CORNELIA
couldn’t help a weary little exhalation as the wedding banquet swept into full swing. Lollia’s doting grandfather had put on his usual spectacle: silver dining couches heaped with Indian silk cushions, musicians plucking harps in hidden alcoves, jasmine and roses twining every column of the vast blue-marbled triclinium that overlooked the whole of the Palatine Hill. A golden-haired slave in silver tissue stood at every guest’s elbow, and a stream of servitors scurried in and out with a series of exotic dishes: sow’s udders stuffed with soft milky eggs, flamingo boiled with dates, a roast boar stuffed with a roast sheep that was in turn stuffed with game hens . . .
Such pomp and spectacle
, Cornelia thought,
and for what?
She sipped her wine—ancient, expensive, and in exquisite taste, like everything else in this house. So much expense for a marriage that probably wouldn’t last the year. Well, Lollia’s grandfather
was
just a freed slave, even if he had managed to get rich and marry into an ancient patrician family. No matter how good his taste was, slave blood showed. Cornelia’s own wedding had been a modest thing by comparison—her father would never have countenanced such expense—but she had at least managed to stay married to the same man for eight years.
Entertainers streamed out between courses: dancers in thin gauzes, poets with hymns to married love, jugglers with gilded balls. An orator in a Greek robe was just preparing a recitation when a sudden blare of trumpets drowned the plucking of harps. Cornelia looked up to see a line of red-and-gold-clad soldiers filing into the triclinium. The Praetorian Guard, personal army and bodyguards of the Pontifex Maximus and ruler of the world. Whispers ran across the throng: “The Emperor!”
A hunched figure in Imperial purple stumped in. As one, all the guests in the room, from host to bride, rose from their couches.
“So that’s him?” Marcella managed to cast her glance upward even when she bowed with the rest of the guests. “Oh, good. My first close look.”
“Sshh!” Cornelia had seen Emperor Galba many times before—he was a distant cousin of her husband’s, after all, and a guest at her table long before he’d taken the purple. A man of seventy-one, hawk-nosed, wrinkled as a tortoise but still sturdy. Emperor for five months now, appointed by the Senate upon Nero’s suicide. The Imperial mouth turned down in a frown as Galba looked around at the wreaths of flowers, the silver dishes, the flagons of wine. Everyone knew the Emperor had frugal tastes. “Some might even say cheap,” Marcella murmured whenever the latest money-saving decree passed through the Senate.
Galba made greetings in his barking voice, waving irritably for the guests to resume, and Cornelia rose from her bow and threaded breathlessly through the throng to the only figure in the crowd of Imperial arrivals who mattered. “Piso!”
“My dear.” He smiled down at her: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus, her husband of eight years. Chosen for her at sixteen, and she had never wanted another. “How lovely you look.”
“Did he say anything?” Cornelia lowered her voice as Galba stood barking orders at his Praetorians, and a troop of dancers in bells and beads undulated in to entertain the guests. “The Emperor?”
“Not yet.”
“I’m sure it will come soon.”
Neither of them elaborated. It rang loud enough unspoken:
The day when Galba chooses you as heir.
Who else could the Emperor choose, after all? A man of seventy-one needed an heir, the sooner the better, and who would be more suitable than his distinguished and serious young cousin? Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus, with his distinguished bloodlines and impeccable record of service to the Imperium? Everyone knew it would be Piso.
Certainly no man in Rome would make a handsomer Emperor. Cornelia looked at her husband: tall and lean, his features somber but lightening when he smiled, his eyes that always looked straight at the world where other men looked for shadows. Emperor Nero had once mistrusted that straight gaze and threatened to exile her husband to Capri or even Pandetaria, where few men survived—but Piso had never looked away, and Nero had found a new fancy for his fears.
“You look very serious,” Piso smiled.
Cornelia reached up to smooth back a strand of his dark hair. “Just thinking of our own wedding day.”
“Was that such a serious occasion?” His dark eyes twinkled.
“Well, I took it seriously.” Cornelia shook her head at Lollia, who was pealing laughter from her dining couch and utterly ignoring her new husband. “Piso, do let me introduce you to the new Praetorian Prefect. Be sure to ask about his son’s appointment in the legions; he’s very proud of that—”
Cornelia was very proud herself, watching her husband from the corner of her eye as they made their way through the throng. A smile here and a nod there, a wine cup ready in one hand for a toast, the other hand ready to clap the shoulder of a colleague or press the fingers of a new acquaintance. Reserved, courteous, gracious . . .
regal . . .
