Mistress of Rome

  Vix gave me a dirty look as the guard hauled him off. He twisted in the hard grip, and at the same moment a hand fell on my arm—Domitian. For a moment, my son and my Emperor locked eyes.

  “Caesar!” I said brightly. “We should retreat—” and drew him away as best I could, until I could look back and see that my son and his keeper had gone.

  I was lucky. Really very lucky. Domitian was in high bad temper, but he didn’t punish me. Just had one of his stewards march me back to his private palace, the Domus Augustana, and dump me in a luxurious room to rot.

  The fire in the gladiator barracks burnt itself out. Not much damage, as I found out later. Two things had been found among the ashes: the Barbarian’s armor and shield. Divine fire, whispered the plebs, who talked of seeing him fly down to Hades. Praetorians, I would have said if anyone had asked me. Praetorians acting on Domitian’s orders: killing the Barbarian and then burning the body. Only one lord and god in Rome.

  Vix. I looked out from the balcony of my new bedchamber, over the panorama of Rome and beyond. Vix, are you in Tivoli now?

  Arius . . .

  Don’t think about either of them. Only survive.

  How I’ve gone up in the world. I’ve got a gold bowl to hold my blood now.

  WE’RE leaving tonight,” said Flavia. “For Tivoli. I’ve got a villa there; that’s where we’ll hide you. Do you know anything about gardening?”

  “Gardening?” The burn on his arm was starting to hurt now, but mostly he felt tired.

  “Yes, gardening. I need another gardener, and you need an occupation. And a disguise, while we give people time to forget that famous face of yours. Hmm. What do you think of ‘Stephanus the faithful gardener’?”

  “Mmm.” The motion of the litter was putting him to sleep. The dog was already chewing on the silk tassel of the litter cushions. “If we get that far.”

  “Oh, but we will. No one will search this litter at the gate. I’m the Emperor’s niece.” Flavia smiled. “Why don’t you go ahead and pass out now.”

  He closed his eyes. Arius the Barbarian left the city, dead to the world.

  PART FOUR

  The Temple of Vesta

  Now and then, Marcus comes to the Temple of Vesta. Not to give the goddess thanks—he can think of no hearth and home more cursed than his own—but to pray for Julia.

  “I feel her here,” he says. The Chief Vestal is his friend; she has a fi erce spirit under her white veil, and the two of them have collaborated, once or twice, against some of the Emperor’s harsher decrees.

  “Perhaps she is here, Marcus Norbanus.”

  He holds his hands out to the eternal fl ame on its quiet altar. “Vesta, goddess of hearth and home, guard the soul of Lady Julia. She was always your servant.”

  Twenty-one

  LEPIDA

  A. D. 92

  IF you want a villa in Tivoli, by all means, buy one.” Marcus barely looked up from his scrolls. “Any house you wish, as long as I’m not in it.”

  “Thank you, darling.” Marcus could be rude to me, he could drill me with those marble-hard eyes, he could say blistering things across the breakfast figs on the few occasions we still met at home, but in the end we both knew who was in charge.

  So, a villa in Tivoli. In Rome I had my own house on the most fashionable side of the Palatine hill, source of all Rome’s finest parties and far from Marcus’s quiet domus near the Capitoline library where he stayed with Sabina—but for summers, the fashionable needed another watering hole. Baiae had once been popular, but Emperor Domitian had a villa in Tivoli and now no one who was anyone went anywhere else. So I had my new villa with its huge circular triclinium and atrium cascading with flowers, with enough ancestral busts of Marcus’s illustrious ancestors to make a show. Perfect for entertaining. I could fi x it up properly during my mourning period this spring. Silver couches with rose silk hangings, intricate mosaics, perhaps some of those new erotic statues that looked so daring. A month to put everything straight, and everything ready in time for the summer season. No need to mourn longer than a month; Father wouldn’t have wanted me sitting at home moldering in grief. A fever had taken him—too tiresome, when he was just starting to climb the ladder and stop being an embarrassment to me.

