Empress of the Seven Hills

by Kate Quinn

  Faustina frowned again. “She could marry you.”

  “I’d have liked that. But she wouldn’t. And she was right—we’re not suited, you see. Hadrian, he’s clever and handsome and he’s going to give her the world. I couldn’t give anybody the world. Just a dull little life here in Rome, married to a dull little plodder like me.”

  “I’ll marry you,” Faustina offered.

  He mussed her hair until she scowled. “You’ll marry a prince, Faustina. Or an emperor. Someone far better than me.”

  She fell asleep on his shoulder shortly after that, and he carried her in the deepening darkness back to the Norbanus house. “See she gets put to bed,” he told the slave with the torch. “She wasn’t out at all, you understand.”

  “Don’t worry, sir.” The slave smoothed Faustina’s fair head affectionately. “I won’t get the little mistress in trouble.”

  “Little mistress no more.” Titus gave a lopsided twist of his mouth. “She’s the only daughter of the house now.”

  “Right you are, sir. Gods, I remember when Mistress Sabina was this little.”

  The slave vanished, Faustina waking enough to give Titus a sleepy little wave over his shoulder. Titus waved back, then turned slowly and ambled away. He felt like crying, but he felt like smiling too when he thought of Sabina lying on the library floor with her chin propped on her hand. Looking up at him and saying, “Oh, no, not another one.”

  “You don’t love him,” he told her through the shadows. “And he doesn’t love you.” But what did that matter? Most marriages weren’t about love at all. They were about money, or family, or advancement, or need. In Hadrian and Sabina’s case—adventure. You would do it differently, Sabina, Titus thought. You’re always different.

  So was Hadrian. Hadrian didn’t look at the Nile and think crocodiles, as Titus would have. Hadrian thought adventure. Hadrian wouldn’t blink twice at walking the wild northern hills of Britannia, or scrambling up the rocky paths of Delphi to see the Sibyl. At the wedding feast he’d spoken eagerly of doing exactly that on their arrival in Greece, and Sabina had brought out a coin and bet him she’d be first to the top. Hadrian had grinned at her and taken the bet, and Sabina had leaned over and and kissed him on the cheek. Titus would have given twenty years off his life to be the one getting that kiss.

  But he got it. Even though he doesn’t love her.

  Never mind. Only dull little plodders like Titus were so stupid as to think a man should love his wife.

  He looked up at the night sky. Full dark now, with stars pricking dimly through the haze of the city. Titus searched his memory for a quote, something by Virgil or Cato or Homer, some elegant string of words put together by a genius who could make heartache beautiful instead of pathetic. His memory failed him. His mind for once was empty of quotes; full of Sabina. Sabina crunching on an apple, Sabina drawing a stylus over a map, Sabina with a single earring glinting by her naked throat. One painful perfect image after another, and no words by any great poet were going to help.

  All Titus could offer up to the uncaring gods was a matter-of-fact “This is really going to hurt, isn’t it?”

  VIX

  “You’re two weeks overdue on your rent,” the landlord snarled at me. “Pay up!”

  “Later,” I hedged.

  A month gone in the new year. The bruises on my face had faded, but my nose and ribs were still knitting from the beating Hadrian had paid for. I was doing sword exercises in the inn’s cramped yard and cursing my aches and pains when the innkeeper’s two spotty-skinned maids came back from shopping. “Glad we didn’t have to go to the forum last night,” one of them was saying. “That wedding procession had the street blocked for miles.”

  “A senator’s daughter! Did you see her dress?”

  Sabina and Hadrian’s wedding? Maybe. I’d been careful not to learn the date, but weeks had passed. Surely they were wedded by now. Wedded and bedded. I wondered how much Sabina had enjoyed that.

  I drank again that night, but not much. Just sat sipping, watching the raddled whores trudge past outside, watching the footpads skulking in the shadows, watching the drunks go reeling past.

  Then I rose, and skipped out on my bill, and went to join the legions.

  PART II

  DACIA

  CHAPTER 8

  Autumn A. D. 108

  SABINA

  Faustina put her little fists on her little hips and looked around the new atrium critically. “I don’t like it.”

