Lady of the Eternal City (24 page)

I shrugged. I’d made myself serve Hadrian for seven long years, too afraid to step outside a soldier’s career and all its certainties. Now I felt remarkably little curiosity about the future and whatever it might hold. “I’ll get by.”

“If you need—”

“Don’t you dare offer me money, you sod. I’ve got coin saved.”

“What can I offer you, then?”

I hesitated. “Nothing.”

“I’ll keep an eye on your son,” Titus said quietly. “When the Emperor discards him, he’ll find a friend in me. Always.”

The words burned my mouth. “Thank you.”

We wandered back to the gardens, silent, shoulder to shoulder. I remembered pulling him out of a mud puddle in Dacia, hearing his incongruously polite voice coming out of the barbarian dark. Drinking sour
posca
, me laughing when he poured his out in horror at the taste. Eating lamb stew together in a rented room where a young Antinous crawled over the floor . . . I felt the urge to cry again. I’d been weeping these days like a woman.

But I didn’t cry. I smiled instead, because I saw a dusty little redhead standing in the garden, hands on knees, panting like a dying dog. Another figure stood beside her, a little boy waving a cup of water under her nose, but she pushed him aside as she saw me.

“I ran,” Annia gasped, “till I threw up.”

I raised my eyebrows, impressed despite myself. “How many laps to the vineyard and back?” I inquired in my sternest centurion’s voice. Might be the last occasion I ever had to use it.

She held up three fingers, too winded to talk.

“She threw up
everywhere
,” the boy at her side protested. “She’s
insane
.”

He had a puffy nose to match Annia’s split lip. I pointed. “This is the one you hit with a ball?”

She nodded, tiny chest still heaving.

“Still want to hit him?”

She shook her head.

“Worked then, didn’t it? The running.”

Nod.

“What are you teaching my daughter?” Titus murmured.

“Lessons to live by,” I murmured back.

“You shouldn’t let her run like that, sir.” The little boy bowed for Titus. “It’s not proper. Girls aren’t supposed to run—”

“Oh,
Hades
,” Annia gasped. “Now I want to hit you again.”

She veered off wearily toward the garden gate once more, and before I realized it, I laughed. Not much of a laugh. But it was there, as I watched that red-haired imp lurch into a grim jog, the skinny boy running after her. “See? See? She’s
insane
—”

Titus laughed too, and we looked at each other and the laughter faded into smiles. We stared at each other, and then I yanked him close and gave him a thump on the shoulder that nearly put him on the ground. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Slight.”

I took my last walk alone through the high-arched anteroom, over those brilliant mosaics that were too good for my boots to walk on. Just before I left my best friend’s house for good, I passed by two silent silk-clad women. One was Titus’s wife, Faustina, and the other had close-cropped hair and red, swollen eyes like she’d been crying. At the sight of her, I felt a swell of fury like none I’d ever felt in my fury-filled life.

I spat between Sabina’s sandaled feet and moved past her without stopping. I was done with her. I was done with Hadrian. I was done with Rome.

And I would never, ever be back.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

SABINA

A.D. 127, Summer
Rome

“It’s
very
improper,” Faustina sighed.

“Very,” Sabina agreed.

“Borderline scandalous.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“I’m a bad mother for allowing it.”

“Terrible.”

From the terrace of Sabina’s villa they watched the small figure emerge from the dawn mist: a blue tunic with feet blurring below and red hair flying above. Annia Galeria Faustina the Younger, out for her morning sprint.

“At least she’s not naked,” Sabina consoled, holding her silver cup between two hands as they peered over the long stretch of gardens. “Didn’t the Spartan girls run naked for the glory of their city? I’m surprised Hadrian hasn’t brought back
that
tradition along with everything else Greek. Of course, he’d probably be more interested in naked boys . . .”

