by Kate Quinn
“Antinous?” That she had not anticipated, not at all.
“He said you had always been kind to him. And,” Hadrian conceded, “he pointed out that I would just need another empress, to take on those formal duties you handle for me, and if I divorced you half the women of Rome would be jockeying. I would probably end up with some pseudo-poetic harpy like Julia Balbilla.”
“Gods forbid!” Sabina mocked.
“So, I did not divorce you. As angry as I was.”
“Was?”
“Still am,” he said evenly, and she could see it in the set of his teeth. “But even if Antinous had not advised against it . . . Well. You anger me sometimes to the point of loathing, but I find it difficult to be rid of you.”
“Why is that?”
“You know me better than anyone in this world, Vibia Sabina.”
“Even Antinous?”
“He does not know me at all, thank the gods. And I intend to keep it that way.” Hadrian released her chin. “I am planning another grand tour, you know. The east—Judaea, Parthia, Egypt. I take Antinous with me.”
“He will enjoy that. He always wanted to see the world.”
“Come with us.”
The breath left Sabina in a rush. “What?”
“Antinous told me I needed you, but what I really need is him. He is the one who needs you, as a shield against the world’s scorn. Given that, you may come with us.”
So I am not to be divorced and freed, Sabina thought with a twinge of disappointment. Perhaps if she had left Antinous to twist under the scorn of ancient spluttering Servianus . . .
But I could never have done that. And so I am to be Empress again.
And an empress had duties.
At least along with duty there would be Judaea, Parthia, Egypt. The world. Not a busy palace stagnant with sycophants. Not a lonely villa where her one joy was a daily glimpse of her speeding daughter.
It is enough, Sabina thought. It will have to be enough. And lowered her eyes for Hadrian, choking down her last pangs of regret, and said, “Thank you, Caesar.”
Hadrian tilted her chin up again. “Do not make me regret it.”
ANNIA
A.D. 127, Winter
Hadrian’s Villa
It was just a flight of shallow stone steps beside the Greek theatre, leading down to a set of black doors. Annia had seen the theatre before—a few months ago, right after the Emperor’s tenth anniversary and before he’d broken his collarbone on a boar hunt, her father had taken her to a pantomime here. No one had paid any attention to the actors because they were too busy watching the Emperor sit with his arm about Antinous. Annia remembered the theatre, but she hadn’t seen these black iron doors set below the earth.
“That’s the Emperor’s Hades.” Pedanius Fuscus sounded nervous. “He buggers little slave boys in there and dismembers them—”
“Does not,” Annia scoffed. The Emperor didn’t like children—it was why she and Marcus and Brine-Face got tossed together out in the Imperial gardens whenever her father and their grandfathers went to attend Hadrian at his villa. But she knew perfectly well that even if he didn’t like children, he didn’t dismember them or bugger them.
Annia took a step down toward the Emperor’s Hades. Her breath frosted in the air; it was the cold time just before the year’s turn. “Don’t go down there,” Marcus said, eyeing the black doors. “It’s evil.”
Another step. “I want to see.”
“You can’t,” Brine-Face said. “I’m allowed because the Emperor favors me, but—”
“No, he doesn’t!” Pedanius was always bragging about his great-uncle’s favor, but if he was such a favorite, why was he out here with the children?
Pedanius bristled. “My grandfather says the Emperor is going to make me a member of the Salian priesthood soon, to show the world I’ll succeed him—”
Annia snorted, bounding down the rest of the steps. The door handles were black iron, fashioned in the shape of screech owls, the bird sacred to Hades. She pushed back her warm red cloak, crouching down to look through the keyhole. “It’s just a passage.”
“You shouldn’t be looking,” Marcus said, and then, “What else?”
“A lamp . . .” A wall bracket shaped like another screech owl, and a guttering lamp lighting a dark stone passage. Annia’s pulse jumped in an uneasy little thrill. “I can almost see a—”
A roar like Jupiter in the heavens shattered their solitude. “What is the meaning of this?”
