by Kate Quinn
He made an obscene gesture and sauntered away. Little monster. I smoothed a lock of hair off my forehead and the frown off my face, putting the brat’s words behind me. I certainly had not lost the Emperor. He was just having a little indulgence, and he’d come back to me when it was sated. He’d done that in the past, after all. The trick was not to look worried.
I sallied out to the Saeculares games the following morning, bestowing a lavish smile on every speculative glance that came my way, my flame-colored gown and fire opals wasted on Marcus. I entered the Norbanus box on my husband’s arm, displacing the plain Calpurnia in her brown silk—really, why was she still such a regular guest? Shortly after the Vestal had been executed, Paulinus had asked Domitian rather halfheartedly if he could break the betrothal. “No,” snapped Domitian, and that had been that. Still, she had to know she wasn’t wanted. I bumped her off Marcus’s arm and outdid her laughing at Marcus’s mild jests. No one would catch me looking worried.
“Overdoing it a bit, aren’t you?” my husband murmured.
“Just smile and kiss me, darling,” I ordered under cover of my peacock fan as we settled into our seats. “If you know what’s good for you. Look, there’s the parade.” I directed a serene gaze out over the arena; ignoring my husband’s slow dry smile, ignoring my daughter drawing away from me—and especially ignoring the stares that slipped my way as the Emperor appeared in the Imperial box. What did I have to worry about? I was the most beautiful, the most alluring and seductive woman in Rome. No yellow-haired chit of seventeen could compete. Domitian would be calling me back to his bed by the end of the week.
I watched the opening wild beast duels, the comic acts, the white bulls plodding past in their garlands of flowers. I reached to refill my wine goblet, and my eyes fell on Paulinus. He looked rather well these days—fit and brown, even smiling now and then. Perhaps he’d gotten over his touching little crush on the dead Vestal. Paulinus and a Vestal—how utterly, utterly typical.
His friend—Majan or Trajan or something, a regular guest in our box since Marcus had learned he was some kind of distant cousin—leaned over to give Paulinus a nudge, looking exasperated, and Paulinus turned rather dutifully to his betrothed.
“I trust you are enjoying the parade, Calpurnia?”
“It’s very splendid.”
“I’ve seen very little of you lately. My duties have been pressing. Perhaps you would like to accompany me to an Imperial banquet next week?”
“The first time I went to an Imperial banquet I saw an orgy,” Calpurnia said bluntly. “And the second time I went I saw an assassination attempt, an arrest, and a murder. I don’t really think I want to try a third time.”
Paulinus could not stifle a smile, teeth gleaming in his sun-darkened face. “I suppose I can’t blame you.”
“I’ve been to see the augurs, Paulinus,” Calpurnia said. “About a date for our wedding.”
“Oh?” said Paulinus cautiously.
“It seems there is nothing auspicious enough,” said Calpurnia. “Not for months.”
“Oh,” said Paulinus.
They exchanged a certain glance, and restored their attention to Trajan and Marcus respectively. I sent Paulinus the slow smile that always turned his knees to water. He nodded back curtly, and looked away. Playing cool in front of his friend and fiancée, of course. We’d see how cool he was once I got him alone. Really, if Domitian could amuse himself, why shouldn’t I?
The midday executions dragged past, and then the gladiators marched through the Gate of Life in their purple cloaks, pairing off for the preliminary fights. My daughter leaned forward, her eyes bending on the muscled armored figures. I looked at her irritably. “Since when is Little Lady Squeamish a gladiator fan?”
“I’m not,” she said, eyes still fixed on the arena. “I went for the first time at Matralia, and it was all fairly awful. But it is interesting.”
I brushed a fly away from my wine cup. “You’ve got a crush on a trident fighter, I suppose.”
“No . . . it’s just that the gladiators are supposed to care about dying well, and all they care about is not dying at all.” Her eyes traveled from the arena to the packed tiers of the Colosseum, the laughing cheering crowds of plebs and patricians alike. “People don’t seem to see that.”
“Perhaps it’s the young Barbarian who makes your heart pound?” I smiled. “Such low tastes, Sabina. Even an ugly little girl with foaming fits can do better than a gladiator.”
