Lady of the Eternal City (26 page)

She was not surprised to feel her husband’s hand on her elbow the moment the guests rose and dispersed into chatter. “Walk with me.” His grip brooked no disagreement.

“Are you angry?” Sabina kept her voice low as they drifted to where the atrium lay open to the vast moonlit gardens. “I’m sorry to interfere, but I saw how you looked at Servianus.”

“I would not have harmed that old fool.”

“No?” They stood looking out over the shadowed trees, the noise and laughter of the party dimmed. “You wanted him dead on the tiles.”

“Yes. But it would have displeased Antinous—a death on his behalf.”

“You would not displease him?”

“Not for the Empire or anything in it.” Hadrian’s bearded face was immobile, but he looked over his shoulder, and Sabina saw the way his eyes followed Antinous’s graceful figure.
So much for my hope it would all burn itself out
, Sabina thought. She had thought it all just lust, at least on Hadrian’s side, but this was far more dangerous.

Publius Aelius Hadrian was indeed in love.

“If you feel so tenderly toward him,” she said, “then why did you expose him to public scorn?”

Her husband’s chin jerked. “No one will dare say—”

“Servianus dared. He is only the first.”

“Antinous said they would. He said . . .” Hadrian trailed off. “You were the one to put Servianus in his place. Not me.”

She could feel the rage biting him. Rage at himself, she thought, and spoke gently. “To silence mockery is a woman’s gift. Men may own the world, but they can do little against scorn. Even an emperor.”

“You came to Antinous’s rescue.” Hadrian said it stiffly. “They could have laughed, and he would have been shamed, and I could have killed them all but that would not have healed his shame. You stopped that. It was kindly done.”

“I don’t like to see anyone shamed.”

“Even your husband’s bedmate?”

“I like Antinous, Hadrian. I have always liked him. But he’s shy, for all his beauty—he doesn’t want notoriety, no matter what those like Servianus might think.” Tilting her head. “So why
did
you bring him forward like that, on the steps of the temple?”

Hadrian looked down at her. “I was not trying to slight you, if that is what you imply.”

“Not at all.” Sabina felt the night breeze blowing sharp and fragrant, stirring the gold strands of her diadem. “You do nothing without calculation of how it will
look
, Hadrian. You know how this will look. Why did you do it?”

He ran a hand along the carved marble of the nearest pillar. “I can’t—hide it any longer. I should. But I cannot.”

“Why?”

He was silent for a moment, fingering his beard. “‘
Passionate love
,’” he quoted at last, slowly. “‘
Relentless, twists a cord under my heart, and spreads deep clouds on my eyes . . .
’”

“That’s not one of your verses,” Sabina said. “Anakreon?”

“No, Archilochus.” Hadrian’s head bowed. “I should hide Antinous. I should dismiss him altogether. It is not fitting, for one of my station to feel what I do. But I looked at him on the steps of the temple today and I could—not—” A long breath. “He steals all my good sense away.”

Sabina remembered Vix’s smile, that invisible one that started and finished all in his gray eyes when he looked her over. “Maybe I felt the same once.”

Hadrian glanced at her sharply. “That crude, bloodthirsty legionary?”

She shrugged. “Can we choose, Hadrian—even those of us with Imperial blood? Cupid strikes where he will.”

“I expected more restraint from you. Better sense.”

“Because I am Empress?”

“Because you were
born
with the control for which I struggle. Do you need a Hades to keep yourself in check? No.” He sounded exasperated. “If I am to be made a fool by love, Vibia Sabina, surely one of us must maintain decorum!”

The unfairness of that stung.
He is allowed to be in love, but not me. Never me.
“So you will have your scandal, and I will be respectable for the both of us?”

“Yes.”

“Hardly just, is it?”

“I do not care,” said Hadrian coolly. “I will not give him up, and I am done hiding him. He is the star of my life. The Empire will accept him, or I will cram their scorn down their throats.”

“He will still be made to feel shame.”

“And in return I will give him the world.” Hadrian’s brown hand curled into a slow fist against the marble column. “It will be enough. It will
have
to be enough.”

Sabina heard the thickness in his voice. She glanced back inside the atrium and saw Antinous standing at Faustina’s side. Faustina had called a dozen women over and they were all cooing and laughing. “If you wish to make the court accept him, start with the women,” Sabina advised. “The senators are swayed more by their wives than they think. Faustina looks to have things in hand—if she takes Antinous under her wing, the others will do the same.”

