Empress of the Seven Hills

by Kate Quinn

  Vix had clearly done away with the subject of Hadrian and Sabina and was looking around the airy atrium again with the sky showing black through the open roof and the fountain still trickling gently in the corner. “All this domesticity,” he complained. “Give me a tent and a bedroll any day.”

  “Really?” Titus regarded his friend. “I think you’re lying. You’ve got that look.”

  “What look?”

  “The look.” Titus saw that Ennia had her hands full lighting the lamps and rose to help her. It was full dark outside now, a noisy Roman night full of creaking cart wheels and yowling dogs and the occasional burst of passing laughter or patter of footsteps. Very different from Germania’s rustling trees and black silences—Titus remembered the suddenness of the contrast, when he’d first come back from the north. “You need a woman, Slight.”

  “Always,” Vix agreed. “You know any good whores here in Rome? The ones I knew years back are likely gone by now—”

  Ennia snorted into the lamps.

  “You don’t need a whore,” said Titus. “You need a wife.”

  “Legionaries can’t marry!”

  “Officers can, and you’re one step from centurion,” Titus pointed out. “Vercingetorix the cynical, a husband. Maybe a father too? You’ve had some practice, with that little sprat you adopted.”

  Titus had been the one to help when Vix turned up on his doorstep after the Dacian campaign with his Bithynian beauty’s little boy clinging to his shoulders. “Help me find someone to raise him?” Vix had pleaded. “Hell’s gates, I’m no one to raise a child!”

  “At least we agree on that,” Titus had said, and found a grocer in Mog willing (for a monthly allowance from Vix) to raise another child with his own three boys.

  “He seems happy there.” Vix reached for the bowl of fruit again when Titus asked about Demetra’s handsome little son. “I drop in now and then, make sure he’s cared for.”

  “See? Practice for when you have your own sons.”

  “Don’t want any. Or a wife. And who are you to be giving me marriage advice? You’re managing well enough on your own.” Vix watched the swing of Ennia’s hips as she retreated into the kitchen. “Or maybe not quite on your own…”

  “I’m too busy organizing the Emperor’s building projects to get married. I’ve got so much marble dust in my hair when I get home, no wife would put up with it.”

  “You helped with the triumphal column?” Vix asked eagerly. “I haven’t seen it yet—”

  “If you think the column’s impressive, wait till you see the public baths Trajan commissioned. The biggest you ever saw. He wants them done tomorrow, but I wager they’ll keep me busy for the next five years.”

  “Such a waste.” Vix fiddled restlessly with the hilt of the knife at his waist. “He should be conquering the world, not building bathhouses!”

  “I’m not certain I agree with you there, but Emperor Trajan might. One hears he’s considering an invasion of Parthia.”

  “Parthia?” That perked Vix up visibly. “Don’t suppose the Tenth will go. Damn, but I’d like to see Parthia. Brown women and hot skies—hot battles too, I imagine…”

  Vix and Titus conquered Parthia over another cup of wine, toasting imaginary victories. Halfway through a dreamy invasion of Babylon Vix began to yawn; by the sacking of Hatra he was fast asleep with his head on the table.

  “See?” Titus dragged a blanket out from the bedroom to throw over his friend. “You need a wife. Then she could do this for you, and not me.”

  But Vix was already snoring.

  SABINA

  Sabina couldn’t remember when she’d had to start timing her moments to be sure of catching her husband in a good mood. The only time a good mood seemed certain was right after he had killed something.

  “A good hunt?” she asked as he came into the triclinium, slapping a pair of bloody gloves against one hand. It was early still, the white marble walls on the triclinium stained pink through the east-facing windows.

  “A deer.” He moved as restlessly as the pair of hunting dogs weaving and growling about his feet, as if they were all three still smelling the morning mist, the fleeing prey, the spurting blood. “Only a doe, but one settles for what one can get.”

  “I didn’t think you liked settling for anything, Hadrian.”