Annia’s hand leaped off the iron screech owl. Marcus let out a croak and Pedanius squealed like a piglet. A tall and furious Emperor stood gazing down at them with eyes like black thunder.
Maybe he does dismember children.
When he spoke again it was in a deadly whisper, and after the sky-breaking roar Annia found that more terrifying than anything. “Come. Here.”
Annia bolted up the steps to Marcus’s side. His fingers slipped instantly through hers, and Annia was glad. Her mouth went dry as parchment as the Emperor looked down at them. He wore a long tunic as dark as the iron doors, his beard was wild, and one arm was bound in a white sling. His face was flushed, his eyes glittered, and he didn’t seem to feel the cold at all. He’s sick, Annia found herself thinking inconsequentially, in the midst of her fear. The Emperor hadn’t just postponed his travels east because of a broken collarbone; he was also sick.
His eyes devoured them as he said in that near-whisper, “What do you brats think you are doing?”
“I told them not to trespass,” Pedanius babbled. He was fourteen, big across the shoulders, and his voice had long since deepened to a man’s, but now it scaled back up in a child’s squeak. “I warned them, Great-Uncle—”
“Silence.”
Brine-Face went red. The Emperor’s eyes moved from Pedanius to Marcus and Annia, and she flinched inside. He was going to beat them to bloody ribbons.
“Strike us if you like, Caesar,” Marcus blurted out suddenly. “But not in anger.”
The Emperor blinked. “What?”
“Strike us because we trespassed,” Marcus explained, “not because you are angry. An angry man is one who has lost control of himself, and the loss of control is contrary to all Stoic principles. If I may paraphrase Epictetus—”
“Shut up!” Annia hissed, seeing the Emperor’s eyes narrow.
“—‘If any be angry, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone,’” Marcus babbled. “Not to mention the precepts of Seneca—”
There was no stopping Marcus on one of his nervous rants. He was spilling Zeno and Seneca and Epictetus at the speed of a chariot on the last lap, and the Emperor glowered like a thundercloud, which just made Marcus quote even faster.
“Boy,” the Emperor said at last, “shut up.”
Amazingly, Marcus gulped and fell silent.
“You with the quotations. Whose brat are you?”
“Marcus Annius Verus, son of Marcus Annius Verus, grandson of Marcus Annius Verus. Though I am frequently addressed as Marcus Catilius Severus in honor of my great-grandfather upon my mother’s—”
“There is another famous quote,” the Emperor said. “‘Be succinct in your answers.’”
“Yes, Caesar. Who said that, Caesar?”
“I did. You are a student of Stoicism?”
“My tutor is a Stoic, Caesar, and I look to follow his precepts.”
“By boring us all to death with your chatter?”
“By making no excuses and by always speaking truth,” Marcus whispered.
The Emperor smiled in wintry amusement. “You won’t live long if you speak nothing but truth, boy.”
Annia could see Marcus trying not to quote, but he lost the battle with temptation. “‘The point is not how long you live, but how nobly you live.’”
E
mperor Hadrian laughed sourly. “Outquoted by a brat,” he said. “I think I will spare you punishment, little Verissimus.”
Truthful one.
“It’s a better nickname than Brine-Face,” Annia couldn’t help whispering, and Pedanius looked like he wanted to kill her.
“You remind me,” the Emperor said, still looking at Marcus, “of myself at your age.”
“Th-thank you, Caesar.”
“It was not a compliment. I was a dreadful little pedant.” The Emperor brushed past them, down to the black iron doors. “Shoo.”
“Yes, Caesar. Thank you, Caesar.” Marcus bowed.
“And tell your grandfather I’m appointing you to the Salian priests,” the Emperor tossed over one shoulder. “It is quite an honor for a child of your age, but you’ve bored me enough this afternoon, so please don’t compose some elaborate speech of thanks.”
Marcus stared openmouthed. The Emperor disappeared inside his Hades, and Annia craned her neck. She got a bare glimpse of a rough passage of undressed stone, of more screech owl lamps, a flash of something that might have been silver . . .