“Surely your sister sees his presence as an insult to you.”

“She is generous of heart. She likes Antinous—and even if she did not, she’d befriend his cause if I asked.”

“And you’d ask? Even if I sent you back to that villa at the edge of Rome tomorrow in disgrace again?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Sabina looked her husband up and down. “Love is good for you,” she said. “Frankly, I hadn’t thought you capable of it. You have no idea how happy I am to be wrong.”

She said it to be flippant, but realized she
was
happy. It surprised her, because she was still angry too. She wished she could haul off and give Hadrian a good slap for his hypocrisy, letting himself gorge on the thing she wasn’t allowed to taste. But—

But she was still happy for him.

A flare of temper went through Hadrian’s eyes at her frankness, but she held his gaze and slowly it banked. He reached out, tilting her chin up with his hand. “It was Antinous,” he said slowly, “who advised me not to divorce you two years ago. When I dismissed Vercingetorix.”

“Antinous?” That she had not anticipated, not at all.

“He said you had always been kind to him. And,” Hadrian conceded, “he pointed out that I would just need another empress, to take on those formal duties you handle for me, and if I divorced you half the women of Rome would be jockeying. I would probably end up with some pseudo-poetic harpy like Julia Balbilla.”

“Gods forbid!” Sabina mocked.

“So, I did not divorce you. As angry as I was.”

“Was?”

“Still am,” he said evenly, and she could see it in the set of his teeth. “But even if Antinous had not advised against it . . . Well. You anger me sometimes to the point of loathing, but I find it difficult to be rid of you.”

“Why is that?”

“You know me better than anyone in this world, Vibia Sabina.”

“Even Antinous?”

“He does not know me at all, thank the gods. And I intend to keep it that way.” Hadrian released her chin. “I am planning another grand tour, you know. The east—Judaea, Parthia, Egypt. I take Antinous with me.”

“He will enjoy that. He always wanted to see the world.”

“Come with us.”

The breath left Sabina in a rush.
“What?”

“Antinous told me I needed you, but what I really need is him.
He
is the one who needs you, as a shield against the world’s scorn. Given that, you may come with us.”

So I am not to be divorced and freed
, Sabina thought with a twinge of disappointment. Perhaps if she had left Antinous to twist under the scorn of ancient spluttering Servianus . . .

But I could never have done that. And so I am to be Empress again.

And an empress had duties.

At least along with duty there would be Judaea, Parthia, Egypt. The world. Not a busy palace stagnant with sycophants. Not a lonely villa where her one joy was a daily glimpse of her speeding daughter.

It is enough
, Sabina thought.
It will have to be enough.
And lowered her eyes for Hadrian, choking down her last pangs of regret, and said, “Thank you, Caesar.”

Hadrian tilted her chin up again. “Do not make me regret it.”

ANNIA

A.D. 127, Winter
Hadrian’s Villa

It was just a flight of shallow stone steps beside the Greek theatre, leading down to a set of black doors. Annia had seen the theatre before—a few months ago, right after the Emperor’s tenth anniversary and before he’d broken his collarbone on a boar hunt, her father had taken her to a pantomime here. No one had paid any attention to the actors because they were too busy watching the Emperor sit with his arm about Antinous. Annia remembered the theatre, but she hadn’t seen these black iron doors set below the earth.

“That’s the Emperor’s Hades.” Pedanius Fuscus sounded nervous. “He buggers little slave boys in there and dismembers them—”

“Does not,” Annia scoffed. The Emperor didn’t like children—it was why she and Marcus and Brine-Face got tossed together out in the Imperial gardens whenever her father and their grandfathers went to attend Hadrian at his villa. But she knew perfectly well that even if he didn’t like children, he didn’t dismember them
or
bugger them.

Annia took a step down toward the Emperor’s Hades. Her breath frosted in the air; it was the cold time just before the year’s turn. “Don’t go down there,” Marcus said, eyeing the black doors. “It’s evil.”

Another step. “I want to see.”

“You can’t,” Brine-Face said. “
I’m
allowed because the Emperor favors me, but—”

“No, he doesn’t!” Pedanius was always bragging about his great-uncle’s favor, but if he was such a favorite, why was he out here with the children?

