Rufus shook his head ruefully and went to where the fruit was stored. 'I apologise, mighty Bersheba.' He placed a bruised apple in the bowl formed by the end of her trunk. 'It is going to be more difficult than I had realized to look after my two ladies in the manner they deserve. But I have learned my lesson.'
Bersheba snorted her acceptance and went back to her hay. Rufus opened the big double doors to allow the sunlight of a glorious morning to stream inside, cutting through the thin clouds of dust rising from the elephant's straw floor. His heart filled with the simple joy of living as he stepped out into the clean air of the park. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs until they could take no more.
'Is the honeymoon over so soon?'
XXV
Lucius, the officer who had delivered Rufus to Drusilla's bedroom, sat on the damp grass a dozen paces up the slope towards the palace. He seemed in no hurry to rise, but lay back, staring at the sky with a contented look. Rufus walked over to him, stood for a while, until he realized how foolish he must appear and took his place on the ground beside the young soldier.
'Everything is so clean and pure on mornings like this, don't you think? Whatever happened yesterday is gone for ever and the day ahead holds nothing but promise. It reminds me of the hour before a battle when one sees everything much more vividly and each breath is precious because it might be among the last you take.' The words were directed at Rufus, but Lucius's eyes never left the solid blue dome above them.
'Have you fought in many battles then?' Rufus didn't try to hide his scepticism. Lucius had the kind of face that would always look boyish. It was impossible to imagine him in combat.
'You mean have I always been a princess's lapdog? Then the answer is no. I have locked shields with my brothers and felt the power of the barbarian horde as they broke upon them. I have tasted barbarian blood on my lips, heard the screams of the dying and smelled the shit from bowels ripped by a blade.' He shrugged as if it was of no consequence, but Rufus heard the pride in his voice. 'But that was a long time ago in another place, in another life. I enjoyed campaigning. All you had to do was follow orders and look heroic even when your guts felt like ice.' He laughed and picked himself up, dusting the grass from his back. 'Perhaps it is not so different here after all. My orders now are to take you to a certain lady.'
Rufus followed him along the covered walkway connecting the Emperor's palace to that of his predecessor, Tiberius, but soon they turned north and into a small enclosed garden near the Palatine library. Broad-canopied trees of a type Rufus didn't recognize threw wide circles of shade on the manicured grass, where a peacock, its brilliant rainbow-fan tail thrown proudly wide, shrieked its displeasure, and a herd of tiny deer grazed peacefully. Life-sized statues lined the paths, their stony gaze still focused on some epoch-making event a hundred years before. They were perfect, these toga-clad patricians; each face an individual, each marble cloak styled slightly differently from the others. Rufus quailed beneath their stern gaze, and wondered why he was here. What could she want from him she had not already taken?
She was waiting for him by a fountain in the centre of the garden. Lucius waved him forward and walked off to stand out of earshot beneath one of the trees.
Drusilla was cloaked and hooded, and stood with her back towards him. She seemed smaller than he remembered, somehow diminished. But perhaps that was a trick of the early-morning light.
'Walk with me.' The words were the merest whisper. She set off slowly towards the far end of the garden where he could see the redtiled roof of the temple of Apollo rising above the trees. He kept pace just by her left shoulder.
'Do you fear me, puppy dog?' The words sent a shiver through him. Her voice was stronger, but he had to lean forward because it was muffled by the thick cloak which still hid her face from him. 'You should fear me. A single word from me would bring a dozen guards to cut you down and they would not stop to question why.'
She walked a little further before she spoke again. 'But the real question is, puppy dog, whether I should fear you. When I had you brought to me you were just another handsome morsel to be tasted. A tender piece of flesh to be enjoyed then discarded. How could it be otherwise? You are a slave and I am destined to be a goddess. You should be nothing to me.' She shook her head under the hood. 'Yet, since our meeting, my mind has been filled with your face and your body and your touch. I have pined for the sound of your voice and the feel of your hard flesh under my hands. At first, I believed it was weakness on my part, and I fought it, but in the fighting I have become weaker still. Then I understood. You had bewitched me. And now,' she swept the hood back from her face and turned towards him, making him step away in fear, 'I must decide whether to accept my bewitchment or to break the spell by having you killed.'
Rufus heard the words and understood their significance, but what she said was overwhelmed by the horror confronting him.
It was as if her beauty had been sucked from her like the moisture from an overwintered apple. The skin of her face was deeply wrinkled and the colour and texture of parchment, blotched with patches of darker, more lifeless flesh. Her yellowing eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. It was the face of death.
She laughed at his confusion, and he gasped at the ruin that was her mouth. The lips he had kissed were covered with weeping ulcerous boils and she had lost several teeth, while others dangled loose in her gums. And she was bald, or almost so. Only tufts of the silky auburn mane remained, standing out like sparse stalks missed by a careless harvester.
'Am I not beautiful?' she rasped, echoing the question that had greeted him in the room with the discus thrower. 'Am I not the treasure you always desired?' Then, more harshly still, 'Is this your gift to Drusilla, slave? Did you betray me?'
'No, mistress,' Rufus pleaded, hoping it was true, but remembering his words to Narcissus. Was this some sorcery of the Greek's? What was it he had said? 'I don't think Drusilla will harm anyone again.' Was there a terrible certainty there he had missed? His mind raced. He understood he was fighting for his life and he groped desperately for the words that would save him.
He found himself babbling, a near-incoherent jumble of inanity which, for some reason, appeared to please her.
'You gave me your love and I was grateful for it. For a few short hours you placed me among the gods and I was blinded by the glories I discovered there. When it was past, you left me in a shadow world where the darkness comes from within. I waited in vain for your call. I thought I had failed you in some way and that knowledge made my life worthless. I would give anything for this not to be. Kill me if you must, but know you have bewitched me as much as you say I have bewitched you.'
He dropped to his knees, not daring to look into her face. He knew he risked everything by offering her his life, but something in the memory of the time they spent together made him believe she wanted it to be so. He didn't see the single tear that ran down her ravaged cheek.
'You were the last of my lovers, Rufus of the elephant. Some would say you were the last of a vast legion, but believe me when I tell you it is not so. Drusilla was discerning in her choice of puppy dogs, at least give her that. And you did please her.' There was an infinite sadness in her words and the way she spoke them. She was talking of herself in the past tense, as if she were already dead, and even in his fear for his own life, Rufus could not help being moved. 'But Drusilla must ask herself if that is enough to save you? Would it not be fitting if you were to join her on her funeral pyre, in the manner of some terrible Babylonian queen in the texts of Herodotus, taking her most coveted possessions with her into the next world? I will think on that.'