Lady of the Eternal City (4 page)

The words burned her tongue, but she forced them out. “Thank you, Caesar.”

He dropped her hand, summoning his dogs, his aides, and his guards with a snap of his fingers. “Return to your chambers. I meet with the Arvals next, and your presence is not requested.”

Old Empress Plotina heard that as she approached, and she looked smug. “Dear Publius,” she began, but he strode past her without a glance, calling for his secretaries.

“I don’t think it matters anymore who is Empress or former Empress, Plotina,” Sabina said. “Dear Publius means to do it all without interference from either of us.”

Plotina sniffed as she stalked out after her protégé, but Sabina did not think Hadrian would be hanging on her advice as he had when her patronage had been worth something. The words of a curse rang through Sabina’s mind, and she could see the letters stark and black as she carved them:
May the Empress die alone, neglected, bitter, and without power.

But I am the Empress too
, Sabina thought with a wrench of her stomach.
And I am just as alone, just as neglected, just as bitter—and just as powerless.
How many empty echoing years stretched out before her? Sabina had no notion, but the dread of it raked at the back of her eyes like hot claws.

The atrium had emptied, the court trailing off whispering of the men who had died, wondering if more men were to die and what their names would be. Sabina had been left alone with only a few slaves and pages, maintaining their posts at the walls and barely hiding, through lowered lids, their curiosity.

Sabina didn’t know how long she stood there, hands folded uselessly over her purple silks, but at last she heard boots on the mosaics behind her. She schooled her face, turning to face Vix because she’d know those footsteps anywhere. He had been almost friendly earlier that morning—his gray eyes had grinned at her in their old way, as he’d used to grin at her when he was a cocky boy. But she turned now and saw him grimmer than he’d ever looked in his life; a scarred soldier with no pity left in him. He had his
gladius
in one hand, unsheathed, and a sack in the other.

Both dripped blood.

Sabina’s hand went to her mouth. A ripple went through the watching pages and slaves, and she heard a faint moan. Someone bleating idiotically, “Is that—”

Vix whipped around at the voice. “What do you think it is?”

Sabina swallowed hard on the well of nausea in her throat, unable to take her eyes from the bulging of the sack. “He will be hated for this,” she heard herself whisper.

Vix’s voice had a harsh grate like iron on stone. “Do you think he cares?”

She gave another hard swallow. A drop of blood collected at the bottom of the sack in Vix’s fist, fell with a thick
plop
to the mosaics.

“The two consuls begged,” Vix said. “The governor of Dacia knelt for me—tried to be brave. The commander—Hell’s gates. I used to
serve
under him in Parthia—”

“Stop.” Sabina cut his words off with a sweep of her hand. They were drawing eyes, she saw—the Empress and the Praetorian speaking so vehemently—and she lowered her voice. “They’re dead, Vix. Gods know I pity them, but they had no chance for mercy. At least Titus isn’t among them.”

“I may still have to kill him.” Vix’s eyes were like pits. “Tomorrow. Next year. Who knows? Your husband made me into his killer, and God knows he loves to kill things. I wonder how long he’ll stare into this sack here, when I lay it at his feet.”

Sabina met his gaze. “I’m sorry it had to be you.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

“We used to be friends—”

“I can’t afford friends. And you spent the last year ignoring me.”

A secret could be a heavy thing; Sabina had discovered that during the past year. It could hang in the pit of the stomach like a burning stone. “You have no idea why—”

He pushed past her, his armored shoulder brushing her bare arm. His footsteps went on without slowing in the direction the Emperor had taken. Sabina closed her eyes a moment, summoning a face like marble. She wanted a basin to vomit into, a pillow to rage into, a shoulder to cry into, and she would have none of those things. Because an Empress was never alone.

All hail the Empress
, she thought savagely.
Vibia Sabina, Empress of the seven hills, mistress of Rome, lady of the Eternal City.

ANNIA

A.D. 122, Spring
Rome

Annia Galeria Faustina never meant to cause trouble. Trouble just happened.

“I won’t do it again,” she promised every time she did something wrong, and meant it. She tried to follow the rules. It wasn’t her fault she kept finding cracks between them.

