Empress of the Seven Hills

  “Fruit on the terrace, Quintus,” Sabina told her father’s steward. “After that, you may please yourself. Go to the races, go to the games, go to the taverns; we’re all free now.”

  TITUS

  Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus took a deep breath and looked his father in the eye. “Any advice?”

  His father stared back, kindly but silent.

  “I haven’t really done this before, you know,” Titus said. “Gone courting a girl, I mean. I called on her once before, but she wasn’t there. She’s back now, so I don’t really have any more excuses to dodge this. I could use a few tips.”

  His father looked encouraging, but stayed silent. That was the problem when your father was dead, and all you had was a marble bust of him mounted on a plinth in the atrium.

  Titus straightened his thin shoulders. “Well, wish me luck.”

  He checked his toga for stains, rearranged the folds over his arm, tried vainly to smooth down the tuft of hair that kicked up on the back of his head no matter how short he told the barber to razor it. The last time he’d gone calling on Senator Norbanus’s daughter, he’d tried desperately to flatten his hair down with goose grease, and his grandfather had told him he looked like a Bithynian bum-boy. “No need to trick yourself out, lad! Your name will do the trick; her father and I are like brothers. I’ve already spoken to him; now all you have to do is charm the girl a bit.”

  Titus sighed. His friends at school complained about tight-fisted fathers, unsympathetic uncles, demanding grandfathers. But Titus had a grandfather who thought he was perfect and a father who had been perfect and was now dead, and that was far harder to live up to. It was absolutely no use telling his grandfather that an heiress related to the Emperor and courted by half of Rome was not going to be impressed by a boy of sixteen with nothing to boast but an armload of violets and six unpronounceable names. She’d probably laugh him right off her doorstep.

  “You’re in luck today,” the broad-shouldered young guard told him. “She’s in the library. I’ll show you back.”

  “Thank you for the advice about the violets,” Titus said, lengthening his stride to keep up with the guard’s long swaggering steps. He dearly wished for a little swagger himself.

  “She likes sort of ordinary flowers instead of stiff fancy ones,” the guard answered. “I told that bugger Tribune Hadrian she goes mad for lilies, the big expensive ones, and now he sends so many she feeds them to the horses.” A chuckle. “She can’t stand the smell.”

  “Tribune Hadrian?” Titus’s grandfather really thought he could win out over men like Tribune Hadrian with his distinguished voice and rising career and oceans of poise? I’m sunk.

  The guard clapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you,” Titus gulped, and marched into the library before his courage failed him.

  Well. Vibia Sabina didn’t look like the kind of girl being courted by half of Rome. He’d met her before, even been introduced, but she’d been dressed up and quiet at her father’s side; a senator’s daughter just like any other. Now she was lying on the floor of the library on her stomach, hair hanging over one shoulder, crunching on an apple. She had maps spread out all around her, and she was apparently drawing a line across them with a stylus. She looked up at Titus, and he saw she had blue eyes.

  “Oh no.” Her voice was mild. “Not another one.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I take it you’re a suitor? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. But I’m not really in the mood to be proposed to today.”

  “I’m not in the mood to do any proposing,” Titus surprised himself by saying just as frankly. “Why don’t you just turn me down now so I can go away?”

  A dimple appeared by the corner of her mouth. “Shouldn’t I know whom I’m turning down first?”

  He bowed. “Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus.”

  “Vibia Sabina.” She held out her hand; he took it and she scrambled up. “Pardon the mess. I’m planning a trip across the Empire, and I’m trying to work out whether to go east to west or west to east.”

  “‘They change the sky, not their soul, who run across the sea,’” Titus said before he could stop himself.

  “What?”

  “Sorry. Just quoting Horace; it’s a bad habit.”

  “So where would you start?” she pressed. “In the west, with Britannia? Or in the east, with Syria?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you. I don’t much want to go to either one.”

