by Rachel Ford
He nodded, rising to get one for himself. In a moment, he came back with an overfull glass. “I hope you don’t mind if I indulge.”
“Of course not.”
“It has been…quite the day.”
“Yes. Yes, it has.” She drew in a breath. “Thank you, Faustus – for what you did today.”
“Of course.” He smiled at her, with the smile that used to warm her heart. Now, she shivered at the sight of it. “You’re my wife. I will do whatever it takes to destroy anyone who tries to hurt you.”
She supposed he meant it to sound romantic. Somehow, it just made her uneasy all over again. “Well, dinner will be up shortly, I suppose. Do you know what they’re serving?”
He smiled again, but this time without much enthusiasm. “No idea. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Emperor Faustus tried to stay the night, but Cassia turned him down, pleading that she was still far too wearied from her ordeal.
Trygve heard it with only a little relief. Oh, he had no reason to be jealous. He knew that well enough. She was another man’s wife, and if she chose to spend her nights with him – her husband – what right had he to complain?
But knowing a thing and convincing his heart of it were entirely different matters. And in the moment, Trygve’s heart was proving extremely stubborn.
He might have left Cassia’s chambers in the same sullen state he’d spent the remainder of the evening, except that she called him to her before he left. “Thank you, Tryg.”
“Empress?”
“For not leaving.”
“Oh.” That, at least, gave him a little reason to believe that her intentions toward Faustus were not as amorous as his toward her. “Of course.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I really don’t.”
“What do you mean, Cass?”
But she only shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s not fair to burden you with this. Forgive me. Goodnight, Trygve.”
He turned to go but paused at the door. “Empress?”
“Yes?”
“I do not know the customs of your people. But in my land…well, if a man raises a hand to his wife, he is lucky if all he loses is a wife.” She blinked, and he shrugged. “Maybe your southern ways are different. But in the North, men have died for less.”
He left her to contemplate this and headed to his own room. The big cat watched him with sleepy eyes, yawning and chirping now and again for attention. This the Northman bestowed, albeit absentmindedly.
“What am I going to do, Gunnar?” he asked after a space.
The cat, of course, had no answers for him. Nor did the coming days. He saw Cass’s discomfort in her interactions with Faustus. There was no mistaking it.
But he saw that the emperor was not dissuaded, either. For now, her recovery would keep him at bay.
It would not work forever, though. Sooner or later, Faustus would tire of waiting. Trygve wouldn’t hesitate to help her dissuade him, if that’s what she wanted. But that was the question, wasn’t it? Would she want his help, or would she give in to the emperor’s campaign of wooing?
Trygve didn’t know, and so he tried to focus on other things. Here at least the gods were merciful. The trial ran several more days, and sentences of death came down for everyone involved. News spread far and wide, and the executions became something of a grisly public event.
And here, Cassia demonstrated her own political acumen. “Felix gave his life for this moment. If we’re ever going to have a chance of fixing the empire, this is it. We have only weeks until the elections. Now is the time to work.”
And work she did. Lucretius and some two dozen candidates came and went on a regular basis. They talked strategy and messaging, bread drives and campaign events.
The color came back to Cassia’s cheeks, the vigor to her step. And all the while, she managed to keep it out of her husband’s sight.
Faustus was busy with the trials and executions. Pleading delicate health, no one expected her attendance. No one was disappointed or suspicious when she didn’t show up. No one, not even the emperor, guessed that she continued Felix’s dream.
No one except Trygve, at any rate, who was party to each and every one of her meetings. She was brilliant. He knew that already but watching the way she fell into her work with such zeal, such eagerness, filled his heart with a new appreciation for her genius.
She’d chosen her team well, too. He wasn’t sure anyone was quite as ardent a believer in their cause as Lucretius, but she’d assembled a solid group of candidates. Trygve wasn’t one to put faith in politicians. But he would have sworn that at least half of these men believed what they said, and the rest would follow through because doing so was their path to power.
It was Luke, of course, he was most glad to see. And when he had a moment, he took the young man aside. “How is everything? How is Tullius?”
It was the wrong question to ask. A shadow passed across the other man’s face. “Well, I believe.”
“Oh. Then…?”
Luke smiled, a bittersweet smile. “Yes. It’s still off. He says maybe, once I win this thing, we can risk it then. But for now, it’s not safe.”
“Ah. I’m sorry, Luke.”
“Me too.” The young man shook his head. “But, enough of that. What about you, Tryg? How’s life here? We’ve been terrified for you. I have, anyway. Tullius says you can handle yourself. But with all this talk of assassinations and plots…I half expected to hear that they’d got you.”
The Northman laughed. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Good.” Luke clapped him on the shoulder. “Very good. I think the empress relies on you a good deal more than you know.”
Trygve felt his cheeks color. “I...we do see eye to eye on a lot.”
“Yes. I’ve noticed it every time I’ve been to the city. She heeds your advice, Tryg. She puts as much stock in it as she ever did Felix’s.” He grinned. “So you’d better stay away from the ale, eh, Northman? Lest you ruin us all.”
