“You never do. You never do.” Densus dropped down on the narrow bed, clasping his square hands between his knees. His fingers were shaking. “Get out, Lady. Find your own bloody way home.”
Cornelia crossed the room, all of two steps. She opened her mouth, but her mind had never been so blank, wiped clean by his rage. She just stood awkwardly before him, wishing she knew what to do. She could only see the top of his head, dropped level to his heaving shoulders.
“Go home,” Densus repeated thickly. “Marry some Vitellian thug and lie there thinking about your duty while he’s mounting you. You patricians are all so good at doing your duty.”
“Not always.” Cornelia reached out and touched his cheek. He flinched, but she stepped closer, pulling his head against her waist. His arms closed around her, bruisingly hard, and Cornelia ran her fingers through his curly hair as his shoulders heaved. Through the thin door panels she could hear the moans of a woman down the hall, a man’s grunting. A whorehouse in the slums, a fetid summer day, an accused traitor, she thought distantly. There are no poems that begin like this.
Cornelia kissed him first, leaning down to take his face between her hands. He looked up at her, startled, and all she could do was shake her head silently and press her lips to his again. His rough jaw scratched her skin as he rose, sinking his hands into her hair. He pulled the dress off her shoulders, burying his face in her breasts, and she sank down on the narrow bed as she helped tug the tunic over his head. So strange, she thought remotely as she pulled him down beside her, rubbing her cheek against his rough shoulder. The only other man’s body she’d ever known was Piso’s. Densus was broader, browner, harder. So different from Piso’s lean height. Cornelia tried to close her eyes against the strangeness of it, but Densus cradled her face between his hands. “No,” he said, “no,” and he kissed her eyes open as he moved inside her, so slowly. She clutched him, crying out, and Piso disappeared.
THEY lay on the narrow bed, hands clasped between them on the ragged pillow. The room was stifling. He ran a hand slowly over the curve of her hip, sheened with sweat. “Cornelia,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing.” His face was serious, drained of rage, the chestnut eyes steady over their linked hands. “Weeks I spent following you around on guard duty, dreaming about calling you by name. Cornelia.”
“Drusus.” She said his name shyly. They had made love half the afternoon in the ferocious heat, and only now did she feel shy.
Fifteen
SHE said what?”
Marcella mimicked Diana’s flat matter-of-fact voice. “ ‘Get yourself a whore. I’ll never marry a Blues fan.’ ”
Cornelia winced. “That sounds like her. Which one of Vitellius’s officers was it?”
“The same German thug who proposed to you.” Marcella smiled. “Two rejections in a row! I’ll leave you to imagine the scene that ensued. Tullia said—”
Marcella lifted her feather fan to hide their whispering. The Theatre of Marcellus was full for once with the Emperor in attendance in his box rather than at the races, and the air was swelteringly close. The actors sweated under their masks and paint on stage as they declaimed through the lines of some turgid drama, and fans waved listlessly through the packed tiers of the audience—feather for the patricians, paper for the plebs below. No one from the Emperor on down appeared to be paying much attention to the play.
Marcella kept whispering. “At least now we know—Vitellius doesn’t want Diana for himself, or his officers wouldn’t dare set their caps at her. I think that’s what maddened Tullia the most. She had such a touching little dream of Vitellius divorcing that meek wife of his and making Diana Empress instead.” Marcella glanced at the Emperor, ruddy-faced and roaring with laughter in the Imperial box just one row away, surrounded by his officers. Properly men and women sat apart at the theater, but Diana had the stool at his feet as she always did these days, and Vitellius’s heavy drink-reddened face was tilted down toward the little blond head. “I could have told Tullia he wasn’t interested in Diana that way. He might pat her hips now and then when he’s drunk—but since when is a man like Vitellius really interested in anything besides eating, throwing up, and watching the Blues win?” Marcella cast her eyes up to the heavens. “And that’s our Emperor.”