“Trade seats with me, Sabina,” Marcus intervened smoothly. “My view is better.”
They traded seats, a move that placed her on Marcus’s other side next to Calpurnia. Sabina leaned forward toward the arena again, and my husband immediately engaged his almost-daughter-in-law in some boring discussion. Paulinus was busy listening to Trajan outline a proposed method of revamping the legions, and around us the crowd was shouting encouragement to the gladiators as they warmed up with wooden weapons. “Marcus,” I said, “fill my cup, will you?”
“Of course, my dear.” He leaned over to fill my goblet, and I leaned toward the arena, at last starting to enjoy myself as the Emperor gave the signal and the gladiators fell on each other with hoarse shouts. Nothing like a good slaughter to clear the head.
“By the way,” Marcus said casually, handing me my goblet. “I’m divorcing you.”
“Mmm?” I blinked, looking up from a pair of Egyptians tussling over a trident.
His voice was clear, carrying over the shouts around the box. “I’m divorcing you.” Calpurnia glanced over.
“What?”
Sabina glanced up at me. Behind her a Numidian shrieked as a little Gaul chopped his knee out from under him.
“You shouldn’t joke, Marcus.” I tossed my head. “You know what the Emperor will do to you if I whisper in his ear.”
“It looks like someone else is whispering in his ear now.” Marcus indicated the Imperial box. The Empress had retired for the afternoon, and a figure in a pink silk stola had just slouched in to perch on the arm of Domitian’s chair. A yellow-haired figure.
“Aurelia Rufina? She’s temporary, just a whim—it’s me Domitian wants—”
“I think he’s done with you, Lepida. And so am I.” Marcus looked at me the way he looked at opposing senators in debates about water rights. “I am hereby divorcing you—legally, of course, I can do that with a word. I’ll give you until the end of the day to remove what possessions you have from my house.”
I thrust the question of the Emperor aside. What did Marcus know about Domitian? Nothing, that’s what, but the other attack had come so suddenly and I unsheathed my claws. “Emperor or no Emperor, Marcus, you know what I’ll do to you if you divorce me. Your precious Paulinus will—”
“In addition,” Marcus overrode me, “I will be charging you with adultery. Within the sixty days prescribed by law I will present the courts with my extensively gathered evidence.” He smiled at me, quite gently. “Yes, Lepida. I’m putting my foot down.”
I stared at him a full minute. Marcus?
Calpurnia’s eyes sparkled. Sabina looked from her father’s face to mine and back. The arena slaves darted swiftly over the bloody sand, dodging the battling gladiators, raking away the dead ones.
“Calpurnia, darling,” I said in a loud voice. “Would you like to know something about Paulinus? He raped me as a young bride, and your future father-in-law let him. Sabina is Paulinus’s child, not Marcus’s, and I’m going to charge Paulinus in the courts with rape. What do you think of that?”
“I think you’re lying,” Calpurnia said equably.
Marcus laid his hand over her square peasant fingers in brief thanks. “Good try, Lepida,” he said. “That story might have worked eight years ago. But bring it out now, and everyone will wonder why you didn’t come forward sooner. And of course there’s the matter of your own reputation, which has hardly remained spotless in eight years. Do you want all the skeletons to come out of your closet into the light of day?”
“You—you wouldn’t dare—”
“The affair with my son when you were—Calpurnia, kindly cover my daughter’s ears—a bride of twenty-one. The affairs with, at my last count, twenty-two senators, nine praetors, three judges, and five provincial governors.”
“It’s—it’s not true, I never—”
“At least they were men of your own class,” Marcus rode over me.
“What about the affairs with the charioteers, and the masseurs at the public bathhouses, and the legionnaires—especially the two brothers from Gaul who took you at the same time, front and back?” Marcus raised his eyebrows, and behind him a trident fighter died with a sword through his gullet. “Governors and senators are one thing, Lepida, but trash from the gutters . . .”
My lips parted, dry as parchment. “You can’t possibly—you never look up from your stupid scrolls—”
“Oh, I see a great deal over my scrolls. In fact, I’ve been amassing evidence for years. I have documents, witnesses, slaves who will talk—eagerly, I might add, and without threat of torture. You were never a kind mistress, Lepida. I also have a few of your former lovers as witnesses. Junius Clodius, for example, once I offered to pay his debts.”
