Empress of the Seven Hills (49 page)

“A goddess,” the man went on, flushed to the top of his bald head. “I shall have my personal statue of Juno recarved with your own Imperial face. Juno stands before me now, in all her glory!”

He shielded his face, as if radiance dazzled him. Plotina inclined her head graciously but did not wave him up from his knees. It was rather pleasant to be worshipped. “You will not forget that little favor I asked of you, Senator?”

“Of course not! I shall tend to the matter myself, I assure you.”

“Very good. And
promptly
, if you please.” Plotina drew a line through another name on her wax tablet. Trajan’s letters from the east still had distressingly little to say in praise of Dear Publius, but there were other men he praised to the skies. A certain Aulus Cornelius Palma was always being mentioned, held in high favor because of some past conquest he’d made among the Nabataean Arabs. Lucius Publilius Celsus’s name too had begun cropping up with great Imperial approval. It would hardly do for their stars to shine brighter than that of Dear Publius, would it?

And when Plotina had learned of a certain renowned senator’s recent batch of failed investments, it had been all too easy. The offer of a dowry for his daughter and the rescue of his family home before it went under the hammer—he had not even blinked at the price Plotina named in return.

“A little whispered slander,” she murmured. “Nothing too overt, mind. Just a word or two dropped to your colleagues over the next dinner party. Perhaps you’ll remember that young Palma seduced a
Roman girl of good family, who killed herself when he refused to marry her. Or that former consul Celsus lined his purse out of his last appointment.” Just enough gossip to taint a man’s reputation among his peers. A man whispered as a lecher or a thief among his colleagues could never be presented as Imperial heir. “You know the kind of thing I mean? It’s for the good of Rome, you understand.”

“Of course, Lady!”

“You might add a word or two about former consul Servianus as well,” she added, musing. Dear Publius’s brother-in-law, and another name that cropped up regularly in Trajan’s letters. “Perhaps you’ll remember to murmur to one or two people that he’s a drunkard or a lecher in his private life?”

“No one will believe it, Lady—Servianus, he’s the most virtuous man in Rome.”

“Well, just the other two, then.” Good enough for a day’s work.

The senator bowed out backward, still spilling compliments. Plotina put her wax tablet aside, giving a little pat to her hair, which now had the most dignified and flattering streaks of gray along the temples. “My face on a statue of Juno,” she said aloud. “I do hope you won’t be offended, dear sister?”

Plotina didn’t have to go to the temple now to speak with Juno. Her sister goddess, she knew, attended her every word.

Winter A.D. 114

TITUS

“Ennia?” Titus wandered into the atrium where Ennia was giving two slave girls a brisk tongue-lashing for dawdling over the laundry. “Have a look at this, and tell me I’m reading it right.”

“You know I can’t read, Dominus.” She dismissed the girls with a flap, coming to squint at the scroll in his hand. “Is that the Imperial seal?”

“It is.” Titus read the message again—brief and brisk, in a soldier’s scrawl. “By the Emperor’s own hand, if I’m not mistaken.”

“All the way from Armenia?” Ennia looked impressed despite herself. “What’s he got to say?”

“I’m being asked for a report on the baths. Also, my opinion is requested on various other official matters—why does he want my opinion, anyway? I haven’t got any ideas. Oh, and I’m being asked for a loan.”

Ennia gave her raucous laugh. “Didn’t take long for the news to get out, did it, Dominus?”

“I suppose not.” There had been more than one surprise to hit Titus after his grandfather’s death, but by far the greatest had been the terms of the will. His grandfather had left all his assets to Titus, and that had been expected; what had not been expected was just how extensive those assets were. “Who ever knew the old gentleman was so smart with his coppers, simple as he lived here at home?” Ennia had marveled. Titus had suddenly found himself the owner of a great many coppers,
not to mention less tangible but no less profitable things such as silver mines, timber yards, properties in Ostia and Ravenna and Brundisium, villas in Baiae and Tivoli and Capri, a fleet of grain ships, a gladiator school, a block of tenement flats on the Esquiline Hill…

It had not taken long, apparently, for news of Titus’s increased fortune to reach the other side of the Empire.
Campaigning’s an expensive business
, Trajan had written frankly in his big open scrawl.
A loan from you would help see my men paid on time this winter, and I’d not forget the favor.

“I suppose even emperors find themselves in debt,” Titus said, wandering back into his study. “Especially when running large armies. I’ll see to the loan right away.”

