Empress of the Seven Hills

  The conversation turned to the possible rebuilding of Jerusalem, and I dipped a toe in the water. “You might get your chance,” I addressed one of the bearded young nephews. “The Emperor will be taking himself to Parthia soon, so I doubt he’ll be much concerned with what anyone does in Judaea.”

  “Oh?” The nephew looked pointedly at the eagle on my arm. “What has Parthia ever done to the Emperor, that it deserves invading?”

  I couldn’t speak for Trajan, but I wanted to invade Parthia because I was bored. This didn’t seem the place to say so, however. I took another bite of roast lamb rather than answer.

  “So now it’s Parthia that gets to fight off Rome.” One of the other nephews sloshed more wine into his cup, despite a quelling look from his mother. Apparently even good Jewish boys got drunk at the table and disappointed their mothers. “They’ll find out what that means. Masada, that’s what it means.”

  I picked my head up sharply. Masada was a name I knew, and very well. There were sighs about the couches; Simon looked heavy and his pretty freckled niece made a gesture that reminded me sharply of my mother: a gesture to ward off sorrow.

  “Masada was a tragedy,” Simon’s brother said ponderously from his position at the head of the table. “It is not to be mentioned at Shabbat.”

  “It wasn’t just a tragedy,” I said.

  They all looked at me. I took another bite of lamb, defiant.

  “An entire city dead because of Rome.” The black-bearded nephew looked at me coldly. “Dead down to the last child. That isn’t a tragedy?”

  “Not just a tragedy. It was a triumph too.”

  “What would you know about it?”

  “My mother was there.”

  Silence spread out. I looked up from my lamb, around the frozen couches. “What?”

  “No one survived,” Simon said finally. “No one. It’s known.”

  “My mother survived.”

  The silence deepened, and again I felt the line that separated me from them. Even the servant girls seemed frozen in place with their decanters and platters.

  No one said a word, but their eyes never faltered. I pushed my platter away, leaning back on one elbow. I’d heard the story only once, when I was ten years old or so. My mother hadn’t told me, but I’d been playing behind the table where she sat talking softly with a friend. I remembered her words.

  “Masada—it was strong. Stuffed full of Jewish rebels, of food and water. It held out a long time, sieged by Roman legions. The Romans couldn’t starve them out, so they built a great ramp up to the gates, and a siege tower. They used Jewish slaves to do it, so the rebels couldn’t throw down pitch and stones to kill them.”

  Simon’s niece rose abruptly, picking up the little boy on her couch and putting him over one hip, beckoning to the other children. They trailed out and I paused for a moment. She returned and sank back down onto the couch. “Mirah,” her mother began. “This isn’t fit for your ears either—” But the girl darted her fierce eyes around the couches and looked back to me. I found my voice again. It came out very flat and tight.

  “The Romans were celebrating below. They’d take the city in the morning, and they’d burn it, and they’d take all the rebels back to Rome in chains. To be sold for slaves.”

  The black-bearded nephew spat.

  “Inside Masada, the Jews met. All of them, men and women. My mother wasn’t there; she was only six years old. But she figured it out later, from what happened. Her father came home, and he talked for a long time with her mother in the bedroom. He came out, looking very white. There was a body behind him on the floor—”

  My grandmother. I’d never thought of that before, somehow.

  “He was crying. He told my mother and her sister to come to him like good girls, and my mother saw the knife in his hand and ran. Not before she saw her sister go to him—he couldn’t do it, so her sister took the knife and stabbed herself. She was fourteen.”

  She’d have been my aunt, if she’d lived. Across the couches, the girl named Mirah put a hand to her mouth. She was surely only a few years older than that dead girl had been.

