Daughters of Rome (2 page)

WE’RE
going to a wedding, not a battle.” Marcella blinked as her sister came into the bedroom hauling a huge spear. “Or are you planning on killing the bride?”

“Don’t tempt me.” Cornelia sighed, looking up the length of the spear. “Lollia and her weddings . . . I sent my maid out for just the spearhead, but of course she came back with the whole spear. Put that pen down for once, won’t you, and help me get the shaft off.”

Marcella shoved her writing tablet to one side and rose from the desk. She and her sister tussled the spear between them, Cornelia yanking at the head and Marcella twisting the long shaft. “It’s not coming,” Marcella complained, just as the blade came loose and sent them tumbling in opposite directions. Marcella banged her elbow against the tiles and swore. Cornelia began a dignified reproof but started to giggle instead. Her stern, serene face cracked for just a moment into a little girl’s, bracketed by those deep dimples she disliked so much. Marcella started to giggle too.

“All this trouble,” she said ruefully, “just so you can part Lollia’s hair with a dead gladiator’s spearhead and give her a happy marriage. Did it work the first two times?”

“I have faith.”

“It didn’t work at my wedding either—”

“Enough!” Cornelia rose, holding out one elegantly ringed hand. Marcella took it and scrambled up. “Aren’t you ready yet? I swore I’d be there early to help Lollia.”

“I got wrapped up in chronicling Nero’s death,” Marcella shrugged. “You know I’m writing up Nero now? It’ll make a short account, but not as short as my history of Caligula.” “You and your scribbling!” Cornelia scolded, rummaging through Marcella’s dresses. “Here, wear your yellow . . . when did you change bedrooms?”

“When Tullia decided she preferred my view to her own.” Marcella made a face at the narrow little corner chamber that had recently become hers, tugging her plain wool robe over her head and dropping it on the narrow bed. “So our dear new sister-in-law got the nice bedchamber with the window over the garden, and I got the view of the kitchens and the mosaic with the cross-eyed nymphs. No, put that yellow dress back, I want the pale blue—”

“Pale blue, too plain,” Cornelia disapproved. “Don’t you ever want to be noticed?”

“Who’s going to be looking at me?” Marcella dived into the pale-blue
stola
, shivering in the November chill that crept into the bedchamber despite the drawn shutters. “For that matter, who’s going to be looking at the bride? You’re the one they all want to see—the future Empress of Rome.”

“Nonsense.” Cornelia looped the silver girdle about Marcella’s waist, but a little smile hovered at her lips.

“If it’s such nonsense, then why did you dress the part?” Marcella surveyed her sister: Cornelia Prima, twenty-four to Marcella’s twenty-one; the oldest of the four cousins collectively known as the Cornelias, and the only one of them not to get a nickname. A severely elegant figure in amber-brown silk, a wreath of topaz about her throat and coiled mahogany hair crowning her head like a diadem, her oval face as classic as any statue’s. As somber as any statue’s too, because when Cornelia smiled a dimple appeared on each side of her mouth, deep enough to sink a finger into, and she’d long since decided that dimples weren’t dignified. Smiling, she looked like the sister who had helped Marcella steal sweets from the kitchens when they were little girls. Unsmiling, Cornelia could have been a statue of Juno herself. “You look very queenly.”

“Not queenly enough. Oh, why didn’t I get your height?” Cornelia mourned, looking into the glass. “And your figure, and your nose—this little snub of mine just isn’t dignified.”

“Isn’t Imperial, you mean?”

“Don’t
say
it! You’ll spoil Piso’s luck.”

“Where is he, anyway?” Marcella reclaimed the mirror, coiling her hair quickly on her neck and reaching for the box of silver pins.

“He’ll come later, with the Emperor.” Cornelia’s voice sounded quite casual, but Marcella slanted a brow at her and she blushed. “Maybe the announcement will come today . . . ?”

Marcella didn’t bother asking
what
announcement. All Rome knew Emperor Galba needed an heir. And all Rome knew how highly Galba regarded Cornelia’s husband, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus . . .

