Empress of the Seven Hills

  He grimaced. “I’ll never be a soldier.”

  “Then why are you?” I asked boldly. The centurion glowered at my impertinence, but I ignored him again. “Don’t you want a career in the legions?”

  I couldn’t help but be envious. Tribune at twenty-two—with his connections, he could be vaulted straight on up to legate in a few years if he showed any aptitude at all. What I’d give for backing like that…

  “Wet,” the tribune said. “Cold. Blood. No thank you. My dearest wish is to go home and become a thoroughly dull little public servant. The kind who never gets out from behind his desk and is always home in time for a good supper.”

  “At least you won’t be cold and wet,” the centurion conceded. “Plenty of that in the legions, sir, sure enough.”

  “And how did you come to the legions, Centurion? A Greek, I can hear that in your voice—”

  With the two of them nattering, I saw the smoke first. It should have been the centurion—he prided himself on his eagle eyes—but he was too smug at being flattered by a tribune to see the wisps of black rising suddenly beyond the next bend in the road.

  “Wait!” My voice cut sharply across the cheerful chatter at my side.

  “I thought you said the garrison was just ahead,” the tribune said, but the centurion was already barking orders and I dug spurs into my horse and cantered down the road. Black smoke, never a good sign, but I was expecting a granary fire, perhaps at the worst an attack on the outer walls from some Dacian skirmishers.

  The entire garrison was aflame.

  I pulled up swearing, my sword leaping out of its scabbard along with six others as the legionaries and the officers caught up with me, but it was no good. A quartet of sentries lay dead in the road, and not newly killed either. Their bodies had already been rifled and stripped, and the roof of the principia smoldered fitfully, its tiles still damp from the night’s rain. Even from a mile distant I could hear the howls, the sounds of smashing tiles and smashing statues.

  “The round shield,” I snarled. “I should have known, I should have bloody known—” There were shaggy men with round shields darting through the broken gate now, holding sacks of loot.

  “What is it?” the tribune shouted from where the centurion had bluntly ordered him to stay back.

  “Dacians,” I yelled back. They’d likely attacked the fort under cover of the rain last night—the three who jumped the tribune would have been advance scouts up the road.

  “What can we do?” the boy called.

  “Prayer might work.”

  One of the other soldiers was swearing helplessly, hand at his sword hilt, but he didn’t attack. None of us did. The granary would have been looted by now, the records room put to the flame, the barracks emptied, and the men slaughtered. The statue of Emperor Trajan would have been toppled from its plinth and smashed into shards of marble. All done last night, while the rain whipped down. Now that the skies had cleared this morning, the rest of the garrison was being put to the torch.

  Too late.

  “Back to Moguntiacum,” the centurion rapped out. “Now.”

  But a yell went up before we could turn our horses. A small advance party of scouts on horseback—for all I knew, the same ones the tribune and I had tangled with last night. Distantly I saw a spear pointed in our direction, heard a long shout—and the horses began to move.

  Ten of them.

  I dragged my horse’s head about, back toward the bend in the road. “Back!” the centurion shouted, “back, back!” but no one needed his orders. We were all fleeing.

  The patrician boy whitened, but he wheeled his mount too. I thumped my horse in the ribs, but the hell-beast just squealed and veered violently into another horse. That legionary went over his mare’s head, and by the time I clutched mane and hauled myself upright in the saddle, a bubbling war scream reached my ears and I saw that the first of the Dacians was catching up to us. “To me!” I shouted to the man I’d spilled in the road, spurring toward him as his own mare dashed away in panic, but he gave a shriek and ran away from me, straight up the road with his arms flailing.

