Beloved (57 page)

“Who can predict the capricious whims of politicians?” Dagian demanded. “Once they have won their place in the senate, they behave as if the gods themselves had placed them there. Only if the public outcry is dangerously great do they heed the people. They serve only their own interests. However, if Aurelian has any personal interest in the lady she may be saved serious consequences.”

“You are telling me, Mother, that if Zenobia survives imperial judgment I must regain my lost ground with her and only then can I hope to have any part in my daughter’s life.”

“Yes, Marcus, I am. You will gain nothing, I suspect, by anger.”

“What if she no longer cares for me?”

“You will have to begin at the beginning with Zenobia,” Dagian said quietly.

“You sound as if you are on her side,” he complained, somewhat irritably.

Dagian smiled, her mouth quirking upward with her genuine amusement, her lovely blue eyes twinkling. “Let us say, Marcus, that even having never met the lady, I like the sound of her. I believe she is going to make me a fine daughter-in-law.”

Stunned, he gaped at her. “What makes you think that I will marry her now? After she has been the emperor’s mistress?”

Dagian chuckled. “You men are so vain when it comes to your prowess. Are you afraid to be compared to Aurelian, my son? Since you conceived a daughter by Zenobia, I am sure the comparison
is already made. Perhaps, though, you do not wish to know the results.”

“Mother!”
He was visibly embarrassed by her frankness.

“I am sure, Marcus, that if you forgive Zenobia for being Aurelian’s captive, she will forgive you Aurelian’s niece.”

“I never touched Carissa!” he protested.

“In Zenobia’s mind it will not matter if you did or not. You married her. That is far worse.”

Marcus sighed with exasperation, and Dagian quietly left him to his thoughts. He was a good man, her son, and she knew that he was intelligent in many matters. In the matter of man and woman, however, Dagian decided that Marcus was a dunce. He would learn, though, and providing that the senate did not condemn Palmyra’s queen to an unfair death, Dagian decided that she wouldn’t miss what was going to transpire between Zenobia and Marcus for all the world.

Two days later, Aurelian and his army arrived outside of Rome’s walls. The emperor went immediately to the senate, and was hailed a returning hero. A triumph, complete with a holiday, was ordered to celebrate his victory over Palmyra. One rather pompous senator, Valerian Hostilius, suggested that the highlight of the day might be the public execution of the Queen of Palmyra in the Colosseum.

“Her reputation is that of a warrior,” he cried in his rather flutelike voice. “Let us dress this barbarian queen in lionskins, give her a golden spear, and have her fight to the death a pack of wild beasts! What a spectacle it will make for the people, Caesar!”

Aurelian yawned, then looked about the senate. What a perfumed bunch, he thought. “A fascinating suggestion, Valerian Hostilius,” he said, “but the Queen of Palmyra has already suffered for her rashness in rebelling against us, and once she realized her mistake she strove to give us aid once more.”

“Yet you were forced to destroy the city, Caesar. Why was that?” This time the speaker was Marcus Claudius Tacitus, an elderly but extremely competent senator. Tacitus’s opinion would carry much weight in the senate’s decision.

“I had already sent Palmyra’s young King Vaballathus into exile in the city of Cyrene. The queen and I had left Palmyra for Antioch en route back to Rome. Unfortunately, the queen’s younger son, Prince Demetrius, could not accept defeat, and with some young friends inspired a second rebellion. The queen was not responsible. She returned with me to Palmyra, and we took our revenge. She
tried very hard before we originally left the city to stop her younger son’s foolishness.”

“You do not think she deserves to die?” Tacitus questioned.

“No, I do not. She is a woman,” Aurelian said scornfully. “It was up to her council to control her as her son, the king, was just a boy. I executed the council for not doing their duty, but Palmyra’s queen does not deserve death.”

Tacitus turned and looked on his fellow senators. “The noble Senator Hostilius has suggested we make a death spectacle of Palmyra’s queen. I disagree with him, and I agree with the emperor. This woman has been a noble enemy to Rome, but she is now beaten, her homeland destroyed, her younger son dead. She has paid the price of her folly. Now let us show the world Rome’s beneficence. After the emperor’s triumph is completed, let us retire her to one of the state’s villas at Tivoli. She will live out her days there a forgotten woman, and what greater punishment can there be for one who was once so powerful?”

