Empress of the Seven Hills (20 page)

“Most importantly,” Plotina concluded, remembering her lecture, “you must not allow Dear Publius’s relationships with important people in the city to lapse simply because of a few hundred miles. Men are so forgetful when it comes to writing letters, so I shall rely on you for regular reports—”

“Really?” Sabina’s eyes snapped up. “So you won’t be coming to the provinces as well?”

“Naturally not. My husband relies on me here. Though of course there are visits.” Plotina cleared her throat pointedly. “For example,
Vibia Sabina—if you should find yourself with child while in the provinces, then of course I would come to assist with the confinement.”

“Oh, look,” Sabina said. “Your barley water.”

“Don’t change the subject.” The Empress laid her shuttle aside altogether, fixing Sabina with a stern gaze. “I had hoped you would have provided Dear Publius with an heir by now, Vibia Sabina. A child of three or four could not accompany you to the provinces, of course—so unhealthful—but I would have been pleased to rear the child in your absence.”

“So kind.”

“To give birth in the provinces is not ideal. There are difficulties finding a decent physician, and as for a wet nurse—! But the problems are not insurmountable. Complete bed rest, retirement from public entertainments, a diet of barley and fish to avoid stimulation of the blood—”

“Calpurnia says it’s silly to shut yourself up like an invalid when pregnant. She goes rolling about the house like a great ball up till the minute the baby starts coming.”

“Your stepmother has very
advanced
ideas, but I cannot recommend them.”

“My stepmother has given birth to five healthy children.” Sabina blinked, innocent. “How many have you had?”

Plotina looked at her coldly. “Children are not granted to us all.”

“I have a feeling they won’t be granted to me either,” Sabina murmured. “Not unless Dear Publius’s tastes shift in fairly dramatic fashion.”

“Dear Publius will do his duty, and so will you,” Plotina snapped. “A man needs a son.”

“Trajan doesn’t.”

“I assure you, he has felt the lack keenly.”

Well. Perhaps that was not
quite
the truth. Years ago, Plotina had been certain that once Trajan became Emperor, he’d change his mind about the importance of begetting a son. She had been only thirty-one when he took the purple; it had not been too late. An Emperor needed
heirs! But when she said as much, the words just rolled off him. “I’ll appoint an heir when the time comes. Best way to do it anyhow. Who knows what kind of son the Fates would send us? This way I can pick the best to follow me, not just pin all my hopes on blood ties.”

Plotina had let the subject drop from conversation but certainly not from mind. Trajan didn’t know everything, after all. Emperor of Rome or no.

“Dear Publius has become the son my husband always wanted,” she said instead. Perhaps that was not strictly true either, but all in good time. “I would not see Dear Publius as deprived as the Emperor. He will require sons, and sooner rather than later. You must—”

A familiar deep voice in the doorway interrupted her. “How domestic you both look. ‘Juno and her daughter-in-law Venus, busy at their looms.’”

“Flatterer!” Sabina laughed up at Hadrian. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever compared me to Venus.”

You give me just as many headaches as Venus gives Juno, I’m sure.
But Plotina looked at Dear Publius, noble as a column in his crisp toga, and held up her cheek for his kiss. “My dear, I was hoping to catch you.”

“Don’t tell me. The legate’s post?”

“How well informed you are.” Plotina sighed. “I should have known you’d charm it out of some freedman.”

“So? What legion did you get?” Sabina gave a crisp little military salute as Hadrian bent to greet the trio of hunting dogs who had loped in from the gardens at his footsteps and were now winding eagerly around his feet. “Where is it stationed? Egypt, Syria, Britannia—”

Hadrian tousled the ears of his favorite coursing hound, glancing over at Plotina. “What, our dear Empress didn’t tell you?”

“Our dear Empress knows everything,” Sabina said sweetly. “How to raise children, raise public morals, and raise cultural standards in the provinces all at the same time! But her omnipotence must have failed her this time around.”

Hadrian frowned at the same time Plotina did, but he didn’t reprove
his wife.
He never does.
Sabina took entirely too teasing a tone with Dear Publius, at least for Plotina’s taste, but he didn’t seem to mind. He almost seemed to enjoy it!

“So?” Sabina abandoned her loom and danced up to him, looking like a child waiting for a gift. “Where are we going, Legate?”