  I yanked my horse at the first Dacian as he spurred toward that stupid fleeing soldier, and I had a bare impression of greasy beard, meaty mail-clad arms, a gap-toothed snarl as he turned his eyes to me instead. I barely had time to touch the lump under my breastplate that was my father’s amulet, and then the Dacian was on me. His spear went through my shoulder, or it would have if his horse hadn’t stumbled, and I took the opportunity to lop the head off the spear and leave him with a haft of wood. I reversed the thrust and bashed most of his teeth in with the gladius’s heavy hilt, and as he shrieked I turned. The other Dacians were catching up fast, and the man I’d unhorsed was still keening fear as he sprinted up the road. The centurion on his good horse was drawing away at a flat gallop, not caring how many of us were killed in the rear as long as he could get back to Mog with the news, and the other soldiers galloped after him without a rearward glance. It was Tribune Six-Names who turned his horse, putting a hand down to give the man an arm up. The legionary gave such a panicked yank that he tumbled the tall boy out of the saddle and into the road.

  Another war cry sounded behind me, and I saw two spears leveling.

  “Hell’s gates,” I swore, kicking my horse ahead again. The legionary had hauled himself onto the tribune’s horse and was fleeing up the road. The boy was on his knees in the mud, dazed, and in another moment I’d be past him. Leave him, the thought went through my head; how far do you think you’ll get with your horse carrying double? But I put my arm down as I went past, and somehow he got hold of it and came flying up behind me.

  “Thank you,” he gasped.

  “Keep my sword arm free,” I snapped, and there was no more talking for a while. The Dacians came after us, and when my horse began to labor we had to stop and fight. I killed one, knocked another out of his saddle with a backhand blow of my free arm, and then the others weren’t so keen on catching me. They finally retreated back to the ruined garrison with derisive whoops, but I pressed my horse back into a flat gallop and kept him there till he was white and lathered under the double weight, till we finally caught up with the rest of our party.

  “I’m sorry,” mumbled the shame-faced soldier on the tribune’s horse, but I hit him with the boss of my shield and knocked him out of the saddle into the mud.

  “We ought to leave you here to die,” I snarled. “Like you left your tribune!”

  “Never mind,” the centurion barked. “He’ll get the lash when we’re back in Mog, and no mistake. For now, we ride. Sextus, give the tribune his horse back. You can double up with whoever can stand to have a coward like you at his back.”

  “No, he can ride with me.” The tribune slid off my horse, offering a hand to help up the man on the ground, who seemed near tears. “Don’t worry, I’ll speak on your behalf to the legate. You won’t be flogged.”

  “He should be,” I grumbled, ramming my gladius back into its scabbard. “You’re letting him off easy, Tribune.”

  “Maybe.” He looked around at the centurion, the optio, the other men. “But let’s not discuss it now. I’d like to be as far away from here as possible, frankly, so why don’t we get back to the Tenth as fast we can and tell them we’re being invaded?”

  PLOTINA

  The Empress of Rome was annoyed. An hour’s work, and the two looms working side by side still refused to get into a rhythm. Her own shuttle passed smoothly back and forth with a rhythmic swish-swish-swish. The other shuttle went swish—pause—swish—pause—swish.

  “Rhythm, Sabina,” she said for the fourth time. “You must get your weaving into a rhythm. You are far too easily distracted.”

  “Mmm.” Dear Publius’s wife passed the shuttle along through the threads, yawning. “Perhaps we could go outside for a walk instead. Such a beautiful afternoon, it’s a shame to be cooped up inside.” Sabina glanced up at the long windows, which Plotina had ordered shuttered tight
as soon as she arrived.

  “Unhealthful,” Plotina said. “This wind will tan your skin, and then what will people think?”

  “I don’t know if anyone spends much time thinking about my skin.”

  Plotina cast a glance at the girl who should have been all but a daughter to her by now but was somehow not. Sabina’s face was smooth. Surely she could not be laughing at the Empress of Rome? Such a thing was impossible.

  But Vibia Sabina had not proved as satisfactory a wife for Dear Publius as Plotina had hoped; there was no doubt about that. Look at her now, barefoot and careless with her hair hanging down her back like a girl’s, her hands far too casual as she flung her shuttle back and forth. Any cloth she wove was loose-warped. And after Plotina had helped her to begin that new piece—a cloak for Dear Publius—and admonished that only an hour’s daily work at least would see it done, the girl still had left it untouched until this morning! Most vexing. And it was not only the weaving…

  “I’ve finally managed to track down a copy of that new Greek poet everyone’s talking about,” Sabina was saying. “Hadrian will be so pleased. With any luck the poet will be terrible. We’ll spend an hour over dinner tonight tearing the verses apart, and he’ll have some new material for his standard rant about Rome’s declining intellectual tastes.”

