Empress of the Seven Hills Read online

  Senator Marcus Norbanus was the kind who puts you on your best behavior. My father had the same effect on people, but mostly because you knew he’d knock the head off your shoulders if you got on his bad side. Senator Norbanus didn’t look like the knocking type—he was nearly seventy, and he had gray hair and a crooked shoulder and ink stains on his fingers. But he had me sitting up straight and minding my language inside the first minute.

  “Vercingetorix,” he mused. “I’ve often wondered how you and your family were faring.”

  “Very well, Senator.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. You’ve returned to Rome for good?”

  “It’s the center of everything.”

  “It is that.” He rotated a stylus between his fingers. His study was cheerfully cluttered, pens and parchment and slates on every surface. He had more scrolls than I’d ever seen in one place in my life. “What were you planning to do here in Rome?”

  “Thought about the legions.” All I’d wanted once was to be a gladiator, but I got over that fast enough once I had a taste of it. Gladiating aside, there wasn’t much else for a boy with a talent for weapons except the legions. Besides, even a slave-born boy could rise in the Roman army…

  “I wonder if you’re aware of the commitment one makes in joining the legions.” Senator Norbanus laid his stylus aside. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty,” I said.

  He looked at me.

  “Nineteen,” I amended.

  He looked at me some more.

  “Nineteen! In a couple of months, anyway.”

  “Eighteen, then. I assume you plan on advancement through the ranks?”

  I snorted. “Didn’t plan on being a common soldier for life!”

  “Plan on being a common soldier for the next twelve years, because you cannot even be made a centurion until you reach thirty.”

  “Thirty—?”

  “Even then, it’s no guarantee. You will need patronage to make centurion, and I may not still be here in twelve years.” The senator ran a rueful hand through his gray hair.

  “Well”—I tried to regroup—“I might not stay in the legions till I’m thirty. There’s other jobs.”

  He looked at me, exasperated. “The term of service for a legionary is twenty-five years, Vercingetorix. Sign up now, and you will be forty-three by the time you are allowed to think of other jobs.”

  “Twenty-five years?”

  “Didn’t you bother to learn anything about the legions before considering them as a career?”

  I shrugged.

  “The young,” Senator Norbanus muttered. “I don’t suppose you know the pay rate either? Three hundred denarii a year, if you’re curious. Minus your weapons, armor, and rations, of course.”

  “Hell’s gates,” I muttered. “You Romans are cheap.”

  “I don’t suppose you know about the laws concerning legionaries and marriage either. Soldiers cannot marry, at least until they make centurion. Even then, they cannot take their wives with them on march. Legion posts, I might add, can last many years far away from Rome.”

  “Don’t want a wife,” I said, but my enthusiasm for the legions was definitely waning.

  “Think on it,” said Senator Norbanus, his exasperation with me fading a trifle. “I don’t mean to discourage you from army life, but at least know what you’re getting into. There are other options.”

  I was already thinking about them. “Like what?”

  “Bodyguarding, perhaps? Good guards are always in demand, and I seem to remember you had a way with a sword even as a child.”

  “Maybe.” Not much glory in bodyguarding…

  “Do you have a place to live, Vercingetorix?”

  “Just got off the boat.”

  “A client of mine owns a small inn in the Subura. He’ll be willing to let rent slide for a week or two, until you find some work. I’ll write you a letter.”

  The stylus scratched busily for a moment, and I contemplated the future with gloom. Twenty-five years. Who would sign up for that?

  “Here.” The senator sealed the letter. “Stop for a meal in the kitchens before you go. And if you have further thoughts on your future, do come back. I owe your parents a debt, and it will easily encompass any help I can give to you.”

  “Thank you, Senator.”

  “And speaking of your parents—” His eyes met mine, suddenly cool. “I trust you are not stupid enough to mention their names to anyone? Or Emperor Domitian’s. They are all dead, or at least officially so, and it’s best they stay that way.”

  “Yes, sir.” Damn him, I had been planning to do a little modest trading on my father’s name. There were still some followers of the games who might remember him, maybe give me a job in his name—but the senator looked stern, and I did my best to look innocent.

