Empress of the Seven Hills (7 page)

“Did she put you up to this?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Hiring me?”

“No, Sabina’s gone to Baiae with her stepmother and the children.”

I couldn’t help a twinge of disappointment. Sabina had put me off the night I kissed her, like a good girl should, but her finger had traced those deliberate circles on the back of the neck that had raised the hair on my arms—raised more than hair, truth be told, and that was not anything to be thinking about right now either. I shifted partway behind a handy chair.

“—Sabina’s idea, taking Calpurnia to the coast for a while,” the senator had continued, unaware of me. “My wife is to have another child”—a smile lit his face, softening the harsh marble-carved lines out of all recognition—“and she’s often queasy in the early months, so Sabina suggested sea air.”

He seemed to shake himself a little, looking back at me. “My idea, in any case, to offer you this position. It occurred to me that you stand some danger of becoming a thug. Your parents, I am sure, would not want that, and I do owe them a debt.”

“Hey,” I said. “I’m no thug.”

“You extort drunk boys in alleys for… what reason, then?”

Maybe he did know more than I took him for. “It’s a living.”

“Not much of one.”

“Being a bodyguard isn’t much either.”

“Consider it a stepping-stone. You will encounter interesting people in this house, people who might be able to help you. A bright young household officer might find a well-placed legate willing to sponsor him as a centurion.”

“In return for services rendered,” I snickered. “No, thanks.”

His mouth quirked. “That’s a danger, true. But there are benefits outweighing the dangers. Emperor Trajan always has his eye out for bright young warriors, and his officers are beginning to look for them too.”

Emperor Trajan. Rumor in the wine shops had it he was heading back up north to Germania soon, to step once and for all on a rebellious king in Dacia who wore a lion skin. I wouldn’t mind seeing an emperor closer up than a box at the races. Maybe something
would
come of working here, something more than just the lodging and light work and regular pay… I thought of fine, flower-tangled hair flowing through my hands, but blinked that particular image back.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“Excellent.” The senator poured a pale stream of wine into a goblet from a decanter at his elbow and pushed it toward me. “Welcome to the Norbanus household, Vercingetorix.”

“Thank you, sir. Dominus.” I remembered the change just in time—I’d have to address him as master of the house, now that I’d joined the household.

Steady pay or not, I didn’t really like calling anyone
Master
again.

Spring fluttered toward a damp hot summer, and I slid into the Norbanus household like an eel into a mud bank. And I had it good.

The work was light. There were only two other guards, both grizzled and graying, happy to dice in the cool garden while I headed off to escort the master to the Senate house. Senator Norbanus was a good master—he might be eagle-eyed over his scrolls, but he was absentminded as far as his household went. In the absence of his wife and
children he was content to eat in his study, dropping crumbs unconcernedly on his wax tablets, or to take a packet of bread and cheese from the cook and limp down to the Capitoline Library, where he’d spend half the day in research. No beatings in this house; no slaves running away in the night or whipped for breaking a dish. I had a new cloak, thick enough to keep the summer rainstorms off my back. I had regular days off to go to the races or the games or the taverns or anywhere else I pleased. The hardest work I had to do was carry an armload of scrolls for Marcus Norbanus on his way to the Senate house.

So why did I feel so bloody
sour
?

“You’re so scowly, Vix,” the freckled slave girl giggled at me. Gaia, her name was, a Greek girl who’d grown up in the Norbanus household, and soon I was counting the freckles on more than her nose. She was buxom and giggly, a soft armful in the night, but I still lay there scowling up at the ceiling after she’d slipped out of my room with another sleepy giggle. And I’d go get drunk on my day off, drunk as I could, and come back with a head so sore even the senator didn’t offer me his usual absent “Good morning” on the way to the Senate house.

Sabina and her stepmother stayed up in Baiae, and that made me sore too. I saw the letters her father wrote to them both; he might have mentioned he had a new guard in the household, mightn’t he? And maybe she’d have come home a little sooner, hearing that, but she didn’t, and why should she? Rich girls, they probably all kissed pleb boys in alleys after a day at the races. Just a bit of spice for them, a cheap thrill before they married and got as fat and painted and plucked as their mothers.