“Just be gentler,” the housekeeper scolded. “Girls should be gentle!”

“Gentle is boring.” Annia liked to play hard, and guests took her for a boy sometimes, approving of her scabbed knees and the ferocious scowl she wore when she sent the
trigon
ball flying clear up to the roof of the villa. “That boy will conquer us a new province someday,” the guests would chuckle, and then they were embarrassed when Annia’s mother said with amusement, “She’s a girl.” After that, they somehow didn’t approve anymore.

“That child should be inside sewing, not climbing on roofs!” Annia had heard two old ladies whisper, appalled because she’d gone climbing after the
trigon
ball and then fallen off the terra-cotta roof. But she didn’t cry. Annia never cried. Her father had told her the story of the Spartan boy, the one who let a fox chew his vitals open rather than cry and give his position away to his enemies. Annia tried letting one of the meaner vineyard dogs chew on her foot, biting hard on a stick first so she could match the Spartan boy for stoicism. But the dog wouldn’t chew hard enough to get any real blood flowing, and then the nursemaid came and made all kinds of silly fuss.

“You’re going to get in trouble one of these days,” Annia’s mother sighed.

“I’m always in trouble,” Annia complained, because how was she supposed to know she shouldn’t let dogs chew her toes off unless somebody
told
her?

“No, real trouble, my love. Because you’re not afraid of anything, and that’s tempting the Fates.”

Annia shrugged. She had long decided, when her father told her the story of the Three Fates, that they had it in for her. And this morning her mother wanted to take her to the Domus Flavia, where everything was breakable and the whole world was watching.
That
was tempting the Fates. “Don’t make me go!”

“Well, we all leave for Britannia soon. I’ll be back soon enough, but this could be your aunt’s last chance to see you all year.”

“I just saw her at the old Empress’s funeral.” The woman her mother had always called Old Stoneface Plotina had gone up in smoke on her funeral pyre not two days ago, and that had been quite enough standing still and being good to last Annia all year. “Aunt Sabina doesn’t like me, anyway.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Annia felt her mother’s hands tying off the end of her plait. “Of course she likes you.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Annia said with deep conviction. And the shuttered look on Aunt Sabina’s face as Annia trailed into the Imperial gardens in her mother’s wake was almost vindicating.
Told you
, Annia thought, meeting those inscrutable eyes.

“You shouldn’t have brought her, Faustina. She’ll end up packed in a box.” The Empress waved a hand toward her quarters, where a stream of slaves bustled. “My maids are trying to pack the entire palace.”

“They need me to supervise,” Annia’s mother decided. “
I
am packed already.”

“I’m sure you are. Are you certain you want to come all the way to Britannia?” The Empress patted the stone bench beside her. “Sea travel, in your condition—”

“Nonsense, I’ve never felt better.” Annia’s mother gave her rising stomach a proud thump. “It’s good breeding stock I come from! My mother never had a moment’s trouble, and neither will I.”

The Empress still looked anxious. She was fingering something in her black silk lap; Annia craned her neck to see what. Something dirty-looking. “I am sorry, you know,” the Empress went on. “Titus hates travel, and I really have no idea why Hadrian insisted he escort me. I’m perfectly capable of crossing to Britannia myself.”

Annia didn’t really remember the Emperor—he’d left last year on a grand tour of Germania and Gaul. She knew, however, that the Emperor didn’t like her father, which was very strange. Everybody liked her father.

“Can I come to Britannia?” she blurted out.

Her mother laughed. “You’d challenge a Druid to single combat, and then he’d cook you over a fire!”

“I’m not afraid of any old Druid,” Annia said scornfully.

“What a fearless girl you are,” Empress Sabina commented, which was really just a way of saying,
No, I don’t like you and I don’t want you coming along to Britannia or anywhere else
.

“Run and play for a moment,” her mother said, and Annia went up the garden path around a statue of a satyr. But she doubled back through the myrtle bushes, behind the bench where her mother and her aunt sat. Whenever her mother told her to go play, that meant that interesting things were about to get said.

And sure enough: “All right, Vibia Sabina. What’s that dirty thing you’re clutching?”

