Mistress of Rome (27 page)

“I’ll send some tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Caesar.”

“The first time I’ve ever given a woman bull guts.”

“At least it’s original.”

Four hours after midnight. The banquet should have ended long ago. Everyone yawned and dozed on their couches. Slaves drooped against the walls, trying to keep their eyes open. Musicians sawed tiredly at their instruments, recycling music heard at the beginning of the night. More people gathered in the anteroom behind the black curtains: I saw that Larcius had arrived with a worried Penelope. But no one dared to leave.

“My niece Julia. I suppose you’ve heard of her death?”

“It’s a great loss, Caesar. Rome’s loss.”

“Don’t mouth platitudes at me.”

“I’m not. I saw her once. She looked kind.”

“When did you see her?”

“At her wedding. I was fifteen.”

“I don’t remember her wedding.”

“Well, it was a short marriage.”

“She was very . . . she had a delightful giggle, when she did giggle, which wasn’t often. Shouldn’t have died. My astrologer Nessus said she wasn’t supposed to die so young. He’s never failed me before.”

“One hears she wanted to be a Vestal Virgin.”

“Spiteful dried-up old priestesses. She’d have been wasted on them.”

“Perhaps.”

“She was—she was a great comfort to me. And now everyone keeps shoving blond girls at me, as if she had been my mistress. Filthy-minded fools.”

“People like to talk, Caesar. What’s the use of having an Emperor if you can’t make up filthy rumors about him?”

“Did any of your former masters sell you for impertinence?”

“No, I’m usually very tactful. But you did tell me to talk.”

“So I did. I can’t think what got into me. I don’t usually like loose talk. And anyone who slanders my niece’s memory, I’ll hang.”

“Then you’ll execute a good many harmless gossips.”

“Traitors.”

“Innocents.”

“They’re all innocent when they’re dead.”

“It’s no use arguing with you, is it?”

“Correct.”

Dawn. Most of the guests had gone to sleep on their dining couches. The others, glaze-eyed and crumpled, nibbled at drying oysters in curdling sauces. A pageboy in a black tunic dozed on his feet, head drooping over the wine flagon. Even Larcius nodded in the anteroom.

The Emperor rose. His guests came to attention with a start. As soon as he took his black Flavian gaze off me, I realized how exhausted I was.

“A delightful evening,” Domitian said carelessly to the room at large. Without so much as a glance toward me, he was gone.

All the eyes turned to me then. Wondering what he saw in me. Because while it wouldn’t have been uncommon for the Emperor to take a fancy to a singer at a party, it
was
uncommon that he hadn’t simply set me aside for later with a word. It wasn’t like Domitian to keep important guests waiting while he talked to slave girls. It wasn’t like Domitian to talk to
any
girls at length. He had no great use for women outside his bed; everyone knew that.

But he had talked to me half the night as if no one else in the world existed, and suddenly everyone was crowding around me with sleepy but shining eyes.

“—my dear Athena—”

“—such a delightful performance—”

“—one of the great artists of our city—”

“Now that’s enough.” Larcius bustled to my side. “It’s been a long night. Home at once, child.”

A well-manicured hand tapped my shoulder, and I turned. An imperial freedman, marked with the official purple insignia. “Lady Athena?” he said in an educated drawl.

The room was avidly silent. I was
Lady
Athena now, was I?

He bent and whispered in my ear for a moment. I nodded. He bowed very low, a bow reserved for the Emperor—or those closest to him.

Y
ES, more than a month now and no sign he’s tiring of her!” one of the slaves whispered outside my room, having just carried out an armful of my dresses. She’d run into two more laundresses and they’d at once put their heads together. For the last month, no one at Praetor Larcius’s house had been able to talk of anything but me.

“I heard he took a courtesan from Madam Xanthe’s establishment—” Another of the slave women.

“Yes, and sent her back within the hour. He keeps our Athena all night!”

“She’s not beautiful like those courtesans. What’s she have, that he doesn’t tire of her?”

I didn’t know, either. “Why?” I asked once, but Domitian only shrugged. He sent for me a minimum of five times a week. I invariably stayed the night and walked back to Larcius’s house in my sandals, yawning at the spring dawn.

