Lady of the Eternal City

by Kate Quinn

  I noticed, Sabina thought. She’d noticed other things too, ever since Eleusis. Wondered if Vix’s eyes rested on her more often, lingered more warmly than they used to. Found herself taking his hand to alight a flight of stairs, when she’d never needed help in her life to get up and down a step. Realized that even in these brand-new quarters in the Emperor’s villa—quarters she had seen for the first time this afternoon during Hadrian’s official inspection—she had somehow already calculated in the back of her mind just how these chambers might be emptied at night. Emptied innocuously so that no one, from chattering Balbilla to her sharp-eyed maids, would notice the way had been cleared for a single man.

  That is how foolish empresses get their heads struck from their shoulders, Sabina told herself. Especially empresses whose husbands have told them quite explicitly to remain chaste.

  The new litter of kittens gave a mrow from their basket beside Sabina’s sleeping couch. Antinous was on his knees beside them, tickling the tiny paws. “They’ve settled well, Lady,” he said. “Since the Emperor is to dine privately tonight, would you like me to send a message inviting Titus Aurelius and his family to dine with you?”

  “No, Titus is still quite busy enough getting used to the idea that he’s to be consul.” Four days since that afternoon at the races that brought Titus’s sudden promotion to Imperial favor.

  Antinous’s face glowed. “Very astute of the Emperor, Lady. There could be no better choice.”

  “No.” Sabina pointed at the page in Antinous’s hand. “Is that the list of books the Emperor wanted?”

  “Yes, Lady.”

  Sabina crossed the chamber and took the note.

  It was Antinous’s involuntary snatch that told her she was right. His hand fell back to his side, and he flushed scarlet. Sabina looked down and in one glance read the verse scribbled in Hadrian’s terse scrawl.

  Oh, dear gods. How much she would have given to be wrong.

  “Anakreon,” the Empress managed to say, hardly hearing her own voice over the thudding of her heart. “Hadrian always did like his verses.”

  Antinous went even more crimson, twisting his hands before him. “Lady . . .” he whispered, but his voice trailed away.

  Sabina read on. There was only one word after the poem.

  Tonight.

  She didn’t know how long she looked at the sheet. When she lifted her eyes, Antinous went crashing to his knees.

  “If you’re wondering how I knew”—Sabina crossed to close the door of her chamber on the chattering maids in the next room—“it was the way you blushed this afternoon when you read it.”

  There had been other signs over the past months: glances, gestures so small they meant nothing unless one added them together. And then there was the matter of Hadrian showing Titus favor, his mood changing from hostility to benevolence as soon as Antinous entered and made it so innocently clear how he revered Titus.

  That was the reason Sabina’s brother-in-law had been made consul. To please Antinous.

  “Lady—” Antinous’s amber-brown eyes were anguished, staring up at her. “I never meant to cause you humiliation—”

  “Oh, get up, Antinous.” She raised him with a crook of one finger. “You think it’s a surprise to me that my husband beds handsome young men?”

  “No, Lady.” Antinous rose, looking as though he were about to be crucified. “But one doesn’t speak of such things . . .”

  Sabina turned away, giving him a chance to compose himself as she ran her fingers along the inlaid frame of her sleeping couch.

  “‘Tonight,’” she said at last, still not looking at him. “Is this the first time Hadrian has—requested you?”

  “No, Lady.”

  “I see.” Sabina wished she could ask for how long, but Antinous was right: One did not speak of these things. An empress was serenely blind to her husband’s lovers, be they girls or boys. Empress Plotina had set the standard for that, her nose riding the air too high to ever see the common soldiers who traipsed in and out of Trajan’s bed.

  But those soldiers were willing, Sabina thought. Not helpless youths.

  She turned, folding her hands at her waist and choosing her words carefully. “You are a citizen of Rome, Antinous,” she said. “Not a slave to be forced, even by an emperor.”

  Antinous was silent. Sabina tried again. “The Emperor may lust for you. I am sure many do. But you may refuse him without fear. He might be displeased, but he would not punish you—for all his faults, he does not relish unwilling bedfellows. And a free man of Rome may not be forced into any man’s bed like a slave on an auction block.”