  “Oh dear, I really will have to turn you down. I must have a husband who travels.” She disposed of the half-eaten apple and waved him to a seat. “I suppose your father sent you to court me?”

  “My grandfather.” Titus perched on the edge of a couch, noticing how easily Sabina curled up in the chair opposite. She had a fragile silver chain about one ankle, and her feet were bare. “My father is dead.”

  “Yes—come to think of it, I’ve heard of him.”

  “Everyone has,” Titus sighed. “He was a great man.”

  “Hard to live up to, isn’t it?” Sabina smiled. “I think my brother will find it hard, when he grows up. Girls have it easier. I don’t have to follow in my father’s footsteps, just adore him.” She clapped her hands. “Well, let’s hear that marriage proposal.”

  “I thought you were going to turn it down.”

  “Well, I am. Sorry about that. But I’ve gotten to be a bit of a connoisseur of proposals lately, so perhaps I can help you with yours. Then you won’t be so nervous the next time you have to do this.”

  Titus felt the tension ebb in his stomach as he started to get the flow of this odd conversation. “How do we start?”

  “Well, normally you won’t be proposing to the girl herself,” Sabina instructed. “I’m an odd case, since my father is letting me vet my own suitors. In future you’ll more likely go to the girl’s father. So just pretend I’m an old man scowling at you censoriously over a desk”—she straightened, furrowing her brows into a glower—“and give me a list of all your good qualities.”

  “Is that how it’s done?” Titus rested his bony elbows on his knees, thoughtful. “If it were my daughter, and I were the one vetting her suitors, I think I’d want to hear about their bad qualities.”

  “Points for originality.” Sabina pushed her hair behind her ears. “So? Let’s hear about your flaws.”

  “Well, to start, I’m just sixteen years old,” he said. “Just finished my education, so obviously I have no career yet. And no money except an allowance from my grandfather, so I can’t offer you a house of your own.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m a dreadful stick,” he confessed. “I’m not witty. I’m not brilliant. I’m certainly not handsome. I never have anything original to say, so I just quote other people. Like Horace. Cato too; I’m terribly boring about Cato.”

  “You’re doing very well at this,” Sabina approved. “Keep going.”

  “I expect I’ll have the usual sort of career—tribune, quaestor, praetor, and so forth. But I’m a thoroughgoing plodder, so I doubt I’ll ever bring much luster to the family name.”

  “Does that worry you?” Her smile was gone; she looked serious.

  “Not really,” he found himself saying quite honestly. “The Empire runs because of plodders. I’ll do my work, and I’ll do it well. But I won’t rise high—I’ll just serve. No wife of mine is going to end up an empress, that’s certain.” He spread his hands. “That’s all, I suppose. There isn’t much to say about someone as insignificant as me.”

  Sabina tilted her head to one side. “I give up,” she said at last. “You need no help from me in learning how to propose marriage. Just give that same speech to the right girl, and she’ll fall headlong into your lap.”

  He grinned and looked down, smoothing a hand back over his cowlick. “You’re sure you won’t marry me?” he asked, looking up. “I may not be very keen on going to Syria, but I think we’d have a goo
d time together anyway.”

  “I’m tempted.” Sabina rose. “But you’d find me a very unsatisfactory wife in the long run. I hate parties, I love adventures, and I’m very fond of getting my own way. If you gave me all your faults, it’s only fair you know mine.”

  “I like your faults.” He rose too, holding out the armload of violets. “I suppose we never like the people with the right faults to match our own, do we? It’s always the unsuitable person we want instead.”

  “Yes, it is.” She looked thoughtful at that. “Sometimes a very unsuitable person.”

  “Have you got your eye on one?” he said a little wistfully.

  “Thank you for the flowers.” She buried her nose in the bouquet. “I love violets.”

  “Your guard said you did.”

  “Vix?” She chuckled. “How nice of him. I shall have to find some way of saying thank you.”

  VIX

  “Vix?”