The laundry woman: “Sshh, she’ll hear you!”

“No, she won’t. She’s been up all hours, doing God knows what, and she’ll sleep till midday.”

In fact I was sitting up on my sleeping couch, my hair hanging down the back of the loose Greek chiton I wore to bed, chewing on the end of a stylus and trying to write a song. Domitian rather liked the music I wrote myself—“You might even write something good someday,” was the way he phrased it.

“You know he
talks
to her? You suppose she advises him—the voice behind the throne, and all that?”

Silently I laughed. I had no influence over Domitian at all; he’d left me in no doubt of that. “Don’t plan on meddling in Imperial affairs,” he’d said coolly on my first overnight stay at the palace. “I never ask my women for advice. A rule for living that follows ‘Never anger the gods’ and ‘Never bet on gladiators.’ ”

I already knew about that last one.

The slave women again: “You think he’ll tire of her soon?”

Even if he did, my future was assured. There would be many men in Brundisium wanting to hear what in my voice had so fascinated the ruler of the world. Everywhere I went I was courted and congratulated. Only Larcius seemed concerned.

“I hate to see you like this, child.” Embarrassed. “You’re a singer. An artist. Not a courtesan.”

“The Emperor knows that. He gave me lyre strings, didn’t he? Enough to keep me playing until I’m fifty.”

“Don’t be tiresome, child. You know what I mean!”

I smiled. A bit of insolence in that smile was borrowed from my son, but I couldn’t help it. Larcius sighed. “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re missing a great many engagements, you know. Centurion Densus and Lady Cornelia Prima asked for you to sing for their eldest daughter’s wedding, and they’ve always been some of your favorite patrons—”

“Tell them no.” My Imperial lover didn’t like to share my time. In a way it was refreshing—the Emperor had singled me out, and as a result I didn’t have to be subservient to anyone anymore. Except him.

The melody I was trying to write unstuck itself in my head and flowed out of the stylus. Rather nice. It would go well with the text of an old Greek poem that I had in mind. Maybe I’d get a word of grudging praise out of the Emperor: “Not good, but not bad, either.”

“Thea?” Penelope burst in, her gray curls vibrating with exasperation. “Thea, that child of yours is beating up Chloe’s son again—”

By the time I rushed down the hall in my bed robe, Vix’s roars were filling the house.

“Call my mother a cheap whore!”
Vix and Chloe’s son were lurching about the atrium swinging at one another.
“She’s not either cheap! She’s very expensive! She’s the best! Your mother gives it away for FREE!”

They fell with a crash into the tiled atrium pool. Vix came up spluttering and roaring, still swinging. I grabbed him by the doubled-up fists, hauled him out of the pool, made the appropriate apologies, and dragged him down the hall again. “You cannot keep going around picking fights! What did Chloe’s son say to you?”

“That you were the Emperor’s whore.”

“I
am
the Emperor’s whore, Vix!” Dragging him into my bedchamber.

“Yeah, but he said you weren’t no singer! Said you’d do anything for a copper. Said—”

“No excuse. Bend over.” I got out the worn birch switch, and Vix let out a bloodcurdling scream.

“Vix, for God’s sake, I haven’t even
hit
you yet.”

“So get on with it.” He grinned.

I gave him a dozen good whacks across his wet rear. He yelled as if I were removing his gizzard with a fork. Not that he was really in agony; he just yelled on principle. I wasn’t really angry with him, either; I just hit him on principle. I had to do something to prove I wasn’t an utter failure as a mother.

“So if you’re the Emperor’s whore, when does it get good for me?” Vix straightened amiably as I put the birch switch away, rubbing his behind. “Will he take you to the games? I could go to the games! Sit in the Imperial box up close—”

“You are not going to the games.”

“Am too! I’m gonna be a gladiator someday—”

My people have an old saying about the sins of the parents being visited on the children. I used to think that was all nonsense. Just imagine.

 

N
OT a bad song,” said the Emperor. “Less banal than usual.” “That’s what I thought you’d say.” I laid my lyre aside.

“Do you care what I think?”

