Mistress of Rome

by Kate Quinn

  A soundless explosion rocked my vision, made up of Marcus’s dry warning and Thea’s mocking face and the tittering of the courtiers. Not even a year, I thought numbly, my fingers clenching around the puny string of pearls. Thea lasted nearly fi ve—“Who’s taken my place?” I demanded. “That stupid little Aurelia Rufina? Why is she better than me? Does she serve the Emperor more eagerly?”

  “Not at all, Lady Lepida.” The chamberlain smirked again, openly. “She is, however, newer.”

  My stomach twisted as though he’d kicked me. Dear gods, how could I have lost the Emperor? Just a week and a half ago I’d been dropping hints about leaving Marcus, dreaming of being crowned Empress—

  The chamberlain shooed at me. “The guards will show you out, Lady Lepida.”

  AT the last minute Paulinus was detained—“the Emperor desires your company”—so Trajan offered his services in taking Sabina home.

  “I’ll carry her.” He cheerfully took the limp form from Paulinus’s arms. “She’s no heavier than a feather, and anyway, according to my mother she’s some kind of great-niece four times removed or something. Where’s that litter?” He muscled his way through the crowds, down the marble steps, out one of the rear archways. Marcus followed gratefully with Calpurnia, Lepida sulking behind. She’d returned white-faced from the Imperial box, and Marcus refrained from baiting her. Vipers, even with their poison drawn, could still bite. But he had to restrain himself from smiling. Serious things, he thought sternly. Funerals. Budget meetings. The last third of the Iliad.

  “You’re not fooling me, Marcus Norbanus,” Calpurnia whispered at his side. “Your eyes are dancing.”

  “They are not.” Raised taxes. Bad poetry. The declining birth rate . . .

  Lepida climbed up into the Norbanus litter, her small chin jutting as if she dared anyone to toss her out. Trajan shrugged and merely swung her small gold-shod feet out of the way, making room for Sabina. “You next, Lady Calpurnia. Put the little one’s head in your lap.” He waited courteously for Marcus to settle himself, hopped in, and the overcrowded litter swayed down the street. Lepida shot Trajan a poisonous look. Marcus couldn’t hide a smile then.

  Sabina was pale and sweating, but her eyelids flickered. “She’ll be out of it soon,” said Trajan.

  “You know a great deal about epilepsia, Commander.” Marcus watched Trajan lift Sabina’s head.

  “The disease every soldier prays for, Senator. Alexander the Great had it, and Julius Caesar, too.”

  Lepida wrinkled her pretty nose. “She’s an embarrassment. Falling down in front of my friends like some drooling idiot—”

  “Will you shut up?” said Calpurnia ferociously before Marcus could speak.

  Trajan grinned. “No shame in epilepsia. No hardship to cure it, either. In fact—” He poked his head through the curtains and shouted down at the bearers. “Turn right up ahead.”

  “What’s all that shouting?” Calpurnia wondered. Sabina moaned, head turning back and forth. There certainly was a great deal of shouting. The sort heard from only two kinds of crowds: triumphal processions and games fans. Or in this case, both.

  The path back to the Domus Augustana was mobbed with screaming plebs, all shoving and stretching their hands out toward the cluster of red-and-gold Praetorians in the middle. Praetorians bearing on their shoulders the Young Barbarian on a makeshift stretcher.

  Trajan hopped down nimbly, applying his armored shoulder to the crush. “Commander Trajan here; official business. Out of the way, please, out of the way—look, will you move? Yes, thank you, out of the way—A moment, tribune,” he said to the Praetorian, and swung up beside the stretcher. Marcus heard his battle-trained voice clearly, even over the din. “Just want to congratulate this young man here on his fight.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Marcus half-glimpsed the Young Barbarian hoisted high on his stretcher, scattered with flowers like a bier, blood streaming down his arm. Hands darted at him, pulling bits of his hair or threads of his tunic for souvenirs.

  “Commander Trajan. Just wanted to tell you that was a fine bout.” He clapped the boy’s wounded shoulder, hard. “If you’d ever like a job in the legions—”

  “Bugger off!” Vix howled, clutching his shoulder.

