Empress of the Seven Hills

by Kate Quinn

  Faustina smiled at him from under her sunshade. “Then take me around again. Father said something about adding an archive, and I think you’ve got room on the eastern side. Maybe a library?”

  “I fear your nose is getting pink.”

  “Bother my nose! I want to make Rome beautiful too.”

  SABINA

  “Damn it,” the Emperor grumbled, “I hate theatre.”

  “It’s Phaedra,” whispered Sabina.

  “It’s some fool woman mooning all over her stepson and then wrecking his life. I’ve seen that happen, and it’s not art.” Trajan’s fingers drummed the arm of his chair. “It’s a bloody mess, and I do mean bloody.”

  Empress Plotina turned to stare at them both, reproving. Trajan made a face like a guilty schoolboy, and Sabina made a point to laugh aloud. Plotina’s disapproving stare deepened, and then she turned her attention back to the stage where the actors declaimed through their masks. The Theatre of Marcellus’s tiered seats were crammed full, the plebs packed close in their woolen cloaks. Sabina could see the musicians sweating as they puffed and plucked at their instruments in the little cavea below the Imperial balcony.

  “Don’t worry, Caesar,” she whispered as Trajan’s fingers began their impatient drumming again. “You’ll be out of here and killing Parthians soon enough.”

  “Gods willing.”

  This time Hadrian was the one to turn and glare from his position beside Plotina. Sabina returned his gaze levelly until he looked away—not back to the stage, but to his work. If we’d come to the theatre alone, Sabina thought, then he might have watched the play. Rigid with concentration, lips moving soundlessly along with the actor declaiming Phaedra’s speech—paying attention to every gesture as he used to do; every word of the liquid sonorous Greek. But with the Emperor in attendance Hadrian was making a great show of consular diligence, rustling among a stack of scrolls and slates, dictating letters in a discreet murmur to a hovering secretary. Any glances he had to spare weren’t for the stage, but for the ornate chair behind him—to see if Trajan was observing his industry.

  Sabina could have told him that Trajan had taken notice, but not of the industry.

  “Gods’ bones, can’t the man ever look happy?” Trajan growled, eyeing his wife’s protégé. “I’ve gotten tired of that sour face these past weeks.”

  “I’m not sure he’s ever happy,” Sabina said. “At least not lately. But he’s more sour than usual, Caesar, and that’s because you gave the legion he wanted to someone else for the Parthian invasion.”

  “Well, I don’t want him at the head of any of my legions.”

  “Why not? He’s a good legate.” In all fairness, Sabina couldn’t deny that. “He has a good eye for maps, he reads terrain well, he’s even-handed with the men—”

  Trajan slanted a look at her. “Did he send you to plead with me?”

  “Yes,” Sabina said. “But I’m not doing it. I don’t care if he gets a legion or not. I’m just curious why you’re leaving him out.”

  “Because he expected to get a legion, and Plotina expected it, and the trouble with being a good-natured sort like me is that everybody starts expecting you to do what they want. It does them good to be disappointed now and then. I’ll find a post for him in Parthia, but not until I feel like it.” Trajan peered down at the stage, where a figure in a yellow-curled wig was beating its breast and wailing. “Will that woman never shut up?”

  “It’s not a woman, Caesar. It’s an actor in a wig.”

  “Well, what’s the point of a man who looks like a woman?”

  “You don’t see the point of women at all, Caesar!”

  “I do think you’re a nice little thing, Vibia Sabina.” Trajan pinched her cheek. “I’ll miss your company when I go to Parthia.”

  “I wish I were going. I hear the Parthians worship snakes.”

  “Why do they do that?”

  “I could find out if I were going along on the campaign.”

  “You can come visit once I’ve conquered it.”

  On the stage, Phaedra was dead.

  “What happened to the stepson?” Trajan whispered.

  “He’s dead too.”

  “Are there any plays that don’t end in a heap of bodies?”

  “I thought you liked heaps of bodies, Caesar.”

  “Only on battlefields.”

  Hadrian’s attention was still rapt on his paperwork as the final spurt of applause burst out, but the Emperor had no time for either applause or the diligence of his consul. Trajan rose with all haste, and Sabina picked up her own cloak—pale green wool pinned at the shoulder with a silver arrow—and hurried after him with the line of Praetorians and the rest of his retinue. Like Vix, Trajan never slowed his pace for mortals with shorter legs.