It was very late. The lamps guttered low, casting shadows over the Imperial bedchamber. A plain bedchamber, reflecting Domitian’s plain tastes: no silk hangings on the walls, no velvet cushions on the sleeping couch, no jewels in the marble eyes of the little Minerva that stood in the corner.

I reached for my night robe and pulled it over my head, not pushing back the blanket until I was dressed. He didn’t like to have me lounging naked on his bed. “I won’t have any woman brazening around my chambers like Cleopatra,” he said shortly. “Unless I say otherwise, you’ll keep yourself clothed like a decent woman.”

He was already reaching for his portfolio, light gleaming through the thin spot in his hair. He was sensitive about that thin spot, I’d found. He frowned as he squinted over a scroll, but it was an absent frown; he was in an approachable mood this evening. “Plans for the harbor?” I asked. “Or a new arch?” Everywhere Domitian went, he built: harbors, arches, roads, aqueducts, temples, all rising to the glory of the Flavian dynasty.

“The harbor.”

“It’s going very slowly, isn’t it?”

“The engineers say they need another year. I estimate three.”

“More like four, I’d say. The auspices are pointing toward another flood.”

“You know more about harbors than I do?”

“No, but I’ve lived in Brundisium a long time.”

“And I never take a woman’s advice.”

I shrugged, arranging myself to wait in silence, but after a moment he gestured at me to continue talking.

“I’m not sure what you want me to talk about, Caesar.” Lightly. “Why don’t you tell me a story instead? Your thrilling victory over the Germans at Tapae, maybe?”

“I despise telling stories.”

“That’s a change. Most men love to bore me with their tales of valor.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized my mistake. He didn’t like being reminded about the other men I’d entertained before him. That was one reason why I hadn’t told him about Vix.

His black eyes looked at me consideringly, as if my skull were made of glass and he could see through it to the little russet-haired boy in my head. A fly buzzed, and his hand snapped out casually, trapping the fly on the pen’s sharp tip. He never missed. The courtiers liked to joke about his kills, laying bets on how many flies could stack up on his pen by the end of a long summer afternoon . . . but the jokes had fear behind them. Perhaps just because he was Emperor. But perhaps not. I was never entirely easy with him despite my frankness of speech. And I hadn’t told him about Vix . . .

I changed the subject.

“Will you be going back to Rome soon, Caesar?”

“No. To Tivoli for the summer.”

“When will you be leaving?”

“Why?” He sharpened his pen. “Looking to be rid of me?”

“Maybe I’m looking to be rid of all the sycophants in my drawing room.” A flood of them every morning now, begging for a word with me. Senators murmuring tactful words about governorships for themselves and posts for their sons, poets writing me verses for patronage, old soldiers hoping for a place in the palace guard—even young men stupid enough to think stealing the Emperor’s mistress the ultimate coup. You’d think it would be exciting to be the hub of all that attention, but it was surprisingly dull. A little sad. All those greedy eyes.

“Don’t worry,” said Domitian, breaking my thoughts. “As soon as I’m tired of you, the sycophants will be gone. I suppose you’ll be sad when the day arrives?”

“No.”

“I used to value honesty in women. I’m beginning to reevaluate that opinion.”

“Shall I go, Caesar?”

“No.” He drew the sharp tip of his pen down over my forehead, my nose, my lips. “Come here.”

As a lover, he was brisk and unsentimental. So far he hadn’t exhibited any strange needs or unusual demands; in fact his only stated request was “Refrain, please, from pretending ecstasy. I find it distracting.” He was thick-bodied but agile, with a sprinkle of graying hairs curling crisply on his chest: a vigorous forty years of age. In bed most men look like fools to me, but Domitian was no fool.

When he was done I reached for my robe. “It’s near dawn,” I said. “I should go.”

He lay against the pillow, his eyes unreadable. “You should.”

I was a singer and I knew how to read an audience. I’d been a whore, and I knew how to read men. But I looked at Domitian and I never knew what he was thinking. I’d seen him sign death warrants with a casual flourish, I’d seen him throw his head back and shout laughter at some unexpected joke, I’d shared his bed and looked into his black eyes across a pillow—and I did not know him at all.