Lady of the Eternal City (32 page)

The waiting crowd rippled, and Ceionia’s eyes flashed under her downcast lids. “Do you see Pedanius Fuscus yet?”

“Get your ankles ready.”

It was always an occasion when a boy donned the
toga virilis
for the first time. Everybody knew Servianus had pinned his hopes on the Emperor returning from the east to see Brine-Face become a man—“otherwise he’d have surely put on his toga at fourteen,” Ceionia whispered. But the Emperor had taken his entourage to Judaea rather than return to Rome, and so Brine-Face had his toga.

Annia could just make him out across the heads of the crowd, his hair gleaming barley-brown in the morning sun. This morning he’d have put aside his childhood tunic, taken the
bulla
amulet from his neck, and hung it up for the household gods, and according to law, that made him a man. Annia didn’t understand why. Girls didn’t get a ceremony when they became women. All she’d gotten when she started her monthly bleeding was a demonstration with cloth pads and a warm hug from her mother, and a lecture from the housekeeper about not running around flashing her ankles for Marcus anymore. What
was
this obsession with ankles, anyway? She wished she could ask Marcus that—he was standing behind her now, not hearing Ceionia’s little kitten-claw digs—but Annia poked his elbow and instead asked, “Why aren’t
you
getting your
toga virilis
yet? You’re more a man than Brine-Face.”

Marcus fingered the
bulla
about his neck, watching Pedanius strut past alongside his grandfather. “I don’t think I’m ready. I’d still rather stay up late reading than start my obligations as a man. I should be more resigned to my duty before I put the toga on, or I won’t do it the honor it deserves.”

“Prig,” Annia teased, but thought Marcus could have done justice to a toga. Even in his boy’s tunic he was slender and strong, his face high-cheekboned and serious, like he could mount the Rostra at any moment and give a speech. But it was Brine-Face at the Rostra today, new toga gleaming in the sun, accepting his formal congratulations with an easy white grin, and getting a roar from the crowd.

“He’ll be needing a wife soon,” Ceionia speculated. “Since he’ll be emperor someday . . .”

“Says who?” Annia snorted.

“Who else can the Emperor choose but his great-nephew?” Ceionia patted at her smooth hair, wound crownlike around her head. “Pedanius will need an empress.”

“Not you. Empresses kill people”—remembering Aunt Sabina and her curse tablets—“and you can’t even kill a flea without squealing.”

After Brine-Face’s ceremony, Servianus hosted a great feast and invited half of Rome. “Where are you going?” Marcus whispered as Annia slid behind her parents and began sidling toward the gardens.

“No one will notice if I’m gone,” she whispered back. “My father only said I had to
come
, not that I had to
stay
.”

“You should train for a lawyer,” Marcus disapproved.

She thumped him on the arm. “Go sit with Ceionia. She’s angling to marry Brine-Face, but she’ll cast her lashes at you, too.”

“I wouldn’t mind that. She’s pretty.”

“Just like a boy,” Annia said, nettled, “getting his head turned by
pretty
.”

“Not just pretty, properly behaved. A man likes that once in a while.”

“You’re not a man yet!” Annia made a face as he disappeared into the triclinium. Now she
really
needed a run.

Servianus was always extolling austerity, so of course his villa and gardens were some of the most sumptuous on the Palatine Hill. Annia reckoned there was a good half mile down the length of the sculpted terraces and back, and she took off at an easy speed, relishing the rich summer grass under her bare, flashing feet. Down to the gate, turn and back, and she let her strides lengthen. The trees flashed past and the wind tore at her hair; the soles of her feet stung and her blood pounded in her ears. She finished her third circuit at a flat sprint, skidding to a halt by her discarded sandals and sticking her head under the fountain’s spray. Raking a hand through her wet hair, she laughed aloud even though she was still gasping for breath.

She remembered that soldier, the russet-haired one who had taught her how to run.
Run till you throw up
, he’d said.
And if you still feel like hitting somebody after that, then it’s because they deserve to be hit.
Annia hadn’t seen that soldier again—he’d left Rome, and there had been some sort of scandal her father refused to talk about. She wished he would come back, so she could thank him. Because the running helped. It helped
everything.