  “My mother ran to the next house,” I continued thickly. “But it was the same. In all the houses. By agreement—they all agreed, the men and the women—the fathers came home and destroyed anything they had of value… and killed their families. After that was done, the men met in the square, and drew lots. Ten men were chosen to kill the rest. They drew lots again, and one man killed the other nine. Then himself. So when the Romans came in, there weren’t any homes to plunder or any women to rape or any rebels to chain up and parade back to Rome. There was only a dead city, still full of food. The Jews left that, to prove they didn’t kill themselves out of starvation.” I looked around the couches. “They killed themselves out of defiance.”

  “We hold suicide a sin,” the black-bearded nephew said. But the anger had leaked out of his voice.

  “Which is why they drew lots for the killing,” I answered. “So only one man would have to kill himself.” Though I wondered how many had had to stab themselves, like my young aunt, when their fathers couldn’t do it. I imagined putting a sword to the throat of Demetra’s little son, his face turned up eagerly to mine, and I shuddered.

  “It was still a sin,” the nephew said stubbornly. “They should have lived.”

  “To be slaves?” I looked at him until he looked away. “My mother was a slave. Her and a handful of other children who somehow escaped. They all died young except her, and there were plenty of times afterward she wished she had died.” I looked around the table. “I was a slave too. It’s no life.”

  Another silence. Beside me I could feel Simon’s tense body. I felt sorry for ruining his dinner. I never got anything right.

  “Perhaps we’ve talked enough of this,” his mother said brightly. “It’s Shabbat.”

  “We should talk of this because it’s Shabbat.” The freckled girl named Mirah spoke up from the couch across from mine. Her voice was low and strong, though I could see tears in her eyes. “He’s right. Masada was a triumph.”

  “Not exactly…”

  “They died as they wanted, and Rome got no victory. Isn’t that a triumph?” Mirah looked at me. “What happened to your mother?”

  “She won her freedom,” I said slowly, picking my words. “She’s on a mountaintop now, with my father, and more children besides me. She lives.”

  “Then Masada lives too.” Mirah lifted her goblet, and I lifted mine. There was a moment of silence, and then Simon lifted his cup and said something in Hebrew. The words sounded harsh, but I looked over at him and saw his eyes glittering like brands.

  Shabbat was over, but Simon’s family lingered afterward—and they lingered around me. Old women clutched my arm; the firebrand nephews pressed for more details of the Jewish defense; even Simon’s stern patriarchal brother gave my shoulder a squeeze. Simon’s mother had tears in her eyes as she invited me to join the family next week when they left for their villa outside Rome. No more of that polite space separating me from them.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered to Simon when I got a private moment. “Didn’t mean to spoil your Shabbat.”

  “No,” he said fiercely. “You spoke well. Over ten years I’ve known you, Vix—I’ve never known any of that.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “It was yesterday.”

  My brows flew up at the heat in his voice.

  “If Rome did that to your family,” my friend demanded passionately, “why in God’s name do you fight for Rome?”

  “I’m no good for anything but fighting,” I said, uncomfortable. “For a man like me, it’s either the legions or the arena. And I’ll never be a gladiator again.”

  Simon gazed into the dark atrium, and I didn’t think he was seeing the orange trees. “Those poor bastards.” His voice was proud and savage. “They left the world on their own terms, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “What more ca
n any of us want than that?”

  I looked around the dark atrium, lit with warm yellow light from the lamps and sweetly scented from the potted orange trees. It seemed to me there was a lot more to want from life than that, but I knew better than to argue with Simon in these moods. I thought of going back to Mog, living in my barracks that smelled like sweaty leather and waiting for the Parthian invasion to happen, and felt tired.

  A hand caught my arm in the dark, and I looked down at a pretty face with a scattering of freckles across the nose. Simon’s niece Mirah had a wide mouth, large eyes, and her head in its neat white scarf came to my shoulder.

  “Thank you.” She tried to say something else but shook her head. Giving my arm a mute squeeze, she turned and retreated down the lamp-lit hall. I watched her go, and wondered what color her hair was under the white scarf.

  PLOTINA

  The man was sweating. Plotina liked that. Men should be nervous in the presence of goddesses; it was only fitting. And it made things so much easier on the goddess.

