“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—”
“—and you have duties to your family at functions like this.” Tullia shed her palla into the hands of a hovering slave, ordered the lamps lit, and frowned at Gaius for calling for wine, all without interrupting her flow of complaints. “There are a great many important people at such parties, people who could benefit your brother’s career and you owe it to him—Gaius, no more wine!—to advance him at every opportunity. Not to mention your own husband. He may be in Judaea, but you can still work on his behalf. Perhaps host a party in his name. Lollia’s grandfather hosts Piso’s parties often enough in return for a little consideration on trade laws in the Senate—”
“In return for which you all look down on him,” Marcella said. “How genteel of you.”
“Now, now—” Gaius began, but he never got to finish a sentence since marrying Tullia.
“Don’t be pert, Marcella.” Tullia’s sandals clicked across the mosaics. “I have only the family’s best interests at heart.”
“You’ve only been a member of the family for ten months,” Marcella pointed out. “Of course it feels like ten years. Or ten centuries—”
She drifted out before her odious sister-in-law could think of an answer.
The Cornelii family home: dim, gracious, considerably improved in the past few years by the flow of money from Lollia’s grandfather. Though most of the family manages to ignore that fact. A beautiful house, its every vase and ornament whispering of gracious years passing and the many Cornelii who had passed serenely through these same halls. Tullia had managed to ruin the gardens by planting rigid clumps of delphiniums in loud primary colors, and she insisted on putting insipid nymph statues everywhere, but it was still a lovely house.
But it’s not my house. Not anymore, anyway. Married or not, Marcella had never had a household of her own. “I’m hardly in Rome four months of the year,” her husband Lucius Aelius Lamia had shrugged when they first married. “Why keep the expense of a household? We’ll just stay with your family for the time being, until I get a proper post in the city.” But somehow, in four years of marriage, the post in the city had not materialized, and Marcella had never left the house where she grew up.
Not that it had mattered, back in the days when her father had still been alive. He’d been too busy marching his legions around Gaul to take an interest in her life, and Gaius had been too busy trying to live up to his example, so Marcella had ordered the household to suit herself. But then Nero had disposed of her father, and the family fortunes had plunged for a while—until Gaius, now paterfamilias of the Cornelii in his own right, had married the rich and well-connected Tullia. And after that . . .
“Marcella must conduct herself properly while under our roof,” Gaius’s new wife had been quick to decree in that voice of hers that sounded like a cart grating over flagstones. “A young wife with her husband gone so long is a swarm for butterfly boys and rakes. And since that incident a few months ago with Emperor Nero—!”
“Tullia,” Gaius had given a quick glance at his sister’s face. “Perhaps we shouldn’t—”
“Gaius, of course we should. It is your duty to guard the reputation of your sisters, and Marcella’s duty to obey you!”
“I’m a married woman,” Marcella protested. “My only duty is to my husband.”
“Who isn’t here. So who else should step in for his authority but your brother?”
Absolutely no one. That had been the beauty of it, all those days when Lucius was traveling and her father waging wars. No one had been around to object to the hours Marcella spent writing and making notes at her desk. For months at a time, Marcella had managed to forget she had a husband or a father at all . . . but here was Tullia, giving her a beady predator’s stare. “Lucius Aelius Lamia trusted you to our care. And in my house, when you’re eating my food, you’ll follow my rules!”
“Your house?” Marcella shot back. “Gaius is master here, not you.”
Tullia smirked. “And if husband and wife speak together as one?”
“I’ve hardly heard Gaius speak at all since you married, Tullia. Is he even capable of speech anymore?”
If it had just been Gaius, Marcella knew she could have beaten down any arguments in ten minutes flat. Paterfamilias or not, legal rights or not, he’s no match for me. But if Gaius was the silk glove, Tullia was definitely the iron fist, and together they had the laws of Rome on their side. Money, duty, tradition: the trifold clamp forcing Marcella into whatever role they chose.
“When Lucius gets back from Judaea, I’m going to make him get a house of his own,” she’d told Cornelia wrathfully, just last week. “I’ll nag until I get what I want this time. That stingy stick owes me!”
“Try honey instead of vinegar,” her siste
r advised. “Much more effective when it comes to wheedling husbands. If you’d just apply yourself to Lucius a little—set yourself to advancing his career, have a child or two—”
“You’re the one who wants babies, not me. I’d rather get the pox than get pregnant.”