  Sabina laughed at her little sister. “When did you get so opinionated?”

  Faustina assessed the snowy marble walls, topped with the frieze of laurel leaves and stern-faced goddesses. “It’s cold.”

  “Hadrian will be crushed; he designed that frieze himself. I think he was aiming for ‘classic.’”

  “It’s stiff,” Faustina decreed, her eleven-year-old face looking just like Calpurnia’s. “Everything’s stiff. No one could ever get dirty in a house like this.”

  Sabina mussed her little sister’s hair. “Do you want to get dirty?”

  “No, I want to try on all your dresses! You have the best clothes…”

  Hand in hand they wandered across the atrium to the stairs, decorated with mosaics in swirling blues and greens, also designed by Hadrian. This house wasn’t the architectural wonder he had sketched for himself with its never-ending improvements—“That will have to wait,” he told Sabina wistfully, doodling domes and columns in the margins of his official documents—but he had taken an interest in every detail of decoration in the new house on the Palatine Hill that Empress Plotina had finally persuaded him to acquire, from the pristine lines of each column in the triclinium to the matched perfection of the slaves who stood in silent symmetrical rows as Sabina ushered her little sister upstairs.

  “Why do they just stand there?” Faustina whispered.

  “Because Hadrian likes silence in his household.”

  “I like slaves who talk. This is like living in a statue garden!”

  Sabina laughed again. Calpurnia had produced three more bouncing boys after Linus, all healthy and handsome, but little blond Faustina with her out-thrust chin was still Sabina’s favorite of the whole brood. “Come on, little bossy. I’ve got a new green dress you can try on.”

  “I look like an asparagus in green,” Faustina said decidedly. “Have you got anything blue?”

  “I think I can offer you a fine selection, madam.”

  Sabina settled herself cross-legged on the long couch in her own bedroom, watching with amusement as her sister picked through the pile of gowns. “I can’t wait to wear a proper stola,” Faustina said, voice muffled as she swam headfirst into a swath of blue silk. “When can I get married?”

  “Not until you’re at least sixteen.” Sabina held up two belts. “Pearl or silver?”

  “Pearl,” Faustina pointed. “Antonia Lucilla says she’ll be getting married at fourteen—”

  “Over our father’s dead body will you do the same.” Sabina tucked up the blue silk skirts for her sister’s shorter limbs. “But at least you’ll get to pick your own husband.”

  “I already picked him,” said Faustina. “Earrings?”

  “The rosewood box on the table. Who did you pick?”

  “Gaius Rupilius! His father brought him to Father’s last dinner party; he’s very handsome and he’s fourteen—”

  “I see you inherited your mother’s taste for older men.”

  “Well, Gaius won’t make me live in a statue garden.” Faustina selected a pair of pearl drops, looking around the room approvingly. “At least you’ve got some clutter in here.”

  “I like it,” Sabina confessed. Her own bedchamber was scattered comfortably with books half unrolled, cushions on the floor for flopping down and reading, a vast map of the Empire nailed to one wall, and a bust of Emperor Trajan over which Sabina usually tossed her shawls. Hadrian liked neatness and order, but he hardly ever entered Sabina’s quarters. His own bedchamber lay in t
he other wing of the house, and traffic between the two was… infrequent. “I hope Gaius Rupilius makes you very happy, Faustina.”

  “My nurse says that isn’t the point of getting married. Being happy, I mean.”

  “No, but it’s nice when it happens. Hadrian makes me happy.”

  “But he’s boring. He droned about Eckian cary—cary-something—”

  “Erechtheion caryatids.”

  “Those. Are they bugs?”

  “No, they’re a kind of column.”

  “Well, he droned about them all through Father’s last dinner party.”

  “He does do that sometimes,” Sabina agreed.

  “Mother says he’s a crashing bore.”

  “He’s that sometimes too.”

  Faustina looked down at herself: pearls in her ears, blue silk dress looped up through the pearl girdle to fit her own height. “Too long,” she clicked her tongue. “Oh, why don’t I grow?”

