Daughters of Rome (22 page)

“What news?” They settled into Lollia’s litter—much bigger and more ornate, now that she had married into the Imperial family.

“It’s your husband,” Lollia said as the litter rose swaying and the bearers swung down the street. Marcella couldn’t help but remember the last time they’d ridden in a litter together, when they’d been spilled out by a mob and had to run for their lives. “I heard Lucius backslapping with the Emperor’s officers. The Emperor offered him a post here in the city, but he angled for one in the upcoming campaign instead.”

“As what?” Marcella snorted. “Paid mooch?”

“As observer to the battle.” Lollia waved a vague hand as the litter joined the slow procession crawling back through the palace grounds. “Message running and so forth. Whatever it is that observers do during battles.”

“Knowing Lucius, it won’t involve getting his hands dirty.”

“At least this gets him out of your hair, doesn’t it? I thought you’d be happy.”

“I suppose.” Observer to the battle, though . . .
much more my line than Lucius’s
. He only bothered observing anything that would boost him up the ladder to a higher post.

“Thank the gods war is men’s business.” Lollia shuddered as their litter was set down at last, at the marble steps mounting toward the gardens of the Domus Aurea. Lamps glowed like golden bubbles and slaves were already streaming out with rosewater foot baths in silver ewers. “All the mud, the legionaries, the danger—”

“And the chance to see history,” Marcella mused. “The clash of an emperor and a usurping emperor, armies deciding the fate of Rome—how wonderful to see all that.”

“Wonderful?” Lollia eyed her a little oddly. “It’ll be men dying, thousands of men on both sides. It will be
horrible
.”

“At least it will be real.” Suddenly irritated, Marcella cast a glance over Lollia’s jewels, her powdered skin, the wine cup in her hand. “Some of us prefer real life to parties and wine.”

“I wasn’t the one who didn’t want to get my hands dirty helping plebs during the flooding,” Lollia said tartly.

“Yes, you were very keen on that as long as you could get away from your husband for a few hours and take your pet Gaul with you. Very admirable, Lollia.”

“He is not a pet!”
Lollia tugged her hand out of Marcella’s arm and flounced off as they were ushered into the vast triclinium. Marcella felt no urge to call after her. The mere sight of her cousins exasperated her these days. Even her sister—there was Cornelia now, lurking long-faced by a column. Couldn’t she even try to smile?

Marcella took a goblet of wine from the nearest slave, trying to stifle her sourness. It was a beautiful night, after all. Emperor Otho’s usual exotic crowd: senators, praetors, consuls, and their wives all mixed together with actresses, astrologers, charioteers, courtesans, even a star gladiator or two from the day’s games. Too many guests for formal dining, and they all mixed in the gardens where gilded braziers kept away the chill of early spring and half-naked slaves in gold tissue circulated with cups of warmed wine and trays of dainties.

“These Imperial parties are all the same.” Diana’s voice came unexpectedly at Marcella’s elbow. “Ever notice that?”

“It’s rather beautiful.”

“Yes, but it’s always the
same
.” Diana rubbed a hand down the marble nose of a horse rearing, massive and statue-carved, out of a bank of jasmine. “The food is delicious, the wine is expensive, the people are beautiful, and the conversation is witty.”

“They aren’t all beautiful.” Marcella watched a portly senator wheeze past in one of the short embroidered tunics Otho had made fashionable—not a forgiving fashion to the elderly. “And they aren’t all witty, either,” she added as she heard the tail end of a particularly labored epigram from another guest.

“So what’s the point of it all?” Diana turned to the statue of the horse and scrambled lithely up, seating herself sideways on its marble back. Her airy white skirts caught the cool evening breeze and billowed about her knees, and she swung her feet freely, ignoring the stares.

“Diana,” Marcella said crossly, “get down from there. Do you always have to be the center of attention?”

“Don’t care if I am or not.” Diana leaned down to accept a cup of wine from an Imperial slave too sophisticated to look startled. “I just do what I want.”

“How nice for you.”

“Diana!” Tullia hissed, bustling over with curls bobbing. “Get down! Do you realize how people are staring?”

“Let them,” Diana grinned.

“Showing your bare legs in public like a slave girl—the
idea
!”

