Empress of the Seven Hills

  “Have I?”

  “Yes. I found out—”

  “I think you mean, you were found out.” And Trajan tossed a creased, much-folded, much-read letter into Plotina’s lap.

  A long letter. There were pages of figures, calculations, receipts, and account book entries, all meticulously noted. But Plotina only had to read the first paragraph, and a blue wave of bile swamped her throat. He said he wouldn’t tell, she thought disjointedly. He said he wouldn’t tell the Emperor—Juno, you heard him say it!

  That sly treacherous poisonous little weasel.

  “Goodness, what an impressive packet of lies.” Plotina looked up from the letter with careless contempt. “Surely you can’t believe that ambitious toad. He’d say anything, he—”

  “No, Plotina.”

  “But I—”

  “No.”

  The harsh bark of his battlefield voice cut her voice off in her throat like a sword.

  “I return to Rome,” Trajan continued crisply, as if briefing an aide. “You will return with me, but not your Publius. He can stay here, as governor of Syria—he’ll make a good job of it, I’ll say that much for him. What he does afterward is none of my business, since he’ll no longer be a member of the Imperial family. I’ve a mind to grant little Sabina that divorce she’s been wanting.”

  Plotina felt the words scrape out of her throat like stones. “You can’t.”

  Trajan continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “You’ve been nagging me about the succession for a while now, and perhaps you’re right. Time to give the matter my full attention. I thought I’d take young Titus under my wing once I got back to Rome; see what I can make of him. Any man with enough nerve to tell me my wife is a thief has got balls of brass, and I like that in a man.”

  The stones in her throat had become boulders, tearing their way out in a shriek. “You. CAN’T.”

  “Don’t bother unpacking.” Trajan had already gone back to his dispatches, gesturing for his secretaries, who had clustered whispering at the other end of the study. “We leave within the fortnight.”

  VIX

  Three days on a ship, and I spent all three of them puking. I hate boats.

  “How can you possibly have anything left to throw up by now?” Sabina asked, coming up on the rail beside me as I was bent over it heaving.

  “I suppose you’ve got a cast-iron stomach?” I reeled upright, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. “Bitch.”

  She made a mischievous face at me, stroking the cat who curled purring in her arms. It felt odd, talking with Sabina again. She looked different, small and neat in a narrow Egyptian sheath that left her arms and ankles bare, a charm of some kind knotted around one wrist, her face tanned and freckled under the short cap of hair. But she sounded exactly the same as she ever did. I didn’t get the old lurch in my stomach when I looked at her anymore… but I didn’t mind laughing with her. She’d gotten Trajan on a boat back to Rome, and for that I would have forgiven her anything.

  “He looks better.” I nodded to the stern, where the Emperor sat playing latrunculi under a purple canopy rigged to keep the sun off his head. Plotina fanned herself woodenly at his side, strangely silent for once instead of droning at everyone in earshot. A dozen more hangers-on lounged about the deck as the sailors padded about knotting ropes and twitching at sails, and the water sparkled behind the rails of the boat, impossibly blue. “Doesn’t he look better?”

  “Mmm. I’ll be glad when he gets back to Rome. I intend to keep him in a chair with his feet propped up for the rest of the summer.”

  “I thought you were going to Syria with Hadrian?”

  Sabina shook her cropped head, tickling under the cat’s chin. “I want to stay with my family for a while. Aren’t you going to miss yours?”

  I ducked that question. Mirah knew she wouldn’t be joining me in Germania until I was established; that had long been settled—but she’d wanted me to take Antinous with me, and I’d refused, and the subject had become sore. “Another active campaign,” I’d said just before I left, gathering my scattered tunics from the bed and stuffing them into my pack. “He’s had enough of that for the time being.”

  “He’s almost eleven,” she’d argued, bringing my spare sandals and whetstones to pack. “Boys that age need their fathers.”

  “I’ve told you and told you, he’s not my son!”

  “But you want one. Men want sons—I thought you’d want to keep him with you, since I haven’t… well, two girls…”

  “Two good girls.” I dropped my load of tunics, leaning down to pick up Dinah and toss her in the air until she shrieked. Chaya regarded me from the floor with big dark eyes, edging back when I reached over to stroke the soft down of her little head. She was still wary of me, the way I blew in and out of her life every few months with my clattering sword and jingling armor.

