Mistress of Rome

by Kate Quinn

  Arius grabbed me around the waist, pulling me onto his lap. As I pummeled his chest, the dog slid to the floor, yapping shrilly. Arius dragged my head down to his, kissing me firmly, and my bones dissolved.

  “There,” he murmured against my mouth.

  I smiled, my lashes brushing his cheek. On days like this, blue and gold mornings when our bare little attic room warmed in the sun and Arius’s gaze made my whole body sing, the world brightened. It was possible to believe, not just hope, that everything might turn out all right.

  “Your hair’s getting long.” I ran my hand slowly up the nape of his neck, feeling the flesh shiver under my touch. “Shall I give you a haircut?”

  “Better leave it long. I look less like the Barbarian.”

  “You don’t look anything like the Barbarian in that ridiculous disguise.” Whenever we set foot outside he insisted on donning a heavy cloak, a hat, and an eye patch.

  “If I go out undisguised, someone will recognize me. I’m supposed to be dead.”

  “Darling.” I touched a finger to his chin, drawing his eyes to mine. “No one has recognized you. No one’s even taken a second glance at you, except to think, ‘Who’s that bizarre man in a hat, an eye patch, and a heavy cloak in the middle of summer?’ ”

  “I had the most famous face in Rome for eight years.” A little huffily.

  “But it’s been five years since you died. The mob only remembers you as a dim legend. It’s Thurius the Murmillo they all rave about now.” I held out my hand. “Your knife, please. You prickle in bed.”

  He lowered his face into my neck and I sawed contentedly, watching the dark-dyed locks fall on the splintery floor.

  “Thurius the Murmillo?” he said eventually.

  “Or there’s a Thracian who’s popular. I saw the graffiti on the wall of the bathhouse on Pomegranate Street—‘Brebix the Thracian makes all the women sigh.’ ”

  “Brebix,” Arius muttered. “My name was on that bathhouse for years.”

  I laughed. Arius turned his cheek against the back of my hand, and his short beard scratched my knuckles. “Someday we’ll shave that off, too,” I said. “You don’t just prickle, you scrape.”

  “I don’t—oh,” he said as I tugged the tunic off my shoulder to show a red patch left by his mouth. “Did I do that?”

  “Never mind.” I pushed him straight, cutting around the nape of his neck. “He loves me hard,” I said in Greek, smiling. My Arius. Someday he wouldn’t need a beard anymore, or silly eye patches and hats. We’d live on a mountain where no one had ever heard of the Barbarian, and no one would care if they did know. And our son would never, ever get near an arena.

  I stepped back, brushing the last stray bits of hair from Arius’s shoulder. He pulled me down onto his lap again, and I laid my head on his shoulder. Sliding my hand along his chest under the tunic, I felt the heat of his hard flesh, the heart pounding underneath. “Will it be all right? Going to the Colosseum?”

  “Yes.” He kissed my eyebrow. “We’ll be watching Vix, not the games.”

  “We won’t be allowed to watch together—women have their own section.”

  Arius scowled. “They’ll let you sit with me.”

  For two weeks we’d tried to keep an eye on our son, merging with the crowds that followed the Emperor on his daily tours of the city and watching the figure in the red tunic that always sat at the Imperial feet. “The Emperor’s pet,” the citizens of Rome called him, and they speculated that he was the Emperor’s bastard son. Never more than an arm’s length away from the Emperor. Never a chance to snatch him and run for it. And no way to get into the palace grounds; not two ragged runaway slaves who could bribe no one.

  Even if we somehow got Vix away, where could we all run where Domitian couldn’t find us?

  The bright morning dimmed a little.

  Arius’s hand enfolded mine. “Let’s go.”

  For the first time since we’d come back to Rome, we headed for the Colosseum.

  LEPIDA

  IT was perfectly sickening, the roar that went up from the crowd when Thea’s brat came into the Imperial box and waved. “Behind me,” I hissed, swatting at him.

  “Lay off, cow,” he said bluntly, and flopped down at Domitian’s feet. I settled fuming on the other side. Not only was he a brat and a boor, his red tunic clashed horridly with my rose-colored stola and pink sapphires. I beckoned a pair of slaves forward with their ostrich fans. The Matralia games were always hideously hot.