  He gave a wintry flick of a smile, already reaching for the pile of scrolls and tablets that awaited him for the morning’s business. He’d washed before coming to the breakfast table; his toga was pleated into crisp folds along one shoulder, his beard was trimmed, his hands clean. Quite different from the man Sabina had watched from her window at dawn, steering his horse into the yard with a rough hand, splashed head to toe with blood and mud as his retainers trooped behind him with the deer’s carcass. No doubt Hadrian had dismounted his horse to cut the doe’s throat with his own hand. He preferred to finish off his kills up close.

  “We’ve already got more venison than we can eat,” Sabina said. As much hunting as he did, their slaves and tenants were awash in game. “I’ll have this one carted off to one of your clients as a gift.”

  “As you please.” Once the kill was done, Hadrian had no interest in what he’d bagged. “I won’t be back for dinner tonight. I dine with Senator Ruricus.”

  “How lovely for you.” Sabina gave a swift, teasing glance. “He has such pretty freedmen.”

  Another glance, considerably more wintry. When did I lose the ability to tease him? Sabina wondered. A few years ago such a comment would have won her a reluctant smile, or at most the faintly irritated flick of an eyebrow. Now, his voice could have frozen the barley water in her cup as he spoke. “I do not question your activities, madam.”

  “Actually, you question my activities frequently.” Another change, in recent years. Where did you go? Whom did you see? Why did you smile?

  “I don’t question your activities,” Hadrian returned. “Merely your discretion.” He rolled up the scroll with a snap and reached for another. Sabina sipped her barley water, watching him thoughtfully. The pink light on the walls had gone to gold; down in the street below she heard the creak of wheels as carts began their daily rumbling past.

  Hadrian glanced up again. “I wish you would not wear that.” He indicated her wrist, where she’d looped an oddly interlaced little charm of thin knotted rope.

  “I like it.”

  “It looks heathen.”

  “It is heathen.” Given to Sabina by a witch in Pannonia, in fact. She’d liked Pannonia. Vast forested plains, deep rushing rivers, tribesmen with unreadable eyes drinking the lethal local sabaea as if it were milk. A great many mysteries to be found in Pannonia—and a great deal of work to be done, no doubt about it. Sabina had wheedled, begged, and browbeaten the funds out of Hadrian to build a hospital in Vindobona; the foundations were just being laid when it came time to return to Rome. She’d been sorry to leave it for Hadrian’s tall narrow house on the Palatine Hill with its white marble walls and geometric friezes and silent slaves.

  “I bought a book yesterday,” she said. “The new verses from that poet everyone’s been talking about, Ammianus. I think you’ll hate his metaphors, but he does turn a pretty phrase.”

  Hadrian made rapid notes on a writing tablet. “I have no time for reading.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “I am consul now. I have many more important responsibilities.”

  “You always had time to read before, no matter what rank you held.”

  He did not answer, smoothing the wax on his tablet and starting again. He had a tiny splash of blood beneath his thumbnail, and Sabina wondered if the doe had looked up at him mutely as he reached down to cut her throat. When they had first married, Hadrian went to hunt perhaps once a week, tracking deer in his chariot. In Pannonia he had hunted for wolves every other day, maintaining an entire pack of ferocious Pannonian hunting hounds. Now he didn’t have time to read his beloved Greek poetry, but he hunted every day without fail�
� and without quite knowing why, Sabina had started getting up with the dawn to watch him return, thoughtfully regarding her husband’s blood-splashed, smiling face.

  “Has the Emperor said anything to you regarding Parthia?” Hadrian asked abruptly.

  “He means to go next year.” Sabina tucked a lock of hair back behind one ear. “He told me he’s still deciding which legions to bring.”

  “He didn’t tell me that,” Hadrian snapped.

  “I’m sure he’s getting round to it.”

  “Since you and he share so much conversation, you can tell him I want a legion to command. Preferably the Third Parthica.”

  “Why?” Sabina tilted her head. “I didn’t think you liked the idea of invading Parthia.”

  “I don’t,” Hadrian said. “It will be a waste of time and money. But it will put me in position to take over the governorship of Syria.”

  “Syria?” Sabina propped her chin on her hand. “That would be something to see. The mountains, the heat… and I’m longing to see Palmyra. You once told me Palmyra is called the Bride of the Desert, remember?”