The November morning had dawned blue and cold. Breath puffed white on the air as Marcella slipped down from the litter at the outdoor shrine of Juno and went to join the wedding guests already waiting. Cornelia had gone to assist the bride, still toting the spearhead.
We’ll see if it works any better this time
, Marcella thought as she slipped in with a group of cousins, avoiding her brother and his loathsome new wife. At the shrine stood Lollia’s latest betrothed with his own entourage—Marcella had to admit he wasn’t an appetizing sight. Fifty-seven, bald, wrinkled, and glaring . . . but he was very eminent; consul and adviser to Emperor Galba. All Lollia’s husbands were eminent.
The richest heiress in Rome can afford to choose.

Strains of music came fading through the crisp air at last, and the guests rustled. The bridal procession: flute players, slaves tossing flowers into the street . . . Lollia’s proud grandfather, born a slave and now one of the richest men in Rome, a festival wreath perched atop his wig . . . a curly-haired doll of a little girl, Lollia’s daughter from the first of her short marriages, beaming from her great-grandfather’s arms . . . Cornelia, regal as any empress, leading the bride by the hand to her newest husband . . . and the bride herself in her long white
tunica
: Cornelia Tertia, known to everyone as Lollia. Not the prettiest of the four cousins, most agreed, but Lollia did have a soft chin, a lush mouth that looked almost bruised, and merry painted eyes. Her mass of curls, dutifully parted by Cornelia with a gladiator’s spear to ensure luck for her coming marriage, had this month been dyed a violent red that clashed cheerfully with the flame-colored bridal veil. Lollia’s kohl-rimmed eye gave a wink to Marcella as she passed, and Marcella smothered a snort of laughter.

Cornelia put Lollia’s hand into that of Senator Flaccus Vinius and took her own place in the crowd of wedding guests. “Don’t tell me,” Marcella murmured. “You gave Lollia your little speech about how when she put the red veil on she was a carefree girl, and when she takes it off she’ll be a married woman with all the attendant duties and responsibilities.”

“What makes you say that?” Cornelia whispered back as the priest began to intone a homily on the virtues of marriage.

“You gave me the same speech at my wedding. You really should get some new material, you know.”

“Well, I’m her bridal escort. I’m supposed to prepare her for what’s coming.”

“She’s nineteen, and it’s her third wedding. Believe me, she knows what’s coming.”

“Ssshh!”

“Quando tu Gaius, ego Gaia.”
Lollia joined hands with her senator at the altar, intoning the ritual words.

“At my wedding I was so excited I could hardly stammer the vows,” Cornelia whispered, and Marcella heard the smile in her voice.

“At mine I was too busy hoping I’d wake up and find it wasn’t real.”

Lollia and Senator Vinius shared the ritual cake, sitting on stools inlaid with gold. Lollia’s rubies winked—cuffs on both wrists, brooches at both shoulders, shoulder-sweeping earrings, and a collar wrapping her throat. “Lollia gets such nice presents from her grandfather whenever she gets married,” Marcella mused. “All Father gave me was a letter of congratulations sent four months late from Gaul. And he couldn’t remember who I married.”

“Our father was a great man.”

“He couldn’t even tell us apart! He barely bothered giving us enough of a dowry to marry on, and he didn’t come home from his precious legions one year in five—”

“Great men have more important matters to tend to than domestic concerns,” Cornelia sniffed. She had mourned their father very properly when Emperor Nero ordered his suicide, observing all the correct rituals, but Marcella hadn’t seen any point in pretending grief. She hardly knew her father, after all—he’d been too busy crashing around Gaul during her childhood, racking up victories.
I suppose all those victories made Nero nervous. It just goes to show that too much success is bad for one’s health.
That might make a neat little aphorism on ambition, with a bit of rewording. Just the thing to finish up her account of the life and reign of Emperor Nero . . .

A white bull was led forward onto the steps of the altar, and the priest shoved back his sleeves and cut its throat with a practiced double slash. The bull bellowed, but went down easily before the shrine—a good omen for the marriage. Marcella twitched her pale-blue hem away from a creeping trickle of blood and heard a careless voice at her shoulder.

“Am I late?”

“Yes,”
Marcella and her sister said in unison. Diana, of course—late for everything. The bull might be dead on the altar and Lollia fidgeting, but the priest was fussing with the bloodied knife and consecrating it to the goddess of marriage, so Diana slid into place behind them.

