Empress of the Seven Hills (61 page)

Emperor Trajan was dead.

“I don’t think many people know yet,” Titus said to Faustina. “There will be a formal announcement for the Senate, but—”

“Of course no one knows yet,” Faustina interrupted, puzzled. “It only happened an hour ago.”

“What?”

“My father.”

For a moment he couldn’t speak, couldn’t collect his reeling thoughts. “Your
father
?”

“Mother found him at his desk.” Faustina’s voice was thin. “He looked so peaceful, she thought he must be sleeping. He must have drifted off over his books—he never called out.”

Titus sank down on the bench and took her in his arms. Trajan dead. Marcus Norbanus, dead.
Oh, no. Oh, no no no.

That changed everything.

“What were you talking about?” Faustina’s eyes were full of tears, but she was trying valiantly to hold them back. “Is someone else dead?”

He hesitated.
She’s lost her father; don’t burden her.
But Faustina was no fragile blossom who couldn’t bear a breath of bad news—if there was anything she shared with Sabina, it was toughness. “Trajan.”

The tears spilled over then. Titus held her, not ashamed to find his
own eyes leaking. They clung together on the bench, Faustina burrowing into his shoulder like a child, Titus turning his face against her smooth fragrant hair.

“I’m glad Father didn’t know.” Faustina finally sat up, dashing the last tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. “He worshipped Trajan. Who’s to be Emperor now?”

Titus forced the words out. “Your brother-in-law. Hadrian.”

Faustina’s tear-drowned eyes sprang wide. “
Hadrian?
We can’t know that yet, the Senate hasn’t—”

“He was acclaimed on Trajan’s deathbed. It’s already all over the city.” News like that shouldn’t have leaked out, not before the Senate had been informed first, but somehow it had. Titus wondered if the Empress had had a hand in that. Far harder for the Senate to reject Publius Aelius Hadrian as Emperor of Rome when the rumor had already spread through the city that Trajan had adopted him as son and heir on his deathbed.

Faustina gave a small dazed shake of her head. “Hadrian,” she repeated, blank. “Trajan would never have chosen him!”

Surely not, after he got my letter.
And Trajan
had
received Titus’s letter—he’d sent a brusque note of thanks, and mentioned something about a longer talk once he was back in Rome.
I’ve got plans for you, boy
, he’d written in his soldier’s scrawl.

Not anymore. But Empress Plotina would have plans of her own. Oh, yes. Titus remembered the strange ripple of her face when he’d confronted her, the dread he had of turning away, as if she might spring onto his unprotected back in one mad leap like a spider.
You’re safe
, he’d told himself.
The Emperor knows the truth now; he won’t listen to any of her poison. And once Trajan is gone, she won’t be Empress anymore. She’ll have no influence in Imperial matters.

He hadn’t counted on Trajan dying. Hadn’t counted on Plotina
succeeding
, actually being able to buy her protégé the purple.

However she’d pulled it off, it was done. Plotina had made her Dear Publius emperor, and doubtless he’d be grateful for the favor. Titus
heard her snarl again in his ear, clear as if she stood an inch behind him.
I will see you dead for this.

“Titus?” Faustina’s voice brought him back—that low, sweet-toned voice that could vibrate through his chest like the plucked string of a lyre. “You’re a thousand miles away.”

“Just wondering how Sabina will take it.” He forced a smile after the lie. “Being Empress. Somehow I don’t think it will suit her.”

“It would suit me!” Faustina tried to smile, but her eyes began to fill again. “Gods, I don’t care if Hadrian’s emperor, or my sister’s empress. I don’t care about any of it. Father, Trajan—the two best men in Rome are dead.”

And so am I
, Titus thought.

He took a deep breath and said it. The thing he’d come here to say, the thing that had squatted painfully in his throat like a ball of thorns all the way to the Norbanus house. “I can’t marry you, Faustina. Not now. Not ever.”

Her head jerked up and she stared at him.

“You’d be marrying a dead man.” The words came out very flat. “Plotina’s wanted me dead since I exposed her for a thief, and now that Hadrian’s taken the purple she’ll get her wish.”

