11. To Worship and Honor

CHAPTER 11

To Worship and Honor

Tristan

An afternoon picnic at Central Park that turned into hours of cloud-gazing, kissing, and hand-holding had only been the first of our many dates. To show Cedric what it was to be an invisible old nobody, I took him to a brewery one evening, enjoying the view of the Hudson River flowing by and tasting the various craft beers Mad Hare offered. We watched the stars and walked the streets. We went to underground movie screenings and watched old horror films neither of us expected to like nearly as much as we did. We ate junk food in a parking lot one evening and made love all night long in my bedroom, with Cedric holding his underwear against my lips to stop me from making a sound. We held hands out in the open until they got slick with sweat, and we kept holding them anyway.

Mama Viv needed me to help Millie with the menu for Lady Vivien's 1950s TV Dinner Extravaganza. Cedric worked his ass off that night, helping behind the bar as much as he was helping in the kitchen, yet he kissed me nearly every time he passed through. There was a kindness and softness in the way he looked at me that hadn't been there before the night at the Henriette Hotel.

The TV Dinner Extravaganza had an outrageously delightful lineup of queens depicting the 1950s life, from perfect little housewives to the ruthless survivors of a nuclear apocalypse, their gas masks and bodies seamlessly smoothed with paint that it appeared as if the masks were a part of their heads. It was wild fun, just like every event Mama Viv had ever put together.

Life was good.

Cedric was beautiful, and the moments we stole were priceless. It was almost easy to forget that things were never certain in life, least of all when his time was running out. A decision had to be made, and people had to be told. There would be diplomatic consequences, and there would be paparazzi coverages. I couldn't even imagine the perfect storm that Cedric's announcement was going to create.

But he picked me. Every night, he picked me over everyone else, and he promised he always would.

Somewhere deep within the rotten blackness of the core of my soul, I was beginning to believe him. I was starting to see a bit of light, a bit of life, a bit of recovery where only devastation had existed for over a decade.

Cedric's hand wrapped around mine and pulled my thoughts from wandering. "The Greek and Roman art galleries are a real gem," he said, leading me into a vast area of sculptures, vases, coins, tools, and pieces of walls with frescos or mosaics still on them.

I smiled at him, letting him guide us through the various galleries. The mission was to find as many homages to Antinous as we could, he explained.

"Um, silly question, but who's Antinous?" I asked, frowning.

"Not silly," Cedric said gently.

"I feel like I should know this," I pointed out.

He laughed lightly. "Never be ashamed of the things you don't know. Only be ashamed of never being wrong." And when I laughed, he led me to Leon Levy and Shelby White Court and galleries, where statues and busts spent their eternity in care and with plenty of visitors to keep them company.

The gallery was rather empty on Wednesday afternoon. Light slanted at an angle from the glass dome, its intensity low enough that the orange lamps were lit throughout the gallery.

One, in particular, was interesting to Cedric, who ignored the perfectly polished, well-kept statues of gods and emperors, of general and philosophers, in order to show me a chipped and chiseled bust of a young man, the marble yellowed and his nose missing, he still had the features of timeless beauty. "This is Antinous. Isn't he beautiful?"

Cedric's eyes were wide with wonder, and the most ridiculous sliver of jealousy passed through me. I envied a piece of marble. The sensation passed immediately, and I tightened my hand around Cedric's. "Do we know anything about him?"

"We don't know much until he appeared in Emperor Hadrian's life," Cedric said. I was giddy with curiosity. This mattered to him, and he mattered to me. "Antinous was born on November 27, and the year was 110. We share a birthday, although I'm of a more recent vintage. He only lived until he was close to twenty, but his image survives to this day. He was raised in Bithynia, today's Turkey, and he met Hadrian when he was twelve."

I sucked a breath through my teeth.