Faustina groaned, thumping her forehead on her older sister’s shoulder. “Did the Spartan girls run four miles at a stretch? That’s how long it is, when Annia takes the far loop round all the grounds!” Sabina’s villa lay adjoining her sister’s, their vineyards almost overlapping; they could walk to each other’s atrium without calling a litter. But Annia always took the long way. “Her feet are as hard as a legionary’s, and she’s as freckled as a slave girl—”

“It suits her.” Sabina feasted her eyes on her daughter: tall and tousled, her long legs pumping lean and strong under the hem of her blue tunic. Annia moved with easy speed toward the line of the vineyard wall, bare feet hitting the soft earth and springing free again, her braid of red hair thumping against her back. She looked as though she might take flight at any moment. “Watching her go by is the best part of my day.”

“She does find it easier to sit still after she’s had a good run,” Faustina conceded. “I don’t have the heart to forbid her, improper or not.”

Annia came to the low boundary wall, cleared it in an easy leap, and sped toward Sabina’s adjoining stretch of vines. Her face as she ran was clear and serene, not the resigned boredom she so often wore when she was stuffed into some embroidered dress and standing on display. If there was anything Sabina could conclude after watching her daughter every morning, it was that Annia was happy as long as she was in motion.

“I don’t know how she gets up so early.” Faustina stifled a yawn: a vision of ripe blond beauty even at dawn. “Who gets up at this hour if they don’t have to? I’m only up myself to help
you
, considering the occasion. You should be in your bath by now.”

“Not till she’s out of sight.”

Annia crossed the grass, diving between the vines. A quick flash of wind made flesh, and then she was gone.

Run forever
, Sabina thought, and raised her cup in silent toast.
Run forever, my love. I wish I could run with you.

But the Empress of Rome could not run anywhere. The Empress of Rome was in semi-exile.

Why didn’t Hadrian divorce me?
The question still whispered to Sabina, every day she rose from her solitary couch. Why hadn’t her husband sent Praetorians to her terrace, demanding her head? Disgraced Empresses had died such deaths before, like Claudius’s Messalina; or else they were exiled to lonely islands to rot, like Tiberius’s loose-moraled Julia.

But no Praetorians with knives ever came, nor did any banishment to barren islands. Sabina’s seclusion in this small private villa at the edge of the Eternal City was pleasant, if dull: She could rise every dawn, take her cold mint tisane and drink it on the quiet terrace, spend the days as she pleased. Her mornings were no longer taken up by petitioners and courtiers; few came to call on an empress whose title was all but empty.

So why leave me the title at all?
Sabina thought. Because she had barely laid eyes on Hadrian in the past two years, and yet she was still his wife. It was
puzzling
.

“Enough musing, Sabina.” The sun was rising, the summer heat sifting down to banish the morning mist, and Faustina was plucking the cup from her hand. “Into the bathhouse with you. If you’re to be at Hadrian’s side today, you are going to look
magnificent
.”

“I doubt that will change his mind about reinstating me, if that’s what you hope for.”

“He has to take you back at some point, doesn’t he? And this is the tenth anniversary of his reign; the entire city will be watching. If he understands he has to have you on his arm today—”

“Why?” Sabina felt the old frustration rise in her chest as they entered the bathhouse steam. “Why now? He needs me for nothing. Why trot me out today?”

Faustina eyed her shrewdly as the bath slaves fluttered with towels and strigils. “Do you wish he would divorce you?”

Sabina considered that. “Mostly I wish he would make up his mind one way or the other.” Slipping out of her robe. “This in-between state is very wearing.”

“Would you marry again?” Faustina sounded genuinely curious.

“I doubt it. I’ll not be having children, after all—you must have them for me, so I can spoil them.” Sabina gave her sister’s rising belly a pat before she stepped down into the blue-marbled pool. Four years since Faustina’s son had died, four years of prayers to Juno and Diana and Isis—and at last Faustina’s stomach was swelling again. Sabina sent silent thanks to whichever of those benevolent goddesses had worked her magic. She had so hated to see the sadness in her sister’s eyes. She was meant for laughter, not tears.

