Mistress of Rome

  Seventeen

  THEA

  YES, more than a month now and no sign he’s tiring of her!” one of the slaves whispered outside my room, having just carried out an armful of my dresses. She’d run into two more laundresses and they’d at once put their heads together. For the last month, no one at Praetor Larcius’s house had been able to talk of anything but me.

  “I heard he took a courtesan from Madam Xanthe’s establishment—” Another of the slave women.

  “Yes, and sent her back within the hour. He keeps our Athena all night!”

  “She’s not beautiful like those courtesans. What’s she have, that he doesn’t tire of her?”

  I didn’t know, either. “Why?” I asked once, but Domitian only shrugged. He sent for me a minimum of five times a week. I invariably stayed the night and walked back to Larcius’s house in my sandals, yawning at the spring dawn.

  The laundry woman: “Sshh, she’ll hear you!”

  “No, she won’t. She’s been up all hours, doing God knows what, and she’ll sleep till midday.”

  In fact I was sitting up on my sleeping couch, my hair hanging down the back of the loose Greek chiton I wore to bed, chewing on the end of a stylus and trying to write a song. Domitian rather liked the music I wrote myself—“You might even write something good someday,” was the way he phrased it.

  “You know he talks to her? You suppose she advises him—the voice behind the throne, and all that?”

  Silently I laughed. I had no influence over Domitian at all; he’d left me in no doubt of that. “Don’t plan on meddling in Imperial affairs,” he’d said coolly on my first overnight stay at the palace. “I never ask my women for advice. A rule for living that follows ‘Never anger the gods’ and ‘Never bet on gladiators.’ ”

  I already knew about that last one.

  The slave women again: “You think he’ll tire of her soon?”

  Even if he did, my future was assured. There would be many men in Brundisium wanting to hear what in my voice had so fascinated the ruler of the world. Everywhere I went I was courted and congratulated. Only Larcius seemed concerned.

  “I hate to see you like this, child.” Embarrassed. “You’re a singer. An artist. Not a courtesan.”

  “The Emperor knows that. He gave me lyre strings, didn’t he? Enough to keep me playing until I’m fifty.”

  “Don’t be tiresome, child. You know what I mean!”

  I smiled. A bit of insolence in that smile was borrowed from my son, but I couldn’t help it. Larcius sighed. “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re missing a great many engagements, you know. Centurion Densus and Lady Cornelia Prima asked for you to sing for their eldest daughter’s wedding, and they’ve always been some of your favorite patrons—”

  “Tell them no.” My Imperial lover didn’t like to share my time. In a way it was refreshing—the Emperor had singled me out, and as a result I didn’t have to be subservient to anyone anymore. Except him.

  The melody I was trying to write unstuck itself in my head and flowed out of the stylus. Rather nice. It would go well with the text of an old Greek poem that I had in mind. Maybe I’d get a word of grudging praise out of the Emperor: “Not good, but not bad, either.”

  “Thea?” Penelope burst in, her gray curls vibrating with exasperation. “Thea, that child of yours is beating up Chloe’s son again—”

  By the time I rushed down the hall in my bed robe, Vix’s roars were filling the house.

  “Call my mother a cheap whore!” Vix and Chloe’s son were lurching about the atrium swinging at one another. “She’s not either cheap! She’s very expensive! She’s the best! Your mother gives it away for FREE!”

  They fell with a crash into the tiled atrium pool. Vix came up spluttering and roaring, still swinging. I grabbed him by the doubled-up fists, hauled him out of the pool, made the appropriate apologies, and dragged him down the hall again. “You cannot keep going around picking fights! What did Chloe’s son say to you?”

  “That you were the Emperor’s whore.”

  “I am the Emperor’s whore, Vix!” Dragging him into my bedchamber.

  “Yeah, but he said you weren’t no singer! Said you’d do anything for a copper. Said—”

  “No excuse. Bend over.” I got out the worn birch switch, and Vix let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  “Vix, for God’s sake, I haven’t even hit you yet.”

  “So get on with it.” He grinned.

