Empress of the Seven Hills

by Kate Quinn

  PLOTINA

  The House of the Vestal Virgins had been taken over by little girls. Hopping with excitement or round-eyed with awe, they clustered about the long pillared atrium with its tranquil pools and double lane of statues, the bolder girls making cautious forays toward the five white-robed priestesses surveying the scene, the shyer ones clinging to their mothers’ skirts. But Plotina had no eye for the children.

  “My dear, what a surprise!” She made a deep curtsy to the only woman in Rome who deserved her reverences. “I had no idea you were coming to see the new Vestal selected.”

  “One of my sister’s many granddaughters is a candidate this year.” Domitia Longina, Emperor Domitian’s widow and former Empress of Rome, raised Plotina from her curtsy. “I came to support her.”

  “Always a pleasure to see you, of course.” Plotina put an arm through her predecessor’s, and their respective pairs of Praetorians fell to a tactful distance behind them. The former Empress rarely came to Rome these days—after Emperor Domitian’s unfortunate assassination, she had retired to a private villa in Baiae, and made very few public appearances. “I had been planning to call upon you soon,” Plotina said. In fact, there was a matter Plotina dearly wished to discuss with her predecessor—and now, the opportunity had dropped itself in her lap. Doubtless Juno arranged it just for me, Plotina thought. I must remind myself to have a cow sacrificed in thanks.

  A little girl in a rose-colored smock ran up with a nosegay of violets and larkspur, looking confused about which Empress to give it to. Plotina made a demurring gesture, and the former Empress took it with a gracious nod. A tall woman, though not as tall as Plotina, with a calm, carved face and iron gray hair knotted demurely beneath a simple veil. She wore a plain pale-blue gown topped by a white wool palla, and not a jewel to be seen anywhere. A perfect picture of modesty, dignity, simplicity: Plotina had taken care to model herself in the same mold when she took the former Empress’s place.

  “Which one is your candidate for sixth Vestal?” she asked as they resumed their slow stroll along the reflecting pool. “Your great-niece, you said?”

  “Little Drusilla Cornelia.” The former Empress nodded to a blue-gowned little girl holding hands with a beaming grandmother from whom she had clearly inherited her deep dimples. “I’m not certain I want her to win—a thirty-year vow of chastity is something I hesitate to wish on a nine-year-old girl—but no doubt it’s an honor to be considered.”

  “The new candidates are most carefully selected when a Vestal retires,” Plotina assured her. “I attended to it myself this year, with the Emperor already gone to Germania. The Vestals, well, I don’t need to tell you the importance of picking a girl of unblemished moral character.” The six Vestal Virgins guarded Rome’s eternal hearth, after all. Rome’s morality, in a sense. “Not just any loose-kneed little giggler can fulfill such a task.”

  “I don’t know about that. The best Vestal priestess I ever knew had a delightful giggle. And she wasn’t a virgin at all.”

  Plotina blinked. A joke? But the former Empress’s face was calm, pensive. “My dear—may I call you Domitia?”

  “I don’t go by that name anymore. Domitian conferred it on me; he fancied having a wife named after himself. Now he’s gone, I find I prefer the name I was born with.”

  Impossible to read anything from her even voice. Certainly the former Empress always spoke respectfully in public of her dead husband, but one always heard whispers… the marriage had begun with a most scandalous elopement (while she had still been married to another man, no less!), and had not proceeded smoothly. Rumors of lovers, a divorce after a quarrel and then a speedy remarriage… and the rumor that would not die, the rumor that Emperor Domitian’s assassination had been hatched, planned, masterminded, and executed by his wife. The tall woman who now stood at Plotina’s side, sniffing at a rosebush.

  Absurd, of course. Plotina of all people knew how people liked to tell tales about women in their position. Jealousy, not only of rank but of innate moral superiority. She had always discounted the rumors.

  Though she did wonder why the former Empress never wore black for the husband she claimed to mourn.

  “Marcella Longina of the Cornelii, I believe, is the name you were born under?” Plotina asked brightly. “I can see why you prefer it. Fewer painful memories.”

  Former Empress Marcella gave a curved smile. “Something like that.”

