Mistress of Rome (45 page)

“I hear the boy has his own room right next to the Imperial suite—”

“The Emperor took him to the Senate hearings yesterday—”

“To the opening of the new aqueduct—in full public view—”

“You know what the people thought of that!”

“Really, though, they must be wrong. If it was Emperor Nero, now, or Galba, then they’d be right, but Domitian’s never been a boy-fancier.”

“Every man’s entitled to a change in midlife. He did get rid of Athena—”

“Athena may be gone, but now he’s mounting that pretty little Pollia weasel.”

“Anyway, the child’s a prisoner. Wears that bright red tunic so he’ll be easily spotted if he tries to run away. Can’t go a step without tripping over Praetorians. Though maybe it’s the Emperor’s protection they’re looking after . . .”

“You mean the rumors about the boy trying to kill him at dinner? We all know the Emperor didn’t get his foot broken by a horse, even if that’s what the doctors say—”

“Nonsense. Domitian would have had the brat’s head knocked off on the spot—”

“Not if he’s the Emperor’s bastard son.”

“Can’t be. You can always tell a Flavian: the high color, the nose. Big stocky lad like that; he’s pure peasant stock—”

“Athena’s?”

“No, then he’d have kept her, too. The boy’s a by-blow on some other mistress, mark my words—some slave woman, probably—”

“Slave or no, he’s the Emperor’s new favorite. Time to start bowing to the boy in red, wouldn’t you say?”

 

 

 

THE
Emperor’s cousin Flavius Clemens and his elder son were executed on the Gemonian Stairs, sometimes known as the Stairs of Sighs. Two days later, it was Flavia Domitilla’s turn to be escorted from her cell. The official charge was impiety.

Marcus watched her from the crowd, on foot with the rest of the plebs, fury surging impotently in his gut. He’d spoken as strongly in the Senate as he dared, and none would support him. All he could do now was watch Lady Flavia go to her death in the same gown she had donned for the banquet where her sons should have been confirmed heirs. One of those sons was dead now. No one knew whether the younger son lived or died. “The elder boy is old enough to be ambitious,” Domitian had shrugged. “The younger—I haven’t yet made up my mind.” No one dared ask. The more lighthearted courtiers took bets on whether the boy had already been exiled, or whether he had been strangled in his cell. Certainly the Emperor had not bothered, today, to watch his niece go to her execution.

The crowd was very silent as Lady Flavia made her last procession. No one dared shout in protest, but she was popular. She had done her duty by producing sons and heirs; she gave generously to beggars and children; she might be a Christian but she always bowed to the proper gods. Now she walked blank-eyed and bloodstained down a few last moments of life. Her son, if he was still alive, would surely not long survive her. The last Flavian branches to be pruned from the tree.

“Halt.”

Marcus turned his eyes sharply at the voice. A figure in white, half-hidden by the red and gold solidarity of the Imperial guards.

“Remove yourself,” the Praetorian snapped. “We escort Flavia Domitilla to her execution.”

“What is her charge?” The voice was female, low, unhurried. Lady Flavia stood patiently, an ox waiting for the sacrificial ax.

“Impiety. Now remove yourself from the road, Lady.”

“I am the Vestal Justina. In Vesta’s name I pronounce her innocent of the charge laid upon her. By my authority as a priestess I lift the sentence of death levied upon her.”

The crowd began to whisper.

Flavia opened her eyes.

“Oh, no,” said Marcus quietly.

The Praetorian paused. Cleared his throat. “We—we can’t—”

“Do you disobey the laws of Vesta?” With every word the Vestal’s voice grew stronger, carried farther.

“No, but—but the Emperor—”

“In this matter the Emperor is powerless. My goddess has extended the hand of mercy to this prisoner. Execute her and you risk divine retribution.”

The Praetorian groped. “We’ll—we’ll have to take you before the Emperor, Lady. We can’t—”

“Do so. I am sure that before all the people of Rome, he will not fail to obey Rome’s most ancient laws.” The Vestal stepped between a pair of guards, her veiled head dwarfed between their armored shoulders. Lady Flavia was staring at her now, muddled eyes clearing. Marcus heard her voice very clearly, as the Praetorians reversed their path and bundled the two women back through the buzzing crowd toward the Domus Augustana.

