Mistress of Rome

  He dropped her, and they stared at each other. Her mouth, he thought, would taste cool and sweet.

  The first clap of thunder roared overhead, and they looked away. For the first time Thea seemed to feel the cold; she crossed her arms over her breasts and the sight of her bleeding wrist hit him like a stone barrier. “I—I should get this tied up,” she said, and he nodded dumb agreement.

  There were no shops, no taverns to duck into. Only a dark vestibule to a tenement house, the door barred. Arius banged, but no one answered. The wind picked up, blowing dust down the road in buffeting clouds, and he could see flickers of lightning beyond the distant edge of the Colosseum. He groped for words, any words. “Your mistress. She’ll be angry?”

  Thea looked at him blankly. “Oh. Yes. But—never mind, I’m used to it.”

  His arm brushed hers in the cramped doorway. They both jerked back. She bent down to fi x the broken strap of her sandal. Her tunic molded flat against her spare body; he could see the supple brown curve of her waist, her back . . . He turned away.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see her hands swiftly tearing a strip from the bottom of her tunic and doubling it around her bleeding wrist. She tied it off neatly with the cord that fastened her braided hair, and the long plait unraveled down her back. She shook her head forward, and the dark sheet of hair hung past her waist, a wall hiding her face. Through the wall he could see flashes of her profile, her straight nose, her mouth.

  He reached out.

  In his head he heard a voice, too low and pleading to be the demon: Don’t hurt her.

  He stirred the ends of her hair with his fingers. The dark strands were silk against his palm and smelled like the coming rain. He gathered up a handful of her hair and carried it to his mouth.

  She turned, eyes flickering toward him with a wary despairing hunger, and a sickening surge of memory flooded his mind: all the times in the arena when he had locked body against straining body, and the end had been a hot spurt of blood and a fading life. The Amazon died again in his eyes, turning into Thea, and he nearly told her to go away then and go away fast before he killed her, too . . . But then she leaned forward to lay her cheek against his throat and kiss the pulse behind his ear, and the arena disappeared, taking the blood with it. His hand tangled fiercely with hers; he felt her bones creak in his grip, and had to remind himself to be gentle. He had never been gentle with anyone in his life. He traced her lips with his thumb and then his mouth, felt her lips part beneath his own, and a stab of joy rocked him to the soles of his feet.

  They slid against the wall to the ground, his cloak pillowing the stones under her head, and her hands slipped through his hair as he folded his body awkwardly into hers. He kissed the hollow of her collarbone, his hands following her back’s pliant arc around to the soft curve of her breast, and something caught at his throat, something so alien it took him a moment to recognize it as happiness . . . Her skin was warm and sweet, and he never wanted to touch a sword hilt again.

  THE rain came down at last, drenched the streets, moved on. “Well, the idea—get out, you riffraff, off my doorstep!” An outraged voice trumpeted behind them as the vestibule door opened suddenly and torchlight flooded the doorway. Hastily they pulled their clothes about them and escaped in opposite directions, pursued by curses.

  THEA

  HE did not come to meet my mistress in the Gardens of Lucullus. She paced and shrieked for a while, her enticing sleeping robe billowing in the cool breeze that was perfect for trysting, but I heard nothing. Lepida raged all the way home, stiffing the hired litter-carriers of their tip and stamping back to her solitary bed, and none of it registered. My Arius, not yours. Mine for more than just one short hour in a cold doorway.

  The house was asleep. I stole quietly through the dark halls, my heart knocking like a drum, and paused outside the door of the bathhouse. I stripped my hair out of its plait, covered my face with my hands for a moment because surely it couldn’t be right to show this much happiness . . . and then I stepped inside.

  Before my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I knew he was there. Before the faint rustle reached my ears, I knew he’d risen from the corner where we’d first met. Before my fingers touched flesh, I knew his hands were outstretched toward mine.

  “Thea?”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.” His hands gripped mine, engulfed them. “Thea. Thea.”

  He bent down, scooping me easily off my feet, and I shook my hair forward around his face, making a private cave just for the two of us.

  Sanctuary, I thought. After that I didn’t think at all.