She made the introduction to the new Prefect, smiled, and bowed out as a proper wife should once the conversation turned to politics. Emperor Galba stayed at the banquet only a few moments more, casting another disapproving glare around the lavish room and stumping out as abruptly as he’d arrived. “Thank goodness,” Lollia tittered all too audibly as the Praetorians filed after him. “That sour face! Nero may have been crazy but at least he had
glamour
.”
“And Lollia may be an idiot, but she’s right,” Marcella murmured in Cornelia’s ear.
“She is not. Galba had a very distinguished career.”
“He’s a sour, cheap old man.” Marcella spoke under cover of the white-bearded orator who had just come out for the second time to launch into sonorous Greek verse. “All those money-skimping policies—”
“Nero emptied out the treasury. We should be glad someone’s trying to refill it.”
“Well, it won’t make him popular. That will work in your favor, of course—by the time Galba dies, and at his age
that
can’t be long, everyone will be cheering your Piso like a god.”
“Marcella, hush!”
“It’s truth, Cornelia. And I always speak truth, at least to my sister.” Marcella lifted her goblet. “Or should I say, my future Empress?”
“You should not say.”
Empress . . .
Marcella’s knowing smile curled Cornelia’s toes. She never could fool her little sister—though half the time people assumed Marcella was the older: half a hand taller and as statuesque as a temple pillar; a column of cool blue ice topped with leaf-brown hair and a calm carved face.
Much more regal-looking than me. Oh, why didn’t I get her nose?
“You should go talk to Caesonius Frugi, Marcella. He spoke very fondly of your husband, I believe they were tribunes together in the Twelfth. I’m sure you could do something for Lucius there, advance his career—”
“Lucius can take care of his own career,” Marcella said. “I’m having much more fun watching you work the room.”
“I don’t see why you’re always so dismissive of Lucius. He’s perfectly pleasant.”
“You aren’t married to him. We weren’t all lucky enough to fall madly in love with the man our father picked for us, you know.” Marcella’s eyes drifted over Cornelia’s shoulder. “Dear Fortuna. Is that the ghastly Tullia headed straight for us? Hide me.”
“You always do that!” Cornelia accused. “Ever since we were little! Disappearing to let me face the worst—Tullia, how delightful to see you!”
“I can’t say the same for you, Cornelia—I understand you’ve had the Emperor to dine last week, and you didn’t invite me! Your own sister-in-law—”
Eventually the sun fell, the wine sank in everyone’s goblets, and soon the guests were drifting out for the final procession. Cornelia took her husband’s arm and joined the throng, Lollia and Senator Vinius in the lead, the slaves darting ahead to throw walnuts for fertility and silver coins for prosperity. Cornelia applauded with the rest as Lollia was carried over the threshold of her new home and knelt for the first time to light the fire in her new hearth. Squealing girls lined up for the bridal torch, and Lollia tossed it straight at Diana. Diana poked the business end of the torch at a young tribune begging her for a kiss.
“—must come with me,” Lollia was groaning to Marcella and Diana as Cornelia approached. The last of the guests were trailing out of Senator Vinius’s house with tipsy congratulations. “It’s sure to be dull as Hades—Cornelia, Vinius is dragging me to dinner at the palace with sour old Galba next week. Tell me you’ll come and glare at me for drinking too much wine—”
“Of course I’ll come,” Cornelia smiled. “Piso and I were already invited. I thought I’d wear my blue—”
“Not blue,” Diana said at once. “I hate blue, and we all have to dress in the same color when we sally out in force.”
“Why?” Marcella met her sister’s eyes over Diana’s head, and they traded familiar amused glances.
“Because we’re like a chariot team,” Diana explained. “Cornelia on the inside—slow, but like a rock around the turns. Marcella next, steady on the inner pair. Then Lollia, fast but wild. And on the outside, me. Fastest of anybody.”
“Why am I the slow one?” Cornelia wondered, and they all started giggling. Vinius frowned.
