Mistress of Rome (57 page)

“Do you know everything, Domina?”

“Nearly,” she said tranquilly. “I have the best spy network in the Empire.”

She pulled out a wax tablet and began to write. I let out a shaky sigh and sank down onto the stool by the desk. My head hurt. I was still splashed in Domitian’s blood. My son had disappeared; my lover was off getting patched up for the thousandth time. The last time? Surely that was too much to hope for.

“What are you writing?” I asked Domitian’s widow.

“A nice new list.” She vigorously underscored the heading with her stylus. “ ‘Things to Do.’ Prepare a formal announcement for the public, summon the Senate to approve the new Emperor, arrange a quick coronation, do something about Flavia—”

“Lady Flavia? She’s all right, then?”

“Oh, yes. I made sure of that. She’s got her boy with her, the one your son and Paulinus saved, and was safely delivered of a little girl a few months ago. They’re doing nicely, Flavia and the children, but it’s high time someone got them off that dreary rock.”

“You can’t bring her back to Rome, surely.”

“No. Better, I think, that the Flavian dynasty be pronounced extinct. But a country estate in Spain or Syria for a respectable widow and her two children—that should do very well. Yes, Spain would be nice. Perhaps I’ll send her Nessus, too. He’s looking rather lost, these days.” A knock sounded at the door. “Enter.”

A silent slave handed over a folded scrap of paper. “From Senator Marcus Norbanus, Domina.”

Her eyes flicked across the single word on the scrap. “I thought so.” She laid the parchment aside, picked up two sealed letters, and handed them to the slave. “Please deliver these to the appropriate addresses.”

“Senator Norbanus won’t take the purple?” I guessed as soon as the door clicked shut.

“What makes you think—”

“I’m not stupid, Domina.”

“Well . . .” A shrug. “Marcus won’t be Emperor. He’ll probably try to retire from the Senate, too, but I won’t have any of that. He’s got years of service left in him, and anyway that rather sweet little Calpurnia Sulpicia should revive him.”

I propped my chin on my hand. “He’d have made quite a Caesar.”

The Empress raised an eyebrow as if surprised to hear a slave’s opinion on such a subject. But I wasn’t really much of a slave anymore, and the eyebrow went down again. “Well, we’ll make do with Senator Nerva. Marcus and I settled on him originally—good lineage, distinguished career, utterly boring. I’d have preferred Marcus, but Nerva will do.”

“Oh, he’s not bad,” I said. “I used to sing for him in Brundisium. Very generous with tips.”

“Let us hope he is as generous with his taxes.” The Empress leaned back in her chair, relaxing for the first time in all the years I’d observed her. “So,” she said.

“So,” I said.

We looked at each other.

“What will you do now, Domina?” I asked.

“Well—” she looked thoughtful. “I have a sister and two cousins who haven’t spoken to me in twenty years. This isn’t the first time I’ve meddled with the doings of Emperors, you see, and they have always disapproved. Time to mend fences. Afterward, I think I shall retire to that quiet little villa in Baiae and live to an extremely virtuous old age.” The Empress tilted her head. “And you, my dear?”

I shrugged. “Arius wants a mountain. He says he’s going to be a gardener.”

“How pastoral. Can he garden?”

“Lady Flavia said he killed most of the grapes in her north vineyard.”

“Perhaps he’ll get better. What about you—what do you want?”

“I just want Arius. Gardener or gladiator.”

“What about your horrid son? Will he be happy with a mountain?”

“Maybe he’ll have a few brothers and sisters he can drill into a legion.”

“You’re already carrying a child, aren’t you?”

I smiled.

“Excellent. Raise it in good health. As for young Vercingetorix—” The Empress looked thoughtful. “He may command a real legion someday, if Nessus’s horoscope is correct. That dreadful son of yours has talent, Thea. If he wants a job when he’s a little older, he will be welcome in Rome. Under a different name, perhaps. I think we may have seen the last of the Young Barbarian. Though not, perhaps, of Vercingetorix.” She shuddered.

Perhaps I should defend my son. Oh, perhaps not. I shrugged.

