Empress of the Seven Hills (60 page)

“I didn’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Plotina told Trajan. “Just shut her away for a few days, until I could settle everything satisfactorily. I know you were fond of the girl, but you must admit she has a tendency to interfere. I couldn’t have that, now could I?”

Plotina paused a moment, frowning. That Girl with her indecent dresses and her tart tongue and her odd ideas of charity had Plotina’s own position now. First lady of Rome. Somehow it was the first time Plotina had considered the reality of it.
That foul-mouthed little slut, taking
my
place?

Well, hardly. Little Sabina would have other duties, after all. And perhaps, somewhere, along the line, she could be quietly divorced. Her connection to Trajan had served its purpose, after all. Another girl could be found if necessary, someone more biddable. Her sister was a likely prospect, if the laws could be sufficiently bent…

Sabina had been kept safely away from the matter at hand. That was the important thing.

“It was quite funny, really,” Plotina assured her husband. “My little deception about your will, I mean. Like a mummer’s farce—you’d have
laughed. And I did carry out your wishes, you know. You
would
have chosen Dear Publius as heir in the end. I know you were annoyed with me about my little efforts in that direction, but I knew what I was doing. If you’d simply let me explain, I’d have made you understand.”

Trajan’s drying lips were beginning to peel back from his teeth, as if he were snarling at her. Plotina reached out a hand to smooth his face. “Don’t growl, dear. I’m not angry with you anymore, in spite of the things you said to me in Antioch. It’s all worked out for the best.”

Really, it had. Juno’s hand, no doubt, reaching down to save her sister. Plotina had felt more frozen with every narrowing mile of water between the trireme and Rome. Disgrace, scandal, ostracism—would Trajan go so far as to divorce her, after all her hard work and initiative? On the word of that little snake Titus Aurelius, whose reward would apparently be Dear Publius’s birthright?
What can I do, what can I do?
Frozen panic had been giving way to pure terror when Juno acted. “You should be proud,” Plotina told her husband. “Only the queen of the heavens could strike down a god like you.”

A knock sounded at the door. Plotina started, then rose hastily and pulled the bed curtains to mask Trajan’s still body. “The Emperor is not to be disturbed.”

“I’m sorry, Lady.” A young secretary entered hesitantly, twisting a scroll between diffident hands. “I didn’t mean… how is he?”

“Resting now.” Plotina gave a brave, distant smile. “He pushed himself so hard, giving us his last wishes. I think it will not be long now.”

She had fed him an extra mix of sleeping draught at the end, just to make sure. A dicey business, really: giving him just enough to keep him unconscious but
not
kill him, and in the end—his real end, which had come in private just after she shooed everyone out—perhaps she’d given him a bit too much.
Really, how tiring. One moment you’re trying to give a man a peaceful death, and the next you have to pretend he’s alive again!

“See, that’s where I’m confused, Lady,” the secretary was hedging.
“It surprised me that the Emperor changed his mind. He dictated a letter to me—”

Plotina took the scroll from his hand before he could proffer it. “Did he, now.”

“Yes, his list of heirs for the Senate… as I said, it seemed odd he’d changed his mind.”

“A dying man often wanders in his last hours.” Swiftly she scanned the list of names. Celsus, Palma, Quietus, Nigrinus… oh, dear, something
would
be have to be done about all of them. Then she read the last name, and a bubble of pure joy rose in her chest.

Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus.

This time the name gave a thrill of satisfaction instead of hammering pains to her temples. Titus. Yes, something could definitely be done about him.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” Plotina turned her attention back to the secretary, barely remembering to hide her beam of happiness. “Phaedimus, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Lady.” His eyes were red-rimmed as he stared at the bed with its silent mound of blankets. A handsome young fellow. One of Trajan’s whores, no doubt.

Plotina smiled at him. “Guard!”

The stocky Praetorian entered again.

“Take this man outside and dispense with him.” Plotina rolled up the scroll again tightly, speaking very low so her words only reached the guard. “A cliff should do nicely. There’s a purse in it for you if it looks like suicide.”

The guard never blinked. “As you wish, Lady.”

Yes, she’d chosen well when she selected him. Loyal men, so rare these days. Pity he’d have to go over the cliff too, in a day or so.

