Lady of the Eternal City (62 page)

Annia came closer, setting her own revelations aside for his. “. . . So it’s settled?”

“Nothing’s settled. How can it be?” Marcus started to pace, restless. “The Emperor said he always wanted me for his heir. I was too young, so he was planning to have Lucius Ceionius adopt me, only now it’s to be your father instead.” Marcus looked up at Annia, and she saw his eyes were wild. “I don’t understand. Why did he choose me?”

“Who knows why Emperor Hadrian does anything?” Annia shrugged. “He’s got a mind like a maze. But he’s decided you’re the one, and he’s right.” If she knew nothing else—and her world had tilted so many times today, her mind was spinning—she still knew that.

“He made your father swear a solemn oath on every god in the heavens that he would name me his successor as soon as he took the purple.” A gulp. “All I wanted was to serve the Empire, maybe write a philosophical treatise or two in my spare time. And now I’m to be Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus Caesar: heir to the throne.”

“That doesn’t please you?” Surely Marcus had to know he was
born
for this.

“How many promising boys in the past have been groomed for the purple by hopeful emperors?” Marcus cried out. “They just get killed! Whenever an emperor dies, the gods toss a coin, and we all hold our breaths. Peace or chaos, no one knows what will come. Not even Hadrian or your father can guarantee I’ll ever be Emperor. I might as well have a target painted on my heart—”

“Stop right there. All those promising young heirs who died young? They mostly got killed off by the same Imperial family who elevated them. But this is my
father
we’re talking of, not some ambitious upstart being asked to keep a throne warm for a rival. My father keeps his oaths. And he loves you.” Coming closer. “Emperor Hadrian did his best to safeguard you—he eliminated every rival in Rome who could oppose you, and he set my father to guard your future. That’s about as certain as any mortal man could make it, Marcus.” Annia paused a beat, feeling a great swell of tenderness. “Emperor Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus Caesar.”

His chin jerked.

“I’ve never liked
Aelius
,” Annia decided. “Perhaps I can just call you Emperor Marcus Aurelius?”

“Aurelius like your father.” Marcus’s eyes met Annia’s, and they were full of tears. “I admire him more than any man I have ever known, and now he’ll be my father in truth.” A breath. “Father and father-in-law.”

“I know. My mother told me.” Annia couldn’t resist a laugh. “Ceionia will be furious. I think I’ll break the news to her myself.”

She did, too—and she enjoyed every moment, two days later, when she watched Ceionia lose her fabled decorum entirely and rip that half-finished wedding tunic off the loom, shrieking.

Marcus leaned his forehead against Annia’s, his hands warming her waist, and they stood quietly in the waning afternoon. It was fiercely cold, and Annia’s body still ached so badly from her twelve hellish miles, but in Marcus’s arms, she felt neither pain nor cold. She felt warm as a fire, and full of hope.

“Vercingetorix wants to speak with you,” Marcus said. “He said he and the Empress have something to tell you.”

“The Empress already did,” Annia said. “So let them wait. I want to be here with you.”

“He’s her lover, isn’t he?” Marcus’s brows puckered. “You’re not going to be taking up with guardsmen when you’re Empress of Rome, are you?”

“Why would I bother? I’ll have Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and he’s enough for me.”

“I had a dream last night.” Rocking his forehead gently against hers, smoothing his hands up and down her back. “I dreamed I had shoulders made of ivory, and I heard Hadrian’s voice telling me I would need those shoulders, because they would carry a heavy burden. This morning, I didn’t know what that dream meant . . .”

“And now you do,” Annia whispered.

“Even with shoulders of ivory, I don’t think I can carry an empire,” Marcus whispered back.

“I’ll help you, I swear it.” Annia cradled his face in her hands. “And this is all a long way off, you know. It’s my father’s turn, first—we have so much time to learn.”

Their lips touched. Annia felt Marcus’s taut body against her relax, just a little. What a worrier he was! “And since we have so much time ahead of us,” Annia added, suddenly playful, “I don’t think we should marry right away.”

He frowned. “What?”

“I know you, Marcus. The moment we marry you’ll start ordering me about.” Annia felt warmth running through her like a ribbon of flame, right where his hands were still stroking her back. “I’ll only marry you once you’ve finally figured out you will
never
be able to get me to behave.”