“Better go, my loves.” Lollia caught his expression, groaning. “And pity me, because the worst part of the day is yet to come.”
“Don’t be crude,” Cornelia chided.
“He smells like sour milk,” Marcella said, “and I imagine he’ll last about as long.”
“Is he a Reds fan?” Diana asked.
Lollia kissed them out the door, and Cornelia took her husband’s arm. She turned to wave her sister and cousin into the dark and saw Diana toss the wedding torch into the gutter.
“A very good wedding.” Piso raised a hand, and one of the hovering slaves dashed forward to beckon their litter. “An older man will steady Lollia, I’m sure.”
“He won’t have her long enough to steady her.” The litter approached; Cornelia accepted her husband’s hand in and drew the rose-silk curtains against the garish yellow glow of the streetlamps. “Lollia’s grandfather will have her divorced and married to someone else the minute Senator Vinius ceases to be of use.”
Piso gave the litter a tap, and it rose swaying on the backs of six Gauls and went trotting into the night. The curtains fluttered, and a wedge of yellow lamplight cut across his aquiline nose and square jaw. Cornelia smiled. Her husband smiled back, moving from one side of the litter to the other to settle his arm about her, and she could feel the litter-bearers hitching below to accommodate the shifted weight.
“I went to the temple of Juno today,” Cornelia found herself saying against Piso’s shoulder as the litter jogged into the night.
“You did?” Had he tensed?
“Yes. I had a sow sacrificed. I think it will do better than a goose.”
“You know best, my dear.” Eight years of marriage, and he had never uttered one word of reproach for her failure to provide him with children.
Sometimes I wish he would.
“So Diana caught the bridal torch,” Cornelia said brightly. “She’ll be our next bride.”
“They’ll have a job forcing that one into a red veil,” Piso laughed. “Lollia will be on her fourth husband before they get Diana to her first.”
“Lollia thinks husbands are like new gowns.” The litter jolted to a halt; Cornelia saw the flickering torches before their front gate and gathered her skirts as Piso stepped down. “Just get a new one every season, and throw out the old.”
“She’s one of the new wives.” Piso gave his arm to hand her out of the litter. “There are not so many of the classic sort, my dear.”
He smiled. Cornelia squeezed his hand as he lighted her to the courtyard, and they passed under the guttering torches. In most houses the slaves would have all been dozing against the walls, but Cornelia’s slaves were alert and waiting, whisking the cloaks away and bringing drinks of warmed wine. Torchlight flickered on the long line of ancestral busts lining the hall in niches; Piso’s taking one wall, stretching back to Pompey Magnus and Marcus Crassus; Cornelia’s taking the other wall, starting with the first of the Cornelii who had come from the Etruscans. The last of the busts was Piso’s own aquiline face, carved by Diana’s odd sculptor father and presented on their wedding day.
He made the mouth too pinched
, Cornelia thought.
“Lollia is one of the new model of wives,” Piso repeated, putting an arm about her waist now that the slaves had retreated from their bedchamber. “I am pleased to have my Cornelia.”
Cornelia smiled a little, feebly. So Lollia was a fickle wife, vain and giggly and frivolous. She’d still been rewarded with a child: Little Flavia Domitilla, three years old and pretty as a sunbeam, whom Cornelia had carried upstairs to her bedchamber in the middle of the wedding banquet when she fell fast asleep in the middle of all the excitement.
And her cousin hadn’t even wanted Flavia. “I was so careful,” Lollia had complained when she found herself pregnant. “How in the name of all gods did this happen? Who even knows if she’s Titus’s or not. I hope she looks like him . . .” Cornelia had had to bite her tongue savagely at that.
Many years ago, another Cornelia of their family had famously been asked why she wore no jewels, and she had gathered her children about her to say that her sons were her jewels.
I’m modest enough about jewels.
Cornelia unfastened the wreath of topazes from her throat as she began undressing for bed.
So why do I have no sons?
MARCELLA,”
her sister-in-law, Tullia, snapped as they entered the house. “You really must not daydream at parties. Senator Lentulus’s wife had to address you three times before you noticed her—”
“Senator Lentulus is very useful to me,” Marcella’s brother, Gaius, interjected, reproving. “He supports my proposal about the new aqueduct—”