Empress of the Seven Hills

by Kate Quinn

  “Hell’s gates.” Vix got his first close look at the racing stallions—huge and sweating, champing against the red leather reins. “I’m never getting on a horse in my life if I can help it.”

  “Killed your first man in the arena at thirteen,” said Sabina, amused, “and you’re afraid of horses?”

  “Petrified,” Vix said frankly. “I haven’t met a one that didn’t want me dead. Why would anybody want to—”

  “Sabina!” Aunt Diana came up from behind, flinging her unfashionably brown arms about Sabina’s waist. As usual, her red dress and white-blond hair smelled of hay. “The Reds took five of nine, did you see? I’m having the charioteers back to my villa for a party; you’ll come, of course—”

  “I think I’m going home, Aunt Diana.”

  “Gods’ wheels, girl, at your age I could drink any charioteer under the table! Have it your way, I’m going to check my horses—”

  Off she whirled. “That’s your aunt?” Vix twisted his head after her, admiring.

  “Not really. She’s some sort of distant cousin on my father’s side, but I call her aunt anyway.” Sabina pulled a wilting poppy from her hair, twirling it between her fingers. “Don’t be embarrassed gawping over her. Everyone does.”

  “She must have been something to see when she was young.”

  “Yes, men used to turn and stare whenever she walked into a room. It annoyed my mother no end—she wanted men to turn and stare only when she entered a room.”

  Sabina slipped her hand into Vix’s arm again, and they made their way out of the Circus Maximus with the rest of the crowd, treading over the litter of stale fallen food and sticky spilled pools of wine, faded festival flowers, and discarded little banners. The Reds fans swaggered and the Blues fans sulked; children wailed fretfully and couples slipped off to darker places. The sky was a deep pink overhead, shading toward night. Sabina tilted her head back to see the vast oval shadow of the Colosseum in the distance and wondered how many men had died inside it today. Vix was looking at the Colosseum too—for the first time that day, she saw his lively face still.

  “Do you think about it?” Sabina asked. “The Colosseum.”

  “No.” Vix’s voice was curt, and he shoved a drunk out of their path with more force than was necessary. The drunk just beamed and gave a tipsy “Ave Vinalia!” before lurching off into the dusk. “I dream about it sometimes,” Vix added abruptly.

  “I wish I dreamed,” Sabina confessed. “I haven’t, not since my epilepsia went.”

  She’d fallen into fits as a child, but she’d been cured by the usual remedy of a gladiator’s blood. The closest gladiator had been Vix: thirteen, wounded, and just out of his first bout. She’d been there in the crowd to see him get the wound—a sword into the shoulder, which might not have been too bad except that Vix had forced his shoulder farther up the blade to get within arm’s reach of his much bigger opponent and make the kill. Probably why I kissed him when I finally met him face to face, Sabina thought. He was a sight!

  “You miss the epilepsia?” Vix asked. The sky had faded from pink to violet now.

  “Mmm, not the fits. But I do miss dreams. The gods talk to us in our dreams. Does that mean they’ll never talk to me?”

  “Don’t know if I’d want to talk to a god.”

  “It might be interesting. So many gods, you know.”

  “You might get one of the animal-headed ones. Scary.”

  “Oh, I’m not easily scared.”

  “That I believe, Lady.”

  Sabina let him steer her around a fat man passed out in the street. Many Vinalia revelers had taken too much of the harvest wine and now lay slumped against walls snoring up at the darkening sky. Sabina’s sandals made soft echoes against the stones as they wound through a series of narrow streets, and she was just about to ask with some amusement if he wasn’t taking her the long way home when someone leaped out of the shadows and bashed Vix over the head.

  “You like that?” a reeking voice snarled, and Sabina recognized the Blues fan from the circus whose nose Vix had bloodied. He must have found some friends after all, Sabina thought, and then someone else rushed past with a rough knock to her shoulder and sent her sprawling. She raised herself on her hands, her hip stinging painfully where she’d fallen, and saw Vix get one good punch off before two men doubled his left arm up behind him. The first man in the blue tunic staggered back with a muffled grunt, bleeding all over again from the nose, but he came back with a hammer blow. Vix yelled, ringing Sabina’s ears like a bell, and then another of Blue Tunic’s friends came out of the shadows and got him by the other arm. Vix braced himself, swearing thickly, and Blue Tunic was just cocking a fist back when a rock descended on the back of his head.