Cornelia just nodded absently, and Marcella suppressed a sigh. She’d dragged her sister out to the theater that afternoon, hoping to give her a treat—Gaius and Tullia were still barely speaking to her, after all—and all Cornelia could do was twitch in her seat, fingers beating a restless tattoo on the ivory handle of her fan. It wasn’t like her, but everyone in Rome seemed overheated and distracted these days. Summer rolled toward September, scorching hot, bringing swirls of dust on the slightest breeze. Everyone groaned about the heat, spent hours in the natatio pools of the bathhouses, bemoaned their cool river villas in Toscana or Tivoli.
Everyone but me. Marcella felt cool as ice in all the heat, and she wouldn’t have left this boiling, bubbling, scheming city for all the gold in Egypt.
Her eyes drifted speculatively over to Vitellius again. She could hear his bull voice clearly over the declaiming of the actors—and even if he’d whispered, she thought she would have heard him. My ears can pick up every whisper in Rome, she sometimes thought.
“—those chestnut stallions of yours, the ones named after winds,” Vitellius was saying down to the little blond head at his side. “You’re afraid to stack them against my Blues!”
“Caesar,” Diana shot back, “your Blues are spavined cow-hocked mules compared to my Anemoi.” The other guests in the Imperial box exchanged glances—Marcella knew they couldn’t believe how freely Diana spoke her mind to the ruler of Rome. But Vitellius had spent a good many years as governor in rough places like Germania and Africa: he liked plain speaking, and he liked Diana. He roared laughter, and his friends were quick to laugh with him.
“You might think he’d be more worried,” Marcella mused aloud. “What with the news from Judaea . . .”
Cornelia blinked, drawn out of her reverie again. “Oh, that.”
“Aren’t you even interested that Vespasian’s been proclaimed Emperor?” Marcella didn’t understand her sister. What an exciting time they were all living through, and all Cornelia could do was mope around taking endless trips to the bathhouse! “Surely you realize this means war.”
Cornelia pushed a strand of hair behind her ears. “We’ve had war all year.”
“But Vespasian has the eastern legions! The Tenth, the Fourth, the Twelfth, and the Fifteenth—” Marcella ticked them off with satisfaction. “He’ll march on Rome, and Vitellius will have to muster an army to beat him. And I wonder . . .” She trailed off, thoughtful.
“I ever tell you how I got this limp, girl?” Up in the Imperial box, Vitellius heaved his bulk out of his carved chair.
“A battle in Africa, wasn’t it?” Diana took his arm as he swayed. “Gods’ wheels, you’re drunk. Lean on me, Caesar.”
“I tell everyone it was a battle. But the truth? A horse kicked me.” Vitellius grinned down at Diana. “Don’t tell.”
“See this, Caesar?” Diana lifted the hem of her red silk dress, showing an ankle Marcella couldn’t see. “I told my family I tripped getting out of a litter, but really—” She stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.
“Really?” A laugh. “What a devil you are.”
“Don’t tell, Caesar?”
“Not if you won’t.” He ruffled her hair. “What a pair of frauds we are, eh?”
His smile had a bluff kind of charm, Marcella conceded. Despite his grosser habits, Vitellius had a certain direct appeal: he laughed when he was amused, ate when he was hungry, drank when he was thirsty, and rarely got angry at anyone. Refreshing after so many subtle politicians with wheels spinning in their heads and plots behind their backs—but would such easy simplicity be enough to hold the loyalty of his generals? They’re a shifty bunch. If more legions went over to Vespasian, the ra
ts might just start wondering which ship was about to sink . . .
The play halted momentarily as the Emperor left the box to go relieve himself, and a buzz of half hearted overheated gossip rose. “Where’s Lollia?” Diana was asking Fabius, flopping back onto her stool. “She likes the theater.”
“The bitch says the heat’s giving her headaches,” Lollia’s husband complained.
“You’re very stupid to treat her so badly,” Diana told Fabius calmly. “But ambitious little toads like you are usually stupid.”
Fabius looked at Diana with loathing. “You won’t always be the Emperor’s pet, girl.”
