Empress of the Seven Hills

  “My mother’s hoping you’ll be delayed in Rome till the baby’s born,” Mirah said. “She wants to hold the naming feast.”

  “It won’t be long before we’re going north.” I steered Mirah around an oozing gutter as we came through the south end of the Forum Romanum. “It’s a month before the Emperor takes his army to Parthia. He’ll get to my dispatches before then, and after that we’re off.” Not that my legate back in Mog would be missing me—an aquilifer didn’t have much to do when the eagle was stuck in the chapel, and there wasn’t any century yet for me to take over. And of course when I did get my century I’d be losing the eagle to a new aquilifer.

  I frowned at the thought. I loved that eagle. I’d carried her for four years, after all—not through any more campaigns, but whenever we did a route march she was always there on my shoulder, and she and I had marched behind Trajan at the triumph he’d held in honor of his Dacian victories. Before heading south to Rome with my dispatches I’d spent a long time in the chapel stroking her metal wings and promising to be back soon—but I’d been gone from her side more than five months now, and I felt guilty. It would hurt to give her up to another aquilifer.

  Well, she’d still be my eagle, even if I didn’t carry her anymore. She belonged to all the men of the Tenth, both high and low. She’d watch proudly when I got my centurion’s helmet, if I ever did get it. I wished one of the Tenth’s centurions would hurry up and die, or retire, or anything as long as I got my century soon…

  “—Maybe we can have the naming feast in advance.”

  “Mmm?” I shook out of my thoughts back to the present.

  “For the baby.” Mirah wrapped her own arms about her waist, which didn’t look any different to me yet. “I want my sister there, so I can see the look on her face. No more condescending smirks about her little Isaac! I’ll have one of my own.”

  “Do we have to name him Isaac?” I asked dubiously.

  “Benjamin, maybe. Emmanuel. Something pious.”

  “Hannibal,” I said. “Caratacus. Something warlike.”

  “Hannibal Emmanuel?” Mirah smirked, and doubled over laughing. She might be pious, my new wife, but God did she know how to laugh.

  “Might be a girl,” I pointed out.

  “It’s a boy,” Mirah said firmly.

  “You can already tell?” I grabbed her round the waist, poking her stomach.

  “Yes, I can tell. Might even be twins—twins run in my family.”

  “Good. Then one can be Hannibal and the other can be Emmanuel.”

  Mirah looked around the forum with a critical eye. A shopkeeper with a stall full of brass pans was trying to catch her eye, as was a ragged thief hawking stolen beads. The butcher’s shop wafted smells of blood and dung, and a pack of street dogs were fighting in the gutter over the corpse of a rat. A cluster of dirty children raced past shrieking, and hordes of harried housewives scurried with their baskets. “The city’s no place for a baby,” Mirah decided.

  “Mog’s different.” A drunk reeled out of a wine shop and careened off Mirah’s shoulder; I sent him hard into the nearest wall and snugged her close against my side with one arm.

  “We’ll need at least two rooms,” Mirah was saying. “Not too far from the market. Not too far from the fort. And not next to any wine shops.” Wrinkling her nose at the drunk.

  “Two rooms? On my pay?”

  “Well, if you really want to sleep in the same room with a crying baby…”

  “Two rooms,” I agreed. Secretly, though, I was hoping those two rooms wouldn’t be in Mog. I was tired of Mog. I didn’t want to go back to the German mud, the gray skies, the crude streets, the cold winds that would keep Mirah’s bright face wrapped in a hood. I’d spent ten years of my life in Germania, and ten years was enough. I wanted sun, I wanted heat, I wanted—well, I wanted Parthia, but how likely was that? The Emperor had already chosen the legions who would be accompanying him on campaign. It was too much to hope for that the Tenth would be called halfway across the Empire.

  We reached the house on the Quirinal Hill with the potted orange trees, and we’d hardly mounted the step before Mirah’s mother popped out her head and demanded, “Did you tell him?”

  Mirah laughed. “Yes, I told him.”

  “Good! Now, we’ll just hope your business keeps you here in Rome until little Emmanuel is born. My Mirah shouldn’t have to give birth on the road.”

  “Hannibal,” I said, “Hannibal Emmanuel,” but we had already been swept into the hall and three more aunts had descended on Mirah with cries of congratulation and a variety of Hebrew blessings, and after two months of living with my new family, I knew when to concede defeat. “There’s a friend of yours here to see you,” Mirah’s mother said with a distracted kiss to each of my cheeks, and I took my exit while I could, escaping into the atrium as Mirah got borne upstairs.

  “I understand congratulations are in order?” Titus smiled from his seat under the potted orange trees, swirling a cup of wine in one hand.

  “You arse,” I complained. “How did you know before I did?”

  “Your mother-in-law told me while I waited, of course.”

  “Mirah says it’s a boy.” I flopped down on the bench beside him.

  “You think she’s right?”

  “Either way, I don’t dare argue.” A servant girl came with another wine cup for me, beaming congratulations, and Titus and I drank a toast. “What brings you here, Titus? Looking very official too.” I eyed his snowy toga.

