They had a guest within the day: Senator Marcus Norbanus, released from prison now and come to collect little Paulinus. “Marcus!” Marcella greeted him gaily. “Delightful to see you again.”
“Delightful to see anything that isn’t a stone cell.” He looked around the atrium with its square of winter sunlight and glassy pool. His hair, only threaded with gray at the beginning of the year, had gone entirely iron-colored, and he had a bracket of harsh lines about his mouth. “Are you hurt?” Marcella asked, noticing him limp as she waved him to a bench.
“A broken shoulder from my arrest,” he said briefly, releasing Paulinus’s plump little hand and pushing him gently to go play. “The guards weren’t gentle. It was never set properly, and now I find it pulls me off-balance.”
“I’m sorry, Marcus.”
“It would have been far worse without that doctor your cousin Lollia smuggled in for me.” Marcus rotated the crooked shoulder, smiling wryly.
“Lollia sent you a doctor?” Marcella blinked.
“Yes, along with food baskets and jugs of good wine. I hate to think what it must have cost her in bribes. Your sister was also kind enough to visit a few times, to give me news about Paulinus.” Marcus smiled again, fond. “And your mad little cousin Diana came every week, smuggling just about every book I owned under her dress, just to keep my mind from rotting away with boredom”
I suppose I should have thought to visit myself, Marcella thought. Dethroning an emperor had been so time-consuming. Perhaps she could do something for Marcus now, since he was out of prison. He really looked very distinguished in his toga—the crooked shoulder could hardly be seen, and his eyes were as penetrating and intelligent as ever. Senator Marcus Norbanus, descendant of Emperor Augustus . . . such an intelligent man, so respected in the Senate, with a consulship already to his credit at the age of thirty-three. Respected enough that three successive emperors this year had feared his influence. Surely he was bitter about the misfortunes they’d inflicted on him.
I wonder if you have ambitions, Marcus. To be something beyond a senator.
“So everything seems to have gone back to normal,” she remarked brightly. “I wonder if it really has.”
Marcus watched his son, splashing his hands in the atrium’s pool. “One hopes.”
“Four emperors! Fortuna, I wonder what Vespasian will be like.” Marcella fanned herself, artless. “None of them could hold a candle to you, in my opinion.”
“Really?” His eyes still followed little Paulinus.
“Yes, and I’m not the only one to think you might have made a fine Emperor. Certainly Galba and Otho and Vitellius were worried about the prospect. Isn’t it a pity that—”
“Stop,” said Marcus.
“What?” Marcella smiled. “Stop what?”
“I don’t know. But stop it.” Marcus looked at her, and his eyes were cool and measuring. “I’ve always admired you, Marcella—you’re an intelligent woman, after all, and I like intelligent women. But I find I don’t like you anymore, and I don’t precisely know why. Perhaps it’s just my feeling that you’re a schemer.”
Marcella’s lips parted, but for once she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“Good day to you.” Marcus rose, holding out a hand, and little Paulinus came running to his side. “Don’t visit.”
Twenty-two
“THANK the gods the bathhouses are open again,” Lollia said. “I need a really good sweat to wake up my skin. All this emperor-swapping is just terrible for the complexion.”
“Not to mention all your husband-swapping.” Cornelia couldn’t help a laugh as she put her arm through Lollia’s, and Lollia giggled back. They threaded their way across the caldarium, around the splashing fountain in the center, past the busy bathhouse attendants and the clusters of flushed women in towels toward a pair of marble massage slabs. Marcella had gone to the natatio pool in the next chamber for a swim, and Diana had announced her desire for a little exercise and loped lean and naked over to the gymnasium. But Cornelia felt happy and lazy and only wanted a massage.
“Look at all those old cats hissing away.” Lollia stretched her pink naked self in the billows of steam, making a face across the caldarium at a trio of plump avid-eyed matrons whispering behind their hands. “Rumor-mongering bitches.”