“But the people love a good spectacle,” Hostilius protested.

Tacitus raised a bushy white eyebrow.
“The people?”
he said.

A rumble of laughter echoed around the chamber. For once all the senate was in agreement. Hostilius sank back onto the bench feeling foolish, and wishing that he’d never opened his mouth.

“It is decided then,” Aurelian said. “Palmyra’s queen will be pensioned, and retired to Tivoli.”

“It is agreed,” the senate said with one voice, and a smiling Aurelian left them.

The emperor hurried to his home upon the Palatine Hill. He was anxious to see Ulpia and to hear about Carissa’s baby. His wife, however, was not at the door to greet him. She was, it seemed, ill and in her bed. Aurelian entered Ulpia’s bedchamber, and was shocked by her appearance. She who had always been of such robust constitution was thin and wan.

“My dear,” he said, his voice full of concern. “How are you?”

Ulpia smiled joyfully at his entrance, and held out her arms to him. “I have not been well, husband, but now that you are here I will feel better. I know it!”

“Has Carissa been to see you? How is she? Is the child a boy or a girl?”

A shadow passed over Ulpia Severina’s pale face. “Carissa is dead,” she said bluntly. “She died in childbirth despite the fact that everything was done that could be done for her. She had the best of care.”

“The child?”

“The child was born dead, and thank the gods it was. It was a monster of incredible ugliness, my lord.”

“Poor Carissa,” Aurelian mused, but it was Marcus Alexander Britainus that he was thinking about.
Marcus and Zenobia.
By the gods, Marcus would not have her! She was his, and he had no intention of letting her go! He was in love. He was in love for the first and only time in his entire life, and the feeling was one of both Heaven and Hades. Suddenly he realized that Ulpia was staring at him. “And you, my dear,” he said solicitously, “you have obviously not been well. Have you seen a physician?”

She nodded, and then tears came to her eyes. “I have seen three. They all say the same thing. I have a canker in my breast, and I shall die from it.”

“How long have you been ill?” he demanded. “Why did you not write to me?”

“I grew ill shortly after Carissa’s death. I did not write you about it for the same reason I did not write you about Carissa. Carissa was dead, and there was nothing that you or anyone else could have done to prevent her death. I am to die, and there is nothing that can prevent
my
death. The physicians did, however, assure me that I should live until you returned home, and so I saw no need to worry you.”

“By the gods, Ulpia, you are a perfect wife. You have always been. I have been most fortunate in you.”

Ulpia beamed with pleasure. He could not have said anything more calculated to delight her. She always had tried to please him, and now with death staring her in the face, the knowledge that she had, sent a joyful wave of warmth coursing through her ravaged frame.

Aurelian bent and placed a fond kiss upon Ulpia’s brow. “I will leave you to rest, my dear,” he said. “My triumph is just two days hence. There is much to do.”

“How I wish I might see it,” Ulpia said sadly.

“I wish you could too, but alas, our house is not near the route of march; and I do not think you strong enough to go.”

Ulpia sank back amid her pillows. Now she was truly curious as to what the Queen of Palmyra looked like. Aurelian did not seem particularly anxious for her to see his triumph, and it could only be because he did not want her to see Zenobia. Nonetheless Ulpia vowed that she would. She would find out who among Rome’s patrician families had a home along the line of march,
and she would use her imperial prerogative, and invite herself there.

She called for her secretary, and told him what she wanted. After that it was simple. Fabius Buteo, she was told, had a fine home where she might watch her husband’s triumph, and he was overwhelmed at the honor being done him by the empress’s presence.

On the day of Aurelian’s triumph she was settled quite comfortably on a second-floor balcony with the pleasant women and girls of the Buteo family, who chatted quite companionably with her. She was offered the finest wines to keep her strength up, and the choicest of delicacies. The warm sun beat down, there was a faint flowery breeze, and, in general, Ulpia Severina felt quite well. After all, Aurelian had not forbidden her to watch his triumph. He had merely lamented that she was not strong enough to do so. But she was strong enough!

Below them, the streets were crowded on both sides by the citizenry jostling with one another for a good place. The vendors were busy hawking cheap wines, sausages, and sweetmeats to the excited population. Then in the distance came the sound of marching feet, the rhythm of the drums that beat out the measure of the military step.

