Lady of the Eternal City (23 page)

“Annia Galeria Faustina.”

The visitor smiled. “Titus’s girl.”

Annia bounced the ball savagely against the wall again. She wanted to hit, when she got in moods like this. Hit or
be
hit, it didn’t matter. Marcus should have hit her back, when she’d smacked him in the mouth with the ball. He just stood there with a look of surprise on his face, and then told her girls shouldn’t hit boys, and that had made her angrier than ever.

The visitor, whoever he was, had descended into the garden holding out a big rough hand. “Throw to me,” he said, and nodded at the ball in her clenched fist.

“Why?” She knew he wasn’t here to play
trigon
.

“I’m bored and I hate waiting. Let’s play.” He shrugged off the lion skin. “Try to knock
me
off my feet, little girl.”

Annia felt her eyes narrow. “Don’t call me little girl.”

“What, you aren’t little? You aren’t a girl?”

Annia whipped the ball at him. The visitor snagged it easily out of the air.

“Soft,” he said, and tossed it back. “I thought you could throw hard.”

“I can!” Slinging the ball at him again.

“You throw underhanded,” he said. “Try side-arming it like this—”

The ball crashed into her stomach. Annia
huffed
in surprise.

“Too slow,” he mocked, but not meanly somehow. Annia could tell.

“Throw as hard as you can,” she challenged, bouncing on her toes.

“I’d knock you down.”

She narrowed her eyes again. “Will not.”

His arm looped. Annia’s hands whipped up, but the ball streaked between them, catching her square in the mouth. Her head snapped back, but she lunged in the same motion and caught the ball before it could rebound into the grass.

“Still caught it,” she said, and cuffed at her stinging lip. She saw a smear of blood on her hand, tasted the metal tang of it. Smiled.

“Catching it with your teeth doesn’t count,” he said, and came toward her. “I split your lip.”

Annia spat blood into the grass. “So?”

His rough hand tilted her chin up. He really was tall. Her father was too, but he had a way of bending toward you so you felt welcomed rather than intimidated. This soldier stood with his shoulders thrown back, like he didn’t care if he scared you into feeling small.

Well,
she
didn’t feel small. She squared her shoulders right back at him.

“You’re not crying,” he observed.

“I never cry.”

“My girls would be crying.”

“Babies.” Annia spat blood again. “Throw the ball again.
Hard
!”

He threw it for her, snapping it like a whip, and she caught that one even though it stung her hands. She threw it back with a whoop, and he gave a bellow of “
Release pila!
” and heaved it back. He ran Annia all over the garden, had her skidding into walls, diving behind bushes, falling into hedges. She scraped both her knees; she opened both her elbows, her lip puffed up twice its size, and she felt herself grinning ear to ear.

“If you get any more flesh wounds I’ll have to carry you to the medicus.” One final toss. “Let’s call a victor.”

Annia saw blood drying on her scraped knuckles and gave them a swipe across her skirt. “Do I still throw like a little girl?”

“You’ve got promise,” he conceded. “Do you always play this hard?”

“Yes.” She scowled. “I shouldn’t. I can’t. I
tell
myself I’m going to behave, be proper like Ceionia Fabia. A girl who does her weaving and knows how to curtsy—”

“Ceionia Fabia sounds like a bloody bore.”

“She’s what girls are supposed to be. Not me.” Annia peered at him through her fringe of sweaty hair. “I get all full of bad temper. And when I do, I usually hit something or break something. I have to hit, or I hurt.”

“I get moods like that,” the soldier said matter-of-factly. “
Gladius
drill gets it out of me. Don’t suppose you can train with a
gladius
?”

Annia shook her head.

“Have you tried running it out?”

“Running what out?”

“The bad. Have you got a good stretch here where you can run?”

Annia pointed to the gate at the end of the garden, the long stretch past the place where her father’s horses were stabled to the more distant stretch of orderly vines that bordered their villa. “It’s half a mile down to the vineyard and back.”

He waited. Annia cuffed at her lip again. She hitched up her skirt a bit and went into a jog.

“
Faster, legionary!
” came a bellow behind her.
“You lazy clay-brained lackwit!”

She turned, running backward, and yelled back at him. “I am not lazy!”