“Let them talk.” Cornelia smiled as she stretched out face up on the massage slab, unable to stop her hand from stealing down to caress her waist through the towel. Pregnant. Me, pregnant at last at twenty-five.
“You’re sure?” Drusus had said when she told him, that first long night back in Rome. He’d all but crushed her in his relief when she came tumbling through the narrow door of the whorehouse—though the relief had faded away soon enough to a stricken guilt. “Oh, gods,” he said, appalled. “I’m sorry—I should have taken care, I should have—”
“Sshh.” Cornelia laid a finger over his lips. “I know what to do.”
“You mean—” He looked at her belly. “. . . you’ll wash it out?”
“No.” Not the child she was already envisioning: a sturdy little boy, compact and brave, or a girl with chestnut curls and maybe her mother’s dimples. “I won’t do that.”
“But your family, they’ll—”
“I can handle them. I’ll have to marry, but—” She had to turn her eyes away from the stricken look that reappeared on his face.
“Aye,” Drusus jerked. “I suppose you will.”
Cornelia kept that look before her when she’d marched her brother into his study. “Gaius,” she’d said without preamble, before her courage could fail, “you should make preparations for a wedding feast early next week. I am going to marry Centurion Drusus Sempronius Densus, and it would be better to have the wedding soon, since I am going to have his child.”
Gaius’s mouth, which had just closed after hearing the word wedding , dropped open again.
“It’s not a grand match, but it is respectable,” Cornelia continued as serenely as she could, though her heart was thumping loud in her own ears. “Drusus’s family is solid equestrian class in Toscana. No, Gaius, don’t interrupt me. Drusus’s record as a Praetorian has been distinguished, and the treason charge laid against him by the Vitellians has been lifted. Gaius, I told you not to interrupt. Drusus will be calling on you this afternoon to discuss details.”
She’d been halfway across the tablinum before Gaius whimpered, “What am I going to tell Tullia?”
“Gaius.” Cornelia turned, giving her brother an exasperated look. “Tullia isn’t the paterfamilias of the Cornelii. You are. Act like it!”
That had been that. In a week’s time the family would see yet another wedding—but for once, not Lollia’s. Cornelia wriggled pleasurably under the masseuse’s fingers at the thought.
“What are all those old bags over there hissing about?” Diana padded naked into the steam of the caldarium, toweling her sweat-damp hair. “They’re nearly making the sign of the evil eye at us.”
“Oh, just our scandalous Cornelia,” Lollia said airily.
“I am not either scandalous.” Cornelia couldn’t help the defensive edge in her own voice. Not that she was ashamed of Drusus, or herself . . . but she’d never been an object of salacious gossip in her life. “It’s a perfectly respectable wedding.”
“Respectable?” Diana snorted, stretching her arms out so the bathhouse attendant could scrape the sweat off with a strigil. “You’re dropping a foal in six months.”
“Well, we thought we’d make our home outside Rome.” Cornelia propped chin on hand as the masseuse moved from her shoulders to her back. “Then no one will know how long we’ve been married . . .”
Drusus would be at the palace today, cooling his heels in a hall full of petitioners as he waited to see if he could possibly be reinstated to the Praetorian Guard. “Don’t know if I want palace duty again,” he’d confided. “But I’d like to train the young soldiers, maybe down in Tarracina at the training camp. Get some loyalty pounded in
to them young, so they don’t go wrong like this batch did when the bribes and the emperors started flying.” He’d made several inquiries about being reinstated, but heard nothing yet. Surely any commanding officer worth his salt would be proud to have a man like Cornelia’s future husband in his ranks . . . Husband—Juno’s mercy, I love that word . . .
“Well, I hope the baby’s a girl,” Diana was saying around a groan as the strigil scraped over a bruise on her shoulder. “So I can teach her to drive a chariot too, and have someone to race against. Go on, keep scraping—”
“You are not making my daughter into a charioteer!” Cornelia protested. By now everyone in Rome had heard the latest story about Diana: how the Blues faction director had come puffing up to the hillside villa to reclaim the Anemoi, how the tall Briton had wordlessly handed Diana a knife—some said a sword—and how she had run the faction director off at bladepoint . . .