  The five Vestal Virgins were trying to corral the little girls now, herding them toward the temple. Chattering mothers and proud fathers followed in their wake, but Plotina put a hand to her predecessor’s elbow as she turned to follow. “Perhaps I might speak with you, my dear Marcella? There is a matter very close to my heart…”

  “Certainly.” They lingered by a statue of some long-dead Vestal, doubled in white perfection in the surface of the pool below.

  How to put it? Plotina wondered. Perhaps, with a woman she could truly call her equal, it was best to be blunt. After all, Marcella Longina had been the mistress of Rome too once, Empress of the seven hills, another sister to Juno in the heavens. Of course she would understand. “You know my husband’s ward, Publius Aelius Hadrian?”

  “Yes, a fine young man. He was kind enough to dedicate some poetry to me once. Amusing little verses, though I think he was miffed when I said so. A young man’s pride bruises so easily.”

  “I had the raising of him,” Plotina said modestly, “and I’m very proud of his achievements—for far more than poetry. Did you know he’s been given a legion in Germania? I expect he’ll cover himself with glory against those wretched Dacians. Naturally I hope to see him rise.”

  “Naturally.” Empress Marcella began to walk again, her profile calm and regal against the pillars. Plotina tucked a confiding hand through her elbow and lowered her voice, though the chamber was now quite empty. Just two women—empresses, sisters, goddesses—having a little chat.

  “It’s a matter of the succession. Trajan refuses to name an heir; says it’s morbid while he’s in such good health. He won’t hear any advice on the matter. You know what Emperors can be like.” A little martyred sigh. “But I worry. For Rome, you know. I want to see the Empire in good hands. And there are none better than my dear Publius.”

  She waited for agreement. Empress Marcella raised her eyebrows.

  Plotina pressed on. “I brought him into the Imperial family by marrying him to Vibia Sabina. You’d think that would do the trick—it’s not just family ties; Trajan thinks the world of her father. Marcus Norbanus, one of the most moral men in Rome—”

  “Most of the time, anyway,” Marcella murmured.

  “—I thought that would be enough, you see. Enough for Trajan to give Dear Publius his due. But it wasn’t. So now I wonder…” Plotina gave a little laugh, feeling uncharacteristically giddy. “Forgive me, I hardly know how to put it. What I mean is, how much can one help? A woman in my position, I mean. I know my Publius is best for Rome; I simply assumed everyone else would know it too once I drew him into the fold. But now I find people still need a little—push. How much can one push? A wife must keep out of such things, but an empress must also look after the empire’s best interests.” The question had gnawed on her for quite some time. Wife or empress? Empress or wife? “Which comes first?”

  Plotina tugged her predecessor to a halt, feeling quite breathless. “You had a hand in seeing your husband become Emperor of Rome, surely. How much of a hand? I model myself on your example in all things, my dear Marcella, so I would model myself in this as well. How much can I do for my Publius?”

  Empress Marcella looked her over with a long cool stare. “More scheming empresses,” she said at last. “Marvelous.”

  “Hardly scheming,” Plotina smiled. “I merely wish to know if one should… help. Assist. Under the circumstances, which seem very—”

  “Since you seem to want my advice, here it is,” Marcella interrupted. “No scheming. No plotting. No kingmaking.”

  “
You don’t need to put it like that,” Plotina said, nettled. “It’s for the good of Rome.”

  “Fortuna save me, a moralist,” the former Empress muttered, giving a shake of her veiled head. “At least in my day, I never pretended I was scheming for anyone’s benefit but my own. I didn’t want to save Rome; I wanted to be a kingmaker. And for all your fine words, so do you.”

  “I do not—”

  “Don’t try to outscheme a schemer, my dear.” Marcella patted her successor’s cheek. “I’ve been at this longer than you, and far more effectively. My schemes landed more than one Emperor in his grave, but they also nearly landed me in mine. Now that I’m old, I’ve given up kingmaking. I advise you to do the same, before you even begin, and let your Publius sink or swim on his own.”