Diana reached down and peeled off her gold-strapped sandals, hanging them over the horse’s marble ear. “Go away,” she advised Tullia, “or I peel off the rest.”

“Oh, Domina,” a half-drunk tribune chortled, draping an arm over Tullia. “Please stay!” A drunken chorus went up.

“Gaius!”
Tullia slapped the tribune away and huffed off. Diana lay back against the horse’s marble neck, her pointed face tilted up at the stars. “Are you making wishes?” Marcella couldn’t help but ask. A wild little thing perched on a statue—so beautiful.
So beautiful she can get away with anything.

“I’m wishing things would change.”

“They
have
changed. The moment Piso and Galba died, things started to shift. Didn’t you feel it?”

“Things changed for Cornelia, maybe.” Diana’s eyes were still fixed on the sky overhead. “For Lollia. Not for me.”

“Then change them,” Marcella said over one shoulder, wandering off. “At least you can.” Nothing had changed for her either, but it never did.
No matter what I try to do about it.

“I just heard Lucius is to accompany the army north as an observer!” Cornelia came to grip Marcella’s arm. “Is it true?”

“Yes.” Marcella shrugged. “And don’t bother being angry at me just because Lucius works for Otho now—you know he’ll toady up to anyone who can advance his career.”

Cornelia brushed that aside. “It could be terribly dangerous. Aren’t you worried?”

“Oh, it won’t be so dangerous as all that. Lucius never puts himself in harm’s way if he can help it. Besides, Otho won’t have far to march, since Vitellius got farther south than anyone anticipated. The two armies will meet somewhere up north, and there will be a battle, and that will be that. Otho’s taking eight thousand men, so I imagine he’ll win.”

“So many?” Cornelia sounded sharp. “I didn’t realize.”

“This is Nessus!” Domitian dragged up the plump young astrologer in his symbol-spangled robe, oblivious to Marcella and Cornelia’s frowns. “I recommended him to the Imperial steward when the Emperor was looking for astrologers to tell fortunes for his guests—Nessus, my Marcella here doesn’t believe me when I say you’re never wrong! Tell her fortune for her, that will do it—”

The young astrologer had quick bright eyes and a ready professional smile—a smile that blinked a little as he bowed over Cornelia and Marcella’s hands. “Ah, my good ladies. Always a privilege to read such lovely palms.” A certain amount of mystical chanting ensued, to Marcella’s amusement. “Lady Marcella, you should prepare for a long journey, and very soon! And Lady Cornelia,” Nessus continued, taking Cornelia’s unwilling hand. “Your heart may now be broken, but rest easy! A man comes to heal it. Now, if you will excuse me, I hear the fates calling.” His eyes flickered over Marcella and Cornelia for just an instant, and then he disappeared speedily into the throng.

“You see?” Marcella smiled at Domitian. “Charlatans always know a cynic like me when they see one. ‘A long journey’—couldn’t he have come up with something a little more original?”

“Nessus isn’t a charlatan! He said I’d be a great general and a prince of Rome and—”

“I’ve had my stars read a dozen times,” Cornelia broke in, bitter. “Not one of them ever told me I’d be a widow. And now I’m supposed to rejoice because supposedly a new man is coming along?”

“If you were a widow, I could have you.” Domitian’s fingers dug hungrily into Marcella’s arm again as Cornelia gave a blind shake of her head and moved off. “All to myself.”

“I doubt there’s room in your cradle for me,” said Marcella.

“I’m not a child!” he flared. “Don’t ever call me that!”

More wine as night fell; more golden globes of light being lit under the sculpted trees. Otho still held court, a brilliant sun surrounded by lesser moons. Nessus read more palms, making plump rouged matrons giggle. Lollia stood dutifully with her new husband, and Diana still sat high above everyone on her marble horse, rather like the goddess in her moon chariot up in the sky overhead. Gaius came to squawk at her for a while, but a troop of acrobats had just begun performing in the atrium to the rhythm of a dozen drums, and Diana cupped a hand to her ear as if she couldn’t hear Gaius’s complaining. He went off muttering.

“You’re always watching everyone,” Domitian scowled at Marcella.

