Lady of the Eternal City (49 page)

“How can you ask that?”

“I think it. Every night I think it.”

Sabina supposed every emperor must think such thoughts in dark hours of the soul. The ones humble enough to admit they could fail, anyway.
Publius Aelius Hadrian, showing a drop of humility.
She would never in all her life have imagined that.

He was still waiting for an answer.

“Remember the plans you laid out for me in Britannia? Your plan for Rome?” She listed them off on her fingers. “You wished to end the constant expansion of an Empire already quite unwieldy enough. You wished to ring that Empire in walls, so that all emperors of the future would know
This is Rome
, and go no farther. You wished to raise temples and columns through every province so the whole Empire would be left more beautiful than you found it. You wished to remake the legions and bring prosperity to your citizens, as a father does his children.” She folded her hands, enclosing within them Hadrian’s list of gifts to his people. “You have done all of that, husband. Hadrian Caesar, Father of Rome.”

“I slaughtered half a million of my children in Judaea.” His voice was harsh.

Sabina reached up to tug his head down, wondering if he would lash out at her as he had done when he grieved Antinous on the Nile
.

But he did not. Perhaps those half-million deaths in Judaea had exhausted him, because her husband allowed his head to drop onto her shoulder, burying his face in the curve of her neck. His skin was hot against her throat, and his shoulders heaved under her circling arm.

“For better or worse, the business in Judaea is done.” Sabina rubbed his shoulder, back and forth as she’d soothe a trembling dog. “You still have work to do. At the very least, you must name an heir and begin preparing him for his duties.”

“I am tired,” Hadrian whispered. “So tired.”

“I will help you. As I’ve always done.” She kissed his forehead. “Even when we were enemies.”

They sat on the bench a long time.
Peaceful
, Sabina thought, and smiled. She never would have equated such a word with Hadrian.

He straightened at last, rising in a stiff movement. “Will you excuse me?” he said formally, his hand still resting in hers. “I have been a long time abroad . . . I will require a long stint in my Hades.”

She returned his gaze, asking the question she had long wondered. “What is in your Hades, Hadrian?”

“I would rather not say.” His gaze was straight for once, no ironic gleam or faint smile or any of his other masks. Just naked honesty. “You have retained a good opinion of me somehow, though I don’t understand why—I would not want to lose that good opinion now.”

“As you please.” She inclined her head. Perhaps she was never going to know what was in his Hades. If it was the price for truth between them, she was more than willing to pay it. “I will see you this evening, then?”

“Yes.” He snapped his swollen fingers for his dog to follow him. “Will you see that Lucius Ceionius joins us? After my Hades, I will need to laugh.”

Sabina hesitated.
Lucius Ceionius
, she thought again, but Hadrian looked so terribly worn, visibly pulling his pride and his dignity around him.
When I have proof
, she thought, and rose. “I will summon Lucius.”

“Thank you.” A nod, deeper than usual, and then his fingers slid away and he went stalking off along the still canal, dog trotting in his wake. Head bent beneath the fading light, but not defeated. Not yet.

I will save you
, Sabina thought. She plucked the lotus from behind her ear and twirled it between her fingers, feeling steady and serene and lighter than air.
I will save you whether you wish to be saved or not. Call it Fate, call it love, call it my final duty as empress—but I will find proof that Antinous was murdered, and I will bring you back to life.

Go free
, Hadrian said.

This felt like freedom to her.

VIX

Rome

Blood
, I thought, inhaling deeply.
Sweat, dirt, marble . . . Stray dogs, frying meat, cheap perfume . . .
“You old bitch,” I said aloud to the Eternal City. “I’d know you anywhere by your smell alone.”

I was home, swaying and tired, heartsick and just a little water-sick too as I disembarked onto the docks. And smiled for the first time in what felt like months, because someone was waiting for me. A tall man in a spotless toga, graying elegantly about the temples but otherwise untouched by the passing years, giving me his quiet smile. “Hello, Slight,” said Titus Aurelius.

“You bugger!” We clasped hands in a grip that left our fingers bruised, both of us pretending our eyes weren’t full of tears. Titus seemed to know without a word being spoken that I was lost in Rome, that I might have a legion but I no longer had a home, that I was slinking back to the Eternal City unheralded because I couldn’t bear the fuss people might have made over me. He led me back to his quiet villa on the edge of the city, where his wife eyed me as though I were a wild wolf but told me there were rooms readied where I could stay as long as I liked. I sank into that luxurious bed and prayed for numbness or death, whichever came first and ended my black dreams.