She produced a bundle of impressively stamped and sealed letters, counting them out one by one. “Papers of freedom for you, Arius, and that appalling child. Board of passage on a ship to Gibraltar, and then to Britannia. A purse with a sum for beginning a new life. An annual stipend to be paid anonymously on the first of every year, forwarded in trust to the governor at Londinium who will ask no questions of whoever comes to collect it.” She pushed them all across the table. “Your reward.”

I picked up the packet holding my future. “We earned it.”

“So you did.” She rose and proceeded to strip each and every emerald from her fingers and throat. “I’m done with green,” she announced. “I think I’ll give all my emeralds away to my sister and cousins.

Choose something for yourself first, my dear.” I chose a broad collar of glittering emeralds that would easily buy a house in Brigantia, or perhaps an entire mountain.

“You’ll need some new gowns before you leave,” the Empress continued, coming around the edge of the desk. “Blood is no longer so fashionable as it once was. I’ll send you some of my own clothes. We are the same size, I believe.”

In fact, we were the same in many ways. The same size, the same height, the same brown hair. Domitian had loved her and then hated her; moved on to Julia who was as unlike her as possible; moved on to me because I was as unlike Julia as possible . . . which meant I was more like the Empress than Julia. But was there ever anyone like Julia?

“Why are you helping me, Domina?” I asked. “Is it because of Lady Julia?”

“Not that it’s any of your business.” Calmly. “But yes. I was relieved when Domitian’s eye moved from me to someone else—you can understand why. So very much relieved that I rather threw Julia to the wolves.”

“Wolves would have been kinder than Domitian.”

“Yes.” Unruffled. “But I was probably a little mad by then. So were you, at one point, and so was Julia. At least we all managed to fight back, in our ways.”

“Some more than others,” I said.

The Empress laughed. In that silent room I imagined I could hear Lady Julia laughing, too.

“Now, a question for you.” The Empress looked at me. “Did you really tell Domitian he was a common little man?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, dear, I wish I could have seen his face.” The Empress stepped forward and pressed her cheek briefly to mine in farewell. I smiled, but I shivered a little as well at her touch. They had called me the mistress of Rome, as they had called Julia, but they had been wrong about us both.
Here
was the mistress of Rome: power made flesh in one cool-voiced woman who looked a little like me.

“Good luck, Thea,” said the Empress.

Good luck, Thea
, Julia echoed. And the three of us parted company.

In the hall outside, I saw two men surrounded by Praetorian guards. Senator Marcus Cocceius Nerva, cross and fussy and still in his sleeping robe, complaining about the night air. And the man who would be adopted as his heir, the great soldier and calm leader undoubtedly suggested to the Empress by Senator Norbanus: Commander Marcus Ulpius Trajan, yawning hugely but still alert in full armor.

“Hail, Caesar,” I said, and passed by before either of them could look puzzled.

 

 

 

ROSE
petals. Trumpets. Chariots. Cheering. Rome, laughing and happy in her festival colors, was ready to celebrate. Marcus could feel it.

Emperor Nerva, in a gold circlet and purple cloak, was borne along in a gilded litter by eight Nubians. Old and fussy, Marcus thought, and he’d be sure to rub the legions the wrong way—but he bowed with appropriate humility before the statues of the gods, and he had been more than generous with the largesse thrown into the crowd. Trajan got a bigger swell of cheers as he rode behind on a gray horse, a laurel crown tipped back on his head at a cheerful angle. Marcus wondered if he should ever tell Trajan that he’d earned his Emperor’s crown by throwing Lepida Pollia out of a litter and making Marcus laugh . . . Perhaps not.

Emperor Nerva took his throne.

Priests came forward, leading rose-garlanded sacrificial bulls. Vestal Virgins in a silent white line. Senators in their formal purple-banded togas. Marcus claimed his place among them, bowing very deeply. He stepped back, joined by Sabina, who looked so tall and pretty in her first woman’s gown that he realized she’d soon be grown up. He’d have her for a few years though, before she married. Marcus wondered if he should ever tell his daughter how close he had come to being Emperor, to making her an Empress by marrying her to the cheerful Trajan . . . Perhaps not.