I wasn’t the only one looking for the daughter of the house. Hardly a day went by when some hopeful fellow in a toga didn’t turn up on the doorstep. Old or young, their faces all fell when I said she wasn’t there. “What’s she got that everyone wants?” I demanded of a patrician boy younger than me who had brought a bouquet of lilies and his brand-new toga to the door. “There’s plenty of senators’ daughters in Rome. Lots have got to be prettier than her, richer than her.”

“But they don’t have her connections.” He was too young to be sniffy
about talking to a guard. “She’s great-niece to the Emperor, or maybe a distant cousin. Anyway, she’s the closest unmarried woman of his family. My grandfather says if I land her, it’ll be a sure boost to my career.”

He dropped his armload of flowers on a nearby table. A sprat of a boy, skinny as a bean, but he had a thin pleasant face and a rueful expression. He’d given me his name at the door, some impossibly long string, but all I remembered was
Titus
. “You’re young to be trying for a wife,” I couldn’t help observing.

“Wasn’t my idea, believe me. My grandfather’s ill, and he’s starting to want me settled.” Titus or whatever his name was fiddled with the flowers. “He said I might have a chance—Grandfather’s great friends with her father, so he’s already dropped a few hints for me.”

“Won’t do you any good,” I said. “She gets to pick her own husband.”

“Well, I’m sunk.” He gestured down ruefully at his skinny frame. “Who’d pick me?”

“You never know. Come back when she’s returned from Baiae.”

“I will. Might as well practice this courtship business, even if I haven’t got a chance in the world. ‘No man by fearing reaches the top,’ as Syrus would say.” The boy picked up his armload of lilies and thrust them at me. “Give these to your girl instead.”

“Violets next time,” I advised. “Lady Sabina hates lilies.”

I liked him, Titus whatever-his-name-was, and if I’d known then just how many times we were going to save each other’s lives I’d have paid more attention when I first met him. Yount Titus aside, however, the rest of Sabina’s suitors seemed like a supercilious lot. That fawning worm Tribune Hadrian came calling, and the heavy brows aligned over his nose when I told him he’d made the trip for nothing. “When will Lady Vibia Sabina return?” he deigned to ask.

“Don’t know.” I hooked my thumbs into my belt. “You think she keeps me informed?”

“Ah—” His eyes swept me, recognition flaring. “The boy from the races. You were rude.”

“Still am,” I grinned.

Hadrian regarded me with cool displeasure. “You need a good beating, boy,” he said. “I’ll see you get one someday.”

“How will you manage that, sir?”

“I am resourceful.” He swept out with a flare of purple-bordered toga, and I made a rude gesture at the stiff retreating back.

I got into a different kind of fight the following week, just after my nineteenth birthday, on a warm damp morning when I celebrated my day off by being stupid and going to the Colosseum. I didn’t want to go, knew I’d hate it, but the other guards jeered at me for missing the Vestalia games, so I went. I watched spearmen die on leopard claws and leopards die on spears, and by the time the midday executions rolled around I was drunk. “Games’ve gone downhill since my day,” I belched as a line of shackled runaway slaves were brought out for brisk beheading. “I remember when the rules weren’t so damned strict. Then you’d really see the blood flow.”

“What do you know?” the other guard jeered.

“I
fought
down there, I’ll have you know.” I waved my mug down at the bloody sand where a guard was forcing a struggling man to kneel, and spilled my beer. “I’m the Young Barbarian.”

“Who?”

“The Young Barbarian,” I repeated, outraged. “Youngest ever to fight in the Colosseum! Youngest to fight a bout anyway—” There were plenty of children who died in the arena, heretics or escaped slaves or prisoners, but they didn’t get a sword to defend themselves. A few children huddled down there now, waiting in paralyzed terror beside their parents for the blade through the neck, and I averted my eyes. “Come on, you remember the Young Barbarian!”

They looked at each other and jeered. “Sounds to me like you’re making it up. You weren’t never no gladiator!”

I hit at them with the mug, and one of them hit back, and a fight broke out in our section of the stands—a free-for-all that got me thrown out before the main bouts, and I wasn’t too sorry about that. I staggered out with a spectacular black eye and a bleeding ear, puked in a gutter,
then puked again as I heard the roar of the crowd rise up from the Colosseum and knew it for a signal that the gladiators had fallen on each other.
Poor bastards
, I thought, and my knees gave out and I sat down on the paved curb with my hands dangling between my knees. “No loitering,” a housewife admonished me, pausing to adjust the basket on her arm.

