Mistress of Rome (46 page)

Whispered orders. Paulinus turned his face away. He couldn’t bear to see Lady Flavia. But it wasn’t Lady Flavia the guards shoved into the room—it was her second son. Pale, chained, gaunt, trying desperately to keep a brave face. The last heir of the Flavian house. Exactly Vix’s age. From the corner, Vix’s eyes flickered.

“Flavia Domatilla’s son,” said Domitian, unnecessarily. “Bow to your aunt Julia, boy.”

Trembling, the boy bowed.

“The last of his family,” the Emperor continued. “His brother dead, his father dead, his mother all but dead. So what’s to become of him? Will you save him, too?”

Her voice was low and even. “If I can.”

“Ah, but can you? That’s the question. What would you give to save this boy?”

“My life.”

“But you’ve already given that, haven’t you? For his mother. What can you possibly give for him?”

The boy looked from his uncle to his aunt and back, a moan deep in his throat. Vix sat frozen in his corner. Paulinus did not dare make a sound.

“What is it you want, Uncle?” Julia, very quiet. “
That
is the real question.”

Domitian laughed, that open charming laugh he so rarely let loose. “Of course it is,” he said, amused. “It always is. For you, it always will be. Because that’s what you were put on this earth to do, Julia. To please me. And if you please me again, now, and promise to go on pleasing me for the rest of your life, then I’ll let the boy go.”

“Oh, Uncle,” Julia said rather sadly. “I don’t think there is anything in this world that would truly please you.”

Paulinus blinked. Flavia’s son opened his mouth in a silent scream.

“You’re quite right,” Domitian admitted. “You always did understand me better than anyone, Julia.”

Paulinus was still surprised. Even with his hackles prickling, he was still surprised when Domitian drew his dagger and gutted Flavia’s son.

The boy’s mouth opened soundlessly. He fell—slowly, it seemed to Paulinus. So slowly.

For a terrible moment all was frozen. Paulinus, his hands half out to stop the fatal blow. The boy clutching his torn belly on the floor, blood pooling over the mosaics. The Emperor, wiping his hands aimlessly down his tunic, leaving red smears. Vix, stopped midlunge from his corner. Julia, still as a statue of her goddess. Then the goddess turned from marble back to flesh and spoke.

“Paulinus,” Julia said quite calmly. “Take the boy out. Vix, you will help him.”

Prefect and slave boy found themselves moving as one.

“Yes,” said Domitian to no one in particular. He dropped the dagger. “Yes, that’s it—Julia—” He fell on his niece, wrenching the veil from her shoulders.

Paulinus half-turned, but Julia caught his eyes again over her uncle’s shoulder, and her gaze was so stern that he turned back, hauling Flavia’s moaning son out into the anteroom of the Emperor’s bedchamber.

“She can take care of herself,” Vix snapped. “Help me!” He had something wadded up in his hand, trying to close the gaping slash in the prince’s belly. Julia’s veil—he had Julia’s veil.

From the bedroom Paulinus heard guttural sounds. Nothing from Julia—nothing. He rose, shoving back toward the bedchamber, but the guards pushed him away.

“You want to die, Prefect?” the
optio
snarled. “Let him at it!”

Somehow Paulinus found himself kneeling, looking for a pulse in the dying prince. Blood pulsed thickly, almost black. Vix’s fingers were gloved in it. “He’s dying,” Paulinus said numbly. “Surely he’s dying—”

“You gonna help me, Prefect?” Vix was sweating, swearing, but he kept the wadded veil sunk over the wound.

Low anguished grunts from the bedroom, more like a rutting animal than an Emperor. Not a sound from Justina. Paulinus felt a sob catch like a splinter of ice in his throat. The thought came, small and terrible:
Maybe if he takes her, he’ll spare her life.

A moan sounded from Lady Flavia’s son. Frantically Vix leaned his whole weight on the veil, his tunic and knees tacky with blood. A clammy eyelid flickered. Slaves were starting to gather, wide-eyed, and Paulinus spat curses at them. They scattered.

Flavia’s son cried out, his hands coming up weakly to clutch at his belly. Vix leaned harder.

A pair of young Flavian eyes opened and stared into Vix’s, alive with pain.

Kneeling in a puddle of blood, Paulinus found his skin crawling.