  “They are good girls,” Mirah said a little more brightly, but then she hesitated. “Vix, if the Emperor, doesn’t recover—”

  “He’ll recover.” Any alternative was unthinkable.

  “If he doesn’t. You’ll still go to Dacia?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? My own legion, I’ve waited all my life for that.”

  “Serving Rome,” she pointed out. “You’ll be serving Rome, not Trajan.”

  “Trajan is Rome.” I kissed her out-thrust chin.

  “Not forever,” she’d said, but I bent myself back to bundling my belongings for the sea voyage. There was room in the Emperor’s trireme for me on the journey back to Rome; I’d disembark somewhere along the way, hire horses, and proceed on north to Germania. The rest of the detachment from the Tenth would follow on a later ship out of Parthia and meet me there. Once I had my legion reunited and in order, I’d send for Mirah and the girls and plan my campaign into Dacia. “Back and forth along the Empire like a message case,” she said wearily, but she’d waved me good-bye with a brave face when I took ship from Antioch three days ago. I’d watched her neat little figure diminish as the watery gap widened. When she was just a speck, with the upright young spear that was Antinous standing at her side, and the little girls in her arms no longer visible at all, I kissed a corner of her blue scarf still wrapped around my arm under the greave.

  On the other end of the deck, I saw Trajan toss his dice aside and rise with a mild curse. He put his hands to his back, stretching, and that sour-faced Plotina asked some question that he ignored. “How did you get him to go back to Rome?” I asked Sabina.

  “I hate to admit it, but I cried.” Sabina made a face. “I can’t abide women who cry to get their way, but Trajan always was a soft touch for a woman’s tears. I scolded him a while about how he had to be sensible and preserve his own health if he had any hope of preserving this Empire he’s built, and then just as he was getting angry I let my chin quiver. In truth, I think he wants to go back home for a little while. He’s tired.”

  “You’ll look after him?” I said anxiously. “Properly, I mean? Old Stoneface Plotina hasn’t got a nurturing bone in her body.” I’d heard she hadn’t been pleased to arrive in Antioch and be told that her husband was taking ship for home within the fortnight. “You’d think she’d be glad to have him home again after four years of absence, but I suppose a cow like that likes running everything her own way.”

  “She won’t have everything her own way this time. I’ll make sure to give her plenty of headaches.” Sabina’s voice was full of relish. “And I might just stay in Rome for a while.”

  “Hadrian doesn’t mind going without you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Time was you two never went traveling without the other.”

  “Times change.” Her voice was coolly neutral, and I took a glance at her. Her face was as blank as a new slate. Well, it was none of my business anymore what went on in her odd marriage and her even odder mind. She glanced over at me over the cat’s head, her face oblique and pointed, and for a moment she and the enigmatic earringed cat looked just alike. Then she ga
ve a smile, changing the subject, and the resemblance vanished. “Your shoulder—why the bandage?”

  “I took an arrow at Hatra, pulling the Emperor out of the way. Better my shoulder than his neck.”

  “No wonder he gave you a legion.”

  “He’d already planned on that, he said. You know how many of his officers hate me now, for getting jumped over their heads? Last week a group of them tried to waylay me in the bathhouse—”

  I heard a cry and whirled. As if from the end of a long tunnel of darkness I saw Trajan stagger, clutching at his suddenly dangling arm. He went to his knees, overturning the game board in a shower of carved pieces, and I saw the lips skin back from his teeth as he tried to stand. Get up, I thought, oh please, get up! But he fell. He fell.

  Oh God, he fell.

  SABINA

  “You cannot see him, Vibia Sabina. He is resting.”

  “He asked for me.” Sabina moved around Plotina. “So I’m going to him.”

  “He would be better off resting.” Plotina drew herself up, more a granite pillar than ever in a charcoal-gray gown. The gray in her hair matched it, winging along her temples. “I do not permit it.”

  Sabina smiled sweetly at the Empress of Rome. “Go fuck a horse,” she said with great precision, and shoved past Plotina into Trajan’s sickroom.