“I already know that.” He frowned, distracted just as she hoped. “We’ll marry at Lupercalia.”

“See? You’re already giving me commands.” Annia slipped out of his hands, backing away with a grin. “Maybe you’re going to be Emperor, Marcus, but I’m going to be Empress. And an empress of Rome
always
gets her way.”

He smiled. “Annia,
must
you?”

He seized her around the waist again, but she slid free before he could kiss her. “Catch me,” she breathed, and those twelve miles and two fractured toes hadn’t stolen her speed after all. She ran like the wind, relishing the pain in her bandaged feet. It was a pain that meant
victory
, and for the rest of her life, Annia Galeria Faustina would feel that victorious ache come back at odd moments. When the twins were teething and she was walking up and down with a baby on each hip long after the nursemaids gave up—when she dozed by light of a lamp, waiting to see if the legions would come back victorious—when she finally persuaded her husband to give up his writing for the night and come to bed . . .

Shining moments—hopeful moments—that was when she’d wince and feel the ghostlike pain of her feet the day she ran them into blood, gritted her teeth, conquered the agony, and sprinted on. The day she saved an emperor, brought down an enemy, avenged a friend—and won Marcus for her own.

She laughed whenever she felt that reminder of pain. Laughed in triumph and in happiness, just the way she was laughing now as she sprinted off into the twilight with legs flashing and hair flying, future Emperor Marcus Aurelius chasing behind.

VIX

A day later, I stood under the massive statue of Antinous and watched the Emperor burn all records of Servianus and Pedanius’s plotting. The smoke rose, wreathing my son’s marble face, and I hoped those two were writhing under the whips of the Furies.
Die
, I told their shades.
Fade into history—my son will live on.

“There.” The Emperor heaped the last scroll on the brazier. He looked thinner than ever outside the layers of his toga; just a collection of bones in a tunic of undyed wool. His only ornament was Antinous’s ring on one swollen finger.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

“Write my memoirs. And poetry, of course. I scribbled a verse at dawn this morning that I think Antinous would have liked.”

“Let’s hear it,” I said, because he’d recite it whether I asked or not. Some things never changed, and Hadrian’s vanity was one of them.

“
Little soul
,” he quoted slowly, “
you charming little wanderer,

My body’s guest and partner,

Where are you off to now?

Somewhere without color, savage and bare;

You’ll make no more of your jokes once you’re there.
”

“I like it,” I said, and I did.

“It came from a dream of my star.” Stirring the crisping parchment in the brazier. “I saw his soul fluttering, the color of gold. Waiting for mine.”

I didn’t say it out loud because I knew he’d mock me—but I was thinking of writing my memoirs, too. The life of Vercingetorix the Red: soldier, and gladiator, and general who had traveled the length and breadth of the Empire, served three emperors, loved one empress and fathered another. Hadrian would preserve my son in his memoirs, god and beloved—but what of the others who had crossed Hadrian’s path and mine over the course of our long and complicated lives? What about Titus, friend and future Caesar? Young Marcus, Imperial heir and future son-in-law? And all those women, the women in blue: sinuous lapis-eyed Sabina, bitter-edged Mirah in her blue scarf, merry sapphire-decked Faustina, and fleet-footed Annia running in a bloodstained blue tunic to save the Empire?

If Hadrian will not tell their story, I suppose it will be up to me.

“You look tired, Caesar.” Sabina tilted her head at Hadrian as we rejoined her. She had insisted on coming back to the villa; I had insisted she was still too weak to be moved, and we both know who won that argument. She looked so white and drawn on her couch that my heart clenched. I thought I saw glints of silver in that silky cap of light brown hair where there hadn’t been any gray even days ago. But her blue eyes gleamed, and bundled in her silver wolf skins with my garnet earring swaying beside her throat, she still had the mischievous look of a child bundled for a snowstorm.

I settled beside her, putting my arms around her since Hadrian did not seem to take offense anymore. Even if he had, I could not have stopped holding her. I did not think I would ever be able to stop holding her. Sabina had become a part of me, flesh of my flesh during those long hours I spent cradling her in a drying pool of her own blood. A part of me I could not lose, and I had so nearly lost her! Those hours were the stuff of nightmare: rocking her limp form, talking to her, sobbing for her, praying over her. Knowing in that bleak hard core of me that if I lost Sabina I would have fallen on my own sword.