  I halted abruptly in my hazy stumble across the gardens. Night had fallen, and there was no moon telling me who had called my name. My hand slipped to the short sword I still carried by habit at my belt, even when I just went out for a quick drink. “Who’s there?”

  “Just me.” The vague shape of an arm waved over the blackness of the grass.

  “Lady Sabina?” I took a step forward.

  “Don’t stab me.” Another movement in the dark and I made her out: stretched full length in the grass, waving a lazy hand overhead.

  My hand loosened on the sword hilt. “What are you doing out here?”

  “It’s the first night in a week it hasn’t rained.”

  True, it had been a hot, wet string of days. Warm air had wrapped the city like a damp wool cloak ever since we’d returned from Baiae, and almost every night it had rained in a hot restless flood that ran fitfully over the rooftop gutters without relieving the heat. No wonder the rich preferred their seaside villas. I had a fleeting yearning for Baiae with its uppity whores and cool sea breezes, but I took another step into the dry grass of the garden. “What are you doing here, Lady?”

  For the past week she’d been holed up with her books and maps in her father’s study, while her nurse fussed at her with fans and cold drinks and the few remaining suitors still in the city drifted off to cooler breezes and less elusive targets. But my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark now, and I saw the senator’s daughter stretched out flat on her back on the grass, ankles crossed and arms folded under her head. “I’m stargazing.” She tilted her chin at me. “Is that wine you’ve got?”

  “Um. Yes, I brought a jug from the tavern.” Hoping I could get the freckled maid named Gaia to drink with me and maybe let me under her blankets again. “It’s my night off, I wasn’t coming on duty drunk—”

  “I’m not the steward, Vix. I’m not going to scold you. Not if you let me have some.”

  “It’s unwatered.”

  “Really? My father won’t let me drink wine, much less unwatered wine.”

  “He shouldn’t. It’s very strong.”

  She sat up in the grass. “Give it over, then.”

  I sat down in the grass, handing over my jug. The garden had turned to shadows all around—jasmine bushes in fragrant shadows, something silvery and night-blooming in paler shadows, columns framing everything in tall shadows—but there were no torches. The rest of the household had long since gone to bed. “No cups,” I warned.

  She took a swallow straight from the jug, and shuddered. “Ugh. I can see why civilized people water it.”

  “Give it back, then. Unwatered wine is for barbarians like me.”

  She took another optimistic swallow and handed back the jug. I took a long drink myself, tilting my head back. No moon, but no clouds either—just stars, thousands of them, and I wondered if Romans in their legions had as many men as there were stars in the sky.

  “Vercingetorix, if I asked you something, would you tell me?”

  I sat up straighter, a little self-conscious. “Of course, Lady.”

  “Good. Tell me what happened the day I kissed you, six years back.”

  “What does it matter?” I plucked a blade of grass by my foot, plucked another. “We were just children. What were you, twelve?”

  “Vix. We met by chance, and I kissed you, and I went home. While I waited at home, my brother died, and my mother died, and the Emperor of Rome died. And my father came home looking like death, and told me there was a new Emperor.”

  “What makes you think I’d know anything about it?”

  “Everyone knew the Young Barbarian was Emperor Domitian’s pet. And the Young Barbarian vanished as soon as Domitian was dead.”

  I made a movement to get up from the grass, but her cool small hand caught my wrist. I tugged away. “Ask your father what happened, Lady.”

  “He says the Emperor was murdered by a slave with a grievance. He says my brother died a hero. He says my mother died in the chaos.”

  “Your father’s a good man. He wouldn’t lie.”

  “Yes, but he does omit a truth now and then. It’s the best way to lie without actually lying.” She was a dim shape in the darkness, just a shadow of an oval face and plaited hair and bare arms. “Please, Vix.”

