Empress of the Seven Hills (11 page)

“Brundisium,” Sabina said, thoughtful. “I’d like to go there. Could take a ship to Greece after that. Hadrian’s always talking about Greece.”

“Hadrian?” I turned on one side, tugging her into the crook of my chest. “Who cares what that gorbellied bootlicker thinks?”

“He’s not a bootlicker,” Sabina laughed.

“He laps at your heels hard enough,” I grumbled. “Why do you always take so many walks with him?”

“Because if I start turning suitors away, people are going to look for a reason why. When you’re living a lie, Vix,” she instructed, “you have to give people something to look at so they don’t start looking anywhere else.”

“Don’t have to make such a good show of it, though, do you?” I demanded. “Walking arm in arm, always putting your heads together over a book—”

“Jealous?” she teased.

“No!”

Maybe a little. Sabina didn’t seem to care a fig about any of her suitors except two: that shy patrician boy named Titus, who made her wrinkle her nose affectionately, and Tribune Hadrian. The skinny prat with the violets didn’t worry me—he was only sixteen, and he hardly had the courage on his visits to thrust some flowers at her and stammer a few shy compliments. Hadrian, now… he came to call at least twice a week, and he and Sabina would walk the gardens, his big head bent down toward hers. Talking, always talking, and Sabina’s little chin had the same attentive angle it did when she cocked it at me over the pillow at night.

“I don’t see what there is to be jealous of,” Sabina pointed out, bumping her nose gently against mine. “You think Hadrian’s pouring pretty compliments into my ears? Last time we talked about architecture, and the time before that it was Greek philosophers, and before that it was the Eleusinian Mysteries.”

“Exactly.” All things I didn’t know anything about.

“Mostly he goes on about Greece,” Sabina continued, unruffled. “He keeps telling me Athens is the center of civilization, not Rome. He can go on quite a while about that. Behind his back, they call him
the Greekling
.”

“I call him
that boil-brained lout
, and I’ll do it to his face.”

She laughed softly in the dark. “I would like to see Athens. And Brundisium. A hundred other places.”

“Rome’s big enough to keep you occupied.”

“And why did you come back to Rome, Vix?” She cocked her head
up against my shoulder, her blue eyes just dark pools in the night. “Your parents hated it.”

“I didn’t.”

“Rome made you a slave. Rome put you in an arena to fight for your life. Rome nearly killed you.”

“That was all a madman’s fault. The madman’s gone now, so there’s no reason for me not to come back. My father didn’t want me to, but—”

“Ah.”

I scowled. “What,
ah
?”

“Your father hated Rome, so you like it.”

I shrugged. “A mountaintop in Brigantia might get a little small for us both. He’s a big man.”

“I remember. I saw him just once, up close—he was all tied up and bleeding and cold-eyed. He looked like a big wounded dog, all bound and determined that if he was going to die, his enemies were going down with him. You look like him, you know.”

“I know, I know.” My little brother had my mother’s dark hair and eyes, but I was my father’s spitting image and tired of being told about it. We had the same russet-colored hair and gray eyes, I was a finger’s breadth away from his height and growing into his heavy shoulders, I was left-handed like him and had his knack with weapons, and so what? “I’m not my father.”

“No, you’re not,” said Sabina. “You’ll be a bigger man than he is someday.”

“You mean taller? I’d like to be—”

“No, not taller.
Bigger.
Too big for Britannia, much less a mountaintop. Rome might not even be able to hold you.”

“Thanks. I think?” I snugged her in against my shoulder, yawning, and soon drifted off to sleep.

“Dream, Vix,” she whispered, or I thought she whispered. “Dream about those stars of yours, the ones that are going to lead you to glory. For all your crashing and shouting, I think you’re a bigger dreamer than me.”

Senator Norbanus and his family dined at the Domus Augustana once a week with the Emperor and Empress, but I never took duty those nights. There might still be slaves or guards who remembered me from the old days at Emperor Domitian’s side. But as Saturnalia approached I realized I’d get my chance to see Emperor Trajan up close after all: when he and his entourage honored the Norbanus house by coming to dinner.