She could feel her heartbeat slowing, the contented tiredness leaking into her muscles. She looked down at herself, and saw happily that the blue dress was a sweaty wreck. She could go back in and her mother would make a great fuss—“Goodness, child, I must take you home!” She said it scoldingly, but Annia never got punished. Not when it was a really boring party they were fleeing. She prepared her penitent face, scooping up her sandals.

“What are you doing?”

Annia looked up to see Pedanius Fuscus standing there, muscled arms folded across his chest. “Nothing.” She started to move past him, then hesitated. She knew what her father would want her to say, and if he were here he’d give her one of his quietly formidable gazes.

“Congratulations,” she added with a bump of a curtsy. “Upon reaching your manhood, Pedanius Fuscus.”

His hand caught her arm as she began to brush past. “Let me show you something.”

“What?”

“Over here.” He had a gleam of sweat on his upper lip, and she was close enough to see that his jaw was rough even if he was only seventeen. “Come on.”

“No.” That was how silly princesses and nymphs got themselves abducted in the myths her nurse told her. Persephone, wandering off all by herself like an idiot, easy prey for Hades to snatch. “I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” Annia said, and yanked her arm free.

But he grabbed again, and he shoved her back into the garden with both hands this time. “I’m a man now,” he said as she stumbled back against the fountain. “So you do what I say.”

“Boy or man, you’re still just Brine-Face,” she retorted. “I’m going inside.”

“No,” he said. And took a step toward her.

Annia gave an insolent shrug, and then she whirled and bolted. “Catch me if you want me,” she mocked over one shoulder. Pedanius could
never
catch her. He was big and slow, weighed down in heavy folds of toga. She’d cruise ahead of him just long enough to hear him curse, and then she’d sprint off with a laugh.

But Annia veered away from the terraced gardens, because that way was just one long open stretch and she’d never lose Brine-Face there. She didn’t know the gardens here as she did her own; she bolted laughing through a stone archway, leaped a small lily pond in one long vault, and then her laughter ended. Because she’d come into the stone enclosure of the
nymphaeum
with its quietly plashing water, and the
nymphaeum
was enclosed on three sides. She was already turning and gathering herself for another sprint, but Pedanius was in the entranceway, breathing hard, blocking her way entirely with his wide chest and planted feet. They were a long way from the noisy triclinium where her father laughed with his grandfather.

Annia wasn’t afraid. It was just Brine-Face, after all. “Out of my way,” she said.

He grinned. “No.”

She feinted at one side, but he just batted a big arm, and all that training he boasted of with his sword instructors had done its work, because Annia went down with a crash, the whole side of her head ringing. The breath left her in a whoosh, and she felt Brine-Face’s big hand in her hair, yanking her up to her knees. Her whole body vibrated with shock as she looked up at him.

“My grandfather says I can have a slave tonight,” Pedanius said. “Any one I want. He says it’s the other part of being a man, and that’s a joke, because I’ve been having slave girls for years. They aren’t any sport; they just lie there.”

That was when Annia felt fear curling through her stomach in cold tendrils. She tried to jerk away, but Pedanius gave her hair a yank that sent sparkles of pain all over her scalp. “I wanted a proper whore,” he went on. “A courtesan with long legs who knows how to please a man, but my grandfather’s too cheap.”

Annia clawed at the big hand in her hair, but her nails were too short and bitten to draw blood.
Why didn’t I ever grow my nails out long like Ceionia?
she thought wildly.
I could rake his arm open to the bone!

“Maybe it’s better this way.” Pedanius gave her head another hard shake. “I’d have to pay a whore, and I don’t have to pay you. I’m going to be Emperor, and you’re going to get on your knees and tell me so.”

“I won’t,” she managed to say. But she was already on her knees, and she could see a bulge under his toga.
Oh, Hades
, she thought, and the word kept going around her head in circles.
Hades, Hades, Hades
—“I won’t!”

“Yes, you will.” Pedanius grinned again. “Because I’m going to fuck you.”

“I’ll kill you.” She hated how high and unsteady her voice came out. “My
father
will kill you!”

Pedanius laughed. “You won’t dare tell him.”

“I tell my father everything.” Yanking against his fist. “I’ll tell him you ruined me!”

“I said I was going to fuck you, not ruin you.”

“What—what do you mean?”

