Lady of the Eternal City (61 page)

Hadrian stood looking down at Antinous’s ring. It sat tightly under his swollen knuckle. Hadrian kissed the gold stone, murmuring something, and when he finally looked up at me I saw tears in his eyes.

It is done.

But he was Emperor, and Emperors are never done. There is always more work to do, and with my son avenged, Hadrian steeled his spine to do it.

“I need a young arm to lean on,” he said, and looked at Marcus. “Walk with me, Verissimus. And you, Titus Aurelius—I summoned you this morning for a reason.”

My friend nodded. “To stand as witness.”

“To stand as heir. I once asked why you were still alive. Now I know. You are destined to succeed me as Emperor.”

SABINA

“Am I still dead?” Sabina wanted to know.

“It’s the prevalent rumor.” Faustina slid an arm around Sabina’s torn and bandaged shoulder with exquisite care, helping her sit up. “Though nobody seems to know what killed you. Everyone knows Servianus and Pedanius were executed, but nobody’s quite so certain how
you
died. My maids heard rumors about poison, hired killers—and coming first, of course, that Hadrian had you executed too, for having some part in Pedanius’s plot.”

“Gods save me,” Sabina sighed. “I really should make some sort of public appearance. Or nobody will believe it’s me once I actually turn up alive.”

“It’s only been five days since you were stabbed,” Vix growled, entering her chamber with a brimming cup. “Plenty of time to correct misapprehensions later. For now, lie still and take your draught.”

“It makes me drowsy,” Sabina complained. She didn’t want to sleep; she’d been lost to black and uneasy dreams for five days and nights after she’d slid into oblivion in a pool of her own blood. By the time she’d wakened, Pedanius was drowned and Servianus dead by his own hand, and the world was a different place.

A world where apparently, Rome believed her dead too.
That
was entertaining.

“I don’t care if the draught makes you sleepy. It also kills the pain, so drink it.” Vix pushed the cup into her hand. Sabina made a face at him, but drank. As a nurse he was a horrid bully and a terrible fusser. But he clutched her hand as though fearing she’d still slide off to death if he wasn’t watching every moment, and he looked at her as though she were beautiful—although one glance in a glass was enough to tell Sabina she was pale as unpainted marble.
I’ll die if I lose you
, Vix had whispered in her ear while she was barely conscious, and she had followed the sound of that whisper out of her black dreams like a thread winding through a labyrinth.
Do not die, Sabina. Not now.

Sabina had no intention of dying, no matter what Rome thought.

“Satisfied?” she asked, finishing her foul-smelling draught. And Vix finally consented to carry her out of her chamber to the atrium, where Titus and the children waited, and where Faustina had already plumped a couch high with cushions and furs. Vix fussed some more, piling pillows behind her head and settling her feet across his lap, and Sabina looked up at this room filled with so many of her loved ones. Alive and safe, all of them—except Antinous.

And at least he is avenged.

“I hate this room.” Annia limped like a lamed colt around the central pool, her feet still bandaged from her sprint to Hadrian’s villa. Afterward, according to Faustina, she’d slept the day and night round, only rising to eat everything in the house and discover that her run down the hard stone of the road to Hadrian’s villa had broken two of her toes. But her restless energy was clearly springing back. “I can’t look at this floor without seeing a lake of blood in the middle,” Annia continued, scowling at the mosaics.

“I like it,” Sabina decided. “The scene of our victory. And the blood’s all cleaned away—”

“How is the pain?” Titus asked in his quiet voice. “And don’t be stoic, please; I know you far too well for polite lies.”

“It’s bad,” Sabina said, matter-of-fact. Her whole right side from shoulder to breast was a mass of flames. “The physician is still looking worried. He mutters about the dangers of infection—”

“Damned know-nothing,” Vix growled. “I’m getting you a legion medicus. What do those court potion-makers know about wounds?”

He captured her hand possessively, and Marcus raised a hand to shield his eyes. “
Must
you?” he pleaded. “It is highly improper for a guard to be so familiar with the Empress of Rome!”

“But Empresses of Rome may do whatever they please,” Sabina said. “You have many years ahead of you to learn that, Marcus.”

Annia grinned, flopping down beside him on the third couch. “He learns fast.”

