Lady of the Eternal City (34 page)

“I just want to talk with you again.” Quietly. “Hadrian may never travel back to Judaea.”

“Then we don’t have anything to talk about.” I drank him in, whole and healthy and stubborn, and I lingered on every detail because I’d probably never see him again. “Not as long as you’re the Emperor’s plaything.”

“Sweet gods, but you can be a bastard,” Antinous said.

We stared at each other. I could have left it there, but I reached out and I wrapped him in my arms. So strong, so tall, and yet all I could feel was the light weight of the little boy on my back, crowing, “
Yion!
”

“Stay,” I said thickly. The black dog whined at our feet.

“Come,” he said.

And there really wasn’t much more to say than that.

*   *   *

The bathhouse in Bethar was sparsely attended. The people here didn’t approve of the Roman habit of social bathing, so there was no one to watch as Simon and I took over the empty gymnasium and squared up behind our wooden shields. A brief salute, and we went at each other in short stabbing thrusts: the legion drills we’d practiced for years. Simon didn’t ask what had happened with Antinous. He already knew, and not just because Mirah told her uncle everything. Simon seemed to know everything that happened in Bethar; in all of Judaea and the provinces around her, for that matter. “The Twelfth Deiotariana is poised to come from Egypt,” he’d say. “If there’s trouble, that is, when the Emperor departs.” And if you asked him how he knew what was happening in bloody
Egypt
, he’d just smile.

“Another bout,” I said shortly after winning the first. Sparring was a physical release when I felt so emotion-roiled inside. Simon nodded, deep-set eyes glittering at me across the weed-threaded sand, and waded in. He might be well into his fifties, but he was still hard-bodied and fit, his drills as crisp as though he’d just come from the legion yesterday. I sometimes wondered why he kept himself fighting trim when he was so eager to forget everything else from the legion.

He slipped inside my thrust, parrying. “So, your boy wants you to go to Egypt.”

“I’d ask how you know that, but you know everything.”

He made a jab of his own, cat-quick. “If I know everything, then what do you think I pray for?”

My turn to parry. “You pray Jerusalem won’t be rebuilt as Aelia Capitolina.”

“What else?”

“That the Emperor will leave.”

His next blow glanced off my shoulder. “I want more for Judaea than the Emperor’s absence.”

I knew what he wanted, but I wasn’t going to say it. Saying it would have been treason for a Praetorian, or even just for a soldier of Rome. And habit died hard in me.

“‘
There shall step forth a star out of Jacob,
’” Simon quoted, advancing on me, “‘
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite through the corners of Moab.
’”

My relief in the simple pleasure of sparring drained away. This was no longer simple. “What’s Moab?”

“You’re a bad Jew, Vercingetorix.” Simon’s
gladius
flashed in a double strike. I parried the first, missed the second. “But the Lord our God can use bad Jews as well as good ones.”

His sword tip rested at my throat. I felt suddenly very alert indeed.

“Mirah told me Antinous looked at you with tears in his eyes,” Simon said as he lowered his blade and we raised our shields again. “As a straying son should look at a righteous father. I was a straying son. I strayed to the legions, but I found the path home.”

Frustration was rising in me like a flooding sea. “What are you
saying
?”

“Follow your boy to Egypt.” Simon’s face was somber. “You might still bring him back.”

A lump rose in my throat, and I stepped out of our hypnotic thrust-and-parry. “You’re a busy man, Simon ben Cosiba. Traveling to Jerusalem, traveling to Lydda and Jericho and Jaffa. So why are you taking time from your afternoon to worry about a catamite?” I said the word harshly, because I knew he thought it. “Even if he is my son?”

“A catamite with the Emperor’s ear.” Simon blew sand off the edge of his blade. “Perhaps he might be persuaded to drop a word in that ear.”

“What kind of word?”

“Leave Judaea for the Jews,” Simon whispered. “Or we take it for ourselves.”

I laughed. “Sounds to me like it would suit you better if I
didn’t
retrieve my son from the Emperor’s bed.”

A shrug. “Such whispers likely won’t work. According to my reports, Emperor Hadrian is a man of strong mind, unlikely to be swayed—”

“Reports?”

“—but everything should be tried, should it not? Everything peaceful.” Simon looked contemplative. “Before the alternative.”

