Empress of the Seven Hills (16 page)

It was midnight by the time I staggered out, and I must have gotten used to living in a nicer part of the city because I forgot the cardinal rule of the Subura: Don’t travel alone.

“This is from Tribune Hadrian.” A snarl came from behind me, and a massive blow on my skull drove me to my knees.

I fought, but there were at least five of them and I was reeling drunk. Three of them held me while the other two alternated hitting me. By the time they were done I had a broken nose, a handful of broken ribs, and a face so bruised even my mother wouldn’t have known me. They dropped me and kicked me around for a while, and once I curled up in a ball trying to protect my innards, the leader leaned down and yanked my head back by the hair. “Next time you want to make a man look ridiculous in front of the Emperor,” he recited in the tones of a memorized message, “don’t choose Tribune Hadrian.”

“Tell the tribune his bride’s a whore,” I mumbled. “Tell him I had her three times a night for months.” But my mouth was full of blood
and the thugs had already swaggered off. I lay there spitting out blood for a while. Some urchins came along and stole my sandals and cloak.

It really hadn’t been a very good week.

TITUS

Titus blinked, looking down. “Hello there,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Lift me up,” the little girl said imperiously, tugging again at his sleeve. “I want to see.”

Titus reached down and lifted up the little fair-haired girl in her embroidered blue dress. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”

“Yes, I am. I’m Antonia, my mother came to the wedding—”

“No, you little liar, you’re Faustina. You’re Sabina’s little sister, and after the wedding feast I distinctly heard your mother say that you were too little to walk along with the wedding procession.”

Faustina scowled, caught. “But I want to
see
!”

“So did I, at your age.” He shifted her to his right arm, her five-year-old weight warm and sweet-smelling, and joined the back of the wedding procession that had just formed at the Norbanus house. Senator Norbanus looked proud and a little rueful, reaching up to hold hands with his wife, who rode in a litter because she declared she could not walk one more step on her swollen feet, much less the mile to the house of her new son-in-law. Beaming slaves had come out with torches to light the way, casting shadows over the chattering crowd of guests. Tribune Hadrian stood triumphant, his massive handsome head thrown back against a darkening twilight sky as he spoke with a beaming Empress Plotina. And on Hadrian’s other arm stood a small figure in a saffron cloak: the bride, smiling serenely under her scarlet bridal veil. In the torchlight, the veil looked like a sheet of flame.

“I like the red veil,” Faustina said critically in Titus’s arms. “’Bina’s pretty in red.”

“Yes,” he said. “She is.”

The procession flowed down the street in a wave of music and well-wishes. Slaves sang wedding songs, the bawdier verses causing the Empress to exhale threateningly. Hadrian paced along, tossing walnuts out at the guests who called congratulations—a symbol of the prosperity to come. Sabina was led along by a trio of pages, one at each hand and one lighting the way with a torch. Evening passersby pointed and waved, calling out good-luck wishes. Titus paced slowly at the back, Faustina craning in his arms.

“There’s the house,” she said breathlessly. “Now he carries her over the doorstep, Mama told me. Mama said she didn’t want Father to carry her when they were married; she thought he’d hurt his bad shoulder. But he said he’d manage it somehow; he didn’t even try with the first two wives and look how they turned out. An’ he did, he carried Mama right over—”

Titus watched as the threshold of Sabina’s new home was sanctified, the prayer uttered. Then Hadrian handed aside the basket of walnuts and came toward his bride, and she smiled at him and held her arms up. He lifted her easily, tossing her up as the crowd cheered, and carried her over the threshold. The guests followed in a bright stream.

“I think that’s all we can see,” Titus told little Faustina. “Your mother will catch us if we go in. I’ll take you back, and you’ll be safe in your bed with no one the wiser by the time they all get home.”

Faustina gave a reluctant nod. Titus shifted her to his other arm and summoned one of the torchbearers to light their way back to the Norbanus house. It was nearly dark, just a streak of red and purple remaining in the west where the sun had vanished.

“You’re sad,” Faustina said suddenly as they rounded the corner of the street and Hadrian’s house disappeared from sight.

“I am?” Titus tried to smile.

“Yes.” The little girl’s frown was implacable. She was pretty even when she frowned—a little blond thing with a snub nose. Nothing like Sabina.