  Plotina frowned. Poetry again. The dear boy had always had a weakness for verse. Poets had their uses, at least for the idle, but the future Emperor of Rome should not waste his time on such things. “Steer him to rhetoric, my dear, instead of Greek poets. They already call him the Greekling in the Senate; it won’t do to give them any more fodder.”

  “When does anyone steer Hadrian to anything?” Sabina pointed out.

  “A clever wife can always manage her husband.”

  “Well, we both know I’m not very clever.”

  But she was, when she chose to be. Plotina knew that perfectly well. At the last Imperial banquet, Sabina had spent an hour deep in the kind of serious well-informed discourse that was just the sort of thing to advance Dear Publius’s career… if she hadn’t wasted it on some doddering intellectual friend of her father’s. A nobody! Ignoring all the provincial governors, the senators, the useful people Plotina had taken such trouble to cultivate. “He was interesting,” Sabina had shrugged. “They weren’t.”

  Juno grant me patience. It was enough to drive even a goddess to distraction.

  Never mind. Plotina had certainly not dropped in uninvited on her almost-daughter-in-law to get distracted by her loose-warped weaving and odd views on guests. Plotina had News, and such News it was. “When is Dear Publius returning this morning? I have a surprise that I believe will please him more than any amount of Greek verse.”

  “Oh, I never track his comings and goings. Wine?”

  “I do not drink wine, you should know that by now. Barley water, if you please. And let me see that slave girl’s hands—just as I thought.” Plotina gave the slave a frosty look. “Clean your nails before you come back with those cups, girl. Vibia Sabina, I don’t know where you find your maids! Such clumsy untrained creatures—”

  “That one came out of a whorehouse on the Aventine.” Sabina nodded after the girl who had just filed out. “I offered her a change of job. So far she’s settling in just fine, though she does get the cups mixed up.”

  Plotina blinked. “You aren’t serious?”

  “Aren’t you always telling me about a Roman matron’s duty to aid the unfortunate?”

  “The clean unfortunate. The moral unfortunate. Not dirty whores.”

  “Well, she’s not a dirty whore anymore. She’s learning to weave—eventually I’ll free her and get her a job in a shop. Shouldn’t take long; she already weaves better than I do. You mentioned a surprise?”

  Plotina debated a continuation of the lecture but couldn’t hold back any longer with the news she had been storing up all day. “Dear Publius has been appointed legate of his own legion!”

  That made the girl sit up. “Legate?”

  “Of his own legion,” Plotina repeated with relish. Oh, how much work it had been, so many headaches pressing in at her temples, so many people determined to thwart her, but she had done it. She had done it: his next step upon the ever-upward path.

  “Which legion?” Sabina gave her shuttle another yank.

  “The appointment has not yet been finalized.” Plotina’s shuttle passed back and forth without thought on her part, an unthinking rhythm as if it had been magicked into perpetual motion. “My husband was not at all eager to appoint him, you know—it took a great deal of persuasion on my part. Dear Publius’s last stint in the legions…” A troubling time. He had run up a great many debts in his idle months as a twenty-three-year-old tribune of the Twelfth Primigenia, and Trajan had not been pleased. “The dear boy could be rather wild,” Plotina temporized.

  “Let me guess,” Sabina smiled. “Hunting dogs and handsome young men.”

  “That is an indelicate speculation.” The shuttle snapped across with a little more force.

  “I know my husband.” Sabina put her hands to her back for a moment, stretching like a sleek and sleepy young cat. “What is there to do in these frontier towns except hunt or make love? And he’s devoted to both.”

  “Dear Publius is far more settled now.” Plotina’s lips pressed tight. “And of course you will accompany him on his appointment to legate, wherever he will be stationed.”

  “At last we agree,” Sabina said sweetly.

