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PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley trade paperback edition / April 2010

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Quinn, Kate.

Mistress of Rome / Kate Quinn.—Berkley trade paperback ed.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18663-3

1. Domitian, Emperor of Rome, 51-96—Fiction. 2. Women slaves—Rome—Fiction. 3. Gladiators—Fiction. 4. Rome—History—Domitian, 81-96—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3617. U578M57 2010

813’.6—dc22 2009022371

http://us.penguingroup.com

To my grandparents
Glenn and Marylou Reed-Quinn,
who are no longer here to read this book,
but who would undoubtedly have cracked a bottle of
champagne and bought a dozen copies.

Acknowledgments

Additional acknowledgments to my mother, Kelly, this book’s first reader; my husband, Stephen, who never lost faith it would be published; my agent, Pam Strickler, who shopped this massive manuscript all over New York until she found someone who believed in it as much as she did; and my editor, Jackie Cantor, whose careful editing and unbridled enthusiasm proved a lifeline. Many thanks to you all.

I undertake to be burnt by fire, to be bound in chains, to be beaten by rods, and to die by the sword.

—GLADIATOR OATH

Prologue

THEA

ROME, SEPTEMBER, A. D. 81

I opened my wrist with one firm stroke of the knife, watching with interest as the blood leaped out of the vein. My wrists were latticed with knife scars, but I still found the sight of my own blood fascinating. There was always the element of danger: After so many years, would I finally get careless and cut too deep? Would this be the day I watched my young life stream away into the blue pottery bowl with the nice frieze of nymphs on the side? The thought much brightened a life of minimum excitement.

But this time it was not to be. The first leap of blood slowed to a trickle, and I settled back against the mosaic pillar in the atrium, blue bowl in my lap. Soon a pleasant haze would descend over my eyes and the world would take on an agreeably distant hue. I needed that haze today. I would be accompanying my new mistress to the Colosseum, to see the gladiatorial games for the accession of the new Emperor. And from what I’d heard about the games . . .

“Thea!”

My mistress’s voice. I muttered something rude in a combination of Greek, Hebrew, and gutter Latin, none of which she understood.

The blue bowl held a shallow cup of my blood. I wrapped my wrist in a strip of linen, tying off the knot with my teeth, then emptied the bowl into the atrium fountain. I took care not to drip on my brown wool tunic. My mistress’s eagle eyes would spot a blood-stain in half a second, and I would not care to explain to her exactly why, once or twice a month, I took a blue bowl with a nice frieze of nymphs on the side and filled it with my own blood. However, fairly speaking, there was very little that I would care to tell my mistress at all. She hadn’t owned me long, but I already knew that.