I had lost Antinous. Mirah. My girls. Simon, Boil, so many friends. But not Sabina. She nestled a little into my arms even as she was asking her husband, “Are you in pain?”

“Agony,” Hadrian said shortly. “My limbs swell, my heart throbs, and I wake at night gasping for breath.”

“You should rest.”

“I will rest when I am dead, and I am certain that will be soon.”

We might as well have been the only people left in this huge marbled place. The Imperial court had been banished the day of Servianus’s arrest and not yet called back; they clustered in Rome trading wild rumors. I supposed it would soon enough sort itself out. Hadrian seemed in no hurry, nor was I.

Hadrian was gazing around him at the massive grounds he had built, the smoke from his burning scrolls still curling up into the sky. “You know”—surveying the vast gardens, the huge colonnaded stretches of marble—“I think I shall leave this place. I meant it for my crowning achievement, but now it has the feel of a tomb.”

“Where will you go?” Sabina asked.

“Baiae, perhaps. The small villa by the sea—I can write poetry there, washed by the waves.” He smiled a little, and I imagined he was remembering the sea at Eleusis. Me on one side and Sabina on the other as we plunged into the cleansing ocean . . . And Antinous, tossing his salt-drenched hair out of his eyes and laughing.

“We will accompany you,” Sabina said, but the Emperor shook his head.

“I go alone.”

“Why?” she demanded, but Hadrian looked at me.

“Where would you go,” he asked, “if you could go anywhere?”

Britannia
, I thought at once. I’d been thinking of Britannia a great deal lately. My parents had found peace there, and peace had bored me when I was young, but now I thought of the mists and the rains, the black silk sky pricked out with thousands of stars, the white ribbon of Hadrian’s great wall . . . And Titus had dangled a tempting proposition before me just yesterday. “You could take charge of the legion there, Slight. Keep the men fit; make repairs on the wall when needed; keep peace in the region. Think on it.”

I’d thought I was done with the legions, but maybe not. When my daughter was Empress, she’d need someone in that troublesome corner of the Empire to keep the peace. Since I’d already pacified the east, I might as well make sure of the west. Annia already had a far better and more civilized father to train her for the work that lay ahead here in Rome—but Rome could always be threatened by danger rising in the provinces. Who better to stop it than her barbarian of a second father, ready to march with his legion wherever she needed me?

I had been Hadrian’s watchdog for so many years. Now, perhaps, I could be my daughter’s.

I didn’t voice my thoughts, but Hadrian saw that I’d thought of something. “Go there,” he said, “wherever it is, and take my Sabina with you.”

The word broke from us both. “What?”

He looked mildly irked. “Must I make it an Imperial order? You, Vibia Sabina, will do as I ask for once and leave me. You, Vercingetorix, are to spend the rest of your days as Imperial guard keeping her safe.”

“I will not leave you to die alone,” Sabina stated, but Hadrian’s eyes just met mine over her head.

Persuade her.

God, but I wanted to! If I had my way, I’d take the woman I loved from this cesspit of a city to some distant, beautiful place where no one on earth would recognize or search for the Empress of Rome, and keep her safe till the end of her days. The whole city still buzzed with the rumor that she’d been killed—I had half a notion to let them go right on thinking it, and take her for my own. Because what held us here in Rome? Our daughter was grown, soon to marry and launch into her future under the care of Titus and Faustina—and they in turn had an empire to lead until it was Annia and Marcus’s turn. That was their path. Perhaps the path for Sabina and me led to Hadrian’s wall, both of us hand in hand under the moon, gazing at those stars that had so long led us in opposite directions.

A trickle of smoke from the burning brazier had been threading its way up toward the sky, but now it was gone. Hadrian looked at the empty sky for a while, and then he turned back to Sabina and me. He said simply, “Have I ever shown you my Hades?”

We glanced at each other. “You have never shown anyone your Hades, Caesar.” Which had not stopped the Empire from gossiping about what happened there.

“Come.” He led the way, stiffly. I followed, carrying Sabina because she still had no strength to walk any distance, and Antinous’s ancient gray-muzzled dog creaked along behind his master. We descended stone steps to the black iron doors set below the ground. Hadrian unlocked them with a small iron key, flung them wide, and went in without turning to beckon us.