“Lady?” The secretary looked more puzzled than alarmed as the Praetorian seized his arm. “What—”

Plotina dropped Trajan’s ridiculous letter and its ridiculous list of
names into the brazier. It caught at once, flaring up in a bright arrow of flame.

“Lady, wait!”

“No one else is to enter,” she called after the guard as he dragged Phaedimus out. “I do not wish the Emperor’s last hours disturbed.”

The door thumped shut. Plotina dusted off her fingertips as the letter flared into ash, and turned back to her husband. “Titus Aurelius?” she chided. “Really, Trajan. Whatever were you thinking?”

His snarl had returned. Maybe he was trying to say he was sorry?

“Perhaps I should announce your death in the morning,” she told him, coming back to the bed. “Before you begin to—well, smell. We’ll have the funeral pyre here when Dear Publius arrives, and take your ashes back to Rome. I’ll see them interred under your triumphal column, my dear. The one recording all your Dacian victories.”

She sat beside his still body, leaning forward to brush a strand of iron-gray hair off his forehead. “Thirty years of marriage, and I’ve never seen you look happier than you did at that triumph. You were a wonder of a man, you know. You should have let me have children. We’d have birthed a race of gods.”

A yawn struck her. Goodness, could it be dark already? So exhausting, this whole business. When she returned to Rome, she would sleep for a week.

“You don’t mind if I rest now, do you?” Plotina asked her husband, curling up beside him on the nest of blankets. “We never did share a bed together, not even on the night of our wedding. So cold. You’re cold now, but I suppose one can’t have everything.”

Empress Pompeia Plotina put her head on her husband’s stiff shoulder and fell happily asleep.

SABINA

Sabina stormed into the room Plotina had transformed into a study, and the former Empress bowed very low indeed at the sight of her. “My dear,” Trajan’s widow smiled. “I fear I have been neglecting you. So very busy, but of course that is no excuse, is it? You, after all, are the Empress of Rome now.”

Sabina did not stop to reflect on her new title, though it was the first time she had heard it. She just hit Plotina fast and hard across the face, not a dainty slap but a close-fisted hammer of a blow that she’d seen centurions deal out to disobedient soldiers. The impact sent a jolt of furious pleasure through her like a spear shaft. “You bitch,” she said, and had to fight to keep her voice even. “You know Trajan would have rather died than have your precious Publius take the purple.”

As one, the slaves bolted out of the room without waiting to be dismissed.

“But Trajan
is
dead.” Plotina’s face remained serene, though one sallow cheek now glowed red. “And I am pleased to say he had a change of heart shortly before he went to the gods. He was able to dictate a letter to the Senate announcing his true choice.”

“Yes, the letter
you
signed. When did he ever have you sign anything for him before?”

“My dear, he was too weak to hold the pen.”

“Too
weak
? He was already dead! He died, and you dictated that letter for him!”

“An empress really shouldn’t put stock in such wild rumors.”

Sabina flung herself down into the nearest chair, crossing one leg over the other in the way that she knew irritated Plotina. “And this letter is your only proof?”

“Hardly.” Plotina seated herself behind the folding desk—Trajan’s desk, Trajan’s lamps and rugs and couches, transported from the trireme to this damp stony little room to give the Empress—the former Empress—all the comfort she required. “My husband verbally announced his intention to adopt Hadrian as his son and heir. There are witnesses.”

“I heard about them too. Standing well back in a darkened room while you wept over a corpse’s hand. If you really wanted witnesses, why wasn’t I allowed to be present?”

“I was told you were in bed with your latest lover. A legionary, I believe?”

Sabina laughed. “Is that the best you have? Me locked into a confined room, probably on your orders, where I spent the hours drying the tears of one of Trajan’s officers? Someone, by the way, who mourned his Emperor much more passionately than you seem to be doing.”

“I will leave matters of
passion
up to you, Vibia Sabina. You know so much more than I about the sordid business.”

Plotina leaned back to a scroll spread over the desk, writing rapidly. Sabina considered her for a moment, feeling rage seep away inside like bathwater, leaving cold calculation behind. “You will never get away with it,” she said at last.