  “I’ve been waiting on the Emperor—”

  “And you call me the Emperor’s pet! You’re the one dogging his heels now—”

  “He has been most kind to me, but that’s not the point. He has made a few minor decisions regarding the Parthian campaign, and one or two of them might interest you.”

  I lowered my cup. “Like what?”

  “Oh, perhaps the news can wait. I can hardly improve on your lovely wife’s surprise, after all. Tell me, have you thought about names yet?”

  “Tell me, you bastard!”

  “Foul language,” Titus reproved me, eyes dancing. “You’ll have to curb your tongue, with a child around.”

  “Bugger the child, and bugger you. What have you learned?”

  “Nothing of interest. Emperor Trajan has decided to reinforce his army in Parthia with three cohorts from another legion—namely, the Tenth Fidelis.”

  “Blast and bugger,” I snarled. “The aquilifer won’t march with just three cohorts. I’ll be stuck in Mog—”

  “Yes,” Titus agreed. “The aquilifer will be stuck in Moguntiacum. But not the Tenth’s newest centurion.”

  I stared at him.

  “The Emperor has done some rearranging of the legion’s officers,” Titus continued airily. “Accordingly, there is a century with a gap…”

  “Which one?” I gripped him by the shoulders.

  “First cohort, last century.” Titus lifted his cup. “Congratulations, Centurion.”

  First cohort. First cohort was the best men, the seasoned men, and the centurions were even better. Men on their way up the ladder. Thirty years old, bare minimum age for promotion, and I’d made first cohort.

  I let out a whoop and flung my wine cup across the atrium against the wall of the house, where it shattered into a dozen joyous pieces. Centurion at last.

  “—you’ll likely have to return to Moguntiacum first, make preparations with the rest of the cohort for the march to Parthia—”

  The march, I thought, heart thumping in my chest. How long would the journey to Parthia take? Where was Parthia? Likely we’d have to take ships, at least part of the journey. Hell’s gates, I hated boats. But there’d be marching too, and eighty men looking to me for their orders. Many of them likely older than I was, and resentful about it. My stomach fluttered, and I couldn’t help a nervous swallow.

  “Never mind,” Titus said at last, looking amused. “You’re not hearing a word.”

  Mirah’s mother got te
ary when we shared the news, and Simon along with a few of the firebrand nephews grumbled about the Parthian invasion, but I didn’t hear them over the golden roar in my head. Titus and I drank a toast to Parthia, to Trajan, to the goddess of good fortune who had just kissed me on the cheek. Mirah drank a toast with me too, then retreated early to bed as soon as I began toasting the Parthians for being obliging enough to have a war just for me.

  “I’ll get Boil and Julius and Philip into my century,” I decided, escorting Titus down the darkness of the hall after he’d been persuaded to stay for supper. “Centurions can do that, can’t they? It’ll be like the old times in Dacia.”

  “Not quite,” Titus said, dry. “For one thing, I have no intention of being dragged along with you. The Emperor offered me a post, but I refused as fast as possible. You can fight the wars this time while I finish my bathhouse. And for another thing, Slight, in those days back in Dacia it would have been a very different girl leaning on your arm. I do hope you didn’t tell your wife about her?”

  “I may be a barbarian, but I’m not an idiot.” It had been strange, seeing Sabina at the circus that afternoon, even from a distance. She had looked very cool and elegant on the Emperor’s arm… but not nearly as pretty as my Mirah.

  I bid good night to Titus, making my way back through the dark atrium. Most of the rest of the household had gone to bed; just a few servants hurried about, dousing the lamps. I hadn’t even noticed darkness falling, not with my Parthian dreams glowing so bright.

  I made my way up the stairs to the room I shared with Mirah, feeling a touch of apprehension uncoil in my stomach. She had thought we would both be returning to Mog, and now… legion wives could get along well enough with their men based at a fort, but a campaign was a different thing. I looked a little nervously through the shadows at the hump of blankets in the middle of the bed. Would she weep and wail like Demetra? I touched the amulet at my neck, the one my father had given me. It had seen me clear of any fight life had thrown at me yet, but who knew how well it worked on fights with wives.

  “Get in here,” came Mirah’s voice out of the dark. “The bed’s cold.”

  I stripped off my tunic and climbed in. She burrowed into my shoulder, shivering a little and kneading her toes against my shins, and I pulled my worn lion skin over us both. “Parthia?” she said.

  “I have to go where they send me,” I began, but she shushed me with a finger against my mouth.

  “I could have married Eleazer, Vix. He has a string of butcher shops and a villa in Ostia, and he certainly wouldn’t go galloping off to the east at a moment’s notice. But I married you.” She nestled her head a little deeper into my chest. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Come with me,” I said impulsively.

  “What?”

  “Why not?” Suddenly I wanted her with me. I’d gotten used to having her in bed beside me, I liked her tart conversation and the oasis of cheerful bustle that spread around her wherever she went, and I didn’t want to give any of it up.

  Besides, if I took her with me I wouldn’t need to rely on whores like most of the legion’s men did when separated from their women for the long months and even years of a campaign. Nice if I didn’t have to be unfaithful to my new wife just yet.