  Six

  WELL, well.” Gallus arched his plucked brows, stroking the arm of one of his slave boys. “Aren’t we in a good mood this winter. No broken chairs, no smashed mugs, no ears lopped off my fighters—my wine cellar is all but untouched—why, I don’t even think you’ve put a knife through a patron’s foot for at least a month.”

  “Stuff it,” said Arius. But amiably.

  A busy winter. No more seedy arenas or back-alley rings; the Colosseum had been thrown open to the mob. The Emperor had come back to Rome just long enough to reconcile with his Empress before heading back up to Germania in a foul temper, but the games-loving Spaniards were in town and eager to be entertained. They packed into the tiers in their unaccustomed furs, shivering in the keen cold winds, and Arius fought for them. He fought Serpicus, the trident fighter with live snakes on his helmet; he fought Lupus, a German in wolf skins; he fought a Spaniard imported from Lusitania to uphold Spanish honor. They all met their ends in the Colosseum, to the sound of frenzied cheering. “For God’s sake, can’t you get yourself wounded?” Thea groaned. “Then for a nice long month or two you’ll get to lie in bed with no sharp things trying to poke your life out, and maybe I’ll get a little peace.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” He lifted her up, squeezing her so hard her ribs creaked. “I’d drag you to bed with me.”

  “Mmmm.” She kissed the scar that interrupted his eyebrow, making his flesh shiver. “I like the sound of that.”

  “Thea.” He cupped her chin in his hand, tilting up her face. “Stay away when I fight.”

  “Lepida makes me come.”

  “But I don’t want you watching when—” He broke off, but the sentence continued itself silently. I don’t want you watching when I’m killed.

  He lowered his face into her hair as she wound her arms around his neck. The next week, fighting a Gaul, he took a trident through the shoulder.

  The Gaul took Arius’s sword through the mouth.

  “I still won,” Arius pointed out to an irate Gallus as the barracks doctor cleaned and bandaged the triple wound.

  “Yes.” Frowning. “And since you can apparently fight with your right hand as well as your left, I’m not canceling your bout next month. You have commitments, dear boy, so don’t think you can cry off just because someone pricked you with a trident.”

  “Bastard,” Thea fumed that night. “I’m going to learn how to hex, just so I can put a curse on Gallus.”

  Arius threw back his head and laughed.

  “Don’t laugh; it’s not funny. Well, I suppose it is, but . . . I take it back, about wanting you to get wounded. I’ll worry more than ever, since you’re fighting in another fortnight. Does it hurt?”

  “It’ll still carry you to bed.” He scooped her up to prove it.

  “You could just let me walk to bed.” Thea snuggled her head against his shoulder.

  “I’m a barbarian.” Murmuring against her throat. “We always carry our women off like sacks of grain.”

  “If you’re capable!” She poked his bandaged shoulder.

  “Capable?” He flung her down across the bed, tickling her until she shrieked.

  “All right, all right, I take it back! Stop it, you’ll kill me!”

  “Good,” he growled, and covered her mouth with his.

  Grabbing moments with Thea was surprisingly easy. There was hardly
a day she couldn’t snatch an hour away from running errands in the forum and steal up to Mars Street. As the nights got longer and darker, she began slipping out of the house and through the garden gate to meet him. “Stay out of sight,” she warned, her bare arms prickled with gooseflesh in the cold. “If Lepida sees us—”

  “You shouldn’t come, then. Not safe.” He drew her inside the warmth of his cloak and gripped her tight, a tumble of incoherent endearments running through his mind; all the things he wished he were clever enough to say properly.

  “What is it?” Her eyes saw right through him.

  “Nothing.” He pulled her close again. He didn’t know how to tell her that his knees dissolved every night when she ran through the door of his cell to land laughing and breathless in his arms. There were no words. All he could do was show her.

  “Arius,” she laughed when he wrapped his arms around her. “I can’t breathe.”

  He’d never had another woman before her, but that wasn’t why she turned his bones to water. That was just Thea herself.

