Empress of the Seven Hills

by Kate Quinn

  “I can hardly say the same for your wife. Did she use her sunshade once, marching through Dacia? Brown as that German slut who just left—”

  “My dear lady.” Hadrian’s voice had a note of humorous warning as he pinched a crisp fold of his tunic into better alignment. “I know you disapprove of Sabina. But I do not, and surely that is what matters.”

  “Disapprove,” Plotina sniffed. There was very little in Moguntiacum of which she approved. The town was dirty, the slaves insolent, and these quarters she had been assigned barely adequate for decent living. Rough walls, garishly colored cushions on the couches, and those German lamps that smoked day and night. She had brought her own modest luxuries—the polished steel mirror at her table, her little writing desk where she attended so much Imperial business; the appurtenances expected and due one of her position. But oh, how glad she would be to return to Rome! There was nothing about Moguntiacum that the Empress of Rome found pleasing.

  Least of all the rumors she had uncovered—all right, the rumors she had made sure she uncovered—about Dear Publius’s little wife.

  “So Vibia Sabina invited herself along on the campaign,” Dear Publius was saying. Lovely to see him in a dinner synthesis for once, handsome and formal and bearded, rather than the ever-present breastplate. Plotina sometimes thought herself doomed to spend her whole life surrounded by men in armor. “I admit I was displeased at the outset, but she did not inconvenience me. She may even have assisted me. She was useful in one or two matters—a problem with the supply officers she brought to the Emperor’s attention, and another matter with my senior medicus. Trajan grew very fond of having her at his dinner table, and therefore me as well. And there is no doubt she enjoyed herself on the march.”

  “Yes,” Plotina said significantly. “I hear she did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Plotina raised her eyebrows, taking her time as she put on her amethyst earrings. Hadrian wandered up behind her, surveying his own reflection in her polished steel mirror.

  “So good to have a proper barber again,” he murmured, fingering his beard. “One hates the feeling of stubble growing halfway down one’s neck, but Trajan lets these things slide on campaign, and it seems best to follow his example… I suppose you mean, my dear Plotina, that my wife took a lover during the campaign?”

  “I’m surprised to hear you say it so lightly.”

  Hadrian shrugged. “A wife can call her bed her own, as far as I am concerned, so long as she is discreet.”

  “I raised you to think better than that,” Plotina said tartly. “But we will leave that matter for the moment. Discretion is all, you say? I don’t believe Vibia Sabina was discreet. I have heard disturbing rumors from slaves, from the legion’s aides, even from junior officers. The girl spent her evenings… well, I don’t like to say…”

  “I think you had better not.” Hadrian glanced at the slave standing with a flagon of barley water in one corner, the other slave folding Plotina’s silks into their casket.

  Plotina did not dismiss the slaves. She wanted them to spread a few whispers around. Not that one liked to see rumors circulate about a member of the Imperial family, but it was time to strip a little gleam off that adventurousness of Sabina’s that Hadrian found so charming.

  Trajan too. It was Dear Publius he should be finding charming, not Sabina.

  “Common soldiers,” Plotina said regretfully. “Legionaries. Those were Sabina’s… companions… during the march.”

  Hadrian’s chin jerked. “She has always had a taste for making friends in low places, but—”

  “More than friends this time, dear boy. I hate to be the bearer of bad news—” Not precisely true; oh, well. Plotina bent her head to twist a ring into place, hiding her satisfaction. “Your wife was seen once or twice looking very intimate with common legionaries. Rough men, of the lowest sort. I need hardly remind you what people would think if that got around Rome.”

  Dear Publius stood quite still, turning his seal ring around and around his finger.

  “I know how fond you are of your wife.” Plotina gave a final comprehensive glance into her mirror, pleased at the severe vision in Imperial purple who gazed back. Juno herself would approve. “But perhaps it’s time you brought little Sabina to heel?”

  “You look very well.” Hadrian offered his arm, expressionless. “Shall we go in to the banquet?”

  VIX

  “Cheer up,” Titus implored as he dragged me toward the spill of lights and noise and music. “Don’t you want to enjoy the occasion? It’s your first Imperial banquet!”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “There was another banquet once where I tried to kill the Emperor.”

  Titus blinked as we joined the line of guests waiting to be admitted. “You tried to kill Trajan?”