“The Salii?” Marcus whispered.
Annia grinned. “You’re going to look silly. The Salii do all that dancing around in costume on festival days—”
Pedanius stared slit-eyed at Marcus. “The Salii?” he said at last. “My grandfather said I would be get that post. Me.”
“Maybe you would have,” Annia told Brine-Face. “But you just babbled like a coward in front of the Emperor. Marcus faced him down.”
VIX
Judaea
My mother had told me something back in Britannia that was beginning to haunt me. She’d been fingering her lyre as we watched Mirah plait flower chains for the girls, and my mother said, “I do hope you realized you married a Jew.”
“Why should that matter?” I blinked. “I’m a Jew, too. So are you.”
“Not really.” My mother gave a graceful shrug. “We were slaves, and slaves have neither God nor nation. We have nothing at all, and it gives us the power to choose where our home lies. And you may have been born to the chosen people, Vix, but that doesn’t mean you were ever of them. Your wife is.”
“She was born and raised in Rome, just the same as—”
“It doesn’t matter. Her heart lies in Judaea.”
“Is that your way of saying you don’t like her?” I asked wryly.
“Oh, I like her very much. She’s good for you. But she is of God and you are of Rome.”
“God and Rome get along well in enough in our house.”
My mother’s dark eyes studied me. “Good.”
“What did you choose?” I couldn’t help asking. “If you’re not much of a Jew, you’re certainly not a Roman either. Where’s your home?”
“It lies in your father.” The melody under her fingers stilled as her gaze rested on the burly figure spading earth in the garden—the figure who lifted his head to smile at her, as though he’d felt her eyes on him like a caress. “My home, my country, and my god together. As I am his.”
I’d been settled in Judaea for two years now . . . And those words were still echoing through my head.
Mirah had wept when we finally stepped off the ship onto Judaean soil: dropped the bundle she had been carrying and fell to her knees. “Thank you,” I heard her whisper, and she pulled the girls close to her sides and kissed their dark heads over and over until they began crying, too. As I stood there with my gladius and dagger in a bundle, feeling so very strange.
We settled in Bethar: a fortified farming town, terraced and prosperous, rising from the high country southwest of ruined Jerusalem. Mirah wept again as we came through the gates. “Home,” she said, pressing my hand, but I felt only strangeness. In Bethar’s pressing crowds, I had the only breastplate, the only shaven chin. I’d spent most of my life as one of many, a legionary among other legionaries, a guard among other guards—and now I was the one who stood out.
Mirah’s family held a great celebration to welcome us. Her mother roasted an entire calf, my wife was swallowed up in the eager arms of her aunts, and our girls were soon running through the garden with enough cousins to field a cohort. I leaned against the wall watching, and when Simon found me there, he switched from Aramaic to Latin.
“It passes.” He smiled when I looked at him in surprise. “The strangeness you’re feeling. It goes away.”
I swirled the wine in my cup. “How long did it take you?”
“A year to stop thinking in Latin. Two years to stop dreaming about the legions. Five before I stopped bristling whenever my cousins cursed the Emperor’s name.”
“Feel free to curse Hadrian,” I said. “But if you curse Trajan’s name, I’ll beat you to a paste.”
“Trajan, Hadrian.” Simon shrugged. “It’s all the same to me.”
“And you call yourself a legion man?” I said, outraged.
“Not anymore. All those years in the ranks?” He shrugged. “Wasted youth.”
I looked at him. A big man, first in my contubernium when I arrived fresh from my training; tough-grained and solid as the earth in his polished breastplate; his curls cropped close and his chin stubbled. He’d looked humorous, weathered, and competent, and I’d yearned to be just like him. He had the same expression now, hard and amused, but he wore a striped robe and a full beard and looked nothing like Simon the legion man. He was Simon ben Cosiba of Bethar, and I wondered if I knew him at all.
“Don’t worry,” he urged, seeing my expression. “It passes!”
