Mistress of Rome

  Marcus blinked. Lepida’s mouth dropped unattractively open.

  “You’re vicious. You’re unprincipled. You mistreat your slaves and abuse your daughter—”

  “Well.” Lepida regrouped. “You’re just a jealous—”

  “And furthermore you’re the worst, most neglectful, most criminal wife in Rome.” Calpurnia looked at Marcus. “I think we can go now.”

  Paulinus stifled something that could have been a cough, and Marcus did more than smile. He found himself grinning, ear to ear, as he had not grinned in a long time. “Yes,” he agreed. “I believe we’re all ready.”

  The winter breeze outside had turned to a freezing rain, but the air inside the litter on the way to the palace was even colder.

  PAULINUS saw one of the Praetorian soldiers flirting with a slave girl when he was supposed to be on duty. “Go on ahead,” he told his father, and paused to give the man a brisk tongue-lashing. Hastening back toward the triclinium, he saw that Lady Flavia and her family had already arrived. The boys had gone ahead with their father, their exuberance awed by the magnificence around them, but Lady Flavia had paused in the adjoining anteroom, berating one of her slave boys. Thea’s son, Vix, Paulinus saw, and he quickened his step.

  “—you’ll keep well back, you horrid child, until the banquet is over and then I’ll drop a word in your mother’s ear and you can see her—”

  Vix wore an anonymous slave tunic with the badge of Flavia’s family, but he had no slave’s servility as he stared around the sumptuous mosaics and pillars of the new palace. “Whoa. This is some pile.”

  “Why did you bring him?” Paulinus lowered his voice.

  “Thea hasn’t seen him in months, I thought she might like—” Flavia hauled Vix back by the neck of his tunic and smacked him before he could prowl behind a column. “I’m beginning to think better of the idea.”

  “Keep him in the anteroom out of sight,” Paulinus advised. Flavia’s wail followed him toward the triclinium.

  “Since when can anyone keep the little monster anywhere?”

  LEPIDA

  A tedious evening, quite unlike that lovely banquet at the Domus Augustana that had celebrated Paulinus’s betrothal. Everyone was being very formal tonight in the massive state banquet room of the new palace, subdued voices murmuring politely about inconsequentials, backed by the splashing of the massive oval fountain framed in the arched windows. Lady Flavia was engrossed with her husband, her two sons were pestering the fat little astrologer with questions, Marcus and Calpurnia were discussing some boring political theory or other, and Paulinus—Paulinus was ignoring me. Talking to the Emperor, his eyes a shade reserved. Had they quarreled? Well, who cared? He was ignoring me, and he’d even refused my last invitation. Something would have to be done about that.

  My eyes fell on Thea. She’d worn carmine-colored silk, rich purple-red like old blood embroidered all around the hem with jet beads, a jet circlet dipping low on her forehead. Moping, hollow-eyed, ignored by the Emperor—

  But she still sat on the same couch as the Emperor. In the place his wife would have occupied had she been there.

  A big Greek in a white silk tunic bent to restock her plate, and my eyes sharpened. Her slave? He was a handsome one, whatever his name was. Tall, golden, muscular, beautiful. He leaned down, a lock of wheat-fair hair falling over his brow, and Thea gave him her first smile of the evening as he touched her hand.

  “Athena.”

  She jumped, but the Emperor’s voice was jovial. “You must sing for us.”

  “Of course, Caesar.” She rose, taking up her lyre. Her royal lover watched her inscrutably. Had he gotten my letter or not?

  “Beautiful.” Marcus applauded as she finished. “I remember the first time I heard you sing, Lady Athena. Your voice has always given me great pleasure.”

  “I remember as well.” She made a little bow. “I was still scrubbing out fountain tiles. You were very kind about my warbling.”

  “Then I owe you a great debt, Marcus Norbanus,” the Emperor called from his couch. “Without her warbling, I would never have met Athena at all.”

  Happy thought.

  “So what do you say, Athena?” The Imperial voice lashed out suddenly, freezing her in the act of swirling up her red-purple train. “Fortunate, isn’t it, that you can sing like the goddess you aren’t?”

  “. . . Yes, Caesar.”

  “I can see you now, scrubbing tiles and singing to frogs.” His voice drawled out, jovial and hard. “No silks, no jewels, no soft feather beds . . . no lover.”