But life could not continue indefinitely in such a fashion. The last of the executions wrapped up in the fourth week. Trygve was pretty sure the entire city had turned out for it, as packed as the streets had been. It was Gallus’s death, and though they did not attend, they could hear the cheers all the way in the palace.
Cassia shivered, and Trygve wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. The days were getting chillier now. Not by Northern standards, of course. By Northern standards, these were unseasonably warm days for the season. But to these Southern constitutions – constitutions like Cassia’s – the days had grown cold.
But then Faustus came home, and he came looking for her. “There you are, my wife. Would that you had been there. What a sight, what a spectacle. The people loved it.”
He scooped Cassia up in his arms, lifting her over his head in a kind of celebratory twirl. Her shawl went flying in one direction, and she protested, “Put me down, Faustus.”
He laughed and put her on her feet. Then, he drew her toward him for a kiss. She pivoted, so that his lips met her cheek. The emperor frowned. “Cass, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
She turned back toward her desk, but he grabbed her wrist. Trygve felt his hand reach instinctively for the blade at his belt, and he checked the motion. What in Frigg’s name is wrong with me? He’d already attempted regicide – twice over. Did he really need to default to that? If Cassia needed his help, there were dozens of ways he could give it that didn’t involve killing her husband. They didn’t even all involve broken bones or serious damage, although those – he couldn’t lie – sat best in his mind.
“Speak to me, Cassia. I’m your husband. You can’t avoid me forever. You think I don’t see this, how you turn away from me? How you act like you detest my touch?” He stepped closer, his hand still gripping hers. She held her ground. “Talk to me.”
She nodded. “Alright. But Faustus?”
“Y
es?”
“Take your hand off of me. Now.”
The emperor glanced down and laughed sheepishly. “Oh. Right.”
She gestured to the seat across the desk. “Take a seat, and we’ll talk.”
Faustus frowned again. He would have had to be blind and deaf to miss the businesslike tones of her voice and choice of seating. “Can we not discuss it somewhere more comfortable?”
“No,” she said. “Let us discuss it here and now, husband.”
He didn’t argue. Nor did his expression change. He took the seat, and she took hers, ensuring there was a desk between them in the process. Then, she glanced up at the Northman. “Will you…Tryg, will you give us a minute?”
He blinked. He had his own, selfish reasons for wanting to stay, of course. This arrangement, her cool, business tones, had lit a spark of hope in his breast that threatened to consume him with all kinds of mad hopes and schemes. He wanted to know if there was even a hint of justification to any of them.
But he had a much better reason for wanting to stay. If – as he suspected – Cassia was about to reject Faustus’s amorous overtures once and for all, he did not want to leave her alone. He remembered the look in the emperor’s eyes only too well when he’d raised his hand to her, when he’d left handprints in her flesh.
What would such a man do if he was rejected? Trygve didn’t want her to find out alone. So he asked, “Empress?”
“Give us a minute,” she repeated. “Please.”
He could not argue. However much he wanted to protest, she was still empress, and he was still bound to follow her commands. “Yes, empress. I’ll be in the next room if you need me.”
Faustus’s scowl deepened at those words. Their intent was clear enough, he supposed. But he didn’t care. He wanted her to know that help was at hand – would always be at hand – if she needed it.
“Thank you. But this won’t take long.”
Her prediction proved more optimistic than warranted. For a while, Trygve heard very little. It was almost impossible to hear a conversation in her chamber when tones were even and the door was closed.
But then, the pitches began to rise. Faustus’s tone grew loud and angry. Hers sounded higher, but with a conviction that convinced him to stay put. She would call him if she needed him. And right now, she could handle this on her own.
He didn’t mean to eavesdrop. If Cassia had wanted him to hear this, she would have let him remain. But he needed to stay within earshot, should she require his assistance. And so, inevitably, he picked up snippets of shouted conversation.
“I’m your husband, godsdammit Cassia,” the emperor declared more than once.
“I’ve made up my mind, Faustus,” she would repeat.
Once, he heard the other man yell, “You can’t just shut your door to me like a used whore.”
“It’s not up for debate. That – that part of our lives is done. Forever.”
“You can’t do that to me. I’m your husband. I have needs.”
“I can, and I will. Don’t pretend you don’t have plenty of outlets to satisfy your needs, husband.”
Faustus had had some choice words for her, then – her and her mother. It was her loss and not his, he’d raged. He’d never found a prostitute whose company he’d enjoyed less than hers.
He cursed her timing, too. “Now that I’ve served your purposes, now that I – I alone – have brought all your enemies to justice, now you cast me aside?”
“I’ve tried to tell you before, Faustus. But you would not listen.”
For some several minutes, he railed at her, insisting that she had used him. Trygve bristled with every insult, with every curse, and more than once revisited those happy fantasies he’d indulged earlier. It would do the emperor good, he thought, to spend some quiet weeks with his jaw wired shut as it healed.
But, of course, that would not happen. Eventually, Faustus left Cassia’s chambers, storming past the Northman in a rage so blind he seemed not to even notice him. Trygve poked his head into the other room. “Cass?”
She smiled at the sight of him – a wan expression, but genuine. “Oh Tryg.”
