Lady of the Eternal City

by Kate Quinn

  “Have you been inhaling too much of that Imperial purple dye?” Sabina asked conversationally. “Sometimes I wonder.”

  I almost laughed, but then the cry went up.

  “He comes!”

  I looked beyond the gates to see dust, billowing like a storm cloud on the road approaching the city. A great roar went up from the waiting crowd, and Sabina spoke softly. “Are they so eager to see him?”

  “They want the largesse they’ll get if they cheer, Lady.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I made a formal announcement that they’d get largesse if they cheered.”

  Sabina smiled, her Imperial mask cracking briefly to show the girl who had cantered around the Empire in search of adventure. It was hard not to smile at that girl, even if you sometimes wanted to put a leash on her.

  She studied me a moment, and her serious expression returned. “What’s wrong, Vix? You’re smiling, but you’ve been coiled tight as a rope all morning. Are you dreading something? Besides that,” she added with a glance at the approaching storm of dust that was her husband.

  I’m dreading a death, I almost said. Five executions were coming, but one would be worse than all the others combined. I’d dreaded it during this whole past year like a leaden weight in my stomach. And it was coming, once this rose-petaled pomp was done. The Emperor had ordered those deaths, and just because he’d changed his mind after the arrests were made—“Leave them alive in their cells till I return,” he’d written me, “I will see the executions myself”—didn’t mean blood wasn’t still going to be spilled.

  Empress Sabina knew whose death I dreaded. She dreaded it, too. I saw her hesitate as though hunting for words, but then the trumpets blared, and she remembered to ignore me. I had a moment to resent that, even over the sick swoop in my stomach, but she was right to do it. We were safer that way, both of us. We turned away from each other at the same instant—immaculate Empress, stone-visaged guard; nothing but cool, impersonal space between us—to face the Emperor.

  Publius Aelius Hadrian.

  He cut a splendid image, I won’t deny that. Broad-shouldered, tall, sitting his big stallion like a centaur, red leather reins doubled through his tanned fist. Bearded like a Greek, in disdain for all the long tradition this city had for shorn chins. He’d worn military dress: a cloak of rich purple draped with careless flair across the horse’s flanks, a breastplate polished to a meticulous gleam that brought a chuff of approval out of me despite myself. Hadrian’s head was bare, the morning breeze stirring his curls, and though that massive handsome head was bowed with a humility designed to please the crowd, I saw the excitement that danced in his deep-set eyes. I felt my pulse give an answering leap of loathing.

  It was afternoon before the interminable sacrifices and blessings were complete. My stomach growled and my eyes stung from temple smoke by the time Hadrian swept like a conqueror into the Domus Flavia, sandals slapping against the intricate mosaics. The roaring of the crowds retreated to distant thunder beyond the marble colonnades as Hadrian unfastened his cloak from his breastplate. A slave came forward, but Hadrian looked about him instead and tossed the cloak at me. It fell to the floor at my feet.

  Our eyes met for the first time in a year, the first time since Emperor Trajan had died and Hadrian had taken his place. The Emperor and I locked eyes, and I swear I saw a flare of hatred in Hadrian’s gaze to match the jump in my heart. I’d felt that same flare the day we first met. Back then I was just a freed slave with a swagger and a chest full of scars; he was a drawling bore with a snow-white toga and a string of senatorial titles. The gulf between two men like that should be wider than the whole Empire, but we put each other’s hackles up the moment we met. We’d circled each other, measured each other through narrowed eyes, and I suppose I could be portentous and say that I knew at once how much he would come to blight my life. But I’m about as prescient as a paving stone, and I’d had no idea at the time. I just knew that I hated him on sight, and he felt the same for me. It’s just like falling in love, that kind of hatred. It feels the same, that sick swoop in your stomach, but it’s all poisoned and upside down.

  He pointed to the purple cloak at my feet. “Pick that up.”