“You don’t know anything, do you?” Pedanius looked nervous, but he looked giddy too, flushed and eager. He gave his hips a jerk. “I’d make you open your mouth and suck on it, but you’d just bite me like the little snake you are. And I can’t fuck you up the front without ruining you. So I’ll go up the back, like the Emperor takes that Bithynian he-bitch who dared call me a bully. And if you try to tell anyone, they’ll examine you and you’ll still be a virgin, and they’ll call you a liar.”

You’re an idiot
, she wanted to shriek. Like her father wouldn’t believe her if she came to him bleeding from
anywhere
. But she didn’t have any scorn to pour into her voice, just fear, and all she could manage was a whisper. “He’ll still believe me.”

“But my grandfather won’t. He already thinks you’re a whore, the way you run around flashing your legs. If your father comes to him, he’ll just say you tempted me and then you’ll be ruined anyway without me fucking you at all. Not even stupid Marcus will marry you then.”

Marcus. What she wouldn’t have given to see Marcus wander up to the
nymphaeum
—but he was inside, talking Stoicism with her father or flirting with Ceionia.

“Say it.” Pedanius wagged her head side to side with his fisted hand in her hair. “Call me Caesar. Do that, and I won’t make it hurt too much.”

Oh
, Annia thought inanely,
I think it’s going to hurt a lot
. She hardly understood the things he was saying he’d do to her but she was certain they would be painful. She lashed out at the bulge under his toga, but he gave her a casual slap that rang Annia’s ears. Somehow that shocked her more than anything.
Brine-Face
, she kept thinking,
this is Brine-Face
. The boy who hit only when nobody was looking, who tattled to his grandfather whenever anyone hit back. Brine-Face, who she’d always found about as frightening as an oyster. Brine-Face, who was releasing her hair and stepping back out of reach.

Annia tensed, still on her knees but gathering her toes under her so she could run. But there was nowhere to run.

“Say it.” He pointed at her. “‘Caesar.’”

She swallowed, still eyeing the bulge.

“Say it!”

She tasted bile. “Caesar.” The word was treason, and it tasted like ash.

“Emperor Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator.”

“Emperor Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator.”

“That’s a start,” he crowed, still sounding like that strutting little boy she’d whacked with a mallet when she was four years old. What she would have given for a mallet, because he was hauling up the folds of his toga.

“I’m not taking this off,” he informed her. As if she cared. “It should happen in the toga, because only men get to take virgins. Down on your hands and knees.”

No.
She was full of terror, but she pushed the word out. “No.”

He grabbed her by the hair again, shoving her down on her hands and knees. She heard him behind her, hauling at his toga. Felt her own pounding blood, tasted rancid fear. She was trembling like it was the last lap of a sprint, one of her bad sprints where she was running out a red haze of temper. Only now there was nowhere to run.

Annia felt his hand hauling up her skirts. Felt air on her naked thighs, and such a rush of shame she almost vomited. Felt him come closer, the brush of his toga against her spread legs. “You’re ugly, but I like your legs,” he said, still sounding nervous but also excited. “Maybe I’ll take you in the front after all, if you promise to wrap those legs around me.”

Annia squeezed her eyes tight shut, her heart hammering in her throat, and kicked behind her with one foot. A stiff kick like a donkey, the knee bent and the foot flexed hard.
The angle
, she thought desperately. It had to be just right—she’d been sizing it up as he forced her down. If she caught him wrong, he’d just swear and get on with it.

She missed the groin. But Pedanius let out a yelp as Annia’s heel slammed into his ankle. He staggered, and Annia lunged out of reach, scrambling to her feet. She could hardly see through her flying hair, but Pedanius was on the ground clutching his ankle. He was still blocking the entrance of the
nymphaeum
, and she backed up to leap across him like she’d vaulted the little lily pond.

But she couldn’t run away like that. She couldn’t.

“Coward,” she hissed, and rage billowed up in her like a red monster. “You couldn’t
fuck
me if I was the last girl in the Empire!” The first time she’d ever used such a foul word, and it fed the rage like kindling to a fire. Maybe this was the ceremony that turned girls into women, rather than some idiotic ritual of putting on a bundle of chalked cloth. You became a woman the first day a man attacked your virtue. “You won’t ever be Emperor,” she said, “
never
.” And she cocked her head back and spat on him. Right on the folds of his new toga.