Cedric chuckled. "It's not like that. Hadrian sent Antinous to Rome to be educated and become his page. He invested in the young man and protected him. So when Antinous was seventeen, perhaps eighteen, the friendship turned into something more. He was Hadrian's favorite, which was recorded in 128. I suppose, in modern terms, we'd call him Hadrian's favorite person." Cedric glanced at me with a touch of humor on his lips. "Hadrian was obsessed with the young man so much that he took Antinous on his tour of the Roman Empire. They traveled together until, in October of 130, the couple attended a festival in Egypt when Antinous perished. We don't know for sure, but from what's recorded, it's likely that it was a freak accident that took him. We do know, however, that the contemporaries wrote of Hadrian's reaction. To cite one, ‘he wept like a woman.' The local priesthood in Egypt was the first to identify Antinous with Osiris. Others followed, and the young man was deified. Although we don't know much of Antinous' life, we know what he looked like. And we know it because Hadrian did everything to immortalize Antinous. He built a city on the Middle Nile, calling it Antino?polis. He commissioned Antinous' likeness to be made into statues and busts. Religions throughout the Empire created cults of Antinous. To some, he was a divine hero. To others, he was the conqueror of death. His name was inscribed on coffins, and his story reached every corner of the Roman domain. Antino?polis was a bastion of Greek culture in the region of the Middle Nile, and there were at least twenty-eight temples built to honor the young man. Today, we can find his face on the statues of Dionysus, Hermes, Osiris, the Celtic sun god Belenos, and the divine hero Aristaeus, and many more."

Chills ran down my arms and spine. My vision blurred as I gazed at this chipped bust that only depicted three-quarters of a face, the rest missing. I hadn't known about him, although he had existed for two thousand years.

Cedric turned to me, a twinkle in his eyes from where the tears caught the last of the daylight piercing the dome. "Can you imagine such a love?" he asked, his voice fiery and passionate. "Thirty cities issued coins with Antinous' face, and at least nine cities held games in his honor, including both athletic and artistic components." He smiled. "Hadrian loved him so much and lost him so young. And there's no doubt about that. It's estimated there were over two thousand sculptures created in the years following Antinous' death. Only a little over a hundred survive to this day. Of forty-odd statues found in Italy, half were kept in Hadrian's home."

I shook my head. I could hardly imagine anyone being loved so much.

Cedric shrugged. "I think it's incredible. Two thousand years and we still know who he was because someone loved him enough to make him into a god. We think of the Roman Empire either as this beacon of culture in a barbaric world as barbarians themselves, but people are people. They love, they lose, they hurt, then feel joy and sorrow and pain like everyone that came before them and everyone that followed."

I simply watched him as he spoke, his gaze moving from my face to the dome above us, then taking the entire room before returning to my eyes. "It's easy to be remembered when you're an emperor's favorite," I said.

"You know, I don't think being an emperor makes someone able to love harder than everyone else," Cedric said simply. "Imagine, then, how many people loved just as hard, but we know nothing about it." He nodded. "But yes, not everyone can go around building temples and issuing coins."

I chuckled. "What happened to the temples? The sculptures?"

"What happened?" he mused.

"You said there were two thousand statues and busts."

Cedric shook his head sadly. "Christians happened. They first denounced Antinous with everything else that was pagan and homosexual. Then, they banned all of pagan imagery around the end of the fourth century. The cult was silent until fairly recently."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, the neo-pagan movement re-sacralized Antinous, and he's a gay icon." The cheeky smile on Cedric's lips filled me with such inexplicable hope as though something terrible had been prevented and there was still a chance for good things to prevail.

I put my hands on Cedric's chest and gazed into his eyes. "You're such a romantic."

"I'm a scandalous pagan, Tris," Cedric said with a laugh. He leaned in and pressed his lips softly against mine .

It sparked tingles in my toes when he kissed me. It awakened the butterflies in my stomach. It made me lighter than a feather and clearer than a drop of water from a cold forest brook. And when he pulled back, still gazing into my eyes, I blinked. "You're not scandalous to me."

The smile on his lips was so pure and fiery that I wished to become one of the statues in this room and remain with him forever.

"This one is special to me," he said, gesturing at the bust with his head. "There were queer gods in Hellenic mythology for centuries before Antinous. Apollo, Hermes, Eros. There are Achilles and Patroclus, of course, and some stories about Hercules. Zeus, Ganymede, Hyacinthus, you name them. But Antinous was a mortal man who had never been a great hero or an emperor. People like him simply weren't deified, and it was a scandal at the time." He took my hand and began leading us out of the gallery, throwing one last glance at the bust.

"That's really amazing," I said. "I didn't know any of this." Before this evening, it had only been another bust in a room I'd visited once in my life. I wondered if each had a story as large as his was.