  “Goodness,” Sabina said as he fell, hefting the muddy chunk of stone she’d managed to snatch up from the gutter. “That makes quite a thunk, doesn’t it?”

  “Hit him again!” Vix yelled, head-butting into the man on his left.

  “Oh, sorry,” Sabina said hastily, and knelt down with the stone. She studied Blue Tunic a moment—she didn’t want to kill him, after all—and finally decided on a medium-strength blow just above the other ear. That took care of his muzzy efforts to get up, and Sabina rose to see if Vix needed any more help, but he seemed to have things well in hand. He’d dropped one thug with a cocked elbow into the throat followed by a knee up into the belly, then turned on the other two. He came at them with a snarl, teeth bared like a wolf, and suddenly they were both brushing past Sabina and stumbling up the street.

  “He should have picked better friends,” Sabina observed.

  “You think fast on your feet,” Vix panted. He cuffed blood off his lip: tall, tense, still taut with energy. “Thanks, Lady.”

  “Don’t mention it.” She rose, tossing the loose stone away and feeling quite pleased with herself. “My first fight, and I dropped one all by myself. It’s been a good day.”

  “Yes, it has,” Vix said, then crossed the cobbles in two long strides, shoved her up against a tenement wall, and began kissing her.

  Well, that’s different. She’d been kissed before, of course—by Vix, for one, though they’d only been children; and more recently by a few of her suitors. Sabina had encouraged them, being immensely curious about the whole experience, but none of them had ever done more than brush their lips gently against hers and keep one mindful eye on the door to make sure her father wasn’t coming. Except for the one suitor whose understanding of the whole business had been to shove his tongue as far down her throat as possible, as if he were trying to find out what she’d eaten for dinner…

  “You’re too damned small,” Vix growled in her ear, and lifted her up off her feet for better access. Sabina chuckled low in her throat, tipping her head back for him and winding her arms about his neck. She was half crushed between the hard wall and his hard chest, but the one was warm, so warm, as though his blood boiled a shade hotter than the ordinary. She felt his heart thudding against her breasts, and tasted the salty coppery tang from his split lip. She touched the back of his neck, tracing an unhurried circle with one fingertip, and Vix gave a muffled groan and started kissing his way down toward her shoulder. One rough hand twined through her hair, dislodging the wilted poppies.

  “The idea—off my doorstep, you filthy things!” Light suddenly flooded the dark vestibule, and Sabina felt a sharp smack on the back of her head. Vix swore, and they both looked up at a housewife’s broad outraged face. “Thugs and trollops, disturbing decent people with your brawling and fornicating, the idea—”

  “Hadn’t even got to the fornicating yet, you cow!” Vix yelled, but Sabina took his arm, shaking with giggles, and pulled him off into the night with the housewife still frothing behind them.

  “Gods, how funny.” Sabina put a hand over her mouth and laughed through her fingers, feeling as giddy and high-sailing as a full moon. “Another first.”

  “Kissing in a doorway?”

  “Being shrieked at f
or a fornicating trollop. What fun.”

  “Could be more fun.” Vix stepped close again, his eyes just black shadows now in the dusk, but Sabina stopped him with a hand on his chest.

  “I’m afraid my father will be looking for me soon. He’ll worry now that it’s dark, and I don’t like to worry him. Besides, the house isn’t far.”

  Vix scowled, but stepped back. “Told you I’d teach you something better than a whistle, didn’t I?”

  “So you did.”

  His face fell visibly when they came up to the house after another block of frustrated silence, and he saw that there were household slaves waiting at the gate. “Damn.”

  Sabina laughed. “Hoping for a good-night kiss?”

  “Or something,” he muttered.