  A little nerve of excitement prickled along the back of my neck.

  “No.” Her voice was neutral. “I’d have none of that. I have been very fortunate.”

  “Yes, you have. All the luxury in the Empire at your disposal, an Emperor to dispense it to you . . . and behind his back, another man on which to shower it.”

  Quite slowly, her face turned the color of chalk.

  “Really, Athena.” Softly. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  A glorious golden shout erupted in my head.

  Marcus and Calpurnia exchanged confused glances. Paulinus looked frozen. Flavia threw a quick glance from Domitian to Thea and back again. “Uncle, we shouldn’t—not in front of the boys—”

  “Oh, but why shouldn’t they watch? Maybe they’ll learn something. How to deal with traitors. With deceivers. With unfaithful women.”

  “Caesar—” Thea took a quick step forward. “Lord and God, I swear to you—”

  “So I’m a god now, am I? How quickly you change your mind. Are you going to beg, Athena?”

  I sat up eagerly. To see the so-called mistress of Rome on her knees—

  “Sir.” Paulinus came to absurd attention on the dining couch. “Sir, I should have told you. I know that. But she’s done nothing wrong. I’ve watched her with him. There has been no betrayal—”

  “Sshh, Paulinus.” The Emperor’s eyes never flickered from his concubine’s.

  “But sir, I swear it’s the truth! Would I lie to you?”

  “No, you wouldn’t. But she would. You don’t realize what liars women are. Athena—” The Imperial voice snapped out across the room again. “How easy was it to pull the wool over the eyes of an honest man like Paulinus?”

  “I never—”

  “Shut up!” he roared, and she recoiled.

  “Sir!” Paulinus’s eyes were frantic.

  “I’ll beg.” In the middle of the room, Thea slipped to her knees. “Is that what you want? I’ll beg. I’ll do anything. If you’ll just spare him.”

  “Too proud.” He uncoiled from the couch, coming to her. “Still too proud.”

  “Please. Lord and God, please.”

  “Grovel.”

  She lowered her head to his feet, pressing her face against the lacings of his sandals, her hands caressing his ankles. “Domitian, I beg you—”

  He leaned down to touch her bowed head, his eyes dreamy and distant, and my breath stopped. “Athena,” he breathed. “Lovely Athena.” Sinking his fingers into her piled hair. “No.” He threw her away from him.

  He whirled, snapping at the guards. “Kill the slave.” Two Praetorians leaped forward with drawn swords.

  Thea screamed.

  Paulinus reared back.

  I drew an anticipatory breath.

  Ganymede let out a hoarse mute’s cry as two Roman blades buried to the hilt in his stomach.

  “NO!” The scream came from the fat little astrologer.

  Ganymede staggered back, mouth a red square, beseeching with bloody hands. The Praetorian swords flashed again, shearing through his fingers on their way to his heart.

  He fell, all his golden beauty a scarlet ruin. Such a waste.

  “No, no, no—” The astrologer fell on the body. “No, no, Ganymede, no—”

  Domitian dragged his eyes away from the corpse, breathing hard. His eyes turned toward me. “Thank you, Lady Lepida,” he said formally. “For bring
ing this man to my attention.”

  “My pleasure, Lord and God.” Dropping my lashes.

  “You?” The astrologer looked at her with swimming eyes. “You said my Ganymede—gods, you bitch, I’ll make you pay—” His voice choked off and he collapsed shuddering, clutching the bright golden head and rocking back and forth.

  “Well, really,” I said. “As if it was my fault that—”

  “Get rid of that thing.” Domitian brushed off his hands. “It stinks already.”

  “Caesar, he never touched me!” Thea leaped to her feet. “Ganymede never touched me, he was innocent—”

  “Then who was guilty?” The Emperor stepped over the mute’s outflung arm. “Name him, Athena. We’ll have another execution, and you can watch that, too, because that’s what every unfaithful woman deserves. To see her lover die before her eyes.”

  “I have no lover, you bastard!” she screamed.

  With one sweep of his arm Domitian threw her against the wall. I leaned forward eagerly. No one was paying any attention to me, but for once I didn’t mind. This was better than a play. Even the slaves clustered wide-eyed in the anteroom to watch.