  “I will not be taking you to Syria.” Hadrian made a note on a slate and set it aside. “Not unless you promise better behavior than you showed in Dacia and Pannonia. All that tramping about the countryside, getting your feet muddy and chatting up inappropriate people—you embarrassed me. The wife of a governor must behave with decorum.”

  Sabina set down her cup with something of a bang. “You used to like tramping around the countryside right along with me. Seeing things up close; seeing what could be done.”

  “A consul must behave with greater decorum. As must his wife. And Syria is far less backwater than Pannonia. Many more eyes will be on us.”

  “If we get there.” Sabina kept her voice even. “I suppose I can drop a word to Trajan about getting you a legion, if it means so much to you. But he may not listen to me. Lusius Quietus is pushing for the Third Parthica too, and he wants it badly.”

  “He also wants you badly.”

  “Does he?” Sabina felt her attention sharpening, her fingers stilling around the cup. A deer motionless in the shadows as the hunter approached.

  Hadrian did not look up from his slates. “Quietus could hardly keep his eyes off you at the Emperor’s last banquet.”

  “So?”

  “Perhaps you could do something for me there.”

  Sabina raised her eyebrows.

  “He’s a Berber,” Hadrian said, scanning his scrolls. “Berbers are hot-blooded. A word dropped in the ear over a pillow could bear fruit.”

  She sat still for a long moment after that.

  “Whoring out your wife,” Sabina said finally. “What would Empress Plotina say?”

  “She would be appalled, of course. But she is a wife of exceeding virtue. Since I don’t have one of those, I might as well use your other talents to my advantage.”

  “If I choose to be whored.”

  “You seem indiscriminate enough in other respects.” Disinterestedly. “What, isn’t a Berber exotic enough for you?”

  Sabina slid off the couch, handed her goblet to a slave, and walked out.

  “He didn’t!” Calpurnia’s eyes widened. “Oh, the pig. Didn’t I tell you not to marry him, Vibia Sabina?”

  “You did.” Sabina coiled her hair up off her neck, jabbing pins with more force than usual.

  “I never liked him.” Faustina couldn’t help sounding satisfied. “Did you slap his face? When he said that, I mean. I certainly would have slapped his face.”

  “No,” Sabina said briefly. “But it was a close thing.”

  She slipped the gown off her shoulders and walked ahead into the billowing steam of the caldarium. Her stepmother followed suit, and her little sister trailed behind more modestly wrapped in a towel.

  “Well?” Faustina pressed. “Tell us more!”

  “Not in front of your sister,” Calpurnia interjected. Sabina’s stepmother had grown comfortably plump from her string of babies, but her fair hair was still bright and her unlined mouth as quick to laugh as ever. “I don’t want to discourage Faustina from marriage altogether.”

  “I’m not discouraged,” Faustina said. “In fact, Sabina, you can tell Mother to let me get married now instead of making me wait another two years.”

  “Sixteen! Far too young. Sabina was nineteen when she married.”

  “But doing plenty before that,” Sabina agreed, thinking of Vix.

  “Were you really?” Faustina looked speculative: a tall girl now, with their father’s dark eyes and Calpurnia’s fair hair. A beauty too—after just a few years of absence, Sabina still had to adjust from the memory of a skinny little girl to this statuesque young Venus. Just yesterday she was trying on my dresses and praying she would grow as tall as me.

  “I can see you girls are going to gossip no matter what I have to say about it,” Calpurnia announced. “Try not to get yourselves too overheated. For myself, I think I’ll take a splash in the natatio pool.”

  Faustina pounced the minute her mother was out of earshot. “Tell me everything,” she begged. “Your husband is trying to whore you out to his friends—did I mention I never liked him? Now, tell me every detail.”

  “Aren’t you even a little bit shocked?”

  “Oh, tremendously. But can’t I still be curious? The most interesting things always happen to you, and nothing exciting ever happens to me.”