  I took a swig of wine out of the jug, and then another. “I locked your mother in a closet,” I began slowly, and that whole strange day spilled out when an emperor had died, my parents killed him, and I’d been witness to it all. There were gaps in places—gaps where I had to reconstruct what happened from things my mother said, gaps where I just didn’t want to go on because all in all it had been a hellish day and one I wished I could forget. But the senator’s daughter waited in the dark, wordless until I was done, and her first question surprised me.

  “Your parents got away?”

  I hesitated, thinking of the rambling villa on the mist-wrapped mountaintop where my mother raised babies and my father tortured his garden, both dead to Rome and happy to be that way. I hesitated, but Sabina’s smile came through the dark.

  “Good.”

  She took the jug from my hand and took a healthy swig. “Gods, that’s vile. Did my brother really die a hero?”

  “Yes.” I’d liked her older brother, a black-haired officer in the Praetorians who had tried to do his best by everybody. It never worked, doing that, but he’d tried anyway. “He was a hero.”

  “I miss him.” Sabina drew up her knees, resting her folded arms on top. “A girl likes having a brother.”

  “You have Linus.”

  “Yes, but he’s my little brother. As long as he lives, I’ll be the one watching out for him. A big brother, now—a girl always knows she’s safe.”

  “He threatened to take my head off for kissing you,” I remembered. “Told me to keep my grubby hands off.”

  “See, there you go.”

  “Sorry about your mother.” I swigged from the jug. “The closet, and all.”

  “I’m not,” Sabina said. “She wasn’t much of a mother. Wasn’t much of a human being, truth be told.”

  “Well, no.” Her mother had been a bitch of the first order, and I was glad Sabina didn’t look like her even though she’d been a beauty, because I couldn’t have kissed any girl who looked like that she-viper. “I don’t know who killed her in that closet, though,” I added. “Wasn’t me.”

  “She had a lot of enemies. In all the chaos, someone saw a chance.” Sabina tugged the jug out of my hand. “This disgusting wine is growing on me.”

  “It does that.”

  She took a swallow and lay back in the grass. “Thank you for telling me, Vix.”

  “Glad I could.” I slid down on one elbow, cocking my head back at the dark sky. “You like stargazing?”

  “Yes. Makes everything down here very small.”

  “An astrologer read my stars once.” The same day Emperor Domitian had died, actually. “He said I’d have a legion someday, and that I’d be called Vercingetorix the Red.”

  “Did you believe him?”


  “Don’t know. He was a funny little man—tubby and cheerful, not like you picture an astrologer. But the things he said had a habit of coming true.”

  Sabina was still gazing up into the sky. “I don’t think I believe in reading the stars. Why would the gods bother laying out our lives for us? I think they’d rather keep us in suspense.”

  “I believe in my stars. I’ll make them go where I want.”

  She regarded me thoughtfully. “I think you actually could.”

  I tilted my head up. “Good stars tonight.”

  “Vix.”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to kiss me now? Or do we have to talk about stars some more?”

  I thought about how to answer that, yes or no, and neither one seemed right. So I just leaned down and kissed her, tasting wine but smelling dry grass and summer. Her breast filled my hand, and her cool fingers were tracing their unhurried circles again on the back of my neck, and this time there was no indignant Roman housewife to bang me on the head and stop me from pulling the dress off Sabina’s shoulder. I buried my mouth in her neck, tugging her fine hair out of its careless plait so it spread on the grass, and that was when her hand moved to my chest, pushing me firmly back.

  “So that’s it for tonight?” I flopped on my back, not resigned but not exactly surprised either. Still, if I’d gotten a kiss last time and a kiss plus a breast this time, then maybe next time… “Where are you going? We can talk about stars, have some more of this awful wine—”

  “Shut up, Vix. You want to wake the whole house?” She got to her feet, brushing bits of grass off her skirt, and offered me her hand.

  I squinted up at her. “What are you doing, Lady?”

  She grabbed my hand. “Come with me.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked as she tugged me through the atrium and then down a darkened passage.