“Well, I am a little sad, Faustina.”

“Why?”

“Because I am in love with your big sister.”
The first time I’ve said it
, he thought with a twist. Even to himself. “Quite wildly in love with her, actually, and I have just watched her marry someone else.”

Faustina frowned again. “She could marry you.”

“I’d have liked that. But she wouldn’t. And she was right—we’re not suited, you see. Hadrian, he’s clever and handsome and he’s going to give her the world. I couldn’t give anybody the world. Just a dull little life here in Rome, married to a dull little plodder like me.”

“I’ll marry you,” Faustina offered.

He mussed her hair until she scowled. “You’ll marry a prince, Faustina. Or an emperor. Someone far better than me.”

She fell asleep on his shoulder shortly after that, and he carried her in the deepening darkness back to the Norbanus house. “See she gets put to bed,” he told the slave with the torch. “She wasn’t out at all, you understand.”

“Don’t worry, sir.” The slave smoothed Faustina’s fair head affectionately. “I won’t get the little mistress in trouble.”

“Little mistress no more.” Titus gave a lopsided twist of his mouth. “She’s the only daughter of the house now.”

“Right you are, sir. Gods, I remember when Mistress Sabina was this little.”

The slave vanished, Faustina waking enough to give Titus a sleepy little wave over his shoulder. Titus waved back, then turned slowly and ambled away. He felt like crying, but he felt like smiling too when he thought of Sabina lying on the library floor with her chin propped on her hand. Looking up at him and saying, “Oh, no, not another one.”

“You don’t love him,” he told her through the shadows. “And he doesn’t love you.” But what did that matter? Most marriages weren’t about love at all. They were about money, or family, or advancement, or need. In Hadrian and Sabina’s case—adventure.
You would do it differently, Sabina
, Titus thought.
You’re always different.

So was Hadrian. Hadrian didn’t look at the Nile and think
crocodiles
, as Titus would have. Hadrian thought
adventure
. Hadrian wouldn’t blink twice at walking the wild northern hills of Britannia, or scrambling up the rocky paths of Delphi to see the Sibyl. At the wedding feast he’d spoken eagerly of doing exactly that on their arrival in Greece, and Sabina had brought out a coin and bet him she’d be first to the top. Hadrian had grinned at her and taken the bet, and Sabina had leaned over and and kissed him on the cheek. Titus would have given twenty years off his life to be the one getting that kiss.

But he got it. Even though he doesn’t love her.

Never mind. Only dull little plodders like Titus were so stupid as to think a man should love his wife.

He looked up at the night sky. Full dark now, with stars pricking dimly through the haze of the city. Titus searched his memory for a quote, something by Virgil or Cato or Homer, some elegant string of words put together by a genius who could make heartache beautiful instead of pathetic. His memory failed him. His mind for once was empty of quotes; full of Sabina. Sabina crunching on an apple, Sabina drawing a stylus over a map, Sabina with a single earring glinting by her naked throat. One painful perfect image after another, and no words by any great poet were going to help.

All Titus could offer up to the uncaring gods was a matter-of-fact “This is really going to hurt, isn’t it?”

VIX

“You’re two weeks overdue on your rent,” the landlord snarled at me. “Pay up!”

“Later,” I hedged.

A month gone in the new year. The bruises on my face had faded, but my nose and ribs were still knitting from the beating Hadrian had paid for. I was doing sword exercises in the inn’s cramped yard
and cursing my aches and pains when the innkeeper’s two spotty-skinned maids came back from shopping. “Glad we didn’t have to go to the forum last night,” one of them was saying. “That wedding procession had the street blocked for miles.”

“A senator’s daughter! Did you see her dress?”

Sabina and Hadrian’s wedding? Maybe. I’d been careful not to learn the date, but weeks had passed. Surely they were wedded by now. Wedded and bedded. I wondered how much Sabina had enjoyed
that
.

I drank again that night, but not much. Just sat sipping, watching the raddled whores trudge past outside, watching the footpads skulking in the shadows, watching the drunks go reeling past.

Then I rose, and skipped out on my bill, and went to join the legions.

Autumn A. D. 108

SABINA

Faustina put her little fists on her little hips and looked around the new atrium critically. “I don’t like it.”