  I didn’t move. He’d schemed his way into Imperial purple, and then—for some perverse reason I had yet to understand—he’d made me his watchdog. I’d laughed in his face, but how do you say no to an emperor when he can squash you like a fly? Not just you, but the two daughters you dote on, the adopted son you probably shouldn’t admit is your favorite, and the stalwart, beloved wife who raised all three? I had a whole set of hostages for my good behavior, and the Emperor knew it.

  “Caesar,” I said, and stooped to pick up the damned cloak.

  “Excellent,” he said pleasantly. “Now, why don’t you go fetch our friends? You know the ones I mean. I’ve a little time to spare before I prepare for the meeting with the Arvals.”

  The Domus Flavia was a lovely place: marble colonnades catching every breeze, wet green gardens with splashing fountains, cool mosaic tiles set in rippling patterns underfoot. But it was a palace—it had housed great men like Emperor Trajan, but it had housed monsters and madmen too. And monsters and madmen require uglier things in their palaces. Things like dungeon cells.

  I let my centurions fetch the other prisoners, but I went for Titus myself—I owed him that, at least. I’d put my old friend in the best cell I could find and softened it up with a yielding bed, good meals, water for washing, even a store of books. But a cell is a cell, and when my friend lifted his head and looked at me, the changes I saw from his months of dwelling in this place shook me. He’d been a lanky, cheerful young patrician with a string of distinguished names and a lineage that went back to Aeneas. Now I saw the shadows under his eyes, the flesh that had fallen away from his body, the gray salting his hair.

  How could Titus have gray in his hair already? He was even younger than I.

  “Hello, Slight,” he said, and I couldn’t help wincing at his old name for me. Vercingetorix was too foreign a name for Roman tongues; it had long been shortened to the casual Gallic “Vix”—which just happened to double in Latin as a common adjective, something along the lines of “barely” or “slightly.” I’d have belted anyone else who dared call me slightly anything, but Titus was allowed. I’d saved his life in Dacia long ago, a brash young legionary rescuing a nervous young tribune, and ever since that day, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus was my friend.

  Was. I already had a family hostage to my good behavior—I couldn’t afford friends, too. Not anymore.

  “Get up,” I said curtly. “He wants to see you.”

  “Your master?”

  “Ours.”

  “Yours, I think.” Titus unfolded himself, all long limbs and bony shins. “He made me his prisoner, but you’re his dog.”

  There was cool judgment in his tone, and I bristled. I’d rather have heard hatred. I didn’t mind being hated, but I was damned if I’d be judged.

  “I’m not his dog,” I bit out. “I’m his killer, the one he lets off the leash when he wants blood spilled. Keep it straight.”

  Titus’s words came quietly. “You were never a killer, Vix. A soldier, yes. But not a murderer of innocents.”

  “Well, that’s what I am now.” Putting my hand on the hilt of my gladius. “So move.”

  “‘A sword is never a killer,’” he quoted. “‘It’s a tool in the killer’s hands.’”

  “Juvenal?”

  He smiled. “Seneca.”

  Titus and his damned quotes; he had one for every occasion. “So according to Seneca, am I the killer or the sword?”

  My friend met my eyes. The night I’d come to arrest him, he’d been all fury at my betrayal, but now his gaze was sad. “Maybe you’re the tool.”

  That stung. Truth usually does. And it just ma
de me angrier. Truth usually does that, too.

  Maybe Titus saw my jaw clench, because he put a hand to my shoulder. “I’ve been wanting to thank you for something, Slight.”

  “What?” I gestured. “Putting you in here? You didn’t thank me when I arrested you!”

  “You’ve done your best for me since then.” A shrug. “No, I meant to thank you for not letting my wife in to see me, after she told me she was expecting a child. I worried she’d miscarry, as much as it upset her to see me here.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said, and gestured him out the door. “I didn’t do it for you.” I did it for me, because every time my friend’s wife looked at me, her eyes were stony with condemnation. I couldn’t blame her, but I hated facing her. I’d been the one to drag her husband away on what should have been their wedding night, her half-dressed and pleading as I dragged him from their wedding bed, him trying to reassure her even as I marched him across the flower-strewn mosaics. “Hope she doesn’t weep all over the atrium today,” I said brusquely. “The Emperor hates crying women.”

