Mistress of Rome (58 page)

Arius shivered. Looking down at Vix, he saw a sickly expression on his son’s face.

“Let’s go,” Arius said.

They walked on in silence. Behind them, the wagon rumbled heavily on its way.

Arius looked back over his shoulder. The Colosseum loomed, a round marble shadow holding a stretch of empty sand and all his nightmares.

Thea’s hand squeezed his. “Don’t look back,” she said. “Remember what happened to Lot’s wife.”

He blinked. “Who?”

“A Jewish story. Take my word for it: You don’t want to look back.”

He tore his eyes from the Colosseum. Reached out tentatively in his mind, listening for the demon’s voice.

It’s dead
, said Hercules.
That demon’s as dead as the Emperor. You big dummy.

A clean, empty silence.

“Arius?”

He squeezed Thea’s hand, the Colosseum dropping off his back and disappearing into limbo, and set his eyes forward.

I
T was just a small fast boat, made for ferrying up and down the Tiber, but it would carry us to the sea. Arius was already sniffing the wind and prowling the deck with the new lightened step that made my heart glad. He also threw a sailor overboard before we’d quite cleared the city, but the sailor had aimed a kick at the dog, and anyway Arius fished him out again quite amiably. Another sailor had kicked Vix for climbing into the rigging, but Arius didn’t throw him overboard. He advised the sailor to kick our son as often as he liked since Vix was a slow learner. Nice to see Arius so calm and cheerful. Nice to have Vix out of my hair, too.

“Good thing he outgrew the arena,” Arius commented in the sunny afternoon that followed, leaning beside me on the rail as we watched Vix try to talk the captain into letting him plot a course on the maps. “He may be an idiot, but even an idiot’s too smart for the arena.”

“How long do you think we’ll keep him?” I watched Vix ruffle his russet hair in a gesture exactly copied from his father. He’d been talking about coming back to Rome someday, becoming an officer in the legions, leading armies and slaying dragons . . .

“A few years.”

“Can we stop him?”

“The Emperor of the known world couldn’t stop him.” Arius hugged my waist, resting his chin on top of my head. “Didn’t that astrologer say Vix would lead an army one day?”

“He’ll lead an army of thugs, that’s what he’ll lead! Our son is headed for a life of crime.” Still . . . my child, son of a singer and a gladiator, growing up to command legions . . . how Lepida Pollia would have hated that! But Lepida wasn’t around to hate anything anymore. I didn’t care much about that, one way or another. When I’d helped bring down an Emperor, other things looked smaller—even Lepida. I’d hardly bothered to wonder who killed her. It could have been anyone. How many enemies had her years of scheming earned her?

Nessus had been looking more and more like his old self. He’d come up to me just yesterday, pressed my hand, and told me my baby was going to be a girl. “The first of a whole mess of them,” he said. “Red-haired and horrible; won’t you have fun? Good luck, m’dear.” Kissing my cheek.

A girl. I’d like a girl. A daughter born in Brigantia.

“What?” Arius caught my smile.

“Later.” No use telling him until the journey was over—he’d fret terribly. “Can I borrow your knife?”

“Why?”

I plucked it out of its sheath at his waist, and pricked my wrist in one smooth motion. He whipped it out of my hand. “Thea—”

“No, that’s all.” Smiling, I held my hand over the rail and shook a single drop of blood into the Tiber before pressing the cut closed. “Last time.”

He looked at me.

“I swear.” Holding up my hand in pledge.

He took my wrist, blocking the trickle of blood with his hard thumb. He wound his free hand deep into my hair and kissed me.

I lifted my head, dizzy and laughing, and saw the sea. I hadn’t even noticed that we’d left Rome behind.

 

 

 

Emperor Titus Flavius Domitianus died at five in the evening on September 18, A.D. 96. He was a man of many contradictions: a soldier idolized by his legions, an administrator admired for his attention to detail, a paranoid given to random executions. Many of the peculiarities described in this book are true, and were described by Suetonis in his gossipy first-century memoir
The Twelve Caesars
: Domitian’s popularity among common soldiers, his jealousy of his elder brother Titus, his dislike of Jews, his love of the gladiatorial games, his black dinner parties, his treatise on hair care, and his peculiar habit of killing flies on the point of a pen.