  “I can’t come,” Mirah was arguing. “Wives don’t march to war with the legion!”

  “Legates bring their wives sometimes. They go on ahead of the men, set up somewhere civilized. You could do the same.”

  “Your legate wouldn’t allow it,” Mirah pointed out.

  “It won’t be up to him. The detachment will answer to the Emperor. And the Emperor likes me.”

  “Does he?”

  I smiled into the dark. “The day I met you, I delivered a load of dispatches to him at the palace. He said he wanted to take Parthia, and I said he should take me and the Tenth with him to get it.” I felt foolishly happy that he had remembered. That he had taken a moment, in the middle of planning an invasion, to arrange my future along with the legion’s.

  “Hmm.” Mirah moved against my shoulder. “Why does he want Parthia, anyway?”

  “Something to do with their new king.” I stroked her hair where it lay across the pillow.

  “What about him?”

  “Who cares? The Emperor’s spent the last few years building roads and arches and columns in Rome. He’s bored.”

  “No one,” Mirah declared, “should go to war because they’re bored.”

  It seemed a good enough reason for me, but I had the sense not to say so.

  “What did the Parthians do to deserve getting invaded?” she persisted. “Especially the ones whose crops will get trampled over by your big feet?”

  “They aren’t so big.” Hoping to deflect her.

  “They’re like boats,” she said, undeflected. “Why do you follow Emperor Trajan, Vix?”

  That was easier to answer. “Because he’s splendid.”

  “He’s just another Roman emperor who invades a helpless country for fun.”

  “He isn’t!”

  “Why not?” she persisted.

  “You haven’t met him. When you do, you’ll see.”

  “I don’t understand you Romans,” she said tartly. “You’ll forgive a man anything for a little charm. I’m sure the Emperor who ordered the siege of Masada was charming too.”

  “Now you sound like Simon.” He’d gotten very fiery and indignant over the state of poor wronged Judaea the past few months. He certainly didn’t like being reminded of his days in the Tenth anymore.

  “Well, doesn’t Uncle Simon have a point? Romans see something they want, and they take it. Whether it’s a cup of wine or a new province. And your charming Trajan is just the same.”

  “Why all this raking over past sins?” I demanded. “Trajan didn’t siege Masada, so what does it matter?”

  “But—”

  I wrapped my arms around her, kissing the back of her neck. I kissed my way around to her ear, and she turned her face toward me in the dark.

  “You really want me to come with you?” she whispered, lips brushing mine.

  My fingers brushed her stomach, and I felt suddenly guilty. “I shouldn’t have asked. The baby—”

  “I am not one of these wilting women who sit indoors for nine months and won’t lift so much as a cup,” Mirah said sternly. “I can ride in a wagon without any harm to little Hannibal Emmanuel. If you want me.”

  “Oh, I want you all right…”

  Two days later I had my orders from the Emperor, a case full of dispatches for the Tenth’s legate, and a new side-to-side centurion’s crest for my helmet. The day after that I loaded Mirah and her budding belly into a traveling train, promised I’d meet her in Antioch, bid farewell to my eighty new relatives, and started north.

  “Good luck,” Simon said a little sourly. He’d never really approved of Mirah marrying me. I suppose it’s difficult to watch your favorite niece wed a man you used to go whoring with.

  “Syrus says that no man by fearing ever reaches the top,” Titus said more cheerfully. “Good thing you’re not afraid of anything, isn’t it, Slight?”

  I hardly heard either of them; just ruffled a hand over my new centurion’s crest and set my eyes forward.

  PLOTINA

  “I don’t understand, Lady.”

  “I think you do, Gnaeus Avidius.” Plotina pushed a slate across her desk at the lean praetor who managed Trajan’s newest building project. “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 new forum.”

  “Lady, I assure you—”

  “Spare me the protestations of innocence.” Serenely, Plotina flicked a speck of dust from the surface of her desk. “New supplies ordered here, never delivered; an order of stone there, never quarried. Quite a few sesterces you’ve managed to pocket, Gnaeus Avidius.”

  “Then someone in my pay is skimming. I assure you it
isn’t me, and I will provide my own accounts to prove it if necessary.” The praetor picked up her slate, frowning. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Lady. I will apprehend the thief and have him removed at once.”

  “Did I ask you to take such steps?” Plotina looked up at the ceiling, ruminative. The molding in the corner was cracked—why hadn’t her steward repaired it? Honestly, did the Empress of Rome have to attend to everything herself? “The funds set aside for the forum are lavish. Some… leakage… is to be expected. I would be willing to let the matter slide, for a small consideration. Shall we say half?”

  The praetor paused a moment, then rose and bowed. “I shall pretend I didn’t hear that, Lady,” he said. “And I shall deal with the thief as I see fit. I do not permit thievery from any projects under my control.”

  “Oh dear,” Plotina said as he stamped out. So many corrupt men in Rome; usually they were quite amiable to any suggestions from their Empress. But one did hit the occasional bump in the road. She drew a neat line through the name of Gnaeus Avidius on her slate. Perhaps he would serve better in a different post. A provincial post, say. Somewhere hot and diseased. His successor might prove easier to deal with.