Empress of the Seven Hills (24 page)

“Why? We already had this argument last night.”

“She’s carrying your child, Vercingetorix.” Titus’s voice was surprisingly stern. “She has earned your respect, if nothing else.”

“Oh, hell,” I grumbled again, and tramped after Demetra.

Her grand exit had been slowed by the crush, and I caught up to her as she squeezed out of the crowded forum and into one of the winding side streets.

“Don’t flounce off alone just to make a point.” I took her elbow irritably. “Too many soldiers around this afternoon looking for a little fun.”

“Why should you care?” Demetra stared straight ahead as she bore down the street, color burning high in her face. “You don’t want your own child, so why do you care what happens to me?”

“You know soldiers aren’t allowed to marry! What’s the point of starting a family? You work hard enough with just the one pup in tow!”

S
he didn’t answer, just put up her trembling chin and towed me behind her by my grip on her elbow.

“I said I’d give you money, didn’t I?”

“To get rid of it!”

“It’s early days, it’s safe enough. And I’ll pay for the work you miss too,” I added generously.

She started to sputter, lost her words, and lapsed back into her native Greek.

“What?” I raised my voice as she jerked her arm free and whirled up the street again. “What did I say?”

“Go away!”

“Oh, now you’re telling me to go away,” I yelled back. “But when your belly’s under your chin you’ll have your hand out, all right! Didn’t you even
think
? Even try to be careful?”

“No!” She whirled around on me just as she turned onto the narrow street where her rooms lay above the bakehouse. I saw tears in her huge eyes, but her chin was still high. So beautiful, with her dark-gold hair loosening around her face in little curls and her cheeks like wild roses… Hell’s gates, she was tiresome. “No, I didn’t try to be careful. I’m not a
whore
, Vix, how would I know about things like that?”

“So you have to be a whore to think ahead?” I thought of Sabina, her pessaries and concoctions that had kept both of us free of having to worry about consequences. “You just wanted to hook yourself another husband, admit it—”

“I did not!”

There were a great many interested glances coming our way by now. I tried to bring my voice down. “Look, let’s be sensible.”

Demetra squeezed her little boy so tight he yelped, then flounced on her heel and disappeared into the bakeshop.

“You know I’m right!” I yelled after her. “I’ll give you some money, and everything will be good as new.”

“I don’t want your money!”

Of course she wanted money—what else could she possibly want? What else did
any
woman want? “Demetra—”

She banged the door of the bakeshop in my face. I heard a loud sob from within, and then nothing.

I hammered on the door for a while, but she didn’t answer, and soon I realized that half the housewives on the street were staring and giggling from their windows. I made a rude gesture and stalked off. Bloody women. I hoped the Tenth would be marching to Dacia very soon.

My furious feet took me back over the bridge, where the roiling river was swollen with spring floods and matched my mood perfectly, back along the well-beaten path to the camp. Two soldiers from my cohort called out to me, but I gave such a black scowl in return that they kept going.

I banged my way to the
principia
, scanning the notices pinned to the outer wall. News always came there first—promotions, demotions, holidays, upcoming inspections. Any news that the invasion into Dacia was beginning—hopefully tomorrow—would be posted here first. But there was no news posted, and I turned with a snarl and caromed off a tall figure in a toga.

“Watch where you’re going!” I snapped.

“Better for you to watch where you are going, soldier,” a deep patrician voice said, and I knew the voice before I looked up and recognized the handsome bearded face. I remembered the voice very well. I remembered another voice too, a voice from the slums that had snarled, “This is from Tribune Hadrian,” before driving a fist into my face and a boot into my side.

Oh, how I wanted to hit the bastard. I could feel my hand itch. “Tribune,” I said.

“Not anymore.” His eyes flickered. “I know you.” It was not a question.

“Could say so.” I bowed, calculating just how many lashes I’d get across the back from my centurion for striking a superior, and if it would be worth it. “Sir.”

I could see the honing of his glance as he retrieved the memory from whatever bank of scrolls it was that served him for a mind. “Vercingetorix. The Norbanus guard. I suppose it is to be expected that you joined the legions. What else is there, for those of your sort?” He twitched the folds of his toga across his chest. “Dismissed.”