  “You will. Hopefully taller than me. Here, try the red dress and slide my gold bracelets up over the elbow; you’ll look very exotic—”

  “Domina?” A slave girl curtsied in the doorway. “You have a visitor. Tribune Titus Aurelius—”

  “Tribune?” Sabina uncurled her legs from the couch. “Oh, no. Faustina, try on the Indian silk, it feels like water on your skin—I have to see something…”

  Titus bowed as Sabina bounded downstairs and back into the atrium. “Vibia Sabina,” he said. Her onetime suitor had gone from a shy boy of sixteen to a tall young man of twenty-two, but he still had the same endless skinny limbs and peculiarly sweet smile. “‘Hail, beauteous nymph with eyes cerulean bright.’”

  “But my eyes aren’t cerulean,” Sabina objected. “You’ve been reading Homeric hymns again, haven’t you?”

  “I’m afraid so. I tend to reach for poetry when I’m stumped for words.” He gave an elaborate bow. “The sight of you usually does that to me.”

  “Today I’m the one who’s stumped.” Sabina eyed his uniform: brand-new breastplate and red tunic, greaves and cloak and a helmet tucked under his arm with a stiff crest of plumes. “Your family finally made you do it, didn’t they?”

  “I’m afraid so.” He saluted. “You see before you a tribune of the illustrious legions of Rome.”

  Sabina sighed. “I told your grandfather you’d rather be eaten by wolves than join the legions! At Father’s last party—”

  “Yes, well, other members of my family told him all about the benefits of military service in seasoning the young. Mostly those members who have not served in the legions themselves. ‘War is sweet for those who have not experienced it,’ as Pindaros would say.” Titus looked down at himself ruefully.

  “My father was a tribune when he was your age,” Sabina consoled. “He said he got through it by keeping his mouth shut and his boots dry. Where are you stationed?”

  “The Tenth Fidelis, in Germania. Some ghastly frontier town with a name I can’t even pronounce. I leave tomorrow, unfortunately.”

  “Germania,” Sabina said enviously. “And you don’t even want to travel! I’d love to see Germania.”

  “At least you saw Greece.”

  “Not enough of it.” Sabina dreamed of Greece sometimes; the rocky cliffs, the blue seas, the sunlight with its peculiar brilliance. She and Hadrian had spent a year in Athens, where he had been appointed magistrate, and it had been everything he promised. Athens had clung like a white jewel to the dry cliffs, and she’d scrambled sunburned and happy among the temples in the sky while Hadrian hunted massively tusked Greek boar and joined fierce philosophical debates with bearded men who looked far more like him than his fellow politicians in Rome. “You really are a Greekling,” she’d teased him, and he’d released a rare rueful laugh.

  They’d planned to go on to Sparta, Corinth, Thessaly… but Plotina had written with news of some crisis back in Rome that required Dear Publius’s immediate attention, and that had been that.

  Sabina banished the thought, waving Titus to a couch. “Sit down; tell me everything. We’ll have ourselves a good chat, if it’s the last one before you leave. How long does your stint in Germania last?”

  “A year.” He managed to sit, his stiff new armor creaking.

  “A year?” Sabina made a face. “Who’s going to take me to the theatre now when Hadrian’s busy working?”

  “I think you’ll be able to find another escort.”

  “Nobody who tells me my eyes are cerulean when they’re plain ordinary blue. You have to write me from Germania, tell me if the tribesmen really cook Romans over a bonfire they way they did in Emperor Augustus’s day—”

  “I think I’m going back to the blue dress.” Faustina’s voice came from the door. “Red is not my color at all.”

  Sabina took care not to laugh as her little sister paraded in for their inspection. The hitched-up red stola was already slipping down around Faustina’s feet, gold bracelets hung like shackles on her wrists, and she’d clearly gotten into Sabina’s rouge pots.

  “I think you look very fine indeed,” Titus said gravely.

  “I look all washed out and diseased,” Faustina said, but gave him a grin that wrinkled her little nose. “Hello, Titus.”

  “Faustina’s going to marry Gaius Rupilius,” Sabina explained. “I thought I’d let her try on my dresses, since she’s going to be needing grown-up gowns very soon.”

