Empress of the Seven Hills (41 page)

A hand caught my arm in the dark, and I looked down at a pretty face with a scattering of freckles across the nose. Simon’s niece Mirah had a wide mouth, large eyes, and her head in its neat white scarf came to my shoulder.

“Thank you.” She tried to say something else but shook her head. Giving my arm a mute squeeze, she turned and retreated down the lamp-lit hall. I watched her go, and wondered what color her hair was under the white scarf.

PLOTINA

The man was sweating. Plotina liked that. Men
should
be nervous in the presence of goddesses; it was only fitting. And it made things so much easier on the goddess.

He moistened his lips. “I don’t understand, Lady.”

“I think you do, Gaius Terentius.” Plotina pushed a slate across her desk at the plump bewigged little official. “My secretaries brought the discrepancy to my attention, and I checked the numbers myself. You have been skimming money from the building funds for the Emperor’s public baths.”

The man’s eyes hunted around the walls of Plotina’s private study. She had stripped away the cheerful woven wall hangings last year to
reveal the dark African marble beneath, stark and pristine as any temple. She suspected all that black marble was starting to close in on the sweating little official. “Lady, I assure you—”

“Spare me the protestations of innocence.” She waved a dismissive hand, her wedding ring catching the lamplight. “A cartload of timber here, never delivered; an order of marble there, never arrived. Quite a few sesterces you’ve managed to pocket, Gaius Terentius.”

A bead of sweat rolled openly down his neck. Plotina’s lips curved at the sight of it.

“I shall resign my position at once, Lady,” he whispered. “I shall leave Rome—”

“Now, have I asked you to do that?” The Empress caught a glimpse of herself in the glass hanging behind the little fraud’s chair, and was pleased by her own reflection. She’d got the expression exactly right—aloof, regal, disapproving, yet not without mercy as she looked down from the height of her carved chair. A posture not unlike Juno’s in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, looking down at her supplicants.
Really, all I need is a diadem.

“You may keep your post, Gaius Terentius,” Plotina went on. “I shall require something else of you.”

He fell to his knees before her. “Anything, Lady!”

“A share in what you take from the bathhouse funds.” She allowed just the corners of her lips to turn up at his startled expression. “Shall we agree to half? Running this Empire is so expensive, you know.”

A few more moments discussing details, and the sweaty little official was ushered out. Plotina picked up a separate tablet on her desk and made a neat line through the name of Gaius Terentius. There were other names, but she set those aside for now.

She’d been nervous the first time she tried this. But it was getting easier all the time. And how could it be counted as wrong, to squeeze a corrupt man for a worthy cause? Had she been working for her own benefit, that would have been quite inexcusable. But this was for
Rome
.

Plotina looked up at the mirror again. “One could say it’s my duty,” she told her own reflection. “After all, it costs a great deal to support Dear Publius in proper style as consul.”

SABINA

Sabina waited until the black-haired Antiochene freedman with the shoulders like Apollo slipped out of her husband’s bedchamber and padded down the hall. Then she struck the door open and walked in.

Hadrian blinked. He lay in bed propped up by pillows, a film of sweat still sheening his bare shoulders. A lamp cast its warm light over the rumpled blankets, the high corniced ceiling, the statue in the corner of a Greek warrior carved in the act of throwing his spear. “This is unexpected,” Hadrian said at last.

Sabina crossed the floor, white robe whispering around her feet, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Let’s go to Athens.”

She saw she’d managed to surprise him twice in as many minutes. “What?”

“Forget the Parthian invasion,” she said. “Forget becoming governor of Syria. Forget your consular duties. Let’s go to Greece. That tour we always planned: Athens and Corinth and Sparta, the little islands with those white cliffs and jewel-blue seas. Let’s take ship and keep going all the way to Troy. Let’s just get out of Rome.”

For a moment she thought she saw a gleam in his eye. The old gleam, from the Hadrian who waved his arms in the air when enthusiasm for the world’s mysteries carried him away. But then he looked down at the bedclothes, straightening the crumpled folds precisely, and his businesslike frown returned. “In the future, perhaps. Not now.”

“Why not? Don’t tell me you’d rather be arguing with stubborn old men in the Senate house than riding a mule up the hills of Delphi to see the Oracle.”

