Empress of the Seven Hills (3 page)

“That pays well?”

“Not bad. Pays even better if they turn down the guard and you can hold ’em up in an alley.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “I want half.”

“Ten percent.”

“Ten the first week, and thirty once I’m paying my own room.”

“Done.”

The room had lice, but at least it had a bed that didn’t rock back and forth like a river. As I flopped down I saw a serving maid creak down the stairs outside. Spotty skin, but breasts like melons, and she gave me a sidelong glance as she trudged by with a basket of blankets. Maybe the day wasn’t such a loss after all.

I didn’t think about Sabina. Why should I? Just a patrician girl I probably wouldn’t see again after she’d walked away from me in that atrium with her light brown hair swaying against her narrow back. Girls like her were off-limits, and anyway, she had small breasts. Figs, say, rather than apples. I liked apples. Or melons… I eyed the dank hall where the serving maid had gone.

If I’d known the trouble that small-breasted off-limits patrician girl would make for me, I might have choked her to death in the middle of that atrium rather than watch her walk away.

PLOTINA

“Vinalia.” Plotina pronounced the word disapprovingly. “A disgusting festival.”

“It’s harmless.” Her husband’s voice was muffled as he dragged a tunic over his head. “Just a little celebration of the wine harvest—”

“All Rome gets drunk! Decent women don’t dare set foot outside.” Plotina frowned into the polished steel mirror, remembering the tipsy shopkeeper who had pinched her on the hip during a Vinalia celebration some twenty years ago when she had been an unwed girl.
Pinched
her.
Her
, Pompeia Plotina, who could have been a Vestal Virgin had she chosen. If she had not known even then that she was destined for Greater Things.

“Will you at least attend the races after the ceremony?” Her husband’s voice was coaxing. “People expect to see you.”

“I will stay through the first race,” Plotina allowed. “That is all. Green gown,” she told the slaves, who hastened forward with the folds of deep green silk. Silk; so ostentatious, but it was expected of a woman in her position. She held her arms out—decently swathed, of course, in a long-sleeved tunic. The women of Rome might mostly bare their arms like courtesans, even the women of great birth, but Plotina would
never
be one of them.

“Gods’ bones, will you leave your fussing?” Her husband swatted
at his slaves as they draped the heavy purple-bordered folds of his toga. “It looks well enough!”

“Don’t be a child,” Plotina said without turning. A man of such power, such distinction, and he stood impatiently shifting and fidgeting like a boy of fifteen.
In many ways he
is
still a boy of fifteen
, she thought, tilting her head as the maid dabbed behind her ears with lavender water. Only whores wore perfume.

Does the girl wear perfume?
Plotina wondered.
If so, I shall have to rethink.

“Ready?” Her husband sounded amused. “If my wife is done primping, the priests await.”

“You know I don’t like jokes.” Plotina cast an eye over her reflection. Dark hair tidy and coiled, covered by a veil as was only proper. Pale oval face (
no
rouge or kohl, of course) and a suitably sober expression. Deep-set eyes, a nose like a furrow with a straight mouth to match it—and could that be a thread or two of gray just starting to come in by her temples? She leaned toward the mirror, pleased. She had not liked youth, and youth hadn’t liked her. A girl was nothing; a woman was powerful. A girl knew nothing; a woman knew all. As a girl Plotina had been lanky and awkward, but now at thirty-five they had begun to call her handsome. “I am ready.”

She rose, taking her husband’s arm. He stood tall, but she did not have to tilt her head to look into his face. Plotina could look eye to eye with all but the tallest men in Rome, and that pleased her. The goddesses of the heavens were always tall, weren’t they? And Plotina liked to model herself after only the highest and greatest of examples.

Well, she wouldn’t model herself after just
any
goddess. Juno, of course, queen of the heavens and always irreproachable—but some of the others were not nearly so well behaved. Plotina eyed the statue of Venus disapprovingly when they made their grand entrance into the temple. Venus: a curly-headed empty little flirt, and her statue looked it.
If I were Juno, I’d never put up with any whorish little goddess of love
and her antics.
Even the gods must keep their houses in order. Plotina’s house was
always
in order.