Sabina laughed at her little sister. “When did you get so opinionated?”

Faustina assessed the snowy marble walls, topped with the frieze of laurel leaves and stern-faced goddesses. “It’s cold.”

“Hadrian will be crushed; he designed that frieze himself. I think he was aiming for ‘classic.’”

“It’s stiff,” Faustina decreed, her eleven-year-old face looking just like Calpurnia’s. “Everything’s stiff. No one could ever get dirty in a house like this.”

Sabina mussed her little sister’s hair. “Do you want to get dirty?”

“No, I want to try on all your dresses! You have the
best
clothes…”

Hand in hand they wandered across the atrium to the stairs, decorated with mosaics in swirling blues and greens, also designed by Hadrian. This house wasn’t the architectural wonder he had sketched for himself with its never-ending improvements—“That will have to wait,” he told Sabina wistfully, doodling domes and columns in the margins of his official documents—but he had taken an interest in every detail of decoration in the new house on the Palatine Hill that Empress Plotina had finally persuaded him to acquire, from the pristine lines of each column in the triclinium to the matched perfection of the
slaves who stood in silent symmetrical rows as Sabina ushered her little sister upstairs.

“Why do they just stand there?” Faustina whispered.

“Because Hadrian likes silence in his household.”

“I like slaves who talk. This is like living in a statue garden!”

Sabina laughed again. Calpurnia had produced three more bouncing boys after Linus, all healthy and handsome, but little blond Faustina with her out-thrust chin was still Sabina’s favorite of the whole brood. “Come on, little bossy. I’ve got a new green dress you can try on.”

“I look like an asparagus in green,” Faustina said decidedly. “Have you got anything blue?”

“I think I can offer you a fine selection, madam.”

Sabina settled herself cross-legged on the long couch in her own bedroom, watching with amusement as her sister picked through the pile of gowns. “I can’t wait to wear a proper
stola
,” Faustina said, voice muffled as she swam headfirst into a swath of blue silk. “When can I get married?”

“Not until you’re at least sixteen.” Sabina held up two belts. “Pearl or silver?”

“Pearl,” Faustina pointed. “Antonia Lucilla says she’ll be getting married at fourteen—”

“Over our father’s dead body will you do the same.” Sabina tucked up the blue silk skirts for her sister’s shorter limbs. “But at least you’ll get to pick your own husband.”

“I already picked him,” said Faustina. “Earrings?”

“The rosewood box on the table. Who did you pick?”

“Gaius Rupilius! His father brought him to Father’s last dinner party; he’s very handsome
and
he’s fourteen—”

“I see you inherited your mother’s taste for older men.”

“Well, Gaius won’t make me live in a statue garden.” Faustina selected a pair of pearl drops, looking around the room approvingly. “At least you’ve got some clutter in here.”

“I like it,” Sabina confessed. Her own bedchamber was scattered
comfortably with books half unrolled, cushions on the floor for flopping down and reading, a vast map of the Empire nailed to one wall, and a bust of Emperor Trajan over which Sabina usually tossed her shawls. Hadrian liked neatness and order, but he hardly ever entered Sabina’s quarters. His own bedchamber lay in the other wing of the house, and traffic between the two was… infrequent. “I hope Gaius Rupilius makes you very happy, Faustina.”

“My nurse says that isn’t the point of getting married. Being happy, I mean.”

“No, but it’s nice when it happens. Hadrian makes me happy.”

“But he’s boring. He droned about Eckian cary—cary-something—”

“Erechtheion caryatids.”

“Those. Are they bugs?”

“No, they’re a kind of column.”

“Well, he droned about them all through Father’s last dinner party.”

“He does do that sometimes,” Sabina agreed.

“Mother says he’s a crashing bore.”

“He’s that sometimes too.”

Faustina looked down at herself: pearls in her ears, blue silk dress looped up through the pearl girdle to fit her own height. “Too long,” she clicked her tongue. “Oh, why don’t I
grow
?”

“You will. Hopefully taller than me. Here, try the red dress and slide my gold bracelets up over the elbow; you’ll look
very
exotic—”

“Domina?” A slave girl curtsied in the doorway. “You have a visitor. Tribune Titus Aurelius—”