Mistress of Rome (40 page)

He stared back at her. Another secret. Another secret between him and the man who held his oath.

Another secret.

“If I don’t tell,” he said, “what happens then?”

“I’ll continue to see Vix,” she said. “I’ll see Vix’s father, too, now and then. But nothing will happen. You have my word on that.”

“Your word?”

“My solemn promise. Quite a selfish promise, really. If I took another man for a lover, then Domitian would know—he’d smell it on me—and that would be the end of both me and—and Stephanus. I don’t want that.”

She took a breath, stirring in her silks as if they were chains. “So, Paulinus. What’s it to be?”

“We’ll talk about it more in the morning,” said Paulinus.

“Thank you.” She leaned back against the cushions, closing her eyes. Tears glittered and ran down into her hair.

“One thing.” Suddenly. “Your Stephanus—have I seen him before somewhere?”

“No.” She opened her eyes. “Never.”

For the rest of the ride back to the Villa Jovis, there was silence.

 

D
ID she say who her jealous lover was?” Flavia’s voice, at Arius’s elbow.

“No.” Wrenching his eyes away from the departing litter, he turned to the Emperor’s niece. “You knew her—all this time you
knew
her—”

“Yes. Ironic, isn’t it? The fates must have had a good laugh at our expense.”

“Her lover—who is he?” He hadn’t pressed Thea when she’d declined to say the name. Too glad to hear her voice, too glad to have her back. As long as she was close enough to hold, the lover didn’t matter.

But now . . . “Who owns her?”

“Ask anyone.” Flavia patted his arm and drifted out.

He collared the first slave he found. “The lady in that litter”—pointing to the cloud of dust that marked Thea’s departure—“who is she?”

The slave looked at him as if he were half-witted. “I know you never come out of that hut, but don’t you know anything? That’s Lady Athena. The Emperor’s mistress.”

The Emperor.

Arius turned away blindly, latching his hands onto the wooden rail around the garden gate.

The demon, so long asleep in the bottom of his mind, stirred murderously.

Thea and the Emperor.
His
Thea, in the bed of a man who’d denied him his
rudius
, who’d shot arrows at him in the arena, who’d thought it funny to hack up his best friend.

Careful, big boy
, Hercules rasped in his head.
Careful.

The gate railing cracked in his hands.

“Arius?”

He whirled, hand leaping to his knife. But it was just Vix. Vix standing there looking unaccustomedly dazed and small.

“Born after I was sold,” Thea had said sometime in that hour of recounted years. “I never told him—didn’t think he’d ever see you.”

He looked at Vix with new eyes. “Tell your son there to leave my horses alone,” a drover had snapped to Arius two weeks ago, unloading barrels at Flavia’s storeroom doors. “Not my son,” Arius had said, amused. “Not that little devil.”

He’d never dreamed of having a son. Never thought he’d live long enough.

Now he saw what the drover had seen. Vix’s russet hair, his light eyes, his strong left hand. The reflexes, the strength, the vicious skill.

And Thea had named him Vercingetorix.

The world tilted. The woman he loved was alive, hope existed, and he had a son.

Vix took a step forward. “Who the hell are you?”

“Come here,” Arius said thickly. “Come here.”

He gripped Vix’s shoulders between his hands, and began to talk.

T
WENTY-EIGHT.
Twenty-eight.
Gods, what an age. Almost old. Almost thirty!

I threw a scent bottle at my maid, ripped my rose-silk veil in half because it had a grease spot, and threw myself down in front of the polished steel mirror. At least I didn’t look twenty-eight. My hair gleamed like ebony, my skin was white velvet, and I could show as much bosom as I liked without a qualm. Lady Lepida Pollia, although twenty-eight, had nothing to fear from the younger beauties of Rome’s court. She still reigned supreme over all.

I scowled, dabbling among my rouge pots. The trouble was, I was bored with reigning supreme over all. I’d reigned supreme over all for years. I had only to walk into a room to have the men slavering and the women slit-eyed. I had only to give my slow smile to a man to have him at my feet. When I wore blue, everyone wore blue. When I laughed at a joke, everyone found it funny. I stood at the pinnacle of patrician society.

So what was the point of it all? If I couldn’t go higher, then what was the point? And I
could
go higher, if it weren’t for . . .

Unfair. Unfair! She always ruined everything, and now she was turning the Emperor into a recluse. He’d never shunned society before. He may have been a dour guest, but at least he’d
been
a guest. For this whole summer, though, he’d hardly gone anywhere except to the villa where his pet Jewess waited. He took other women to his bed, yes, but none lasted as she did.

“Surely she’s put a spell on the Emperor,” I wheedled Paulinus. “Jew magic—you could have her executed!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Paulinus said stiffly, and wouldn’t be moved. He was taking her side now? Could he and she be . . . Paulinus and Thea . . . of course they’d been lovers before, back when she’d been just a common singer . . . I could tell Domitian that little piece of news! But no—it might rid me of Thea, but it might also rid me of Paulinus, and to have my stepson as the Emperor’s best friend was very much to my taste. Anyway, I doubted there was anything between Thea and Paulinus. Even Paulinus wasn’t so stupid as that.

There was something wrong with him though, even if it wasn’t Thea. Oh, he still came despairingly to my bed whenever I called him, but . . . little things. Last time I’d twined my arms around his neck in the garden of some senator’s dinner party, he’d tried to push me away for a moment before succumbing with a groan. His gaze held a sort of straight dislike that unsettled me. Of course he hated me. Naturally. But hatred had always been the other side of the coin that was desire. This look of flat distaste was something new. Something very like Marcus.