I bowed, and he whirled his purple-bordered folds and turned in the other direction. But I’d spied a trailing end of that fine toga, and surreptitiously put my foot down on it, and it snapped taut and caught him up. His foot slipped in a slick of spring mud and down he went.

“Sir!” I sprang into motion. “Allow me to help you, sir. My pleasure, sir.” I managed to slip and get my own hand covered in mud before I held it out to him, then trip again and land him back in the worst of it. “So sorry, sir. Mud, sir, very treacherous in the springtime, sir.”

He was expressionless as he finally rose: a broad smear of mud down one arm and along one leg, and another right across the rump. Across the
principia
I could hear a cluster of watching centurions snickering.

“Vercingetorix,” he said, thoughtful. “I seem to remember you required a lesson from me in the past. Perhaps it was not stern enough.”

“Sorry, sir. Can’t remember, sir.”

“Clearly it was not stern enough, then.”

“Sir.” I stood at my stiffest attention as he gathered his muddy folds about him and marched off into the
principia
. If that beetle-brained prig thought he could lay a finger on me while I was in the Tenth, he’d have a stern lesson coming
his
way. Only an officer of the Tenth could levy punishment on me, and only for violating the legion’s own regulations. And if Hadrian got creative and tried to hire a beating for me, as he’d done in the past, he’d find I had a friend among the tribunes
and
four loyal brothers in my
contubernium
, all of whom would have my back clear down to hell.

Suddenly feeling more cheerful, I swung back into the rows of barracks toward my own.

“Heard the news?” Boil was lacing up his breastplate as I came into
the little barracks room with its stacked beds that I shared with my
contubernium
. “We’ve got a new legate.”

“Heard that already from Titus.” I tossed my sword belt onto the cot that had been very little used lately. I had a feeling that with Demetra barring her door, I’d be seeing more of my barracks cot. Or at least of my redheaded whore. “Some cousin of the Emperor’s?”

“Had some experience at least,” Philip said from the floor, where he was casting another endless game of dice. “Tribune somewhere, a legate somewhere else—maybe the Fourteenth? Trajan doesn’t promote generals who just stand around looking pretty, so this one must be decent if he’s got the Tenth just in time for an invasion.”

“Just hope he’s not a flogger,” I said. “Who are you playing against, Philip?”

“Myself, and I’m still losing.” Philip cast the dice again, cursing. “Boil, you saw the new legate. What’s he look like?”

“Tall.” Boil stuffed a scarf under the neck of his breastplate. “He’s got a beard—looks funny. How many patricians have you seen with beards?”

I suddenly felt cold. “What’s his name?”

“Publius Aelius something. He married the Emperor’s niece or something, that’s how he’s got so high up when he’s not even thirty-five. Publius Aelius—Adrianus?”

I fell onto my cot with a moan, narrowly missing the sword. “Hadrian,” I said hollowly. Our new legate, our general, the man who would be leading us into battle against the Dacians and have command over all our lives, was Sabina’s husband Hadrian.

TITUS

“Titus!” Sabina straightened from a box of scrolls. “As soon as Hadrian said he got a legion in Germania, I prayed it was yours. Fortuna must have been listening.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on both cheeks. Titus hoped the lick of hair on the back of his head wasn’t standing straight up. “You’re still unpacking?” he said, and at once kicked himself.
What does it look like she’s doing? Baking a cake?
Slaves bustled about with piles of clothes and armloads of cushions, rushing from this room to that, and boxes lay everywhere bursting with half-unrolled scrolls and trailing scarves and dozing dogs who lifted their heads at Titus’s arrival and then went back to sleep.

“Yes, we only arrived a few days ago. Trajan started after us, and he still nearly beat us here.” Sabina removed a bust of her father off a box, waving Titus to sit. “I’d offer you a chair, but I’m afraid this is the best I can do. I couldn’t even find my own clothes this morning.”

Titus perched on the edge of his box, trying not to stare. Sabina had skewered her hair at the back of her neck by jabbing a stylus through it, and she was wearing what was clearly one of her husband’s tunics, which left her long legs bare below the knee.
Vix can have his blond Bithynian goddess
, Titus decided.
I like them blue-eyed and coltish.

A slave girl hovered at Sabina’s elbow with a questioning look. Sabina glanced at the crate in her arms and pointed. “Books go in the back. I’ll organize them later. Did you bring a message, Titus?”

