Semper Fidelis

Chapter 82

Alone as usual, Sabina lay in the comfort of her own fragranced sheets and savored the silence. The women bedded down on the floor around her would not dare to speak into the darkness unless she gave the order, and of course there were no rats. It had been the sound of mutinous Britons creeping across the roof.

The tremulous staff from the inn were long gone, as was the dreadful woman from the tribune’s household who had the nerve to ask the slaves-in her hearing! — if the empress was really as all right as she claimed to be.

Clarus had been harder to get rid of, but he had finally stopped making a fuss when she compromised: no Praetorians standing guard in the bedroom, but however many he wanted outside the door. She heard a floorboard creak as one of them shifted his footing. It would not surprise her if Clarus, ever loyal and now unusually flustered and apologetic as well, was lined up out there with them.

Safely returned into the care of her staff, she was finding it hard to believe what had happened this evening. All those men chanting her name! She could not restrain a smile. Her name. Not that of the emperor. Sa-bi-na! Raw and raucous and potent.

For a few brief minutes, she had been more than an unloved wife trailed in the wake of the most powerful man in the world. More than a woman with thinning hair and a tooth held in by gold wire whose slaves tactfully buried her deeper each year in layers of jewelry and makeup and hairpieces.

They had called for her. They had cheered her. They had listened to her. They had even laughed at her joke. She had felt a thrill run all the way through her as she knew for the first time what real power was like.

If the men knew what you had done, the Briton had said, they would be grateful to you. What did the Briton know about the murder of the centurion? What exactly had Clarus told her when they were alone together, and how much had she passed on?

It was a problem she would consider tomorrow.

Tonight she would enjoy being Sa-bi-na, Warrior-Queen of the Britons.