“It isn’t what I want that matters.”

“So it’s all about what Plotina wants instead?” Sabina lifted her eyebrows. “I thought you were your own man, Publius Aelius Hadrian.”

“It isn’t about Plotina at all. She merely helps me to achieve what is mine.”

“And what
is
yours? The Third Parthica? The governorship of Syria?”

“Among other things.”

Hadrian reached for a book he’d placed on the table by the bed, unrolling the scroll. Sabina leaned closer and put her hand over the page, blocking his view. He exhaled a short breath through his nose.

“You know this is the first time I’ve seen you reading in weeks?” Sabina said lightly.

“I have been busy.”

“You were never too busy to read before.” She kept her voice gentle. “What’s changed you?”

“Have I changed?”

“You used to talk to me.”

“You used to interest me.”

“Don’t think you can distract me by hurting me, Hadrian. I don’t love you enough for you to be able to hurt me.” She reached out and took his big hand between hers. “But I do care for you. And I know you aren’t happy.”

He disengaged her hands and rose abruptly. Sabina watched the muscles move under the skin in the warm lamplight as he shouldered into a tunic to cover his nakedness. He was a fine figure of a man, her husband. So much hunting kept him strong and fit.

“Perhaps I am not entirely happy,” he said at last, yanking the belt of his tunic with a
snap
. “Perhaps I would rather go to Greece with you than battle Lusius Quietus for command of the Third Parthica, all so I can take part in a war I believe pointless. It doesn’t matter in the slightest.”

“Doesn’t it?” Sabina drew up her legs until she sat cross-legged on the bed. “Tell me why.”
Tell me anything, husband. Just
talk
to me
.

“I am not destined to spend my days wandering Greece and reading books.” He folded his arms across his chest, looking down at her. “That is all.”

“Yes, destiny. You told me you’d always known what yours was.”

“I am going to be Emperor of Rome.”

Sabina stared at him. His hair and beard looked almost black in the lamplight, and the blade of his nose threw a deep shadow across his cheek. His gaze was steady, his expression neutral, his body as relaxed as if in sleep. He looked quite calm.

“I had my horoscope drawn up when I was a boy,” Hadrian continued as conversationally as if they were discussing the weather. “The astrologer said—”

Sabina burst out laughing. Hadrian’s face stiffened coldly and she choked the laughter off, but she could still feel it bubbling in her throat. “An astrologer? You’ve based your life’s decisions on a
horoscope
?”

“A great many astrologers are frauds, but Nessus was different,” Hadrian snapped. “I never heard him get a word wrong when it came to the future.”

“Emperor Domitian’s astrologer; you told me.” She knew the name well, though the famous seer was long retired. “You told me he predicted you would see more of the world than any man in Rome.”

“He did tell me that. He also told me I would become Emperor.”

“And that’s why Plotina is always trying—”

“I never told her about the prophecy. I’ve never told anyone.” A peculiar note crept into his voice. “I don’t know why I’m telling you now.”

“It’s not much of a secret,” Sabina pointed out. “One prophecy—how many astrologers have whispered thrones to ambitious men, hoping for a few extra coins?”

“Not just one prophecy. Ever since the day Nessus made his prediction, I made my own study of the stars and how to read them. Every year I draw my own horoscope, and every year I have to burn it. Because they
all
say that I will be Emperor.”

Sabina laughed again but more quietly, shaking her head. “And I always thought you such a man of logic.”

“It
will
happen. I can feel it.”

“But do you even want to be Emperor?”

“Does that matter?” He shrugged. “I will be, whether I wish it or not.”

She stared at him. “You’re serious.”

“When do I joke, Vibia Sabina?”

He looked down at her, arms still folded. Sabina put her fingertips together under her chin, feeling like she’d descended a step she hadn’t known was there and snapped her teeth together on her tongue.

“Before I married you,” she said at last, “I asked if you meant to live your life as Plotina wanted you to—politics and scheming and striving toward the top. You said no, that there were too many things to see in the world. Like the Nile in flood and the Temple of Artemis in Delphi—”

“All true.” Hadrian nodded. “The key to telling a good lie, as you yourself have often said, is to tell as much of the truth as possible.”