  Antinous’s face had begun to clear, but now it flooded with color again. “I—” he began, and cleared his throat. He looked at her, and his eyes burned like brands. “Lady—I’m not unwilling.”

  Oh, Sabina thought. Oh.

  “It started at Eleusis,” Antinous said in a rush.

  Eleusis. Six months this had been going on? Sabina’s heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach.

  “I found him in the trees after the Night of Torches. The kykeon madness; I soothed him. He wasn’t Emperor then, he was a man as frightened of the void as any of us.” Antinous trailed off, lashes veiling his eyes, but not before Sabina saw the light in his gaze. Oh, sweet boy, she thought, looking back at the rolled note in her hand. How clever Hadrian was in his wooing, irresistible as he had the power to be when throwing all his passion into one single aim. Stealing a moment before his entire court to write his beloved a love note, just like a god coming down from on high to beg a mortal girl’s love. Antinous looked as starry-eyed as though he wore the favor of Jupiter himself about his arm.

  “He has had other handsome lovers besides you,” Sabina said finally. What to say that might penetrate Antinous’s radiant happiness? “You hear the jokes people make, about the line of pretty pages outside the Imperial chamber? You think you are something unique to him?”

  “I am,” Antinous said simply.

  Sabina had to turn away, bending to pick up one of the kittens. The little ball of fluff purred and flexed its tiny claws in the silk of her stola. “You do not know him as well as you think, Antinous. Do you know where he is now?”

  Antinous’s answer was prompt. “With the architects.”

  “Wrong. He is in his Hades.” Antinous and the rest of the party had been dismissed by then; Sabina had been the only one close enough to hear as the architect pressed into the Emperor’s hand a key of black iron. “Your Hades, Caesar. Built exactly as specified.”

  “Excellent,” Hadrian had said, and looked at Sabina. “Make my excuses, Vibia Sabina. I require a long stint.”

  “Do you know what he does in his Hades?” Sabina looked up into Antinous’s beautiful, puzzled eyes. “Do you have any idea?”

  “Do you, Lady?”

  “No. And I have known him far, far longer than you.”

  Stubbornness was falling over Antinous’s face like a curtain. “There is no Hades, Lady, not the way the rumors paint it. He goes off alone sometimes to brood, that is all. He always comes back the better for it. He told me so.”

  I’m sure he did, Sabina thought. Clever, clever, clever. “Break it off,” she said. “For your own good, Antinous, break it off.”

  But he was already shaking his head, his eyes clear and guileless. “I will leave your service, Lady. I will leave court if you wish it—I would not cause you humiliation for all the world, as kind as you’ve been to me. But I cannot leave him. He needs me.”

  Sabina wanted to slap him back and forth until his head rattled. Was there no one more stupid, more blind, more fanatically stubborn than a boy in love? You young fool, she wanted to rage, but she didn’t rage at him and she didn’t strike him either. Antinous had stars in his eyes and a heart full of poetry, and all the blows and curses in the world wouldn’t make a dent i
n either.

  Instead, she gave back the note with Hadrian’s verse. Antinous took it, his fingers tender on the parchment in a way that tore at her breast. He hesitated a moment, and then his gaze under those long honey-colored lashes rose.

  “Lady,” he said, and now there was anguish in those eyes instead of stars. “My father—I know you and he are friendly. Will you feel it your duty to tell him . . . ?”

  Vix, she thought, and the pulse that stabbed through her was pure, leaden dread.

  “No,” she managed to say. “No, I will say nothing.” Vix’s curses wouldn’t do any good, either. All she could hope for was that this passion burned out before Vix knew a thing about it.

  But it has burned already for six months, she thought. Much longer than any of Hadrian’s other affairs had lasted, to be sure.

  “Thank you, Lady.” Antinous fell to his knees before her again. “For not telling my father.”

  “You should be the one to tell him.”

  He flinched. “I will, Lady. I will, but . . .”

  She allowed the silence to stretch. “Tell him,” she said, and turned and swept from the room, almost running. Wishing she could run all the way back to Britannia, reach Hadrian’s wall, and keep running into the wilds north of it, before Vix ever found out her husband had seduced his son.

