Mistress of Rome (23 page)

“No, not my style.” Paulinus was used to the offer by now. Half his friends and most of his superior officers preferred boys or young soldiers to their wives.

“Pity. Still want to get drunk?”

“Gods, yes.”

A letter arrived from Paulinus’s father, sent by fast courier. A single sheet of parchment, a single line of writing. “
Well done, boy. Marcus.
”

“Hate me!” Paulinus shouted down at the letter. “Disown me! Don’t
congratulate
me!” He crumpled the letter up and threw it across the room. Then spent the next hour smoothing it out. Lepida wrote nothing.

After a week, the Emperor marched in.

“Norbanus, is it?” The famous Flavian gaze made Paulinus’s knees brace. He stared fixedly past the Emperor’s ear. “I know your father. You’ll join me for dinner in two hours.” He turned to Lappius. “Bring out the traitors. We’ll deal with them now.”

“All of them, Lord and God?”

“The officers. The legionnaires will be decimated; that can wait until morning. Prepare the officers for execution.” The Emperor’s purple cloak swirled as he took off briskly across the courtyard. Twelve Praetorians, six secretaries, a cluster of generals, a handful of slaves, and Lappius Norbanus trotted in his wake.

“So that’s how a Caesar handles treachery.” Trajan whistled. “I like his style.”

Paulinus lowered his voice. “He didn’t even hold trials.”

“Who needs ’em? We know they’re guilty.” Trajan flicked a speck of mud off Paulinus’s shoulder. “Go spruce up, pretty boy. You’re having dinner with the world’s most powerful man.”

The world’s most powerful man hardly looked up as Paulinus ducked into the Imperial presence and snapped off his sharpest salute. “Norbanus,” he said perfunctorily. “Sit. Eat. Camp food; I hate eating soft on campaign.”

Paulinus sat, tangling his cloak around the stool legs, and helped himself diffidently. He ate for ten minutes in silence as the Emperor bolted his food, dictating a letter to a pair of secretaries between bites, and sifted rapidly through a heap of correspondence. The hard soldier’s bread and plain stew looked strange sitting on Lappius’s golden plates. Rather like Domitian himself, who sat on the silk cushions in the leather breastplate and rough tunic of a legionnaire and rapidly flipped through a dozen frayed old folders of paperwork. Paulinus eyed him covertly: the man his father had pronounced both a good general and a great administrator; the man who decimated entire legions and was kind to a mad niece; the man of whom great depravities were whispered and who had looked with interest on Lepida, and who now sat before him in a plain tent wearing less silk and gold braid than his own secretaries.

The Imperial gaze flicked upward at that moment. Paulinus flushed and applied himself to his dinner. Too late.

“So, Norbanus.” The Flavian voice dragged Paulinus’s eyes obediently upward. “You’re a tribune in my Praetorian guard.”

“Yes, Caesar. I’ve been stationed in Brundisium.”

“Mmm.” Domitian snapped for a secretary and dictated a quick postscript. “Centurion Densus’s command?”

“Yes, Caesar.” Wondering how the Emperor had known
that
off the top of his head.

“I know all my Praetorian commanders,” Domitian said as if he had read Paulinus’s mind. The Emperor had a broad ruddy face like an amiable shopkeeper, but Paulinus didn’t imagine that those black eyes missed much. “Your father is Senator Marcus Vibius Augustus Norbanus.”

“Yes, Caesar.”

“You are his only child?”

“I have a sister. Four years old. She likes apricots.” Paulinus closed his eyes. “Why did I just say that?”

“You’re nervous.” Unexpectedly the Emperor smiled. “We Caesars have that effect on people. Have some wine.”

Paulinus sipped gratefully.

“So. You weren’t stationed here in Germania?” Stamping various documents.

“No, Caesar. I was on leave. My cousin Lappius appointed me commander of the legions over my objections.”

“Your objections?” The black eyes probed.

“I wasn’t a good choice. I knew nothing about Germania, or Saturninus and his legions. I could never have managed without the help of Legate Marcus Ulpius Trajan. I recommend him in the highest possible terms.”

“He will be rewarded in due course. But you were in command.”

“It wasn’t much of a battle. If the Rhine hadn’t thawed—”

“I dislike the word
if
. ” The Emperor melted a stick of sealing wax in a candle flame. “
If
the Rhine hadn’t thawed—what of that? Fortuna favored you. You won.”

“Just don’t expect me to do it again.” It popped out of Paulinus’s mouth. “Um. That is to say—”

Domitian laughed. “Are you trying to get yourself punished rather than rewarded?”

“No, Caesar.”

“I hear you killed Saturninus yourself.” Secretaries went scrambling as Domitian tossed out a load of letters and scrolls.

“He committed suicide.”

“You could have claimed the credit. No one would have known.”

Paulinus shrugged.

“Spar with me sometime.” Abruptly. “I need the practice.”

“Caesar?”

“Yes, I know how to use a sword.” The pen wove in an elaborate parry before swooping down to sign a dispatch. “I’m dismally out of practice, since my sparring partners always allow me to win. An irritating habit. Would you allow me to win, Tribune Norbanus?”

“. . . No . . .”

“I thought not.” Domitian slid a hard thumb under a seal and rapidly scanned another letter. “So. You spared me the trouble of putting down Saturninus and his legions myself. For that I thank you.”

“Thank you. I mean, you’re welcome. Caesar.”