“You’ll never get it back,” Ennia warned. “Emperors, they’re notorious. When they say loan, they mean
give
.”

“‘All men cheerfully obey when worthy men rule,’” Titus quoted, scrawling himself a reminder to consult the steward in the morning. “Trajan can have my life if he likes; who am I to deny him my money?”

“That’s a quick way to end up poor.”

“Perhaps I shall. But loved.”

“Better get a rich wife, the way you’re splashing it about,” Ennia muttered. “Speaking of which, the locusts arrive in half an hour, and two of them said they’re bringing their daughters.”

“I believe they would prefer to be called guests rather than locusts, Ennia.” But Titus couldn’t help a sigh. “Daughters?”

“
And
a niece.” Ominously.

“Well, see if you can squeeze them in. Preferably not next to me.” Ever since the terms of his grandfather’s will had become common knowledge in Rome, there had been a sharp increase in Titus’s female guests. Colleagues who’d barely bothered attending his dinners were now not only begging to attend but bringing along hordes of unmarried women with them. Titus’s winter had been one long parade of sisters, daughters, granddaughters, nieces…

“Should have married before the old gentleman died,” Ennia said, whisking a spare cloak off Titus’s chair and brushing it off vigorously.
“Now you’re the biggest catch in Rome, and begging your pardon, Dominus, but I haven’t seen one girl yet who isn’t just a pretty little shark smelling blood in the water.”

“There’s bound to be one or two who aren’t just out for the, er, blood.”

“Keeping my eyes open, Dominus, believe me. I want to retire someday, you know. Running this big house all by myself—”

“Quit your grumbling,” Titus chided. Ennia, he knew, had been ridiculously pleased when he asked her to stay on as his housekeeper.

“Me?” she’d said, astounded. “I’d thought I’d help you move out of your apartments back to the family house, and that would be that. You’ll be needing a proper steward now.”

“Like you couldn’t keep that big pile of marble in order,” he teased. After the mourning period was done, he’d moved back into his family home as was expected—but paterfamilias or not, it had felt strange to move through his grandfather’s halls as master. “I wouldn’t have anyone else to manage my household, Ennia.”

“Thought you’d be getting rid of me.” She’d looked up at him shrewdly. “You’ve got coin now for the best fancy ladies in Rome, Dominus. No need for some housekeeper with a slum lord’s mouth. I know what I am.”

“I know what you are too. And I know what you’re worth.” Titus had lifted her skinny wrist and slipped over it a heavy gold bracelet inlaid with garnet and carnelian flowers. The first really costly thing he’d ever bought, and he had to take a deep breath at the thought that such a purchase no longer cost a month’s worth of his yearly allowance. “I want to keep you, Ennia. Anyone makes you a better offer to join their household, I’ll double it.”

“Hmm.” She eyed him, speculative.

“Of course,” Titus added, “I’ll have to
confirm
the offer first.”

She snorted, holding her arm up to admire the bracelet. “Perhaps I’d better stay on after all, Dominus. Else some snake of a girl will snap you up and make your life miserable.”

“No chance of that with you on watch.” And Ennia kept his house,
his slaves, and his guests in better order than he’d ever hoped. Not a girl passed through the hall who didn’t go through the gauntlet of her appraising up-and-down glance.

“Half an hour,” Ennia reminded him again, and whisked out, yelling for the page boys to get the wine warmed before she warmed their backsides for them. Titus tipped back in his chair and read through the Emperor’s letter again.
How are my baths progressing?
Trajan had written after the request for a loan.
I’ve a mind to put you in charge of my
alimenta
program as well; there’s been skimming there and I need someone honest to put a stop to it. Tell me what you think…

Titus looked up from the letter at the bust of his grandfather. The formal death mask had been placed with ceremony in the entry hall, but here he had a less formal bust of the old man, carved with the familiar kindly glint in his eye. “Emperors asking me for advice,” he said. “Strange days, eh, Grandfather?” He still felt self-conscious giving the orders in his family’s house, sitting in judgment when his family’s clients brought their problems to him, signing his name with the authority of his family’s seal ring. He was no longer just “that fellow who quotes.” He was now the fellow who got personal letters from emperors. His sisters looked at him with respect now, instead of scolding him for his untidy hair and his absentmindedness. His opinions were no longer brushed aside in discussion but weighed with all seriousness. People bowed when he passed in the street.