  I gave him a dozen good whacks across his wet rear. He yelled as if I were removing his gizzard with a fork. Not that he was really in agony; he just yelled on principle. I wasn’t really angry with him, either; I just hit him on principle. I had to do something to prove I wasn’t an utter failure as a mother.

  “So if you’re the Emperor’s whore, when does it get good for me?” Vix straightened amiably as I put the birch switch away, rubbing his behind. “Will he take you to the games? I could go to the games! Sit in the Imperial box up close—”

  “You are not going to the games.”

  “Am too! I’m gonna be a gladiator someday—”

  “You are not going to be a gladiator!”

  My people have an old saying about the sins of the parents being visited on the children. I used to think that was all nonsense. Just imagine.

  NOT a bad song,” said the Emperor. “Less banal than usual.” “That’s what I thought you’d say.” I laid my lyre aside.

  “Do you care what I think?”

  It was very late. The lamps guttered low, casting shadows over the Imperial bedchamber. A plain bedchamber, reflecting Domitian’s plain tastes: no silk hangings on the walls, no velvet cushions on the sleeping couch, no jewels in the marble eyes of the little Minerva that stood in the corner.

  I reached for my night robe and pulled it over my head, not pushing back the blanket until I was dressed. He didn’t like to have me lounging naked on his bed. “I won’t have any woman brazening around my chambers like Cleopatra,” he said shortly. “Unless I say otherwise, you’ll keep yourself clothed like a decent woman.”

  He was already reaching for his portfolio, light gleaming through the thin spot in his hair. He was sensitive about that thin spot, I’d found. He frowned as he squinted over a scroll, but it was an absent frown; he was in an approachable mood this evening. “Plans for the harbor?” I asked. “Or a new arch?” Everywhere Domitian went, he built: harbors, arches, roads, aqueducts, temples, all rising to the glory of the Flavian dynasty.

  “The harbor.”

  “It’s going very slowly, isn’t it?”

  “The engineers say they need another year. I estimate three.”

  “More like four, I’d say. The auspices are pointing toward another flood.”

  “You know more about harbors than I do?”

  “No, but I’ve lived in Brundisium a long time.”

  “And I never take a woman’s advice.”

  I shrugged, arranging myself to wait in silence, but after a moment he gestured at me to continue talking.

  “I’m not sure what you want me to talk about, Caesar.” Lightly. “Why don’t you tell me a story instead? Your thrilling victory over the Germans at Tapae, maybe?”

  “I despise telling stories.”

  “That’s a change. Most men love to bore me with their tales of valor.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized my mistake. He didn’t like being reminded about the other men I’d entertained before him. That was one reason why I hadn’t told him about Vix.

  His black eyes looked at me consideringly, as if my skull were made of glass and he could see through it to the little russet-haired boy in my head. A fly buzzed, and his hand snapped out casually, trapping the fly on the pen’s sharp tip. He never missed. The courtiers liked to joke about his kills, laying bets on how many flies could stack up on his pen by the end of a long summer afternoon . . . but the jokes had fear behind them. Perhaps just because he was Emperor. But perhaps not. I was never entire
ly easy with him despite my frankness of speech. And I hadn’t told him about Vix . . .

  I changed the subject.

  “Will you be going back to Rome soon, Caesar?”

  “No. To Tivoli for the summer.”

  “When will you be leaving?”

  “Why?” He sharpened his pen. “Looking to be rid of me?”

  “Maybe I’m looking to be rid of all the sycophants in my drawing room.” A flood of them every morning now, begging for a word with me. Senators murmuring tactful words about governorships for themselves and posts for their sons, poets writing me verses for patronage, old soldiers hoping for a place in the palace guard—even young men stupid enough to think stealing the Emperor’s mistress the ultimate coup. You’d think it would be exciting to be the hub of all that attention, but it was surprisingly dull. A little sad. All those greedy eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” said Domitian, breaking my thoughts. “As soon as I’m tired of you, the sycophants will be gone. I suppose you’ll be sad when the day arrives?”

  “No.”

  “I used to value honesty in women. I’m beginning to reevaluate that opinion.”

