Empress of the Seven Hills

  Plotina had let the subject drop from conversation but certainly not from mind. Trajan didn’t know everything, after all. Emperor of Rome or no.

  “Dear Publius has become the son my husband always wanted,” she said instead. Perhaps that was not strictly true either, but all in good time. “I would not see Dear Publius as deprived as the Emperor. He will require sons, and sooner rather than later. You must—”

  A familiar deep voice in the doorway interrupted her. “How domestic you both look. ‘Juno and her daughter-in-law Venus, busy at their looms.’”

  “Flatterer!” Sabina laughed up at Hadrian. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever compared me to Venus.”

  You give me just as many headaches as Venus gives Juno, I’m sure. But Plotina looked at Dear Publius, noble as a column in his crisp toga, and held up her cheek for his kiss. “My dear, I was hoping to catch you.”

  “Don’t tell me. The legate’s post?”

  “How well informed you are.” Plotina sighed. “I should have known you’d charm it out of some freedman.”

  “So? What legion did you get?” Sabina gave a crisp little military salute as Hadrian bent to greet the trio of hunting dogs who had loped in from the gardens at his footsteps and were now winding eagerly around his feet. “Where is it stationed? Egypt, Syria, Britannia—”

  Hadrian tousled the ears of his favorite coursing hound, glancing over at Plotina. “What, our dear Empress didn’t tell you?”

  “Our dear Empress knows everything,” Sabina said sweetly. “How to raise children, raise public morals, and raise cultural standards in the provinces all at the same time! But her omnipotence must have failed her this time around.”

  Hadrian frowned at the same time Plotina did, but he didn’t reprove his wife. He never does. Sabina took entirely too teasing a tone with Dear Publius, at least for Plotina’s taste, but he didn’t seem to mind. He almost seemed to enjoy it!

  “So?” Sabina abandoned her loom and danced up to him, looking like a child waiting for a gift. “Where are we going, Legate?”

  He straightened from the dogs, tweaking Sabina’s cheek in what Plotina could only call affection. You weren’t supposed to be fond of her, the Empress wanted to snap. She was merely supposed to be useful.

  But she wasn’t useful, and he was fond, and none of it had quite worked out like Plotina had planned.

  “I believe a toast is called for.” Hadrian held out a hand, and a well-trained slave instantly filled it with a cup. “To our coming days in…”

  “Well?” Sabina bounced on her toes. Plotina lifted her eyebrows.

  “Germania,” he relented. “To be specific, Moguntiacum.”

  TITUS

  The journey back west toward Moguntiacum took far less time, Titus noticed, than the journey east. He was content to let the centurion set the pace, signing his name wherever the man pointed so they could commandeer fresh horses from each way station. “With a different horse every day,” Vix complained, “you’d think I’d get a good one at least once. But no. They all hate me.” Titus got used to leaning over and hauling Vix back into his saddle by the neck of the tunic whenever he started sliding down the horse’s shoulder. Even with the grueling pace, Titus didn’t mind the return journey so much. Maybe it was just the difference of having someone to share dinner with at the way stations now. “I’m sure Cicero or Juvenal had something clever to say about exhaustion and dirt grinding away the barriers of birth,” he told Vix one night, head tipped back in his chair, their boots propped identically before the common-room fire. “But I am for once too tired to come up with a single quote.”

  “God be thanked,” said Vix, his eyes closed. “Pass the bread.”

  Titus stared into the fire in the crude little way station’s common room. His boots were steaming. “I suppose you’ll think me a dreadful coward if I tell you I was terrified,” he found himself saying. “When I saw those Dacians coming at me…” His feet had felt like they were bedded in stone; all he could do was stare frozenly as they grew closer, closer—until Vix’s arm found his, jerking him up onto the horse so violently he could hardly move his arm in its socket the next day. “Terrified is putting it mildly,” Titus concluded.

  “I pissed myself the first time I was in the arena and I saw a man coming at me with a sword.” Vix tore off a mouthful of bread, reaching up unconsciously to touch the little amulet hanging at his neck. “Everyone’s terrified, when the moment comes at you.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Pushed the fear down and killed him first. All you can do, if you don’t want to die.”

