The slave girl dipped her slim fingers into the white unguent and spread it around the bruises rimming the boy\u2019s eyes. He was hardly a year older than she was, and more beautiful. But today it was hard to conceal the black and blue marks on his face and taut torso. She patted his wounds softly with myrtle oil and balsam, then watched as he winced when shimmying into his yellow robes. \u201cDoes it hurt terribly, Master?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
Elagabalus threw back his head and laughed out loud, and with his round open mouth and dark locks against the saffron shawl, he resembled the helianthus blooms bunched in vases all around the room.<\/p>\n
Yellow robes were usually reserved for brides or for priests who were already eunuchs, but Elagabalus did as he wished. More, he made no secret of his wish to be both a eunuch and a bride. \u201cOh, yes, it does,\u201d he replied, giggling. \u201cI screamed for mercy to no avail. But he pinned me down and nearly ripped me open with his sword.\u201d<\/p>\n
From his mouth arose the rancid stench of yesterday\u2019s wine, and vomit, too.<\/p>\n
Ancilla shuddered. \u201cMy Lord, chew on these leaves.\u201d She popped a sprig of fresh herb against his tongue. Elagabalus licked his lips, then swiped his hand across her bosom, squeezing her blossoms playfully. Everyone knew he loved to be beaten within an inch of his life while his wife feigned sleep beside him in the royal bed. But he never asked for those things from Ancilla.<\/p>\n
His servant quickly polished the speculum argenteum so Elagabalus could examine himself. He leaned in coquettishly. \u201cWhat do you think, do I look pretty?\u201d he asked. He pointed to the rouge and she rubbed more into his lips. She dipped an ivory wand into the kohl and rimmed his eyes, working with the bruises blurring through the white paint.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are splendid, my Dominus, always.\u201d He smiled widely. \u201cYou\u2019re the best, Ancilla. I will put aside a special plate for you during the banquet tonight.\u201d He drew her towards him, and buried his face in her hair, idly fondling her bottom. \u201cPerhaps we will have a moment for some wine together, no?\u201d <\/p>\n
The slaves adorned the triclinium with sunflowers, as per the emperor\u2019s commands. Heliotropes followed the sun, and were grown in Elagabalus\u2019s honour, holy flowers that turned their faces to him. In vast terracotta vessels, they towered over the tables. Yellow ray florets were swept over the mosaic floors. There were mountains of rose petals and ivy garlands and violets, too, for their fragrances would help mask the stench of the sewers that would invariably overflow.<\/p>\n The tables would soon be heaped with steaming roast flamingo and coriander, peppery camel\u2019s feet, cumin dormice, simmering ostrich brains, oysters, peacock tongues and nightingales. There would be goose liver, for both the guests and the emperor\u2019s dogs. There would be cheese with olives and cinnamon, and dates stewing in honey, and endless vats of spiced wine. The Master\u2019s pet wolves and panthers would roam freely: he loved to terrify his guests once they had taken off their clothes. The Master\u2019s animals had been declawed and all of their teeth extracted, so that he could entertain without trepidation for his own flesh.<\/p>\n The servants gossiped freely in his absence, but many of them held fondness for the boy. Though disgruntled by the emperor\u2019s erratic displays, he always fed them from the same feast-stuffs as his guests. And he entertained himself by tossing gold and gemstone jewelry into the kitchen, laughing as they scrambled amongst themselves for victory. The lucky ones kept their treasures. The boy often erupted into maniacal laughter, feeding on the indignation of the nobles that the peasants owned jewels as fair as theirs. Sometimes he literally tossed pearls before swine, filling the slop barrels with jewels he demanded from patricians he disliked. In such scenario\u2019s, the master\u2019s mirth was infectious indeed.<\/p>\n Still, none of the bodyguards or slaves relished bearing witness to the emperor\u2019s bizarre proclivities, and they feared his demands that they participate. For he also loved debasing himself with the lowest classes, and in an astonishing range of ways. One didn\u2019t have to be a prude or a vestal virgin to be shocked by his tastes. It was commonplace for men of status to seek release with men of humble origin, so long as the Master was the active partner in their congress. Elagabalus turned everything upside down. He married his own slave, Hierocles, a rippling muscled charioteer, and then ordered him to call him Empress.