  Herself, Sabina had been pondering whether it would be wise to give him one… but the slaves were already hurrying out into the street to greet her. “Lady Sabina, you should have been back before dark!” She started toward them, pulling a fold of her palla up over her head and hoping Vix hadn’t left any marks on her neck that might need explaining. Behind her, she heard Vix’s footsteps turn back down the street.

  On impulse, she shooed the slaves ahead and then turned. “Vix!”

  He turned, tall and irritated in the torchlight. “What, Lady?”

  “You kiss much better now than you did at thirteen.” Sabina grinned and disappeared into the house.

  CHAPTER 3

  PLOTINA

  The Empress of Rome prided herself on laughing very seldom. Life was a solemn thing, after all, and her position in the world demanded every possible dignity. But she could not help laughing when she saw the look on Hadrian’s face.

  “Dear Publius, don’t look so grim. It’s not a sentence of death, you know. Only a marriage.”

  “Which is a sentence of a different kind.” He hesitated. “Vibia Sabina?”

  “Yes, I’ve chosen her. You object?”

  Hadrian moved his shoulders restlessly, pacing to the end of her study. Plotina looked up from her writing tablet, reveling in the sight of him: so tall and sturdy, the picture of Roman rectitude in his spotless toga, his head handsome in the wash of spring sunshine from the window. The gods had not seen fit to grant her children, but they had granted her Publius Aelius Hadrian: her husband’s ward from the age of ten, and when first she laid eyes on him she had seen his potential. Trajan had had little time to act the guardian, so his care had been hers. Her Publius.

  “We agreed it was time you married,” she pointed out as he continued to pace. “Right in this room we agreed it.” A fine sunny morning; Hadrian always came to call on her before midday if his duties permitted, and she had lost no time in dismissing the slaves from her cozy study and informing him she had at last found him a bride. “It’s high time you took a wife,” Plotina continued, “and you asked me to find you a suitable candidate.”

  “Not Vibia Sabina. I don’t like the girl.”

  “Why not? She’s quiet, well mannered, decently bred. She has a fine dowry and even finer connections.”

  “Her mother was the greatest whore since Messalina!”

  “And her father has one of the most respected voices in the Senate house. His support would carry your career far.” Plotina smiled. “I do so want to see you consul someday, Dear Publius. By thirty if I can manage it, and I expect I can.”

  “Not with a wife like that. She may look quiet, but she has a taste for low company. I saw her at the races, rubbing elbows with plebs.”

  “Once you’re married, she’ll have to keep the company you choose,” Plotina pointed out. “Surely you can rein in one errant little wife?”

  “She’s very young,” Hadrian complained. “I don’t like little girls.”

  “I wish she were younger,” Plotina sighed. A ripe biddable little thing of fourteen who would do as she was told—the ideal daughter-in-law. “Sabina’s father should have arranged her marriage three or four years ago instead of letting her loll about the house reading Homer. Still, if he had then she would not be available for you. The gods arrange these things for a reason.” They generally arranged things to suit Plotina, she found. And what they did not arrange, she could contrive for herself.

  “I don’t think the girl is as biddable as you say,” Hadrian was saying. “She says all the right things, but I can feel her laughing at me.”

  “Nonsense; who would ever laugh at you?” Plotina looked back to her wax tablet. “Just leave her to me; I will train her up to satisfaction after your marriage. Hand me that stylus?”

  “Checking the household accounts again?” Hadrian shook his head, amused. “An army of stewards at your beck and call, and the Empress of Rome still does her own figures.”

  “My last steward tried to cheat me. I had to make an example and have his hands chopped off.” Plotina scraped the tablet clean and made a fresh heading. “Besides, I have always kept my own household accounts. I see no reason to change simply because my household is larger. You will recall, Dear Publius, that when I entered the palace for the first time—”

  “Yes, yes, you declared you would leave the palace the same woman as you entered it.” Hadrian’s eyes crinkled. “You’ve told me that a hundred times.”

  “I hope I’ve done more than quote it at you.”

  “Certainly, my lady.” He bent and kissed the top of her head. “You have not changed in the slightest.”