  CHAPTER 8

  VIX

  A.D. 125, Autumn

  Rome

  “Give us a kiss!” I greeted the girls as I came through the door. Chaya stood on tiptoe to peck my cheek, but Dinah squealed.

  “You’re all sweaty and dusty!”

  “So I am, but your mother doesn’t mind.” I grabbed Mirah in a bear hug, squeezing till she laughed. I didn’t see her as often as I liked, even if I wasn’t traveling the provinces anymore—I berthed most nights at the Emperor’s villa outside the city.

  “Where’s Antinous?” Mirah asked as I set her back on her feet. “I made his favorite beef stew.”

  “Well, he told me that he’ll be sitting up with a sick dog all night. But I think he’s got a woman.” I discarded my cloak. “The other Imperial pages tell me he ducks out most nights from their quarters, and he had a nice gold chain about his neck yesterday that he couldn’t explain without blushing.”

  “Hmm. And you think that means some woman’s keeping him?”

  “Julia Balbilla, I’d wager.” I unbuckled my sword belt, tossing it over the back of my chair. “She’s handsome enough—one of those painted, well-preserved types who manages to look forty when she’s fifty. Yesterday I saw her pinch his bum when he poured her wine.”

  “A court lady keeping your son like a pet, and you’re not outraged?”

  I shrugged. “He’s a man grown, Mirah. He can do as he likes. Let’s have that beef stew—”

  She dished up, and then because it was Shabbat she bowed her head after we’d all assembled at table, and murmured the ancient prayers. I usually murmured the prayers with her because she liked it, but tonight I just looked at her through the soft lamplight. My lovely Mirah, with the freckles across her nose like a sprinkle of ginger, her hair falling loose the way I loved to see it, her voice low and serene. Our girls flanked her like twin acolytes, ten and eleven now, alike as two rosebuds in their smocks of matching pink wool. My girls were good as gold, and my wife could have married a wine merchant with a villa in Rome and land in Judaea but she’d chosen a hot-tempered legion man instead. It was more than I deserved, and I was a bloody fool to have ached for any woman but Mirah. In the dark groves of Eleusis or anywhere else.

  And to my shame, I couldn’t deny that I ached. Things had been different since Greece. My eye stayed on Sabina longer than it should have, noticing her swift swaying grace as she moved ahead of me while I escorted her, and why was I escorting her so much lately, anyway? Why did my hand keep writing my own name in beside hers on the roster, and not giving that spot to Boil instead? I’d torn up a whole month’s worth of rosters this afternoon and given him every single slot at her side, cursing myself for a fool.

  Women. Didn’t I say they ruined everything?

  “Uncle Simon writes from Bethar,” Mirah said as we finished our prayers. “He’s befriended a rabbi in Jaffa, Aqiba ben Joseph—they’ve been studying the prophecies of Balaam.”

  “Who’s that?” My stew was rapidly disappearing. I’d worked through midday with Suetonius on the legionary manual, composing a new system of ration distribution. “Balaam?”

  “One of our prophets, surely I’ve told you before!” Mirah chattered on as I got myself another bowl of stew. I got more for the girls as well, grinning because Mirah was too busy waving her spoon and quoting holy verse to notice that her daughters were nearing the bottom of their bowls. “‘I look into the future and I see the nation of Israel. A king like a bright star will arise in that nation.’ Think of it, Vix!”

  What I thought of it was that Judaea didn’t stand a chance of breaking away from Hadrian’s grip to make a free nation of anything, but I didn’t say so. It was Mirah’s dream, and for her happiness and for her family who all lived there, I hoped it would come true. I had my own dreams, too.

  “My manual,” I said when Mirah ran out of prophecies to quote and dived into her own cooling stew. “You should see how it’s coming along. Boil and I talked through two shifts about training the legionaries in the fighting styles of past and potential enemies, learning to use their own tricks against them—”

  I would have babbled on as she had, but I stopped because I could see the little smile on her face. The kind of smile wives get when they’re being tolerant and just a little disapproving. “What?”