  “Shall I go, Caesar?”

  “No.” He drew the sharp tip of his pen down over my forehead, my nose, my lips. “Come here.”

  As a lover, he was brisk and unsentimental. So far he hadn’t exhibited any strange needs or unusual demands; in fact his only stated request was “Refrain, please, from pretending ecstasy. I find it distracting.” He was thick-bodied but agile, with a sprinkle of graying hairs curling crisply on his chest: a vigorous forty years of age. In bed most men look like fools to me, but Domitian was no fool.

  When he was done I reached for my robe. “It’s near dawn,” I said. “I should go.”

  He lay against the pillow, his eyes unreadable. “You should.”

  I was a singer and I knew how to read an audience. I’d been a whore, and I knew how to read men. But I looked at Domitian and I never knew what he was thinking. I’d seen him sign death warrants with a casual flourish, I’d seen him throw his head back and shout laughter at some unexpected joke, I’d shared his bed and looked into his black eyes across a pillow—and I did not know him at all.

  I tied my sandals, collected my lyre, and slipped into the hall. Behind me the lamplight outlined the Emperor’s harsh-cut nose, the half-folded eyelids that camouflaged the sharp Flavian gaze. The “bed-wrestling,” as he called it in his more jocular moods, was done. He was already busy with his scrolls.

  An easy man? No. A likable man? Not even that.

  But not a boring man.

  I was rarely summoned to the palace in the morning, but when the freedman knocked on my door after breakfast I didn’t argue. To my surprise I was shown not into the bedchamber but the tablinum, where my Imperial lover was half-hidden by a mountain of paperwork. “Come in,” he said, stamping his seal ring at the bottom of some document or other. “Close the door.”

  The interview, where I received the first shock of the day, was brief and businesslike. A smirk hovered around the freedman’s mouth as he ushered me out, and I knew that soon everyone in Brundisium would be whispering that the Emperor had paid off his whore at last and what did you expect with a common singing Jew. I drew a fold of my veil over my head and hurried through the atrium, threading through a crowd of slaves and hangers-on. I bumped squarely into the second shock of the day—a shock wearing a ruby-red stola and smelling of musk.

  “Watch where you’re going,” she snapped, and pushed past me.

  “Lady Lepida?” I said.

  “Yes, what?” She turned and looked at me for the first time. I pushed the veil off my face, and as her skin flushed a mottled red I felt an obscure gladness that I was wearing my new gown of spangled amber silk banded in gold around the hem.

  “Thea?” Her eyes darted over the amber beads around my neck, the chunks of topaz in my ears, the inlaid gold circlet that caught up my hair. “What are you doing here?” I could see her mind whirling, fast as the wheels of the chariots around the circus.

  “I’m working.” I made a vague gesture that showed off my gold rings. “What are you doing here in Brundisium?”

  “Visiting my stepson—he’s just come south from Germania, not that it’s any of your business—”

  “Oh, but Paulinus isn’t here just now.” I set my earrings dancing with a small toss of my head, feeling a swell of savage satisfaction in my middle. “Some business at the Praetorian barracks, no doubt. Come back tomorrow?”

  “How do you know? What are you doing at the palace, Athena?” Lepida glared, groping for her calm. People about us were beginning to stare, and she lowered her voice. “Prefect Norbanus is a close personal friend of the Emperor’s, and if he hears how you’ve spoken to me—”

  “Well, Paulinus is a close personal friend of mine, too. I’m sure he’ll forgive me.” I used my superior height to look down my nose at her, a trick that worked just as well now as it had in the past. Maybe a little better, since now my gown was just as fine as hers and my jewelry finer. “And the Emperor, well, he’ll forgive me anything these days. You weren’t hoping to see him? He’s very busy with the harbor plans just now. The pressures of his position are infinite.” I sighed, getting into the spirit of things. A stout matron in a plum silk stola looked at us, whispering behind a beringed hand to her husband. “Infinite pressure, but my poor darling bears up so well. Better luck tomorrow.” I turned on the heel of my gold-trimmed sandal as if ready to swirl past.