“I’m the Young Barbarian,” I snarled at her. “You don’t want to get too close to me!”

“Barbarian indeed,” she sniffed, and bustled off. Rainwater had gathered in the hole left by a missing stone between my feet, and I restlessly kicked at the puddle. Another roar went up from the great arena behind me, and I wondered if I should just become a gladiator again. At least the sentence wouldn’t be twenty-five years. There weren’t many gladiators who lasted as long as
two
years, much less twenty-five. A short life, but no questions about it—as a gladiator, you knew where you were. Fight or die.

Nothing simple about life now. Years ahead of me, and no idea what to do with them… I fingered the little amulet on its leather lace about my neck. Just a simple brass medallion of Mars, the Roman god of war; the kind you find at any vendor’s stall ten for a copper. My father had given it to me the day I left for Rome. “You should have a proper Roman god to look after you,” he said dubiously, “if you’re going back to that hellhole.”

“Did Mars keep you safe?” I’d asked. “All those fights in the Colosseum—”

“Something did,” he shrugged, and looped the amulet around my neck. The medallion had a stern, scowling, helmeted face on it—Mars looked like a humorless bugger. I rubbed a thumb over the stern visage and looked up at the sky. “Any hints?” I called hopefully. “Gladiator? Legionary? Anything?”

A drop of rain fell on my neck, and the skies opened. I sat there getting wet, trying to work out if it was an omen.

“Fighting, Vix?” The steward eyed me with disapproval when I returned dripping to the house. “A guard with a black eye, it reflects badly on the master. Never mind, pack your things.”

“Pack?” I swayed, tired and wet and still more than a little drunk.

“Senator Norbanus is going to Baiae to join Lady Calpurnia. We leave tomorrow. You’ll be needed to help with the journey—”

“What an admirable black eye,” Senator Norbanus remarked mildly in the morning. “Here, take these scrolls and load them into the litter. Pliny, hmm, I’d better take him. Some Martial, some Cato—can’t do without Catullus—”

A jolting journey in an ox-drawn palanquin. Baiae. I’d never been there. Pretty little town. White marble, blue water, big houses. Women in towels, trotting back and forth from the famous sulfur baths. More patricians here than anything else. Even the prostitutes on the street corners in their saffron wigs looked uppity.

“Marcus!” Lady Calpurnia came running out the front gates of the villa when the palanquin halted. She’d dressed up to greet her husband, all airy yellow silks and chunks of amber in gold settings, an elegant far cry from the cheerful housewife who wasn’t too proud to bake her own bread and gossip with her slaves. Those same slaves had told me Lady Calpurnia had been one of the richest heiresses in Rome—“Oh, she brought Dominus half of Tarracina and Toscana when they married!”—and this was the first time she looked it.

“Good-looking, rich,
and
she loves you,” I breathed to Senator Norbanus as he limped toward his wife. “You fell on your feet bagging that one, Dominus. Any man in Rome would take her for her bread alone!”

He gave me a familiar glance, half irritated and half amused, but didn’t rebuke me for insolence. He’d never have brought down an emperor six years ago if not for me—neither of us had planned it that way, but it happened, and the bond still stuck. He let me get away with more familiarity than I should have. And his irritation faded fast enough as Lady Calpurnia flung herself into his arms. In fact, he reminded me abruptly of my rough gladiator father, who cupped my mother’s face between his hands in just the same way.

It’s not necessarily the beautiful girls that hook you good and tight.
It’s the ones like Lady Calpurnia—the ones like my mother. One of those warm, quiet women starts loving you, and you’re sunk. Be warned.

“Marcus, your eyes look squinty,” Lady Calpurnia was scolding gently. “Have you been reading by bad lamplight again? Vix, take those scrolls right back to the litter; my husband will not be doing
any
work in this villa—goodness, Vix, that’s quite an eye.”

“I know,” I growled.

“Hide the scrolls in my study,” Marcus said low-voiced when his wife turned her back, and I tramped dutifully into the house as little Faustina came running out through the gates to collect her own greeting from her father. A spacious spread-out villa—pools of water sunk under open roofs, porticoed halls with slender columns, mosaics of leaping fish and twining vines on the floors. The study was already occupied when I got there.