brush of your lips frozen in amber, to be examined and relished in each individual facet, but my body cannot wait. Your fingers, too, move with haphazard clumsiness, now clinging to me, now tearing at my tunic.

I pull up your stola, bearing your legs, and that sweet flower I so recently examined with only clinical ministrations. I feel it now, warm and wet, and I moan into your lips. You tell me once again not to love you, to simply do my duty.

I hold your face in mine and make you look at me. You are a creature worthy of worship, but my love has nothing of duty in it. Would that I had ten lifetimes to stare at these clever eyes, it would not be near enough to measure my love.

I love you to damnation. I love you to exile. I love you for the iron in your jaw and the lonely twist of your spine.

My fingers are inside you now, massaging your inner walls with every pronouncement, and when you sob, I fear that I have hurt you. It takes me several moments to realize it is your own pleasure that disturbs you. It has been some time since your satisfaction was taken into account.

And so, though there is no time, I hike your stola higher and take you into my mouth. Calpurnia makes a distasteful sound at the door. Perhaps she is mindful of the time, or of the traditional bent that men make themselves unclean by this act.

I rely on the sound you make to tell me if it is right or wrong. From the way you tumble to the couch and hold my head at your sex, I gather it is to your liking. But you, too, know that time is fading away.

Terentia will return before long. Another of the Emperor's people may appear, and there are eyes and ears everywhere. So you pull me up upon the couch, to you, and tell me with those fearsome eyes to mount you.

I know this is the first and only time we shall be together as my mentula enters your cunt. You are the Empress of Rome, and even if you loved me, there is no safer means of keeping me silent than drowning me in the Tiber. And so I endeavor to capture as much life as I can in these frantic minutes.

My hand sweeps across your cheek, and you hold it there, just as you hold me inside you. My other hand sweeps up your belly, in echo of that cautious brush beneath the eyes of your husband. My fingertips linger over the marks of your previous pregnancies, proof of the life you hold within you.

You kiss my palm, and my thumb sweeps tears from your eyes. I say I love you again, knowing you cannot answer. You only smile and close your eyes, basking in the light of my devotion.

All Roman women are strong, for the world they inhabit demands it, but your strength must support an empire. And so, for once, and just this once, I support you. I hold you up against the cushions of this couch, whose value is greater than any home I have ever known, and move within you like a river through its aqueduct.

You bite your lip to hold back the sound. I cover it with my mouth, and you moan for me, into me. My hand glides to your ass.

My teeth bite into your flesh. The ivory legs of the couch squeal over the quartz mosaic beneath us. For a moment, there is no conflict in my heart.

There are no flickering flames throwing wild shadows on the wall, no sounds of common folk swearing and roaring in the city below. No emperor, no senate, no roads or ruin, no empire. There is only you and I, and the merciful relief of this burdensome flesh.

Only your nails in my back, your sex clenched around mine, heat and wet and tongue and torrent. You feel the sudden fountain, the rush of my semen, and cry out. Your conus, like a fist, squeezes around me, milking me further, coaxing the seed of life into your fertile womb.

For a moment, all frantic noises cease, as we push together and struggle to prolong this climax, the end of the affair. You hold your breath, and I hold you, gritting my teeth with each pelvis-shivering pump. I begin to pull out, and you break the silence with an animal grunt.

No, your eyes tell me, stay. Your hands clutch at my face to confirm you're understood, and when my empress commands, I obey. What I will remember in the days and weeks and months to come is the way you kept licking your lips, for the tears would not relent.

And how salty were your kisses, like the sea that would soon part us. Tell me where you dream was the last thing you whispered to me, and I will meet you there. When she escorts me from the palace, Calpurnia's eyes never leave her feet.

I know she is too good for me, I say, before I step through the gate. My father was a freedman. I am only two generations removed from slavery myself.

Calpurnia shakes her head. It has nothing to do with my station. If she does not see me leave, she cannot say she did, if she is taken and tortured for the truth.

But more than that, she says, she does not wish to show me the anger in her gaze. Her mistress loses a friend tonight, and Rome her chief physician, and for what? To consummate an act of lust.

I can't help smiling at the Gaulish woman. Your mistress and I are both Romans. This act of lust is a rebellion on both our parts.

She sacrifices her dignitas to choose a lover for herself, in defiance of her husband and father and house. Tonight I go into exile and leave my name and my auctoritas behind. To a Roman, reputation is everything.

But your lady is worth more than any prestige I will amass in this lifetime, or monument I could erect to my own glory. She is worth everything to me, and so I give her my nothing. Calpurnia spits on the ground.

You are all mad, she says. A year later, in Alexandria, I hear the Emperor's son is a strong child, clear-eyed and blessed with the rich dark hair of his mother. I gaze over the Mediterranean, past the lighthouse to the horizon.

The gods grant me a vision of you on the far side of it, doting on a boy of olive skin and a strange, uncertain future. I smile and say a prayer and pack my things for Syria. I will not see you again in this life, but in my dreams.

In my dreams, sometimes you meet me in an old fishing hole near the Rubicon, where my father took me before he died. And there you whisper to me that I am the husband of your heart, father to your prince. I wake up as merely the doctor you dared to kiss, but that is enough.

If I tell myself it is enough, if I tell myself it is enough, enough times, perhaps one day it will be true. I will not see you again in this life, but in my dreams.