  “Sabina, will you quit lurking around like a sick rabbit? Do something normal.” She spent a week or two with me every now and then, for form’s sake. Marcus didn’t like it, but I had to be seen with my daughter enough for propriety. “Go have a spasm somewhere else,” I told her, and proceeded in my blue-curtained litter to the public baths where I had myself steamed and perfumed and oiled, soaking in the latest gossip. The Empress was involving herself in good works, the refuge of all neglected wives. There were rumors that the Emperor’s niece Lady Flavia Domitilla was a Christian—“Yes, my dear, one of those dirty fish-people!” The new erotic poetry from Crete had been banned in the name of public morals, but for a fee private copies could be obtained. The Chief Vestal Virgin had been arrested for impurity—“Such a scandal!”—and had been sentenced to burial alive on the next holiday, while her lovers would be beaten to death by rods. Stolas were to be worn shorter, showing the whole of the ankle. Gray was fashionable, and hair dressed into a braided crest with silver ribbon. “Yes, that’s what the Emperor’s concubine Athena wears—”

  “I don’t like gray,” I said sharply. “Much too drab.” I turned on my side for a dusting of lilac powder.

  Athena. Thea, that common little slut Thea, was still in my way. Swooped in on the Emperor before Julia’s ashes were cold! Still queening it at Domitian’s side over a year later. The courtiers jokingly called her the mistress of Rome, as they had once called Julia. My slave girl, the mistress of Rome!

  Well, she wouldn’t be for long. With my new villa in Tivoli, I’d be much closer to the Emperor. I’d get Paulinus to drop my name, escort me to a few more Imperial functions. Yes, that would do the trick. I’d still get what I was after.

  Didn’t I always?

  THE investigation of the Vestals I leave to you.” The Emperor passed a packet of papers over to Paulinus. “If the Chief Vestal is corrupt, then so might the acolytes be. Corruption always filters down from the top.”

  “I’ll see to it next week, sir.” Paulinus saluted.

  The Emperor smiled. “When can I break you of the habit of saluting me, boy?”

  “Never, sir.” Paulinus saluted again, grinning.

  The Emperor waved him off with a tolerant hand and beckoned for the usual troop of secretaries. “Get on with you, Paulinus. It’s nearly midnight. You soldiers don’t have to burn the midnight oil like Emperors—”

  “Good thing, too.” Paulinus tucked the folder under his arm. “Good night, sir.”

  “Good night.”

  He did not, however, go straight to bed. Maybe soldiers didn’t have to burn the midnight oil, but Praetorian Prefects certainly did. There were guard rosters to draw up, papers to be sorted and signed, letters to be answered . . . a great many letters.

  By midnight Paulinus was rubbing his aching head. Eyeing his bed, he caught sight of a crumpled scroll at the edge of his desk, marked with a familiar brusque handwriting. He slid his thumb under the seal. “To Prefect Paulinus Augustus Norbanus the Almighty Right Arm of the Emperor,” Trajan had written in his ebullient upward-slanting lines.

  Paulinus smiled and leaned back. Trajan had been transferred from the cold muddy woods of Dacia to hotter climes and hotter battles where sullen legionnaires, army cutbacks, and irate superior officers had not stopped him from amassing an impressive reputation. “Envy me,” Trajan wrote. “Lots of wine, plenty of fighting, pretty girls, and prettier boys—and with the Chatti calmed down for good, you’re stuck in Rome pushing scrolls around a desk. Is the Emperor treating you well, Bureaucrat?”

  Better than well. The Emperor worked him, loaded him, talked to him, joked with him, trusted him: a god, a master, a friend. A glimpse into a mind a thousand times more complex than his own. A
burden of unbelievable good fortune.

  “I’m coming back to Rome in a few months, and I’m dragging you to the Colosseum. It’s been months since I’ve seen a good gladiator. I suppose we’ll have to pay our regards to your family, but they aren’t bad. I’ve found that your father is some kind of cousin on my mother’s side. Everyone is well, I hope?”