They all laughed but Titus. He had lapsed back into silence beside Faustina, head bowed. Sabina risked the stab of pain through her shoulder to reach out and touch his knee. “When does the Emperor want your decision?” she asked.

“As soon as possible.” Titus looked up. “
Me
, as Emperor of Rome? I have nothing to recommend me. The most anyone can say is that I’m unobjectionable—never made any enemies, never landed myself in any scandals, never made any spectacular mistakes. And that is enough to qualify me for the purple?”

Marcus spoke with quiet sincerity. “I can think of no one more suitable, sir.”

Titus ran a hand over his hair, and with a wash of love Sabina saw the lanky boy he’d once been. How that boy would stare, looking at the man he became!

And the man he could become: Emperor of Rome.
Oh, Hadrian, this time you chose well!

“It would mean a great change for our family.” Titus looked at Faustina and Annia. “I turn it down, and the life we have goes on unaltered.”

“Can you be sure of that?” Faustina countered. “If you turn it down, whoever Hadrian chooses instead will always be nervous of you—”

“And you
should
have been Emperor all along,” Vix said from Sabina’s feet. “Trajan wanted you for his successor—Hadrian and his scheming did you out of twenty years on the throne. This is his way of apologizing, and Hell’s gates, he never apologizes for anything. You really want to throw it back in his face?”

Titus sighed.

“My darling.” Faustina laid her arms about his neck, her golden hair glinting and her eyes amused. “There is no man in Rome who would make a finer emperor. So for the sake of all the gods, just breathe deeply and say yes. As for what it means for us, well, we shall manage. Annia may have to do her running with a Praetorian in tow, but frankly I think I shall make a
splendid
empress.”

“Far better than me,” Sabina agreed.

Titus took a deep breath. They all waited.

“No announcement unless poor Lucius either succumbs to his ill health or is formally set aside.” Titus looked up. “I will not have him humiliated on his sickbed. Surely Hadrian will agree to that.”

“Until then—” Vix swung Sabina’s feet out of his lap and rose, giving a slow, perfect salute. “Hail, Caesar.”

The solemnity held for a moment. Titus’s face was somber, Imperial. Vix was proud and fierce-eyed, and Sabina felt a thrum of sweet pain that wasn’t her wounds. How proud Antinous would be—he had always revered Titus.
Did your death bring this about?
Sabina could not help wondering. She would not have traded that golden life for anything in the world . . . But it was something, to know that at least one consequence from that terrible day on the Nile was one Antinous himself would have cheered.

She could see him now, springing up with his enchanting grin to wring Titus’s hand in congratulations. Maybe Vix saw it too, because his solemnity cracked and he yanked Titus into a bear hug. “You long-winded prig,” Vix said as Annia cheered and Faustina beamed. “Now you get an entire empire to bore!”

“You could lead my Praetorians,” Titus offered. “Prefect Slight, this time around.”

Vix shook his head. “There won’t be a duller job in all the Empire. You’ll be so damned popular, no one will ever try to kill you.”

“Let me give you one order, at least. Come with me to the Emperor this afternoon, when I give him my answer?” Titus made a wry face. “I may need you to drag me the last few steps, when my courage fails.”

Vix glanced at Sabina. She smiled. “I shan’t stir off this couch until you get back, I promise.”

“Go on!” Faustina shooed. “Marcus, go with them.”

“Me?” Marcus rose. “Why?”

“Because the Emperor said something to me when he made his offer,” Titus said. “When he sent you off to fetch wine for us. He told me that I was destined to succeed him, and that
you
were destined to succeed me.”

Marcus looked like he’d been turned to stone. So did Annia, frozen halfway through replaiting her untidy hair, and Sabina laughed silently.

“Me?” Marcus said at last, stunned.

“Hand him an empire and he looks like you handed him a bag of spiders!” Vix hooted, but Titus’s face showed that he understood everything.

“I am to adopt you as my son and heir,” he said gently, coming to lay a hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “It was a condition of my acceptance, and it’s one I wouldn’t dream of arguing.”

“You will want your own heir—” A panicky look at Faustina, looking on serenely. “A son of your own, surely the gods will bless you both—”

“I am not to have sons of my own blood,” Titus said even more gently. “The gods decreed that, and I will mourn my two boys always. But the place of son and heir, it seems, was always intended for you. And I am honored to act as your father.”