“Bitch,” he heard indistinctly from the bedchamber. The Emperor’s voice, thick and slurred. “You unmanning bitch—get out—”

The guards outside exchanged glances. “You heard him!” Paulinus snapped, scrambling to his feet and half-falling into the bedchamber. He took it all in, in one glance; the Emperor collapsed half off the couch, Julia quietly pulling her white robes around her.

“Take her,” the Emperor said, and his whole body shook. “Oh, gods, just take her.”

Paulinus raised Julia with trembling hands, but her own steps as she left the bedchamber were rock-steady. He led her through the blood, past Vix, who was now helping Flavia’s son to sit up.

“The guards will take me,” she said. “Help Vix with my nephew, Paulinus. He needs your help getting out of the palace.”

“He won’t live—he was gutted, ripped in half—”

“Was he?”

Vix was slinging an arm under his friend’s shoulders and hauling him upright. He looked up, wary, and Julia gave him a cordial little nod. Her eyes, catching a glow from the lamps, didn’t look quite . . . human.

“Give my regards to your mother, Vercingetorix,” she said, and then the guards were hauling her away. They held her by the sleeve rather than her bare wrists, though, as if she might burn them. She left small bloody footprints behind her on the mosaics.

“We’ve gotta get him out.” Vix had Flavia’s son on his feet, moaning but unmistakably not dying. He still clutched Julia’s veil against his stomach, now red rather than white.

“I imagined it,” Paulinus muttered. “I didn’t really see the Emperor gut him—couldn’t have—”

“You’re gonna faint,” Vix said in disgust.

Paulinus felt laughter welling, huge hysterical bursts of laughter. He wanted to laugh until he died. But more guards were approaching at a trot, and curious courtiers, and gawking slaves. He took off his red Praetorian cloak, fingers moving stupidly, and dropped it around Flavia’s son. Vix hauled a fold over his face.

“Tend to the Emperor,” Paulinus ordered the guards. “Send for his physician. I’ll see to the boy myself.”

“Prefect, where are you taking him?”

“Emperor’s orders,” Paulinus said coldly. “
Private
orders.” The guard’s eyes dropped at once.

“How’s it feel?” Vix whispered at the young prince as they hauled him away from the hall and its rapidly growing audience.

“It’s—it’s strange—it feels—I don’t know.” The boy was near tears.

Under the cloak, Paulinus peeled back Julia’s veil. Underneath there was—a long shallow cut, oozing a little. Not the bloody wound Paulinus had expected.

“Guess the freak missed,” Vix shrugged. “You’re a lucky one.”

Luck?
Paulinus didn’t want to think about that.

Vix was turned back at the outer gate, and Paulinus took Lady Flavia’s son on himself. “What will you do with me?” the young prince gasped.

Tell the Emperor you died of your wound
, thought Paulinus.
And that I disposed of your body quietly.
“Keep still,” he snapped, and he kicked his horse forward with Flavia’s son bent weakly over the saddle before him.

A quick canter to his father’s house in the falling dark, marshaling desperate explanations, but his father required surprisingly few words. “Good lad,” was all he said, and in half a moment he had the slaves dismissed and the fainting boy whisked inside.

“The Emperor—” Paulinus spoke around a leaden tongue. “The Emperor can’t know you ever—”

“He won’t.” Coolly. “I’ll have the boy out of the city before dawn.”

“The Vestal,” said Paulinus. “She was—she wasn’t a Vestal—Julia, Lady Julia who was
dead
—”

“No time for that now.” Marcus didn’t seem surprised. Paulinus stared.

“You
knew
?”

“You think she faked her own death without help? Get back to the palace, boy, before you’re missed.”

Paulinus’s feet took him past the circular Temple of Vesta first. Looking up, he saw the other Vestal Virgins watching; a silent white line. Their faces were all veiled.

He bunched Julia’s bloody veil up and laid it on the first step. His knees gave out, and he sat there beside it until a pair of Praetorians came in search of him.

 

 

 

THE
old year had died—and by the Emperor’s decree, Rome would see the new year in with a death.

It was a strange, resentful crowd that gathered to watch Lady Flavia go into exile and the Vestal into death. The Emperor pronounced it a day of celebration, but the banners looked limp and the flowers fell like tears and the trumpets could have been dirges. Bad luck, people whispered, bad luck. A priestess and a princess both doomed before the year was a day old—the coming year would surely bring nothing good.

Paulinus, escorting the prisoners on his black horse, felt haggard.