  “Fortuna’s luck to you, then.” He held out the scroll. I took it, bowed, and thumped out, wondering what in hell I was supposed to do if I didn’t join the legions. The only skill I had was fighting.

  SABINA

  “Did you get what you wanted?” Sabina asked, looking up from her scroll when the tall boy came slouching back into the atrium. He was scowling blackly, running a rough hand through his shaggy hair.

  “Not really.” He scuffed to a stop by the pool, toeing one foot along the blue-tiled edge. “Thought your father might get me into the legions, but now I’m not so sure I want that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t see why I should sell my soul just for a job.”

  “Oh, Rome always wants your soul. Didn’t you know that?” Sabina marked her place in the scroll with one finger. “But most people seem to think it’s a fair bargain.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You could always be a gladiator,” she suggested.

  He jumped, and looked at her again.

  “You really don’t remember me, do you?” She’d known him at once, even after four or five years. He looked the same: russet hair and brown arms, big feet and big shoulders and a lot of loosely bolted limbs between them that hadn’t quite caught up. The same, just larger.

  He was looking at her warily now. “Should I remember you?”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “It was a memorable day, all told.”

  “So who are you, Lady?”

  She stood up, discarding her scroll, and stepped close against him, putting one hand on the back of his sunburned neck and standing on tiptoe. Inches away, she tilted her head and smiled. “Remember now?”

  She could see the click in his eyes. “Sabina,” he said slowly. “Lady Sabina—right?”

  “Right.”

  “Didn’t know you without the bruises. Otherwise you haven’t changed much.” He looked her over. “First girl I ever kissed.”

  “The Young Barbarian? I’m flattered.” Sabina felt his arms begin to sneak up around her waist, and stepped back. “All the little girls loved the Young Barbarian. The year you had your bouts in the Colosseum, your name was on schoolhouse doors inside hearts all over Rome. I told my friends I’d met you, and none of them believed me.”

  “You tell them I kissed you?” He took another step toward her, a grin starting around the corners of his mouth.

  “I think I was the one who kissed you, actually.” Sabina retrieved her scroll and sat down on the marble bench again. “What’s next for you, if not the legions?”

  “Not a gladiator’s life, that’s for damned certain.” He leaned up against the pillar, folding his arms across his chest and cocking his head down at her. “I suppose you’re married now?”

  “Gods, no.” On her seventeenth birthday last year, her father had given her a pearl necklace and promised her reasonably free rein in the choice of her husband. Sabina valued the promise more highly than the pearls.

  “I thought that baby might be yours.”

  “No, that’s little Linus. He and Faustina are Calpurnia’s—she’s my stepmother.”

  Sabina went back to her book then, wanting to savo
r the last verses where Ulysses dealt with his wife’s suitors, wishing Homer might have written just a little more about Penelope in her husband’s absence. But the large sandaled feet in front of her didn’t move, and Sabina glanced back up at the russet-haired visitor who looked so out of place in the quiet vine-veiled atrium. Vix’s lurking grin flowered into something cheerful and lewd, and she laughed. “Fortuna be with you, Vercinget-orix.”

  “I make my own luck,” he bragged.

  “Do you? That’s a nice trick, if one can manage it.” She wandered away, finding her place in the scroll again and reading as she walked. She didn’t have to glance over her shoulder to know that Vix was looking after her.

  VIX

  The inn Senator Norbanus had directed me to wasn’t bad. The innkeeper wasn’t happy to give me a week’s free rent, but he grunted at the senator’s seal. “Maybe you could help around the place,” he added. “I could use a big strong lad like you. Customers, it gets late, they like having someone with a knife see them home safe.”

  “That pays well?”

  “Not bad. Pays even better if they turn down the guard and you can hold ’em up in an alley.”

  I quirked an eyebrow. “I want half.”

  “Ten percent.”

  “Ten the first week, and thirty once I’m paying my own room.”

  “Done.”