I’d been staying in that villa ten days before I laid eyes on her. A delicious hot afternoon, the sky blue and cloudless overhead. A fine day to celebrate, and Rome was celebrating. Titus and Faustina had gone to join the hubbub, begging me along, but I declined. I took a jug of wine down to the little vineyard at the edge of the villa, halfway to drunk and aiming to get the rest of the way there by sundown. Out here I had no company but the budding vines, the birds wheeling overhead, and a moss-grown statue of Priapus, who leered over the vineyard with his huge jutting phallus. Randy old bastard. “Send a woman my way,” I said, toasting him. “Been a long time since I’ve had one.” How long? Months before Bethar fell, surely. Executions, siege walls, and cartloads of wretched slaves hadn’t really put me in the mood for bed-sport.

Priapus sent me a woman, all right, but that donkey-pricked god had a sense of humor because the one he sent was hardly out of girlhood. She was just a spot of dark green speeding through the vines, and I squinted because I was halfway down the jug by that time and couldn’t really focus until she came skidding to a halt in front of me. “You look familiar,” she greeted me without preamble. “Who are you?”

“A conquering hero,” I answered, “or so they tell me.”

She evaluated me as she stretched the arch of first one bare foot and then the other. A tall girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with reddish hair stuck in sweat-damp tendrils to her neck. She wore a rough green tunic kilted up for running, showing a pair of hard and muddy feet. Not a pretty girl, but she looked like an Amazon: slim-hipped, broad-shouldered, long-legged, sweating, and fierce. “Are you Vercingetorix? The one staying with us?”

“Us?”

“I’m Annia Galeria Faustina the Younger.” The memory surfaced even as I heard the name—the memory of a little girl with a
trigon
ball and a bloody nose.

“You’ve grown.” I ducked my head in the best bow that I could manage while sitting down. “And yes, I am Vercingetorix.”

A huge grin broke over her face. “I’d have recognized you sooner if not for the hair!”

“It’s growing back.” I had prickles of reddish stubble all over my head now that I’d stopped brutally razoring my scalp. “I’m surprised you remember meeting me. You were only seven or eight.”

“You’re the one who started me running!” She bounced a little on her toes, as though ready to sprint off through the vines again. “It does help me keep my temper, you were right about that.” A lightning flash of a scowl. “Most of the time.”

I tilted the jug, filling my cup. I was still stuck at the faint-blur stage of tipsy, and what I wanted was serious-blur. What I wanted was
numb
.

“You’ve been staying with us near ten days.” Annia tilted her head. “Why haven’t I seen you before now?”

“Because I’m avoiding people in general and your mother in particular.”

“A conquering hero of Rome, terrified of my
mother
?” Annia bent down to touch her toes in a quick stretch. Always moving, this one. “You’re the terrifying one. The slave girls say you ravaged every third virgin in Judaea, and killed every second man.”

“Maybe I did.”

“I doubt it.” Annia flopped down cross-legged like a boy. “Why are you here?”

“In Rome? Because the Emperor ordered it.” I took another long drink, holding the fiery wine in my mouth to feel the burn. I didn’t even know if the Tenth Fidelis was still mine. My orders when I was done finishing my sad business in Syria hadn’t been very extensive—return to Rome for the triumphs. Maybe afterward I’d be relieved of command. I didn’t really care.

“No, I meant why are you
here
?” Annia twisted her sweat-damp hair into a rope, lifting it off her neck. “The triumph is going on right this moment. The chariots should be making their way to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus—the whole city’s turned out to celebrate the victory over Judaea. They’ve turned out to celebrate
you
, you and the other commanders. So why are you getting drunk in a vineyard?”

She had big blue-gray eyes with red lashes, like a sword blade with a fan of blood on it and every bit as piercing. I rotated the cup in my hand. “I declined the triumph.”

“Why?”

I gave a bark of a laugh. A triumph—the highest honor a soldier like me could ever dream of. I’d marched in a triumph behind Trajan, and I’d ached to stand where he stood: the victorious commander in his chariot laden with charms, his face daubed by red paint and his head crowned by a victory wreath; rose petals in his path and cheers deafening his ears.