“So let’s have the truth now, Diana.” Lollia rubbed rose oil into her dimpled knees. “You’re madly in love with that imposing Briton, aren’t you!”
“I did wonder for a while,” Diana mused. “But I don’t think so.”
“Admit it, my honey! We’re all scandalous here—I’m bedding my daughter’s body slave, Cornelia’s marrying a pleb—”
“He’s not a pleb!”
“—so the least you can do to keep us company is fall in love with a savage!”
“I don’t think I’m very good at falling in love.” Diana shook her damp hair out of her eyes. “Not with anything that has less than four legs, anyway. Boreas, now—he’s the love of my life.”
They all giggled, and then Cornelia slid off the massage slab and wrapped herself modestly in a towel, and Lollia tipped the bathhouse attendants. They filed through the steam toward the tepidarium, and Cornelia heard smothered whispers as they passed the avid little cluster of gossiping matrons.
“—true she met him in a whorehouse?”
“Oh, he’s not the only lover she met there! Half the Praetorian barracks trooped in and out of her bed—”
“Before her husband was even dead! Poor Piso, if he’d known half her antics—”
Cornelia’s eyes dropped to the floor a moment, but she lifted her chin and gave a blind, bright smile. “Juno’s mercy,” she said, trying to laugh, “I’ll be glad when they move on to some new scandal.”
“Sooner than you think.” Diana turned on her heel, marched up to the loudest of the whisperers, grabbed a handful of the woman’s bobbing ringlets, and gave a swift yank. The woman squeaked, making a vain grab for her wig as Diana wound her arm like a discus thrower. The mass of false curls landed in the fountain with a splash, and Diana aimed a glare around the suddenly silent caldarium. “One more nasty word about my cousin from any of you,” she warned, “and you go into the fountain after that wig. Head first.”
Lollia giggled. Cornelia blushed and ducked out of the caldarium, but she pressed Diana’s hand in wordless thanks as her little cousin sauntered after. The door swung shut on the bald matron’s shriek.
“Well, that was amusing,” Lollia said as more bathhouse attendants came forward with perfumes and powders and wine. “Yes, a face mask for me, please—nail varnish for Cornelia here, maybe red to match the bridal veil? And something to take the calluses off Diana’s hands. No, a pumice stone isn’t going to do the job. Maybe a chisel . . .”
Marcella came through the door wrapped in a towel, flushed pink from her swim. “I didn’t mean to be so long. The water was wonderful.” She shook her wet hair around her neck as she joined them on the long marble benches, but not fast enough. Lollia pointed triumphantly as the slaves began fluttering around them.
“Someone’s been putting marks on your neck! Don’t tell me our slimy little junior prince of Rome finally wore down your defenses?”
“Domitian?” Cornelia wrinkled her nose as she stretched her toes into a slave girl’s lap for filing and varnishing. Somehow, she’d have rather had Diana tumbling that tall Briton than see her sister in bed with that mean-tempered little thug.
“He’s very tiresome sometimes.” Marcella leaned her head back as a slave girl moved in with combs and scented pomades. “But he has his uses.”
“A source for your next history?” Diana asked. Two bathhouse attendants had captured her hands and were moaning over the calluses.
“Oh, I’ve given up writing histories.” Marcella closed her eyes as the comb stroked through her wet hair. “No one will ever read them, and anyway it’s far more interesting seeing what happens in real life.”
“Is it,” said Diana.
“Lollia, you look like a ghost,” Cornelia laughed. A slave girl was applying a bread paste all over Lollia’s face and neck to whiten and tighten the skin.
“ ‘I want to see what happens.’ ” Diana’s spear-straight gaze was still narrowed on Marcella. “That’s another favorite phrase of yours, this year.”
“I do want to see what happens.” Marcella opened her eyes, blinking. “It’s been an interesting year.”