“Then run faster!” Cupping his hands around his mouth. “Run till you throw up! And if you still feel like hitting somebody then, it’s because they deserve it, and not because your temper’s biting you!”

She whipped back round and put her head down, feet flashing from the grass of the garden to the white dust of the track where the horses were sometimes exercised.

One full lap. Down through the hedges out of sight of the legionary; the full half mile to the wall that bordered the vineyard; giving it a slap; turning about and sprinting back. Sweat trickled down her neck inside her tunic, and her feet burned. The legionary probably didn’t think she’d do it—run till she threw up.

She’d show him.

VIX

“What have you done to my daughter, Slight?”

I heard Titus’s voice behind me. I knew that voice so well, though I hadn’t held a conversation with him in so long.

His daughter’s flying red mane was disappearing toward the vineyard. I braced myself before I turned to face him, dreading the moment I’d have to meet his eyes. Maybe that was why I’d been so willing to dawdle in the garden, throwing a ball to a little girl . . . Titus stood in his snowy toga with his armload of scrolls, consul of Rome with all it entailed, and as I met his gaze I saw that his thin, gentle face had a wry expression. “What
have
you done to my daughter?” he repeated.

“She’s running off a fit of temper,” I said. “Fierce little thing you sired there.”

“Gets it from her mother.” Titus smiled strangely, studying me a moment. “Is that why you came, to get a look at my daughter?”

“No, why would I? I was waiting for you.” But I thought of little Annia’s steely glare, the fierce smile she’d given me as she cuffed blood off her lip, and a little pang of guilt stabbed me. Because I loved my girls, I’d have died for them in a heartbeat . . . But in all stark honesty, they
bored
me. So pretty, so good, keeping their dresses clean and sewing their straight seams and never misbehaving; crying at a skinned knee or a barking dog or a glimpse of a spider. I’d never once played
trigon
with either of my girls. Dinah would squeal in disgust at the thought of getting her hem dirty, and Chaya would be too mortally afraid of scraping her knees.

“So—” Titus looked at me, and I looked back. “Why
have
you come to see me, Slight? Seven years, and you turn up without a word of warning. Seven
years
.”

There was muted anger in his voice, and I bowed my head under the sting because I deserved it. “I’ve come to say good-bye,” I said, and the words felt strange in my mouth. “Maybe it’s been seven years, but—but you’re the only damned person in Rome I wanted to bid farewell.”

“Ah . . .” Titus let out a long sigh. “Well, come in.”

I felt every bit the hulking savage in that beautiful airy villa on the edge of the city. Every graceful line of carved couch or still pool of water spoke of wealth, of peace, of happiness. I saw Titus’s beautiful fair-haired wife across the atrium, a column of smoke-blue silk sharing a laugh with the housekeeper—I saw the enormous crowd of petitioners outside his
tablinum
eager for their consul’s advice, his authority, his calm certainty. I’d cut myself off from my friend in part to protect him, but why had I bothered? Titus was loved by Fortuna, he always would be: Titus Aurelius Antoninus Pius, as they were starting to call him. I was the one cursed.

His petitioners stared at me as I passed, and I saw one or two whisper behind their hands. One of the Praetorians who had seduced the Empress, or tried to rape her, or perhaps shared her bed, along with Prefect Clarus and Imperial secretary Suetonius, who had also been dismissed. No one could be sure what the real reason for our dismissal was, behind the bland and formal words, but everyone whispered. It must have been something very untoward indeed, though, to merit losing my place at the Emperor’s side.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t heard,” I began, as Titus closed the door of his
tablinum
behind us.

“I’d have to be deaf and dumb not to have heard.” Titus sat back, looking at me across his heaped desk. “The whole city’s buzzing.”

“About which part?” I said it brutally. “That I fucked the Empress, or that the Emperor fucked my son?”

“Actually, the part that has people buzzing is just how little anyone seems to really know.” Titus quoted the official announcement that had come from Hadrian’s pen. “‘Tribune Vercingetorix and Prefect Clarus of the Praetorian Guard, and Imperial Secretary Suetonius are to be dismissed because they behaved toward Empress Vibia Sabina in a more informal manner than respect for the Imperial family requires.’ No one quite knows what to make of that, ‘more informal manner.’”