The priest raised his hands with a jug of the season’s new wine, intoning a prayer for the harvest to come and thanks for the harvest past. Judging from the flush on his face, he had been appreciating the wine already for some hours.
I’ll have a new priest
, Plotina decided. Not that anyone was listening to the prayers. Men stood shifting from foot to foot until they could get their hands on the wine; girls giggled behind their hands; matrons fidgeted with their festival wreaths. Plotina’s own husband was trading jokes in a whisper with his slouching guards. “Set an example,” she nudged him, and bowed her head pointedly low as the priest rolled into the final prayer for Venus and Jupiter. Heads lowered hastily across the temple. Including one light-brown head Plotina had spotted the moment she entered the temple.

The girl.

Oh, the agony of it. Was she the one?
Was
she? Her bloodlines, of course… the mother’s side left a great deal to be desired, but surely Senator Norbanus’s side balanced that. The face: modest and neat-featured. Beauty was not required—indeed, it could even be a deterrent. Flightiness and vanity so often came hand in hand with beauty, and the girl Plotina chose must have poise and dignity above all. Two other candidates had already been discarded on that basis. Plotina watched for some minutes while the priest droned, but the girl stood quietly, not fidgeting like the others of her age or darting looks at the dresses her friends were wearing. Quiet; that was good. She stood respectfully behind her father, eyes lowered—mindful of her elders; excellent. Plotina would be able to mold her, guide her, train her. The dress—deep red silk, and really a girl of eighteen was far too young to be wearing silk, but her father was notoriously indulgent. At least the arms were covered.

The girl looked down at her little fair-haired sister, wriggling and yawning under the drone of prayers, and put a finger to her lips in a
shushing motion. Ease with children; definitely good. The girl Plotina chose would be required to bear many children. Plotina would be the one to rear the children, of course—she would see to their education and morals herself. Now, the girl’s education… that could be a problem. Not only was Senator Norbanus too indulgent a father, but he had educated his eldest daughter far past the usual standard.
What was he thinking?
Homer and Aeschylus were of absolutely no use to a woman in the practical world. Fortunately, Senator Norbanus’s third wife had reportedly taken her stepdaughter in hand as regarded the housewifely arts, so perhaps the excess education was not too great a flaw. Once the babies came, after all, the books would be forgotten.

Now—the dowry. Plotina did not count that as high as most; other things were far more important. But the girl’s dowry was more than satisfactory, and there would be no denying its usefulness. The connections—those were even better than the dowry. Senator Marcus Norbanus might be aging, but his voice in the Senate was still strong. His support could be vital.

The priest finished his invocation to Venus and lifted the vessel high. Wine poured in a ruby stream. The girl watched, narrow head tilted to one side under its festival wreath of scarlet poppies. Plotina felt a flutter in her stomach, dryness in her mouth.
Is she the one? The one who will be worthy?

No, no one was worthy. It was quite impossible.

A biddable girl who would spend her life trying, however—that was within reach.

Here. In the person of Senator Norbanus’s eldest daughter, Vibia Sabina.

Yes, she’ll do. She’ll do very nicely.

“Thank the gods that’s done with,” Plotina heard her husband grumble as they left the Temple of Venus. The waiting crowd erupted at the sight of him, surging forward with lusty cheers, stretching to touch the purple edge of his toga as he passed. Praetorian guards in red and gold held back the crush, clearing a path back toward the gold-trimmed
Imperial litter. He handed Plotina inside, then raised an arm in cheerful salute to the crowd. The shouting redoubled: men, women, and children screaming themselves hoarse.

“Now for the races,” said Marcus Ulpius Trajan, Pontifex Maximus and thirteenth Emperor of the Roman Empire. The litter rose on the backs of six Greek slaves and went jogging toward the Circus Maximus. “Gods’ bones, I hate priests and their droning.”

“Yes, dear.” Pompeia Plotina, Emperor’s wife, first lady of Rome, Empress of the seven hills, was not listening. The races did not matter at all; nor did a grubby little celebration of the wine harvest where men and their sluts drank too much wine and defiled public morals. Nothing mattered except that the girl, the
right
girl, had finally been chosen. Plotina laughed a little—it had not occurred until now just how much the matter had been preying on her.