  He moistened his lips. “I don’t understand, Lady.”

  “I think you do, Gaius Terentius.” Plotina pushed a slate across her desk at the plump bewigged little official. “My secretaries brought the discrepancy to my attention, and I checked the numbers myself. You have been skimming money from the building funds for the Emperor’s public baths.”

  The man’s eyes hunted around the walls of Plotina’s private study. She had stripped away the cheerful woven wall hangings last year to reveal the dark African marble beneath, stark and pristine as any temple. She suspected all that black marble was starting to close in on the sweating little official. “Lady, I assure you—”

  “Spare me the protestations of innocence.” She waved a dismissive hand, her wedding ring catching the lamplight. “A cartload of timber here, never delivered; an order of marble there, never arrived. Quite a few sesterces you’ve managed to pocket, Gaius Terentius.”

  A bead of sweat rolled openly down his neck. Plotina’s lips curved at the sight of it.

  “I shall resign my position at once, Lady,” he whispered. “I shall leave Rome—”

  “Now, have I asked you to do that?” The Empress caught a glimpse of herself in the glass hanging behind the little fraud’s chair, and was pleased by her own reflection. She’d got the expression exactly right—aloof, regal, disapproving, yet not without mercy as she looked down from the height of her carved chair. A posture not unlike Juno’s in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, looking down at her supplicants. Really, all I need is a diadem.

  “You may keep your post, Gaius Terentius,” Plotina went on. “I shall require something else of you.”

  He fell to his knees before her. “Anything, Lady!”

  “A share in what you take from the bathhouse funds.” She allowed just the corners of her lips to turn up at his startled expression. “Shall we agree to half? Running this Empire is so expensive, you know.”

  A few more moments discussing details, and the sweaty little official was ushered out. Plotina picked up a separate tablet on her desk and made a neat line through the name of Gaius Terentius. There were other names, but she set those aside for now.

  She’d been nervous the first time she tried this. But it was getting easier all the time. And how could it be counted as wrong, to squeeze a corrupt man for a worthy cause? Had she been working for her own benefit, that would have been quite inexcusable. But this was for Rome.

  Plotina looked up at the mirror again. “One could say it’s my duty,” she told her own reflection. “After all, it costs a great deal to support Dear Publius in proper style as consul.”

  SABINA

  Sabina waited until the black-haired Antiochene freedman with the shoulders like Apollo slipped out of her husband’s bedchamber and padded down the hall. Then she struck the door open and walked in.

  Hadrian blinked. He lay in bed propped up by pillows, a film of sweat still sheening his bare shoulders. A lamp cast its warm light over the rumpled blankets, the high corniced ceiling, the statue in the corner of a Greek warrior carved in the act of throwing his spear. “This is unexpected,” Hadrian said at last.

  Sabina crossed the floor, white robe whispering around her feet, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Let’s go to Athens.”

  She saw she’d managed to surprise him twice in as many minutes. “What?”

  “Forget the Parthian invasion,” she said. “Forget becoming governor of Syria. Forget your consular duties. Let’s go to Greece. That tour we always planned: Athens and Corinth and Sparta, the little islands with those white cliffs and jewel-blue seas. Let’s take ship and keep going all the way to Troy. Let’s just get out of Rome.”

  For a moment she thought she saw a gleam in his eye. The old gleam, from the Hadrian who waved his arms in the air when enthusiasm for the world’s mysteries carried him away. But then he looked down at the bedclothes, straightening the crumpled folds precisely, and his businesslike frown returned. “In the future, perhaps. Not now.”

  “Why not? Don’t tell me you’d rather be arguing with stubborn old men in the Senate house than riding a mule up the hills of Delphi to see the Oracle.”

  “It isn’t what I want that matters.”

  “So it’s all about what Plotina wants instead?” Sabina lifted her eyebrows. “I thought you were your own man, Publius Aelius Hadrian.”