A rustle greeted the two condemned women, walking in a cluster of Praetorians to their fates. Both small and fair-haired, one in stained coral-colored silk; the other in a pristine Vestal’s robe. A ship awaited Lady Flavia, and then a small sea island; but all that awaited the Vestal Justina was an airless bricked-up chamber.

Vestal Virgins who broke their vows were buried alive.

Arm in arm the two women passed through the street. “Why?” Paulinus heard Flavia say dully. “Leaving me alive on an island for the next forty years—why is that kinder than dying?”

“Who said the gods were kind?” Julia’s voice was gentle.

“Oh, I know they aren’t kind. Your goddess
or
my God. My boys are dead, Julia. My eldest with Flavius, my youngest—I won’t even know when he’s executed—”

“I wouldn’t give up on him yet, Flavia.”

“No. I know Domitian. He hates children because they remind him he’s mortal—he beat his own children out of his wife before they were even born, and he’ll kill mine, too—”

“Watch the horizon.”

“W-what?”

“When you get to Pandateria. It’s a silent place—sea grass waving in the wind, and quiet stretches of sand, and a little stone hut with a small shrine. You’ll be alone, and the silence will be unbearable for a while, so listen to the sea birds cry and watch the horizon. You won’t be alone for long.”

Her voice was low and lulling. “One day soon you’ll see a sail on the edge of the ocean. A faded red sail, I think, and a bank of oars flashing each side of it. You’ll think of assassins and you’ll want to run, but you’ll stand proudly because you’re a Flavian and you’ll want to die like one. But the galley won’t land. It will lower a tiny fishing boat, without oars, and the tide will carry it to shore, and long before it lands you’ll see who sits in that boat waving his arms and calling for you. And you’ll plunge into the ocean, and you’ll reclaim your son.”

“You can’t know that.” Flavia’s voice was a whisper. “How can you know that?”

“I see things sometimes. And you have even more than that to live for, Flavia Domitilla.”

Paulinus turned. Julia had stretched out a hand, placing it on Flavia’s abdomen.

“What?”

“We’d better keep walking. I don’t want to get Paulinus in trouble.” Julia tugged her sister forward. “A daughter. You can’t feel her yet, but she’s there. She’ll be born in the summer, on Pandateria, and I rather think you will name her after me.”

Tears pricked Paulinus’s eyes. He stared blindly ahead. “But—but how do you—”

“Oh, I know. Let’s leave it at that. I know, but I’m the only one. Domitian won’t find out at all; once he’s landed you on your quiet little island he’ll forget all about you. But the Empress won’t. She’ll see you’re fed, and I imagine she’ll even smuggle you a midwife when your time comes. Maybe she’ll even find a way to get you and the children off that island someday. She used to be brave—maybe she will be again.”

“Julia—Julia, I—”

“It’s time,” said the guard at Paulinus’s side.

“No!” Flavia’s voice rose. “No, I can’t—”

“Quiet, now,” Julia said peaceably. “Safe journey, Flavia Domitilla. And if you don’t mind—
do
name your daughter after me.”

A breath, and Flavia was gone.

 

 

 

NO
Vestal could be killed within Rome’s walls. A small chamber had been built near the Colline Gate, in the
campus sceleratus
. A place more often known as the Evil Fields. The Emperor had ordered a dais and stands erected, as if for a festival, but the crowd that gathered there was curiously hushed as they watched the Vestal Virgin pause before her burial chamber, gathering her snowy robes. Paulinus saw his father standing with Calpurnia, their hands unexpectedly linked tight. On the royal dais the Empress looked stiffer and more marble-carved than ever, the Emperor ruddy-faced and hard-eyed, Vix in his scarlet tunic frankly sick.

The Vestal put a bare foot over the lip of her grave and started down the rough steps.

“Halt!”

The tension snapped as Paulinus lunged off his horse. In half a second he was at her side, seizing her arm.

“Justina—Julia—”

“Justina. I like it better. It’s what my father always called me. Because he said I looked as grave as a judge.”

“You did—I remember.” He could hardly see her for the tears in his eyes—she was just a white blur. “Justina, I can’t let you—”

“So you’ll make off with me over one shoulder? Slay the Emperor?”

“Justina—”

“Shhhh.”

She put her hand over his mouth. He closed his eyes and leaned his mouth into her palm. For a moment it stayed there. Then it glided away under his hand like a ghost.