It was rare for boys to wear the pin. The pin meant a permanent place in the retinue of a member of the royal family. The pin meant more than that. Of course, any slave might be called on to serve in private, if the royal eye fell on them. But the pin meant the certainty of a First Night, in which the slave was presented to the royal bed.
Those who wore a pin received the best rooms, the strictest training, and first privileges. Those without dreamed of acquiring one, and worked day and night in the attempt to prove worthy. In the male gardens, Aden said with a flick of his shiny brown hair, that was almost impossible. In the female gardens, of course, pins were more common. The tastes of the King and his two sons ran along predictable lines.
And since the birth of Damianos, there was no Queen to select slaves for her own retinue. The King’s permanent mistress Hypermenestra had full rights and kept slaves as befitted her status, but was too politic to take any but the King into her bed, said Aden. Aden was nineteen and in the last year of his training, and spoke about First Night with sophistication.
Laying himself down on the bedsheets, Erasmus was aware of the lingering responsiveness of his body, which he could not touch himself. Only those with special dispensation were allowed to handle him there, to wash him in the baths. Some days he liked it. He liked the ache of it. He liked the feeling that he was denying himself something to please his Prince. It felt strict, virtuous. Some days he just wanted, beyond reason, and it made the feeling of self denial, of obedience, stronger, wanting it yet wanting to do as he was told, until he was all confusion. The idea of lying untouched on a bed and the Prince entering the room. . . it was an obliterating thought that overwhelmed him.
As yet untutored, he had no idea how it would be. He knew what the Prince liked, of course. He knew his favourite foods, those that might be selected for him at table. He knew his morning routine, the way that he liked to have his hair brushed, his preferred style of massage.
He knew . . . he knew the Prince had many slaves. The attendants spoke of this with approval. The Prince had healthy appetites, and took lovers frequently, slaves and nobles too, when the need was on him. That was good. He was liberal with his affections, and a King should always have a large retinue.
He knew the Prince’s eye tended to roam, that he was always pleased by something new, that his slaves were looked after, kept in permanent style, while his eye, roaming, frequently fell on new conquests.
He knew that when he wanted men, the Prince rarely took slaves. He was more likely to come from the arena with his blood up and pick out some display fighter. There was a gladiator from Isthima who had lasted in the arena for twelve minutes against the Prince before he’d fallen to him, and had spent six hours in the Prince’s chambers, after. He was told those stories too.
And of course he only had to choose a fighter and they would yield to him as any slave, for he was the son of the King. Erasmus remembered the soldier he had seen in the gardens of Nereus, and the idea of the Prince mounting him was stunning image in his mind. He could not imagine that power, and then he thought, but he will take me like that, and the deep shiver went all the way through his body.
He shifted his legs together. What it would be like, to be the receptacle for the Prince’s pleasure? He lifted a hand to his own cheek and it felt hot, flushed as he lay back on the bed, exposed. The air felt like silk, his curls trailing like fronds across his forehead. He drew his hand to his forehead and pushed the curls back and even that gesture felt over-sensual, the slow motion of one underwater. He raised his wrists above his head and imagined the ribbon binding them, his body the Prince’s to touch. His eyes closed. He thought of weight, dipping the mattress, an unformed image of the soldier he had seen silhouetted above him, the words of a poem,
Arsaces, undone
.
The night of the fire festival, Kallias sang the ballad of Iphegenia, who had loved her master so much that she waited for him though she knew what it meant to do so, and Erasmus felt the tears well up in his throat. He left the recital and walked out into the dark gardens, where the breeze was cool in the scented trees. He did not care that the music was growing distant behind him, needing suddenly to see the ocean.
In the moonlight it was different, dark and unknowable, but he felt it before him nonetheless, felt its vast openness. He looked out from the stone balustrade in the eastern courtyard and felt the reckless wind against his face, the ocean like a part of himself. He could hear the waves, imagined them splashing his body, filling his sandals, the foaming water swirling around him.
He’d never felt it before that yearning, tossed feeling, and he became aware that the familiar shape of Kallias was coming up behind him. He spoke the words swelling up inside him for the first time.
‘I want to be taken across the ocean. I want to see other lands. I want to see Isthima, and Cortoza, I want to see the place where Iphegenia waited, the great palace where Arsaces gave himself to a lover,’ he said, recklessly. The yearning inside him crested. ‘I want—to feel what it is to—’
‘Live in the world,’ said Kallias.
It wasn’t what he had meant to say, and he stared at Kallias, and felt himself flush. And he was aware of something different in Kallias, too, as Kallias drew alongside him, and leaned on the stone balustrade, his eyes on the ocean.
‘What is it?’
‘Kastor has returned from Delpha early. Tomorrow will be my First Night.’
He looked at Kallias, saw that distant expression on his face as he gazed out at the water, looking out to a world Erasmus couldn’t imagine.
‘I’ll work hard,’ Erasmus heard himself saying, the words a tumble. ‘I’ll work so hard to catch up with you. You promised me in the gardens of Nereus that we’d see each other again, and I promise you now. I’ll come to the palace, and you’ll be a fêted slave, you’ll perform on the kithara at the King’s table every night, and Kastor will never be without you. You’ll be magnificent. Nisos will write songs about you, and every man in the palace will look at you and envy Kastor.’
Kallias didn’t say anything, and the silence stretched out until Erasmus grew self conscious of the words he had spoken. And then Kallias spoke in a raw little voice.
‘I wish you could be my first.’
He felt the words in his body, little explosions. It was as if he lay uncovered on the pallet as he had done in his small room, offering up his longing. His own lips parted without sound.
Kallias said, ‘Would you . . . would you put your arms around my neck?’