<\/p>\n The worst of all assignments to the servants was the clean-up after the orgies: there were rivers of bodily emissions, of urine and blood and puke. Sometimes, citizens with perceived infractions against the emperor were thrown to ravenous lions for everyone to watch. The Master also liked to entertain the crowds with soothsayers who read the future in human entrails. With that sardonic sparkle in his eye, he would amuse himself with lots, randomly choosing whose intestines would portend the coming affairs of the land.<\/p>\n Elagabalus was well-aware of the rumoured plots to assassinate him. He kept poisons in a vial around his throat along with his jewels and an array of charms and amulets. He joked festively about the silk cords he matched to his dresses, how they could double as a noose when danger came close. He gleefully taunted his enemies with detailed accounts of the torture that many had already endured for attempts on his reign. Of course she had to do what she was told. He had complete ownership over her. But also, she wanted to. She couldn\u2019t help the ripples of excitement she felt at his touch. She loved to straddle him and ride until her pleasure peaked, a phenomenon no one else ever acknowledged but something her Master made sure of. \u201cAtta girl,\u201d he said throatily when she was finished. She was terrified, of course, of pregnancy, but Elagabalus supplied her routinely with pennyroyal tea. She was even more scared of her feelings for him, intense and wild, but also, oddly maternal. The boy was a mere political pawn, of his own family and the empire, only fourteen when he became emperor. It had been only a few years since then. How could he have a clue about state affairs or the malicious motivations of others?<\/p>\n She knew, too, that he was lonely, because once she found him in her own servant quarters, weeping for his mother. And it broke her heart to see how power corrupted and led to decadence so quickly: she\u2019d been born into servitude, and the story was the same with each new master. She couldn\u2019t help thinking that the boy was far too young for this deviant world. He didn\u2019t stand a chance.<\/p>\n But still. Ancilla was not a fool. She knew Elagabalus did not love her. Could not, would not, did not. Her own girlish hopes and feelings did not matter. The cold truth was that such a person was beyond redemption.<\/p>\n \u201cDominus,\u201d she said as she dressed him. \u201cThere has been more talk in the palace. Tensions are high. I fear you are in danger.\u201d Elagabalus held a finger to her lips. \u201cI know, I know,\u201d he said. He kissed her almost wistfully. \u201cDon\u2019t worry your pretty little heart about me. I am protected by al-Gabal.\u201d He waved his hand to show her the sunflowers, how their bobbing yellow heads all leaned in toward him. He let her finish his makeup. \u201cBesides,\u201d he said. \u201cI won\u2019t let anything happen before tonight\u2019s party. It\u2019s going to be epic.\u201d His chortling laughter was still ringing when she pulled the curtains behind her.<\/p>\n The emperor had waited until the third wine amphora was nearly drained, and then abruptly announced his retirement, leaving the hall. Everyone was naked and dancing. Then, the ceiling had come crashing down in an avalanche of sunflowers. At least a dozen guests had been smothered to death, along with as many servants and guards.<\/p>\n She really couldn\u2019t care less what randy escapades Elagabalus got himself up to, or what social norms he upended. Rather, it was his cavalier cruelty that broke her. This wasn\u2019t the first time something so brutal had happened. It was impossible to understand how someone who sometimes touched her with such tenderness could delight in ruthless debauchery.<\/p>\n She prayed all morning that he would not summon her for dressing. She didn\u2019t think she could stomach going through the motions.<\/p>\n Still, a jolt of envy ran through her when he didn\u2019t. A feeling of betrayal.<\/p>\n He called for one of the gardeners instead, a rough, hulking man twice his size, whose extraordinary\u2026proportions\u2026the emperor often joked about. A mean brute with a terrible temper.<\/p>\n For a fleeting instant, Ancilla wondered if she understood something of Elagabalus\u2019s thirst for punishment. Perhaps there was a strange penitence at play in his desires. She wiped the thought from her mind. So what if there was a shred of sorry in his sickening soul. It wasn\u2019t enough. It was almost nothing at all.