  “Faustina doesn’t weep.” There was pride in Titus’s voice. “Too brave! Far braver than me. I’m sure our daughter will take after her—”

  I put an arm out and checked him as he passed me. “Stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop being friendly,” I said brutally. “We’re not friends. Not now. I’ll get the order to kill you in a few moments—”

  “And will you carry it out?”

  “I’ll have to, won’t I?” I stepped closer until we stood chest to chest. “I’ve got a wife too, you know.”

  “Of course.”

  I stared into his eyes, seeing fear, but well-mastered fear. He was almost as tall as I was, something few men could say, but I could have snapped his aristocratic bones in half. He’d never been a fighter, Titus. He was a man of honor, with all it entailed. He wouldn’t kill me, if our positions were reversed.

  But I wasn’t a man of honor. I’d survive, and so would my family—even if I had to kill a friend to do it.

  “Come with me,” I said, and yanked him away from the cell toward the man who—whether we liked it or not—was master of us all.

  SABINA

  When Sabina’s mother-in-law had become Empress some twenty years ago, she had paused picturesquely in the massive doorway of the Domus Flavia upon entering for the first time and announced, “I hope to leave this palace the same woman as I enter it.” Plotina had made sure all Rome knew that story, told with respectful nods for her humility and modesty.

  When Sabina entered the Domus Flavia last year as Empress, she hadn’t bothered with humility and modesty. Her first words in the Imperial palace had been to the director of the Imperial archives: “Give me everything you have on the previous Empresses of Rome.”

  He had blinked: a thin, bright-eyed man named Suetonius, ink-stained and irreverent, trailing a forgotten tail of parchment from a scroll thrust through his belt. “Which Empresses, Lady?”

  “All of them.” Because Rome had had so many Empresses, some of them infamous. Those names were still whispered: the Empresses who had been exiled for adultery or beheaded for plotting. But what about the others? Emperor Domitian’s wife with her spotless reputation, except for those faint uneasy rumors of how she’d engineered her husband’s assassination . . . Empress Livia, who boasted of weaving Augustus’s tunics with her own hands, but was as clever as any man in Rome . . .

  The Empresses who survived.

  How? Sabina had wanted to know, plunging into the scrolls Suetonius brought her. Teach me quickly, because no one’s going to put a sword through my neck if I can help it.

  And Hadrian would certainly put a sword through her neck, if he had even an inkling what she was hiding.

  “Vibia Sabina,” he had greeted her at the city gates just an hour ago, raising her from her curtsy with a gesture. His eyes moved over her, and Sabina felt a moment of pure, undiluted panic. He’ll see, she thought. He’ll know.

  No, she thought, and smoothed her face to blandness. He won’t. He’ll never know.

  “Caesar,” she replied, and saw his eyes flare dark excitement. At hearing the title, not at seeing her—and certainly not in any kind of suspicion. Sabina had breathed easier. One hurdle cleared.

  Sabina had not taken her eyes off her husband during the procession through the city. She watched him from her silver litter behind Hadrian’s big horse, consuls and lictors pacing along behind. Most men would have been dazzled, and he was dazzled; she could see that in the giddiness of the smile every time he raised his hand and got a roar in return. But he was working too, Sabina could see that. She could all but hear his thoughts when they paraded past the ruins of the Pantheon, that ancient temple to all the gods of Rome: Burned down forty years ago. Rebuild? Note: Check funds. When his eyes fell on the Ara Pacis, the great frieze Emperor Augustus had erected to celebrate the peace and prosperity his family had brought to Rome: Imperial family as lodestones of divine favor; yes, that always goes over well. Note: Parade family unity. Working, always working, even in his moment of triumph.

  But once the parade was over and they entered the Domus Flavia, Sabina saw him smile. And that made her skin prickle, because her husband always smiled at the prospect of blood.