If it wasn’t Thea, did he have another? Surely not the bovine Calpurnia: for all they’d been betrothed forever, no date was set and he’d hardly met with her all year. Well, no use worrying too much about Paulinus. No matter what kind of look I’d been seeing in his eyes lately, I’d always be able to bring him to heel. Thea—she was my little problem.

I gazed into the mirror a little longer, and then beckoned my cowed maid. “You must have friends among the Imperial slaves,” I said, nailing her with a glance. “If you don’t, make some. For any information they bring me about Lady Athena, there’ll be a rich reward. For you, too. Now get out.”

P
AULINUS.” Flavia’s voice was curt. “Don’t you have anything better to do than spy on Thea?”

“I’m not spying.” Paulinus felt mulish.

“You’ve been staring out that window at her for the past hour!”

“It is my duty as Prefect to extend my eye to all suspicious activity.”

“ ‘Suspicious activity?’ She’s just talking to her son’s father! And it’s the first time they’ve met at all since they found each other. Three weeks she waited to come back here—”

“I shouldn’t allow it.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. Have they touched once in all the time you’ve watched?”

“They don’t have to touch,” Paulinus muttered. Athena and her gardener, sitting a decorous twelve inches apart on a marble atrium bench, generated enough heat between them to burn bread. But Flavia’s face hardened.

“You sound like a jealous lover, Paulinus. I do hope you’re not falling in love with Thea yourself. That would put a nice wrench in your loyalties, wouldn’t it?”

He reddened. “I am not—”

“Then let her alone. She’s given you her word that she won’t betray the Emperor. Or is her word not worth anything because she’s a Jew and a slave?”

“I’m sure she has every intention of keeping her word.” Stiffly. “But my duty lies with the Emperor, and the Emperor would want to know about this.”

“Tell my uncle, and you sign her death warrant.”

“. . . No . . .”

“You don’t believe me?”

“He’s a man of honor—”

“No, he’s not!” she said witheringly.

“Lady Flavia, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying!” Her voice rose. “Do you think you know him better than me?”

“I’ve served him for six years. In the thick of battle—”

“Battle!” Flavia spat. “Who cares about battle? I’m his niece! Do you know what I’ve seen? I’ve seen him stab flies out of the air on a pen and watch them writhe until they die. I’ve seen him shoot arrows at slaves until they look like sea urchins. I’ve seen him condemn men without trial for the pleasure of watching them beg. He’s a hard man, my uncle; he’s hard and he’s cruel, and he’s cruelest of all to his women.”

Paulinus opened his mouth, but Flavia rushed on, her face flushed.

“Did you know the Empress used to smile once? Even laugh? Then Domitian got hold of her and she turned into a marble statue covered in emeralds. You played with Julia when you were children, but you just dismissed her as mad when the rumors started to fly. You didn’t get letters from her, letters getting thinner and thinner and more hopeless until when she finally died all you could do was be happy. And Thea—my God, you’re not the only one who’s served the Emperor for years! She’s served him, too, filled his bed and made his music and
paid
for it. She hides her son and she hides her scars, but when she’s alone she drains her blood into bowls and thinks about dying. Did you know that, Prefect? No, of course not. But I do, and not because she tells me. I know what to look for, because I’ve known Domitian all my life and I know what he thinks when he looks at people—
and because now he’s looking at my sons
!”

She burst into tears. Paulinus stood blank and open-mouthed.

“So as far as I’m concerned, if Thea wants a lover then she’s welcome to him!” Kohl ran down Flavia’s cheeks, and she angrily smeared it away. “If all she wants is to sit in a garden and talk to a man who loves her—a man who’s
normal
—then I’ll cover for her. I couldn’t do it for Julia, but I’ll do it for Thea. She’s earned it. And if you don’t see that, Paulinus Norbanus, then for God’s sake
open your eyes
!”

She rushed away, doubled over with sobs. Paulinus stared after her.

 

W
HY didn’t you come back sooner? Three weeks -” “I’m watched, Arius. I didn’t dare make it sooner.”

“For twelve years I thought you were dead. Used to see you everywhere, like a ghost.”

“I did see you everywhere. In Vix.”

“I should have known—”

“I didn’t know myself until after I was sold.”

“I should have taken you away when I had the chance. Hauled you off over one shoulder like a proper barbarian.”

“You’re not a barbarian anymore.” Lightly. “You’re a gardener.”

“Not a very good one. All the grapes have a blight since I started tending them. But I wasn’t a very good barbarian, either, when I had you.”

“Don’t say things like that. You make it hard.”

“You’re beautiful. Silk, soft hands, no more calluses—”

“I’m not allowed to do anything anymore.”

“Except wait on the Emperor?”

“. . . Don’t.”

“Why can’t I touch you?”

“He’d smell you on me.”

“He’s not a god.”

“But I wear his eye . . . Arius, he’ll never release me. Once he puts his mark on something, it’s his forever.”

Silence. He reached for her.

“Arius—Arius, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t touch me.”

“What’s wrong? You’re shaking.”

“No, I—I—just don’t try to kiss me. Please.”

“I need to know you’re real. You look like a dream, and I’m old and ugly.”

“Never that. Never that.”

“Thea, we’ll run. Take Vix, get out of Rome—”

“Arius, there’s nowhere I could run where he couldn’t find me.”

Their hands touched diffidently on the bench between them. Tangled. Kneaded mutely.

I
don’t know what to think.” Paulinus rested his elbows on his knees, interlocking his fingers. “But sometimes—sometimes I think she’s right.”

“Lady Flavia?” Justina’s voice was a murmur around the marble walls.

“Yes.” Over and over he kneaded his hands. “Because lots of things don’t add up. Not quite. Things about the Emperor. That banquet the night of my betrothal. The Empress. Julia’s death. The treason trials . . .”