“You will behave yourself when you see Hadrian, won’t you?” Faustina pressed as soon as Sabina resurfaced, slicking back her short hair. “No matter how much he provokes you!”

“I have no idea how he’ll greet me. Whether he’ll snub me, laugh at me, or ignore me altogether.” She couldn’t help but be curious—curious, and more than a little nervous. If that didn’t sum up her entire life with Publius Aelius Hadrian . . .

“It doesn’t matter what he does,” Faustina instructed. “Make him see the advantages of having you at his side again.”

Sabina laughed. “I can’t
make
him see anything.”

“Then behave yourself for noble reasons.” Faustina folded Sabina’s fallen robe. “Until the Emperor divorces you, you are still Empress of Rome. And an empress has duties.”

“Oh, she does,” Sabina sighed as a slave began to scrape down her wet shoulders. “Very well, I shall be impeccable. You know exactly how to hit me in my weak point, don’t you?”

A sparkling smile as Faustina fanned herself in the steam. “What are sisters for?”

Hadrian’s tenth anniversary. It was an occasion worth celebrating; Sabina couldn’t deny that. At the bloody beginning of his reign, no one would have guessed Hadrian would cling to his throne for a full decade.
And I had my part in that
, Sabina thought with a small flash of pride. However difficult Hadrian found his mask to wear, it seemed firmly fixed in place. He was a good emperor. A just one. A hardworking one. Even (mostly) a merciful one—he’d spared Sabina and Vix both, hadn’t he, when he could have had their heads on spears?

So perhaps my life’s work is done
, Sabina thought as she came from the bathhouse swathed in towels. Her maids were laying out her elaborate silks, the curled wig she never bothered to wear when alone, the shackles of bracelets and necklaces and rings.
I shall put it all on like a cart horse shrugging into its harness, and go do my duty.

And perhaps the Emperor would finally set her free.

ANTINOUS

Hadrian was reading one petition, signing another, and dictating to a secretary as Antinous brought the dogs into his study. “Caesar,” Antinous murmured into the general commotion, and Hadrian raised a hand. The throng of pages and secretaries and guards filed out, and he called for the dogs.

“Come here, my girls!”

Antinous released the gilt leather leashes so the hounds could lope across the mosaics, tails wagging. Hadrian dropped caresses among those sleek heads until the doors closed behind the last Praetorian. Then the Emperor rose to take Antinous in his arms for a long kiss. Antinous had the same sensation of floating that he’d first felt in a lemon grove in Greece. He raised a hand to the Emperor’s face as they kissed, touching the furrow traced almost permanently between those heavy brows, and Hadrian dissolved into laughter against his mouth because it was a joke between them by now—Antinous’s way of telling him to cease working and for the love of all the gods don’t think so hard. “That’s better,” Antinous murmured against Hadrian’s lips, feeling the furrow disappear under his fingers.

“Blue,” Hadrian said, once he’d pulled away far enough to look Antinous over in his blue tunic. “I like you in blue. I’d hang sapphires around your neck, but you’d refuse to wear them.”

“I’m afraid so.” Of all the ornaments his lover tried to give him, the only one he kept was a gold ring set with a modest topaz.
The color of your eyes
, Hadrian had said, kissing Antinous on the throat as he slipped it over the fourth finger on the left hand, where a vein was supposed to run to the heart. Antinous never took that ring off, but he turned down the pearled fillets and the emerald cloak pins as tactfully as he knew how. He still remembered Vix’s eyes sliding over him, that night when he’d been surprised wearing nothing but the gold chains about his neck and wrists that had been Hadrian’s first gift.
Tarted up like a whore.

The usual shaft of sheer agony pierced him at the thought of his father, but there was nothing to do but shove it away. As he had been doing for two long years. “The Empress has arrived,” he said instead, briskly to hide the momentary pain thickening his throat. “She’s waiting in the atrium.”

“I don’t know how I let you persuade me,” Hadrian complained, his arms still resting easy about Antinous’s waist. “I don’t
want
the Empress present for the festivities!”