  The waiting crowd cheered as soon as he emerged, and the Emperor waved back cheerfully like a boy at a festival. Empress Plotina paused behind them to nod and bow more regally, Hadrian poised attentively at her side, but Trajan slung an arm about Sabina’s shoulders and set off into the crowd. They made way for him: vendors hawking crude portraits of the theatre’s actors, urchins with their begging bowls, an old soldier missing a leg; all of them beaming. Trajan paused to speak with the crippled soldier, raising the man up when he tried to bow. “You get far too close to these plebs, husband,” Sabina had heard Plotina say time and time again. “A madman with a dagger could end your life anytime he liked!” But Trajan always ignored her, and Sabina admired him for it. What other Emperor could walk all over Rome without his guards, and have no fear at all of being murdered?

  Sabina tugged her green cloak closer about her chin. The late afternoon was still bright, sunlight falling in hard bars over the theatre’s marble roof, but a keen wind had picked up as evening approached. The crowd was thinning. Plotina had already swept out of the theatre, allowing one of her Praetorians to help her into the curtained silver litter. The litter rose on the backs of six Greek slaves, swaying like a ship, and the Praetorians cleared a path toward the palace. “Caesar?” Hadrian called after the Emperor, but Trajan waved one hand in dismissal and continued to walk with Sabina. She felt a mean little spurt of pleasure at her husband’s set expression as he climbed into his own litter and directed it after Plotina’s in a tight voice. Since the scene in his bedroom, they had not spoken one word to each other beyond what was necessary.

  “Are you as cold as I am, Vibia Sabina?” the Emperor’s voice sounded at her side. “Or is it just my frail old bones?”

  “It’s cold,” Sabina agreed. “I think autumn is finally coming. Shall we walk to get warm, Caesar? You can lean on me if you get tired.”

  “Nonsense.” Trajan waved his Praetorians well behind him. “You’re too little to lean on.”

  “My father isn’t tall either. But half a dozen Emperors have leaned on him.”

  They walked arm in arm, well away from the crowds now, Trajan’s retinue trailing obediently behind. A few citizens paused to recognize their Emperor, and Trajan had a cheery wave for them all. “No smile?” he said, glancing down at Sabina. “Don’t tell me that dreadful play made you mopey.”

  “No, it’s not the play. Just memories.” Time was, she and Hadrian would have walked home from the theatre together and argued the whole way about which actor was the better speaker of verse and which one had wooden gestures. Then Sabina would have declaimed the best speech in the play, and Hadrian would have interrupted her midway through to do it himself.

  “Memories can ambush you,” Trajan agreed, and tugged up the hood of his cloak. “Gods’ bones, I am getting old. The wind saps me more than it used to.”

  Sabina tilted her head up at him as they walked. Trajan’s hair had gone from gray-sprinkled to entirely gray, and his nose was sharper. Years of campaigning under foreign suns had graven deep lines about his eyes and mouth. He is sixty, Sabina realized with a start, and he looks it.

  She took a deep breath. “May I ask something of you, Caesar?”

&
nbsp; “Ask away. I’ll even give it to you if it’s reasonable.”

  Sabina redirected their feet away from the street, toward the Gardens of Antony, which wound beside the Tiber, and the Praetorians trailed obediently behind. They passed a row of spruces gracefully pruned to offer glimpses of the silver river, then a marble Diana in full sprint with her hunting hounds, as Trajan looked amused.

  “Out with it,” he said at last. “You want an emerald necklace? A house in Capri?”

  “I want a divorce.”

  He paused midstride. “What?”

  “I am thinking of divorcing my husband.” The idea had danced at the edge of her mind for weeks now, ever since Faustina had suggested it at the bathhouse… and especially since Hadrian had announced his intended destiny. Having the words out made Sabina almost giddy. “If you please,” she added.

  “Well, it doesn’t please,” the Emperor of Rome said shortly. “The answer’s no.”

  Sabina blinked. She’d heard Trajan’s military voice before, on the rare occasions he got irked with droning bureaucrats or stubborn senators. But that snap of impatient authority had never been directed at herself. “May I ask why, Caesar? I didn’t think you were so fond of him.”

  “And you need fondness all of a sudden in marriage? Who needs that? Plotina and I—” He broke off, looking irritable. “I may not have given Hadrian a legion in Parthia, but I’ll need him in the invasion, make no mistake. Hardly fair to kick the man out of my family, then ask him to run my supply lines.”