“That’s absurd!” Color flooded Faustina’s cheeks. “Hadrian doesn’t have any reason to—”

“He’s disliked me since the campaign in Dacia where I showed him up for a fool in front of Trajan.” And for another reason he had no intention of telling Faustina: Plotina had seen Titus that night when he kissed Sabina. She’d have told Hadrian about that by now, certainly, and he wasn’t a man to overlook such a slight. No, the new Emperor had no reason to extend any mercy to Titus.

“Sabina wouldn’t allow it! If she’s the Empress of Rome—”

“She won’t be the real Empress. Not the one with the power.” Titus thought of the coltish senator’s daughter who had sprawled on the floor with a map, planning to see the world.
My poor girl, you won’t be seeing much of it now.

“My father,” Faustina began automatically, and stopped.

Marcus Norbanus’s support might have given Titus some protection—he was a patron even an emperor might hesitate to cross. Titus had come here today to consult with him, see if there might be protection from Plotina’s vengeance. But Marcus Norbanus was dead.

“You see why I can’t marry you.” Titus released her hands, putting them gently away from him. “You deserve a husband who will last out the year, and—”

“Shut up!” Faustina jumped to her feet. “You think you’re getting rid of me that easily, Titus?”

He looked up at her, standing there before him. Lovely, lissome, steady, and sweet—and safe. Safe as long as he didn’t marry her, anyway. Because any wife he took would be a widow within the year… or would be dragged down with him.

The pain kicked him then, square in the chest.
I can’t do it
, he thought numbly. The hurt clawed at his innards like a live thing.
Dear gods, I can’t give her up. I just
found
her!

Be quiet,
he told himself harshly.
She’s not for you. She never was.

“I’ll be leaving now.” He rose from the marble bench. “Give my sympathies to your mother, and explain why I won’t be attending your father’s funeral procession. It will be easier that way for both of us.”

Tears had flooded into her eyes again, but she refused to let them spill over. “You don’t mean it,” she whispered. “You can’t.”

He averted his eyes. “I’d better go. The madness about Trajan’s death will be hitting soon, I imagine.”

He hoped desperately that she wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t cling to his hand and beg him to stay… but she just lifted her head bravely, reaching out to straighten the folds of his toga over his shoulder. Somehow that was worse.

She stepped against him, taking his face between her hands, and pressed her lips to his. His arms rose to circle her, and her mouth opened under his like a bud.
Stop
, Titus thought, but he drank her desperately and it was a mistake.

His hands gripped her long waist, skimmed her round breasts, buried themselves in her hair. She pressed herself against him hungrily, and the strap of her dress fell down her arm and the warm silk of her bare shoulder was under his mouth. She murmured wordlessly, tugging him backward without ever moving away, until they fetched up hard against the wall of the house, out of sight from the garden or the atrium. Faustina pulled his head down again, and the other strap of her dress slid down, and Titus could have drowned in her hyacinth scent.

A shutter slammed open on the other side of the house, and Titus heard the sound of a woman’s stifled sob. A slave, perhaps, grieving for a kind master as she went about her duties. The sound brought Titus out of himself; sent a wash of confused shame through him.
Not one hour ago I heard the Emperor of Rome was dead—and I’m undressing his great-niece against a wall?
Marcus’s daughter…

Faustina had stilled in his arms, as if the world had suddenly come rushing back to her too, and as if she found it a frightening place. “My father is dead,” she said in a thin voice, and just leaned her head against Titus’s chest.

He held her quietly. On the other side of the house there was another slam as the shutters banged closed, and another muffled sniff of suppressed tears. Definitely a slave woman. Soon, Titus supposed, another slave would be sent to look for the daughter of the house.

He stepped away from the gentle weight of Faustina’s head against his shoulder, and somehow that was harder than stepping away from her kisses. “I suppose you thought you’d seduce me, and then I’d be honor-bound to marry you?” His voice came out reasonably steady, and his hand too as he eased the shoulders of her dress back up. “I’m afraid that’s not going to work.”

“I didn’t really think it would, but it was worth a try.” Faustina met his eyes square, her blond hair uncoiling down her back from its neat pins, her mouth swollen from kissing and her eyes swollen from tears. Her voice, though, was pure steel. “I am
not
giving you up, Titus.”