“And what will their evidence do to you?” I rallied. “You’ll be the senator whose wife took on every man in Rome—”
“Oh, I think my reputation will survive.” A smile. “Will yours?”
Sabina brushed Calpurnia’s hands away from her ears, giggling.
“You!” I rounded on her. “If you think any man will want a cuckold’s daughter—once I’ve done there won’t be a man in the Empire who will touch you—”
“By law,” Marcus intoned the words as he did in the Senate, “a man is entitled to retain his former wife’s dowry if her adultery is sufficiently proved. Every aureus of your dowry will go to Sabina. Sufficient gold, I think, to catch her any husband she likes—even if she were not already a prize for any man.”
“I’ve still got a chance,” I hissed at him. “Courts are made up of men, remember? I can make any man believe me!”
“I’ll risk it.”
He sat there, Sabina and Calpurnia at his back; a triumvirate of judges with an ocean of slaughter behind them. The gladiators were done, the victors raising their arms winded and triumphant, the losers raked away to feed the lions. The gladiators were done and so was I.
It couldn’t have gotten this far; it couldn’t. I’d be an outcast, looking for any man to marry me—I cast around for a weapon, any weapon, and heard Paulinus laugh with Trajan behind me. “What about your son, Marcus? Who do you think he’ll side with? He loves me, in case you’ve forgotten. He’ll roll over and beg like a dog if I want, and if you think he’ll stand for this—”
“Then why don’t we ask him? Paulinus!” Before I could stop him, Marcus called politely over my shoulder to his son, who was tossing coins down from the box to a triumphant German in a wolf skin. “Paulinus, I am divorcing your stepmother. Have you any objection?”
Paulinus paused, his eyes flicking over my bare arms and enticing shoulders; the body he had once slavered over. “None,” he said, and his voice was so cold it hit me like a slap of wind from the north.
“Paulinus—” I leaned forward to offer him a glimpse of my breasts. “Paulinus, he’s vindictive, he’ll shame me—I’m counting on you—”
He turned his back. Simply turned his back on me and began speaking again to a puzzled Trajan. “I think you’re right about the legionnaire training. Too focused on conformity—”
This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t be happening.
“Lepida.” Marcus’s voice again.
No. No. NO.
“Lepida, I will not strip you of everything. Keep your slanders away from Paulinus and Sabina, and I’ll withhold my charge of adultery and leave you your dowry.”
My dowry? What good was money if I had no husband? A Roman woman without a husband is nothing. Even if Marcus didn’t blacken my reputation in court, what man of patrician stature would marry me after Marcus so unceremoniously divorced me . . . if Domitian really had abandoned me?
I began to shake.
Marcus had already turned back to Calpurnia, discussing Senate debates as if nothing had happened at all. Sabina leaned on the marble railing over the arena, watching as slaves darted out to rake fresh sand over the bloody patches. Paulinus outlined training tactics with Trajan. Up in the Imperial box, Aurelia Rufina had slipped from the arm of Domitian’s chair into his lap.
Divorced. I had been divorced. Just Lepida Pollia, instead of Lady Lepida Pollia the senator’s wife and the Emperor’s mistress.
Dimly I heard a roar from the crowd and looked up at the Imperial box. Domitian had just given his signal for the next act, a trident fighter against an armored Gaul.
He could not have tired of me already. He could not. Thea had lasted nearly five years. I had reigned supreme for barely seven months.
The trident fighter died quickly. The crowd roared for the next duel, the young Barbarian against a famous Syrian, and I had time for a fleeting hope that Thea’s horrid son would die slowly with a sword in his gut. Then I began planning exactly how I would oust the pretty little Aurelia from the Imperial box in the next interlude . . .
And how I would make Marcus and Paulinus pay.
THEA
THEY’D given Vix his father’s old armor, resized to fit. The mail sleeve, the blue-plumed helmet, the shin plates. His face, in the shadow of his helmet, was set like stone. They set him against an enormous Syrian, and my heart crawled into my throat. I’d always thought him big for his age, but I was wrong. He looked so terribly small beside the Syrian’s hulking shoulder as they bowed before the Emperor.