Pedanius bristled. “My grandfather says the Emperor is going to make me a member of the Salian priesthood soon, to show the world I’ll succeed him—”

Annia snorted, bounding down the rest of the steps. The door handles were black iron, fashioned in the shape of screech owls, the bird sacred to Hades. She pushed back her warm red cloak, crouching down to look through the keyhole. “It’s just a passage.”

“You shouldn’t be looking,” Marcus said, and then, “What else?”

“A lamp . . .” A wall bracket shaped like another screech owl, and a guttering lamp lighting a dark stone passage. Annia’s pulse jumped in an uneasy little thrill. “I can almost see a—”

A roar like Jupiter in the heavens shattered their solitude.
“What is the meaning of this?”

Annia’s hand leaped off the iron screech owl. Marcus let out a croak and Pedanius squealed like a piglet. A tall and furious Emperor stood gazing down at them with eyes like black thunder.

Maybe he does dismember children.

When he spoke again it was in a deadly whisper, and after the sky-breaking roar Annia found that more terrifying than anything. “Come. Here.”

Annia bolted up the steps to Marcus’s side. His fingers slipped instantly through hers, and Annia was glad. Her mouth went dry as parchment as the Emperor looked down at them. He wore a long tunic as dark as the iron doors, his beard was wild, and one arm was bound in a white sling. His face was flushed, his eyes glittered, and he didn’t seem to feel the cold at all.
He’s sick,
Annia found herself thinking inconsequentially, in the midst of her fear. The Emperor hadn’t just postponed his travels east because of a broken collarbone; he was also
sic
k
.

His eyes devoured them as he said in that near-whisper, “What do you brats think you are doing?”

“I told them not to trespass,” Pedanius babbled. He was fourteen, big across the shoulders, and his voice had long since deepened to a man’s, but now it scaled back up in a child’s squeak. “I warned them, Great-Uncle—”

“Silence.”

Brine-Face went red. The Emperor’s eyes moved from Pedanius to Marcus and Annia, and she flinched inside. He was going to beat them to bloody ribbons.

“Strike us if you like, Caesar,” Marcus blurted out suddenly. “But not in anger.”

The Emperor blinked. “What?”

“Strike us because we trespassed,” Marcus explained, “not because you are angry. An angry man is one who has lost control of himself, and the loss of control is contrary to all Stoic principles. If I may paraphrase Epictetus—”

“Shut up!” Annia hissed, seeing the Emperor’s eyes narrow.

“—‘If any be angry, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone,’” Marcus babbled. “Not to mention the precepts of Seneca—”

There was no stopping Marcus on one of his nervous rants. He was spilling Zeno and Seneca and Epictetus at the speed of a chariot on the last lap, and the Emperor glowered like a thundercloud, which just made Marcus quote even faster.

“Boy,” the Emperor said at last, “shut up.”

Amazingly, Marcus gulped and fell silent.

“You with the quotations. Whose brat are you?”

“Marcus Annius Verus, son of Marcus Annius Verus, grandson of Marcus Annius Verus. Though I am frequently addressed as Marcus Catilius Severus in honor of my great-grandfather upon my mother’s—”

“There is another famous quote,” the Emperor said. “‘Be succinct in your answers.’”

“Yes, Caesar. Who said that, Caesar?”

“I did. You are a student of Stoicism?”

“My tutor is a Stoic, Caesar, and I look to follow his precepts.”

“By boring us all to death with your chatter?”

“By making no excuses and by always speaking truth,” Marcus whispered.

The Emperor smiled in wintry amusement. “You won’t live long if you speak nothing but truth, boy.”

Annia could
see
Marcus trying not to quote, but he lost the battle with temptation. “‘The point is not how long you live, but how nobly you live.’”

Emperor Hadrian laughed sourly. “Outquoted by a brat,” he said. “I think I will spare you punishment, little Verissimus.”

Truthful one.

“It’s a better nickname than Brine-Face,” Annia couldn’t help whispering, and Pedanius looked like he wanted to kill her.

“You remind me,” the Emperor said, still looking at Marcus, “of myself at your age.”

“Th-thank you, Caesar.”

“It was not a compliment. I was a dreadful little pedant.” The Emperor brushed past them, down to the black iron doors. “Shoo.”