Lady of the Eternal City (20 page)

“Did not,” Annia said.

“Did too.” Sabina smiled. “You were still as a mouse till you saw a way to make a fuss. And you never sit still for anything.”

Annia’s scowl was pure Vix.

“Don’t worry,” Sabina reassured her. “I won’t tell. You were very helpful.”

“Antinous helped too,” Annia said, and Sabina looked for her favorite page. She’d invited him to take a post in her household, at Hadrian’s irritated request—Antinous had somehow ended up on Hadrian’s trireme rather than Sabina’s, on the voyage back from Athens. “I don’t care to have the boy underfoot when he once tried to break my nose, Vibia Sabina. Take him into
your
service if you insist on sponsoring him!”

She had—and she made a point of never taking him with her if she was accompanying the Emperor on any function. That was for Vix, who didn’t favor his son’s new post. “I offer to send him to the Tenth Fidelis as a tribune, and he’d rather pour your wine?” Vix had complained.

“You had better not still be thinking I have a lustful eye for him,” Sabina said tartly.

“Maybe he has an eye for you.” Vix’s eyes had crinkled the way they did ever since Eleusis. That way that could still turn her stomach over and over as though she were a girl. “At least my son has good taste.”

Annia was still looking worried, chewing on her lip as she looked across the box at her father, and her cousin Marcus followed her eyes. “Why was the Emperor talking to your father for so long?” little Marcus whispered. “What happened?”

“He made him consul,” Annia replied. “What’s a consul?”

“A consulate”—Sabina supplied the answer—“is the highest rank to which a man of Rome may aspire.”

“If he is not emperor,” Marcus corrected, and began droning something about the required terms of service.

Annia just looked up at Sabina. “Why?” A whole host of questions hovering behind that one wide-eyed word.
Why is my father in danger? Why is he now consul? Why did the Emperor do it?

And the Empress had to wonder as well. Because she would have laid any odds in the Empire that mercy had not been on Hadrian’s mind when he first crooked his finger at Titus across the Imperial box.

ANTINOUS

Hadrian’s Villa

“This isn’t a villa. It’s a small city!” Empress Sabina looked out over the nest of marbled buildings stretching out around them. The Imperial party had arrived for the first glimpse of the Emperor’s fabled new domicile, his resting place outside Rome from which he could rule an empire in peace, and Antinous had to school his face into utter innocence.

“Very beautiful,” he said, handing the Empress out of her litter, and hoped his surprise wasn’t too obviously feigned. He’d never been much of an actor.

“Let us hope Hadrian thinks so.” She tilted her head at her husband, swinging off his horse and making for the architects. “He’s complaining already.”

“—first set of porticoes, not right at all.” Hadrian’s critical voice drifted clearly back to Antinous’s ears. “Far too sprawling compared to the plans I drew—”

Don’t overdo it, my love
, Antinous thought with a ripple of inward laughter. All those frowns and tutted sighs as the Emperor strode up the marble steps, and Antinous knew it was all to make him laugh, because Hadrian had seen everything already and loved it, and so had Antinous. Two nights ago they had been lying in bed, Antinous listening to the Emperor’s heartbeat as Hadrian expounded on his much-awaited villa. “Four years leaving the architects to their own devices; doubtless they mucked everything up! I should have stayed in Rome if I wished to see it all done as I wished—”

“And died of boredom,” Antinous had laughed.

“But I’ve dreamed of building this villa all my life.” How he could worry, this ruler of the world! “What if it falls short?”

“Then let’s go tonight.” Antinous sat up, tossing the covers back.

The Emperor blinked. “What?”

“Let’s set that restless mind at ease.” And they had taken two guards and two horses and sneaked out of the Eternal City like a pair of errant schoolboys escaping the
paedogogium
in search of whores and wine. A long midnight gallop under the moon, helpless with laughter, racing their horses till they lathered white. “Gods,” Hadrian gasped when they pulled up. “Antinous, the things I do for you!”

“Quick, Caesar!” Hurling himself off his horse, he tossed the reins to the guard who stood as stolidly as though deaf and blind. “We’ll have to move fast if we want to be back unseen!”

“And why should the world not know that I decided to view everything a few nights early?”