He entered the room. “Is everything alright? Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yes. As well as can be expected, considering.” She scrutinized him for a long moment. “I just…I just told Faustus that our marriage – that is, that I won’t be sharing my bed with him ever again.” She spread her hands. “You can guess how he took it.”
The Northman nodded. “Yes. But after the way he’s treated you, what else could he expect?”
She snorted. “Oh, in my husband’s mind, that is already long forgotten. He denies half of it, and the rest he blames on Caius and Gallus. I’m not supposed to hold that against him, you see.”
He shook his head at the other man’s nerve.
“Well, Minerva knows it had to be said. But I fear what will come of it, Tryg.”
He’d reached her side, and kneeling by her, stretched a hand to hers. “You need not fear, Cass. Whatever happens, you will be safe. I promise you that.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Elections came and went. The murder of Felix, the end of the Empress’s pregnancy, and the failed assassination of their leader, turned the tide of public opinion so sharply, so irrevocably, against the conservative wing of the Senate that even Cassia found herself astonished by the results.
More than half of the conservative seats flipped. Felix’s successor was one of his closest allies, a young man of indefatigable zeal called Balbus. Tryg’s friend Lucretius easily won his seat, crushing the conservative competitor by thirty points.
In the end, she had a seventy-eight percent majority in the Forum.
Faustus was floored. He’d turned rather heavily to drink after their conversation about the future of their marriage. If he’d guessed what she was up to, he hadn’t tried to interfere. But when the results came in, he’d stormed into her chambers and denounced her with every curse ever introduced to language. She’d betrayed him, she’d used him, she’d used their dead son for her own political aims, and so on. She was a whore, the daughter of a whore, and worse.
Somehow, the words didn’t hurt as they might once have done. On the contrary, they seemed to do her a service. Some part of her, some last lingering sense of guilt, had plagued her mind in the intervening weeks. Had she done the right thing? Faustus was her husband, after all. Was it right to close her heart and her bed to him?
But each insult, each barb, swept those feelings away. It was like a boat, moored by the last strands of a fraying rope. And one by one, he was cutting those strands, until she regarded him with something almost like contempt.
She didn’t see a husband she loved. She didn’t even see what she had once loved. She saw only a spoiled man, an angry, cruel and violent man. A man unused to having his will contravened or hearing the word “no.” She saw a man that she almost hated.
She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to hate him. She had never meant to. They were still husband and wife, after all. But enduring his stream of vitriol, his half drunken charges of every kind of infamy, she felt contempt and – yes – hatred.
Ending the interview before things progressed further seemed the right course of action, although this too provoked a fiery response from her husband. He had more threats, more insults, and more vitriol for her.
But then, mercifully, he was gone.
She saw him little in the next few days, and then only in accidental encounters. They weren’t pleasant, but she didn’t particularly care. She was too busy to care much what Faustus thought these days.
She had her majority. Now, finally, she could change things. Forget soup kitchens and bread and circus to keep the people from starving. Forget scraps and stopgaps. Now, she could affect actual change. She could ensure that wages covered the cost of living, she could ensure that landlords couldn’t gouge their tenants. She could implement safety regulations for the mines and factories. She could p
ass long overdue building codes and devote more resources to the fire brigades and schools.
For the first time since she’d ascended to the highest position in Stella, she could actually help her people. And no snit of her husband’s was going to distract her from that.
Indeed, nothing could, unless it was Trygve. The Northman was more persistent than Dr. Aelius. He insisted that she eat her meals on schedule and take her daily constitutionals, even when she would have preferred to sit at her desk working.
But she didn’t mind. Not really. Tryg came with her on the walks and brought his snow leopard with him. And for a little while, she could think about other things. She could forget the cares of the day, the uncertainties and challenges that surrounded her work. She could laugh and relax and remember what it was like to truly be at peace, to love living for living’s sake.
It had been far too long since she’d remembered that.
A few weeks after the new Senate was sworn in, Faustus absconded from the capital on another tour of his holdings. Of course, Trygve wasn’t sorry to see him go. But more than that, he was delighted in the effect it produced in Cassia.
She smiled more freely, she laughed more regularly, and she disappeared into her work less frequently.
The only downside to all of this was that now that her husband was gone, she insisted that he take his days off again. “I’ve been very selfish,” she told him with a smile, “in keeping you here with no escape from me. Go visit your friend in the country, or Lucretius. Enjoy yourself, Tryg. I promise, I’ll eat my food and drink plenty of water. You don’t have to babysit me.”
He would have been just as happy to stay with her. But knowing that Faustus was gone, and that she was safe from him for the time being, meant he could leave in relative peace of mind. So he did.
Lucretius had taken up apartments in the city, but he spent his weekends in the country. So Trygve arranged that he would accompany the senator back on the second of those weekends after Faustus’s disappearance.
The junior senator had no end of topics to occupy their conversation. Or rather, the monologue, as it largely proved to be. Trygve didn’t mind particularly. Yes, he’d heard it all before from Cass. But his friend’s enthusiasm, not least of all after all the dark days they’d had of late, didn’t go amiss.