Thea is a fictional character, but her background at Masada is real enough. An entire city of Jewish rebels committed suicide there rather than submit to Roman rule, and only a handful survived. I wondered what kind of survivor’s guilt would manifest from surviving such a horrific experience, and so Thea was born. Lepida Pollia and Marcus Norbanus are also fictional creations, but many of the others are based upon fact. Emperor Domitian did take his niece Julia as a mistress until she supposedly died of a botched abortion; her continued existence as a Vestal Virgin is my own creation, though such an escape would have been far more difficult than I have implied here, given that the Vestals were chosen as children with much pomp and public ceremony. However, Domitian did execute several Vestals during his reign in the manner described, for the crime of breaking their vows. His second niece Flavia (in reality Julia’s cousin and not her half-sister) was eventually exiled to Pandateria as a convicted Christian, her husband executed and the fate of their two young sons unknown. Domitian was often attended at the games by a young boy garbed in a red tunic, leading to the character of Vix. There was a Praetorian Prefect Norbanus whose role in Domitian’s assassination is prominent but unclear, and his death unknown. The Empress was also a conspirator; she did discover a death warrant with her name upon it, which prompted her to put the assassination forward, and she did manage to live to a virtuous old age after her husband’s death. Domitian’s principal assassin was a slave of Lady Flavia’s, a man named Stephanus who smuggled a knife into the Imperial presence in a sling. History proclaims that he died after a bloody struggle with the Emperor; in my imagination he became the gladiator Arius instead, and escaped to a happier life. I have taken some liberties with the games as depicted in
Mistress of Rome
: The Roman gladiatorial games were every bit as violent as described, but there were strict rules that would have prevented Arius from fighting one against six, or unarmored against wild beasts, or against women. Fik Meijer’s excellent book
The Gladiators: History’s Most Deadly Sport
proved invaluable in providing details about the games, as A. J. Boyle’s
Flavian Rome
, Michael Grant’s
The Twelve Caesars
, Brian Jones’s
Emperor Domitian
, and Matthew Bunson’s
Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire
proved invaluable for their descriptions of Domitian and the empire he ruled.

Domitian is remembered poorly as the last of the Flavian dynasty, an ill successor to his great brother and father. But his reign led smoothly into Rome’s golden age, eighty years of prosperity beginning with the fussy Senator Nerva and the glorious soldier Trajan. Thea and Arius will find their mountain and raise their family in peace, so their story is done. But Sabina has an interesting life ahead of her, and Rome is not done with Vix, either.

*
Titus Flavius Domitianus,
Emperor of the Roman Empire

*
Empress Domitia Longina,
his wife

*
Julia Flavia,
daughter of Domitian’s brother Titus from his second marriage

*
Flavia Domitilla,
daughter of Domitian’s brother Titus from his first marriage; Julia’s half-sister

*
Flavius Clemens,
her husband

*Their two sons

*
Gaius Titus Flavius,
Domitian’s cousin, Julia’s husband

Marcus Vibius Augustus Norbanus
, Roman senator, grandson of Emperor Augustus

Lepida Pollia,
his second wife

*
Vibia Sabina,
their daughter

*
Paulinus Vibius Augustus Norbanus,
Praetorian, Marcus’s son from first marriage

*Lappius Maximus Norbanus,
governor of Lower Germania, Marcus’s cousin

Lady Diana,
Marcus’s cousin

Thea,
a Jewish slave belonging to Lepida Pollia

Vercingetorix,
slave boy

*
Stephanus,
gardener to Lady Flavia Domitilla

Penelope,
freedwoman to Praetor Larcius

Nessus,
Imperial astrologer

Ganymede,
Imperial body slave

Quintus,
steward to Marcus Norbanus

Iris,
Lepida’s maid

Laelia,
Roman courtesan

Chloe,
slave woman of Praetor Larcius

Arius,
gladiator and slave

Gallus,
lanista
, Arius’s master and owner of a gladiator school, and his gladiators

Belleraphon,
star gladiator

Hercules,
dwarf and comic gladiator

Centurion Densus,
Paulinus’s commander in Brundisium

Verus,
Praetorian, Paulinus’s friend

*
Marcus Ulpius Trajan,
legion commander

Quintus Pollio,
games organizer, father of Lepida Pollia

Larcius,
praetor and music aficionado of Brundisium

*
Saturninus
, governor of Upper Germania

Justina
, Vestal Virgin

Calpurnia Helena Sulpicia,
patrician heiress

 

*denotes actual historical figure