  “Stop.”

  Marcus slid off his dining couch and made his slow limping way across the triclinium, his eyes never leaving the Emperor’s. In the voice of an Emperor he told the Emperor of all Rome, “Stop this.”

  Domitian stared into the eyes of Marcus Vibius Augustus Norbanus.

  “Stop this,” Marcus repeated quietly. “Now.”

  Domitian let out a breath like a gasp. “No.” He sounded like a little boy whining at a difficult lesson, and when he put out both hands and shoved Marcus away it was the gesture of a little boy. But Marcus hit the floor on his bad shoulder, and when his face twisted with pain Domitian laughed, and the odd stillness broke. He drew back his foot to kick my husband, but Calpurnia flung herself over him, her yellow gown billowing, and the Emperor turned away with a shrug.

  “Keep the senator from interfering again,” he told the Praetorians, and moved toward Thea.

  “No!” Paulinus stumbled forward, actually seizing the Emperor’s arm. “You can’t do this, sir—it’s wrong, all of it—just let me explain—”

  Domitian looked at Paulinus with a kind of crazy compassion. “You’re too good for all this, Paulinus. You don’t see the enemies around me, the snakes in the grass—you don’t have the eye for evil.” He flicked his fingers, and two more Praetorians seized my astonished stepson by the elbows. “It’s for your own good,” Domitian said earnestly. “Watch, now. This is how an Emperor deals with snakes.”

  He took two deliberate steps across the room and crashed his fist across Thea’s face. She staggered, blood flying from her broken lips, and he hit her again, a blow across the back of the head that drove her to hands and knees. There was a dry crunch of snapping bones as he stepped on her fingers, then twisted her hair around his hand and pulled her up like a doll. Her breath coughed out in bloody bursts.

  Domitian raised his hand for another blow, but it never landed. He staggered back instead, hit from behind by a soundless streak that darted from the crowd of slaves in the anteroom, and I was astonished to see a broad rip in the Emperor’s toga.

  “Vix—” I heard Thea shout. “Vix, no!”

  The slave boy was tall, compactly muscled, hair shining nearly red under the lamplight, an ivory-hilted table knife growing from his fist like it belonged there. Perhaps twelve years old. So familiar—if I could just place him . . . He swept in toward the Emperor of Rome, blade scything down in a smooth lethal arc, and we were all frozen to our couches.

  Domitian’s body bent and blocked with the automatic speed of his years with the legions. The knife carved a path through his sleeve instead of his throat, and he captured the boy’s wrist in his hand. The boy wrapped his arm around Domitian’s throat and they stayed locked for a moment, swaying back and forth.

  Then the Praetorians swept in, smashing the boy into the floor—“Don’t kill him!” the Emperor rasped, and they wrestled the knife away. Even then he tried to fight, butting savagely with his head and nearly knocking himself out on a bronze breastplate.

  Thea was screaming. Calpurnia had her arms around Marcus, still in the grip of his guards. Flavia’s hands were over the eyes of her sons. Paulinus struggled uselessly in the grip of his own men.

  “Lord and God, are you hurt?” One of the Praetorians stepped toward Domitian.

  He gazed at the shredded folds of his tunic. “The blade tangled in the linen.” Turning puzzled eyes on the boy, now forced bleeding to his knees between two guards. “Are the slaves going mad now?”

  “Lord and God!” I looked rapidly from the boy to Thea and back again. “I think I can tell you who our little assassin is.”

  He turned his gaze on me. Thea stopped screaming, stared with huge eyes.

  I smiled. No wonder the boy looked familiar. “He’s Athena’s son.”

  Thea moaned.

  “Sir,” said Paulinus rapidly. “Sir, if you’ll just stop—stop and listen to me—”

  The Emperor stood looking back and forth. “Her . . . son?”

  The boy stopped struggling suddenly, frozen wide-eyed between the guards. Domitian didn’t look at him. He looked at Thea; took one slow step toward her and then another. “Well, well.” Softly. “You said you had a child. You didn’t say you’d trained it to kill for you. You said, in fact, that you hadn’t seen it since it was born.”

  “No—no, I don’t know who he is; I don’t know him—”

  “She called him by name,” I added helpfully. “ ‘Vix,’ wasn’t it?”