“Fancy that,” Titus told his grandfather, and went to greet his guests.

VIX

One year, just one year, and Armenia was gone.

“All Rome will rejoice at such a victory,” one of the Tenth’s tribunes said pompously—a useless highborn twit whose voice was still breaking. “The day is ours!”

“Easy there, sonny,” I admonished him, but the little squirt was right. All Rome
was
rejoicing when word went out that we had a new province, and with hardly a pause for breath or to celebrate the new year, we marched on Mesopotamia. Our first official foray into the Parthian Empire, and how we cheered when we saw those flat fertile lands stretched out between the vast fork of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

A land in two colors: the flat sand of desert blushing into green beside the rivers; rocks and dunes turning to grassy pastures where goats grazed and nomad shepherds hastily collapsed their tents at the sight of the Roman eagles. A thousand tributaries threaded the land between the rivers, and our feet squelched from dawn to dusk as we crossed one ford after another. Trajan crossed every ford and bridge on foot beside us, bawling out bawdy marching songs, and I cuffed tears from my eyes to see him, so strong and sturdy at more than sixty years of age, making us younger men speed our steps, his iron-gray head bare under the sun. A good portion of the army was cuffing their eyes right along with me. There is no more sentimental creature in the world than the average Roman foot soldier.

We trapped Mesopotamia in a vast fork that year, Lusius Quietus moving east and the Emperor west. I was on permanent loan to Quietus now; he liked my fast-marching men who could be counted on to keep up with his cavalry and could buttress an attack with one hard smash of a charge or lie in wait in the thick of night to jump out of the dark with screams and steel. Hard fights and heady days—this war was wine, it was song, it was a woman but with none of the complications.

We lost Julius that summer in a night attack. I’d swept up a score of men to chase after what was left of a Mesopotamian cohort after we’d shattered their camp in the dead of night, and when I returned I found Julius lying on his back with a broken spear in his side and his eyes reflecting the moon. I wept, and Boil howled as he wrenched the spear from Julius’s side, and I held my
optio
as he beat his big fists against my shoulders in helpless rage. The two of us dug a grave for Julius with our own hands, ordering the other men back when they
tried to help. We laid Julius in the fertile black earth on the bank of the Euphrates, and I buried him with two more campaign tokens that I stripped off my own breastplate in mark of the two enemies he’d taken down before the spear took his life. One of my best scouts was a stonemason’s son, and I had him carve a stone with Julius’s name. “Carve in that he was a descendant of the noble Julius Caesar.”

“Was he?” My scout looked skeptical.

“He was.”

The whole century stood attention around Julius’s grave and one by one poured wine from their skins into the earth. Good men. They might not like me, but they liked my reputation, they liked bragging up their latest feats to the other soldiers, and they boasted there wasn’t a century in the whole Tenth who could do what we did. Whether they were lumped turtle formation in one vast shielded square or whipping through a phalanx of Mesopotamian soldiers in forty separate screaming pairs, there didn’t seem to be a fight my men could lose that year. They were the tip of the spear; they were hardness; they were death. Mesopotamia fell. I jumped up another rank.

Now, now, now.

We wintered in Antioch again at the end of that year. “Thank God,” Mirah said, having somehow managed to find us a tiny room of our own on the ground floor of a tall tenement building in the western quarter of the city. “Not that I don’t like a little adventure, and it is lovely seeing all this beautiful countryside before you and your locust band of soldiers move through and destroy it, but I’ll be happy to give birth to this baby in a bed and not a wagon.”

“You’re bigger this time around, aren’t you? Well, not you,” I said hastily as my wife’s eyes shot daggers. “You’re slim as ever—look at those ankles! Just the baby, I mean. It’s bigger.” Mirah had quickened again when Dinah turned a year old, but I didn’t mind. Our daughter wasn’t much trouble: a placid baby who slept soundly at night and was even now cooing to herself and crawling around the hard-packed dirt
floor with a crude little wooden horse Antinous had carved for her. At least I thought it was a horse. I’d been teaching him how to handle a knife and he might know how to stab someone with it, but he couldn’t whittle worth a damn. He sat frowning in the corner now, hacking bits of wood off a crude block. “What’s that going to be?” I asked him, sinking down on the edge of the bed. I’d spent so many months in bedrolls on hard ground, a mattress felt too soft for sleeping.