Cedric rolled his shoulders. "I'd like to honor him."

My heart leaped. "How do we do that?"

He grinned at the fact I included myself so gladly. "I'm happy you asked."

Cedric hurried out of the museum, one hand holding mine like he was never going to let go, the other holding the canvas bag that hung from one of his shoulders. We walked fast around the museum, and Cedric found us a path through Central Park that led us straight to Arthur Ross Pinetum, less than ten minutes away.

"I was hoping to convert you," he said mischievously. "Of course, I'm not going to sacrifice you under the full Moon, just in case you were wondering. This is more of a thing I like to do for the purpose of reflection. Antinous was athletic and artistic, according to some rumors, and we know he was educated in Rome, so he's a god of light of sorts. Some modern pagan groups call him a god of homosexuality, but I disagree with that."

I was smitten even without Cedric going on about all these incredible things, but I listened happily. We reached the Pinetum and sat down on a bench just as the last of the daylight set the sky and the wispy clouds on fire.

"To me," Cedric continued, "he's much more than that. Especially because there are many better-known gay gods if you like. I generally don't think of any ancient god as something singular. They weren't seen that way then; they shouldn't be so simplified today."

"Sorry, but…" I winced. He was very much into this, and I needed a moment to catch up. "Do you actually believe he's a god?"

Cedric threw his arm around my shoulders and gazed at the pines before us. "It's unknown if even Hadrian believed it," he said softly. "But that's not important. Who knows what comes after? Who knows if there's anything out there in the universe? We're just one species from a planet brimming with life, and we happen to be a species that exists on stories. Everything's a story, Tristan. History, religion, and nationality, they're all stories we collectively agree on. Or disagree, so we go to war over our differing stories. But stories have lessons, and people need to learn so long as they live. And the story of Hadrian and Antinous is one I like, so I sit down and spare them a thought, and I drink a bit of red wine or read a poem, and that's a way to honor him."

"Red wine? Tell me more," I said flirtatiously.

Cedric smirked. "I knew that would get you interested. You could also go for a swim or, if you're particularly devoted, fight for gay rights, equality of all people, and for peacekeeping."

"Sounds like a lot of work," I said.

Cedric pulled his canvas bag open and produced a bottle of red wine and a corkscrew. "That's why we're starting with something easy." As he opened the bottle, he spoke about his childhood fascination with Greek and Roman religions, as well as most of the world's ancient religions. To Cedric, these things weren't literal, and they had never been particularly organized.

While it might have passed as an eccentric hobby that would surprise nobody coming from a willful prince—a fact I still struggled to wrap my mind around—it was much more intimate, according to Cedric's words.

His eclectic paganism was not an organized thing with a hierarchy or a dogma. There were no rules to follow, but his intuition dictated which gods had a place in his life.

"It's like collecting art," he said. The fact that he was speaking to someone who couldn't even fathom the idea of collecting stamps with how little he owned in life, let alone art, flew way over his head. "It enriches you, the individual. And it presents you to others in a way. So you ask yourself, ‘What are the things that matter to me?' And if you're a lover of beauty and peace and compassion, like you are, then you do some little things that affirm those beliefs."

"Like public drinking," I teased.

Cedric laughed aloud and pulled the cork out of the bottle. "Better be quick." He tipped the bottle, pulled a long sip, swallowed, and handed me the wine. I mimicked him and hurried to return the bottle to his bag. Cedric stoppered it with the cork again and leaned back, his arm returning to my shoulders.

I rested my head on his shoulder, and my arm pressed against the side of his torso. "You're wonderful."

"Nah," he breathed. "You are."

My heart filled with so many feelings that I couldn't count them all. They weren't all bright and welcome. Some, like this creeping dread that I tried to keep at bay, threatened to taint the beauty. Fears unfounded and founded, sorrows over the things that hadn't even happened yet, that might never happen, clawed at my heart. Putting a hand on Cedric's chest, I reconnected with the wonderful warmth he sparked in me.

If only time could slow down. If only life weren't as complicated as it was.

I inhaled a deep breath of air and closed my eyes. Antinous roamed through my mind, and I wondered what it must have felt like to be loved so much by someone as powerful as Hadrian. And I wondered if I didn't know the feeling already.