Cornelia dropped the subject then, and so did Marcella. She might tweak her sister about her dimples, her lectures, the particular queenly tone she got when she was angry, but never about children. Not when Cornelia spent more hours praying for a child with every year that passed.
Not me, Marcella thought. But I’ll even promise Lucius a baby, if he’ll just get me my own household.
Well, until he got back to Rome, all she had was her tablinum: cluttered, scattered with pens and ink pots, shelves of scrolls and a bust of Clio, the muse of history, that Diana’s odd sculptor father had astutely given Marcella on her nineteenth birthday. The tablinum might be small and dusty, but it was still all hers.
She banished Tullia’s carping from mind and pulled out the stool, reaching for a tablet. Clio gazed serenely overhead with blank marble eyes as Marcella wrote a fresh heading: Servius Sulpicius Galba, sixth Emperor of Rome. A man of great lineage and long service. A high forehead, indicating intelligence; an upright bearing, indicating discipline. A bark of a voice, better suited to a parade ground than a dinner table. Unyielding eyes—that was good; Rome liked her Emperors unyielding. Tight lips—cheapness; not so good. Emperors might be wicked or even insane, but they had to be generous. Marcella had heard whispers that Galba was even refusing to pay his Praetorians their usual bounty. “So he should,” Cornelia had said approvingly when she heard that particular rumor. “Galba wants greater discipline in the ranks, higher standards.”
“Admirable,” Marcella agreed. “And the ranks love being disciplined, don’t they?”
They did look sullen, the guards I saw at the wedding banquet tonight . . .
Marcella put her pen down, looking at the shelf where a few modest scrolls were immaculately stored. A woman might not be able to influence history, but she could certainly watch it—analyze it—record it. Marcella had already written histories of Rome’s past Emperors, from Augustus the God to Nero the mad. What a descent. Galba could hardly be anything but an improvement on Nero. Nero’s history was the newest on her shelf, still not quite finished—she had just this morning penned his death, with a pleasant sense of impartiality. A historian must never allow personal opinion to color her writings, after all. Cornelia Secunda, known as Marcella, she had enjoyed jotting down in the mental portrait of herself. A profoundly disinterested and impartial observer of history.
Being impartial to Nero had been . . . difficult.
“That incident at the palace.” Tullia had accosted Marcella that spring, shortly after it happened. “It must have been terrible, my dear. Do tell me.”
“Should I?”
“Everyone needs a listening ear at such times.”
“Do they?”
“Marcella,” Tullia snapped, dropping the cozy coyness, “don’t be difficult!”
“You want to hear all the details about Emperor Nero, Tullia? How his breath smells? What pomade he uses on his hair?”
“I don’t—”
“I’m sure you’re panting to hear every last sweaty detail, but I’m not going to oblige.”
Off Tullia went. “Gaius, you will not believe how your sister spoke to me!”
Well, no use thinking now of Nero with Galba on the throne. An old man, but it seemed certain enough he’d adopt Cornelia’s husband Piso as Imperial heir. Marcella smiled, thinking of her older sister’s regal command of Lollia’s wedding guests as she moved through the crowd. Piso, on her arm, had been dwarfed by all that majestic poise. If he does become Emperor, he’ll be the dullest one we’ve ever had.
“Marcella?” A peevish voice broke her reverie. “The slaves aren’t cleaning the mosaics properly. Have a word with them?”
“That’s not my job anymore, Gaius.” Marcella didn’t bother looking up as her brother came into the tablinum, stooping his height under the lintel.
“Yes, but Tullia will have the slaves lashed for it, and they don’t mean any harm.”
“You really could have done better for a wife, Gaius.”
“None of that,” he answered severely. “Our father selected her for me himself, before he died.”
“And our father was perfect?” Marcella raised her eyebrows. Certainly Cornelia and Gaius seemed determined to remember him that way.
“He was a great man!”
“And are any of us the happier for all that greatness?” Marcella said tartly. “Personally, I think great men are overrated.”
Gaius shifted, uncomfortable. “A Roman’s true duty isn’t happiness. It’s—well, duty.”
“Martial would have said that better. You never were any good at epigrams, Gaius.” Nor good at much else, truth be told. Marcella looked at her brother: tall, handsome, broad of forehead and sloped of nose, but somehow forgettable. He hadn’t even tried to match their father’s career in the legions, and now the Senate didn’t seem very impressed with him either.
