Read Gore Vidal’s Caligula for Free Online Page B

into her all the way. Still under his grandmother Antonia’s roof, and wishing no repetition of her punishments, Caligula would take his little sister deep into the gardens outside the house, to a grotto that contained a natural waterfall from a ground-fed spring, and a Herm. The waterfall masked the high sound of Julia’s squeals, and the Herm was the perfect silent witness, a sacred household statue so old it could not be dated, a statue with an eroding goat’s head and an enormous phallus.
    One day, while he was driving hard into Julia Livilla, he felt the most incredible sensation at his balls. Somebody was sucking and licking them from behind and below; a thin, long tongue was probing his anus. Astonished, he looked down.
    His eleven-year-old sister Agrippinilla was on her knees behind him.
    Up to now, Caligula had never even given her a thought. Agrippinilla was totally undeveloped, and as flat-chested and lean as a boy. In time, she would grow tiny, budlike breasts, but she remained thin and undersized all her life. Yet she seemed to have been born to make love and, from the first, was even more adventurous and experimental than Drusilla.
    By now, Caligula was an orphan. Agrippina had died, possibly by her own hand, pushed over the edge of desperation by Tiberius’ persecutions. His brothers were dead; Nero Caesar had perished by the sword, and Drusus Caesar had been starved to death in prison. Both boys had been so popular with the Romans that Tiberius had arranged to have the bodies hacked into tiny, unrecognizable pieces. Mincemeat couldn’t be cremated in any fitting ceremony, one that would give the populace a chance to mourn.
    Now all that was left to Gaius Caligula were his sisters, and he grew more and more passionately attached to them. Afternoons were often spent at Drusilla’s house; her bedroom had a door that could be locked. There, the four of them played intricate and wonderful games of lust, devising new pleasures for themselves.
    Now, standing on the deck of the bireme, being carried to an uncertain fate, Caligula stoked the fires of his memory.
    There was the day that Agrippinilla first buried her head between Drusilla’s thighs, her long tongue darting out. Drusilla had uttered a shriek of outraged protest, but Caligula had silenced her. How aroused he had become, just watching them. The little girl’s tongue dove deeper and deeper bringing Drusilla to peals of ecstasy. Caligula’s erection had become immense and painful, and he summoned Julia Livilla, who dutifully bent her head to his crotch. Ramming into her young throat, he had watched his sisters’ sapphic pleasures with a passion that matched theirs (and he was never to lose the taste for watching women make love).
    Even now, as he stood next to Macro on the deck, watching the dreaded speck of land on the horizon become larger, an aroused Caligula was grateful for the heavy folds of his cloak. He slanted his blue eyes toward the captain of the guard—those hairy, muscular types held definite appeal for him. Suppose, he told himself in amusement, just suppose he were to whip it out and order Macro down on his knees, right now? Would his command be absolute? Would Macro obey? Some day he must try it and see. Some day when he held total power over the Empire and Macro. But not yet.
    Agrippinilla, mused Caligula. What talents that girl held between her lips. He hoped that her husband, Marcus Domitius, was appreciative, but that was doubtful. After the sex life she’d had as a child, what could satisfy her now in marriage to that righteous old fart? Anyway, she lavished too much attention on that fat little brat of hers, Nero, whom she had named after their murdered brother. What kind of future was she preparing for that spoiled little bastard? (If Caligula could have foretold the future, he would have trembled in dread. Born with the taste for incest already in her talented mouth, Agrippinilla—“little Agrippina”—would grow