  “Hell’s gates, no. Another Emperor. Crazy as a loon.”

  “We’ve had a few of those. Are you making up stories again?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “I can never tell when you’re joking. Don’t tug at that synthesis.”

  “It’s too small.” I yanked at the fine white folds of the dinner tunic he’d lent me.

  “Well, it’s the best I could do at short notice. Otherwise you’d have had to show up naked under that lion skin.”

  “Bet that would make all these fine ladies sit up.”

  The Imperial steward descended on us then, recognizing Titus’s name and rank, offering me a blander glance, and ushered us through. The finest villa in Mog wasn’t much compared to the ones I’d seen in Rome, but it had been commandeered for the Empress and her entourage when they arrived—and now it hosted the Emperor’s victory celebration. The floors might be crude stone instead of supple mosaics and the dining couches might be soldered metal instead of carved silver, but the Emperor stood in the center drinking and roaring campaign stories with his officers, and his happiness had spilled over everything and turned it to pure gold. The music was bright and the laughter from all those guests crowded around him was brighter, but everything looked off-color to my eyes. I could have taken Demetra to this, and she’d have put all these powdered patrician beauties to shame. I grabbed a goblet of wine from a pretty little half-naked cup-bearer who beamed at me as if she’d marched to defeat the Dacians too—but I couldn’t drink. There was a bubble in my throat, hard and unyielding.

  “What?” Titus asked me. “You look grim all over again.”

  Demetra’s dead, I nearly told him. My child with her. But I didn’t. He’d have covered me with his warm sympathy, thinking that was why I couldn’t enjoy the banquet, and I couldn’t have borne it. He’d have thought I was grieving, and I couldn’t have taken credit for that. The bubble in my throat that wouldn’t burst?

  It was… relief.

  No child. No wife. Nothing to weigh me down or drain my purse or stop me from following my stars. Poor, dull, beautiful Demetra was dead, my child was dead, and what did I feel? Some sadness… but mostly a twisted, shamed relief.

  What a bastard I was. No wonder Sabina hadn’t wanted to stay with me.

  I’d seen her at once, as soon as I entered the room, but I didn’t look at her. I forced my wine down and held out my goblet to another cup-bearer, who promptly filled it. A good wine, far better than the sour posca I’d had to drink on campaign, but who cared? “Let’s get drunk.”

  “Better bow first to your hostess,” Titus advised, steering me toward the little dais where the Imperial couches had been laid. “Empress Plotina does not approve of drunkenness. One wonders if she approves of anything, to be honest.”

  We pushed through the happy throng, and then Titus made a graceful speech of thanks to the Empress and I got away with jerking my head in a bow as the ladies stared at me in idle curiosity. Trajan’s wife in her severe purple stola, a clutch of legates’ wives—and Sabina, youngest of the women there, watching the crowd of guests as if she’d rather be whooping it up with the soldiers than sitting among all the disapproving
old women who reclined so stiffly and properly on their couches. Maybe she’d gotten a taste for low fun in the time she’d marched with the Tenth. Her eyes drifted to me as Titus made his graceful introduction, and for a moment I just wanted to flee. But I hadn’t fled the fucking Dacians and I wasn’t going to flee any well-born whore, so I clamped my jaw tight and stared back at her as rudely as I knew how. No more flamboyant yellow like she’d worn at the parade—the Empress had clearly gotten hold of her and laced her into a white dress with a high draped neck. But she still didn’t look right in it, no more right than I looked stuffed into Titus’s synthesis. Her skin had gone dark gold from all the marching under Dacia’s summer sun, and her slim arms were brown and exotic against the prim white. I remembered all that golden skin spread out on my bedroll, and tasted hatred sour and metallic in my mouth. Probably just like the taste in the mouth of Trajan’s immaculate Empress, who was clearly thinking that a stuffy white dress and a stuffy linen synthesis hadn’t succeeded in changing either me or Sabina into anything she wanted at her dinner party.

  “Your loyal service is noted,” the Empress decreed with one of her judicial nods, and I took it for a cue and bolted. Not noticing, not noticing at all, the grin Sabina shot at me behind Plotina’s frown.

  “More wine,” I said instead, and looked around for the cup-bearer.