  Mirah shook her head. “I wish you hadn’t taken this manual on. Isn’t it something of a betrayal?” She nipped up another bite of stew, decisive. “Rome stamped on you as a boy, and you want to make her armies even stronger so she can stamp on even more boys?”

  “It’s not just that.” I thought of the painstaking work of the past months, stealing my sleep, stealing my time—and yet the visceral white-hot excitement I felt underneath of knowing how it would all unspool. Boys not yet born, growing up someday to fight and defend in the way that I was setting down on my midnight-scribbled notes. Boys living longer, perhaps, because of the rules of battle I laid out. Hadrian’s white wall hemming the north of Britannia, manned by Roman soldiers a thousand years hence, every one of them trained to my standards and vigilant as eagles. I could feel the eagle tattooed on my arm pulse at the very thought. “It’s important,” I said. “It’s important to me.” Just like Balaam and his prophecies were important to her.

  That faint smile again. “Well, tell me about it, then.”

  Suddenly I didn’t want to. I went back to my stew, and Mirah looked quizzical but applied herself to the girls, who were soon chattering away, and as soon as dinner was done I pushed back from the table. “I should ride back to the villa tonight.”

  Mirah’s arm snaked about my waist as I reached for my sword belt. “I was hoping you’d stay.”

  I kissed the top of her head. “Tomorrow.” When I could bring Antinous with me, because dinners were always easier when my son was present. His jokes, his bright cheer, his deft way of easing the conversation whenever Mirah and I prickled at each other . . .

  It was full dark by the time I reached Hadrian’s villa. I found my Praetorians on night duty, standing rigid at the moat around the Emperor’s tiny central villa. I could see the faint glow of a lamp inside the shuttered windows, but the wooden footbridge that spanned the little moat had been taken up—a sign Hadrian was not to be disturbed. By anything. “What if I get word a mob is marching on us?” I hadn’t been able to resist asking, the first time he immured himself.

  “I trust you to hold the bridge like Horatius and let me sleep.”

  It had made me smile. Since when did Hadrian learn to joke? Since when did he trust me? And who was Ho
ratius, anyway?

  My Praetorians reported quietly. “Caesar has company tonight,” one said, and the other shot him a quelling glance. I was about to retire back to the barracks, when I caught sight of a shadow on the little islanded villa’s doorstep.

  A pair of dogs. The bitch-hound who had been swiped by the bear in Mysia, long recovered and lying placidly on the doorstep by the water . . . and a smaller dog, black as a moonless night, with a red leather collar.

  I had made that collar.

  I saw my own hand reach out, saw myself point toward the dim lamplight from the Emperor’s chamber. “Who is with him?”

  My Praetorians looked at me, and they both blanched. My stomach rolled sickly.

  “Who?” I whispered.

  One of them shuffled. “Tribune—”

  “Put the bridge back.”

  “Tribune, we were ordered—”

  I jumped down into the water surrounding the little villa. It wasn’t deep despite its grand title of moat. I waded across, grabbed the marble lip of the far side, levered myself up dripping and shaking. “Tribune,” one of my Praetorians called, and I could hear them scrabbling to put the bridge down, but I ignored them. I thrust the dogs out of the way, I drew my sword, and with one blow of the hilt I shattered the bolt that had been drawn from the inside and kicked the door in.

  * * *

  What do you see, when you cannot bear to see?

  The details come slowly, a series of fractured images, as though your mind hopes you will take it better if you see only a little at a time. A warm pool of yellow lamplight falling over rumpled blankets. A pair of cups. A tray with the remains of a meal. A spider, descending from the ceiling on a frail thread of silk. I focused on the spider, because I didn’t want to see the rest.

  A young man, curly-haired, bare-armed, sitting cross-legged on the bed’s rumpled blankets, fingering the strings of a lyre. Surely the most beautiful young man in the world, his skin gilded in the light, his long fingers sensitive on the lyre’s strings, his wide mouth half-smiling. His eyes heavy-lidded as he turned his head, as a muscled arm slid about him from behind, and an emperor’s lips whispered something in his ear.