His heart beat painfully. He nodded, then wanted to hide his head. He felt lightheaded with daring. He slid his arms around Kallias’s neck, feeling the smooth skin of his neck. His eyes closed to just feel. Snippets of verse floated through his mind.
In the columned halls, we embrace
His cheek rests against mine
Happiness like this comes once in a thousand years
He put his forehead against Kallias’s.
‘Erasmus,’ said Kallias, unsteadily.
‘It’s all right. It’s all right as long as we don’t—’
He felt Kallias’s fingers on his hips. It was a delicate, helpless touch that preserved the space between their bodies. But it was as if he had completed a circle, Erasmus’s arms around Kallias’s neck, Kallias’s fingers at his hips. The space between their bodies felt clouded and hot. He understood why those three places on his body were forbidden to him, because all of them began to ache.
He couldn’t open his eyes, as he felt the embrace tighten, their cheeks pressing against one another, rubbing together, blindly, lost to the sensation, and just for a moment he felt—
‘We
can’t!
’
It was Kallias who pushed him away with a strangled cry. Kallias was panting, two feet away, his body curved around itself, as a breeze lifted the leaves of the tree, and they swayed back and forth, as the ocean swelled far below.
On the morning of Kallias’s First Night ceremony, he ate apricots.
Little round halves, ripened just past their early tang to perfect sweetness. Apricots, figs stuffed with a paste of almonds and honey, slices of salty cheese that crumbled against the tongue. Festival food for everyone: the ceremonies of First Night eclipsed anything he had seen in the gardens of Nereus, the height of a slave’s career. And at the centre of it all, Kallias, paint on his face, the gold collar around his neck. Erasmus looked at him from a distance, holding on to the promise he had made to Kallias, tightly. Kallias performed his role in the ceremony with perfect form. He never once looked at Erasmus.
Tarchon said, ‘He is fit for a King. I always questioned Adrastus’s decision to send him to Kastor.’
Your friend is a triumph,
the attendants whispered to him the next morning. And in the weeks after that,
He is the jewel of Kastor’s household. He performs on kithara every night at table, displacing Ianessa. The King would covet him, if he weren’t sick.
Aden was shaking him awake.
‘What is it?’ He rubbed his eyes sleepily. Aden was kneeling next to his narrow bed.
‘Kallias is here. He had an errand for Kastor. He wants to see you.’
It was like a dream, but he hurried to put on his silks, pinning them as best he could. ‘Come quickly,’ Aden said. ‘He’s waiting.’
He stepped out into the garden, following Aden out, past the courtyard to the paths winding through the trees. It was past midnight, and the gardens were so quiet that he could hear the sounds of the ocean, a soft murmur. He felt the paths under his bare feet. In the moonlight, he saw a slender, familiar figure gazing out at the water beyond the high cliffs.
He was barely aware of Aden retreating. Kallias’s cheeks were brushed with paint, his lashes heavy with it. There was a single beauty mark high on his cheekbone that drew the gaze to his wide blue eyes. Painted like that, he had come from entertainments in the palace, or from his place in Kastor’s household, at Kastor’s side.
He had never looked so beautiful, the moon above him, the gleaming stars falling slowly into the sea.
‘I’m so glad to see you, so glad you’ve come,’ said Erasmus, feeling happy but suddenly shy. ‘I am forever asking my attendants for stories of you, and saving stories of my own, thinking this or that I must tell Kallias.’
‘Are you?’ said Kallias. ‘Glad to see me?’
There was something strange about his voice.
‘I missed you,’ said Erasmus. ‘We haven’t talked to each other since—that night.’ He could hear the sounds of the water. ‘When you—’
‘Tried to dine from a prince’s table?’
‘Kallias?’ said Erasmus.
Kallias laughed, the sound uneven. ‘Tell me again that we’ll be together. That you’ll serve the Prince and I’ll serve his brother. Tell me how it will be.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Then I will teach you,’ said Kallias, and kissed him.
Shock, Kallias’s painted lips against his, the hard press of teeth, Kallias’s tongue in his mouth. His body was yielding, but his mind was clamouring, his heart felt that it was going to burst.
He was dazed, reeling, clutching his tunic to himself, to keep it from falling. Standing two paces away, Kallias was holding Erasmus’s golden pin in his hand where he’d torn it from the silk.
And then the first real understanding of what they had done, the bruised throb of his lips, the stunned feeling of the ground opening up beneath his feet. He was staring at Kallias.
‘You can’t serve the Prince now, you’re tainted.’ The words were sharp, jagged. ‘You’re tainted. You could scrub at it for hours and you’d never wash it off.’
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Tarchon’s voice. Aden was suddenly there with Tarchon in tow, and Kallias was saying,
‘He kissed me.’
‘Is this true?’ Tarchon took hold of his arm roughly, the grip painful.
I don’t understand
, he had said, and still he didn’t understand it, even when he heard Aden saying, ‘It’s true, Kallias even tried to push him away.’
‘Kallias,’ he gasped, but Tarchon was tipping his face up into the moonlight, and the evidence was smeared all over his lips, Kallias’s red paint.
Kallias said, ‘He told me he couldn’t stop thinking about me. That he wanted to be with me, not with the Prince. I told him it was wrong. He said he didn’t care.’
‘
Kallias
,’ he said.
Tarchon was shaking him. ‘How could you do this? Were you trying to lose him his position? It is you who have wrecked yourself. You have thrown away everything that you have been given, the work of dozens, the time and attention that has been lavished on you. You will never serve inside these walls.’
His eyes, desperately searching found Kallias’s gaze, cool and untouchable.
‘You said you wanted to cross the ocean,’ said Kallias.
Three days of confinement, while trainers came in and out, and spoke about his fate. And then the unthinkable.