  “I only asked—” Plotina felt herself floundering. Me, floundering! She never floundered. “That is—”

  “I don’t wish to know.” Empress Marcella held up a hand. “These days I confine myself to the politics of the past rather than the present. I’m writing a history of the Republic, and the only scheming I concern myself with is on the page and at least a hundred years concluded. Give my regrets to the Chief Vestal; I don’t believe I will stay for the selection after all.”

  She turned and glided away unhurriedly from the sunny pillared atrium to the round unadorned room that was the Temple of Vesta. Plotina could only hasten after, swallowing a host of hot words. A trip to visit the statue of Juno was going to be necessary today, but not for sacrificial thanks—for commiseration. Not a true daughter to you, Juno, oh no. How you must have suffered under Domitian’s reign, without a true empress to guide. Those rumors are true, aren’t they—that she slept with actors and gladiators, that she had her own husband murdered. I am your only true sister, your only equal. Schemer indeed!

  Plotina could see it clearly now. How foolish she had been, to ask for guidance from such a woman. Did she not have a conscience of her own? Didn’t she know what was best for Rome? For Trajan? For Dear Publius?

  Empress, perhaps, was the title that must come before wife. If it was her duty to help Trajan see clear to the right path, then she must help him. And Dear Publius too.

  The Chief Vestal called for quiet just as former Empress Marcella reached the cluster of her family. Plotina heard her voice very clearly, cool and faintly amused as she spoke to her sister: “Cornelia, perhaps we should take your granddaughter home. Somehow I don’t think she’ll be selected today.”

  CHAPTER 11

  VIX

  “Isn’t he splendid?” I beamed. “Isn’t he?”

  “That’s the Emperor?” Demetra had refused to speak to me all morning, but the sight of the Emperor of Rome riding through the streets right before her eyes had unlocked her pretty mouth from its stubborn silence. “He looks like a god!” she breathed.

  “He is a god.”

  “I think I agree,” Titus echoed, a skinny pillar standing on Demetra’s other side. He wore his toga, for which he ditched his tribune armor whenever possible, and somehow even in all this crush the immaculate folds were unwrinkled. “There’s no one quite like Emperor Trajan, is there?”

  Our Emperor rode through the streets of Moguntiacum in a red cloak and full armor, vigorous and impatient on his black horse, waving and calling out to the crowd as they screamed for him. He could have been a god… or a man on holiday… or simply an emperor. An emperor the way an emperor was supposed to be. “I cut his arm open in a fight once,” I said reminiscently. “He’s probably still got the scar.”

  “You shouldn’t tell lies,” Demetra chided.

  “I’m not lying! It was a good fight—if he’d had a shield he might have pinned me, but—” A legionary jostled me in the crowd, swearing, and I swung Demetra’s little boy up to my shoulders to keep him out of the crush. He yelled, grabbing double handfuls of my hair in his excitement as the Emperor’s Praetorian guards began filing past in immaculate red-and-gold rows.

  “Maybe there won’t be war now.” Demetra shaded her eyes with her hand, peering over the packed heads before her. “Now the Emperor’s here, maybe he’ll make peace?”

  “You might hope for that,” Titus told her, “and so do I. But unfortunately, I think we’re the only ones. No one else from the Emperor on down wants peace.”

  “Me included.” I craned for a last view of Trajan’s red cloak, vanishing now around a bend in the road and toward the fort. Normally I’d have received him in tight rows with the rest of the Tenth, but there were far too many legions to array us all together, so half of us had been released to welcome the Emperor in the crowd. The poor bastards at stiff attention in their ranks outside the fort must be finding it hard to keep discipline—I could hear the banging of spear hafts against shields from a mile distant. Suddenly I felt an itch to be back among them, cheering myself hoarse among the smells of iron and sweat.

  “Sojers!” Demetra’s little boy yelled, hanging on to my ears, and I yowled at him. Swinging him down, I made horrible faces until he giggled. “At least someone thinks I’m funny,” I said pointedly.

  Demetra looked at the ground, lips tightening. Titus looked back and forth between us.