  Domitian was busying himself with a load of scrolls and his hovering secretaries, but Vix sat drinking everything in. “Whoa,” he whistled at the vast expanse of sand stretching before the Imperial box. Usually he was tensed statue-hard in the Emperor’s presence, but now he gaped as eagerly as any pleb brat in the stands. “This being-the-Emperor’s-shadow thing has its benefits. The view here—”

  “Do you suppose your mother’s out there?” Domitian made a check on one of his lists, then shuffled to another.

  “Dunno,” Vix shrugged. “How about some dice, Caesar? The opening parade’s always pretty pointless.” Vix fleeced the Imperial chamberlain, a tribune, two languid Gracchi noblemen, and the Emperor himself, until I bumped his shoulder at just the right moment and his hands slipped.

  “Cheating.” The Emperor snatched up the pair of dice that fell out of Vix’s sleeve. “What else could one expect from a gutter rat?” Courtiers exchanged glances.

  “What do Emperors do to cheats?” I said in my most velvety voice.

  “Cheats are traditionally thrown to the lions, Lepida. Even young cheats. How’s that for a birthday present, Vercingetorix?” The Emperor’s face was inscrutable. “A dance with a lion on the sands of the great arena?”

  “I’ll pass, Caesar, thanks.” Uneasily.

  “Cheat.” Caressing the word. “Cheat.”

  “And here’s how to cheat like a champion!” Vix produced a cajoling smile from somewhere. “Palm the crooked dice like this . . .” Demonstrating with a rapid hand. “See?”

  The Emperor regarded him another silent moment, then grinned. “Show me again.”

  “Like this.” Correcting the Imperial grip. “No, no, Caesar. Like this. God, you’re slow.”

  They diced through the morning’s wild beast hunts and the midday executions. I frowned. “The gladiators now, Lord and God—your favorite.”

  Domitian shoved the dice aside and leaned forward. On the sand, an African and a Thracian were pairing for the first duel.

  “The African,” said Domitian. “He’ll win.”

  “The Lord and God has such a discerning eye,” I murmured, and a ripple of agreement ran around the box.

  “Nope,” said Vix. “That African’s clumsy. Tripped on his net just walking through the gate. I’d go with the Thracian.”

  “Really?”

  “What do you know?” I snapped. But they both sank chins into hands and bent their eyes on the arena, ignoring me. Not enemies for the time being, or even prisoner and captor. Just two lovers of the games.

  The Thracian took the African, and then a pair of Numidians came out, and after that two Gauls. Several good fights, not that I enjoyed them. Normally I quite liked a good brisk slaughter, but with the Emperor ignoring me for a vulgar gutter brat—

  “You do have an eye, young Vercingetorix,” Domitian was saying. “How did you know that Macedonian would lose?”

  “Hung over. See the way he avoided looking at the light?” Vix popped a handful of fresh figs, chewing vigorously. The victorious fighters had trooped wearily through the Gate of Life, the losers raked away by arena slaves. “Look for fighters like that Gaul who cut the Greek’s arm off, Caesar. The lean mean ones.”

  “Really,” I murmured, seeing a chance. “Who taught you that?”

  “My father.” Falling into the trap. “He was the best. Rules didn’t apply to him, he used to go in as hung over as all hell and he still—” Suddenly breaking off.

  “So your father was a gladi
ator.” Domitian sat back. “How interesting. I suppose your mother told you it was the noble Barbarian. How romantic, the great gladiator leaving a long-lost son behind him—”

  “Hey,” Vix flung at him. “The Barbarian was my father.”

  The lounging courtiers tittered. “Likely story!” someone whispered. “That brat’s a lying little toad—!” I tittered, too.

  “Perhaps not such a lie.” The Emperor set down his wine goblet. “There is a certain coarse resemblance. I met the Barbarian once or twice, and I never forget a face. What I wonder is, how did you ever meet him?”

  “After I ran away from Brundisium.” I could feel Vix shift on the marble step, uneasy. “He taught me a bit.”

  “Hence your facility with knives.” The Emperor contemplated the knot of healed scar tissue on his foot. “Do you want to be a gladiator, Vercingetorix?”

  “. . . No.”

  “Liar,” said Domitian pleasantly.

  “Liar as well as cheat,” I interjected.