  “Perhaps not. But—”

  “No buts! Plotina and Hadrian aren’t the only ones who expect me to grant their every desire, Vibia Sabina. What do you all think an emperor is, a wishing well?” Trajan scowled at the sunlit river. “It’s enough to turn any good-natured man into a dictator.”

  She’d never heard him so short-tempered. Is his age hurting him more than he lets on? Frightening thought. Rome without Trajan… it couldn’t be imagined.

  “You are a dictator, Caesar,” Sabina ventured. “Just a very good-natured one. I suppose we do take advantage of that.”

  “At least you admit it,” Trajan said grudgingly.

  “Are you sure you won’t consider—”

  “No! I may be fond of you but gods be good, girl, I’ve got an empire to consider! You think your whims stack up against that? I’ve got a duty to Rome, and so do you! If I ever do let you divorce Hadrian, it’ll only be to marry you off to someone more useful!”

  “I’ll take that,” she cajoled. “I know my duty, Caesar. Go ahead and marry me off to someone else; you won’t hear a peep of protest from me.”

  “Don’t hold your breath waiting, Vibia Sabina. I need Hadrian, and I need him in a good mood.”

  “Yes, Caesar,” Sabina said meekly.

  “Don’t be abject with me, it doesn’t suit you.” Trajan gave her chin a fierce tweak. “Why don’t you just ask for emerald necklaces and diamond rings, like most women? I’d be happy to give you those.”

  “No diamonds needed, Caesar. But you could give me something else. Not a divorce,” she added hastily. “I promise I won’t keep nagging on that score. This is something different.”

  His voice was very dry. “What is it?”

  Sabina took another breath. This really was much harder than she had anticipated. “Don’t make my husband your heir.”

  A pause, as Trajan halted and glowered down at her.

  “I’m sorry,” said Sabina. “That wasn’t very tactful, was it?”

  “Implying I might die someday? No, it wasn’t, but I’ll forgive you.” He started walking again, perhaps leaning a little harder on her arm as they rounded a bend in the winding path. “I suppose it’s possible, after all.”

  “Please—don’t make Hadrian Emperor after you. Please.”

  “Why?” Trajan looked grimly amused. “I thought all women wanted to be an empress.”

  “I don’t. I’ve never seen an empress yet who got to have any life of her own.”

  “Plotina could have one if she wanted.” Trajan sounded defensive, and Sabina grinned despite her churning insides. The Emperor never said anything exactly disparaging of his wife, and certainly in public they were the picture of serenity. In private… well, they didn’t seem to have any “in private,” did they?

  “To calm your fears,” Trajan was saying, “I wasn’t planning on making Hadrian my heir. Or anyone else, for that matter. Not yet, anyway.”

  “You’ve made me very relieved.” Sabina paused under a cypress tree, looking out at the sculpted view of the river. It glinted serpent-silver in the slanting light. “I thought that with Plotina pushing…”

  “Well, I don’t always take her advice,” Trajan said testily. “You’ll answer something for me now, little Sabina. You might not want to be Empress, but why don’t you want Hadrian to be Emperor, eh? He wants it, and shouldn’t a wife support her husband?”

  “I do support him.” That much was still true, she felt. Surprisingly. “I support what’s best for him—and to be Emperor would be the worst thing on earth.”

  “Does that matter, girl? It’s what’s good for Rome that comes first.”

  “I know. But Hadrian… well, he’s not made for it, whatever his pet astrologer says.”

  “Astrologer?” Trajan asked.

  “Emperor Domitian’s former astrologer, Nessus. He fed Hadrian a prophecy of how he’d be Emperor someday. Of course he believes it implicitly.”

  “I hate astrologers,” Trajan grumbled. “I remember Nessus. He had the nerve to tell me I’d fail the first time I tried to conquer Dacia.”

  “He was right, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “Well, he told Hadrian he’d be Emperor, and Hadrian thinks he’ll be right about that too. And Hadrian could be a good Emperor.” Sabina still felt anger curling through her stomach at the thought of her husband, but she couldn’t help being fair. “But it’s not what’s best for him, no matter what your wife thinks. It will bring out the worst in him. Is that why you won’t appoint him?”

  “No.” Trajan tilted one burly shoulder. “I just don’t like cold fish.”

  “Then who do you like? For an heir, I mean.”