  “Lepida!” Marcus’s eyes drilled me. I poked my tongue out at him and giggled.

  “So, Athena.” Domitian drew a finger down her bruised cheek.

  “What shall I do with him? This precocious son of yours, who has just tried to kill me.”

  She stood, her bloody lips trembling, a bruise darkening the side of her face.

  “Shall I kill him?”

  “Go ahead,” the boy snarled from his huddle of guards. “Just make it quick.” He was shaking, but he bowed his head like a gladiator awaiting the death blow.

  “How touching.” The Emperor, turning away from Thea. “The little warrior bravely awaiting execution. How noble.”

  “Not that noble,” the boy said, and moved like a snake. He got an arm free, just an arm, but it was all he needed to sweep a knife from a guard’s belt. He lunged forward.

  And staked the Emperor’s foot to the floor.

  Domitian howled, doubling over.

  A shield smashed across Vix’s head and he went down. He yelled in pain but grabbed the shield and pulled it across himself. A short blade stabbed where his neck should have been, and then Thea fell on the guard, wrenching at his arm.

  A female voice cut through the din, halting the guards. “Wait!”

  The cry came from Lady Flavia, who had crouched in the corner with her children and her husband through the madness. She stepped forward, a smile pasted over terror, and laid a placating hand on the Emperor’s arm.

  “Uncle—not in front of my boys.” Cajoling. “Allow me to take them home—and my husband—it’s no place for them. And the slave boy, he’s nothing, he’s certainly no son of Athena’s. I’ll take him home and see that he’s punished harshly. Flogged. Let me take him—” She had her own sons halfway to the door, wide-eyed and terrified, as she gestured at Vix. “Uncle, please—he’s not worthy of an Emperor’s vengeance.”

  Domitian straightened, the bloody knife in his hand, blood welling under the arch of his foot. “But a child is needed, Flavia,” he said reasonably. “A child is needed. So if not Thea’s, yours.”

  He whirled, pointing at her eldest son. “Seize him. In fact”—consideringly, as Flavia cried out—“seize them all. I’m tired of this whining woman and her brats.”

  They were dragged out, Flavia shrieking, her husband turning to all sides for the help that didn’t come, the
two princes white-faced. My thoughts leaped ahead like quicksilver. If Domitian had no heirs now, perhaps he’d want a wife who could give him one . . .

  “Now for you!” The Emperor took a limping step toward Vix on his bleeding foot, smiling. “Goodness, what am I to do with you?”

  “Fuck you.” The boy bared his teeth like a cornered rat, but I saw fear flick across his eyes.

  “Oh . . . I think not.” Gently tugging a bloody flap of skin on his foot, the Emperor addressed the Praetorians again. “Take that Jewish whore out of the city and dump her.”

  “No!” Thea threw herself at his feet. “No, no, keep me, just let Vix go—”

  The Emperor smiled. Bleeding, vicious, genial, he smiled. “Afraid now, Athena?”

  She stared up at him.

  He flicked his fingers at the Praetorians. “Take her. But first—” He bent over her with a knife, and in three sawing strokes sheared raggedly through the welded collar on her neck. Then he turned, the black eye shining in his hand, and with a grunt of effort he bent the silver band around the neck of Thea’s son.

  Thea moaned again as they dragged her out. “Excellent!” Domitian beamed, seeming not to feel his maimed foot. “Now take the boy to his mother’s old quarters. Search them first for sharp objects. And will someone clear all this mess away?” His eyes swept the spilled wine and dishes, the bloody footprints that tracked the mosaics. “Paulinus, you should take your father home. He’s too old for all this excitement.”

  Paulinus’s face was white, glazed with shock. Slowly, never taking her eyes from Domitian, Calpurnia reached up and tugged at his sleeve. Moving like a puppet, he rose and put an arm under Marcus’s shoulder. They huddled out in Vix’s defiant wake.

  Only one was left.

  Me.

  I arched subtly on my couch as the Emperor’s eyes flicked toward me. Thank the gods no blood had splashed onto my dress.

  “I think I owe you a reward.” He came closer, an odd excitement flickering through his eyes. Being stabbed hadn’t dimmed his ardor. “For bringing all this about. What shall it be, Lady Lepida?”