  “Not unless you promise you can keep your eyes off the legate’s wife.” Titus steered me behind an ivy-draped column, regarding me bluntly.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” I snapped, “but I told her this morning that I was done with her.”

  Titus raised his eyebrows. “Good,” he said at last, though his tone was peculiar. “I’d rather not see you dead and her exiled. Which could still happen, if the wrong person finds out what the two of you were up to this summer. Hadrian could kill you—adultery between a married woman and, if you will excuse me, a commoner is not taken lightly.”

  “I suppose you could hump her all day and get away with it?” I snarled. “You bloody aristocrats all stick together, don’t you?”

  “No, I couldn’t hump her all day, as you so colorfully put it, and I’ll tell you why. Because I served Hadrian for more than six months on that campaign, and I admire him. I wouldn’t dream of poaching the wife of a man I admired, no matter how much I wanted her. Not to mention the fact that he’s an odd cold fish who holds grudges. I wouldn’t want to cross him and neither should you, even if he wasn’t your legate.” Titus rolled his eyes. “Your legate’s wife—not one of your brighter ideas, Vercingetorix.”

  “Shut up.”

  His eyes danced. “I’ll bet she was the one who broke it off.”

  “You’re looking awfully pleased about all this,” I accused.

  “Yes, frankly. You got everything on this campaign, Vix—the glory, the eagle, the promotion, the Emperor’s favor. It’s a rather low feeling, but I can’t help a touch of satisfaction that you didn’t also end up getting the girl.”

  I thought of Demetra, and shoved the thought away. “What, are you jealous? I didn’t think you were the sort.”

  “I’m not jealous of the promotion and the glory, that’s for certain.” Titus surveyed me. “You already got wine all over my synthesis.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” my friend suggested. “Perhaps we should go get drunk? I confess I’ve never been completely swacked before. Surely tonight’s the occasion for it. ‘Seize the night; trust as little as possible in tomorrow,’ as Horace would say.”

  “I’ll get swacked, all right,” I promised. “But I’m staying right here. She’s not going to run me out of any good party.”

  “Oh, good gods be damned,” I heard Titus swear as I lurched out into the crowd.

  There was a lot of wine after that, and I wasn’t the only one swilling it down. It was a party I could have enjoyed, if I’d been in the mood to enjoy anything. The Emperor got drunk, as cheerfully as he did everything else, and at one point he saw me and clapped me on the shoulder and told the whole story of my fight with Decebalus to a rapt audience while I stood shifting from foot to foot. Half a dozen of his generals congratulated me after that, some of them men as rough spoken as I was, and at any other time I’d have hung on their every word. The Emperor’s Praetorian Prefect even gave me a nod of approval and I should have been flushing with pride because he was everything I wanted to be—a blunt-spoken soldier who had risen through the ranks and was now Trajan’s right-hand man. Instead I just grunted at him, and then grabbed another cup-bearer and told him that he’d better be within arm’s reach of me all night or I’d pound his nose through the back of his head.

  “Don’t you want to leave now?” Titus asked hopefully.

  “No.”

  Slaves began trooping in with heaped platters—vast joints of roast ox, stuffed boar, goose cooked in its plumage. The Empress gave a signal for the guests to take their places at the dining couches that had been arrayed in graceful semicircles about the room, but nobody was paying any attention. The Emperor just grabbed a wing of roast goose from the nearest platter going past, waving it to illustrate some story he was telling about the siege of Old Sarm, and the rest of the guests dragged the couches out of their semicircles and flopped on them any which way as they grabbed food from the passing platters. The Empress gave a patient sigh and withdrew as soon as the troupe of half-naked dancers came in. Trajan waved her out cheerfully and then grabbed the tallest of the male dancers to sit beside him.

  My head was whirling, and the room’s heat stifled me. I yanked the wine flagon away from the startled cup-bearer and stumbled out of the noisy hall to the atrium. Torches had been lit in brackets around the walls but they’d mostly guttered out, and somehow I managed to fall in the little tiled pool at the atrium’s center. “Hell’s gates!”

  I was wet head to toe, but I’d managed to save the wine flagon. Still sitting six inches deep in water, I tilted my head back and took a long drink. The stars sparkled coldly overhead through the open roof. My stars—or so I’d thought. Where were they leading me now?