“A note from the Emperor. He wants to dine with all the legates this evening.” Any of the aides or freedmen could have delivered it, but Titus had seized the excuse to take it over himself.

Hadrian stalked in then, brushing dried mud off his arm. “No progress on the chaos yet?”

“I’ve extricated the library, but the box with my clothes is still nowhere to be found.” Sabina rose to kiss her husband’s cheek with casual wifeliness, and Titus felt a shaft of pure envy go through his chest. “Goodness, what happened to you?” she added, eyeing the mud that literally daubed Hadrian’s toga.

“An accident.” Hadrian frowned, unwinding the muddy folds and presenting them with the tips of his fingers to a waiting slave. “One I
shall have to give some thought to correcting. You have a dispatch for me, Tribune?”

“Yes, from the Emperor.” Titus handed it over. He had met his legate formally a few days ago, during formal introductions to the young officers, and had been astonished to be singled out.

“Titus,” Hadrian had said with a charming smile. “I had not thought to find a familiar face so far north.”

“I’m surprised you recognize me at all, sir. I’m far too insignificant to be noticed by a man of your stature.” Titus had met Sabina’s husband many times in Rome, of course, at dinner parties and plays and formal occasions, but Hadrian had had little time then for some callow young friend of his wife’s. He had merely nodded at Titus in passing and looked on to more important people. But finding Titus among his staff in Germania, he had smiled as if at an old friend. “Delighted to have you, Tribune.”

He really did sound delighted, Titus had thought—and he looked pleased now as he took the dispatch from Titus’s hand and broke the seal.

“We’re dining with Trajan tonight,” Sabina explained.

“He doesn’t allow
me
to call him by name,” Hadrian grumbled.

“But I get special privileges. I’m his little pet, after all.”

“And I’m his ward! The closest thing to a son he has, or at least I should be.” A slave bumped Hadrian’s elbow, murmured an apology, and kept dashing with an armload of clothes. Hadrian looked at the chaos around him and shook his head, reaching down to dispense pats to the dogs, who had leaped up as soon as he entered. “I hope you can unearth a dinner synthesis for me out of all this mess, Vibia Sabina.”

“Never mind your synthesis.” Sabina rooted through the nearest box, unearthing a statuette, a single earring, and a bottle of ink. “If I don’t find
my
clothes, then I’ll have to show up naked. Wouldn’t that make a splash?”

Titus did his best to dismiss the image that popped immediately
to mind. At least until he was out of his new legate’s presence. “How do you find your new legion, sir?” he asked hastily.

“The men are impudent,” Hadrian frowned at the smear of mud along one broad arm.

“I assure you they can fight, sir.”

“I’d prefer them both fighting fit
and
respectful.” Hadrian directed a slave with a stack of writing tablets into his study. “None of your exploring, Vibia Sabina. Even a legate’s wife isn’t safe to walk alone among all these rough men. They haven’t seen a proper Roman woman in years—no telling what they’d do if they came across you wandering about sniffing the flowers.”

“No wandering,” Sabina said. “I promise.”

“Is it a promise you have any intention of keeping?”

“Not really, no,” she confessed. “But I’ll be careful.”

“Minx.” He smiled faintly. “Go and change. I’d rather not have you flashing your knees at my tribune, even if he has been good enough to keep his eyes away from them.”

Sabina gave a little salute, blew a kiss at Titus, and disappeared into the next room. Titus cleared his throat, looking at the ceiling.

“Forgive my wife,” Hadrian said, breaking the seal on Trajan’s note and scanning it. “As you well know, she can be impossible at times.”

“‘Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses.’”

“I’d not thought to find a reader of Ovid in Moguntiacum.”

“I brought as many books as I could carry north,” Titus confessed. “Though I fear I’ve read them all by now.”

“If you wish to borrow any of mine, you have only to ask.” Hadrian’s smile was aloof but friendly, his dark eyes keen. “Will you accompany us to dinner this evening with the Emperor?”

“Me, sir?” Titus blinked, wondering for a moment if Sabina’s husband might be flirting with him.
Gods, wouldn’t that be awkward.
But Sabina had confided before that Hadrian’s taste ran solely to strapping young athletes, and Titus had only to look at himself to know that he
didn’t fit
that
mold. Besides, the warmth in his legate’s gaze was friendly rather than flirtatious.