  “Excellent, excellent. Carry on, tribune.” His hand covered in blood, Trajan leaped back toward the waiting litter.

  “What—” Marcus exclaimed as he climbed back in.

  “Fresh gladiator blood.” Trajan painted Sabina’s lips with one scarlet finger. “Bound to cure epilepsia every time; any soldier knows that.”

  “I will not have my daughter drinking blood!”

  “I know, I know. Barbaric.” Trajan smeared the rest of the blood on her temples and forehead. “But it works.”

  Lepida shivered. “If anyone gets blood on my skirts—”

  Sabina’s eyes fluttered open. “Ow,” she said.

  “How do you feel?” Calpurnia felt her forehead.

  “My head hurts.” Pushing herself upright. “Did he die?”

  “Did who die, sweetheart?” Marcus took her hand.

  “The boy.”

  “No, he’s swearing like a soldier,” Trajan said cheerfully. He looked at Marcus. “See?”

  “He’ll get better, won’t he?” Sabina pressed.

  “Rest your head, little one, he won’t die.”

  “My word,” Lepida yawned, drawing her skirt aside. “So much passion for a gutter rat.”

  “You know,” said Trajan. “I think this litter’s a little crowded after all.” He leaned forward, seized Lepida around the waist, and dropped her briskly on the road outside. He yanked the curtains shut on a shrill yelp and a flood of cursing. “Carry on,” he shouted down to the bearers. “She’s no longer your mistress!” The bearers grinned and trotted away double-time. Marcus heard Lepida’s shriek after them and laughed aloud, regarding Trajan thoughtfully.

  “Young man,” he said, “I like your style.”

  “So do I,” giggled Sabina. When the litter reached the Norbanus house, she all but skipped up the steps.

  “Leave the blood the rest of the day,” Trajan advised. “Use her to scare a few visitors while she looks like a demon.”

  Calpurnia looked after Sabina. “Do you think she’ll ever have another seizure?”

  “Of course she will,” said Marcus. “Gladiator blood isn’t medicine; it’s rank superstition. She’ll have another seizure next week.”

  But she didn’t.

  I wonder who will be Emperor next?” Thea asked the question idly as they tidied away their stools and wine goblets. “When Domitian is gone.”

  “Some proper senatorial graybeard,” Paulinus shrugged. “Senator Nerva, maybe—good lineage, distinguished record of service, no vices. One or two others might put themselves forward—”

  “Hardly a matter to discuss before slaves,” the Empress broke in, casting a glance at Arius and Thea.

  “That’s right,” Arius agreed. “Those of us who hope Rome and everyone in it falls into hell.”

  “As long as we get Vix . . .” Thea rubbed her forehead, and Arius caressed the back of her neck with a comforting hand. She turned her cheek against his palm, and Paulinus looked away, fumbling a handful of black grapes from a silver bowl on the table. The trusting angle of her head reminded him of Julia.

  The conspirators broke apart through the doors, leaving Marcus to extinguish the lamps. The Empress reached for her palla, Arius and Thea slipped out arm in arm like wraiths, and Paulinus set about helping his father clear away the evidence that anyone had been here but themselves. The day was almost upon them, come nightmare-slow but still too fast: the day when they would try to kill an Emperor. The matter had loomed so huge and hideous Paulinus had not even stopped to think what came after.

  “Who will be Emperor next?” he wondered aloud, putting away the wine decanter. “Whoever gets the most legions, I suppose. Although . . . Father, didn’t you write a treatise about how an Emperor s
hould be childless so he can adopt a talented successor rather than rely on blood?”

  “I’ve written a great many treatises,” Marcus said vaguely, but a fast look flashed between him and the Empress. Paulinus looked at them both, quizzical, but the Empress broke in smoothly.

  “I’m sure an appropriate candidate will present himself.” She drew her palla up over her hair. “No doubt by killing all his rivals. Good night, Paulinus, Marcus.” She gave her curved smile and passed into the darkness.

  Paulinus shrugged as the door clicked shut, still musing. His Praetorians would be a factor in the succession, too, as much as any of the legions. As commander of the Imperium’s own personal army, Paulinus’s support would be invaluable to whoever claimed the throne. Frightening thought . . .