  The room had lice, but at least it had a bed that didn’t rock back and forth like a river. As I flopped down I saw a serving maid creak down the stairs outside. Spotty skin, but breasts like melons, and she gave me a sidelong glance as she trudged by with a basket of blankets. Maybe the day wasn’t such a loss after all.

  I didn’t think about Sabina. Why should I? Just a patrician girl I probably wouldn’t see again after she’d walked away from me in that atrium with her light brown hair swaying against her narrow back. Girls like her were off-limits, and anyway, she had small breasts. Figs, say, rather than apples. I liked apples. Or melons… I eyed the dank hall where the serving maid had gone.

  If I’d known the trouble that small-breasted off-limits patrician girl would make for me, I might have choked her to death in the middle of that atrium rather than watch her walk away.

  CHAPTER 2

  PLOTINA

  “Vinalia.” Plotina pronounced the word disapprovingly. “A disgusting festival.”

  “It’s harmless.” Her husband’s voice was muffled as he dragged a tunic over his head. “Just a little celebration of the wine harvest—”

  “All Rome gets drunk! Decent women don’t dare set foot outside.” Plotina frowned into the polished steel mirror, remembering the tipsy shopkeeper who had pinched her on the hip during a Vinalia celebration some twenty years ago when she had been an unwed girl. Pinched her. Her, Pompeia Plotina, who could have been a Vestal Virgin had she chosen. If she had not known even then that she was destined for Greater Things.

  “Will you at least attend the races after the ceremony?” Her husband’s voice was coaxing. “People expect to see you.”

  “I will stay through the first race,” Plotina allowed. “That is all. Green gown,” she told the slaves, who hastened forward with the folds of deep green silk. Silk; so ostentatious, but it was expected of a woman in her position. She held her arms out—decently swathed, of course, in a long-sleeved tunic. The women of Rome might mostly bare their arms like courtesans, even the women of great birth, but Plotina would never be one of them.

  “Gods’ bones, will you leave your fussing?” Her husband swatted at his slaves as they draped the heavy purple-bordered folds of his toga. “It looks well enough!”

  “Don’t be a child,” Plotina said without turning. A man of such power, such distinction, and he stood impatiently shifting and fidgeting like a boy of fifteen. In many ways he is still a boy of fifteen, she thought, tilting her head as the maid dabbed behind her ears with lavender water. Only whores wore perfume.

  Does the girl wear perfume? Plotina wondered. If so, I shall have to rethink.

  “Ready?” Her husband sounded amused. “If my wife is done primping, the priests await.”

  “You know I don’t like jokes.” Plotina cast an eye over her reflection. Dark hair tidy and coiled, covered by a veil as was only proper. Pale oval face (no rouge or kohl, of course) and a suitably sober expression. Deep-set eyes, a nose like a furrow with a straight mouth to match it—and could that be a thread or two of gray just starting to come in by her temples? She leaned toward the mirror, pleased. She had not liked youth, and youth hadn’t liked her. A girl was nothing; a woman was powerful. A girl knew nothing; a woman knew all. As a girl Plotina had been lanky and awkward, but now at thirty-five they had begun to call her handsome. “I am ready.”

  She rose, taking her husband’s arm. He stood tall, but she did not have to tilt her head to look into his face. Plotina could look eye to eye with all but the tallest men in Rome, and that pleased her. The goddesses of the heavens were always tall, weren’t they? And Plotina liked to model herself after only the highest and greatest of examples.

  Well, she wouldn’t model herself after just any goddess. Juno, of course, queen of the heavens and always irreproachable—but some of the others were not nearly so well behaved. Plotina eyed the statue of Venus disapprovingly when they made their grand entrance into the temple. Venus: a curly-headed empty little flirt, and her statue looked it. If I were Juno, I’d never put up with any whorish little goddess of love and her antics. Even the gods must keep their houses in order. Plotina’s house was always in order.