“It’s what I do.”

Cornelia had returned to her pillar, taut and fierce in her black, rigidly rotating a gold-and-ebony bracelet around one wrist. A Praetorian paused to square his shoulders before approaching her—Centurion Drusus Densus, apparently restored to health at last, though he still looked drawn. He said something to Cornelia, or tried to before she brushed past him.
So Otho restores the gallant centurion to duty in the Praetorian Guard
, Marcella thought.
Nice to know that loyalty is sometimes rewarded.
“Centurion,” she called cordially as he stumbled past. “I’m glad to see you recovered from your wounds.”

He looked puzzled. “I’m sorry, Lady—do I know you?”

“You saved my life.” He looked blank. Marcella had been to thank him on his sickbed, but he’d been half asleep from a poppy draught and clearly didn’t remember her visit. “I am Cornelia Secunda,” she enlarged as Domitian scowled to see her talking to any handsome man who wasn’t him. “Lady Cornelia’s sister? There are four of us—you saved us on the steps before the Temple of Vesta. My cousin Lollia over there too, and Diana. The one on the statue.”

Recognition then. “I remember Lady Diana—the hair.” He gestured at the white-blond locks slipping Diana’s gold combs and tumbling over the horse’s marble mane. “Only it was bloody.”

Of course he remembers Diana.
Marcella stamped down her irritation again, seeing how stiffly the centurion moved as he bowed. “Are you on duty already?” He wore his red-and-gold Praetorian armor, awkwardly formal for a party.

“No, I’m a guest.”

“Since when do guests come armed?” Domitian blurted.

“If I’m in armor, they know how to look at me.” Densus nodded out over his wine cup at Otho’s beautiful butterfly crowd. “I put on a tunic and perfume, and they laugh at me for trying to be like them. Armor’s safe.”

So the centurion was another of Otho’s oddities.
A former rebel who breeds horses, a girl who loves racing, and the only loyal soldier in Rome
, Marcella thought.
All just curiosities for the Emperor’s parties.
“Do you march with the army against Vitellius?”

“Yes. After that—” A restless movement of the burly armored shoulders. “Perhaps I’ll retire from the Praetorians.”

“Why? You’ve no cause for shame.”

“I
failed
, Lady. Your sister, Lady Cornelia—she made that clear.”

“The Imperium needs men like you.”

“What good is it? Every friend I had in the Guard turned traitor for Otho’s coin. I don’t blame him for buying them—but they weren’t supposed to be for sale. And now they ask me to play dice with them and go to the bathhouse and get whores at taverns. Like nothing happened.” He drained his wine cup—not the first he’d drunk tonight, Marcella saw. He looked at her, not seeing her at all, and his eyes were full of tears. “Gods, what a mess.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Marcella agreed.

“Go away,” Domitian said rudely. “She doesn’t talk to drunks.”

Densus moved off unsteadily. “Did you have to do that?” Marcella demanded.

“Why were you talking to him? He’s just a common soldier!”

“Well, he did save my life.”

“I’d have saved your life if I’d been there,” Domitian muttered.

The highlight of my evening
, Marcella thought.
Being panted over by an eighteen-year-old boy.

She couldn’t help looking at Lollia, laughing with her friends; Diana, swinging her feet from the back of her marble horse; Cornelia, standing in rigid dignity by her pillar and looking icily past any Othonian who attempted an introduction.
They can get away with anything, all of them. But not me.
“The Cornelia in limbo,” Marcella said aloud. Not a privileged wife like Lollia, not a pampered daughter like Diana, not even a weeping widow like Cornelia—just an unwanted wife living on her brother’s charity. Of course, things would be different if she were as beautiful as Diana, or as rich as Lollia, or as grief-stricken as Cornelia—money and beauty and unhappiness bought exceptions to anything.
But if I started bedding slaves or throwing vases at the door or climbing on statues at parties, I’d be raked over the fire.

“What a fierce face,” Emperor Otho said in amusement as Marcella bowed before him. “You haven’t come to chide me about your husband’s post, have you? I offered him one in the city—”

“And he turned it down.” Marcella straightened, looking the Emperor of Rome in the eye. “So, Caesar—do I still have a favor to claim?”