“. . . But she died of an abortion, didn’t she?”

“No.” Paulinus remembered the private report he had read, the description from the doctor in Cremona who had afterward fled in fear of his life. “It was suicide—she cut her stomach open. She lingered, and the infection—. After that, people would say it was a botched abortion. My father was there; he tried to put the truth out, but who listens to the truth when lies are more interesting?”

A rather uncomfortable silence lapsed after that. Athena shifted on her cushions, rearranging the plum silk curtains to shield her face from the sun. “I saw your stepmother in the palace a few days ago, Paulinus.”

She’d sought to find a less awkward subject. Hardly her fault she’d found a more awkward one. “Lepida?”

“Yes. She said she was coming to see you.”

“Well, she didn’t.” Paulinus leaned down to brush a bit of dirt off his boot. “She’s—we’re not really on good terms. I see her sometimes, but . . .” He trailed off again.

“Personally,” Thea said in candid tones, “I’d rather be on good terms with a viper than Lepida Pollia.”

A mile or two of silence. Thea’s painted fan moved slowly back and forth.

“Lady Athena—Thea.” Paulinus felt his voice burst out of him.

“Have you ever been—well—I mean—have you ever—really wanted someone? Wanted them like water in the desert—even when you knew all their faults, every single one—and it didn’t matter?”

He saw a deep swell of pity in her eyes, and looked away. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ve wanted someone like that.”

“. . . How long did it take to forget?”

She shook her head slowly, the fan ceasing its motion. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?”

“No . . . Maybe if I’d married and settled down, but—” A shrug. “You should marry, Paulinus.”

“Oh. Well, it’s not me. It’s—it’s my friend—Trajan’s his name—”

“Of course.”

He found it easier to ride ahead of the litter, after that, than meet her eyes.

THEA

GIVEN Domitian’s taste for simple living, I was surprised at the beauty of his villa in Tivoli.

It was a jewel of white marble: colonnaded walkways and terraced gardens, urns of lilies and pools of quiet water, rippling mosaics and silver nymphs in niches. A luxurious and solitary hideaway tucked a mile or two from the exquisite town of Tivoli; a place where a man with no privacy could be alone. Domitian had arrived a day or two after me, and for once there were no crowds of courtiers or busy secretaries. Except for silent slaves, the Emperor of Rome and I were utterly alone. Strange.

“We’ll dine on the terrace,” he ordered me. “One hour.”

I dressed carefully in a pink-marbled room that might once have been Julia’s, choosing a plain white robe with a silver girdle under the breast, my hair hanging down my back and no jewelry but Larcius’s welded copper ring on one hand and a single massive pearl on the other. How nice to take a break from my careful performance toilettes. I pushed the rouge pots and fingernail varnish aside, and glided out to the terrace on bare feet. Two silver couches were drawn up beneath a shaded willow tree, underlaid by the rushing sound of the river below.