  The priest raised his hands with a jug of the season’s new wine, intoning a prayer for the harvest to come and thanks for the harvest past. Judging from the flush on his face, he had been appreciating the wine already for some hours. I’ll have a new priest, Plotina decided. Not that anyone was listening to the prayers. Men stood shifting from foot to foot until they could get their hands on the wine; girls giggled behind their hands; matrons fidgeted with their festival wreaths. Plotina’s own husband was trading jokes in a whisper with his slouching guards. “Set an example,” she nudged him, and bowed her head pointedly low as the priest rolled into the final prayer for Venus and Jupiter. Heads lowered hastily across the temple. Including one light-brown head Plotina had spotted the moment she entered the temple.

  The girl.

  Oh, the agony of it. Was she the one? Was she? Her bloodlines, of course… the mother’s side left a great deal to be desired, but surely Senator Norbanus’s side balanced that. The face: modest and neat-featured. Beauty was not required—indeed, it could even be a deterrent. Flightiness and vanity so often came hand in hand with beauty, and the girl Plotina chose must have poise and dignity above all. Two other candidates had already been discarded on that basis. Plotina watched for some minutes while the priest droned, but the girl stood quietly, not fidgeting like the others of her age or darting looks at the dresses her friends were wearing. Quiet; that was good. She stood respectfully behind her father, eyes lowered—mindful of her elders; excellent. Plotina would be able to mold her, guide her, train her. The dress—deep red silk, and really a girl of eighteen was far too young to be wearing silk, but her father was notoriously indulgent. At least the arms were covered.

  The girl looked down at her little fair-haired sister, wriggling and yawning under the drone of prayers, and put a finger to her lips in a shushing motion. Ease with children; definitely good. The girl Plotina chose would be required to bear many children. Plotina would be the one to rear the children, of course—she would see to their education and morals herself. Now, the girl’s education… that could be a problem. Not only was Senator Norbanus too indulgent a father, but he had educated his eldest daughter far past the usual standard. What was he thinking? Homer and Aeschylus were of absolutely no use to a woman in the practical world. Fortunately, Senator Norbanus’s third wife had reportedly taken her stepdaughter in hand as regarded the housewifely arts, so perhaps the excess education was not too great a flaw. Once the babies came,
after all, the books would be forgotten.

  Now—the dowry. Plotina did not count that as high as most; other things were far more important. But the girl’s dowry was more than satisfactory, and there would be no denying its usefulness. The connections—those were even better than the dowry. Senator Marcus Norbanus might be aging, but his voice in the Senate was still strong. His support could be vital.

  The priest finished his invocation to Venus and lifted the vessel high. Wine poured in a ruby stream. The girl watched, narrow head tilted to one side under its festival wreath of scarlet poppies. Plotina felt a flutter in her stomach, dryness in her mouth. Is she the one? The one who will be worthy?

  No, no one was worthy. It was quite impossible.

  A biddable girl who would spend her life trying, however—that was within reach.

  Here. In the person of Senator Norbanus’s eldest daughter, Vibia Sabina.

  Yes, she’ll do. She’ll do very nicely.

  “Thank the gods that’s done with,” Plotina heard her husband grumble as they left the Temple of Venus. The waiting crowd erupted at the sight of him, surging forward with lusty cheers, stretching to touch the purple edge of his toga as he passed. Praetorian guards in red and gold held back the crush, clearing a path back toward the gold-trimmed Imperial litter. He handed Plotina inside, then raised an arm in cheerful salute to the crowd. The shouting redoubled: men, women, and children screaming themselves hoarse.

  “Now for the races,” said Marcus Ulpius Trajan, Pontifex Maximus and thirteenth Emperor of the Roman Empire. The litter rose on the backs of six Greek slaves and went jogging toward the Circus Maximus. “Gods’ bones, I hate priests and their droning.”

  “Yes, dear.” Pompeia Plotina, Emperor’s wife, first lady of Rome, Empress of the seven hills, was not listening. The races did not matter at all; nor did a grubby little celebration of the wine harvest where men and their sluts drank too much wine and defiled public morals. Nothing mattered except that the girl, the right girl, had finally been chosen. Plotina laughed a little—it had not occurred until now just how much the matter had been preying on her.