<\/p>\n Ancilla entered her Master\u2019s lair and prepared his bath, then busied herself rearranging the vessels of sunflowers. She thought about what it would feel like to be buried alive and suffocated by a throng of bobbing flower heads. She imagined stuffing them down his throat.<\/p>\n Elagabalus pranced inside in his usual manner and immersed himself in the water. His body, hairless, and for a rare moment flaccid, seemed puny and vulnerable, repugnant. A flash went through her of their last meeting, when she had eased herself onto him and bucked there with reckless abandon. She knelt behind him and began to soap his curls.<\/p>\n As she perfumed his body afterwards, her fingers moved tentatively, rubbing the salve into his tiny nipples, the smooth hollows of his underarm. She felt a wave of the profound sorrow that had been growing inside of her.<\/p>\n When he circled her with both hands and moved his lips across her throat and face, she wondered if she was going to unravel.<\/p>\n \u201cPurple today,\u201d Elagabalus said after a while, and she slid his robes over his body. He pointed to a rope of silk and amethyst, and another heavy with amulets. \u201cWord is, I need to double up on the charms tonight,\u201d he said, tossing his head back the way he always did when he amused himself. Then his expression grew more serious. \u201cIs it true, girl? What have you heard?\u201d<\/p>\n Ancilla swallowed. \u201cYes, Master. You know there is always talk around the palace.\u201d<\/p>\n She wanted to tell him more. She wanted to tell him to run. But she left it there, without revealing any specific details. Not even an emperor could outrun his fate. Come what may.<\/p>\n Elagabalus looked her intensely in the eyes. \u201cYou would tell me everything, wouldn\u2019t you, Ancilla?\u201d She wondered how much he knew. She wondered if he felt her slipping away.<\/p>\n \u201cHere, take this, girl,\u201d he said, unfastening a sunflower amulet from his necklace. He reached for her hand and pressed the charm of gold, black basalt and citrine into her hand, closing her fingers around it with his. \u201cMay al-Gabal protect us both.\u201d He kissed her then, and it felt like goodbye.<\/p>\n Every leaf and flower turned toward the emperor, the heliotropes, of course, but the roses and lilies, too.<\/p>\n Then, the clanging of the cymbals. The cue.<\/p>\n The charioteer whipped the horses in the rhythm of the tympanum, then let go of the reins. The horses took off, scattering blooms in their thunder. The dogs went wild.<\/p>\n And a legion moved in on the carriage in the mayhem.<\/p>\n Elagabalus was a flash of purple lightning, bolting at breakneck speed. But there was nowhere he could flee. His most loyal bodyguards in the palace had already turned on him.<\/p>\n They came upon him in his hiding place, cowering in the putrid stench of the latrines. His robes had been torn away and he was nearly naked, with nothing left but the subligaculum around his loins and a dishevelled tiara. His useless amulets were scattered across the dank and grimy floor.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease,\u201d the sun god priest begged. It was his final word.<\/p>\n They closed in on him, with fists and swords. His body spouted blood like a great fountain. One soldier picked up a xylospongium, the sponge on a stick used to clean the toilets. In a final indignity, he thrust it down the boy\u2019s throat.<\/p>\n The day grew dark, as if the sun had simply vanished from the sky. All around them, the heliotropes, their terrible black and yellow, snaking swiftly, suddenly up the rank walls, down through the windows, up through the floor stones, and out of the toilet cesspits. There were sunflowers by the thousands, with heads twice as large as nature had ever before endowed them, bowing to their high priest for the last time. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Sunflower King (after The Roses of Heliogabalus, by Lawrence Alma-Tadema [Engand, b. Netherlands] 1888 ) The slave girl dipped her slim fingers into the white unguent and spread it around the bruises rimming the boy\u2019s eyes. He was hardly a year older than she was, and more beautiful. But today it was hard to conceal the black and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5409,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/5409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/03\/leave-image-1.png\")