“Why—what—why did you—?”

“Vesta told me to save you,” the Vestal said calmly.

“But I don’t believe in her—I’m a fish-painting Christian, I don’t
believe
in her—”

“That doesn’t matter. She still wants you alive.”

“But—” They passed out of Marcus’s hearing, but he could still see the horror dawning in Flavia’s eyes as she stared at her savior. The same horror rose in his own gut because he knew that voice—knew it very well. “Her death for yours,” Marcus said aloud. “He’ll have it no other way.”

D
OMITIAN’S tricky,” I said. “But not trickier than Vix. Vix will do all right.”

Arius, squatting by the fire, didn’t answer. He’d hardly spoken ten words to me the past day.

“Really,” I said as if he’d argued. “Vix will be fine. Domitian’s weakness is games; he can’t stop playing games with people. Vix will play him right back—”

Arius’s dog growled in my lap. I stroked her over and over. “He’ll be all right. He will.”

Arius picked his head up. “Quiet.” His nostrils flared, and for a moment he looked like nothing so much as a wolf catching the scent of the wind. In one fluid motion he was out the door. I sat clutching the dog, frozen.

He reappeared. “Praetorians,” he said coolly. “Get your cloak.”

After a day’s rest I felt stronger again. I flung our cloaks over my arm and hastily bundled up the bread left over from dinner. Arius groped under his mattress, coming up with a long glimmer of metal it took me a moment to recognize.

“I didn’t know you still had a sword,” I said.

He hefted it a moment, carving a figure eight in the air, and a flash of light from the blade cut across his eyes. The Barbarian’s eyes.

No, the sword wasn’t gone. Neither was the blackness in his gaze.

“Ready?”

I scooped up the dog and ducked out of his hut. I risked a quick glance toward the villa, hearing the shatter of pottery even from a distance. Domitian’s guards had already come once, no doubt to take anything valuable for their master, but now they were back to complete a more thorough destruction. The possessions of all traitors were forfeit to the Imperium, their fields no doubt sown with salt and their names never spoken again. For a man who hated Jews, Domitian certainly had a streak of Hebrew vengefulness.

Arius cut straight through the vineyards, holding back the branches for me not out of courtesy, but because I would slow him down if I had to fight my own way through. That was how he had been since he’d seen my strange bruises, since I’d flinched away from him. Silent. Cold. He hadn’t tried to touch me again.

With the blackness reappearing in his eyes, I didn’t want him to.

The dog yapped shrilly at the orange glow of flames licking toward the sky from the roof of the villa. I closed my hand around her muzzle and followed Arius’s broad back straight toward Rome.

Toward our son.

J
USTINA turned away from the little window of her dank cell. “Why,

Paulinus. I believe that’s the first time you’ve ever shouted at me.”

“Shouted at you?” he shouted. “
Shouted
at you? The story’s all over the city! The Vestal who stepped in front of the Praetorians and granted a goddess’s mercy—”

She looked at him calmly. The frantic anger shriveled. “Justina—Justina, I don’t know what he’ll—”

“Sssshhh. It’s in Vesta’s hands, now.” She smiled, a thin smile that quivered at the corners, and pulled her veil down over her face. “Take me to him.”

He stared at her a moment, trying to find her eyes through the barrier of pale silk. Vestal Virgins, he remembered, veiled their faces at only one occasion.

At the time of sacrifice.

 

 

 

S
o,” said Domitian. “This is the Vestal.” He was sitting at his desk with a pile of petitions and maps and letters, Thea’s son cross-legged at his feet as he always was these days. The boy was nodding; Domitian himself looked sleepy, genial, barely interested in traitors after a long day’s work at his desk. Paulinus felt an instant’s flicker of hope.

Then Justina pulled off her veil. Pulled off her whole Vestal’s headdress, shaking loose a head of fine pale hair. She smiled at the Emperor. “Hello, Uncle.”

For an instant there was silence so absolute that Paulinus thought there would never be sound again.

Vix opened his eyes, turning a puzzled gaze on the Vestal. So did Paulinus, looking for the girl he loved—

Instead he found a stranger. Saw the bold Flavian nose shadowed against the lamplight; the curling Flavian hair he’d seen carved in marble, curling now over the collar of a Vestal’s robe; the dark Flavian eyes filled with Domitian’s enigma.