  “He won’t marry me if I don’t look pretty in red.” Faustina plucked at her skirt. “All brides wear red.”

  “Try a rosier red.” Titus rested his still-bony elbows on his still-bony knees. “With those pink cheeks, you’ll be prettier than any bride alive.”

  “As pretty as Sabina?”

  “Now, I don’t know about that.” Titus rose, his new boots squeaking, and crossed the tiles to Faustina. He took her hand and raised it high, twirling her in a circle and giving her his most thoughtful frown. He had become a great favorite, not just with Sabina but with all her family—Sabina could hardly visit home anymore without finding Titus there: unashamedly begging Calpurnia for a taste of her fresh-baked bread, arguing books with Sabina’s father, romping with the boys in the garden… “You really should have married him,” Calpurnia had scolded Sabina.

  “I’ll stick with the husband I’ve got, thank you.”

  Titus was still twirling Faustina under his arm. “It’s true your big sister is very pretty, Annia Galeria Faustina,” he said, judicious. “I don’t think you’re going to be pretty when you grow up, though.”

  Faustina stopped twirling. “I’m not?”

  “No. You are going to be a true, genuine, undoubted, and undisputed beauty.” Titus bowed, kissing the plump little hand. “Helen of Troy had forty suitors, but you should beat her easily. Young Gaius Rupilius will have to fight off the other men lining up for your hand.”

  Faustina danced over to the still pool of water in the center of the atrium, bending over to survey her own reflection. “You know,” she said as she straightened, “I think you’re right!”

  “She’ll miss you when you go north to Germania,” Sabina told Titus as her little sister dashed upstairs; a little blond whirlwind leaving a trail of gilded sandals, silver belts, and the occasional pearl earring in her wake. “All of us will miss you. My father thinks very highly of you.”

  “Goodness, why? I’m such a dullard.” Titus picked up his helmet. “I should be going.”

  “You can’t stay? I want to tell you lots of horror stories about my father’s time as a tribune. Like the night when the centurions froze his only toga into a solid block of ice—”

  “Tempting,” said Titus. “But I’ve still got to creak over to the Forum and see about my travel arrangements.”

  “Or the time a hawk swooped down and stripped the feather crest off his helmet,” Sabina added brightly. “That’s a good story.”

  “You are not being encouraging.”

  “Or my older brother Paulinus; he had some stories from his tribune days.
Like the time he got the maps mixed up and marched a whole cohort sixteen miles in the wrong direction…”

  “I’m leaving now!”

  “Cheer up.” Sabina stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

  TITUS

  It was.

  “Any advice?” Titus asked his father.

  His father stared back. Sympathetic, Titus thought. But unfortunately still just marble. A small hand-sized bust his grandfather had pressed into his pack the day he left to join the Tenth Fidelis. “To keep you on the right path, boy. You’ll do well as long as you remember your father and obey your legate.”

  “Anything else?” Titus had asked hopefully.

  “Try not to pick up the pox from any German whores.”

  Titus rested his chin on his folded arms. Tribunes had their own quarters, as barren or as luxurious as their private allowances would supply, but he wouldn’t have minded sharing. At least it would have given him someone to talk to besides a bust. “‘Obey my legate,’” he told his father. “Not very useful advice. The legate doesn’t even know my name. I haven’t done a thing since I got here but watch clerks file records, and scrape the mud off my boots.”

  The trouble, Titus decided, was that tribunes as a whole were utterly useless. The legionaries, now, those stamping swearing creatures with their swagger and their scars and their rough stubbled faces, they were frankly intimidating but undoubtedly useful. There didn’t seem to be anything they couldn’t do, from fighting endless drills to marching endless miles to building endless additions on their crude German fort. Then there were the bustling clerks and quartermasters who apparently found it no strain at all to maintain, in the middle of a dank German forest, a camp large enough to hold three legions at once—useful fellows, no doubt about that. And then there were the centurions, mostly ex-legionaries risen from the ranks, even tougher and more terrifying than the men they commanded, and the prefect of the camp, who was built like a mountain and seemed to know all five thousand or more men in the legion by name, and then there was the legate who did a great deal of frowning and stamping and ordering about. But the tribunes?