  The window had no shutters, so the physicians had pinned a blanket over the sill to give darkness. The bed had had to be brought from the trireme and assembled. The floor was packed clay, and spiderwebs grew in the corners. No room for an emperor to die, Sabina thought.

  “Don’t bustle around me, damn it.” The voice from the bed was hoarse, slurred. Trajan lay on his back, heaped with blankets despite the heat, and he batted a hand weakly at the physician trying to measure his pulse. “Is that little Sabina? Come here. The rest of you, out.”

  The physician fell back obediently. His face as he passed Sabina was taut and sad, and the slaves who filed out behind him all looked as if they had been weeping. The Praetorian at the door kept repeatedly cuffing at his eyes.

  “Take that blanket down. I want some light.”

  “Of course.” Sabina dragged the blanket off the window. The harbor sparkled outside, impossibly blue under an even bluer sky. An abandoned harbor, though. The emperor’s ship had put into the nearest available port: empty, ruined Selinus, sacked in a long-ago war and never rebuilt. A few squatters nested in derelict buildings along with the crows, but there had been no one to greet the frantic Imperial entourage when Trajan had been carried off the ship to one of the few houses that still boasted an intact roof. Sabina could see the ruins of an old temple cresting the hills above, but for once she felt no urge to go exploring.

  “Come here, girl,” Trajan rasped, and she came and knelt by the bed. He seemed to have shrunk in just two days, his cheeks hollowed, the skin of his hands loose and wattled, the corner of his mouth dragged down now in a permanent snarl. He could not move the right side of his body; every breath wheezed in his throat. Sabina took his hand between hers and felt no answering squeeze.

  “I’ll be on my feet in a few days,” Trajan said, and coughed. Sabina slid an arm under his shoulders and helped raise him to breathe easier. “A week at most.”

  “Of course you will, Caesar,” Sabina lied.

  “So this is strictly a precaution, mind. I want to write a letter—the succession. Leave instructions who’s to follow me.”

  “But—” Sabina blinked. “Not that I don’t approve, but why talk to me about it?”

  “Because if I talk to any of my officers they’ll all be putting their own names forward, and I’ve already heard everything I want to hear on the subject from Plotina.” Another cough. “You won’t try to influence my choice, Vibia Sabina. You’ll listen and keep your mouth shut, like a good soldier.”

  “True.” Sabina felt her heart fluttering in her chest like a moth. “So who will follow you?”

  “That’s the question, eh? Thought I’d draw up a list and let the Senate choose. The buggers have a need to feel consulted, so I thought I’d give them five names.”

  “I see… and is Hadrian one of them?”

  “Gods’ bones, no.”

  Sabina let out a long breath. She felt oddly giddy. The matter had been hanging over her head for so long, living in every silence between her and Hadrian—and now it was gone.

  Publius Aelius Hadrian would not be emperor.

  “Five names,” Trajan was saying. “First, former consuls Palma and Celsus.”

  “Are you sure, Caesar?” Sabina said doubtfully, dragging her mind back to the matter at hand. “They’re both—well, I remember you saying Palma was a hothead and Celsus was an honest man but a fool.”

  Trajan paid no attention. “Lusius Quietus for the third name—”

  “The Senate will never choose a Berber, Caesar.” Sabina blinked. “Um… have you really thought about these names?”

  “Of course I have, girl.” Trajan sounded waspish, if slurred. “Give me a little credit! The Senate won’t choose any of them. Fools and hotheads and Berbers don’t get to be Emperor of Rome! The Senate will flick past all three with a shudder, and settle on the name I really want.”

  “Ah.” Sabina raised her eyebrows. “Very cunning, Caesar. I always knew that simple soldier act of yours was a sham.”

  Trajan tried to wink at her, but his eyelid just twitched. “They’ll pick Gaius Avidius Nigrinus. Solid fellow, honest. A safe pair of hands. Not much flair, but he’ll do.”

  Sabina pondered. “But that’s only four names. Three impossible choices, and your real candidate. Who’s the fifth—former consul Servianus, maybe?”

  “That old tortoise? Are you mad?”

  “You’ve mentioned his name before. At a dinner party, you said he would make a fine candidate for—”

  “I was drunk. No, my fifth name has to be my backup in case the Senate doesn’t choose Nigrinus. And that name is Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus.”