“With what?” Plotina did not bother to look up from her parchment. “Dear Publius has probably already received the letter announcing his adoption—I sent it before Trajan even died, on the fastest ship here. Hadrian will take that same ship back here to take charge of my husband’s funeral cortege, and then return to Rome. Word has been
sent to the Senate as well, on a fast ship, and their approval will be a matter of a mere week or so. The legates and officials here have been instructed to inform their legions—”

“And what about Trajan’s real letter?” Sabina snapped. “The list of candidates he wished to send the Senate, so that
they
might choose? I assure you, Hadrian was not on that list.”
Titus…

“What letter would that be?” Plotina blinked. “We searched my husband’s papers thoroughly, of course. Everything is a sad tangle. Phaedimus, that freedman who wrote letters for grants and promotions, has committed suicide. He leaped off a cliff… a noble gesture, wishing to follow his Emperor into the grave, but one wishes he had left the Imperial documentation in better order.”

Sabina felt a ribbon of ice crawling down her spine. “I was there when Trajan dictated that letter,” she managed to say. “I know what names were listed, and I will tell anyone who wishes to know that Hadrian was not one of them. Can you have me killed as easily as an inconsequential little freedman?”

“No. But who will believe you, my dear? A woman who keeps such questionable company. Closeted with a lover when her Imperial great-uncle lay dying… not your first lover either. I saw you carrying on with that young Titus Aurelius before you left for Antioch. I wonder how many people know about your affair with him. Not to mention all the other men.”

Sabina chuckled lightly, as if this were all nothing more than idle gossip over a good meal. “You want to soil the reputation of Dear Publius’s wife just when he wants to look impeccable? By all means, Plotina. Tell everyone I’m the great whore of Rome and I’ve been making a fool of my husband for years with half the men in the legions. Dear Publius will
love
you for that.”

“Dear Publius loves me anyway. I have made him Emperor of Rome.” Plotina’s voice oiled out, deep and unctuous and satisfied. “Perhaps we might strike a different bargain, Vibia Sabina. We may have had our differences in the past, but it doesn’t prevent us from striking
a new alliance, does it? I will refrain from darkening your reputation any further, and you will greet your husband properly when he arrives, wearing something more dignified than that shift.”

“Die slowly, Plotina.” Sabina rose, speaking slowly and distinctly. “Dear gods, was there ever a woman better named than you? You sallow plotting scheming treacherous bitch.”

She turned for the door.

“You really will have to improve your language, Vibia Sabina,” Plotina called after her. Sabina could hear the smile. “There can be no swearing for the Empress of Rome.”

TITUS

The Norbanus house seemed strangely silent when Titus entered the atrium. The slave who ushered him inside was white-faced and distracted, vanishing without taking Titus’s cloak or asking whom he had come to see. When Titus had come to this atrium hand in hand with Faustina, soaking wet and asking her father’s permission for a betrothal, the house had rung top to bottom with congratulations: Calpurnia showering them both with kisses, Marcus beaming pleasure, Faustina’s brothers making sly jokes about why their big sister was drenched head to toe, the slaves trading smug whispers of “Told you so!” Now the house was silent as a crypt.

They already know
, he thought. Good. It would make things easier.

“Faustina!” He found her sitting in the gardens, a splash of peach-colored linen and fair hair, staring at the splashing fountain. “You heard, I take it.” He kissed the top of his betrothed’s smooth blond head.
Betrothed. Future wife. Wife-to-be.
Words he’d reveled in these past weeks, because they were all just so many delicious synonyms for
mine
.

Faustina looked up at him, but he didn’t see the familiar leap of happiness in her face. Her dark eyes were larger than ever, and blank as stones. “He’s dead.”

Titus swallowed. “I know.”

He’d had the news from Ennia, of all people. A freedwoman housekeeper, better informed than one of the richest men in Rome… she had a brother who worked the Tiber docks, and she’d been visiting him when the black-sailed ship came gliding home. She’d come running direct into Titus’s chamber, where he sat ostensibly looking at
alimenta
reports and in reality making happy plans for his wedding. How many guests to invite to the banquet; whether Faustina would prefer an old-fashioned iron ring or the new kind with gold set in iron… he’d been doodling her profile in the margin of a wax tablet when Ennia came running in, sickly pale under her olive tan, to tell him the news that had just barely come to Rome.