  “Sabina, is that you?” Marcus straightened toward the door with a smile of welcome, but Paulinus saw how speedily his father whisked the extra wine cups out of sight. “What are you doing awake?”

  “I heard voices downstairs.” Small and neat in her white night robe, Sabina traced the curve of a mosaic serpent with one bare toe.

  “ ’Linus was arguing with me about Cicero’s Commentaries,” Marcus said calmly. “He should know better, but he is a soldier and he does learn slowly.”

  “I heard voices besides yours.” Still tracing the serpent. “And saw a hired litter out the window. You have some very interesting guests, Father.”

  Paulinus opened his mouth, but Sabina put out a hand in a remarkably adult gesture. “Don’t tell me,” she said, and she turned with a hint of a smile back toward her bedchamber. “I don’t want to know.”

  Thirty-three

  SEPTEMBER 18, A. D. 96

  YOU’RE cheating again.” The Imperial voice was a snarl. “Just lucky, Caesar.” Vix shook his empty sleeves; no loaded dice.

  “Not luck. Cheat.”

  “I will remove the boy if he displeases you, Caesar,” Paulinus said quickly.

  “All Jews are cheats.” The Emperor flung the dice across the room. He had paneled the walls in moonstone in preparation for this day, so he could see anyone who might be lurking behind him. “Like Athena. Not even her real name. Should have killed her. Should have killed you all.” The Emperor’s eyes had a wild uneasy flicker, and he scratched distractedly at his forehead. “Are you the one who will try to kill me today, Vercingetorix? At the fifth hour?”

  Vix looked weary.

  “According to Nessus, today brings my death. Are you the one to bring it?”

  Paulinus cleared his throat. “He’s only a boy, Caesar—”

  “Boys can kill,” Domitian snapped. His eyes prowled the dull silver reflections of the room, wary, and he still scratched at his forehead. Paulinus saw he had drawn blood, and despite everything could not help a leap of pity.

  “Caesar,” he said gently.

  Domitian dropped his hand, seeing the blood under his nails. “Gods,” he muttered, “I hope this is all the blood required today.”

  “I’m hoping for more, myself,” Vix muttered.

  “Oh, get him out,” Domitian snarled.

  Vix darted out before Paulinus could take hold of his arm. The boy’s shoulder had half-healed after his last bout in the Colosseum, and he rubbed it absently as he looked out into the green wetness of the gardens. Paulinus spoke briefly to a pair of guards and then joined him. They were the only loiterers. The Emperor, on the day of his supposed death, had ordered the Domus Augustana cleared of everyone but Praetorians, slaves, and a few selected Imperial pets. Where normally the marble halls thronged with togas and buzzed with whispers, today there was only the slap of sandals as slaves hurried about their tasks, the nervous exchange of passwords as the guards changed, and the lonely plash of the massive fountain. “Quiet today,” Vix observed.

  “It’d be quieter if you quit baiting the Emperor,” said Paulinus. “The mood he’s in, he might lop your head off.”

  “He’s always in a mood.” Vix pried up a pebble from an urn of flowers and lobbed it into the massive oval fountain with a splash. “Doubt he’ll kill me, though. He’s looking forward to my next bout too much.”

  “Aren’t you? Your mother said you always wanted to be a gladiator.”

  “Wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be.” Vix hesitated. “People—they die hard.”

  Vix’s head drooped wearily, and it trembled on Paulinus’s tongue to tell the boy he wouldn’t be fighting in any more arenas if Fortuna favored their plan that night. But they’d kept the secret too well to spread it now.

  “Cheer up, young Vix.” Nessus wandered past in old scuffed sandals, dull-eyed and vague-faced, fingering a little gold chain about his neck that had once belonged to Ganymede. “The stars all say the Emperor will be dead by tonight’s moonrise, and then all your troubles are over.”

  “Not him. He won’t die today.” Vix lobbed another stone, viciously. “He’ll die old, in a nice soft feather bed with a cup of wine in his hand. Bastard.”