  So the girl wasn’t putting up a fuss about that. Good. “You will find the provinces quite different from anything you are used to in Rome,” Plotina said, mollified. “Rougher accommodations, rougher company—and of course it is quite impossible to get decent bread, even for a legate’s table. But one must endure.”

  “Coarse bread? Goodness, how shall I ever survive?”

  “Even in rough circumstances, certain standards must be maintained. Especially by a legate’s wife. Never less than three courses at dinner, even if they must be simple ones, and a proper stola worn at all times regardless of the weather.” Plotina patted the severe, elegant folds of her own gray silk. “None of this dabbling in local customs. One hears of wives who go to Britannia and come back all over blue paint and native jewelry!”

  “Perhaps Hadrian will end up in Britannia. I think I’d look rather well in woad.”

  “Well may you joke.” Plotina raised significant eyebrows. “Now, some mixing with the wives of lower officers is inevitable, but you should keep it to a minimum. The wives of the magistrates and governors make better company. Naturally they will look to you to set the standard of behavior.”

  “I wonder if he might get a legion in Egypt?” Sabina mused. “I long to take a barge down the Nile like Cleopatra…”

  “You will be far too busy for riverboat cruises, my dear. Dear Publius will be relying on you to further his career. The right kind of friendships with the provincial governors, the correspondence with useful people here in Rome, the proper parties hosted for the proper guests.” Sabina was a rather good hostess, Plotina would grant her that, though she invited far too many of what she called interesting people. And there did seem to be a tendency for her dinners to lapse into loose laughing affairs with a great deal of wine and banter, rather than serious functions with serious discussion. Plotina shuddered to think of that one dinner where everyone had ended the night wading in the fountain and passing a jug back and forth like carefree plebs on holiday. Why Trajan and his friends had been so charmed, she really could not understand.

  “Most importantly,” Plotina concluded, remembering her lecture, “you must not allow Dear Publius’s relationships with important people in the city to lapse simply because of a few hundred miles. Men are so forgetful when it comes to writing letters, so I shall rely on you for regular reports—”

  “Really?” Sabina’s eyes snapped up. “So you won’t be coming to the provinces as well?”

  “Naturally not. My husband relies on
me here. Though of course there are visits.” Plotina cleared her throat pointedly. “For example, Vibia Sabina—if you should find yourself with child while in the provinces, then of course I would come to assist with the confinement.”

  “Oh, look,” Sabina said. “Your barley water.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” The Empress laid her shuttle aside altogether, fixing Sabina with a stern gaze. “I had hoped you would have provided Dear Publius with an heir by now, Vibia Sabina. A child of three or four could not accompany you to the provinces, of course—so unhealthful—but I would have been pleased to rear the child in your absence.”

  “So kind.”

  “To give birth in the provinces is not ideal. There are difficulties finding a decent physician, and as for a wet nurse—! But the problems are not insurmountable. Complete bed rest, retirement from public entertainments, a diet of barley and fish to avoid stimulation of the blood—”

  “Calpurnia says it’s silly to shut yourself up like an invalid when pregnant. She goes rolling about the house like a great ball up till the minute the baby starts coming.”

  “Your stepmother has very advanced ideas, but I cannot recommend them.”

  “My stepmother has given birth to five healthy children.” Sabina blinked, innocent. “How many have you had?”

  Plotina looked at her coldly. “Children are not granted to us all.”

  “I have a feeling they won’t be granted to me either,” Sabina murmured. “Not unless Dear Publius’s tastes shift in fairly dramatic fashion.”

  “Dear Publius will do his duty, and so will you,” Plotina snapped. “A man needs a son.”

  “Trajan doesn’t.”

  “I assure you, he has felt the lack keenly.”

  Well. Perhaps that was not quite the truth. Years ago, Plotina had been certain that once Trajan became Emperor, he’d change his mind about the importance of begetting a son. She had been only thirty-one when he took the purple; it had not been too late. An Emperor needed heirs! But when she said as much, the words just rolled off him. “I’ll appoint an heir when the time comes. Best way to do it anyhow. Who knows what kind of son the Fates would send us? This way I can pick the best to follow me, not just pin all my hopes on blood ties.”