  “I would have died, if you hadn’t picked me up out of that road.” Titus felt awkward. The words Thank you seemed hopelessly inadequate.

  “Don’t mention it,” Vix said, eyes still closed. “And don’t mention what I said either, about pissing myself, or I’ll have to kill you.”

  “Done.” Titus tore off a chunk of bread for himself. “What’s that token around your neck you keep playing with?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “You made sure to touch it before you jumped into that fight with the Dacians,” Titus noted. “Good-luck charm?”

  “My father gave it to me,” Vix admitted. “Mars—he said the god of war would keep me alive in a fight. Truth is, it’s my father’s face I see every time I touch it. He was a gladiator too; survived eight years in the Colosseum. I’d rather have his luck than any spear-toting Roman god’s.” Vix tucked the little disk back under the neck of his tunic. “So far it’s kept me safe.”

  “Father and son gladiators?” Titus wondered.

  “Well, there was an emperor who hated both of us…”

  They made it back to Mog at dusk after a full day’s gallop, barely squeezing through the gates before they closed for the night. The centurion was already striding away toward the legate’s quarters. “Come along, Tribune, he’ll want a report.”

  “What do you need me for?” Titus wondered. “I don’t have anything to contribute. All I did was get yanked off my horse.”

  “Come along!”

  By the time the legate was through with them, it was full dark. Titus trudged into the principia, wondering tiredly about dinner. Messengers ran back and forth across the hall, slaves were trotting to and from the records room, legionaries paused to scan the wall for new announcements. New barracks were to be raised, Titus read; a detachment was to be welcomed from Thrace on temporary assignment; a stern reminder had been posted that local women were to be visited off-duty and outside fort walls only… no sign here that anyone knew what Titus had seen in Dacia. No sign they were all soon to be at war.

  Titus felt a tingle in his belly, like the first tendril of smoke to creep up from a pile of kindling. Why did I complain about a year of boot polishing and boredom? he wondered. Better boot polishing and boredom than battles and blood.

  “Well?” Vix lounged against one wall beside the bust of the Emperor that presided over the principia of every fort in Rome. Even in stone repose, Trajan looked friendly. “What news? What did the legate say?”

  “To me, nothing.” Titus took off his helmet, raking a hand over his hair. “All I did was stand there nodding while the legate grilled the centurion on the details. Then he told me to get out and go eat, and started dictating dispatches.”

  “I knew it.” Vix socked one fist into the other. “War for sure—Trajan won’t stand for assaults on his garrisons. That Dacian king will be sorry he was ever born.”

  “Not as sorry as I am that we missed dinner.” Titus winced. “Not that dinner from those hacks the legion calls cooks is much to miss.”

  “Burned barley and boiled pork,” Vix agreed. “Not much like roast dormice and minced flamingo from Rome, is it, Tribune?”

  “You saved my life at least twice on this journey, Slight.” Titus repressed a shiver. He had a feeling those screaming Dacians were going to be bearing down on him in his dreams for some time yet. “I think you can call me Titus
now.”

  Vix laughed. “Centurion’ll have the skin off my back.”

  “Out of his earshot, then. Perhaps that’s best. As Ovid would say, ‘One who lives well, lives unnoticed.’”

  “Ovid must have known a few centurions.” Vix took his proffered hand, a little self-consciously. “Titus, then.”

  “Good night to you, Vix.” Titus staved off a bone-cracking yawn. “I think I’ll go see if I can scrape up some of that burned barley and boiled pork. I could eat a dead horse raw.”

  Vix hesitated a moment. “Tribune—Titus. I’ve got a girl in town, and she’s a better cook than any of those legion butchers. If you want—”

  Titus interrupted. “Lead the way.”

  The lamb stew smelled tantalizing, but Titus was still trying not to stare at the girl who eyed him nervously as she put the bowls down on the table. Full lips in a lovely oval face; skin as clear as new cream and dark-honey hair roped into a thick braid that lapped the back of her knees… Vix’s girl should have been wearing silk and jewels in a golden palace, not a flour-dusted smock in a one-room tenement over a bakery.

