Mistress of Rome

by Kate Quinn

  “The slave, sir?” Paulinus asked. “He says he has important information.”

  Domitian hesitated, then shrugged. “Show him in.”

  Paulinus dismissed the guards, and Domitian settled himself on the edge of his sleeping couch. “Enter, slave. You are—?”

  “Stephanus, Lord and God.” The voice rumbled in my ears. “Former gardener to Lady Flavia Domitilla.” I trained my eyes on the carved silver arm of the sleeping couch, still weeping softly, every nerve in my body humming like a harp string. The only thing I saw of Arius was the white sling that muffled his arm.

  Domitian frowned. “You have information?”

  “Found papers. Didn’t look right to me.” The knotted brown hand I loved so well passed over a scroll: lists of closely written names.

  “Senator Nerva?” said Domitian, reading. “Who would have thought?” He unrolled the parchment, and as I risked a glance up, I saw his eyes fell on Vix. My son, crouched forgotten in the corner where the guards had dropped him—but his head was up, and his blazing eyes fixed directly on the slave supposedly named Stephanus. The slave behind whose head the sun slanted much too high over the Tiber for twilight.

  DOMITIAN’S eyes flicked back and forth, panic settling in just as Arius pulled a dagger from the sling around his arm.

  The Emperor screamed as the dagger plunged into his groin.

  The demon howled its pleasure. Arius howled back.

  He flung himself forward, shaking the false bandage off his arm, and struck again. The Emperor got an arm up and the blade sheared along the length of the bone. Blood leaped up, spraying Arius’s face. He breathed it in like Indian perfume.

  In the dull reflection of the moonstone, he saw Thea grope under the bed in the tangle of silk sheets, snatching up the Emperor’s fallen dagger, half-running and half-falling across the room to throw herself over Vix. That first blow in the groin had been for her. For the weeping he’d heard as he waited outside the door. For the Emperor’s laughter.

  Domitian clawed screaming for his eyes. Arius twitched his head to one side, feeling the bloody fingers skate off his cheek, and drove his fist into Domitian’s throat. The blow flung the Emperor against the silk cushions of the couch, where he scuttled backward like a spider, scrabbling for the dagger that never left its place under his pillow. Arius waited until his groping fingers had found nothing—until his eyes flew to Thea in panicked accusation.

  Then he gutted Domitian like a fish.

  “GUARDS!” the Emperor screamed, doubling over. “GUARDS!”

  No guards. Paulinus had assigned them to the other end of the palace grounds, sent them on pointless errands, bluntly bribed them with Marcus’s gold. Arius could see Paulinus from the corner of his other eye, pressed rigid against the wall.

  Pretty boy, the demon whispered. Forget him.

  The mad black fury roared up so fast his vision slipped. Just like the early days of the Colosseum, the days when the world had been a sword and a stretch of sand and someone to kill, nightmares afterward and no Thea to sing them away. He struck again, crushing Domitian down into a bed full of blood and silk, and it wasn’t enough.

  “Paulinus!” Domitian shouted. The pretty boy’s hand went to his gladius as if he were about to fall on Arius, and Arius tensed to fight two men at once, but Paulinus never moved. Only stood against the wall, rock still, his eyes huge.

  “Paulinus!” Domitian looked at his closest friend with eyes swimming in blood, and Arius let him look until betrayal swam to the top and Paulinus looked away.

  The Emperor howled, scrabbling, and Arius straddled Domitian without haste, dropping a knee between the Emperor’s shoulder blades. He plunged his blade into the broad back, shearing the spine through like a silk rope. The Emperor gave a quiet gasp.

  He’s dying, thought Arius remotely. I’m killing the Emperor of Rome.

  “No!” The shout broke from Paulinus as he lunged away from the wall. The blow caught Arius sideways, knocking him off the Emperor. He came up rolling, but Paulinus had dropped to one knee over the Emperor’s body, holding Arius off at dagger point. “It’s enough, for gods’ sake, let him die like a man—”

  “He’s not a man!” Arius snarled.

  But Paulinus never heard him. He lifted Domitian up in frantic, loving hands. Blood poured everywhere. Paulinus was weeping.

