“I’ve asked him to come early. Sabina loves his stories before bed.”
“You both spoil her,” I chided. “She’s got a nurse to tell her stories.”
“Can I help it if she likes Paulinus’s better?” He kissed my cheek again—ugh, that inky smell!—and quietly limped out.
I waited until he was safely out of earshot before I threw another perfume bottle at the door. I hate Marcus! I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!
PAULINUS
Norbanus lowered his sword as his opponent doubled over. “You all right, Verus? Did I—”
“Hah!” Verus straightened, whipping his blade up at Paulinus’s throat. “Knew you’d fall for it. Yield?”
“Yield.”
They sheathed their swords, loping out of the heat of the practice ring back toward the Praetorian barracks. “You’ve got to go for the kill, Norbanus. Augustus’s great-grandson? You’re just a baked clam.”
Paulinus grabbed him in a headlock, and they wrestled across the sunny courtyard. A pair of sparring Praetorians dodged out of the way, swearing amiably. “Yield,” Paulinus panted, thumbs jammed into Verus’s windpipe.
“Yield, yield.”
They ducked into the Praetorian baths, stripping off their sweat-stained tunics and collapsing gratefully in the hot steam of the
laconicum
. Verus groped through the billows of steam for the wine decanter. “Going to Marcellus’s dinner party tonight?”
“I can’t.” Paulinus swiped a towel across his forehead.
“Got another party?” Verus grinned. “Maybe an intimate dinner for two?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, come off it. It’s that singer you’ve been tagging after—Antonia?”
“Athena. And no, it’s not her.”
“Don’t blame you; she’s a nice piece. Pricey, though. Expects lots of little presents. How much is this intimate little dinner for two going to cost you?”
“It’s my father, you ass. He’s in town.”
“Your father, eh? Didn’t think he ever came out of the Senate.”
“Don’t you know anything? Senate’s out for the summer. Like school.” Paulinus waved the bath attendants away as they approached with oil and strigils. He never felt comfortable letting slaves scrape him down. Soldiers should look after themselves.
“Maybe I’ll pay your singer a visit for you. Tell her how much you miss her, while you’re off listening to all those backbone-of-the-Empire types declaim the virtues of the Republic in Alexandrine verse.” Verus groaned as the bathhouse attendant dragged a strigil across his back, scraping away the sweat. “Or maybe I’ll say you’re paying court to that toothsome stepmother of yours.”
“Hey,” said Paulinus.
“Oh, don’t start. I’m just expressing my heartfelt admiration for that absolutely mouthwatering creature who happens to be your legal
mother
—”
Paulinus flung a towel at him. In the ensuing scuffle, a tray of bath oils was knocked over. Paulinus waved the slaves back, neatening the little vials into soldierly rows.
“You know—” Verus flopped down on a marble slab, beckoning the masseur. “I’ve never thought your father would wed a girl a third his age. My father, now, that old goat’s on his fourth. But yours—”
Paulinus drew the strigil down his arm, sloughing away the sweat. He could remember thinking the same thing. “Father—this Pollia girl—well—she’s a child,” he had blurted out five years ago. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”
“A natural observation.” His father smiled. “I know what people are thinking—old lecher, young girl. I don’t mind giving people a laugh.”
A rush of angry color flooded Paulinus’s cheeks. No one was going to ridicule his father while he was there. “Who’s laughing?” he demanded.
“Everybody,” said Marcus dryly. “Don’t bristle, boy.”
“But if they’re saying—”
“They’re saying I’ve lost my head over a girl young enough to be my daughter. They don’t know that the Emperor ordered it, rather against my wishes. Though I think we may do well enough together, Lepida and I.” Marcus smiled. “I have no illusions, Paulinus. Not at my age. But Lepida likes me well enough, and that could be pleasant.”
Paulinus was uncomfortably aware that his own mother had not really been . . . pleasant. “Pleasant?” his aunt Diana had snorted once. “Paulinus, she was a bitch on wheels.”
“Aunt Diana . . .” but he hadn’t really been able to refute that. He had only been three when his mother divorced his father, ten when she died, but even so he could remember her shouting and throwing things. Once, he recalled, she had dumped all one hundred forty-two scrolls of Livy’s
Ab Urbe Conditi
into the atrium fountain. “Not a very good edition anyway,” his father had remarked calmly.