A rustle as Aunt Sabina passed something over—a folded-over tablet made of lead or something else dark and heavy.

Annia’s mother took it with a groan. “Sabina, really. You made a
curse tablet
?”

“Five years ago. Feel free to call me foolish.”

“Who did you curse? Let me see . . . ah.
‘To the goddesses Diana, Hecate, and Proserpina. I invoke you holy ones by your names to punish Empress Pompeia Plotina—’
Well, you couldn’t pick a nastier old cow to curse, may the gods keep her rotten soul, but I’ve never taken you for superstitious!”

“Yes, well, I was in a state. She spent fifteen years calling me a whore—she made Hadrian Emperor—she turned him against Titus and got him stuck in that cell—”

“It was all I could do to keep a suitably sad expression at her funeral pyre,” Annia’s mother admitted. “I wanted to dance round the flames singing!”

“So did I.” Aunt Sabina didn’t sound like she wanted to sing and dance, though. She sounded thoughtful. “When I first returned to Rome as Empress, Hadrian was still off in the east—I didn’t have anyone to share the palace with but Plotina, smirking and giving me orders. And I remembered a rather nice old witch in Pannonia when I was traveling years before, who told me all about curses and how to make them . . .”

“I’d say your witch knew her work.” Annia’s mother continued reading off the tablet.
“‘May the Empress die alone, neglected, bitter, and without power.’”

“Strange, really,” Aunt Sabina mused. “She spent her whole life working toward one thing: getting Hadrian made Emperor. And once she achieved it, she was finished. Hadrian tossed her aside like an old shoe. Frustration and bitterness and getting exactly what she wanted—that was what killed her.”

“Now you’re being fanciful. What killed her was a burst heart!”

“I’m not sorry she’s gone.” Aunt Sabina’s voice hardened. “But it’s still strange . . . I spent a good many years wishing her dead. Now that she is, I think it will make very little difference. I’m still Empress, after all. And like her, I’ll die alone, neglected, bitter, and powerless.”

“You,” Annia’s mother said briskly, “are not just being fanciful, but morbid.”

“I am being realistic. The Emperor only summons me to Britannia because he’s discovered there are ceremonial duties I can discharge. The kind of staid public appearances that bore him. And I have to obey.” A shake of Aunt Sabina’s sleek head. “That’s not power of any kind, Faustina.”

“Then what is it?”

“Duty. Empresses live by it. I married a madman, and the Fates put him on the throne—that was a terrible thing. Now I’m to go to Britannia and preside over the dedication of temples and the drone of dinner parties, and that’s merely dull—but I can’t escape either duty.”

Annia decided she didn’t like duty. When she grew up she just wasn’t going to do it.

“Looking the brighter side of things,” Annia’s mother said at last, “now that the old cow is dead, you won’t have anyone calling you a whore across your dinner table.”

The Empress laughed, and Annia tried to wriggle closer. All this talk about curses and hearts bursting was fascinating. But she bumped against a stone nymph, and before she could make a grab, over it went and the carved hand broke off.

“Annia Galeria Faustina!” her mother called. “Stop eavesdropping!”

“Sorry.” Annia winced, crawling out of the bushes. “I didn’t mean to break it—”

“I’m glad you did,” the Empress said. “I’ve always hated that nymph. She has the most sickly expression.”

Annia’s mother laughed, rising. “You two say your good-byes. I’m going to go take charge of your packing, Sabina. Or we won’t be ready to leave until Saturnalia.”

Don’t leave me
, Annia thought, eyes traveling a touch uneasily to the curse tablet still lying on the stone bench, but her mother was already gone. And the Empress of Rome didn’t look all that happy about it either, Annia thought.

“Well—” The Empress rose, fluid and swaying in her black
stola
as she dropped her shawl over the curse tablet. She moved like one of her cats, a kind of lithe, connected glide. “What did you hear, little eavesdropper?”

“Nothing,” Annia said instantly.

“Really? Because you strike me as quite an observant little thing. Just like your mother.”