  Then Titus took a bite of the stew.

  “Oh, gods.” He closed his eyes as the first swallow went down. “Marry me, lovely lady?”

  “Told you my Demetra could cook.” Vix threw a careless arm around the girl’s waist. She smiled but cast a nervous glance at Titus. She had gone quite white when he introduced himself.

  “Tribune?” Demetra squeaked. “What’s Vix done? I swear he doesn’t visit me often, sir, only when he’s off-duty, and I never come into the fort! I know the rules—” It had taken all Titus’s reassurances to convince her he wasn’t here to haul Vix off for a flogging. Even now she was eyeing Titus as if a dragon had come to roost in her kitchen, despite the ecstatic noises he couldn’t help making as he bolted down her stew.

  “You’re a lucky man,” he told Vix in a low voice as the girl retreated to the stove. “Emperors would beg for that girl’s favor, Vix—for the stew alone, not to mention the beauty. How did she end up cooking your supper?”

  “I found a few auxiliaries pestering her at the market one day last year and ran them off.” Smugly. “It’s easy to get a girl when you’ve got that rescuer glow.”

  Titus filed that bit of advice away for future reference. On the other hand, what was he ever going to rescue a girl from? A misattributed quotation?

  He was scraping the bowl before he knew it, and Demetra scurried to bring another. He thanked her with a bow, looking around the cozy little room. Not a large room, and it served as kitchen and bedchamber both, but it glowed warm and cheery—a far cry from the sweaty masculine ugliness of the fort. The bed had a bright covering pieced together from colorful scraps of cloth, the rickety table had a cluster of the last autumn asters crammed into an old jug, and there was still a lingering smell of fresh bread drifting up from the bakeshop downstairs.

  Vix had already plunged into his own second bowl. “What are you staring at?”

  “All this.” Titus cast another envious glance around. “Domestic bliss. I never knew how much I missed it until I got consigned to that barren barracks.”

  “You should get a girl,” Vix advised. “Visit her off-duty. Bribe the right people, and you can even get permission to sleep out of the fort.”

  “There’s already a girl I want.” For a heady moment, Titus pictured a little cheerful room like this one: books in cases against the walls, fresh bread and fresh flowers, and Sabina lying across the bed crunching an apple and reading. Dimpling up at Titus when he came in… “But she’s in Rome,” Titus concluded. And she’d never been his girl to begin with.

  Not that he was still in love with her. If anything, he knew her far better than he had when he’d fallen head over heels at sixteen for a blue-eyed girl who’d been kind enough not to sneer at his very first attempt at a marriage proposal. She’d become someone to borrow books from; someone to take to the Campus Martius on the mornings her husband was busy; someone to share a couch with at dinner parties. Someone to make him secretly proud, when she glided along on his arm at the occasional social function. Somehow the other girls his grandfather kept trotting out as prospective wives looked flat, pallid, and passionless compared to Sabina.

  No, he wasn’t in love with her. But until he found a girl just as captivating, why settle?

  “So you’ve got a girl in Rome,” Vix was saying, oblivious. “Who cares? Have a girl here too. It’s not like they’re ever going to meet.”

  “I won’t dignify that by arguing.” Titus felt a warm weight against his side, and looked down at the brown-eyed little boy with his curly hair. The child had retreated warily when Titus first entered, taking his carved wooden horse and edging back into a corner to watch, but now he blinked shyly up at his mother’s guest. “We were weeks on the road,” Titus accused Vix, “out to the edge of the Empire and back, saving each other’s lives—and you never told me you had a son! He’s what, two years old?”

  “Oh, he’s not mine.” Vix mopped out his bowl with a scrap of bread. “His father was a clerk the legate brought over from Bithynia a few years back. The clerk brought Demetra and the boy with him from his village, but he died the first winter and left ’em alone. German winters aren’t for everyone.” Vix punched Titus’s arm, jostling the stew in his bowl. “Try not to cry when you get your first chilblains.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Titus ruffled the little boy’s curls, the same dark-honey color of his mother’s. “Good of you to look after him, with no father in the world.”