\nThe palatial banquet rooms were already thrumming, hours before the arrival of the guests. With Elagabalus safely out of earshot off at the sun ceremonies, dancing around the two-tonne meteorite he had dragged in from Emesa, the servants and guards grumbled freely. Everyone knew their emperor was a fraud, that his mother had lied about his lineage. That was how the boy, already a high priest of al-Gabal, the sun god incarnated in stone, had taken the throne. He fancied himself a galli<\/em>, too, a priest of Cybele, pretending to be castrated as they were, and demanding his young virile servants defile him as they would a woman. Perhaps most egregiously, the foreigner had befouled a sacred virgin of Vesta, whose vocation was to tend to temple fires. The vestal virgins were forbidden to know a man, but he had insisted on taking her as one of his wives. It was just a matter of time before she would be sentenced to the only fate allowed one who broke her vows to Vesta. She would be buried alive when he was finished with her.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\nWhen the day\u2019s sun dances had ended, Ancilla was summoned to prepare the emperor\u2019s bath. She set up his heliotropes and filled the water with perfumes, then set out the strigil. She warmed oils with frankincense to soothe his sore body and his wounds. Elagabalus entered the room unselfconsciously, already naked, grinning. \u201cI requested you,\u201d he said. She smiled bashfully and got to work. He basked for a while as she slathered him in oil. He reached for the novasilla. \u201cShave me,\u201d he said coyly. Elagabalus liked to be shaved everywhere, leaving only the dark curls on his head. Ancilla hesitated, and then did what she was asked. He started to moan and she saw his member stiffen as she worked at his most sensitive parts. \u201cI told you we\u2019d spend some time together today,\u201d he whispered. \u201cCome, join me in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWhen dawn broke, and Ancilla dressed and headed to her duties, there was a dreadful hubbub in the palace. She was used to all the noise, and the gongs and cymbals the night before, the shrieking and hooting of wasted revelers, had barely stirred her. A dozen slaves were furiously coming and going, carrying armloads of garlands and yellow flowers and gore outside, some of them dragging bedraggled corpses behind them. She did not dare ask anyone what had happened, as happenings of the royal festivities were none of the slaves\u2019 concern. But eventually, as they were washing up a hundred platters, one of the cooks told her everything.<\/p>\n
\nAncilla felt sickened. Disgust and grief overwhelmed her. There were many friends from the kitchen that she wouldn\u2019t see again. A dark pit of disappointment grew inside her, threatening to engulf her. She could barely comprehend the gravitas of it all. As she went about her morning chores as usual, she grew more unsettled.<\/p>\n
\nHe didn\u2019t call for her for several days. She was plucking geese with other servants in preparation of another feast when the summon finally came. It was the same afternoon that some guards had been talking about a rebellion. They were conspiring to overthrow the Master to replace him with someone who was actually invested in the affairs of the state and her people, and her own gods. They planned to lynch the boy during the afternoon procession, and even Hierocles, his most adored of lovers, the charioteer who would drive the fleet of white horses, was plotting against him.<\/p>\n
\nThe sun was high in the sky, reflecting al-Gabal\u2019s mighty power, when the jewelled chariot began its procession from the Coliseum. The sounds of the cornu and lituus, of the tambourines, could be heard across the hills and gardens. Elagabalus was resplendent in his flowing amaranthine dresses and a dazzling tiara of amethyst and garnet. The chariot was festooned with orchids and sunflowers. Even the horses were jewelled along their crests, and flowered, the yellows and purples blazing against their alabaster flanks.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>Author\u2019s note: Sunflowers did not grow in Rome (or Syria) until the 16th<\/sup> century. Their appearance in this story can be considered artistic licence. Elagabalus was a Syrian high priest of al-Gabal, a sun god local to Emesa, who became the teenaged emperor of Rome who ruled from 218-222. He was assassinated at the age of eighteen because the locals did not appreciate his importing of foreign religious rites and his decadent sexual appetites. Historians are not certain about the extent that his recorded exploits were true, as the records of his history may have been exaggerated or misunderstood.<\/p>\n