He straightened from the dogs, tweaking Sabina’s cheek in what Plotina could only call affection.
You weren’t supposed to be fond of her
, the Empress wanted to snap.
She was merely supposed to be
useful.

But she
wasn’t
useful, and he
was
fond, and none of it had quite worked out like Plotina had planned.

“I believe a toast is called for.” Hadrian held out a hand, and a well-trained slave instantly filled it with a cup. “To our coming days in…”

“Well?”
Sabina bounced on her toes. Plotina lifted her eyebrows.

“Germania,” he relented. “To be specific, Moguntiacum.”

TITUS

The journey back west toward Moguntiacum took far less time, Titus noticed, than the journey east. He was content to let the centurion set the pace, signing his name wherever the man pointed so they could commandeer fresh horses from each way station. “With a different horse every day,” Vix complained, “you’d think I’d get a good one at least once. But no. They all hate me.” Titus got used to leaning over and hauling Vix back into his saddle by the neck of the tunic whenever he started sliding down the horse’s shoulder. Even with the grueling pace, Titus didn’t mind the return journey so much. Maybe it was just the difference of having someone to share dinner with at the way stations now. “I’m sure Cicero or Juvenal had something clever to say about exhaustion and dirt grinding away the barriers of birth,” he told Vix one night, head tipped back in his chair, their boots propped identically before the common-room fire. “But I am for once too tired to come up with a single quote.”

“God be thanked,” said Vix, his eyes closed. “Pass the bread.”

Titus stared into the fire in the crude little way station’s common room. His boots were steaming. “I suppose you’ll think me a dreadful coward if I tell you I was terrified,” he found himself saying. “When I saw those Dacians coming at me…” His feet had felt like they were bedded in stone; all he could do was stare frozenly as they grew closer, closer—until Vix’s arm found his, jerking him up onto the horse so violently he could hardly move his arm in its socket the next day. “
Terrified
is putting it mildly,” Titus concluded.

“I pissed myself the first time I was in the arena and I saw a man coming at me with a sword.” Vix tore off a mouthful of bread, reaching up unconsciously to touch the little amulet hanging at his neck. “Everyone’s terrified, when the moment comes at you.”

“What did you do?”

“Pushed the fear down and killed him first. All you can do, if you don’t want to die.”

“I
would
have died, if you hadn’t picked me up out of that road.” Titus felt awkward. The words
Thank you
seemed hopelessly inadequate.

“Don’t mention it,” Vix said, eyes still closed. “And don’t mention what I said either, about pissing myself, or I’ll have to kill you.”

“Done.” Titus tore off a chunk of bread for himself. “What’s that token around your neck you keep playing with?”

“Nothing much.”

“You made sure to touch it before you jumped into that fight with the Dacians,” Titus noted. “Good-luck charm?”

“My father gave it to me,” Vix admitted. “Mars—he said the god of war would keep me alive in a fight. Truth is, it’s my father’s face I see every time I touch it. He was a gladiator too; survived eight years in the Colosseum. I’d rather have his luck than any spear-toting Roman god’s.” Vix tucked the little disk back under the neck of his tunic. “So far it’s kept me safe.”

“Father and son gladiators?” Titus wondered.

“Well, there was an emperor who hated both of us…”

They made it back to Mog at dusk after a full day’s gallop, barely squeezing through the gates before they closed for the night. The centurion was already striding away toward the legate’s quarters. “Come along, Tribune, he’ll want a report.”

“What do you need me for?” Titus wondered. “I don’t have anything to contribute. All I did was get yanked off my horse.”

“Come along!”

By the time the legate was through with them, it was full dark. Titus trudged into the
principia
, wondering tiredly about dinner. Messengers ran back and forth across the hall, slaves were trotting to and from the records room, legionaries paused to scan the wall for new announcements. New barracks were to be raised, Titus read; a detachment was to be welcomed from Thrace on temporary assignment; a stern reminder had been posted that local women were to be visited off-duty and outside fort walls only… no sign here that anyone knew what Titus had seen in Dacia. No sign they were all soon to be at war.

Titus felt a tingle in his belly, like the first tendril of smoke to creep up from a pile of kindling.
Why did I complain about a year of boot polishing and boredom?
he wondered.
Better boot polishing and boredom than battles and blood.