“I saw the most marvelous race in one of the little circuses! Four Arab stallions and a Greek running for the Whites beat Perseus and the Greens—gods’ wheels, Cornelia, what are you fussing about? Lollia won’t care if I’m late. Can you imagine the Whites beating the Greens? They’ve already sworn the Greek can’t do it in the Circus Maximus, but I think he might. Good hands, a nice sense of timing, driven eight months for the Whites so of course he hardly has any victories because Helios the Sun God couldn’t get many wins driving those mules the Whites call horses—Marcella, what are you rolling your eyes at me for?”

“Because you’re drowning out the priest and everybody’s shushing you, that’s why.”

The wedding was over. The priest finished his prayers, and Senator Vinius offered Lollia his arm. Marcella and her sister fell in behind with the rest of the guests, making a slow procession back toward the house of Lollia’s grandfather. Everyone with a spring in their step now, as they looked forward to the wedding banquet. Lollia’s new husband was already engrossed with a gaggle of balding well-wishers, and Lollia beckoned her cousins up on her other side. “Come keep me company! Gods, that was a dull wedding. Is it just me, or do they get more boring every time?”

“It’s marriage, Lollia,” Cornelia sighed. “Your third or not,
try
to be serious.”

“I think of it as less of a marriage than a lease agreement.” Lollia lowered her voice so her new husband wouldn’t hear. “Senator Vinius gets conditional use of me and my dowry for a period of time not to exceed his usefulness to my grandfather.”

“Fair enough,” Marcella conceded.

“Sorry I’m late.” Diana sauntered up to link her arm with Lollia’s, not sounding at all sorry. Half a dozen charioteer medals clanked around her neck, a sprinkle of freckles gleamed like powdered gold across her nose, and her red silk dress was knotted so carelessly it looked ready to slide right off her shoulders. All the men present were probably hoping it would. “I saw the best race!”

“Oh, don’t go on again,” Marcella groaned. “You’re more boring than the whole Senate house put together.” But a beauty, of course, could get away with being boring: Cornelia Quarta, the youngest of the four of them at sixteen and certainly the most lovely, all white-gold hair and blooming skin and cloudy blue-green eyes. But Diana didn’t care a fig for any of the suitors panting on her doorstep. The only thing that made her eyes shine was horses, horses and chariots wheeling around the hairpin turn at the Circus Maximus. As far as she was concerned everything else could go to Hades, including all the men begging to marry her. The spurned suitors were the ones to nickname her Diana: the virgin huntress who scorned all men.

“I adore Diana,” Lollia had said many times. “But I don’t understand her. If I were that beautiful, the last thing I’d be was a virgin
anything
.”

Marcella envied Diana too, but not for the beauty or the suitors.

“Diana, your hair looks like a bird’s nest,” Cornelia was scolding. “And couldn’t you have worn something besides red? You know only the bride wears red at a wedding. A nice blue to bring out those eyes—”

Diana bristled. “You think I’d wear blue after the way that Blues charioteer fouled us at Lupercalia?” There were four racing factions at the Circus Maximus—the Reds, the Blues, the Greens, and the Whites—but to Marcella’s youngest cousin there was only one, and that was the Reds. She went to the circus every other day, cheering her Reds and cursing all the others like a pleb girl on a festival day. It should never have been allowed, but her father was another odd bird in the family Cornelii, and he let his daughter do as she pleased.

So lucky
, Marcella thought enviously,
and she doesn’t even realize it
.

“Enjoy those races while you can, my honey,” Lollia was telling Diana. “Galba disapproves of horse races—‘frivolous waste of funds,’ he calls it. If you think festivals and chariot racing won’t be first in line for budget cuts—”

“Where did you hear that?” Marcella asked over Diana’s groan. “I’m usually the one with all the news.”

“I had myself a Praetorian guard a few months back when Galba was first acclaimed,” Lollia explained, swirling her scarlet bridal veil over her head. “There, am I ready for the banquet?”

“In all ways but modesty.” Cornelia gave a quelling stare as they came forward into the atrium, Marcella laughed, the slaves rushed forward to place festival wreaths on Lollia and her balding husband, and everyone trooped in for the feast.