Well, today it could have been me. But I’d told Hadrian I’d rather be buggered with a rake.

The Amazon was still waiting for her answer, and not too patiently either.

“I want nothing,” I said at last around my blurring tongue, “except to forget every single thing I did in helping to crush that rebellion. Every death, every execution, every battle, every massacre. I won’t ever forget, but I’ll be damned if I celebrate it.”

Annia pointed at my wine. “Can I have some? My mother won’t let me try unwatered wine.” She saw me hesitate. “If we’re talking about massacres, I’d like a drink.”

“Can’t fault your logic.” I poured a measure of wine into the spare cup. “Just a sip,” I began, but she tossed it all down the way she’d seen me do it. A minimum of spluttering, too.

“Ugh.” She passed the cup back. “Thank you. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to march in the triumph, but doesn’t that mean you’ll never be honored for the
good
things you did? It can’t all have been bad. My cousin Marcus says only those recorded are remembered—if you aren’t recorded in the triumph, no one will remember you were a hero in Judaea.”

“Suits me fine if history forgets I was ever there. God knows I never will.” Another swig. I really had to be drunk by now, even if I didn’t feel it. Because I hadn’t talked this frankly even to Titus. “I lost everything I had in Judaea.”

“What did you lose?” Annia flexed her muddy feet one at a time, the afternoon sun dappling her freckled skin.

“My friends died. My wife died. My girls . . . are gone.” I drank again for Dinah and Chaya, another of my endless prayers for their happiness. “So you see”—I tried to muster some kind of smile for Annia that didn’t make her recoil with its bitterness—“you see why I’m damned if I’ll take a triumph celebrating everything I’ve lost, eh?”

Annia considered that, regarding me with her sword-colored eyes. “But Judaea had to be subdued. We heard terrible stories, the atrocities. Well, nobody told them to me, but the slave girls get positively ghoulish when they think no one’s listening.”

“There were bad things done,” I acknowledged. “On both sides. Tell it truthfully, maybe we
didn’t
have to put down Judaea. But they couldn’t have timed their rebellion for a worse moment. Hadrian had no mercy in him right then, not at the beginning.”

“Because of Antinous?”

“Did you know Antinous?”

“I loved him.” She smiled, and both the smile and the words pierced me. But this was a sweet pain rather than a thorned one. “He always said I was the first friend he ever made in Rome. And he saved me and my cousin Marcus from getting beaten to a pulp by Brine-Face—”

“Brine-Face?”

“Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus
Salinator
.” She drew out the last name scornfully. “The golden boy.”

“No, he’s not.” The very thought offended me.
Antinous
was the golden boy, not that arrogant little prick. “Pedanius Fuscus is a sack of shit in a silk tunic.”

“Oh, I like you.” Annia grinned and looked at the wine again. “Can I have some more of that?”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why, because I’ll get tipsy and then you’ll try to ravish me?”

“No!” I said in horror.

“Well, good. You couldn’t, anyway.” She tossed down another swig, slanting a brow at me in warning. “I know exactly where to kick you if you try.”

I felt a smile tug at my lips, the first one I’d felt in quite some time. “So why aren’t
you
at the triumph?” Didn’t girls her age like the chance to dress in their finest, go out into the city, get admired? With Titus’s heaps of gold and her mother’s bloodlines, surely every young buck in the city was groveling at her feet.

Annia grimaced, taking another sip of wine. “I’m avoiding my cousin Marcus. He’s become an utter ass ever since he put his toga on. He’ll spend the whole triumph dancing attendance on my father—hours and hours of seeing him nod like a donkey and pontificate like an old man. Ignoring me.”

“Ignoring you, eh?” I tilted my wine cup at her, since she had the jug, and she filled me up. It soothed me somehow, talking of a girl’s innocent problems. “Why does he ignore you?”

“Because he’s an ass? We’ve been playing together since I was four years old—he’d come toss a
trigon
ball with me, and we’d do lessons together, and we made a curse tablet—and the moment he put on a toga he turned into a bundle of starched laundry. He just looks down his nose at me and avoids me.” She grimaced, taking another swallow of wine. “This is disgusting.”