“Because it’s more fun this way!” Antinous shouted over his shoulder, taking the steps three at a time. Hadrian had sprinted after him, broken leg now healed to full strength, and he tackled Antinous at the top and got him in the same arm-lock Antinous had put him in Eleusis. He had held Antinous there till he begged mercy, still laughing, then kissed him till he begged mercy again.

And now Hadrian was striding about as though he had never seen it before.

“Those poor architects,” Empress Sabina said. “Look at them sweating. I do hope he doesn’t throw them to the lions.”

He’d never toss anybody to the lions
, Antinous thought. Though his Imperial lover wasn’t above
pretending
he might. “I encourage dark rumors,” Hadrian had laughed, some months ago when Antinous asked rather tentatively about some of the more sinister tales that swirled about his lover’s name. “People work harder not to annoy me when they think I’m a touch ruthless!”

Antinous wondered what his father would have thought of that.
Likely refused to believe it.

“If you will note the presence chamber, Caesar—” The chief architect groveled into an airy vaulted chamber as the Imperial party flocked after. “Built as you specified—”

Hadrian frowned. “
Blue
mosaics?” And Antinous had to bite his lip to keep from laughing, because two nights ago the Emperor had dragged Antinous into this chamber and stood behind him using his hand to point, alight with excitement. “I wanted the colors to echo the provinces I’ve seen! The south wall, you can’t see in the dark, but that should have a mosaic in shades of green, like the forests in Gaul. Gold on every statue, like the golden plains in Mauretania. And finally . . .” Pointing Antinous’s finger to the tiles beneath their foot, as his lips moved over Antinous’s ear in that lazy pattern that made him tremble. “Sapphire-blue floors, like the seas we sailed over from Athens. Remember?”

“I remember,” Antinous had whispered.

“All very Greek,” Servianus was saying now, peevishly. He was in an ill humor because of course he’d wanted to bring the boy he’d been pestering Hadrian to adopt as heir—“My grandson should be present to see the legacy you have built, Caesar”—and Hadrian had snapped, “I didn’t build it for him, I built it for me.”

Antinous could have told Servianus that the worst way to get Hadrian to do anything was to nag. He’d been the Emperor’s companion for six months, but he’d known that at six
hours
.

Six months.
Can he still make me so dizzy after six months?
Just watching Hadrian go striding through this vast villa was enough to melt Antinous’s knees. Hadrian was so much the Emperor today, toga falling about him in crisp folds as he surveyed a banqueting suite equipped with wrought-silver couches and declared “Fit for the Empire’s finest guests!” in such round tones that Antinous had to cough to hide his splutter of laughter. Two nights ago, Hadrian had wandered through those couches in a mussed tunic and muttered, “Fit for the Empire’s greatest bores.”

And both men were his, somehow: the grand Emperor in Imperial purple, and the laughing man with his trail of dogs. Both treasured
him
, Antinous, Bithynian boy from nowhere.

“And the smaller triclinium, here, for when Caesar wishes to dine alone. The pool will reflect the sunset . . .”

“I want a line of lemon trees,” Hadrian decided, “so the fragrance blows on the evening breezes.” And the architect took notes, and Antinous swallowed a lump in his throat because that was for him, too: lemon trees, for the grove outside Athens.

“Antinous?” Empress Sabina was looking at him. They had fallen behind, Antinous idling in reverie as Hadrian and the rest of the party made their processional way to a set of blue-tiled baths. “What are you daydreaming about?”

“Nothing, Lady.” Antinous banished his smile as he caught up with her sunshade, feeling the usual vague pang of guilt as he looked at his lover’s wife. Because it was an odd thing to be bedding an empress’s husband, even if he knew there had never been any particular passion between them. Perhaps he felt the guilt because he
liked
Empress Sabina—had liked her ever since their sea crossing from Rome to Mysia, when she had taught him to play
latrunculi
. He liked the way she played with ruthless relish, annihilating his pieces one by one, and then swearing as filthily as any legionary when he ambushed her from behind. He liked the fact that she could be all candor one moment and all mysterious silences the next; could be a barefoot urchin strolling a deck and also mistress of Rome in elegant olive-green silks and bands of jade as she was today. A dual woman as Hadrian was a dual man, and maybe all emperors and empresses had to be that way. Maybe he liked Empress Sabina so much because she was like Hadrian.