  “Keep out of this, you cow,” glared the Barbarian’s son, and he squared his shoulders as he looked the Emperor in the eye. “Yeah, I want to be a gladiator. Just like my father. Only my father hated the games. Hated them like poison, and look how good he was. So I’ll be better, ’cause I love it. Your fault, Caesar. My father’s your fault because you put him in the arena in the first place. And I’m your fault because you’re the first blood I ever drew.”

  Sweat was pouring down his face, and I could feel him trembling against the arm of my chair. But that mad crazy grin appeared, spreading until it nearly hooked behind his ears. I wondered if Domitian would kill him personally. I hoped so—a dagger in the gut would serve the little bastard right, although if he bled all over my new pink stola—

  Domitian moved so quickly when he wanted to. In one movement he lunged, grabbed the front of Vix’s tunic, and threw him out over the railing like a doll.

  He landed on burning sand. I heard the air whoosh from his lungs, and he sat up gasping for air. The arena buzzed like a beehive.

  “Bring back the Gaul,” the Emperor was saying coolly to the arena guards. “The lean mean one who cut the Greek’s arm off.”

  Vix scrambled up, looking around him wildly. I leaned forward. Oh, this was something different—!

  The Emperor tossed his own dagger into the sand at Vix’s feet. “Time to prove yourself, young Arius.”

  “A sword.” Vix dragged his paralyzed gaze up to the box. “At least give me a sword!”

  Domitian considered. “Lord and God,” I murmured, “a dagger will be much more amusing.”

  “Correct.” He settled back.

  The crowd’s buzzing had mounted to uproar now. The games announcer looked from Vix to the Emperor and back again, rifling the schedule to see what this unexpected event might be called. “An, ah, extra bout for our Emperor’s pleasure,” he announced at last, voice ringing through the packed tiers. “The Gaul versus, ah, the boy.”

  With a crisp crunch of sand the Gaul stepped up beside Vix. He cast an incredulous look sideways, and I giggled at the paralyzed look on Vix’s face. “Not so cocky now, are you?” I called down.

  “Hail, Emperor.” The Gaul saluted a rock-hard arm up at the Imperial box.

  The Emperor looked at Vix. “Have you anything to say, Gladiator?”

  Vix launched himself forward and sank the knife deep into the Gaul’s knee.

  The Gaul screamed. Vix tugged the blade free and took off running.

  ARIUS’S belly crawled up the back of his throat. Freezing sweat trickled down his spine and the smells of the arena hit him like a slap: fear, sweat, iron, fresh-raked sand, the rotted flesh on the breath of the lions, the stains of old blood. Any minute now he’d wake up—he’d wake up and it would be him out on the arena sand, waiting for an enemy to strike.

  But it wasn’t him.

  It was Vix.

  The Gaul’s first angry sweep whistled through Vix’s hair. He stumbled away from the next feint, reeled back from a vicious thrust. The Gaul’s curved blade ripped through his tunic. Thea moaned, and Arius’s hand tightened around hers until the bones ground together.

  Remember the drills, Vix. Arius felt terror clench somewhere inside his chest, a tight frozen ball, but he didn’t dare let it thaw. He willed his thoughts out to the impossibly small red spot in the arena, calm as if this were just another training exercise behind the vineyard. Remember what I taught you. Because there’s no mercy here for beginners, Vix, no start-over for mistakes.

  Vix fell to one knee in the sand. The hand with the knife supported his trembling weight. The Gaul stepped forward, dragging a ruined leg and raising a shining sword.

  Thea moaned again.

  Kill him. Arius sent the thought out to his son. Not what he wanted, making his son a killer at thirteen, but this was the Colosseum and here the rules were different. Kill him, Vix. Find a way.

  Vix flung a handful of sand into the Gaul’s eyes. The Gaul yelled and stepped back blindly. Vix ducked under his shield and stabbed.

  Arius froze. The Colosseum waited.

  When Vix crawled out from under the still body of the Gaul, they clapped. When he dragged himself to his feet, they cheered. When he retrieved his knife and scrubbed the blood off his face with an unsteady hand, they howled. Howled for twenty minutes, raining rose petals and silver coins down on his head. As they had once done for Arius.