  “Do you realize you’re sitting in a pool of water, Vix?”

  “Never occurred to me.” I drank again, blocking out the image of the figure in white approaching from the other end of the atrium.

  Moonlight splashed across her face from the open roof. “Do you need a hand up?”

  “Maybe I like it in here.” I splashed a wave of water at her, wetting her white hem.

  “Gods,” she sighed, “but you’re a child sometimes.”

  “I wasn’t a child when I was screwing you.” Tilting my head up at her.

  “Go home, Vix. You’re drunk.”

  “And you’re a bitch.”

  She turned away, back toward the half-open doors where music and rowdy shouts eddied through. My hand shot out, seizing the hem of her dress, halting her.

  “You said this morning you didn’t want to follow my stars, Lady. Fair enough. But at least I’ve got stars. What have you got? Following whatever looks interesting, as long as it’s forbidden? There’s a word for that, you know.” I bared my teeth up at her in something that might have been a smile. “They call it slumming.”

  With the moonlight falling over her white dress she looked like another marble column. “They should call it ‘duty,’ Vix. I’m not as free as you seem to think I am. Maybe I would rather stay with you; spend my life ‘slumming,’ as you call it. But I still have a duty to others. To Hadrian, who’s always been fair to me. To Rome, for giving me a good life. To the world—because if I get to spend my life seeing it, I should spend my life improving it too, in whatever way I can. I push my limits as far as I can, get away with as much adventure as I dare, but there’s still always duty waiting.” She looked at me, level. “When did you ever feel a duty to anything but yourself?”

  “I have a duty to Trajan,” I shot back. “I owe everything to him—he’ll be the next Alexander, he’ll conquer the world, and it’s my d
uty to help him do it.”

  “That’s rot, Vix.” Sabina’s voice was tart. “You’re in this for the adventure, and don’t try to pretend otherwise. If your duty to Trajan meant sitting behind a desk day after day, you’d be a lot less keen to serve him. Real duty means giving up the things you want. I’ve had to walk away from you twice, but you don’t hear me whining about it.”

  “You’re all about patrician duty now, are you?” I spat. “Where was that the last few months you spent in my bed?”

  “I didn’t hear you complaining, Vix. Not as long as you got what you wanted.”

  “What about the next time you want it?” I rose, dripping all over but not feeling the cold at all. I was never cold in the middle of a fight. “What happens the next time you get the itch you can’t scratch? It won’t be me scratching it. I might be a stupid barbarian, but even stupid barbarians know better than to get burned three times.”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid at all.” Her eyes had gone cool as those of a marble statue, and I felt a flick of savage satisfaction that I’d finally cracked that serene shell. “You’re clever enough to keep your options open. Tell me, did your girl take you back—the girl you kept here in town, the one Titus hinted about? You were quite careful not to tell me about her. Making sure you had something to come home to, in case I didn’t work out?”

  “She’s beautiful,” I spat, forgetting for a moment that she was also dead. “She makes you look like week-old fruit at a village market.”

  “Not beautiful enough to keep you faithful, apparently. Who says I’d hold you any longer? Are you angry I left, Vix? Or are you just angry because I left first?”

  I picked up Sabina and dropped her in the pool. Water slopped over the tiled edges, splashing her shoulders, and her white skirts went floating about her wet knees as she stared up at me.

  “Better enjoy it,” I said. “That’s the last time I ever get you wet.”

  I turned and left her there, stamping back into the noise and music of the banquet, clawing my wet hair back. The bath and the fight had left me stone-cold sober again. A drunken tribune bumped me, staggering past, and I shoved him into a statue of a bathing nymph. The nymph crashed over, and the tribune hiccupped at me happily. Everyone looked happy. The Emperor lay sprawled on a couch with his arm around an adoring slave, pounding his free hand against his knee in time with the music. The lute players banged cheerfully at their instruments, sawing out filthy songs as half the soldiers roared along with the choruses and the other half lay passed out among the couch cushions. Even that bastard Hadrian looked as if he were enjoying himself as he watched a team of boy acrobats tumbling across the mosaics—though the enjoyment disappeared quickly enough as he looked at the door. He put down his wine cup and crossed the room quickly, brushing past me.