  Her sharp-nailed little hand dug into my arm. “What do you mean? You don’t know the Emperor!”

  “Oh, but I do. He’s devoted to me.” I smiled, planting every word like a dart and raising my well-trained voice to carry. A group of nearby lictors glanced over. “Hadn’t you heard? Athena, the Emperor’s new songbird? His new mistress?” I twirled, spinning my gold veils. “Me.”

  Her face turned green. I’d never seen anyone’s face turn green before, and I watched with interest. Just like an unripe cheese. Lepida opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. I cut her off, loosing my last and biggest dart. Everyone in the atrium was staring now. “In fact, when the Emperor retreats to his villa in Tivoli for the summer, he’ll be taking me with him. Alone.”

  I smiled again, fondly, into her gaping face. “Do feel free to call before I leave for Tivoli. We have so much to say to each other. Oh, and you needn’t feel embarrassed about calling on a common singer. I get so many distinguished visitors now . . . Have a lovely day, Lepida Pollia.”

  A beautiful moment. Oh, what a beautiful, perfect moment. But as I proceeded out of the palace and down the street, glee gave way to puzzlement. The Emperor was taking me to Tivoli. Where he took no one.

  Why?

  “Time to pay me off?” I’d asked him crisply, threading my way through the usual bustle of slaves, pages, and secretaries in his tablinum. Perhaps if his farewell present was generous enough I could buy my freedom from Larcius . . .

  “I’m not paying you off yet,” he said disinterestedly, sealing up a scroll and handing it to a slave. “I’m taking you to Tivoli for the summer. We leave in five days.”

  I must have looked quite comical, standing there with my mouth open. He looked up in some irritation, but then he rose and walked around the desk toward me, his mouth flicking upward into one of its rare, charming smiles. “No, Athena, I rarely joke.” He picked up my hand, surprising me again. Outside of “bed-wrestling,” he rarely touched me. He lifted my fingers to his lips as if to kiss my hand, but then he leaned down quite suddenly and bit the side of my palm.

  “Pack light.” Without missing a beat he resumed dictating to one of his secretaries, who gave me an awed look as I left the room in a daze and bumped into Lepida.

  I blinked the image away, looking down at the little crescent of pink marks on the side of my palm. Barely visible in the sunlight.

  Well. I really had better be getting home. If I was leaving for Tivoli in five days,
I had a lot of preparations to make.

  Eighteen

  SO what is a high-powered government official like Praetorian Prefect Norbanus doing escorting his master’s mistress to an assignation?” Athena teased. “I hope it’s not a demotion.”

  Paulinus laughed. “I think I’m the only person the Emperor trusts to get you there without trying to seduce you,” he said cheerfully. In a smoke-blue stola with lapis lazuli combs holding her dark hair, reclining in an Imperial litter curtained in plum silk and borne by six impassive Nubians, Athena looked every bit an Emperor’s mistress. Paulinus felt a moment of faint envy—he’d enjoyed her company long before the Emperor, after all . . . not that Domitian knew that. He banished the thought, steering his horse up to the litter’s side. The road had been cleared before them, dew already drying. His cohort of Praetorians chattered easily behind, hoisting their spears across their shoulders and swearing amiably at the spring mud underfoot, glad as Paulinus was himself of a pleasant ride on a sunny blue morning.

  “Since I’m off-limits now, you might as well call me Thea,” she said, fanning dust away from her face. “That’s my real name, after all.”

  Paulinus blinked. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Men don’t talk to their mistresses. Only to their friends.”

  “So the Emperor doesn’t talk to you?”

  “Well, he does.” Athena—Thea—sounded reflective. “But he’s different, isn’t he?”

  “He is,” Paulinus agreed.

  “And he values you very highly.” Thea propped her elbow against the plum silk cushions. “You haven’t had many breaks from Dacia these past few years, have you?”

  Paulinus shrugged, feeling the red plumes nod on his helmet. “I’m just a watchdog.”

  Thea smiled, her lapis earrings swinging against her throat. “He uses you hard, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Paulinus said seriously. “But it’s a great trust.”