  “Ah,” he said idly as a line of shackled men were led in. “The traitors.”

  A ripple went through the crowd of watchers at the sight of the five men. Two renowned former consuls; a fierce Berber-bred legion commander with the loyalty of thousands; a popular former governor of Dacia whose wife gave a moan from the crowd as he was led in . . . But Sabina’s eyes flew past the first four pairs of shoulders, whether shrinking inward or held proudly erect, to the fifth man. Titus. Her heart squeezed, and for a moment the secret that weighed so hot and heavy in her breast was forgotten. Poor Titus looked so thin and worn in his shabby tunic, she hardly recognized him—and she’d known him since she was eighteen and he just a year or two younger. He was her brother-in-law and oldest friend; he’d once courted her hand in marriage; he’d stayed a friend when she turned him down. He’d eventually, to her great delight, married her younger half-sister. And now, somehow, he was her husband’s enemy.

  Sabina found her fingers cutting into the gilded arms of her chair.

  Hadrian was lounging back in his own. “Read the charges,” he said benignly, and bent to scratch the head of the hunting dog at his feet.

  Sabina did not listen to the charges as they were read. They were absurd anyway; trumped-up nonsense about a conspiracy against the Emperor’s life. The five men in shackles shared no conspiracy between them. What they shared was the former Emperor’s favor; popularity in Rome and among the Senate as her husband had never been popular. Men who could make trouble for a new Caesar. So perhaps my husband is wise, Sabina could not help thinking. Removing all his potential enemies at once, at a single stroke on the beginning of his reign.

  But not Titus. Titus was no one’s enemy. Former Emperor Trajan had thought the world of him, had even considered appointing him heir—but Sabina’s husband inveigled his way onto the throne instead, and so here was Titus in shackles. What would this day be like if Titus and not my husband were the one wearing the purple? Sabina couldn’t help but wonder with a pang of thwarted longing. Certainly my sister would make a far better Empress than me. Beautiful Faustina, so tall and lovely, clutching her baby in her arms, managing a desperate smile for her husband as he stood there in chains. Titus smiled back at his wife, and Sabina’s heart contracted. Dear gods, he cannot die today. He cannot!

  “Well,” Hadrian drawled at last, looking from sweating face to sweating face as the charges were concluded. “I understand the Senate has ratified the arrests. And has recommended execution?”

  A general mutter of assent. That decree had been forced through the Senate House, and from the furious glances flying
about the room, humiliation still lingered on every senatorial mind. It had been the scandal that rocked all Rome, this whole past month.

  “Executions?” Hadrian snapped, voice suddenly icy. “Did I specify to the Senate that I wished these men dead? Where was that written, Senators?”

  The new Emperor’s deep-set gaze roved the atrium, and everyone froze under it. Pages, senators, slaves, guardsmen—not one person moved.

  It wasn’t written down because you didn’t write it, Sabina thought. Hadrian never committed himself so absolutely to anything—in case he wanted to change his mind later. But everyone in the Senate House knew what you wanted, and they gave it to you. So, my mercurial husband, what are you doing?

  “Precipitate of you, Senators,” Hadrian tutted, “to order executions without my presence.”

  More silence.

  “Or perhaps the blame lies with my Praetorians?” Gaze roving to the Praetorian Prefects, who looked puzzled because they would have had very specific orders indeed about the charges he brought before the Senate. “Praetorians can be . . . overeager.”

  Sabina’s gaze shot to Vix, standing behind the Prefects in that ridiculous overdecorated tribune’s armor. His face was impassive as granite, but his eyes burned for one furious white-hot moment. Because Vix had had his orders too, and had been very far from eager to carry them out.

  “I’m to stop off on my way back to Rome,” Vix had said in bitter horror after Trajan’s death in faraway Selinus. “And kill all your husband’s enemies for him.”

  “All his enemies?” Sabina had quipped, just as bitterly. “That’s too long a list for one man. Even you.”