“You can hardly exclude her on such an important occasion,” Antinous pointed out patiently, as he had been pointing out ever since the celebrations were first being planned. For a tenth anniversary nothing would be overlooked; everything had to go well. Antinous felt a twinge of anxiety, knowing exactly how people would be looking for omens today. “It would cause talk if you exclude her. Do you wish that to overshadow a day of such triumph?”

“It will cause far more talk if she is seen at my side as if all is forgiven. All is not forgiven. She humiliated me.”

“Rome does not know that.” The vagueness of Sabina’s offenses kept gossip roiling, but no one was certain precisely why she was out of favor—only that she was. “Besides, who could humiliate you? The god of Rome!” Antinous kept his tone gentle. He had learned that a light touch was needed on prickly matters. And there were few matters that prickled Hadrian more than his Empress.

“I still don’t see why you are such an advocate of Sabina’s.” Hadrian held up a hand, matching his fingers with Antinous’s.

“Because she was always kind to me.” But it was more than just kindness.
I cost you your husband
and
your lover
, Antinous thought every time he contemplated the Empress of Rome. That guilt bore at his stomach like a wire. To see her restored from solitude and shame to the place she deserved seemed the least he could do. “She is still your wife,” he said mildly. “The women of Rome look to her, and they can’t do that if she’s nowhere to be seen. You need her on your arm.”

“I’d rather have you on my arm,” Hadrian said, and pulled him close for another long kiss. “Where everyone could admire you.”

“Better if they don’t.” He’d
prefer
if they didn’t. Antinous held his post only as the Emperor’s page, handler of his dogs and pourer of his wine. A bedmate, certainly, but no one important. Hadrian saved his gestures of love for private moments, thank the gods. It made Antinous anonymous and comfortable, hardly to be noticed. Safe in the shadows.

“You will be late,” Antinous said after another kiss, bumping his nose softly against Hadrian’s. “Go make the Empress welcome!”

Hadrian slanted a brow at him in warning. He would listen to gentle argument, but never nagging. Antinous made a face of wide-eyed apology, and Hadrian laughed. “Oh, my star. Let’s get this rose-petal pomp over with, and then I’m taking you on a tour of the east. Egypt, Parthia, Syria . . .”

“If your health allows.” Antinous looked at the Emperor’s fingers, still linked with his. Hadrian’s knuckles were swelling again, and looking painful. Just the summer heat, he insisted, but Antinous worried.
He pushes himself so hard.
His ever-busy, ever-working lover who would not admit he was unwell even when he was weaving from fever—sometimes Antinous wanted to throttle him, and all from love. “Does the physician say it’s a summer malady or—”

“Bother the physician,” Hadrian said, as Antinous had known he would, and swept out to the atrium.

A crowd had gathered to wait, pressing at once around their Emperor. Antinous took the dogs and melted discreetly back, but Empress Sabina noticed him at once. She noticed everything.

“Antinous.”

“Lady.” Antinous approached her where she stood beside her sister. How different the two of them were for sisters: Faustina tall and ripe and merry-eyed as a fertility goddess; Sabina small and cool and elegant with her face like an oblique shield.
The deepest rivers flow with the least sound
, Antinous thought of the old quote by Quintus Curtius Rufus. If Titus Aurelius’s wife was a laughing stream, Hadrian’s was very dark still water indeed.

Do you resent me? Do you hate me? Are you happy to be out of the public eye, or are you slowly dying of loneliness in your exile?
Antinous had no idea. The Empress’s opaque blue eyes gave away nothing.

He still wanted to help her. “You look very fine, Lady.” She wore the same shade of sea-blue as he did: a chiton with a pattern of Greek keys stamped in gold about its rippling hem, and a gold diadem with long filigreed strands hanging to her shoulders like the one Helen of Troy was said to have worn. She had made herself a Greek queen, and Antinous knew Hadrian would approve despite himself—because she never put a foot wrong.
Except, perhaps, in loving my father.