  Paulinus’s mind skittered to a halt. Well? No, he didn’t suppose any of his family were well. Sabina looked as sad as a sick puppy. His father was polite—unfailingly gentle, unfailingly courteous, never reproachful. Hate me, Paulinus wanted to shout. Just hate me. But instead of curses—

  “Duties going well, boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Emperor thinks much of you.”

  “Yes, well—yes.”

  “You don’t look well. Rings under your eyes.”

  And claw marks down my back, and a bite on my shoulder, and an ache in my gut, all put there by your wife—hate me, oh gods, just hate me—

  But the eyes were awkward and caring. Easier not to face them. He scarcely went home at all, now; just a visit every month or two for form’s sake. “That pretty little Pollia cow,” Paulinus’s aunt Diana had said, disgusted. “It’s not enough she’s got her claws in you. Now she’s driving you out of the family.”

  “You know?” Paulinus had been appalled. His aunt Diana lived out in the country with her horses, paying no attention to gossip. If she knew . . .

  “Paulinus, everyone knows. Say the word, and I’ll run the bitch over with my chariot.”

  Trajan again: “No wife yet? I thought a sentimental chump like you would be an easy target. No doubt women are climbing all over the Emperor’s right arm.”

  “Where do you think you’re going, Paulinus?” Lepida’s voice, sinking as it always did straight past his brain through the pit of his stomach and lower so it was his own body that betrayed him as his mind wailed. She didn’t have much time for him, with her parties and her banquets and her other lovers. But every few weeks she’d send a note—“Tonight”—and he’d stare at it for a day, swearing up and down that he wouldn’t go, and in the end his feet would drag him to her door.

  No, there weren’t any other women. Lepida had burrowed under his skin like a fishhook.

  I’ve wanted someone like that, Thea had told him last summer. And she’d never forgotten him.

  Never. Never was a long time.

  But time was time, and time could be filled. Paulinus closed his window on the beautiful spring night and its nightmares, and reached for a blank scroll. “To Commander Marcus Ulpius Trajan, Judaea,” he scrawled. “All going well here in Rome . . .”

  AND so,” Marcus wrote, “it is this author’s conclusion that the only possible solution for the success of the Imperium, the Senate, and the People of Rome is the system of adoptive Emperors.”

  He put down his pen and sat back, massaging his thumb with his free hand. It was late; most of the house was asleep. He’d been writing for a good three hours.

  “And for what?” he said aloud, idly. The Emperor had forbidden him to publish any more speculative treatises.

  “Political speculation encourages freethinking among the masses.” The black eyes had rested on him coolly. “My regard for your son earns you this warning, but the next time you publish advice on how my Empire should be run, you will face my disapproval.”

  Finis.

  Marcus swept up the finished scrolls and folded them away into his desk drawer. You can forbid me to publish, Lord and God, but not write. Or to think. Not even a god can do that.

  “Father?”

  He looked up to see a little white-robed figure in the doorway. “You should be in bed, Vibia Sabina.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She edged a little farther into the library. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  She ran across the room and climbed up into his lap: eight years old, but small for her years. Too small. Everything about her reminded him of a bird: the fragile bones, the pointed face, the fall of feather-brown hair down her back. He tucked her hair behind her ear, feeling the too-rapid pulse in her temple. “Another seizure?”

  She shrugged. She had a very deep pride, his daughter—even to him, she hated admitting when the strange faulty connection in her mind gave way and threw her into one of her fits.

  “Are you taking your medicine?”

  “It doesn’t work, Father.”

  “Then we’ll go to another doctor.”

  “He’ll just tell me to drink gladiator’s blood. That’s supposed to help epilepsia. Remember the slave boy named Vix who told me—”

  “We live in the age of enlightenment, and I won’t have you drinking gladiator’s blood. I’m sure it tastes very nasty.”

  “I don’t want to go to any more doctors, Father.”

  He smoothed her hair. “We’ll talk about it later, then.”

  “I love you.” She closed her eyes in perfect trust, and he felt a stab of guilt. I’m not worthy of it, Sabina. Not a good father to you, or Paulinus.