“Well?” Vix lounged against one wall beside the bust of the Emperor that presided over the
principia
of every fort in Rome. Even in stone repose, Trajan looked friendly. “What news? What did the legate say?”

“To me, nothing.” Titus took off his helmet, raking a hand over his hair. “All I did was stand there nodding while the legate grilled the centurion on the details. Then he told me to get out and go eat, and started dictating dispatches.”

“I knew it.” Vix socked one fist into the other. “War for sure—Trajan won’t stand for assaults on his garrisons. That Dacian king will be sorry he was ever born.”

“Not as sorry as I am that we missed dinner.” Titus winced. “Not that dinner from those hacks the legion calls cooks is much to miss.”

“Burned barley and boiled pork,” Vix agreed. “Not much like roast dormice and minced flamingo from Rome, is it, Tribune?”

“You saved my life at least twice on this journey, Slight.” Titus repressed a shiver. He had a feeling those screaming Dacians were going to be bearing down on him in his dreams for some time yet. “I think you can call me Titus now.”

Vix laughed. “Centurion’ll have the skin off my back.”

“Out of his earshot, then. Perhaps that’s best. As Ovid would say, ‘One who lives well, lives unnoticed.’”

“Ovid must have known a few centurions.” Vix took his proffered hand, a little self-consciously. “Titus, then.”

“Good night to you, Vix.” Titus staved off a bone-cracking yawn. “I think I’ll go see if I can scrape up some of that burned barley and boiled pork. I could eat a dead horse raw.”

Vix hesitated a moment. “Tribune—Titus. I’ve got a girl in town, and she’s a better cook than any of those legion butchers. If you want—”

Titus interrupted. “Lead the way.”

The lamb stew smelled tantalizing, but Titus was still trying not to stare at the girl who eyed him nervously as she put the bowls down on the table. Full lips in a lovely oval face; skin as clear as new cream and dark-honey hair roped into a thick braid that lapped the back of her knees… Vix’s girl should have been wearing silk and jewels in a golden palace, not a flour-dusted smock in a one-room tenement over a bakery.

Then Titus took a bite of the stew.

“Oh, gods.” He closed his eyes as the first swallow went down. “Marry me, lovely lady?”

“Told you my Demetra could cook.” Vix threw a careless arm around the girl’s waist. She smiled but cast a nervous glance at Titus. She had gone quite white when he introduced himself.

“
Tribune?
” Demetra squeaked. “What’s Vix done? I swear he doesn’t visit me often, sir, only when he’s off-duty, and I never come into the
fort! I know the rules—” It had taken all Titus’s reassurances to convince her he wasn’t here to haul Vix off for a flogging. Even now she was eyeing Titus as if a dragon had come to roost in her kitchen, despite the ecstatic noises he couldn’t help making as he bolted down her stew.

“You’re a lucky man,” he told Vix in a low voice as the girl retreated to the stove. “Emperors would beg for that girl’s favor, Vix—for the stew alone, not to mention the beauty. How did she end up cooking
your
supper?”

“I found a few auxiliaries pestering her at the market one day last year and ran them off.” Smugly. “It’s easy to get a girl when you’ve got that rescuer glow.”

Titus filed that bit of advice away for future reference. On the other hand, what was he ever going to rescue a girl from? A misattributed quotation?

He was scraping the bowl before he knew it, and Demetra scurried to bring another. He thanked her with a bow, looking around the cozy little room. Not a large room, and it served as kitchen and bedchamber both, but it glowed warm and cheery—a far cry from the sweaty masculine ugliness of the fort. The bed had a bright covering pieced together from colorful scraps of cloth, the rickety table had a cluster of the last autumn asters crammed into an old jug, and there was still a lingering smell of fresh bread drifting up from the bakeshop downstairs.

Vix had already plunged into his own second bowl. “What are you staring at?”

“All this.” Titus cast another envious glance around. “Domestic bliss. I never knew how much I missed it until I got consigned to that barren barracks.”

“You should get a girl,” Vix advised. “Visit her off-duty. Bribe the right people, and you can even get permission to sleep out of the fort.”

“There’s already a girl I want.” For a heady moment, Titus pictured a little cheerful room like this one: books in cases against the walls, fresh bread and fresh flowers, and Sabina lying across the bed crunching an apple and reading. Dimpling up at Titus when he came in…
“But she’s in Rome,” Titus concluded. And she’d never been
his
girl to begin with.