“Poor Lollia,” Cornelia said, overhearing. “She’s been crying all week, since Fabius flogged her slave. And I’m not sure he doesn’t beat Lollia too—she’s got marks she keeps trying to cover up with powder and bracelets, and she’s avoiding her grandfather. I suppose she doesn’t want him to see the bruises. He didn’t want the marriage to happen in the first place, and he’ll just be miserable he can’t do anything about it now.”
Marcella eyed Fabius thoughtfully as the Emperor reappeared in the box, hitching at his toga. Vitellius would raise an army soon against Vespasian, and he’d count on Fabius to do it. What kind of army could he raise? Those eastern legions were hard, seasoned troops—German savages and palace guards wouldn’t be enough . . .
The Emperor settled back into his chair, waving an irritable hand, and the perspiring actors hitched their masks into place. “Damned long play,” Vitellius complained loudly to Diana, splashing more wine into his cup. The actors onstage looked rather resigned as they resumed trudging through their verses, the Emperor’s strident voice bulling over their own. “I’d rather have a good race any day. No sulks from you when my Blues win at Vinalia, now—losers should wear a smile.”
“Did that mean you were smiling all last year, Caesar?” Diana said sweetly. “When the Blues came in last of all the factions?”
“You’ve got a tart tongue, girl. Your father didn’t beat you enough growing up.”
Marcella only half-listened to Vitellius and Diana’s wrangling, still pondering the possible loyalty of the Emperor’s generals. “If they’re shifty sorts, I wonder what Vespasian’s generals are like? Domitian might know. Of course he’ll be boring and try to get me into bed, but if I can’t wheedle a little information out of an eighteen-year-old boy . . .”
There was a rustle at her side, and Cornelia rose abruptly. “I’m going home.”
“Are you all right?” Marcella looked up, blinking her thoughts away.
“A headache—I hate this hot weather.” Cornelia looked more distracted than ever, pushing a damp tendril of hair off her neck. “Excuse me—” and off she rushed.
Marcella wondered for a moment if she should go with her sister—offer to take her to the bathhouse where they could cool down in the frigidarium and have a good gossip like they used to in the old days. But a moping sister just wasn’t much amusement compared to everything else going on. I’ll spend more time with her later, Marcella thought vaguely, when things have calmed down. Will they ever calm down?
She listened to a few more verses from the lackadaisical actors, thoroughly overridden now by the Emperor’s bull voice and Diana’s strident one as they argued horses, and then someone claimed the seat beside her.
“You shouldn’t sit here.” Marcella waved her fan, languid.
“The Emperor doesn’t care about the rules.” Domitian’s hand settled on her knee, moist and warm. “So why should I?”
Marcella smiled and deftly shifted away. “Behave, now.”
“Why?” he breathed. “You weren’t always so well-behaved.”
“That was a mistake. I was very distressed after what I’d seen in Bedriacum.” Ever since that swift ferocious coupling in the garden overlooking the city, Marcella had been careful not to allow Domitian any further intimacies. He worked so much harder for her when he was frustrated . . . and he was so easily frustrated. Sulky, he flopped back in his seat and started to mutter the latest news from his father in Judaea, but Marcella only listened with half an ear. Her eyes had settled on one discontented face in the crowd below, a face she had noted before.
“Excuse me,” she murmured to Domitian, rising and pulling the pale-green veil over her hair. “I won’t be a moment—
“Caecina Alienus!” Marcella smiled, sinking into the seat beside the man both her sister and Diana had turned down. “I did not know you were such a devotee of the theater.”
“A soldier can make time for the arts, Lady.” His German-accented bass was surly—he could hardly be pleased to see another member of the Cornelii, after what happened with the first two—but he gave Marcella a curt nod before turning his attention back to the stage. Several of his officers diced beside him, bored.
“Isn’t Fabius at the Senate now?” she asked innocently. “Surely you’re his little shadow.”
Alienus scowled—a man of considerable power, Marcella knew, but not as high in Vitellius’s favor as Fabius Valens. And no doubt smarting from being rejected—publicly—by two patrician brides in a row.
“What good taste you have,” Marcella said, fanning herself. “Theater is for subtle men—wasted on these straightforward sorts like Fabius. Vitellius too, really.”