“All right.” I threw my
gladius
to the ground at his feet. “No more riddles. What are you planning? What are you
doing
?”

Simon held up his sword. “A good blade,” he said. “There are smiths in Judaea who do nothing but forge weapons to supply Roman soldiers—and on the Emperor’s orders, any blade that fails to meet standards is returned.”

“I’m going to kill you,” I warned, “if you don’t talk plainly.”

“What if I told you those inferior blades returned to all those smiths aren’t scrapped?” Simon balanced his
gladius
against the sand, giving it a twirl so it spun on its point. “What if I told you they’re reworked in secret, made into blades fit for any soldier? And then they aren’t returned to the legions, but . . . hidden? Many, many thousands of them.”

I stared at him. “Where would anyone hide so much weaponry?”

“Underground caches, perhaps.” Simon smiled. “You’d be surprised how much of Judaea is hidden. Tunnels, passages, networks through the mountains. We have a history of being hunted. We know how to hide.”

“You’re mad,” I whispered. “Rome’s legions would crush you.”

“Would they?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. Because a fight through hidden city tunnels and mountain passes was not the kind of fight the legions trained for.

Simon spun his
gladius
about on its point again. “Of course, I’m not talking seriously,” he said at last. “Just spinning clouds with an old friend.”

“If I’m such an old friend, then why am I only hearing of this today?” My voice rose. “It takes years to build caches of discarded blades, and I’m only now—”

“Because I don’t trust you,” Simon said harshly. “You married my niece and you’ve lived here five years, and you’ve got more reason to hate Rome and its Emperor than most of the men I
do
trust. But you still shave your chin and speak Latin like a Roman, so why should I trust you?”

That hurt. I’d served Rome, yes—been loyal to her all my life, and I wouldn’t deny that this flood of news raised the hackles on my neck. But I served my family too, and my family’s people. Wasn’t that worth just as much? “If you don’t trust me, why tell me anything at all?”

Simon stepped close, and I saw the glitter in his eyes again. “Go with your son to Egypt. See if he knows what Caesar plans for Judaea. Then knock your boy on the head if he won’t see the righteous path, drag him back to Bethar, and tell me what you’ve learned. Then maybe I’ll trust you.”

I stared at him. “And what happens then?”

“You get it
all
back. Have your son again. Be a soldier again. Fight a war again. But for God this time, not Rome.” Simon bent and scooped up my
gladius
, offering it to me hilt-first. “And who knows? God is just. Serve Him, and He might even grant you the chance to kill Hadrian.”

Fine words.

But it wasn’t Simon who made up my mind for me, for all his hypnotic speeches.

It was Mirah.

ANTINOUS

It was a bad time to ask—Antinous could see that the moment he entered the room. Hadrian had one of his headaches; he was rubbing at his temple as he read his way through a scroll, and the groove between his brows was deep. Sabina sat at his side, sipping at her cup without speaking because she understood the pulse of the Emperor’s moods as well as Antinous, and she knew when to be silent. But Antinous could not be silent tonight.

He came to Hadrian’s couch, and he spoke simply. “My father wishes to join us when we leave for Egypt.”

A peculiar silence fell. Antinous could feel the coil of sudden bright energy in Empress Sabina, though she didn’t blink an eyelash; feel the hard watchfulness that spiked in Hadrian as his eyes traveled slowly—so slowly—from the scroll in his hand to meet Antinous’s gaze.

Antinous cast his eyes to the floor. “With your permission, Caesar,” he said, and knelt. “I ask this.”

He had asked it before—when they had come to Jerusalem, when he had whispered to Hadrian across their shared cushions that he would be going to Bethar to see his father. “
What if he accepts my offer?
” he had whispered. Hadrian had only given a knife-edged laugh and said, “
He won’t
.”

But the message had come today, just four words in that brusque scribble Antinous knew so well. Four words to send joy springing through his blood like divine nectar.

I will join you.

Hadrian looked at his wife. Sabina touched one finger to his hand as if to urge restraint, then rose to leave, her eyes flashing a warning as she passed Antinous. He heard the doors close behind her.