  “Caesar—Caesar, I’m sorry—get away from him,” he snarled at Arius, slashing out with the dagger. The blade missed Arius by an inch.

  Domitian tugged the hard brown arm.

  “Caesar—” Paulinus bent closer. “Sir—”

  Domitian tore the dagger from Paulinus’s hand, and ripped his throat out.

  Thea screamed.

  Arius lunged. Too late.

  “Justina,” Paulinus whispered in surprise, and died.

  THEA

  I struggled stiffly away from my son, falling across Paulinus, toward Domitian where he lay faceup on the mosaics, strangling on his pulped lungs. I crawled over him, nailing his body with my body, his gaze with my gaze.

  I never feared you, I told him. I never feared you.

  I looked into his black eyes until they glazed over.

  FOR a long time there was no talk. I lay across Domitian, covered in his blood. Vix sat frozen in his corner. Arius half-knelt beside Paulinus’s body, gazing blindly ahead. No one stirred. No one spoke.

  Then Arius threw the dagger away from him. It bounced off the opposite wall, and at the clatter Vix gave a violent tremor.

  “God,” he said in a cracked voice. “God.”

  Arius stretched out a tired arm, and Vix turned into the hard shoulder. Arius reached around the back of his weeping son’s neck, took the welded silver collar between his hands, and snapped it in two. He flung it against the wall where it fell with a soft rattle, the black eye just a lump of jet. Arius’s eyes squeezed shut a moment, and when they opened again the demon had gone out of them.

  I crawled over Domitian’s body and collapsed on my lover’s other shoulder. He turned his lips into my hair, and I felt the tremors deep in his body.

  We were still sitting like that, three locked in one, when the world crashed in.

  LEPIDA

  HOURS in the dark—hours and hours. I screamed through the gag, pounding at the door of the closet with my sandaled feet, but no one came. Domitian had ordered most of the slaves away, on the day he was supposed to die.

  He wasn’t dead yet. He couldn’t be dead yet. He’d live to hear me speak, and then he’d kiss my feet and crown me Lady and Goddess, because thanks to me he was alive.

  Scuffling sounds outside. I shrieked through the gag, drumming my heels. A scraping sound, and then light blinded my eyes as the door dragged open. I blinked furiously, and saw the blank round face of the astrologer. Nessus.

  “There are a great many closets in this palace,” he said, expressionless. “I must have looked through a hundred.”

  “Untie me at once,” I spat as he pulled the gag from my mouth. “Where is the Emperor? I have information about a conspiracy. The Empress is involved, and his precious pet Vix—”

  “Ganymede,” said the astrologer.

  “What?” Loosening cords from my wrists. If I could just get to Domitian, I could have Thea and Arius and Vix and Marcus and Paulinus in chains by night’s end, every enemy I had—

  “Ganymede. Do you remember him?”

  “Remember who?”

  His hands locked about my throat before I knew what he was doing. “Nessus—” I choked out, and then his fingers took my breath away.

  “Ganymede.” He crushed me back against the wall, squeezing. “Ganymede.”

  I gasped, scrabbling at his wrists. Two of my nails broke—he’d pay for that—!

  “Ganymede.” His face was blank as marble as his hands sank deeper and deeper into my throat, like a ring of red-hot iron. “Ganymede.”

  I left great claw marks on the skin of his arms, thrashing from side to side as a choking blindness
filled my head. Guards would come, they would kill Nessus, they would take me to the Emperor—my hair came down in tangled snakes; I’d be a mess when Domitian saw me—

  “Ganymede.” Squeezing. “Ganymede.”

  My throat was a mass of flames, and numb little flickers of pain trickled down my limbs. No. This could not happen. I was Lepida Pollia, Lady and Goddess of Rome—I was beautiful, and Fortuna loved me—

  “Ganymede.”

  I feel the blood pump through my neck between his hands.

  “Ganymede,” he says. Blood runs down his arms from my scratches. I bat weakly at his hands, and the red of my lacquered nails mixes with the blood on his arms.

  I summon all my strength and scream. Nothing comes out—nothing but a single strangled gasp as my eyes darken and my limbs go numb.

  “Ganymede,” he whispers.