“Mmm.” Alienus glowered at the stage.
“I think more things are wasted on Vitellius besides theater,” Marcella continued. “Good men like yourself, for example.”
A fleeting glance from below thick brows.
“I should like to tell you something, Commander.” She dropped her voice. “Of course we all know that the eastern legions proclaimed Governor Vespasian as Emperor some weeks ago. You probably don’t know that the Moesian legions have declared for him as well, five days back.”
“What?” She had Alienus’s full attention now, the dark eyes narrowed. “Five days—how could you possibly know that?”
“Vespasian’s younger son Domitian. He’s mad for me.” Marcella smiled, keeping up the fan’s placid movement. “So you see, I do know what I’m talking about. Vespasian has four legions in Judaea, but it’s a long time before they can get here, isn’t it? However, the legate of the Moesian legions has persuaded his men to march at once on Rome . . . and they are much closer.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why should you?” Marcella tilted a shoulder. “I’m just a woman whispering rumors during a play. You’ll receive confirmation of the rumors in a few days’ time, however, and perhaps then you should come see me.” She rose.
“Why would I do that?” Alienus challenged.
“Why?” Marcella looked back over her shoulder. “Because unlike Vitellius, Vespasian isn’t the Emperor to overlook good men. Maybe you should consider that.”
She drifted back to her seat, where a scowling Domitian took possession of her hand. “What kept you so long?”
“Nothing unimportant.” She put an arm about him, stroking the back of his neck openly, and he dove forward to bury his lips between her breasts. She looked over his shoulder at Alienus, watching her with narrowed eyes, and lifted an eyebrow. See, you ambitious little man? I do have sources.
“Domitian,” she murmured, pushing him back a little. “You may want to drop a word in Caecina Alienus’s ear sometime soon.”
“Alienus?” Domitian lifted his head from where he’d been nibbling along the line of her shoulder. “Why are you talking about him? If you’re bedding that thug in breeches—”
“You don’t have a rival, you silly boy.” Flicking the tip of his nose. “I just know an opportunity when I see one. Alienus is a powerful man—and lately he’s been humiliated by two proposed brides, edged out by Fabius Valens, and neglected by the Emperor. I think he’s feeling . . . restless.”
“So?” Domitian scowled.
“So, that could be exploited. Why don’t you and your uncle host a dinner party, and invite him. Put him next to me, and I’ll drop a few words in his ear abou
t your father. How generously he rewards his supporters. Then you can chime in with convincing details.”
Domitian’s black eyes began to gleam.
“Maybe bring your pet astrologer,” Marcella suggested. “He must be hard up these days; Vitellius doesn’t like astrologers. He could say a few encouraging words about the fates of all those who serve your father . . .”
“You’re a goddess,” Domitian breathed.
Marcella smiled. “Perhaps I am.”
CORNELIA remembered the days back at the beginning of this strange year when she’d been meeting with Vitellius’s brother to pass on information about Otho; how easily she had managed to come and go unnoticed from her brother’s house for those clandestine gatherings. I could be bedding half of Rome and my family would be the last to know, she’d thought at the time, and scoffed inside at the patrician matrons who bemoaned the difficulties of meeting with their lovers.
She knew what they were moaning about now.
“My family thinks I’m at the theater with my sister,” Cornelia said breathlessly, coming through the rickety door of the whorehouse and landing in Drusus’s arms.
“Good.” He pinned her against the wall of his room, pushing the veil off her hair, kissing her throat. “How long?”
“An hour—” she murmured between kisses. “Maybe two—”
But two hours wasn’t enough, and Cornelia found herself running back through the streets, heart hammering in her throat, slipping through the slaves’ gate and hoping no one had noticed how long she’d been gone. Two hours here, three hours there—it was never long enough.
“Don’t take any risks,” Drusus urged. “You’ve got more to lose than me.”
“You’ve got your life to lose.” She twisted her head on the pillow to look at him.
“That’s already lost,” he shrugged. “They just haven’t collected payment yet.” He cupped a hand around Cornelia’s cheek, and she shivered at his touch. “You be careful. At least—”