  “You have, and not entirely for the better.” Plotina patted his furred cheek. “I don’t like that beard.”

  “And I don’t like your choice of bride.” The scowl returned, and he flung himself into the chair opposite her. “Why Vibia Sabina?”

  “You require a wife of breeding and connections, with the poise to host your colleagues and rivals as you climb the ladder.”

  “You have always done that for me,” he observed.

  “And will continue to do so.” Plotina began copying a list of figures out on her slate. “But a wife will give you sons, and a man should have sons.”

  “Trajan—”

  “Is also very fond of Sabina,” Plotina interrupted smoothly. “You will rise in his favor as well, marrying her.”

  “I should already have his favor,” Hadrian grumbled.

  Plotina felt a pang. “You should take more interest in Dear Publius,” she had told her husband many times. “He’s your ward. He should be like a son to you.”

  “Well, he isn’t.” Trajan had been short with her, very short. “I’ve done my duty by him, haven’t I? Cold moody little bugger he was as a boy, and he’s a cold moody bugger now. Enough is enough.”

  No, Plotina thought, it’s not nearly enough. But she knew when to drop the matter for later. Trajan could be so stubborn.

  “Marry little Sabina,” she said, “and you’ll get on better with my husband. He’s even a distant great-uncle to her on her father’s side—the marriage will make you family, not just a ward. The Emperor will see you more frequently, get to appreciate you better. You’ll see.”

  “It’ll take more than a marriage to make the Emperor like me.”

  If you’d kept your hands off that dancer Trajan liked so much, you’d stand better with him today, Plotina thought. What a debacle that had been! Trajan had been very cross about having his pet poached from under his nose, and in the end Plotina had had to pack that smooth-cheeked little whore off to a brothel in Ostia, just to keep the peace in her household. All young men had wild oats to sow, but couldn’t they be more careful about where they scattered the seeds? It was a thought Plotina kept to herself. There were things young men fondly thought their mothers did not know. Mothers always did know, of course, but if they were wise they kept their own counsel. And who was wiser than Plotina, who was not just the mother Dear Publius should have had, but the Mother of Rome?

  “This marriage will be a start in the right direction,” she said instead. “Trajan likes Sabina, and if you marry her he’ll like you. So why don’t you go pay a visit on t
he Norbanus household this afternoon?”

  “I suppose I could speak to her father.” Grudgingly. “Advance my prospects.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to address yourself to Sabina as well, my dear. Her father is letting her have some choice in her marriage.” Plotina exhaled. “What is this world coming to? He always was far too lenient a father.”

  “I’ll take a firmer line with his grandsons, then.” Hadrian rose, kissing her hand. “You win, my lady. Senator Norbanus’s daughter it is.”

  “Shave off that beard?” Plotina begged. “I’m sure no girl wishes to marry a hedge.”

  SABINA

  “It’s perfect.” Sabina looked down at the little figure in marble. “Uncle Paris, I don’t know how you do it.”

  He took her thanks serenely, hardly bothering to look up from the new block of marble now occupying his worktable. Sabina wandered the studio, used to his silences. Long windows letting in a flood of pale gold morning sunshine, scraps of marble and stone dust everywhere—and shelves, rank on rank of shelves crammed full of marble pieces. A bust of Emperor Trajan, looking vigorous… a half-finished study of a nymph, exquisite arms and shoulders rising from a rough chunk of stone… a granite Hercules with his lion skin and club… Uncle Paris might be old now, his hair gone white and his eyes cloudy, but his hands with their chisel and mallet were clearly as steady as ever. He must have been quite a scandal when he was young—Sabina could well imagine the whispers. A boy of good family sculpting marble like a common artisan? My dear, the shame of it! But the family had gotten used to him by now, and left him alone with his marble and his gift for shaping it.

  “I wish I had a talent,” Sabina confided to a suspicious-eyed bust of the old emperor Domitian. Even an awkward talent like sculpting marble, or Aunt Diana’s passion for training horses—it would still make life simpler. You’d know what the gods intended you to be. It was just a matter of clearing any obstacles out of the way, and getting on with it.