Lady of the Eternal City (25 page)

The Emperor came to claim his Empress, and eyes turned everywhere as Hadrian’s gaze traveled over his mysteriously disgraced wife. Antinous wished he could have seen acceptance there, however grudging, but his lover’s eyes were cold. The Empress returned that stare calmly, and a wave of unabashed admiration rose in Antinous. Gods only knew, Hadrian’s anger turned him into jelly (little as he ever saw it), but Empress Sabina wasn’t giving away so much as a flicker of nervousness.

“Argive Helen,” the Emperor said at last, giving a nod to her Greek diadem.

“Jupiter Optimus Maximus,” she returned, surveying his crisp toga and wreath. “All you’re missing is a lightning bolt in one hand. Don’t we make a handsome statement? How did you put it, ‘The best that is Greece and the best that is Rome, brought together in harmony’?”

Hadrian’s eyes did not thaw. “Not such great harmony as that, Vibia Sabina.”

Sweet gods, but Hadrian could hold a grudge every bit as ferociously as Vix! It made Antinous wonder sometimes just what Empress Sabina had ever been thinking, to try to balance between two men with such ever-lasting tempers.

Well, I tried that, too. In a different way.
But such a balance would always fail, sooner or later: in the end, the scales crashed and the choice had to be made.
I chose Hadrian.

He would make that choice again a thousand times over, and never hesitate. If only the pain of making it didn’t still linger like an unknitted wound.

“Shall we settle for the appearance of harmony, Caesar?” Empress Sabina tucked a hand through Hadrian’s arm, and the Emperor’s tenth-anniversary celebration began.

“For such a momentous occasion, it’s a damned dull one!” Antinous heard Lucius Ceionius drawl, yawning behind a pair of slave girls dressed in nothing but peacock feathers. “Even the crowds look bored!”

But isn’t that extraordinary?
Antinous wanted to say as the procession descended through the streets of Rome. At the
paedogogium
he had studied the Year of Four Emperors—back then, Rome would have been agog to celebrate any emperor who made it a full ten years on the throne. But titans like Vespasian and Trajan had ruled since then, and here was Hadrian following in those giant footsteps, giving out peace and prosperity with such ease that his people were not even excited by it anymore. The parade with falling rose petals, the gladiatorial displays, the coins and prizes flung into the crowd—Rome took it all as her due.

It was not until the sacrifice at the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus that the city’s boredom evaporated.

The sun had just appeared from behind a cloud, striking the gilt-bronze roof to brilliance as the priests led out a white ox bathed and bleached to the color of snow. The beast stared impassively at the sacrificial knife, as though quite willing to die for the glory of the emperor who stood bearded and grave in his toga—the Emperor who turned his head to find Antinous in the throng and gave him a tiny circumspect smile. Antinous felt that upwell of tenderness, seeing not only Hadrian where he stood now, but Hadrian bare-shouldered in bed scribbling poetry, and Hadrian laughing till his eyes overflowed. Hadrian shouting in irritation; Hadrian remote on his throne; Hadrian in rippling motion on his horse. The many faces of Publius Aelius Hadrian, and Antinous loved them all.

I’d die for you too
, he thought.
Just like that bull.

Maybe his eyes said it too clearly, because Hadrian didn’t look away. Just stood staring with that expression he sometimes had when he looked at Antinous. An expression of bewilderment, as though he did not understand what he was looking at. “I don’t,” he had muttered, the one time Antinous laughingly said as much. “I don’t understand why the gods gave you to me. I will never understand it.”

Understand that I love you
, Antinous thought, sending a kiss with his eyes.
Nothing on this earth can be simpler than that.

Hadrian was still staring. The priest waited, holding his sacrificial knife with a puzzled expression, and Antinous quickly dropped his gaze.

That was when the rustle of the crowd became a flurry of whispers. Antinous glanced up and saw that the Emperor had turned away from the priest and was holding out his hand.

To Antinous.

Heads craned. Shock pierced Antinous like an arrow. He took an automatic step forward, pulled by those fierce eyes, but he stopped again, giving his head a minute shake.
Hadrian
, he thought, stunned.
No!
He already had his Empress at his side where she belonged; his Greek queen, his match in the eyes of the world.