  She nearly felt her jaw drop. “Titus?”

  “Why not? I’ve had my eye on him for a while. Quiet, conscientious, a hard worker. A fine old family; pots of money; and he did a fine job as quaestor. Not much liking for military matters, but he’s got courage—brought a nasty little matter to my attention recently, and I owe him for it. Rome owes him for it, truth be told.”

  Sabina tried to collect her thoughts. Titus, forever claiming he’d never be anything more than a plodder, now a candidate for Emperor of Rome? “He’s very young, Caesar,” she ventured at last. “Surely the Senate wouldn’t approve a man under thirty-five to be Emperor?”

  “They might,” Trajan rasped. “The idiots fell all over young Nero and young Caligula, didn’t they? They just might pick Titus if Nigrinus has too many rivals blocking his path. Or they might give Nigrinus the purple, but have him adopt Titus as his heir. Either way, he’s my backup plan. Not that I need a backup plan. I’ll be on my feet in a day or two, and when I get back to Rome I’ll take the boy under my wing and see how he does with a little grooming. Give me five years to season him, and I’d pick him over Nigrinus any day.” Trajan’s chest heaved. “Gods, just five years. That’s all I ask.”

  “Titus.” The more Sabina thought of the idea, the more she liked it. “He hasn’t an enemy in the world, I’ll say that. How many men can make that claim?” She thought inconsequentially of Vix, even now sitting somewhere outside with his head bowed and his fists clenched together. Vix, who bashed through life making one enemy after another… oh, gods, the cry that had torn out of him when Trajan fell!

  “Plenty of spineless jellyfish don’t have enemies,” Trajan slurred. “Not many brave honest men, though. And I can think of at least one enemy young Titus has made, but it was on my behalf so I can’t complain. He’s my fifth name, anyway. Get Phaedimus for me to make it official. He’s my secretary of grants and promotions; he’ll know how to write it up.” Trajan’s chest heaved in another bout of coughing. “Damn
me. I left this too long, didn’t I? Should have done it years ago.”

  “You were too busy conquering the world,” Sabina said gently, and withdrew to thread her way through the crowds of restless idlers outside, all trying their best to peer into the Imperial sickroom. “The Emperor wishes to be alone,” Sabina said over and over, finally squeezing back inside and pushing the door shut. Phaedimus proved to be one of the Imperial freedmen—a handsome one, and from the way he fell to his knees by the bed and pressed his lips to Trajan’s hand, he’d been more to the Emperor than a secretary of grants and promotions. “Caesar—”

  “Get out your pens, young man.” Trajan’s wasted fingers tweaked the lean cheek. “No more weeping. Take down a letter for me. ‘To the honorable senators of Rome’ or maybe ‘Most noble senators of Rome’—just do it up properly for me; you know how to flatter that pack of proud buggers by now…”

  Phaedimus wrote neatly and rapidly, pen never pausing while the tears dripped down his face. Sabina helped Trajan sit up partway in bed, supporting his deadened shoulder while he crookedly signed at the bottom.

  “There.” He fell back, the pen dropping from his fingers. “You keep that for the time being, Phaedimus. Till I’ve broken the news to Plotina and the others. Tomorrow, maybe.” His voice trailed off. “Can’t face her hissing at me today… she’s already likely trying to poison me, angry as I made her in Antioch…”

  Sabina couldn’t make out the rest of the mumbled words, but she leaned down to kiss Trajan’s forehead. “Rest now.” The skin under her lips was as dry as parchment, and cold to the touch.

  Phaedimus looked at her with miserable swollen eyes as they passed out of the sickroom. “He’s going to die, isn’t he?”

  Sabina eased the door closed. “Yes.”

  VIX

  I stood watching an emperor die, but somehow I couldn’t see him. My eyes couldn’t focus on that shrunken figure in the bed. I kept seeing him the way he’d looked during his triumph in Rome, after the Dacian campaign. Tall, godlike, standing like a colossus in his own chariot at the center of the parade, his face daubed with celebratory red paint and a wreath of laurel leaves crowning his head—I could see him so clearly, as if the triumph had happened last week instead of nearly a decade ago. The little room where an emperor lay dying was full of people, but I couldn’t see any of them. I was too busy remembering.