Annia offered her most wide-eyed expression, the one she adopted whenever anything turned up broken.
You kill people
, she thought.
You write people’s names in curses, and their hearts burst.
She didn’t know what Aunt Sabina meant about being powerless, because killing people with curse tablets sounded like power to Annia. It was children who were powerless. Children couldn’t do
anything
.

The Empress was still surveying Annia top to toe. “What?” Annia asked, edging backward.

“You’ll probably be as tall as your father by the time I come back. You already have his hair.”

“No, I don’t,” Annia objected before remembering that empresses weren’t supposed to be contradicted, and neither were family, and Aunt Sabina was both. But did that count if they were
wrong
? Because Annia’s hair was a soft sandy red, not brown like her father’s with his little bits of gray.

“Right here”—Aunt Sabina touched a finger to the crown of her head—“you’ve got a stray lock that sticks up no matter how hard you smooth it down. Just like your father’s.”

Annia touched her hair, defensive. “People think I’m a boy,” she found herself saying.

“Why do they think that?”

“The way I play.”

“And how do you play?”

Annia jutted out her jaw. “To
win
.”

Aunt Sabina didn’t smile, as most people did. People smiled with indulgence or they smiled with reproof, but they smiled, and Annia hated that. “Win what?” the Empress asked quite seriously.

Annia shrugged.
“Everything.”

“And you shall win.” Aunt Sabina knelt down so she was on eye-level. “You shall win everything; I’ll make sure of it. Even from Britannia, I’ll be watching for you, Annia Galeria Faustina. I’ll imagine you starting your lessons, and playing with slave children, and scraping your knees. I’ll send you presents—a pot of woad like the old warriors used to wear, because you’d rather have war paint than dolls . . .”

I would
, Annia thought, but didn’t say so. The Empress already seemed to know her far too well. The silence stretched.

But Aunt Sabina only smiled. “Let’s go find your mother.”

Annia kept the Empress in front of her the entire walk back through the gardens, warily. “Hug your aunt good-bye,” her mother said as they left, but Annia shook her head. “No,” she said, even though it made her mother frown and Aunt Sabina veil her watchful eyes with her lashes. Because Annia wasn’t afraid of heights or spiders, strangers or blood or the dark—but strange, fascinating, curse-casting Aunt Sabina definitely made her nervous.

VIX

Gesoriacum, a port in Gaul

Any soldier has his good-luck charms; the things that sift out through the rough passage of nomadic campaigns. The things that
matter
, for whatever reason. I had my own collection stowed in my pack. An amulet of Mars, given me by my father to keep me safe in battle. A gold ring with the engraved letters
PARTHICUS
, given off former Emperor Trajan’s own hand when I saved him from a Parthian archer. An earring, silver and glinting with garnets, from a woman I cared for and shouldn’t have. A blue scarf from the hair of yet another woman, one I still cared for. Small things, because a soldier never accumulates more than he can carry on a long day’s march.

But I’d somehow accumulated more over the years. I’d accumulated people, people I couldn’t divest as easily as I’d cut off my friend Titus. I couldn’t really afford carrying people about in my heart, not with an emperor’s enmity hanging over my head—but I did. And my heart was singing that morning in Gesoriacum as I thought,
She’s here!

I was supposed to be doing any number of things: making preparations for the Emperor’s imminent arrival, reading a stack of reports from those officious little supply clerks called the
frumentarii
with their endless tattling of the latest rumors. And I was ignoring it all, rushing down the dock with my heart fluttering in my throat, because my wife had finally disembarked.

She let our daughters tackle me first, both of them pelting across the docks with their dark curls flying. They were getting big, but not too big yet to swoop against my armored chest, one in each arm. I smiled at their mother over their heads, and she smiled back.

“I got
seasick
,” Dinah complained, wrinkling her nose. My eldest, a fastidious little thing even at eight. At least, I thought she was eight. Children, even my own, all looked more or less the same age to me: small. “I threw up
everywhere
.”

“So did I,” Chaya confessed, looking worried. My second daughter always looked worried. She’d been born in the middle of an earthquake in Antioch; the world to Chaya was an uneasy place where even the ground under your feet couldn’t be trusted. “Antinous didn’t get seasick! It’s not fair!”