“Maybe I don’t want it to,” I said. “Maybe I don’t want to stop thinking in Latin and dreaming about the legions.”
“That’s Rome talking,” he dismissed. “It’s like a poison dream, Vix. You stop taking the poison, and at first you crave it, but then you see it was making you weak all along. You’ll see.”
“Will I?”
“Rome made your son a whore,” he said, face darkening. “Think of that, when you start doubting. If it were my son, I’d have—”
I dropped my wine cup and grabbed Simon by the front of his striped robe. “Friend or not, I will tear your throat out if you use that word about him again.”
“Mirah said—”
“Mirah shouldn’t have gone telling you about my son’s shame, even if you are her favorite uncle. It’s not your business, Simon, so don’t you ever call him a whore.”
“Vix!” Mirah called across the little garden, her face glowing. “My mother says we can take a house nearby! There’s—” She stopped as she saw my spilled wine, my fist at Simon’s chest. “Vix, what are you—”
“It’s nothing,” Simon said, not taking his eyes from mine. “I spilled his wine, and now he’s threatening to dump mine over my head.”
I exhaled the rage, uncurling my fist from his robe. “That’s right.”
Mirah looked doubtful, but she took my arm and steered me away. Toward safer things.
We soon had a house with a walled garden and a small courtyard forever overflowing with laughter and chatter and cousins. “You’re a lucky man,” they told me, and yes, I was. I had a beautiful wife; I had two daughters who were starting to flower into young women; I had coin enough to support them in comfort and take my ease in my sunny courtyard. I knew men who did just that, men like Mirah’s father, who basked in grandchildren and books. “You could grow a beard,” Mirah teased me, “become a venerable patriarch!”
“What does a patriarch do?”
“Well, I don’t see you studying the sacred scrolls like my father.” She kissed me soundly. “There’s any number of trades you could take to fill your time. Perhaps buy a wine shop? There are other retired soldiers in Judaea—you could make a way station for them.”
“You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?” I couldn’t help asking.
“I kno
w my husband isn’t the sort to lie idle.” A laugh. “But at least you could run a place where the war stories can be told in comfort!”
I did buy a wine shop, though I wasn’t much good at running it. What did I know about how to store wine and keep mice out of storerooms? The part I did best was toss out the rowdy drunks; everything else I left to a capable widow who could have run a naval fleet, never mind a wine shop, so I left her to it and soon the days were empty again. I made a stab at working leather, then—made my girls a pair of slippers apiece that fell apart on their first wearing. Wasn’t any good at working leather, or smithing, or any of the other pastimes Mirah suggested. I wasn’t any good at peace. And before I knew it, two years had passed and I was still dreaming of the legions. The legions and my mother’s noncommittal words.
I had letters from Titus, who gave me news of his own family—and of Antinous. Antinous, still the Emperor’s perfumed boy, and that stabbed like a fresh wound. I’d had some vague but vibrant hope that one day I’d turn around and see Antinous on my doorstep; free of Hadrian, free of everything. I’d have flung my arms about him with all the joy in the world . . . but I didn’t see him. I didn’t see my son, and maybe I never would. Why should he come back to me? I was a bitter, aging legionary with bloody hands and a cruel tongue; I’d failed at running a wine shop or even making a pair of shoes, and I’d failed my son. Why should Antinous give me any thought at all?
Two years, then approaching three. Dinah turned thirteen, fourteen, flowering into her monthly blood with Chaya starting right behind her as though she were too afraid to be left in childhood while her sister advanced ahead. “You’re women now,” Mirah told them, though the only difference their new status made was that Mirah stopped wearing her hair loose in the evenings the way I’d always liked it. “It’s not fitting in a mother of grown girls,” she said briskly, and she bustled about in dark gowns that hid her lithe slenderness and made her look like a dowager. She smiled at me tolerantly when I said that I missed seeing the fall of her russet hair at night, and I started going to my wine shop in the evenings. Simon met me there sometimes and I would see his eyes on me, shrewd and thoughtful. “Do you still dream of the legions?” he asked once.