A buried memory surfaced: a tiny princess carrying the flags of childhood games.

“I’ve known you forever,” he’d said to her once, “long before I ever set eyes on you.”

“Julia?” he said to the daughter of Emperor Titus, the grand-daughter of Emperor Vespasian, the niece and—according to some—mistress of Emperor Domitian: Lady Julia Flavia of the Imperial and divine Flavian dynasty.

I offered to marry her
, he thought foolishly.

“Julia,” echoed the Emperor. The look on his face was so strange, so complicated, that Paulinus knew he couldn’t identify it in a thousand years.

But he was afraid of it.

“Sir,” he said rapidly, “I apologize for allowing this impostor into your presence. I will remove and deal with her as she deserves to—”

“No,” the Emperor said absently, eating his niece with his eyes. “No impostor. Tell me, Paulinus—did you know?”

His mouth was dry.

“No,” said Justina—Julia. “He suspected nothing.”

“Much becomes clear.” Still in that musing tone. “Why, for instance, you chose to pardon that worthless Flavia. The pardon is invalid, of course. Since only Vestal Virgins can override an Imperial death sentence, and you—you are no virgin of any kind.”

Incredibly, she smiled. Becoming Justina again, instead of some anonymous Flavian princess. “Ah, but if you were to override my so-very-public pardon, then the people would demand an explanation. What would you tell them?”

“An Emperor does not explain himself.”

“You’ve been explaining your way out of my father’s shadow all your life.”

A restless movement. “And where have you been all this time, Julia?”

Paulinus opened his mouth—and found himself desperately wanting to hear the answer. He closed it again.

“In the Temple of Vesta. Where I always wanted to go. I had to die before I could go there.”

“People said it was a child—”

“No child. I tried to stab myself, but—” A smile illuminated her face. “Vesta did not want me dead yet. So I went to her. She didn’t seem to mind about the virgin part.”

“Someone helped you to escape,” Domitian snapped.

“The Chief Vestal—dead now. One or two others, whom I won’t name.”

A long pause. “I can still kill Flavia, you know.” Abruptly. “I may have remanded execution to exile, but she goes tomorrow to Pandateria. Do you know what that is? A bare rock in the middle of the ocean, not even a mile square. A number of Imperial women have died there, one or two bearing your own name. Who’s to know if one more royal prisoner falls off that rock and breaks her neck?”

“The people will know. They’ll believe the worst because, Uncle, they don’t much like you.”

Vix, curled up on the floor like a dog, let out a faint snort. Domitian sent him a sharp glance before turning his eyes back to his niece. “So they dislike me. You think I torture myself over that?”

Her voice deepened in imitation of his. “Correct.”

Before Paulinus could blink, Domitian had his hands around his niece’s throat. It took Paulinus and two guards to pry him away. Vix took the opportunity to lunge back into the farthest corner, well out of the way.

“Tie her up,” the Emperor snapped to the guards, breathing in fast snorts. “Tie her up.
Do it!
” he screamed as they hesitated, visibly, to lay hands on a princess—Vestal—whatever she was.

Paulinus turned away from the sight of Julia, red finger marks gleaming on her throat, passively surrendering her wrists. “Sir—” To Domitian. “Caesar, please—”

The Flavian voice overrode his own. “Guards. Restrain Prefect Norbanus.”

The Praetorians grabbed his elbows. Paulinus got a hand free, grabbed for the Emperor’s arm. “Caesar, have I ever asked you for anything?”

Domitian paused. The furious gaze lightened briefly and purely with love. “No,” he said, covering Paulinus’s hand with his own. “No. You haven’t. Quiet, now.”

He turned away, back to Julia, and touched her hair where the fine pale gold strands fell around her shoulders like a Vestal’s veil. “I have a piece of this hair in my private chambers,” he mused. “Resting alongside the urn containing your ashes. Although I suppose they aren’t really your ashes, are they? Only the hair is real . . . You gave up your life for your half-sister, Julia. Was it worth it?”

“It was the will of my goddess.”

“Would you do it again?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll give you the opportunity, shall I? Guards!”