  “Having your husband try to whore you out is not exciting, Faustina!” Sabina looked at her little sister—little no longer, really, though she still wore the heart-shaped gold amulet of unmarried girls about her neck. That amulet would come off on the morning Faustina married. Maybe she should know, before that day, that there was more to husbands than a red veil and a few vows.

  “Hadrian worries me,” Sabina admitted, gazing through the billows of steam. At one end of the caldarium, a cluster of naked elderly matrons gossipped over cups of rose wine. At the other end, a pair of girls whispered about their lovers. More secrets got traded in the hot confidential steam of the bathhouse, Sabina thought, than anywhere else in Rome. “He’s changed.”

  “How?” Faustina lifted the damp blond curls off her neck.

  Such small things. Saying them out loud made them absurd. “He doesn’t talk to me anymore,” Sabina said slowly. “And all he used to want to do was read philosophy and sketch architectural designs and travel to Athens, but now he’s scheming to be governor of Syria. Empress Plotina has been pushing that kind of post on him for years, but now—now he’s letting her push him.”

  “Ambitious mothers.” Faustina nodded. “Mother warned me about them when I started getting suitors. Pick a husband without a mother, she told me.”

  “Empress Plotina isn’t even his mother.”

  “That makes it worse, doesn’t it?” Faustina sounded worldly. “A mother has to work with what she’s given birth to, but these childless women just pick out some young man they can drive around like a chariot. Don’t you get the feeling they’d really like to take lovers, but instead they just take protégés?”

  “When did you get so worldly-wise?”

  “Have I impressed you? Oh, good. I mean to be tremendously sophisticated and all-knowing, just as soon as I can manage it.” Faustina swung her feet, pleased. “What I want to know is—can Empress Plotina possibly be as well-behaved as she seems? Surely no one could manage to hold that pose for so long without falling off the pedestal once or twice.”

  “No sign of a fall yet,” Sabina said, regretful. “Certainly Plotina is very virtuous. So is Hadrian, now. She expects it of him.” Only now he hunted every day instead of once a week, and reproved his wife for being indecorous but set her to seduce his rivals…

  “I don’t really see your problem,” Faustina was saying decisively. “You don’t like Hadrian anymore? Divorce him. The Emperor’s so fond of you, he’d surely give permission. You could come live back home with us again. Help me pick my husband.”
/>   Sabina hesitated, tempted. Stay in her old bedchamber again, gossip with her sister, get to know the three tumbling half-brothers Calpurnia had produced after Faustina and Linus. Discuss books every evening over dinner with her father, who was getting a trifle frail now, though he was still a force to be reckoned with in the Senate. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Why?” Faustina looked around for eavesdroppers, then leaned close. “Is it a lover?” she whispered.

  Sabina cocked her head, amused. “What rumors have you been listening to?”

  “According to gossip, either you’re a Vestal Virgin or you’ve slept with a whole legion,” Faustina said frankly. “I can’t wait till they start making up juicy rumors about me.”

  “A whole legion?” Sabina wondered. “When do they think I have the time? There haven’t been very many men outside Hadrian, really.”

  “You have to tell me now, you know.” Faustina held up a hand in promise. “I vow never to tell Mother and Father.”

  “Good. There are some things one’s parents should not know.” Sabina looked up at the ceiling. “Let’s see. There was a praetor with a lovely gift for declaiming poetry. The poetry he wrote wasn’t quite so good, but he could certainly recite other poets to perfection. He had a beautiful voice. Then there was a certain very intelligent colleague of Father’s in the Senate, whom I won’t name—”

  “I think I know which one!” Faustina’s eyebrows flew up. “He’s thirty years older than you!”

  “So? Gray hair and a devastating wit can be very attractive.” Sabina smothered a laugh in favor of a nonchalant, sophisticated shrug. If Faustina saw her as the wicked older sister, she might as well play the part. “Before the senator, there was a very handsome priest at Delphi when Hadrian and I went to Greece. He let me chew laurel leaves and breathe the fumes like the Pythia did, and it made me very light-headed. After that he took me to an orgy with a variety of worshippers.”

  Faustina’s eyes went round. “You went to an orgy?”