  There was nothing of Lepida in his daughter, but there was something of Paulinus: the diffident but straight gaze, perhaps. Paulinus, who paid a dutiful visit every few months and winced whenever Lepida’s name was mentioned, just as Sabina did. Marcus kept Sabina from her mother’s company as much as possible, but he had already failed Paulinus. What would his Imperial grandfather have done? What would any decent man do for his children?

  Watch them shrivel by inches, or ruin them in a stroke?

  He fingered another scroll shoved to the back of a drawer—a long scroll, tightly written in his own hand, labeled “Evidence.” A good many slaves had given testimony on that scroll, nervously affirming Lepida’s misdoings over the years. But slave testimony might not be enough—every court of law knew slaves could be intimidated by a cruel master.

  “Cast-off lovers,” he mused aloud. Lepida might have some who were angry enough to talk. Or some with pressing debts—if he could buy their secrets from them, so much the better. He fingered the scroll.

  I am the grandson of the god Augustus. I will not be saddled all my life with that evil she-viper.

  Wait, another voice said—the voice of his wily Imperial grandfather. Not just yet.

  TIVOLI

  WELL, Stephanus?” Lady Flavia Domitilla came through the wet green garden, a shawl about her shoulders, hair gleaming in the orange light of the sunset.

  Arius bowed. “Reporting on the north vineyard, Domina. The late frost took some of the grapes, and there’s something on the vines—black stuff.”

  “Pity,” she sighed. “Those vines make an excellent wine in good years. I’ll have Urbinus take a look at them.”

  “I’ll fi x it,” Arius said stubbornly. He found he liked gardening. It didn’t much like him yet, but he’d find a way.

  “So much for my wine.” Lady Flavia clearly did not share his faith, but she smiled. “How you’ve changed, Barbarian.”

  He ran a hand over his hair, dyed dark with walnut juice. He’d grown a short beard, too, and his gladiator tattoo was gone under a burn mark. The only link between Arius the Barbarian and the gardener was the little three-legged dog limping devotedly at his heels. None of the other slaves appeared to recognize him, and in his hut behind the vineyard he could keep his distance from the rest of the household.

  “As much pleasure as you take in wrecking my vineyards,” Lady Flavia was saying, “you don’t have to stay here. I was sure you’d want to move on. It’s been more than a year, now.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind staying.” His own hut instead of a locked cell, wet velvet earth under his feet instead of bloody sand, birdsong instead of hungry applause—this place might as well have been paradise.

  “You can go home, you know,” Lady Flavia was saying. “Back to Britannia, if you like. I can arrange that.”

  “I know. But—it’s not right. Not yet.” He wasn’t sure Britannia was still home. He’d dreamed
of going back once, but that had been when he had Thea. Now, maybe a hut in a vineyard outside Tivoli was home enough. Or maybe he’d lived too long as a slave to feel comfortable making any decision about the future. “I’m not done here yet,” he said at last.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t know.” He sniffed the air, feeling ill at ease. “The gods’ll let me know, maybe.” Until then, days among the twining vines and nights before a fire with his dog were good enough.

  “You are an odd one,” said Flavia. “If you’re not leaving us, I’ll keep an eye on the vines myself. I’m staying here all year, instead of going back to Rome. Rome doesn’t need me.”

  “And the Emperor?”

  “He’s well,” she said calmly. “Restless, I think, since the wars in Germania are over and he’s always preferred army life. But well.”

  “I’ll take my leave, Domina.” He bowed, snapping for the dog.

  “Good night.”

  Twenty-two

  ROME

  PAULINUS tucked his helmet under his arm, raking his fingers through his sweat-matted curls. Spring had bloomed early and hot this year; after the heat of the midday sun outside, the House of the Vestal Virgins was pale and cool and still.

  A middle-aged woman approached in a silent flutter of white robes. “Yes, Prefect? Have you come to pray?”

  “Official business, madam.” Paulinus handed over a scroll with the Imperial seal. “You are requested and required to assist me in all my inquiries.”