Calpurnia joined them, glowing like a spring daffodil in a yellow gown. Marcus brought her hand up, pressing it against his cheek, and knew people were murmuring. He had not married Calpurnia yet, not until the end of September when the augurs had declared the date most auspicious, but she had already moved quite openly into the Norbanus household with all her slaves and belongings. Her family wailed and Rome whispered, but his betrothed was impervious. “I adore you, Marcus,” she said frankly. “I’m not wasting one more day away from you.” Marcus found it rather entertaining, at his age, to be scandalous. Only one person’s opinion mattered, and she had given her consent immediately.

“I like to see you happy,” Sabina had said, looking up from a map she had spread out on his library table. “Not that you’re exactly happy right now, but you will be. Calpurnia will see to it. And she’ll have lots more children, which is good because I plan on seeing the world, not marrying a senator and being a dull Roman matron. So there should be someone besides me to carry on the family name.”

She saw his face then and tucked her narrow brown head against his shoulder. “’Linus wouldn’t grudge it,” she said gently. “He’d want you to be happy, too.”

“And your mother?” Marcus managed to speak around the terrible block in his throat that rose whenever Paulinus came to his thoughts. He couldn’t talk about Paulinus, not yet—even to Sabina.

“Well, Mother wouldn’t have wanted you to be happy,” Sabina admitted. “But that doesn’t matter now.” Lady Lepida Pollia had been found dead in the Domus Augustana, stuffed ignominiously into a closet . . . another victim, all assumed, of the assassin who had claimed the Emperor’s life. Marcus, who knew better, did not inquire into the death of his former wife. In the pain of losing Paulinus, he did not even care.

Rome’s former Empress made her solitary way up to Emperor Nerva and sank into a magnificent curtsy. She’d been true to her word, seeing that Paulinus was given a hero’s funeral as the man who had died trying to protect his Emperor and friend. An arch was to be constructed in Paulinus’s honor, his name known forever. The Empress had already bullied it through the Senate in her last act as Empress before she announced her retirement to Baiae and her own family. She curtsied now before the new Emperor in her white silk, a woman for Roman matrons everywhere to hold before their daughters as a model of virtue and decency. Marcus remembered the Empress back when she had been a brown-haired girl named Marcella, a girl with a talent for scheming whom he had not liked. He liked her well enough now, but would he hold her up as a role model for Sabina? Perhaps not . . .

Nessus the astrologer delivered a ringing prophecy, his round face plump and beaming. Marcus felt Calpurnia’s fingers squeeze his as he heard that eighty years of glory lay ahead for the Roman Empire. The golden age of Rome, Nessus promised, had dawned.

Marcus—and Rome—felt collectively that they had earned it.

 

W
E should go.” Arius felt Thea tap his shoulder. “The boat’s waiting. Oh!” she exclaimed as he turned around. “You’re you again!”

He ran a hand over his hair, scrubbed clean of walnut juice to its original russet. The beard was gone, too. “Like it?”

“I love it.” She twined her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek against his clean jaw. He turned her hand over and kissed the inside of her wrist. She had a sunburned flush across her nose, her hair hung in a rope down her back, and when he looked at her he didn’t know if the world was up or down.

“Hey,” said Vix, appearing with the dog panting happily under his arm. “Save it for the boat.” Arius walloped him and Vix swung back, grinning. He’d shot up another three inches during his months at the palace, and his bouts in the Colosseum had added more muscle to his arms, but he looked like a boy again. The drawn, wary look had gone from his face, and he was bounding up the street with his old cocky swagger.

They slipped through the empty side streets, Thea’s hand locked in Arius’s and Vix jogging ahead throwing a stick for the dog. No need to worry about being stopped; with the Empress’s seal on their documents, not a soldier in Rome would do anything but salute and let them pass. Anyway, all the soldiers were busy watching their new Emperor. No one knew or cared that a family of three was bound for a boat on the Tiber.

Brigantia. Arius hadn’t seen it since he was Vix’s age. But when he drew in a breath, he could still smell the mountain mist.

He bumped into Vix, who had stopped in the middle of the street. “What—” His eyes followed his son’s.

Gladiators.

A stream of big, scarred men in purple cloaks trooped out of an unbarred gate into a waiting wagon. Armored men, their faces distant and strained under their helmets. Casting sour looks at the perfumed, powdered
lanista
leaning out of his gilded litter to scold them along.

“Games,” said Thea. “To celebrate the coronation. Trajan loves the games . . .”