“Of course, Caesar. I’ll do whatever I can.”

Hadrian stepped closer. He gazed steadily into Marcus’s eyes. “What I really want, dear Pygmalion, is for you to sculpt Antinous.”

Marcus stared back at him. Had grief erased the emperor’s memory?

Hadrian smiled wanly. “I understand your hesitation, Pinarius. Let me explain. Temples have been erected. Temples must have statues, so artists in Egypt and Greece have sculpted images of the Divine Antinous. At best, these statues have been – what word can I use? – acceptable. But none has captured the divine essence of Antinous. I’m convinced that only you – because you alone sculpted him in life – can possibly do that. I want you to make a statue of Antinous. We’ll collaborate on this project, you and I, working from memory.”

Marcus felt many things at once – doubt, dread, and a twinge of anger, but also a thrill of excitement such as he had not experienced in a long time.

Hadrian looked at him with a plaintive expression. “I don’t suppose… when I told you to destroy the statue…”

“I did as I was ordered, Caesar. I burned my sketches. I destroyed the models. I broke the arms and legs from the statue, smashed the torso, pulverized the hands and feet – ”

Hadrian winced and shut his eyes.

“But…” Marcus hesitated for a long moment, then decided to tell the truth. “I kept the head.”

Hadrian’s eyes grew wide.

“It was the most beautiful thing I ever made, or ever could hope to make,” said Marcus. “I couldn’t bear to destroy it.”

“Where is it?”

Marcus walked to a cluttered corner of the workshop. Hadrian followed him. Marcus cleared away a pile of implements and tattered scrolls to reveal a small cabinet covered with dust. The iron latch was rusty. Marcus had not opened the cabinet in years. It would have been too painful to look at the object it contained.

He managed to open the latch. He reached into the cabinet. He stood and held aloft the head of Antinous.

Hadrian gasped. He took the head from Marcus and held it in his hands. He touched his lips to the marble. His eyes filled with tears.

In the days and months that followed, the emperor spent every spare moment with Marcus in the workshop, surrounded first by drawings and small clay figurines, then by life-size models. Together they strove to recreate, to Hadrian’s satisfaction, the true image of Antinous. Marcus drew and moulded, and Hadrian gave his critiques, circling the life-size models, touching them and closing his eyes as if to summon up tactile memories, telling Marcus to make the chest larger, or the nose slightly longer, or the curvature of the calves more pronounced.

Having sculpted Antinous from life, Marcus trusted his memories of the youth’s appearance; sometimes Hadrian’s suggestions struck him as dubious, but Marcus did as he was told. Hadrian was pleased, and sometimes so shaken by the verisimilitude of the image that he wept. Strangely, to Marcus, their collaborative creation seemed to resemble more closely the god of his dreams than his recollection of the living Antinous.

At last came the day of the unveiling.

The statue would present no surprises to Hadrian, since he had overseen its creation from conception. Nonetheless, Marcus wished to make a formal unveiling, more for the benefit of his son than for the emperor. But young Lucius was late. Hadrian arrived ahead of the boy, but he did not seem to mind waiting. He strolled about the workshop, fiddling with various objects and taking deep breaths.

“Caesar has much on his mind today,” observed Marcus. The two of them had grown increasingly comfortable in each other’s presence. Hadrian now regularly unburdened himself to Marcus.

“The Jewish revolt,” said Hadrian. It was the problem that most preoccupied him these days. “It’s like the hydra: cut off one head and two more take its place. People continue to die by the tens of thousands. As long as a significant number of Jews persist in their belief that this fire-brand Simon Bar Kochba is their long-awaited Messiah, there seems to be no way to suppress the revolt, short of complete extermination, of the sort that Trajan practised in Dacia. But that’s not possible in the case of the Jews; they’re scattered all over the empire. The only long-term solution is to somehow assimilate these people, whether they wish to be assimilated or not. Towards that end, I’ve enacted a ban on their practice of amputating their foreskins. For reasons which defy comprehension, they attach some religious significance to this barbaric procedure. It’s yet another way by which they deliberately set themselves apart. For their own good and to put an end to these insurrections, they must put aside their primitive religion and embrace the true gods, like the rest of the world.”

“I understand you’ve renamed the province,” said Marcus.

“The region that was Judaea is now to be called Syria Palestina, just as Jerusalem is now Aelia Capitolina. These things make a difference – names and symbols and such.”

“And Caesar’s problems with the Christians?” said Marcus. This was another concern occasionally mentioned by the emperor.

Hadrian scoffed. “My travails with the Christians are as nothing compared to the trouble stirred up by the Jews. Some of my advisers lump the two groups together, but such thinking is ignorant and out of date; a great many Christians are not and never were Jews. Like the Jews, their atheism sets them apart from their neighbours, but unlike the Jews, they seem to be quite meek; meekness is actually a part of their teachings. As long as their numbers remain small and they keep their heads down, I think Trajan’s policy of ‘ask not, tell not’ is best.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” said Marcus, to whom this dictum had never quite made sense.

“It means that Roman magistrates take action against the Christians only when there is a formal complaint against them. No complaint, no action.”

“That would seem to put a great deal of power in the hands of their neighbours,” noted Marcus.

“If the Christians persist in their perversity, then they must live or die at the discretion of the decent, law-abiding majority.” Hadrian put down the clay model he was examining and raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t one of your relatives a Christian?”

“I hardly think so,” said Marcus with a laugh. His denial was genuine. Marcus had never been told about his Christian great-uncle.

“Oh, no, I’m quite sure about this,” said Hadrian, who had reviewed every aspect of the imperial dossier on Marcus when he was deciding the fate of Apollodorus. “As a matter of fact, isn’t that talisman you wear some sort of Christian amulet? I’ve always presumed it was handed down from the Christian in the your family, and worn by you for sentimental rather than religious reasons, since you yourself clearly are not a Christian.”

“A Christian symbol? My fascinum? Certainly not!” Marcus touched the fascinum. “This heirloom was given to me by father in the presence of yourself and the Divine Trajan. The fascinum long predates the first appearance of the Christians.”

“Calm yourself, Pygmalion! Perhaps I’m mistaken about your amulet. Nonetheless, I can assure you that the brother of your grandfather was indeed a Christian. I can’t recall his name at the moment, but I know for a fact that he was executed by Nero after the Great Fire. It must have been quite a scandal at the time. That’s probably why you never heard about it. Families have a way of falling silent about the scandals in their past; the children are the last to find out, if they ever do. If you don’t believe me, ask your friend Suetonius the next time you see him. In his research, he’s certain to have come across the Pinarius who was a Christian.”

“With respect, Caesar, Suetonius is not my friend,” said Marcus, flustered and taken aback by these revelations.