But Hadrian was stepping away from her, making his way toward Antinous with jaw clenched in defiance of the whispers, eyes wide with that strange bewilderment as if he did not know why he was moving. He halted, still staring, and Antinous felt a wash of crimson flood to his cheeks as all faces turned toward him. He cast his gaze down, rooted to the spot under so many eyes. Hadrian still hesitated.
Go back to your Empress
, Antinous begged him silently.
This is not fitting!
Not fitting in so very many ways: not here, not today, not before the temple gods, not before all the people of Rome.
And not me.
I
am not fitting!

But Hadrian came to his side. The Emperor of Rome came to a page, brushing people out of the way if they did not move fast enough. Antinous jerked out a bow as he always did when there were people to observe them, but Hadrian put a hand to his cheek and raised him.

“Caesar,” Antinous whispered. “What are you—”

“Take your place,” Hadrian said, not lowering his voice, and drew Antinous’s hand through his arm. “Take your place where you belong.” A breath, and he spoke even more loudly. “Dearest and most beautiful of stars.”

He led Antinous to the front, gripping his hand tight. Standing at his side, as close as Empress Sabina stood on the other. Antinous did not dare look at her—that carved profile under the diadem was just a blur on Hadrian’s other side. He stared straight ahead, feeling a roar in his ears. Whispers rose all around him like a sea of snakes.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Hadrian look fiercely around, glaring at the whispering entourage, the hissing senators, the shocked priest. “Continue.”

They did. But no one had eyes for the sacrifice—only for Antinous.

“Caesar,” he whispered as the priest’s prayers stuttered out.
“What are you doing?”

“Bringing you out of the shadows.” Hadrian gazed straight ahead, his lips clamped tight, the picture of cool arrogance. “I will not hide you any longer.”

“I like the shadows—”

“But you belong at my side. You. No one else.”

The way they stare
, Antinous thought, feeling his heart rise into his throat. Sweet gods, he might as well have been utterly naked. He had been stared at all his life, but not like this. “They look at me as if I crawled from a gutter,” he whispered. He saw it in their eyes, the disgust Vix had warned of: a bum-boy standing before all Rome, before the temple that
was
Rome, on the Emperor of Rome’s arm.

“Let me step back,” he begged in another whisper as the knife descended and the bull went to its knees in a pool of blood.

“I need you.”

Not for this
, Antinous wanted to cry out. To discreetly share an emperor’s bed; that was his place. To stand at the Emperor’s side on the most momentous public day in recent memory; that was Empress Sabina’s.

She will hate me for this
, he thought in black, barren certainty.
They will all hate me.

Hadrian’s hand raised his chin, another gesture to send hisses fluttering through the crowd. He ignored them, staring into Antinous’s swimming eyes. “No one will scorn you,” he said, and he no longer looked fierce. He looked tender, as tender as he ever looked when they were alone and he could let the mask of a great man drop. “You have my word.”

Oh, my love
, Antinous thought sadly,
what a dreamer you are. There are some things even an emperor cannot command.

SABINA

“He did it to slight you!” Faustina huffed loyally. A feast at Hadrian’s great villa was to mark the end of the anniversary festivities. “All the world knows about his lovers, but to show one off at his side like an empress—”

“Not just any lover, Faustina.” Sabina looked over the lily-decked atrium: buzzing, roiling with gossip only barely contained to a whisper. The slightly bored pleasure that had previously marked the festivities was gone; everyone in the room craned their eyes for the Emperor. “Antinous is different.”

“And he’s a sweet boy, but he’s not an
empress
, and he can’t be treated like one! Everyone knows that. Remember the stories about Emperor Domitian and that Jewish slave girl he was obsessed with? Even
he
never brought a concubine out on his arm standing in for his wife.” Faustina shook her head, blond curls dancing. “The Emperor can divorce you or he can reinstate you, but he has no right to shame you.”

“I don’t think he meant to,” Sabina said. “I don’t believe he was thinking of me at all.”

Conversation suddenly stilled. Sabina looked up. The Emperor had arrived, toga changed for a Greek robe and a wreath, his eyes gleaming and his arm openly about Antinous. Old Servianus hissed audibly at the sight, and he was not the only one. Sabina heard muffled gasps, stifled titters—and at the sound, Antinous faltered in the doorway.

But Hadrian pulled him closer and pressed his lips deliberately against the honey-colored hair. The Imperial eyes looked at the throng, cold and challenging. Across the atrium, senators and generals and their wives all bowed before the Emperor and his lover.