Marcus looked away then, hiding his face. Titus put an arm about his shoulders: two men, tall and lean and scholarly-looking, who might have
been
father and son.

“Come see Hadrian.” Vix smiled. “He’ll talk the ears off you both, finalizing all the details.” Titus and Marcus turned to follow, both looking grave at the future that faced them rather than elated.
A man who does not really want the Empire is the best man to rule it
, Sabina thought.
And somehow my husband found two of them.

There was a clatter of boots as the men swung out, Vix banging into something because Vix couldn’t go anywhere without banging. Titus’s voice floated out, musing: “I shall grow a beard. A sign of filial admiration for Hadrian . . .”

As their footsteps faded, Sabina called for wine. Her villa was still empty, guards and slaves still dismissed, which probably contributed to the rumors that she was dead, but she had her African girl—freedwoman, now. “Three cups of the good Nomentan, and don’t bother watering it. While Hadrian and Titus are busy laying all their important plans for the future,” Sabina said to her sister and daughter as the African girl whisked out, “we may as well lay some of our own.”

Annia was still looking stunned. “My father, Imperial heir,” she said slowly. “And
Marcus
?”

“Titus will have to take over Imperial duties soon,” Sabina warned Faustina. “Hadrian really is quite ill.”

“Titus can shoulder a great deal of the burden. And I can take over duties for you.”

“Good.” The cups arrived; Sabina passed one to her sister and her daughter. “You already know my routine, but Annia should learn it too.”

“Me?” Annia’s red-lashed eyes blinked.

“If all goes according to plan, you will be Empress someday, too.” Sabina smiled. “Marcus’s.”

Annia looked stunned all over again, and Faustina laughed. Sabina wondered if she hadn’t seen some flying, splintered image of the three of them while she was lost in her feverish wound dreams that had felt so like an epilepsia fit. Wondered if she had not seen the three of them, sitting here like a trinity about this same couch. The Empresses of Rome—past, present, and future.

“Just think,” Sabina mused. “It would be the first time in Rome’s history that a daughter followed her mother as Empress . . .”

Annia’s eyes flared. “You know,” she said slowly. “Vix said something to me, the day . . .” She didn’t have to specify which day. “I didn’t notice it at the time, but I woke up last night remembering it.”

She looked at her unwatered wine and tossed it down in a single gulp. She looked from Sabina to Faustina, and Sabina felt her heart begin to pound under that straight, questioning gaze.

“So,” said Annia. “Which of you is my mother?”

ANNIA

Annia’s mind was reeling by the time she escaped her mother and her—other mother. She wandered out into the garden, shaking her head a little, and found Marcus by the fountain, shoulders outlined dark and bowed against a blue afternoon sky. Was he returned from the Emperor’s villa so quickly?

He looked up at the sound of her footfall. “What is it?” he asked, seeing her bemused expression.

It hovered on the tip of Annia’s tongue.
I have two mothers, Marcus. And two fathers.

And though the thought was astonishing, she was somehow not shocked—not deep at the core of her. Aunt Sabina’s watchful eyes all through her childhood, the thrum of instant liking she had felt the day Vix appeared in his lion-skin cloak . . . No, Annia was not really surprised. Nor distressed.

More than anything, the thought made her smile.

I have two mothers, one the kindest woman in Rome and one the cleverest. And two fathers: one the wisest man in Rome and one the bravest.
What other girl in the Empire was so fortunate?

But Annia rather thought Marcus
would
be shocked, and he’d had enough surprises for one day, so she tucked her astounding new secret away to tell him later.

“I think we should run away,” she said instead—though the thought of
running
anywhere at a pace greater than a gentle amble was horrifying. She was still so muscle-sore and foot-weary that she hobbled like an old woman. “Go to Britannia or Hispania or somewhere, before we get just as crazy as our elders. I left my mother cackling away with Aunt Sabina, getting tipsy and telling horror stories about empresses of the past. You would not
believe
the things they were saying. All I can conclude is that ruling an empire turns you utterly mad, so let’s run away before it happens to us.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Marcus scuffed the path with one foot, head still hanging.