“Maybe you could write me a few epigrams,” Gaius was hedging. “I could trot them out at parties and look clever.”
“Only if you pass me all the gossip from the Senate,” Marcella relented. “You know how I love news.”
“Here’s a bit for you.” He raised the eyebrows that Tullia had decreed he begin plucking lest he look like a caterpillar. “There’s rumors Governor Vitellius in Lower Germania will revolt. Even declare himself Emperor along with Galba.”
“Vitellius?” Marcella shook her head. “He’s a drunk. I saw him once at a faction party, and he could hardly keep upright after the first hour.”
“Well, it’s what they say. Not that it matters. Everyone knows Piso will be Galba’s heir.” Gaius brightened. “What a thing for our family, eh? I wonder if—”
Marcella looked down at the tablet on Emperor Galba as her brother chattered. It was hardly written on, but she put it away. Better to wait for another day, another month, when she knew more of Galba’s character. Besides, sitting on a throne changed a man. Who knew what Galba might become in another year or two?
Who knows what I’ll become in another year or two? Marcella thought. Mistress of my own household? Published historian? Owner of just the occasional hour or two of privacy?
No. That was too much to hope for.
Two
SHOULDN’T we be going?” Piso retied the lace of his sandal, frowning. “The races will have started by now.”
“But we aren’t going to the circus for the races.” Cornelia shuffled a dozen different lists as a bevy of anxious slave girls hovered at her elbow. Their atrium was a hive of activity: litter-bearers waiting outside to carry them to the Circus Maximus, maids with Cornelia’s sunshade and fan, freedmen with Piso’s correspondence and cloak. “We’re going to the circus to let people see us, and we’re going to make an entrance. You’re a public figure now, and public figures have a duty to make an impression on the populace. The right impression—here, take these.”
Piso shuffled through the armload of tablets and scrolls. “The household accounts?”
“Just shuffle them importantly between races.” Cornelia smiled at him over her lists. “The responsible Imperial heir, tending to matters of state even on a festival day.”
“I’m not Imperial heir yet,” he said reprovingly, but his eyes smiled at her as he took the accounts.
November was passing in a storm of winds and blown leaves, and with it the Ludi Plebii, the games of the people. Cornelia didn’t care for the games, but Diana had spoken of nothing else for days. “It won’t be a proper festival,” she complained. “Galba is too tightfisted to give any good purses, which means all the charioteers will save their horses for the races at Saturnalia instead.”
“Even your precious Reds?” Cornelia couldn’t help teasing her.
“The Reds don
’t run for a purse,” Diana flashed back. “They run for glory. You will come, won’t you?”
“Better the races than watching the gladiators die in the arena.” Cornelia detested the gladiatorial festivals. It made her sick to see so many people—from good families too! Not just plebeians—stand there shrieking for blood. The races, now, they had turned into something quite different from the staid laps of her childhood. Emperor Nero had been mad for racing—or perhaps just mad—and Cornelia might deplore the money he had spent, but there was no denying that the result was impressive. The Circus Maximus was now a proper arena with a central spina thick in carvings, golden dolphins dropping their noses for each of the seven laps, sprays of victory palm for the winning charioteers. A place to see and be seen . . . and who better to be seen by all Rome than her husband?
“Domina,” a maid said breathlessly, tumbling into the blue-tiled atrium, “the wine has been delivered to your box at the Circus Maximus.”
“Was it properly warmed? Last time the steward had it boiling—Lollia’s grandfather gave me the pick of his own cellars for the occasion,” Cornelia explained to Piso. “Falernian, Aminean, Nomentan—”
“With his breeding, you’d think he’d drink common beer.” Piso made a face. “He’s vulgar as Hades.”
“Oh, surely not. He has exquisite taste. Not one of our friends or relations has anything to match his house, or his collection of statues, or his wine cellar.”
“Yes, and that’s my point. Freed slaves should live modestly, not flaunt themselves higher than their birth.”
“Well, he has been very helpful to us,” Cornelia murmured. More than helpful, really—Lollia’s grandfather was extremely generous with gifts, and there was no denying that his assistance in other areas had been invaluable. Piso’s family had been hard hit under Nero’s suspicious eye, and even Claudius’s before that—she and Piso would never have kept their house and assets if not for a few timely loans. . . .