  YOU’RE softening,” Gallus said with disapproval. “Yes, yes, I know you’re still packing them in, but I know you, boy. You’ve gotten cautious, that’s what. And caution doesn’t win points in the Colosseum.” Sighing. “It’s the Pollio slave, isn’t it? Don’t look so surprised, dear boy. I know she’s giving you something else besides letters these days. Well, better Lepida Pollia’s slave than Lepida Pollia, but still . . . if she’s the one who’s making you lose your form, I’ve half a mind to send her packing—”

  Arius had both hands around his lanista’s throat before Gallus could blink. “Don’t,” he said. “Or I’ll squeeze.”

  “That’s the spirit!” A rapidly purpling Gallus patted Arius’s shoulder. “A little more of that in the arena, please. You can, ah, let go of me now, dear boy.”

  He hated to admit Gallus was right, but Thea wasn’t good for him. Not that he’d told her so, but he’d lost his edge. Still, his luck had held so far. Every time the games attendants dragged a fallen enemy off through the Gate of Death, he’d been able to think, a few more weeks with Thea.

  “I’ll bet you say that to all the ladies,” she teased him one night when he said as much. “ ‘A few more weeks with Sulpicia, with Cassandra, with Lepida—’ ” She shrieked as he tipped her over onto her back, trapping her between his arms like a mouse under a cat.

  “None before you,” he whispered into her ear, “and none after.”

  “None before me?” She cocked her head in genuine interest.

  He shrugged. No need to tell Thea about the demon, and what the demon whispered that a man should do to his women. Thea and the demon didn’t belong in the same room. He smoothed a hand over her face, and wasn’t afraid of hurting her anymore.

  Some evenings she sang for him, drawing his head into her lap and stroking his hair as she crooned the melodies of Greece and Judaea and Brigantia. Her rich alto resounded in the pit of his stomach, washing up through his spine and sinking into every muscle until he fell asleep wrapped in the music of her hands and her voice. “Witch,” he told her. “That voice of yours is a wand.”

  Sometimes they lay with their hands entwined on the pillow between them, silent as the circles of standing stones that marked the holy places in Brigantia, and her eyes swallowed him up whole. “What are you thinking?” he asked, as his hand memorized her cheek, her throat, the fall of her hair. She always shook her head, pressing her body hard against his so there was no space left between them, and they fell asleep intertwined like the roots of a tree. When he woke, her eyes would be open already, and her mouth curved in a smile that made him shiver with pleasure.

  Sometimes she traced the map of scars on his body: the ragged lattice of whip marks over his back, the puckered marks of stones and lacerations on his feet, the sharp lines of blades and tridents marking his shoulders. “And this one?” she would ask.

  “Slave driver broke my elbow with a club.”

  “And this?”

  “Knife fight in the Subura.”

  “And this?”

  “The tattoo for Gallus’s fighters. Supposed to be crossed swords.” Thea peered at it. “Looks like crossed carrots.” She fingered the scars and the tattoo, smoothing them gently so he felt clean and young and not too bitter to be happy.

  “Don’t fancy her myself,” a Thracian told Arius, watching Thea swing out into the street. “Not enough hip on her. That mistress of hers; the Pollia girl—now there’s a sweet mouthful.”

  Arius knocked the Thracian’s head against the wall, but not with the black fervor of the past. The demon whined on its leash but seemed very far away.

  THEA

  YOU’VE got a lover, haven’t you?” Lepida asked suddenly one evening as I stood behind her combing her hair.

  My pulse leaped, but I kept the silver comb moving. “Pardon, my lady?”

  “A lover, Thea. A man. You do know what those are?” Oh, she was foul-tempered this winter. “Who is he?”

  “He?”

  “Oh, don’t give me that blank look. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” I saw her blue eyes narrow in the mirror. “No secrets between maid and mistress. Tell me.”

  You’ll have to give her something. “How did you know?” I asked, lo w-voiced.

  “It’s obvious, really. Dreaming through your errands, smiling into the soup. And you were gone far too long at noon today for a simple shopping trip. So—who is he?”

  “Um. He’s—” Damn her sharp eyes. I pulled the comb through her long black hair again, wishing I could yank it all right out. “He has a tavern. In the Subura.”

  “A tavernkeeper in the slums? Oh, Thea, what a prize. What else?”