“That’s the point.” Less humiliating for the Imperium altogether, even if everyone had salacious suspicions. Hadrian merely dismissed us, and let the world speculate why. People would suspect adultery, but no one would know for certain. His humiliation would remain private.

“Why Suetonius and Prefect Clarus as well as you?” Titus asked.

“My guess?” I shrugged. “Suetonius because he heard me tell about Sabina, and my Prefect because he was my direct superior and if he didn’t know I’d bedded her, he should have. Or maybe just because dismissing three of us distracts from the fact that the only guilty one is me.”

Titus indicated an inlaid chair, and I sank down into it. Now the questions were mine to ask.

“Did you know?” I looked at him. “About Antinous and the Emperor?”

“No.” The answer came without hesitation. “I don’t concern myself with gossip about the Emperor’s lovers. Had I known, I would have told you.”

“Everyone else knew,” I said. “No one told me.”

Titus’s voice was quiet. “Antinous’s position isn’t the scandal you seem to think. If the Emperor takes a handsome young man to his bed, it’s hardly worth noting. Very few people even realize he is your son.”

“He’s not my son.” I looked away. “He made that very clear.”

“Don’t cast a son away like trash.” Titus’s voice went suddenly cool. “I lost my boy to the shadows of death. You think I wouldn’t trade places with you?”

“You’d wish your son alive again so he’d someday be despised and used by a madman?” I flared. “No, I don’t think you want to trade places with me.”

My old friend was silent, but his cold gaze never wavered. I remembered the nervous young tribune I’d rescued in Dacia, and I couldn’t see him anywhere.

“I’m sorry, Titus.” His eyes hooked it out of me. “I’m so sorry about your son.”

A long moment, and then Titus finally sat forward and filled two cups with a golden wine the color of Antinous’s glinting hair. “And I’m sorry about yours, too.”

We drank. Probably an ancient vintage that cost as much per amphora as a year of my old tribune’s pay. It might as well have been a dram of vinegar in my mouth.

“Sabina is here, you know,” Titus said at last. “Faustina and I invited her, when the news of your dismissal became public. We thought it might help alleviate the talk.”

“Don’t tell me where she is in this big house of yours. I might still be tempted to wrap my hands about her throat and squeeze till her face turns black.”

“She’s hurting every bit as much as you, Vix. You realize the Emperor could divorce her? Exile her?
Behead
her?”

“Yes.” And I felt a certain thrum of guilt for that, but the rage was still sharper. “She knows better than anyone what her husband is, and she still let Antinous go to his bed without a word of warning. Because for Sabina, whatever Hadrian wants he gets. Even my son.”

For that, I refused to regret what I had done.

Titus went on. “The Emperor could have killed you
both
, you know!”

Hadrian would have killed me, right there in the bedchamber with my own
gladius
, but Antinous had gotten down on his knees. Begged for my life, begged for Sabina’s, and the Emperor had listened.

I have to hit
, little Annia had said,
or I hurt
. How well I understood that. I’d seen my son go down on his knees before Hadrian, and now I hurt all the time and I wanted to hit everyone. Everyone in Rome but the man opposite who looked at me with such quiet eyes.

“So you are leaving,” Titus said at last. “Where will you go?”

“Bethar. In Judaea.”

“Why Judaea?”

“Because I don’t care where I go, and Mirah wants to rejoin her own people, so I might as well make her happy.”

God, but my wife was happy! I’d seen the incredulous flash of joy cross her face when I walked through the door stripped of my Praetorian armor and said without preamble, “We go to Bethar as soon as we can make the arrangements.” Joy; she couldn’t suppress it even when I explained the reason. Even as shock rippled through her eyes when I told her what had happened to our son, even as I stood there fighting off sobs, I saw the happiness overtaking her sorrow for Antinous. And I had the urge to hate her. Because how could she be happy when we’d lost our son?

She must have seen the look on my face, because she came to me and drew my head to her breast. “We won’t speak of Antinous,” she said. “Not until you are ready. Not ever, if that is what you wish.”

Not ever?
I’d thought, and wanted to howl.
I don’t want to write him off as lost! I want him
back
!
But the tears came then, and I let it all go and sobbed in her arms.

Titus’s voice broke my bitter thoughts. “How will you live in Judaea? I can’t imagine you outside a soldier’s life.”