  “It isn’t about Plotina at all. She merely helps me to achieve what is mine.”

  “And what is yours? The Third Parthica? The governorship of Syria?”

  “Among other things.”

  Hadrian reached for a book he’d placed on the table by the bed, unrolling the scroll. Sabina leaned closer and put her hand over the page, blocking his view. He exhaled a short breath through his nose.

  “You know this is the first time I’ve seen you reading in weeks?” Sabina said lightly.

  “I have been busy.”

  “You were never too busy to read before.” She kept her voice gentle. “What’s changed you?”

  “Have I changed?”

  “You used to talk to me.”

  “You used to interest me.”

  “Don’t think you can distract me by hurting me, Hadrian. I don’t love you enough for you to be able to hurt me.” She reached out and took his big hand between hers. “But I do care for you. And I know you aren’t happy.”

  He disengaged her hands and rose abruptly. Sabina watched the muscles move under the skin in the warm lamplight as he shouldered into a tunic to cover his nakedness. He was a fine figure of a man, her husband. So much hunting kept him strong and fit.

  “Perhaps I am not entirely happy,” he said at last, yanking the belt of his tunic with a snap. “Perhaps I would rather go to Greece with you than battle Lusius Quietus for command of the Third Parthica, all so I can take part in a war I believe pointless. It doesn’t matter in the slightest.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Sabina drew up her legs until she sat cross-legged on the bed. “Tell me why.” Tell me anything, husband. Just talk to me.

  “I am not destined to spend my days wandering Greece and reading books.” He folded his arms across his chest, looking down at her. “That is all.”

  “Yes, destiny. You told me you’d always known what yours was.”

  “I am going to be Emperor of Rome.”

  Sabina stared at him. His hair and beard looked almost black in the lamplight, and the blade of his nose threw a deep shadow across his cheek. His gaze was steady, his expression neutral, his body as relaxed as if in sleep. He looked quite calm.

  “I had my horoscope drawn up when I was a boy,” Hadrian continued as conversationally as if they were discussing the weather. “The astrologer said—”

  Sabina burst out laughing. Hadrian’s face stiffened coldly and she choked the laughter off, but she could still feel it bubbling in her throat. “An astrologer? You’ve based your life’s decisions on a horoscope?”

  “A great many astrolo
gers are frauds, but Nessus was different,” Hadrian snapped. “I never heard him get a word wrong when it came to the future.”

  “Emperor Domitian’s astrologer; you told me.” She knew the name well, though the famous seer was long retired. “You told me he predicted you would see more of the world than any man in Rome.”

  “He did tell me that. He also told me I would become Emperor.”

  “And that’s why Plotina is always trying—”

  “I never told her about the prophecy. I’ve never told anyone.” A peculiar note crept into his voice. “I don’t know why I’m telling you now.”

  “It’s not much of a secret,” Sabina pointed out. “One prophecy—how many astrologers have whispered thrones to ambitious men, hoping for a few extra coins?”

  “Not just one prophecy. Ever since the day Nessus made his prediction, I made my own study of the stars and how to read them. Every year I draw my own horoscope, and every year I have to burn it. Because they all say that I will be Emperor.”

  Sabina laughed again but more quietly, shaking her head. “And I always thought you such a man of logic.”

  “It will happen. I can feel it.”

  “But do you even want to be Emperor?”

  “Does that matter?” He shrugged. “I will be, whether I wish it or not.”

  She stared at him. “You’re serious.”

  “When do I joke, Vibia Sabina?”

  He looked down at her, arms still folded. Sabina put her fingertips together under her chin, feeling like she’d descended a step she hadn’t known was there and snapped her teeth together on her tongue.

  “Before I married you,” she said at last, “I asked if you meant to live your life as Plotina wanted you to—politics and scheming and striving toward the top. You said no, that there were too many things to see in the world. Like the Nile in flood and the Temple of Artemis in Delphi—”