  “He has, um, black hair. He’s from Brundisium. He has a scar over his knuckles. From when a drunk pulled a knife.”

  Lepida laughed. “And does he want to marry you? No, let me guess: He’s married already!”

  I took my cue, muttering, “Well, she’s gone most of the time. They don’t get on.”

  “I’m sure they don’t. From gladiator to tavernkeeper, Thea—I always knew you had low tastes. In fact—” She twisted, eyeing me. “Lift your hair off your neck. Goodness, a bruise of passion?”

  “He loves me hard,” I murmured in Greek, and hid a smile of foolish happiness.

  She caught it, and something in her face soured. “Run along back to your slums, then!” she snapped, and whirled back to her mirror.

  Too close, I thought as I put down the comb. But to Arius that night, I just laughed. “Don’t worry, I put her off the scent. Maybe it’s a good idea she noticed. From now on whenever I run off to you, she’ll think I’m running off to the tavernkeeper.”

  “So who’s this tavernkeeper?” He bit my earlobe. “Can I kill him?”

  He fought in the Colosseum a fortnight later. An enormous Trinovantian; a close and grueling fight. They slashed and battled across the sand for twenty minutes. I couldn’t have moved to save my life, but Lepida was too busy sulking to notice my frozen figure.

  “Really, I don’t see what everyone makes such a fuss about,” she pouted. “He’s just a big ugly barbarian.”

  “The mob dotes on him,” Pollio said absently. “Do admit, he’s splendid. He’s got the Trinovantian on his knees—”

  But for all Arius’s disdain as he stalked out through the Gate of Life, he was bloody and winded. And a voice in my head whispered, How long before he’s killed?

  I prayed at every temple in Rome. I visited witches and astrologers and fortune-tellers. I spent the coppers I had earned singing and bought charms by the armload. I wore down my knees praying to every god and goddess I’d ever heard of, and quite a few I hadn’t. Arius was highly amused by my efforts, or pretended to be.

  “You only believe in one God,” he pointed out one long night.

  “Yes, but my God is the god of the Jews,” I said, curling against him under a scratchy blanket. “He’ll look out for me because I’m one o
f the Chosen People, but He doesn’t care a thing about you.”

  “I don’t care about him.” Arius ran his hand up the length of my back, leaving a trail of tingles and shivers. “So we’re square.”

  “Who are your gods? Maybe I can pray to them.”

  He propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at me with the rare boyish grin that utterly banished his usual stoniness. “There’s Epona. Goddess of horses.”

  “What can she do about the Colosseum?”

  “Artio, then.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Goddess of the forest. Also of bears,” he added gravely.

  “Be serious.”

  “There’s Sataida. She’s the lady of grief.”

  “That’s better. I’ll tell her not to kill you off and come paying me any visits.”

  “You’d grieve?” His grin slipped away.

  I’d die.

  I didn’t say it aloud. That would be to tempt God, who doesn’t like to take second place in any human heart. But Arius’s sword-roughened hand slipped through my hair as if to feel my thoughts on his fingers, and then he caught me up so hard and close that I had no time for any thoughts at all.

  ARIUS?” I whispered through the dark. No answer. I felt the whisper of his breath on my bare shoulder.

  Careful not to wake him, I turned my face into his hard chest. I closed my eyes against the blackness. And I spoke, softly and formally in the Hebrew of my childhood.

  “Arius. Arius, Arius, Arius, I love you. I love you.

  “I love the way you rub the scar on the back of your hand when you’re nervous. I love the way you make a sword into a living part of your body. I love the way you burn your eyes into me, as if you’re seeing me fresh every time. I love the black streak in you that wants to kill the world, and the soft streak that is sorry afterward. I love the way you laugh, as if you’re surprised that you can laugh at all. I love the way you kiss my breath away. I love the way you breathe and speak and smile. I love the way you take the air out of my lungs when you hold me. I love the way you make a dance out of death. I love the confusion I see in your eyes when you realize you are happy. I love every muscle and bone in your body, every twist and bend in your soul. I love you so much I can’t say it out loud in the daylight. I love you. I love you. I love you.”