Well, if his father wanted a little peace in his old age, then he could have it with his son’s blessing, and no one was going to laugh. Not in front of Paulinus Vibius Augustus Norbanus, anyway.
Verus was still talking, voice muffled against the marble massage slab. “I know you’re touchy about letting your father help you—though I don’t see why; if he were my father I’d have begged a prefecture by now—but if you won’t ask him for a transfer to the front in Germania, get one for me.”
“Still dreaming of war and glory on the Rhine?”
“Every night. I wake up just as the Emperor’s awarding me a laurel wreath and a triumph. If only we’d been with him at Tapae!”
“Sounds like they managed to cut a swath without us.”
“Well, Domitian’s taking after Emperor Titus, I’ll say that for him. Get Rufus Scaurus talking about his campaigns with Titus in Judaea; he’ll tell you the best stories—”
When Paulinus was a boy, his great dream had been to save the Emperor’s life. To leap in the path of a poisoned arrow, drag down a charging assassin, slay an entire barbarian horde. Silly boyish dreams. Yet . . . to serve, just to serve! “To be a Norbanus is to serve,” his father had taught him. To make his father proud would be better than any laurel wreath or triumph.
“Hey, wake up. Time to go bow and scrape to Father and his lovely,
lovely
wife.” Wink, wink. “I’ll give my regards to Antonia for you.”
“Athena.”
“Maybe I’ll give her something else, too—”
Paulinus flung a scraper at him.
L
INUS!” The cry went up as soon as he stepped over his father’s threshold, and something assailed his knees. Paulinus laughed and leaned down to hug his four-year-old half-sister. “You’ve grown up, Vibia Sabina! Practically a lady.” He ruffled her brown hair and she giggled. She was little, bird-thin, and bright-faced, and her birth had delighted him; he’d always wanted a sister. She was frail, and she fell into mild bouts of epilepsia, but her giggle was delightful. Marcus watched them both with a smile as he limped across the atrium with its blue-tiled pool and intricate mosaics.
“Sabina, where is your curtsy?” Lady Lepida glided in, all rose-red silk and pink pearls. Such a pretty little thing herself; Paulinus could hardly believe she was Sabina’s mother. She looked too soft and doe-eyed to lift a child in her arms, let alone bear one. Sabina’s little monkey face straightened, and she broke away to bob solemnly. He saluted her, Praetorian fashion, and winked.
“Much better,” said Lady Lepida. “Run along, now. Marcus, your guests are here.”
Sabina disappeared in a flash of yellow, her mother a bird of paradise gliding behind her into the triclinium of gray-veined marble. Marcus turned in Lepida’s bright wake. “I’m sorry I didn’t write earlier, Paulinus. A sudden arrival, I know.”
“I did wonder. Change of plans?”
“Yes,” said Marcus briefly. “I’ll explain later. Now, I believe you know most of my guests. Drusus Aemelius Sulpicius, Aulus Sossianus, that obnoxious young Urbicus from the
septemviri
—he’s clever, though . . .”
His father’s dinner parties were infrequent and pleasantly similar. The same low-voiced guests reclining on their cushions, the same simple supper, the same white-bearded orator declaiming Greek verse (why were Greek orators always white-bearded?), the same philosophical banter back and forth across the couches. When he was a boy, these dinners had always bored him cross-eyed. They still did, but now he knew his father’s table fed the best minds in the Empire. Once anyone started quoting Plato (and they always did) Paulinus was utterly lost, but there was something comforting about lying here on the cushions watching his unassuming father so easy among the great minds of Rome. Comforting knowing that your father was just as brilliant as you thought he was when you were a boy.
He looked better these days. Neater, more distinguished. Lady Lepida’s influence, of course. Paulinus looked over at his stepmother.
She reclined against the cushions eating grapes from a silver bowl, the taut line of her throat very young and unprotected somehow. She’d barely said a word all evening. Paulinus felt a rush of sympathy for her. Naturally she must feel out of her depth, married to such a brilliant man. She really was very young—twenty-one, only two years younger than himself. And she hardly looked any older than she had at sixteen when he had first seen her in the red bridal veil. He smiled at her across the table.