It took a moment to realize, through my fog of terror, that Vix was holding his own.
The Syrian launched an overhand swing, the clean ring of steel on steel vibrating through the arena as the blades met. He took a compensating step as Vix disengaged and ducked back, then parried as my son’s sword flashed out with a slow looping ease.
“That Syrian’s never fought a left-hander before.” Arius looked gray and lined, scared as he had never looked during his own bouts, but he spoke calmly. “Vix’ll keep turning him to his weak side.”
Close, duck, disengage. Close, duck, disengage. Sensible, I thought, trying to breathe. Don’t close with a stronger opponent; wait it out. My son seemed to hear me, crouching and circling as if he had all the time in the world. His chest was pink with sunburn, and the helmet turned his eyes to dark slits.
Close, duck, disengage. The Syrian lost patience, lashing forward. Vix parried the first two strokes, ducked the third, and then ran, his feet skimming the sand. Laughter rippled over the Colosseum. The Syrian stopped, crouching again, and Vix fell back into the pattern of his own making. Close, duck, disengage.
“Good,” Arius murmured. “Good.”
The Syrian’s foot wobbled in the sand; he cursed as if he had twisted the joint, and retreated limping. “Get him!” I whispered, but Arius gave a sharp shake. Vix stood back, head cocked to one side, and ducked easily when the Syrian made a leap for him. God, but my son was fast.
The Syrian slashed again, letting Vix dance back. Lunged. Feinted.
“Don’t let him herd you,” Arius said, but Vix took two more hasty steps back and then froze with the marble of the arena wall against his back.
“Vix!” I screamed along with all the other screaming fans, as the Syrian raised his sword.
Vix charged. The Syrian barely had time to correct the blade’s angle before it punched through the strap of Vix’s mail sleeve and bit smoothly through the flesh, through the shoulder and out again.
“Too high,” Arius murmured, whitely.
One more blow through the lung for the slow kill. The Syrian tugged his sword.
Then Vix grabbed it.
He wrapped his hand around the blade piercing his shoulder. Held it there, blood dripping from his hand,
and I saw the muscles bunch in his arm. His teeth bared, he held the blade steady while he drove his shoulder farther up toward the hilt.
Not far. Just within arm’s reach.
Just close enough to strike.
Arius nodded professional approval as Vix’s sword flashed up, and the Syrian’s blood jetted out to stain the sand. “Pretty work,” he said as if Vix had just finished a training bout.
I turned and vomited over the ground.
LEPIDA
STRATEGY! In the arena, no less.” Trajan pounded his fist against the railing. “If that isn’t the prettiest piece of blindsiding—There’s a place in my legion for that boy if he ever earns his freedom—”
“If he lives,” I said sourly, but nobody was listening to me.
“I’ll beat you out for him and offer a place in the Praetorians.” Paulinus tossed a coin down at the Young Barbarian, who had reached around with his good arm and tugged the Syrian’s blade out of his shoulder. He stood looking at it for a moment, and then very quietly crumpled up on the sand.
“Oh dear,” I heard Sabina say. Her little rat-narrow face was all pink. “The poor boy.” She folded up into a seizure.
I had no desire to be seen with a jerking, writhing brat. As Calpurnia and Marcus bent over her, I slipped out of the box. In the arena they were rigging a hasty stretcher for the unconscious Vix, and the audience was still screaming approval. Domitian had leaned forward to clap, but Aurelia Rufina looked half-asleep at his side. She never had understood what the games were all about. Surely he’d want my company now.
The chamberlain blocked my way as I slipped up to the back entrance of the royal box. “The Emperor has observed the disturbance in your box,” he informed me in bored tones. “Your child appears to be ill. Your place is with her.”
“But she’s in good hands. Her father—”
“Children are women’s work. You are Imperially commanded to take your child home.” Just a hint of a smirk hovered around the chamberlain’s rouged lips. “The Emperor instructs me to give you this, Lady Lepida.” He pressed a rather inferior string of pearls into my hand. “He will no longer be requiring your services.”