  I sag against the wall, feeling my tongue protruding. The astrologer’s contorted face comes to me dimly through the black flowers blooming across my eyes. Who, I try to say, who, who—but I have no breath left.

  Who is Ganymede?

  Thirty-five

  MARCUS walked home, and with every uneven step the thought repeated itself.

  My son is dead.

  He’d been unable to go home and wait when Arius and Thea left for the Domus Augustana. He’d found some pretext for loitering outside the palace gates . . . so he’d been one of the first on the scene when the blood was done flowing and the panic set in. One of the first to see Paulinus’s gaping throat, the loose-tangled limbs, the outflung hand.

  “Leave him, Marcus,” the Empress had said. “We’ll prepare him for a hero’s funeral. The Emperor’s friend who died trying to defend him.”

  Paulinus is dead.

  Marcus stared at his own gate a moment before recognizing it. Slowly he struck the latch, limped through the garden, stepped into the dark empty hall.

  Paulinus is dead.

  He turned his head away from the thought, and his eyes fell on the atrium. A shadowy figure stood there in the moonlight, leaning against a pillar. “Calpurnia?”

  She started, whirling around. Her eyes were huge holes in a white face. “Marcus,” she whispered. “Oh gods, Marcus.” She took three running steps across the atrium and flung her arms around him.

  He opened his mouth to tell her, and drew in a confused breath of her scents: herbs, crushed mint, bread rising sweet in the oven; and then the pain kicked sharply, swelling through him until he thought he would die. He turned his face into her shoulder, dimly hearing her dismiss the curious slaves.

  “You’re all right.” Her arms closed tight around his neck, her cheek pressed against his hair. “I can’t believe it—waited for hours—didn’t know where you were—and I don’t want to know, but you’re all right; you’re all right and that’s all I want. Oh gods, Marcus, don’t leave me.” She kissed his mouth and his eyes and his hands, over and over. “Don’t leave me again, I can’t bear it.” She couldn’t stop kissing him, and her mouth tasted like all good things on earth.

  He reached up, slowly, and cupped her face in his hands.

  “You’re crying.” She drew back, tasting the salt on his cheeks. “What is it?”

  “Paulinus—Paulinus is—” He said the words while he could still force them out. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?” He felt a jerk go through her. “What do you mean, how—”

  “Killed. And the Emperor,” Marcus added leadenly.

  “But Paulinus—” Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, gods. Oh, Marcus, I’m sorry.” She stepped close, leaning her forehead against his. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’ve been offered—” He stopped, looking at his son’s betrothed: pressed against him, her arms about his neck. His for the asking. When had that happened?

  He drew a finger along her wide clear brow. “How would you like to be an Empress?”

  “What?”

  They’ve offered me the Empire, Calpurnia. The Empress offered it to me before, but because of Paulinus I refused. Because an Emperor should put the Empire above his family; he should adopt an heir to follow him, to be sure of getting the best man for Rome. And such a system will never work unless the Emperor has no jealous sons of his own blood who would expect to inherit. “You have no son now, Marcus Norbanus,” the Empress had said over Paulinus’s body. “Adopt the man we spoke of as your heir. Adopt him, and take the purple.”

  “Marcus?” Calpurnia kissed him again. “Marcus, what is it?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head. “Calpurnia—I need to be alone. Will you—?”

  She retreated at once, without question. Not so far he couldn’t call her back with a single word, if he wanted.

  He lowered himself onto the atrium’s marble bench. You have an hour, the Empress had said. In an hour, we must have an Emperor. You or another. Half that time was gone. He folded his hands.

  Emperor Marcus Vibius Augustus Norbanus.

  Even with the grief howling inside him, he’d live for years yet. Enough years to get an Empire in order for a gifted and vigorous young successor. Enough years to soften the treason laws, repair relations with the Senate, commission enough monuments and temples to make Rome beautiful. Work—hard work, and years of it to undo the bad times—but he might as well use up his last years in the Empire’s service.