  Praetorians hauled Vix out of the arena and hoisted him on their shoulders, dousing his bristly hair with wine and thumping him on the back. Vix hardly seemed to notice. He stared around him with blank dazed eyes as they trooped him up to the Imperial box, and Arius remembered his own first arena kill in the middle of that deafening crash of applause.

  Not like you imagined, is it, boy?

  “I give you Vercingetorix!” The Emperor took Vix’s arm and raised it high, spurring another wave of cheers. Domitian’s voice carried over the screaming, the stamping, the clapping, all the way to the last tier of spectators at the top of the arena. “Vercingetorix, son of the Barbarian!”

  BACK in their rented tenement room, Thea lay rigid in Arius’s arms. He clung gratefully to her tense body, closing his eyes in her hair. He couldn’t get away from the images, images that left the ash-taste of horror in his mouth: Vix stumbling and stalling, Vix straightening and lunging, Vix taking his first kill . . .

  Behind the horror, the demon was quietly taking the Emperor apart limb by limb.

  “We’ll have to kill him.” The sudden harsh voice made him start, so unlike Thea it took him a moment to recognize it.

  “The Emperor?” Of course the Emperor. The demon purred agreement.

  “He did it to get at me.” Thea stared ahead, unseeing. “He knew I’d be watching. He’ll throw Vix back into that arena until he dies. And he will die. Maybe you trained him, but he’s still just a child.”

  “Yes.”

  “And even if we could get Vix away, Domitian would find us. Wherever we ran.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he’s got to die. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I’ll kill him,” said Arius quite calmly. “You and Vix flee Rome.” He wanted to live, but if it was the only way—

  “No.” For the first time her body trembled. “No.”

  “But—”

  “I said no!” She turned in his arms, taking his face hard between her hands. “There’s a man I know—we’ll go to him. He’ll manage something.”

  “Thea—”

  She crushed her body fiercely against his, and for a while there was no more talk.

  WHAT’S on your mind, Paulinus?” Marcus asked as soon as the library door closed behind his son. Sabina had been very poised through her first games, not crying or wincing at the blood-shed, but she’d unexpectedly had a seizure in the litter on the way back, and Calpurnia was tending her now. Marcus would be tending her himself, if his son hadn’t stridden unexpectedly into the atrium.

  “Paulinus
?” Marcus paused. “I’d have thought you would be at the palace.”

  “The Emperor already had me take Vix back.” Paulinus’s hands bunched at his sides.

  “The boy?” Marcus grimaced. “Children fighting in the Colosseum now. Barbaric.”

  “Oh, the boy’s all right.” Paulinus jerked. “Shaking, doing his best not to cry. Said he’d kill me if I laughed at him. Never felt less like laughing in my life.”

  Paulinus’s eyes skittered over the pool in the atrium floor, the columns about the roof. Marcus regarded him a moment. “Perhaps you’d better come into my study, Paulinus.”

  “Yes,” Paulinus said in a rush. “I must talk to you. I need your advice.”

  “What is it?”

  Paulinus came to parade rest. “Sir.” He fi xed his eyes on the wall over Marcus’s shoulder, and recited in the tones of a reporting legionnaire. “I have come to the conclusion that Emperor Domitian is unfit for the office he holds.”

  Marcus blinked. He lowered himself into the nearest chair. “Go on.”

  “He exiled his niece Lady Flavia Domitilla and executed her husband and children, all without just cause.” Eyes still fi xed stonily on the wall. “I have reason to believe him guilty of torturing his mistress Athena, and his niece Lady Julia. Julia he—he also murdered without cause. I believe he is a monster.”

  “Perhaps,” Marcus said mildly. “But he is a good Emperor, is he not?”

  “A monster can’t—”

  “Of course a monster can be a good Emperor, Paulinus. Domitian’s personal habits may leave much to be desired, but there is no doubt he is a good administrator, a fine jurist, and a capable general. We have enjoyed stability under his reign. Stability, and boring peaceful things like a balanced economy and historically low corruption levels.” Marcus rotated a pen between his hands. “You may be too young to remember the Year of Four Emperors, Paulinus, but many who do may be willing to balance a little monstrosity against stability.”

  “I’m not one of them.” Paulinus looked him square in the eye. “I believe Domitian must be removed.”