  “You’ll die old, too,” said Nessus, indifferent. “Driving a chariot too fast because even when you’re an old general with a devoted legion that calls you Vercingetorix the Red, you’ll still like fast horses and fast fights. You’ll die fast, too, though you’ll hang on long enough for your officers to crowd around you and weep. There’s a woman who will weep for you, too, though she won’t be able to show it. An arch will be built in your honor, and afterward your men will toast your memory on enough wine to float your funeral barge down to Pluto, and swear there was never a man like you. How’s that for a death, young Vercingetorix? Not that you believe me anyway, because you don’t believe in the stars.”

  “You’re nuts,” Vix muttered.

  “Do I get a prediction, too?” Paulinus called after Nessus, but the astrologer had already drifted away: a fading ghost down the silent, echoing hallways.

  LEPIDA

  I came to Marcus’s house for a last attempt to persuade him to remarry me—I hadn’t slept with him for years, but it was worth a try. But he wasn’t there. “Gone to the Capitoline Library, Domina. He left orders we were not to allow you—”

  “Allow?” Five minutes of my tongue brought the slaves into a more submissive mood; they’d obeyed me too long as mistress to be shed of the habit yet. I wandered inside, flopping moodily on a blue-cushioned couch in the atrium. Poky quiet house. No one had ever made assignations in the corners here, or giggled over risqué jokes, or even drunk too much wine. And I was no longer mistress of this poky little house. No longer Lady Lepida Pollia, the senator’s wife. Oh, I laughed it off as best I could—“Really, I was so tired of dreary old Marcus, you can’t imagine!”—but people whispered about the speed with which Marcus had disposed of me after thirteen years of marriage . . . and so soon after Domitian had disposed of me as well. Marcus hadn’t charged me with adultery—I’d kept my mouth shut about Paulinus, and so far Marcus had kept his word—but all those fat Roman matrons jealous of my success took any chance they could to whisper. And one or two of my lovers had found themselves inexplicably busy these past weeks, wary that I was looking for a new husband.

  Everyone who was anyone wanted Lady Lepida Pollia for a mistress. No one who was anyone wanted me for a wife.

  “Mother?” Sabina came into the room, reading a scroll, and curtsied hastily as she saw me. “Father’s not here. An Imperial messenger came, and he had to go out. I’ll tell him you called.” She turned away.

  “Wait,” I said. “I thought he went to the library.”

  “Oh—” Sabina dropped her scroll, leaned down to pick it up again. “Well, maybe he did. Excuse me, Mother, my tutor is expecting me.”

  “Stop.” I uncoiled off the couch. “Did you say an Imperial messenger?”

  Her eyes slid to one side. “I thought—”

  “The Domus Augustana has been locked up like a fortress for weeks. The Emperor’s orders. Who would be sending Marcus messages?”

  “The Empress.” Sabina drew herself up. “She has great
respect for my father. Some people do, you know.”

  “Well, what a rude little queen you are.” My daughter turned hastily to go, and my hand shot out and fastened on her wrist. “I think we need to have a little chat, darling. After all, now that I’ve been divorced I have so much more time to spend with you.”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.” Edging back.

  “Oh, I think you do.” Something clicked in my head, the reason why Domitian had locked his palace up like a fortress. “Today is the day Domitian is supposed to die. On a day like that, the Empress should be locked up tight with her guards. So why is she sending your father messages?”

  THEY met in the Gardens of Lucullus: two curtained litters pausing briefly beside each other.

  “Thank you,” said the Empress behind her half-drawn curtain. “I know it’s short notice.”

  “Paulinus?” Marcus said sharply.

  “No, no, he’s at the palace soothing Domitian. He’s the only one who can. We’ve a different problem. I’ve sent my page to summon Arius and Thea—your house is empty?”

  “Yes, Sabina is busy with her tutor in the afternoons and I’ve ordered the slaves to turn away all visitors. What’s wrong?”

  “We may have to put the plan forward.”

  LEPIDA

  DARLING, I don’t like it when you lie to me.” I stroked Sabina’s arm. “The slaves say Marcus went to the library. You say he got a message from the Empress. So who is lying?” My nails were freshly lacquered, and they left little red marks in her arm.

  “I was wrong, he’s at the library.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” Stroking my daughter’s hair. “You saw him get a message from the palace, and away he went. Probably to meet the Empress. What can they possibly want to talk about on a day like today?” I wound my fingers into her hair. Just a little tug, to encourage her.