  “He’s not much trouble.”

  “He shouldn’t be bothering you!” Demetra swooped down and bore her handsome son away, scolding in soft Greek.

  “So what else did the legate say when you made your report?” Vix reached for the clay jug on the table. “They’ll mobilize the Tenth for sure; we’re the best legion outside Gaul, and closer too.” He still had mud on his boots from the endless riding of the past weeks, but he looked ready to throw his cloak over his shoulder and march for Dacia on the spot. “How long till we march, you think? Two weeks, maybe three—”

  “More like three months,” Titus said, and sipped from his cup. Cold local mead rather than wine; rotgut stuff, but he’d have choked it down if it had been vinegar. He hadn’t felt so warm and welcomed since—well, since he’d come to Germania.

  Vix sputtered. “Three months?”

  “At least. I sit at the Senate a great deal—just listening at the back during public sessions when my grandfather speaks—and I hear a great many wranglings about the disposition of the legions.” Titus picked at the mud flaking off his tunic. “It will take time to mobilize everything, send for reinforcements, call in additional legions. At least three months, and more like four.”

  “Mobilize?” Demetra said behind them, her brown eyes wide. “The Tenth, you mean—it’s going east, sir? To fight?”

  “Nothing’s certain yet,” Titus reassured her.

  “There had better be a fight this time,” Vix snorted. “Five years in the legions, and I haven’t had a single good battle! That first go-round Trajan had at the Dacians, when I was just out of training? The Dacians ran before the fight even started, damn them. How am I supposed to get a battlefield promotion to centurion when the buggers settle everything by treaty?”

  “Why on earth would anyone want to be a centurion?” Titus asked. “Haven’t you seen how hard they have to work?”

  “I want all of it,” Vix said unhesitatingly. “The work, the rank, the battles; campaign tokens, looted gold, and a triumph in Rome.”

  “How grand,” said Titus, amused. “For myself, I’m just hoping to make it through my tribune posting without anyone else trying to kill me. After that a quiet post looking after census records or inspecting the occasional aqueduct.” With a quiet house in a garden, sturdy handsome children like Demetra’s boy, and a wife who wasn’t Sabina. Hard to fit Sabina into any fantasy of domestic bliss. Even in her own immacu
late house in Rome, she’d never looked like a contented Roman matron. More like a cheerful but untidy guest who might float out the door at any moment and depart for the ends of the earth.

  Well, no use musing.

  “You might get that promotion to centurion,” Titus said. “Somehow I don’t think this go-round with the Dacians is going to end in a treaty. A few months before we move out, maybe, but—”

  Demetra burst suddenly into tears, scooping up her son and running from the room.

  Titus half rose as the door banged behind her. “What did I say?”

  “Who knows? She cries when anyone talks about war. She cries whenever she thinks about me leaving. She cries when her bread doesn’t rise.” Vix mopped up the last of his stew, unconcerned. “She cries a lot.”

  “Shouldn’t you go after her?”

  “Why? Better to let her sob it off. I usually go sleep somewhere else for the night. There’s a redhead I like on the street behind the big theatre…”

  CHAPTER 10

  SABINA

  Two luxurious wagons had been provided for the wives of the officers traveling north—covered, cushioned, padded, and shuttered for maximum comfort. Within four days Sabina had the first wagon to herself and all the other wives found excuses to ride in the second.

  “What on earth did you do to them?” Hadrian ducked his head as he entered.

  “Left the shutters open so I could see out.” Sabina looked up from the nest she had made for herself: a cushion for her back, a fur over her knees, a dog at her feet, and a scroll in her lap. “Enjoying the fresh air is apparently a criminal offense. I might also have told a few stories about cannibal German tribesmen who burned women alive in wicker cages.”

  “Did you have to do that?” Hadrian said mildly.

  “After four days of listening to their complaints about disobedient children and thieving slaves? Never mind the German cannibals, I wanted to burn those wretched women alive in wicker cages.”