  “It’s supposed to be a celebration today.” I swung her son upsidedown, holding him by his heels as he gurgled and shrieked. The Praetorians had passed now, giving way to the wagons, the Imperial freedmen, the secretaries and stewards, the rest of the entourage that traveled wherever an emperor led. The crowd’s cheering had mostly died off, though I could hear the banging of javelins against shields increasing, and the shouts mounting as well. The crowd about me had slowed to cheerful conversation, the passing of wineskins, the waving of pennants, and the business of making the day into a holiday. “It’s a holiday, so will you stop sulking?”

  “Sulking?” Demetra’s voice wound up into a squeak. “If you think I’m sulking—”

  “So,” Titus interrupted brightly. “I thought you’d have sentry duty today, Slight. How did you get out of it?”

  “Luck. Simon and Boil got stuck instead, poor bastards.” I blinked my thanks at Titus for the interruption; he blinked back and turned to Demetra.

  “Allow me to take your arm, can’t have you crushed in this crowd—”

  Demetra gave a shy bob of her head. Titus came to dinner often enough that she no longer dropped to her knees at the sight of him, but she still tended to get stiff and self-conscious in his presence.

  “I don’t see how you can say you’re friends with an officer,” she’d said to me, awestruck and a little disapproving. “Like should keep to like.”

  “According to who?” I’d shot back.

  “Have you heard the news?” Titus continued. “It’s just come from the principia, about the new legate—hadn’t you better put him right side up, Vix?”

  “The legate? Oh.” I realized I was still holding Demetra’s boy upsidedown by the ankles and hastily swung him back up before his face turned purple. Demetra took him, still jutting her chin at me, but the boy just grinned. A handsome little scrap, honey-haired and dark-eyed like his mother. “What about the legate?” I pressed. “Have we got a new one?”

  “Just come from Rome.” Titus beamed as if he’d brought the Legate all the way north just for my approval. “One of the Imperial cousins, at least by marriage.”

  “Just what we need,” I grunted, applying my shoulder to the crush. Titus courteously cleared a path for Demetra as we fought our way out of the crush around the bridge and back toward the town’s forum. “Another patrician sprat.”

  “I’m a patrician sprat,” Titus protested. “We’re not all bad.”

  “I still wouldn’t want you leading my legion! The worst tribune in all Germania—”

  “I’m sure you’d make a lovely legate, sir,” Demetra said, anxious. “Vix didn’t mean that.”

  “I did too! Who wants a sprig in a toga at the head of a legion? We need one of those rawhide commanders who worked their way up from centurion—”

>   “Someone like you? I’ll put your name forward, Vix, but you might be a little far down the chain.”

  “Not so far down. I’ll make centurion, then I’ll make chief centurion, then prefect of the camp, then I get my own legion.” We broke out into the forum, and I paused to buy a stick of savory roasted meat off a vendor. “Couldn’t be simpler.”

  “Only those of, ah, senatorial class are appointed as legates,” Titus pointed out.

  “Then I guess I’ll be the first exception.”

  “Not if you don’t make optio first,” Demetra snapped. “And you won’t, not the way they all hate you—”

  “Who wants to be an optio?” I bit a chunk of spiced meat off the skewer. “Gutless little weasels.”

  “Then you’d better make some friends who can bump you straight up to centurion without any intervening stops at optio,” Titus advised. “Meet me at the principia this evening, and we’ll circulate. The Emperor’s having a dinner party to meet his officers—we won’t get into that, but there’s bound to be plenty of important people drifting about. If you don’t look too grubby, I can introduce you to a few of them.”

  “It could be a great thing for you,” Demetra insisted. “I don’t see what you have against making optio. We could use the money. Especially this fall…”

  “Not that again. I told you.”

  Demetra’s face darkened, and she jerked her arm out of my hand. She snatched up her squirming son and began elbowing her way through the crowd again.

  “Oh, hell,” I scowled.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Titus blinked.

  “The silly cow got pregnant.” I tossed away the greasy meat skewer, scrubbing my hands together.

  “Congratulations,” Titus said at once.

  “For what?”

  “It’s the traditional response, Slight. And surely it’s an occasion for happiness? She’s a beautiful girl, she’s respectably born, and she cooks like a goddess. Actually I doubt goddesses cook at all, so she’s better than a goddess. You’re going to marry her, I presume?”