  “I’d have picked your older brother, if he’d lived.” Trajan looked momentarily sad. “The best man I ever knew.”

  “Me too.” If my big brother were still alive, Sabina thought, he’d pound Hadrian’s bearded face through a wall for trying to whore me out to his enemies. “So if it can’t be Paulinus and it won’t be Hadrian…”

  “Jove knows who it will be, girl. Perhaps I’ll die like Alexander, and leave my Empire to the strongest.”

  “Look what happened to Alexander’s empire. Broken up to pieces in no time.”

  “Let me straighten out Parthia first, and then we’ll see.”

  They walked on under the cypress trees.

  CHAPTER 20

  VIX

  “You were looking at that girl,” Mirah said as I pushed a path through the tired and chattering circus crowd.

  “What girl?”

  “The one in the Imperial box with the Emperor. The brown-haired one—she had a flame-colored dress.” My wife’s voice held a swift undercurrent of amusement, rather than jealousy. She did love to tease me.

  “I never notice other girls when I’m with you,” I vowed, playing along. “I was looking at the Emperor. Isn’t he splendid?”

  “Don’t change the subject. She must be one of the Imperial family. Doesn’t the Emperor have a great-niece?”

  “Don’t know.” I’d seen Sabina up in the Imperial box at once, cheering at the Emperor’s side all through the afternoon. No sign of Hadrian or that stuffy bitch Plotina; Sabina and the Emperor had been cheering away by themselves and talking between the heats. I wondered if Sabina was telling Trajan, “The Blues are utterly fucking evil,” in that polite voice of hers, as she’d once told me years ago.

  I wished she’d been able to look dow
n into the vast crowd and pick me out. Me and my wife of two months.

  “I wish I had a flame-colored dress,” Mirah was saying. “With fire opals like the Emperor’s great-niece was wearing…”

  “Maybe I can’t afford the opals, but I’ll buy you a flame-colored dress.”

  “With this hair?” Mirah ran a hand over her chestnut head, rueful. “I’ll look like a gourd.”

  “You’ll look beautiful.” I kissed the tip of her nose.

  “I’ll be round as a gourd too, soon enough. Round and fat with your baby, and here you’re already looking at other girls!” She smiled, pinching my arm gently, and I smiled back.

  Never let it be said I don’t learn from the past. When I came home from a day of aimless waiting at the palace (orders still hadn’t been passed down from the Emperor for me to take back to the Tenth) and Mirah took me out for a walk and told me she might be pregnant, I ignored the leap in my stomach, gulped a little, and said what I should have said to Demetra: “Wonderful.” Then I said I’d take her to the races in celebration. Mirah preferred the theatre, especially if the play was one of those turgid weepers, but she could cheer lustily at the Circus Maximus too, and I felt the need for a little action and speed to get my mind off the flutter of nerves in my stomach. Me, a father.

  “I suppose your family already knows about the baby?” I asked as we came out from the marble arches behind a cluster of dejected Greens fans and left the Circus Maximus behind us.

  Mirah laughed. “My mother knew before I did. There are no secrets in my family.”

  Something else I was rapidly learning. When I’d married Mirah, I’d anticipated only a few weeks before I’d be collecting my new wife and the Emperor’s dispatches and taking them both north back to Mog. Too short a time to bother finding rooms for us in Rome, so the two of us had stayed on at her family’s house, just moving to a room with a bigger bed. But summer had gone on to fall, and I was still kicking my heels aimlessly in Rome as the Emperor’s plans for Parthia’s invasion inched forward. So I knew all about Mirah’s family now: her aunt’s bunions and her brother-in-law’s nightmares, her uncle’s third wife’s inability to have babies and her cousin’s inability to spit them out in anything but twos and threes. I knew that her niece Tirza broke out in bumps when she ate strawberries and her brother Benjamin saw ghosts under his bed; I knew that Simon wanted to marry his olive-skinned girl from a neighboring family but her father was putting up a fight about the dowry. Her family knew all about me now too: Mirah’s mother always smeared my bread with clover honey, the servants knew exactly how much water to mix into my wine, and the firebrand nephews and cousins who talked about liberating Jerusalem knew not to do too much bashing of the Roman legions when I was in the room. Everybody knew everything about everybody else in this new family of mine, and I loved them for it, but I was starting to wish that I could take Mirah north so we could finally have a home all to ourselves.