prima signans

Outside, the hounds are baying. Marcus Junius Brutus presses Caesar’s hand to his lips – the thumb, the heel of the hand, each knuckle on the back of it one by one and the long bones of each digit. His own reverence is frightening; he lets go. Laid up alongside his commander he makes an inelegant armful, but the weight of him elicits no complaint. His own arousal is a dull thrum that animates the smallest gestures with meaning.

It began with small things – a cup, a bowl, an errand – and from there it took its shape: boy and eagle, mortal and divine. He is not a supple plump-chested boy, and even in his school days he was not that which men seem to relish most – a graceful youth with full pink cheeks like a girl’s and a hairless arsehole. He’d been clumsy and coltish, long-boned and long-faced, and no one had badgered his tutors for access to their charge or dogged his footsteps on the way to gymnasium. As a well-born boy Brutus had had no suitors – no one to write poetry about him, to praise the grace of his naked limbs or chide him for his reluctance to be buggered. It is he who writes the verses, now, detailing these affairs with a man still old enough to be his father – they go straight in the brazier when Brutus is done with them, and even before the paper burns up and the ink sizzles away he writes his oblique praises in ciphers.

If it is not right for a grown man to desire submission to the approaches of another, then he is simply making up for lost time. Even the comeliest boy cannot be said to desire his buggering – but Romans are not Greeks, and it is not so unthinkable that the one penetrated may receive his own share of pleasure, only unseemly. Who would not submit to a man with Caesar’s power? Even kings must kneel.

Caesar brings the winecup to his lips, drinking the last, and sets it aside. He is a temperate man; the gesture is only a gesture.

In Greece Brutus had seen a carving of the Trojan boy carried off by the eagle – the boy’s head bent against the bird’s feathered neck, tender and fearless. It is like this that Brutus inclines himself against the broad shoulder of a man who would be more than king, a man who would make himself a god. Caesar plays with him lazily through the drape of his tunic, as other men seated at their desks will idle with an empty cup or caress a favorite hound – there is nothing more in it, no bold intention, only the assertion of absolute ownership. Caesar’s power is not only in strength of arms or his welcome ways with the common people. The sound of his voice and the glances of his eyes radiate command, and the soft strength of his body is like bronze.

The god murmurs against Brutus’ ready and quivering throat:

“What shall I give you, my boy? You’re old enough for lands and properties – shall I give you dominion over some pleasant place and its people? Or would you prefer less tractable subjects?” Caesar rubs his long thigh, from the bare hip beneath his tunic to the sun-browned knee; his touch has the air of possession. Brutus feels a shiver rise on the back of his neck.

In poetry, mortal lovers are said to give a bribable boy a brace of hares or a pair of birds – these are the conventional tokens, whether as payment for services rendered or a promise of future benefits from prolonged association. Brutus does not know whether this particular offer is made in play or in earnest; his face colors, and he murmurs some assent against the palm of Caesar’s hand. He is no longer a beloved boy to be satisfied with cocks and coneys, yet not too old for the lover to delight in his nervous stammered thanks.

Caesar takes him in his lap and kisses him, with a great suntanned hand cradling the back of his skull – Brutus sighs against his mouth, and yields to those tyrannical hands.

The following morning a slave comes to Brutus’ door leading a pair of white horses – he does not have to marvel long, for the collar about their necks proclaims them Caesar’s gift.