Leading the triumph was the Ninth Illyrian Legion, Aurelian’s own. The Ninth consisted of ten cohorts of six hundred men each, and was led by six tribunes, each riding before his own unit of cavalry. The legionnaires marched with perfect precision, the sun gleaming off their spotless weapons and helmets. Following them came the plundered wealth of Palmyra in flower-bedecked carts; the gold and silver booty sparkling in the clear Roman light. The crowds ohhed and ahhed.

Following this came the Third African Legion, its tribunes and centurions wearing leopardskins and a toothed leopard’s head to cover their own, almost appearing as if they were being devoured by the beast itself. Their men wore the simple skin of the leopard thrown across their left shoulders, without its fierce head. Following the Third African came enormously tall black warriors, their heads capped by wavy grass headpieces that swung with the rhythm of their dancing. The blacks were oiled so that the sunlight made them appear even darker, and about their loins they wore a covering made from the black-and-white-striped skin of some exotic animal. They brandished their carved spears in mock ferocity, much to the delight of the watching children along the route.

Now came what all of the citizenry had awaited so eagerly: the emperor who had given Rome such a great victory. Aurelian himself drove the magnificent triumphal chariot: an incredible piece of workmanship. The vehicle was all overlaid in gold leaf over the raised figures of Mars, the god of war, in a scene of an Olympian triumph. The chariot was drawn by four magnificent white stallions, each more vicious than the next, but kept well in hand by the emperor, who was acknowledged to be one of the empire’s finest drivers.

Aurelian was dressed as befitted a triumphant soldier-emperor. He wore a purple-and-gold-embroidered
tunica palmata
that reached to his ankles, and over that the official robe of the emperor, a
toga picta
, also of Tyrian purple and embroidered with gold. Both garments were of the finest silk. Upon his feet the emperor wore a high-soled strapped shoe of gilt leather laced with hooks and decorated with a bejeweled crescent-shaped buckle.

Behind him stood his personal body slave of many years, dressed simply in a natural-colored tunic and holding the laurel wreath of victory over the emperor’s blond head.
“Remember”
the slave intoned with regularity,
“thou art but a man. Remember, thou art but a man”
This ancient custom of the triumph was supposed to keep the victorious general humble with die constant reminder of his mortality.

Ulpia looked with pride upon her husband as he came into view. Then she, along with the other ladies of the Buteo family, let out a collective gasp of shock. Behind Aurelian’s magnificent chariot came the Queen of Palmyra—stark naked! Ulpia felt sick with shame that her husband would do such a thing to any woman, let alone the gallant captive Queen of Palmyra. How could he have been so cruel!? So brutal!

“Look at the hussy!” the wife of Fabius Buteo snipped. “She does not even lower her eyes in shame, but stares straight ahead, her arrogant head held high.”

“She is incredibly beautiful, Mother,” said the eldest Buteo daughter, a gentle matron. “How awful for her!” Then she turned apologetically to the empress. “I mean no disrespect, my lady, I only …” her soft voice died away.

“I agree with you, my dear,” the empress said quietly. “How awful for her.”

Still, the women watching Zenobia were envious of her. They could not help it. Here was a woman who had borne her late husband three children, and yet her body was that of a young girl.
Her breasts, firm globes of perfection, thrust boldly forth. Her well-shaped arms and legs were in perfect proportion to her tall height. She had only a faintly rounded belly, and her buttocks were round and firm. Around her slender neck she wore a magnificent necklace of pigeon’s blood rubies that set off her pale-golden skin and her flowing blue-black hair. Her high-arched feet were shod in the faintest wisps of red leather sandals. She held her arms before her as her slender wrists were imprisoned by the golden manacles she had worn when she left Palmyra. True to his word, Aurelian had had them lined in soft lamb’s wool so they would not chafe her tender skin.

Aurelian
. She wanted to kill him as she walked so bravely along, neither looking to the right or the left, hearing none of the lewd comments sent her way by the populace of Rome. That they hadn’t rushed out to fondle her was only due to the fact that she was well guarded by a maniple of sixty men. Aurelian didn’t mind showing off his new possession to all of Rome, but they might not touch that which was the emperor’s toy. She had almost begun to like him, but thank the gods he had reverted to type so she might hate him again, and plot his downfall with a clear conscience no matter how kind he had been before this damnable triumph. No matter how kind he would be afterward, for he would be kind again.