Hadrian erupted from his couch, scroll flying halfway across the room. He crossed the mosaics in three violent strides, jerking Antinous up from his knees. “Caesar,” Antinous breathed, and Hadrian’s mouth speared him. The Emperor’s fists clenched in his hair, so hard Antinous gasped in pain, and Hadrian drank that pain down, his teeth scoring Antinous’s lip brutally. Then his mouth and his hands both were gone, and he looked at Antinous with eyes remote and cold.

“Keep him from my sight,” the Emperor said. “I do not wish to see him once, understand?
Keep him from my sight.
”

“Thank you,” Antinous whispered. He tasted blood on his lip, and Hadrian raised a hand to touch it.

“My poor star,” he said, and as fast as that, all anger was gone. “I am so sorry, I would not hurt you for the world”—and he said not one word more about Vix or any of the rest of it. It was only to Sabina that Antinous could talk of his father, and to her he babbled like a nervous bride.

“I’ve made arrangements for him to stay with the Praetorians. He can be inconspicuous there; they won’t give him away to the rest of the court.” When the Imperial cortege was on the move between provinces, the off-duty Praetorians traveled in their own phalanx of wagons and horses. Hadrian and Antinous traveled far away, at the heart of the whole procession, Antinous on his bay colt beside the Empress’s palanquin, Hadrian either riding beside Antinous or lying with his head in Sabina’s lap whenever they could bully him into resting. Around them the insulation of guards, secretaries, body slaves, dogs, and courtiers. No, Hadrian should not lay eyes on Vix at all. “As long as they don’t
see
each other—”

“And as long as
I
don’t,” the Empress said, sounding wry. “Because the Emperor will be watching me, that I know.”

Antinous winced. “I wish . . .”

“What?”

That you could be as happy as I am
, he thought.
That the man I love would not be as unforgiving as a stone, when it comes to the thing that would make
you
happy.
Hadrian had softened toward his wife—they laughed together now, teased each other, argued books, shared a couch while working—but he had not softened
that
much.

“Wish for the moon,” Sabina said lightly. “Hadrian will try to pull it down from the heavens to hang about your neck, I’m sure.”

He’d find that easier than what I just asked of him
, Antinous thought, rumpling a hand through his hair. “I’m nervous,” he confessed. “We’re to depart in two days. What if he doesn’t come?”

But Vix came, his pack over his shoulder just like the old days when he’d swing through the door back home from the latest war. He looked as hard and awkward as he had that day in Bethar when all they’d been able to do was stare at each other and bleed inside . . . But he was here.

“Is he much changed?” Empress Sabina asked the next day. Looking very cool and remote about it all, holding her eyes closed so her little African maid could line her eyes with kohl against the sun’s heat—but she still asked.

“He’s leaner, maybe. A bit more gray.” Antinous smiled. “No, not much changed.”

Sabina kept her eyes closed. “And his wife?”

“She’s in Bethar. I only saw her once. But she’s—harder.”

So am I
, Antinous thought. You didn’t spend five years gritting your teeth and keeping a smile nailed on while people called you a whore without getting a little harder around the edges. He had a little stony spot in his heart for Mirah, even after she’d given him her blessing.
You blessed me
, he thought,
but you turned my sisters against me.
Dinah and Chaya, who used to ride his shoulders, flinching away from him—sweet gods, but that had hurt! And it had been Mirah they looked at as they flinched, not Vix.
I want my father back.
Antinous sent the thought to his father’s wife.
I will woo him back whether
you
like it or not, and then I will change Hadrian’s mind about hating him. I will do it if it takes me the rest of my life.

“You look rather grim.” Empress Sabina looked up from her mirror, blinking kohl-rimmed eyes. “Does it worry you, having Vix here?”

“It’s such a chance, that’s all.” Antinous smiled. “I don’t want to ruin it.”

“You won’t. Egypt is a land of magic and healing—anything can happen there.”

“Maybe Egypt will heal my father and me.” Antinous felt his smile disappear. “Maybe it will heal fate.”

Sabina cocked her head. “Whose fate?”

“Never mind.” Antinous still thought of the swirling blackness he’d seen at Eleusis; the terrible conviction of death on the mountaintop with the smell of lightning in the air.
Hadrian’s death.
“If Egypt is truly a place of healing, we must get the Emperor to see some of the native doctors in Alexandria. I don’t like the way his headaches are coming back . . .”