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