I shall tell him tomorrow
, the Empress thought happily.
I shall tell him I’ve found her.

VIX

I don’t much like patricians, and it’s fair to say they don’t like me.
Jumped-up thug
, they tend to mutter when I’m around, just loud enough for me to hear, but I ignore them. They’re a fairly useless lot, with a few exceptions—and you have to watch out for the exceptions. Senator Norbanus was an exception, a good one. As for the bad exception, he’s the man I should have kept an eye on from the start. Bastard.

The day already hadn’t started well. I’d gotten my lip split by what should have been an easy mark: a rich boy ducking his tutors and his father to go hunting for whores in the Subura, which was the last place anybody should ever hunt for whores. He found one, and probably a case of something nasty that would be itching him within weeks, and then he found the inn where I now lived and a good many tankards of bad wine. The innkeeper gave me a nod as the boy reeled out, and I slid
out after him. Only midmorning, but it was Vinalia and everyone was getting drunk early. The boy was still reeling when I pulled a dagger on him in an alley and demanded his purse, and he was drunk enough to hit me instead of just handing it over. I got my lip split, but I got the purse too, and sent the boy home with his nose broken in two places. “Consider it a mark of manhood,” I called after him as he fled wailing. “A better one than the pox that whore gave you.”

There were a good many coins in that purse, and of course I skimmed a few off the top before I handed the rest over to the innkeeper to count my percentage. “Mop that lip up and keep your eyes open,” he ordered. “Lot of easy marks on festival days.”

“Get someone else to hit them,” I said shortly. “I’m going out to celebrate like everybody else. Hail to bloody Venus and hail to the bloody wine harvest.”

“Listen, boy—”

I made an obscene gesture at him and thumped out. A grimy urchin darted under my feet; I booted him out of the way and his mother screeched at me. I made an obscene gesture at her too, and slid moodily into the cheerful crowds. Truth was, this wasn’t what I had planned when I’d dreamed of coming back to Rome. Oh, it was easy enough—after a month I had a room of my own, food that didn’t have too many bugs in it, coins for the bathhouse or the theatre whenever I had a mind to go. It wasn’t hard taking purses off wild boys and rich tradesmen, and I even had a little side business stealing goods off vendors in the Subura and reselling them to vendors in the Esquiline. An easy enough life. But it wasn’t quite…

The Colosseum had been thrown open to the crowd for festival day, and games were planned. No doubt a thousand lions would be slaughtered by spearmen, five thousand exotic birds by archers, and a few hundred prisoners by guards, and half the unlucky bastards sentenced to the gladiatorial fights would get dragged out on hooks through the Gate of Death. I ducked the Colosseum and turned toward the Circus Maximus instead. Not that the chariot races couldn’t get bloody when
a team went down, but it was better than the games. Plus, at the circus the women weren’t walled up in their own section of seats, so you had a decent chance of finding a girl to take home.

God, the time I spent back then trying to get girls to go home with me. Well, I was eighteen.

The tiers were already packed to the skies, families waving little colored banners and already cheering their favorite teams. The Reds, the Blues, the Greens, and the Whites—I’d never backed one faction or another, but in my red tunic I was automatically hauled along to a section of seating packed with Reds fans. “A Blues bastard do that to you?” a big gap-toothed fellow demanded, pointing at my puffy lip. “Bloody bastards, those Blues.”

“Right,” I agreed. Never argue with a racing fanatic.

“The Blues’ll take all the heats today, you wait,” a woman in blue face paint screeched down from the tier above.

“They’ll be dead bloody last!” the gap-toothed man roared, and a brisk shoving match broke out. I squirmed out of my seat and went looking for another, eyeing the cooler tiers and private boxes where the patricians and
equites
seated themselves. Maybe I could sneak in…

“Vercingetorix?” someone said behind me.

I turned—a girl in a red dress, with a wreath of festival poppies in her light-brown hair. “Lady Sabina.” I remembered to bow. “You’re in the wrong section. Patricians are all up there.”

“I know. My aunt Diana has a box. But I’m ducking a suitor.”

“I’ve got a seat,” I said promptly.

“How kind.” She tucked her hand into my elbow. She was little, hardly up to my shoulder, but people moved out of her way. That patrician thing again.