“I’m going to
die,
don’t you understand?” He said it brutally. “Once Plotina sees her precious protégé crowned, she’ll start settling old scores. She’ll probably send a squad of butchers for me in the middle of the night. So for once in your life, Faustina, won’t you do as you’re told and stay away from me?”

“I don’t think you really like women who do as they’re told, Titus. Sabina always does exactly as she pleases and gets exactly what she wants, and so do I. We may not be much alike in other respects, but we have that one thing very much in common.”

Titus turned away from his betrothed. His hand clenched and unclenched about a crushed fold of his toga, and his eyes burned. He could still taste the sweet smooth skin of her bare shoulder.

“Maybe you’re right.” Faustina’s arms slid about his waist from behind, and he felt her warm cheek lean against his back. “Maybe Hadrian won’t let you live. But the worst thing that will happen to me, Titus, is that I’ll be a very,
very
wealthy widow.”

He gave a short laugh, and for one wild moment thought of fleeing. Taking Faustina and running with her to Britannia, to Hispania, to anywhere.

But where did you go when your enemy was master of the world?

He turned, folding her back into his arms. “I love you, Annia Galeria Faustina.”

They clung together silently in the dusk.
Walk away
, Titus told himself.
Walk away now.
But he couldn’t move, not with Faustina’s arms knotted around his waist like a circle of rope.

“Do you want an old-fashioned iron ring?” he asked her. “Or one of the new ones with gold set in iron?”

“Just iron.” Faustina tilted her head up at him, giving a watery smile. “Iron lasts, and we’re going to last too. We’ll be
old
together, Titus. Hadrian won’t kill you, you’ll see. You won’t be dooming me when we get married—you’ll be saving yourself. Hadrian won’t be able to touch you once you’re his brother-in-law.”

He let her think it. She scolded him a little as she scrubbed at her eyes—“You’ll have to buy me something very expensive to make up for this, you know!”—and he just feasted his eyes on her, wondering how long he would have to enjoy his wife.

And who they would finally send to kill him.

VIX

The day after he arrived in Selinus, my new Emperor sent for me.

No. Not
my
Emperor. Just
the
Emperor. That supercilious prat Hadrian would never be my Emperor, not if he ruled a thousand years.

I saluted as I came into the little study with its makeshift luxuries. Hadrian leaned back in the most comfortable of the cushioned chairs, bearded and busy in a black toga, reading a letter and at the same time dictating another to a hovering secretary. Freedmen scurried to and fro with armloads of correspondence, slates and scrolls, gifts from officials eager to show the new Emperor their loyalty. Hadrian managed to direct the stream with flicks of his free hand, never missing a beat in either his reading or his dictating, gently rubbing one foot along the back of the dog sleeping at his feet—and he still had an eye to spare for me as I entered.

“Sir.” I came to parade rest.

“—about the gardens outside Antioch. I want the Castallian Fount blocked up with a stone. It predicted I would become Emperor, and I won’t have it predicting the same for anyone else. Sign it,
Hadrian, son of Trajan Caesar
.” He gestured the secretary to carry on, and raised his eyebrows at me pointedly. “‘Sir?’”

“… Caesar,” I managed to choke out, saluting again.

“Better,” he said, and held out his hand for the secretary’s scroll. “I’ll sign that now, thank you. Bring me the packet for Vercingetorix, please.”

I fixed my gaze somewhere over Hadrian’s shoulder as he signed a
series of documents. I couldn’t look at him without the gorge rising in my throat. He had arrived yesterday on what was undoubtedly the fastest ship that could leave from Antioch. He had disembarked from his black-sailed trireme, head covered in mourning, and bowed before the rise of cheers started off by Empress Plotina—former Empress Plotina—and her ring of toadies. I had not clapped once, from my spot in the back of the crowd of officers. All I wanted was to get out of this barren ghostly little town and back to my men. Back to route marches and battles and the clash of javelins and the swearing of my legionaries. Back to the things I understood.

I hadn’t expected to be summoned. Surely a new Emperor had better things to do than demote old enemies? And my record spoke for itself. Hadrian might be a cold bastard, but cold bastards are practical men. Surely he would let me continue the work I’d done so well for Trajan?

But I remembered the cool murderous gaze Hadrian had leveled on me in a feasting hall in Germania, a gaze I’d given back in full furious measure, and I couldn’t help a shiver.