  Emperor Marcus Augustus. Living his days out in the palace surrounded by guards, addressing the Senate from the center of the floor instead of the back, raising his arm to acknowledge the cheers of the populace, presiding over triumphs and games in a purple cloak. Working his nights away to strengthen coinage and expand borders and build aqueducts. A man with no Empress—foolish of him to have mentioned it, because a young healthy wife would have children, sons who would expect to inherit the Empire themselves. A man with a princess for a daughter, a princess who would have to marry his adopted heir—a man three times her age—in order to strengthen the alliance. Marcus Augustus Caesar, twelfth Emperor of the Roman Empire, a face to be feared in life, worshipped in death, sculpted in marble for posterity.

  You should be Emperor, Marcus, he remembered a woman saying to him once, long ago. Well, now he had his chance. The minutes ticked away, and he sat as still as the statue he could commission of himself by tomorrow morning, if he liked.

  He fished for a scrap of parchment. For a pen. For ink. He wrote a single word. A yawning slave, roused from bed, ambled off with it toward the Domus Augustana.

  Marcus turned his head into the shadows. He held out his hand and waited with a slow, reluctant flutter of hope for the touch of Calpurnia’s warm fingers.

  THEA

  THE Empress brought the silence with her into her private tablinum. Outside slaves screamed, guards rushed back and forth, the marble halls echoed with uproar, but she closed the door firmly behind me and locked it all out.

  “The noise,” she grimaced. “It’s going to be a very noisy few days, I’m afraid. As soon as the Empire is staggering along under its own power again, I’m going to retire to a quiet little villa in Baiae where you can’t hear anything but birds.” The woman who had just murdered her husband settled down behind her desk with a businesslike air. “Perhaps I shall write my memoirs.”

  I blinked. A dozen slave women could testify that the Empress had been sitting innocently at her loom weaving household cloth when her husband was hacked apart, but she had certainly arrived speedily on the scene as soon as everything was done. Before the rush of slaves and guards flooded into the bloody Imperial bedchamber in her wake, Arius and Vix and I had all been efficiently whirled in separate directions. “For anonymity’s sake,’” the Empress had explained as Vix disappeared down one hall, Arius down another, and she had grasped my elbow and escorted me personally from the moonstone-sheathed, blood-soaked bedchamber to her own private tablinum. I had no guarantee that she wouldn’t . . . well, do anything. How well did I really know the Empress? How well did anyone know her?

  “So where are Arius and my s
on?” I said, feeling the words float up from a long distance. “Some quiet little cell where you’ll soon take me, where we’ll all be strangled and disposed of? Is that part of your mopping up?”

  “Twenty years ago, yes.” The Empress frowned absently at one of her many lists. “But I’ve grown a trifle wiser with age. You and I, Thea, have the merit of being the only two women in the world to survive Domitian’s affection. Surely a sign of divine favor, and I am not one to tamper with the gods’ chosen.”

  “Then where is Arius?”

  “Arius.” The Empress checked off a point on one list. “Being privately patched up by my personal physician, who says he’ll be good as new far sooner than any man of his age and habits has a right to expect. Although we’ll put out an official announcement that he’s dead,” she added. “ ‘The slave Stephanus, chief assassin of our beloved Emperor, was mortally wounded himself during the epic struggle’ etc. At least one villain must be publicly accounted for. We’ll find a criminal’s body to display on the Gemonian Stairs.”

  “Vix,” I said. “What about him?”

  “Your horrid son? Do you know, that child has destroyed an entire wing of the new palace? Gladiated it to smithereens! And there’s been more than one coin purse missing ever since he—well, never mind. He ran off after being splinted.”

  “What? Where? You let him go?”

  “Of course I didn’t let him go. I would have known better than to turn my back on that beastly child for an instant. The physician did not. Oh, don’t worry. The horrid boy—oh, he makes me so glad I never had children—will be back in no time. Probably going to fetch that little three-legged dog of yours. Arius was asking for it rather forcibly.”

  “Do you know everything, Domina?”

  “Nearly,” she said tranquilly. “I have the best spy network in the Empire.”

  She pulled out a wax tablet and began to write. I let out a shaky sigh and sank down onto the stool by the desk. My head hurt. I was still splashed in Domitian’s blood. My son had disappeared; my lover was off getting patched up for the thousandth time. The last time? Surely that was too much to hope for.