“I don’t see what all this fuss is,” Senator Norbanus said mildly, looking up from his scrolls at his madly rushing wife. “He’s a soldier; he’s easy to entertain. Put a slab of meat on his plate and enough beer in his mug, and he’s happy.”

“But Empress Plotina notices everything,” Lady Calpurnia groaned, “and I won’t have her wrinkling her long nose at
my
housekeeping.” Very heavy now, Calpurnia went lumbering about the house trailing lists and menus and worried slaves. Even the daughter of the house was pressed into service, and I saw Sabina down in the kitchens with her hair tied up in a rag and a smudge of flour on her chin, wrestling gamely with a lump of bread dough. “Show me,” she said, watching the cook’s expert hands pummeling and punching. “How interesting.” I hid a grin because she’d said the same thing to me last week, in exactly the same tone, when I showed her something under the blankets (never mind what).

“Gods, it’s cold,” she shivered, diving into my bed that night. “Warm me up.”

“As my lady commands.” I wrapped my arms around her. “You’re late tonight.”

“I was busy with Calpurnia, picking menus for the Emperor’s dinner.”

“I’ll be glad when this bloody dinner’s over.”

“Don’t you want to see the Emperor?”

“I’ve seen emperors before. Don’t want to see any more.”

“Liar.”

She could always catch my lies. I
was
curious to see this Emperor. A soldier, they said, but the Senate doted on him as they usually didn’t dote on soldiers. Popular. Intelligent. But what else was he?

Sabina poked my chest. “Can’t you warm me up any more than this?”

“Doing my best, Lady…” I ran a hand down her bare back and lower, and as usual we’d finish all the talk by making love a few more times—nothing like nineteen for stamina—and do it all over again the night after.

“Sabina, you’re looking tired these days,” Calpurnia exclaimed the following morning. “Rings under your eyes! Am I working you too hard for this ridiculous Imperial dinner?”

“I just haven’t been sleeping much,” Sabina said, placid, and I thought I saw a sharp look from Lady Calpurnia to her stepdaughter. But if she watched Sabina, there was nothing to see. No bright glances in my direction, no attempts to brush my hand as she went by in the halls, no more than the friendly interest she gave all the slaves and freedmen. The same friendly interest she gave me when we’d met in her father’s atrium that first time, and at the races afterward… not much changed from the interest I got now, really, in between the rest of it.

And a good thing, really. I’d had one or two girls get moony over me before, and it just made things uncomfortable. Moony girls always started pressing to see how you felt back, and usually the result was floods of tears for her and a slapped face for me. Nothing moony about Sabina, and that was good. I might not be able to get enough of her, but I certainly wasn’t moony about her myself. To be honest, I didn’t know what I felt about Sabina. So, good thing she was sensible.

Very good thing.

PLOTINA

Sometimes Plotina despaired, she truly did. Nearly five years now her husband had been Emperor of Rome, and would he ever learn to act like it?

“So pleased to see you,” Plotina murmured to Senator Norbanus and his wife as they entered the atrium, but Trajan’s shout of greeting drowned her out.

“Marcus! You limping brilliant bastard, happy Saturnalia!”

Plotina cast her eyes to the heavens as her husband enveloped Senator Norbanus in a bear hug. The senator just looked amused as the Emperor of Rome set him back on his feet.

“Gods’ bones, Calpurnia, you look ready to drop that foal any minute.” Trajan kissed his hostess’s cheeks soundly. “If it’s a boy, name it after me and I’ll do something nice for it. Better yet, name it after his big brother—Paulinus was the best man I ever knew, far better than I—”

Plotina lifted a hand to signal their entourage. Quite a crowd had joined them at Senator Norbanus’s dinner party that evening: senators and their coiffed wives, giggling girls and laughing young men, sleek pretty page boys, red-and-gold Praetorians, and Trajan’s ever-present tail of blunt-spoken legates and legionary officers. “You cannot always travel in a cloud of soldiers,” Plotina had protested many times.