“It was not much of a rebellion, and I doubt it would have gone far. But you have saved me the trouble of subduing an angry province. And yet I cannot give you a triumph. Mutinies, even defeated ones, cannot be made much of.” Still scanning the letter. “Thus I find myself indebted to a man I cannot reward. How interesting.”

Another pause. Domitian glanced up from his letters and looked Paulinus in the eye. Paulinus looked back. He didn’t know what to do with his hands.

The Emperor tilted his head at the servants, the guards, the scurrying secretaries. “Leave us.”

They filed out, whispering.

“I am putting your cousin Lappius forward for the position of consul next year. He’s a fool, but a fool can do relatively little harm as consul.” Domitian’s hands stilled for the first time, dropping the pen and thoughtfully tapping the desk. “Commander Trajan will have another military post that promises much action. I reward loyal men. I need them around me, for the day when some assassin tries for my life.”

Paulinus remembered the mess hall rumors:
The Emperor’s scared of his own shadow—

“I know they say I’m afraid of my own shadow.” Domitian mirrored Paulinus’s thoughts again, and he jumped. “But with half of ten previous Emperors dying by the knife, I would be foolish not to fear assassins. It’s a dangerous job, being Emperor.” Domitian contemplated his fingertips. “I’m not asking for pity. But one gets . . . tired.”

Paulinus felt an unexpected twist of sympathy. “I don’t envy you, Caesar,” he said candidly. “People might assume I want your job just because my great-grandfather was an Emperor. But I wouldn’t have it for anything.”

Domitian looked at him sharply, opening his mouth. He closed it again, sharpness fading into speculation. “You know—” thoughtful—“I think I believe you.”

They traded glances again, in simple curiosity.

Domitian nodded once and reached for a sheet of parchment. He wrote out a rapid page, then stamped the Imperial seal at the bottom and tossed the still-wet document across the table at Paulinus.

Paulinus skimmed the formal phrases.
“. . . we hereby recognize Tribune Paulinus Vibius Augustus Norbanus . . . in reward for his loyalty and devotion . . . award the title and responsibilities of—”

He blinked. Jumped back. Read more carefully.
“Award the title and responsibilities of—”

He lifted his eyes, astonished. “Caesar—it’s too much.”

“I’ll be judge of that.”

“Surely there must be more qualified men—”

“Of course there are more qualified men. They will all loathe you for jumping over their heads and try to undermine you at every turn. Accept that position, and you make a hundred mortal enemies. Do you want it?”

“Well—of course I want it, but—”

“Then why are you trying to talk me out of it?”

“I’m not trying to talk you out of it, Caesar. I just think that—”

Domitian’s black eyes were amused. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to contradict an Emperor?”

Paulinus felt his mouth opening and shutting like a fish’s. His ears were roaring. “Well. I didn’t mean to contradict you. Caesar. I just—”

“Good.” The Imperial hand extended. “Congratulations, Prefect.”

I
really was glad that Saturninus’s little rebellion fizzled out in Germania. He wouldn’t have made a good Emperor at all. Everybody knew he liked boys, and where would that have left
me
? So I was quite relieved, along with the rest of Rome, when the rebellion had been crushed. There was a little bonus in it for me: Domitian would be sure to come back to the city at long last, and I had a new flame-orange
stola
encrusted with gold embroidery that would dazzle his eyes . . .

“To think your son is the hero of the hour!” I trilled to Marcus over a rare supper. We scarcely saw each other now, keeping to our own wings of the house and meeting only for form’s sake. I was considering buying a house of my own, in a more fashionable district than the Capitoline Hill.

“’Linus is a hero,” Sabina piped.

“No he’s not, darling. Paulinus is an earthworm masquerading as a man.” I smiled at Marcus. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”

He looked through me as if I were made of glass. And he didn’t tell me The News. I had to learn from Gnaeus Apicus, my latest lover.

“Praetorian Prefect?” I sat bolt upright in bed. “The Emperor’s appointed Paulinus as Praetorian Prefect?”

“Astonishing, isn’t it? The boy can’t be much older than you”—Gnaeus pinched my breast—“and he’s only served as a tribune. High jump for one so young—”

Praetorian Prefect. One of the most important posts in the Empire. The Emperor’s eyes and ears. Watchdog, spymaster, commander of the Imperium’s private army . . . Paulinus, suddenly one of the most powerful men in Rome.

“Marcus, why didn’t you tell me?” I said sharply when I got home.

He never lifted his eyes from the scroll he was reading. “One of your lovers was sure to give you the news.”

I curled my lip and stamped off. How dare he keep me out of the know like that? News like this was enormous. I hadn’t planned to keep Paulinus on my string once he came back to Rome, but things were different now. He was the Emperor’s right arm now. He could get me an invitation to the palace every night of the week! Unless he’d forgotten me . . . but I didn’t really think so. And if he had, I’d make him remember in a hurry. I’d better write him a letter right away, to remind him.

Perhaps I should marry him. Would it be legally possible? Rome had such tedious laws regarding incest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re too thin, Julia,” he frowns at me sometimes. Well, even a Caesar cannot have everything. I eat when he tells me to, and when he is gone I go to the
lavatorium
and vomit it all up. I have not taken food in a week. My body will disappear.

M
Y master was plump, bald, smiling, and airy, but two deep lines appeared on either side of his mouth when he was angry and turned him from a harmless praetor to a cold and furious judge. The two lines were very deeply graven today as I came into the sunny little atrium to stand before him on his silver couch. This was going to be bad.