It was a hot night outside, the air from the open shutters heavy and blossom-scented from the gardens, but Sabina felt suddenly chilled to the bone. “Why would you wish to tell me such a lie?” she asked levelly.

“To win you,” he said in surprise. “Though it did take me a while to puzzle out the best method of doing so. Most girls would be won by the promise of a crown, not the promise to avoid one.”

“Then you should have proposed marriage to one of those girls, Hadrian. Not to me.”

“I would have,” he agreed. “Had there been another suitable candidate. But such are not thick on the ground. I require a wife with breeding and bloodlines, with a close blood tie to the Emperor, a sizable dowry, and connections to the powerful families of Rome. A wife with style and intelligence, educated beyond the common. A wife with a gift for charming people of all stations in life—my own character may lack spontaneity, but yours has been useful in making up the deficit. No,
there were no other candidates. Providing you can control your taste for adventures in low places, Vibia Sabina, you will make a credible Empress.”

“Well, I can’t say the idea doesn’t have its attractions.” Sabina was no longer sure what might come out of her mouth once she opened it, but the roiling in her stomach made silence impossible. “However, I fear I will have to pass. Maybe you weren’t listening when I told you the first time, Hadrian, but I don’t particularly want any job that lasts for life. Still too unclear?
I don’t want to be Empress.
”

“My dear,” he smiled. “Why does it matter what you want? It is going to happen anyway.”

“Will it?” asked Sabina. “Will it still happen without me?”

He turned sharply. “What do you mean?”

But she was gone.

VIX

As far as I could see, Tu B’Av was a kind of Lupercalia for Jews. A lover’s day, a day for the unmarried.

“Why should you want me along?” I protested when Simon dragged me out of the house. “I’ve mooched off your family the last week.” The week after my Shabbat dinner with Simon’s family, they had left for their modest villa outside the city and had almost forcibly dragged me with them.

“No, no, we’re happy to have you to celebrate.” Simon waved an expansive hand about the villa. A pleasant place, not grand like Senator Norbanus’s summer home in Baiae, but pleasant. Just a big sprawling house where dogs ran in and out and hens scratched in the yard, and all around the vineyards stretched with a smell of dusty grapes. “The hero of Masada is always welcome here!”

“Look here,” I complained, “I’m not the hero of Masada. I’ve never even been there.”

“But you’re the last bloodline from it.” Simon gave my arm a punch. “Your children will be the heirs of Masada, Vix. Proof that Rome can never win.”

“Rome
has
won.” I pointed to the horizon where the city lights could still be seen every night, to the cultivated fields that spread out all around us. “You
live
in Rome. Not to mention fighting for Rome for the past twenty-five years.”

“All gone in a heartbeat,” Simon dismissed his time with the Tenth. “This is the real time. Now, I’ll wager you’ve never seen a Tu B’Av celebration—look, there they are!”

“Who?”

A cart came rumbling up to the door, decked in flowers. A slave with a wreath perched rakishly on his head handled the mules, and in the back were a dozen giggling girls in white. The door to the house opened and another trio of girls dashed past us, also in white. I caught sight of Mirah’s neat ankles as the other girls handed her up into the cart with much squealing.

“The unmarried girls dance in the vineyards on Tu B’Av,” Simon explained. “It’s supposed to bring them husbands.”

“Does it?”

“Well, all the men come to watch,” Simon grinned, “so marriages do tend to come out of it.” He ducked ahead to link arms with his two younger brothers as the cart creaked off toward the vineyard. The procession already had the air of a festival, jugs of wine being passed back and forth among the younger men, the girls in the cart giggling under their lashes, the mothers and fathers walking arm in arm with more wreaths perched on their heads. I slouched along behind, liking the smell of the deep red earth under my sandals, the scent of the vines and the grapes all around.

“Don’t fall behind, Vix!” Simon’s mother caught my arm and pulled me ahead. She’d gotten fond of me the past week, which made me blink. Mothers were normally more inclined to warn me off their daughters and their clean floors, not stuff me with roast goose and urge me to sleep late in the mornings. “Goodness, it seems just yesterday I was dancing at Tu B’Av. Simon’s father, he chose me that same day. Let’s hope Simon does the same. He needs a wife. It seems quite foolish to me, this rule about how you soldiers can’t marry. Who needs a wife to come home to more than a soldier?”