“Why not? Ensures I never get bored.”

And of course so many of his retinue of soldiers were
handsome
men. Really, her husband’s private arrangements were none of her business, but why couldn’t he just bed pliant little slave boys as most men of his tastes did? Then she wouldn’t have all these hulking figures with their armor and their rough accents cluttering up her parties.

“Empress Plotina,” Lady Calpurnia was exclaiming. “How lovely you look. You’d put Juno to shame in those emeralds.”

“I care nothing for jewels.” Plotina bent her head to brush cheeks with Marcus’s little wife in her blue silks. “I had none at all until I entered the palace. I never saw how a truly thrifty wife could stomach the ostentation.”

“Well, I find jewelry very comforting during these late months.” Calpurnia rubbed her rounded stomach, sapphires at her ears and throat winking like blue eyes in the lamplight. “None of my gowns fit anymore, but at least my necklaces still do.”

Pregnant
again
—Marcus certainly hadn’t wasted any time. Such a levelheaded man, really the backbone of the Senate, but everyone knew what a fool he was for his wife (and at his age too!). Though Calpurnia was a nice little thing, if prone to levity. Not to mention the occasional display of
bosom
. “Lady Calpurnia, I do hope you will forgive my husband looking like a peasant? I simply could not stuff him into a proper synthesis for dinner.”

“I’m strangled half the day in a damned toga,” Trajan complained good-naturedly. “I knew Marcus wouldn’t mind if an old soldier abandoned custom for once and made himself comfortable.”

“Men.” Plotina lifted pointed eyebrows to Calpurnia. The atrium was filled with guests now, drifting and chattering, the women tinkling laughter over the lower rumble of male voices, backed by the trickle of water in the central fountain and the plucking of lutes from an alcove. Trajan was already laughing loudest of all, making jokes, clapping backs hard enough to flatten them. “He’s such a child,” Plotina said to Calpurnia. “Most men are, I find, but some more than others. Perhaps I might
steal you a moment for a real discussion? I’ve a matter of great importance—”

“Of course, Empress. Wine?”

“Barley water. I never touch wine.” Didn’t everyone know that?

The two women fell into promenade along the colonnaded end of the atrium. Calpurnia paused here and there to direct a slave, drop a quiet word in her steward’s ear, greet a guest, give a murmur of instruction—“go rescue Marcus from that crushing old bore Servianus, will you?”—and Plotina gave a regal nod to the curtsies that followed her in a ripple across the room. “It’s about your stepdaughter.”

“I knew you’d notice Sabina’s lateness,” Calpurnia said ruefully. “I’m sure she’s still primping. You know how girls are.”

Certainly not. Plotina had never primped before a mirror in her life, girl or not. But she brushed that aside. The matter had to be settled, and it might as well be settled tonight. “Vibia Sabina’s marriage. Surely it’s been put off long enough.”

“I’m afraid she hasn’t made up her mind. Marcus means to let her have her own way—within reason, of course.”

“Senator Norbanus is far too lax with her. It is not for a green girl to make such an important decision.”

“Sabina has a good head on her shoulders.” Calpurnia smiled. “Far wiser than I was at her age.”

Plotina felt the beginnings of a headache at her temples, right where the coiled bands of her hair had been anchored down with long pins. When the headaches really came, the pins felt like they were boring all the way through her skull. “I will speak frankly, Calpurnia. Dear Publius is besotted with her.”

“Is he?” Calpurnia sounded noncommittal. “Really.”

“He is.” Plotina forced herself to take a sip of barley water. “And I do not like to see him thwarted. Clearly he is the best possible husband for your stepdaughter.” For any girl, anywhere on earth.

“He’s certainly a fine young man, Empress.”

He is a perfect young man
, Plotina wanted to snap.
Your stepdaughter should be on her knees thanking the gods for such a husband.
“Perhaps you could drop a word in her ear. A line from you would surely stop all this dithering.”

“Oh, Sabina never dithers.” Calpurnia paused to speak to two slave girls; they curtsied and began circulating with fresh cups and trays of fruit.