LEPIDA
I
hadn’t been so bored since—well, I don’t know when. Boring Marcus and his boring friends and that boring Greek orator and all their boring speculation about the Fate of the Empire. Every time I thought they were finally winding it up, someone would start up again on Plato. Or one of Marcus’s awful treatises.
“I found your views on the declining birth rate quite interesting, Norbanus,” Senator Sulpicius or Gratianus or somebody boring would say, and off they’d go for another hour, talking about Marcus’s awful boring treatise, which I’d had to
read
last year just to keep him happy. Of course they all pressed him to read aloud from it, and thank goodness he refused, even though I could tell he was bursting with conceit. How simple he was. They didn’t care anything about his treatise; they were just hoping for another free meal. Anyone could see that. Anyone but my stupid husband.
Paulinus was the last to leave. He insisted that Marcus take him upstairs first to say good night to Sabina. Just sickening, the look on their faces as they gazed down at the little bed. I didn’t see why they were so fond of her. She looked nothing like me. One could hardly even take her out in decent society, not the way she fell into seizures in public places. Twitching, foaming brat. I should have known any child of Marcus’s would be deformed. And she was Marcus’s child; I’d made sure of that.
“I thought it went very well, my dear,” Marcus said as we waved Paulinus out at last.
“Yes, darling.” I smiled, and he raised my hand to his lips. I leaned forward and kissed him, and he cradled my face in his hands.
“Stay with me this evening?” I said archly. I had my own bedchamber—I’d insisted on it!—and Marcus never presumed without my invitation, but I allowed him regular access. These little shows of affection kept him happy, and my bills paid.
“My pleasure. After I’ve told Sabina her bedtime story.”
Sabina, always Sabina. He doted on that stupid child. I sometimes wondered if having her hadn’t been a mistake. It wouldn’t do to be replaced in his affections by my own daughter, would it? But I smiled and murmured, “What a good father you are,” and kept on smiling until his footsteps had faded off into her room, and then I poked my tongue out in his direction.
I stamped off to my bedchamber, regarding my reflection in the polished steel mirror as Iris stripped the pins from my hair. The rose-red gown suited me. I had the complexion for red, and not many girls did. Even the Imperial Lady Julia had looked sallow under her red bridal veil. My bridal veil, now . . .
My wedding day had been an enchantment. The white gown, the crimson veil, the procession, the sacrifice at the shrine—everything was perfect. Well, except for Marcus; he just looked old. Still, I found I could ignore him quite easily. At a wedding, the bride is the star. I even had a pair of gladiators to duel in my honor.
No, not the Barbarian. He’d been whisked away by his
lanista
on a tour of the provinces. Afraid of me, no doubt, and what I’d do if he dared show his face in Rome. Well, he should have been afraid. I would have thrown him to the lions without a moment’s hesitation, and I still would. If he’d dared show his face at my wedding—!
Well. It was a marvelous day. Simply marvelous. But the night . . .
Marcus by rights should have carried me over the threshold, but he was too old and feeble. Paulinus carried me instead, and then everyone bowed out and left me alone with my new husband in the dark bedroom.
“Your hair—?” As I slid my red veil off, Marcus had gestured to the tumble of short curls that it had taken Iris and her hot tongs most of the morning to create. After Arius sheared me, I’d kept my head carefully covered until the hair grew a little.
“Oh, I got dragged off into a dark alley by a very nasty old woman with shears.” Artlessly. “My hair is probably adorning some bald matron’s wig at this very moment.” That was the story I gave my father, too, when I came home from the gladiator barracks with my hair chopped within an inch of my head. Oh, I could have gotten Arius thrown to the lions, but I’d have had to explain to Father why I’d gone to his room in the first place, and even Father’s indulgence had limits . . . No. Better to deal with Arius in my own time.
But by the time he’d come back from his yearlong tour of the provinces, Father had been promoted from organizer of the games to praetor—and I had no chance. Well, I’d get my revenge someday. I always did.
“At least they only took your hair.” Marcus had been properly concerned, and I gave him my most bewitching smile. His eyes softened, and he took my hands. “Lepida, let me make something clear to you,” he said as he sat down beside me. “What happens here is for you to decide. If you want this marriage to be in name only for a while, I understand that.”