“I think,” Sabina said slowly, “that my husband is in love.”

I should have seen it
, she thought, stunned. But the thought followed itself with
Why? Publius Aelius Hadrian has never been in love in his life.

The Emperor was calling for wine, calling for dice, declaring he felt lucky. A page brought him a cup, but Hadrian waved him to serve Antinous first. Antinous sipped shyly, handsomer than ever with his fair curls bound back under a Greek fillet, his limbs tanned and oiled and glowing against a snow-white synthesis. He was just beginning to smile when Servianus stumped up with his mouth pinched tight.

“Caesar,” he said. “I fear you must excuse me this evening. I am an old man, and I have had”—his eyes slid over Antinous as though he were covered in sewer slime—“quite enough.”

Hadrian’s eyes went from happy to vicious in an instant.

Oh, gods
, Sabina thought. This was going to end very badly if that old idiot did not shut up.

“You will stay, Servianus,” the Emperor stated. “At least long enough to throw a turn of dice with Antinous.”

“Please, Caesar—” The Emperor’s lover tried to smile, giving Servianus a respectful bow. “Do not keep anyone from their beds on my account.”

Hadrian’s eyes drilled into the old man’s. “He will stay to play a round with you.”

Servianus’s nose quivered as though he smelled something foul. “Caesar,” he hissed. “As your brother-in-law I have the right to speak—this is
disgrace
, this is—”

Someone safely out of sight at the back of the crowd laughed. There were little ripples of agreement, almost too small to be heard but they were there, and Antinous turned as red as an open wound. “Caesar,” the young man whispered, and then lost his voice and slid away from the Emperor’s arm.

Sabina saw murder in her husband’s eyes and found herself moving before it could blossom like a poisoned rose. Someone had to stop this before there was blood on the tiles, and it might as well be the Empress of Rome. She brushed past Servianus, so quickly that her sea-blue hem frothed at her feet like a wave as she came up beside Antinous and slid an arm through his.

“Goodness, Servianus,” she said, and gave a titter of amused mockery. “Such fussing over a game of dice! If you are so determined to retire, I will take your turn.” She felt Antinous’s pulse beating fast inside his arm and gave his elbow a squeeze. “Antinous, do throw the dice for me, I have had abominable luck—”

“I will join you,” a quiet voice said at Sabina’s other side. Titus was there, giving Antinous a cordial nod. He had a set of dice in hand, though Sabina did not think Titus had ever played dice in his life. “If you would give me the pleasure, Antinous? And perhaps you might tell me more about the
paedogogium
; my wife is to bear what she assures me is a son, and I am already pondering whether I should send him to school or hire tutors at home—”

“Of course,
patronus
,” Antinous said with a sudden smile of utter relief, and the chattering broke loud and nervous over the room. Old Servianus looked dour, shaking his white head. “A shame,” he whispered venomously to his nearest crony. “In my day no man of this Empire would pay honor to a—”

But Sabina lifted her voice loudly before he could name just what he thought Antinous was. “Faustina, join us!” and even if Faustina had earlier thought Antinous’s presence a slight to her sister she still came forward, loyal as a rock. Soon there was a riotous game in progress with Antinous at its center like a young sun.

“Thank you, Lady,” he whispered when Sabina bent her head to blow on the dice cupped in his palm. “I thought—I thought you might hate me.”

She looked up into those amber-brown eyes, startled. “Dear gods, Antinous, who could hate you?”

“Most of this room, I imagine.” He tried to smile as though that were nothing, but Sabina saw the rigid set of his shoulders.

“They may think what they like of you,” Sabina said. “But they will not dare say it, that I promise. Chamberlain!” she called. “Seat Antinous beside me at dinner. The brightest young man in Rome, and certainly the most charming!”

“Antinous is to sit at the Emperor’s side, Lady,” the chamberlain said nervously, and everyone looked to see how she would take that, but Sabina only shrugged.

“Sit him between us then, what of it?” She kept up the laughter through the many courses of dinner, hanging on Antinous’s shy words, offering him the choice bits of each dish, pulling every guest into the conversation until every person on every couch had been forced to acknowledge the Emperor’s lover with at least a few civil words. She kept the tension at bay with silver-bright chatter, seeing the gratitude in Antinous’s eyes, and seeing nothing at all in Hadrian’s.