“Don’t be absurd!” Hadrian had snapped the one time Antinous had ever made the comparison. “My wife is as irksome as any woman ever born, and I cannot think why I did not divorce her years ago!”

“Because she understands you?” Antinous suggested.

“Of course she doesn’t!”

“What do you think of it all, Lady?” Antinous ventured as they strolled into yet another audience chamber. “What do you think of the villa?”

“I think it’s like him.” The Empress tilted her head at her husband, who strode on into the gardens. “It’s all curves, just like his mind. Color and charm and nothing straightforward.”

You do understand him, Lady.
And Antinous had a sudden mad urge to confess everything, to look into those thoughtful eyes lined with crushed malachite and say, “I love your husband more than breath.” Because he could talk of Hadrian to no one, he held his whole overflowing heart in silence—and that was as it had to be, as he’d asked it to be from the start. Only a few Praetorians knew, the ones Hadrian had threatened into silence with words so soft and deadly that even Antinous’s blood ran cold. “You are a dangerous man,” he’d said, trying to laugh off the moment as the men tramped out white-faced, and Hadrian had looked at him with that cold gaze he showed even Antinous sometimes and said, “You wish for secrecy. I give it to you. Do not complain about my methods.”

I do wish secrecy
, Antinous thought, and felt a bleak twist in his gut because he wished for it still. Because of his father—and he knew that it angered Hadrian. “I do not like to sneak, boy. Not on the account of a thug like your father.”

He is not a thug
, Antinous wanted to cry out, but there wasn’t any use trying to make peace between those two. Too much hatred there for that, and sometimes Antinous wondered if Empress Sabina didn’t lie at the root. Because he’d seen her walk out of the trees in Eleusis at his father’s side, wearing his father’s lion skin about her small shoulders, their hands almost brushing, and there was something there in his father’s closed face whenever Antinous spoke the Empress’s name after that.
Is that why you believe the worst of him, Vix? Because you desire his wife?

But that was not something to be spoken of either. Just a small unhappiness, really—a little dark sliver in the joy of these past months. No mortal had uninterrupted happiness; only gods had that, and he was no god. Mortals paid for bliss with grief.

Make it only a little grief
, Antinous prayed nightly.
Let my father not find out.
For another day, for another year, for forever—Antinous lived hour to hour, not letting himself think of the future, of how long Vix could be kept in ignorance.
Let him not find out
now,
that is all I ask.

They’d passed through more gardens, a vast green space with pools and fountains and overgrown statues of Pan and Silenus. Handsome Lucius Ceionius with his silly dressed-up slave girls was declaring they must host a party of maenads with everyone in vine leaves, but Hadrian strode on to the heart of the villa.

“This is for us,” he’d told Antinous when they visited alone. A circular colonnade enclosing a silent pool, and floating on the pool, a tiny marble island of a domicile. “A villa within the villa. A room to work and read, a private bathhouse, a sleeping chamber. Big enough only for two.” And he turned and took Antinous’s face in his hands. “No one to enter unless by
my
invitation. The bridge to be drawn up, so no one may disturb us. You understand?”

“I understand that I love you,” Antinous had replied, and Hadrian’s face had filled with bewilderment.

“Why?”

Antinous laughed. “Is there a
why
with love?” The Emperor shook his head and held him even tighter, rendered speechless for once. Antinous did not really know if Hadrian returned his love in the same measure—there were so many claims on an emperor’s heart and mind and time; could one person ever truly hold full sway? Sometimes the Emperor looked at him, and Antinous had no idea what was passing through that complicated mind, only that it was dark and paralyzing and sometimes filled Hadrian’s nights with torment. Nights when his Imperial lover disappeared without comment and came back after hours, spent and exhausted, and people whispered of some imaginary Hades and the things that happened there. Antinous learned not to speak on those nights, just draw Hadrian’s head into his lap and hum quietly until the taut muscles gave way to sleep.

And the Emperor had created a place in this villa just for them—for the two of them alone. “I need you,” he had said fiercely in the dark as Antinous first gazed on it. “Gods, but I need you!”

I know, my love. I know.