“Not the word I’d use.” Diana brushed away the slave girls and took a step forward, hair falling down her naked back. “You say you’ve given up writing histories. But you’re always writing—up in your tablinum , at dinner parties on napkins, at the races on parchment scraps. What are you writing, Marcella?”
She smiled: Cornelia’s tall sister wrapped in her white towel, wet hair combed sleekly down her back, her face carved and cool. “Nothing important.”
Diana looked at the bathhouse attendants. “Leave us.”
“What’s this about?” Cornelia asked as the slave girls filed out. Lollia’s puzzled eyes peered out from her stiff white mask of bread paste.
“When you’re not writing, Marcella, you’re whispering all over town,” Diana continued as if Cornelia hadn’t spoken. A few matrons glanced over from the opposite corner, but no one was close enough to hear. “I see you meeting with Domitian in the Forum, and it doesn’t look like any lover’s assignation. I see you sitting next to Caecina Alienus at a play, and neither of you is paying attention to the play. I see you at one of Otho’s parties, whispering into the ear of Vitellius’s brother. And at Galba’s parties months and months ago, I see you whispering to Otho.”
Cornelia looked at her sister, who sat quite still with a comb in her hand and a faint smile playing on her lips.
“All that whispering,” Diana continued. “To senators who went over from Vitellius to Vespasian. To praetors who went over from Otho to Vitellius. To governors who went from Galba to Otho. And now there’s Domitian in your bed.”
“Diana,” Cornelia began, “what are you—”
“You really don’t write histories anymore, do you?” Diana’s blue-green gaze never wavered from Marcella. “Too pointless, just like you said. You’ve started writing history.”
“Goodness,” Marcella said mildly. “I just do a little whispering now and then. No harm in that.”
“Isn’t there?”
“Will someone tell me what you’re both gabbling on about?” Lollia interrupted. Her masked face was beginning to flake.
“I’ll tell you.” Diana crossed the room in two lithe steps. Diana the Huntress they all called her teasingly—but now she was the huntress, stalking her prey. “Marcella got bored writing histories, and decided she’d start meddling in the real thing. A comment to Otho, maybe; something he hatched into a rebellion. Then Vitellius declared himself Emperor up in Germania, and she wondered what would happen if she passed on information about Otho’s troops.”
“Marcella didn’t do that.” Cornelia flushed. “I did. I was so crazed after Piso died, I just wanted Otho dead—”
“And where did you get all those little gems of information, Cornelia? You wouldn’t know where to begin, but a historian knows what information is valuable. She dropped it all in your ear, everything Vitellius’s commanders needed to defeat Otho, and you passed it along for her.” Diana looked back at Marcella, now running
a finger over the teeth of the comb in her hand. “Otho’s army lost, maybe because of her. And she even went along so she could watch the battle. So she could watch Otho die.”
“You think I’m a prophetess?” Marcella protested. “I never dreamed he’d commit suicide. I just went along because—”
“You wanted to see what would happen,” Cornelia echoed.
“And you came back,” Diana continued. “And Vespasian declared himself Emperor, and you thought you might start whispering in Alienus’s ear and others too, to see if they’d turn traitor. And enough of them did, and Vitellius lost his army because of it, and Rome tore itself to bits. And now we have a new Emperor and a bit of peace, and the first thing you do is take Domitian to bed and start whispering about—what? How he’d make a better Emperor than his brother?” Diana looked around, to Cornelia frozen in her towel, to Lollia bewildered and white-masked. “From all that what might happen, something did happen. Four emperors have ruled Rome this year. And our Marcella had her hand in the fall of three of them.”
“Well, four if you count last year too,” Cornelia’s sister confessed. There was a little flush on her cheeks . . . could it possibly be pride? “There was that little incident with Emperor Nero. But that was just a whisper, really, and I had no idea he’d follow my advice and actually commit suicide. What?” She looked around at them. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
They stared at her as if she had snakes for hair.
“You’re all making too much out of this.” Marcella put down the comb. “So I meddled a little. No more than a hundred other scheming senators were doing, for their own advancement. But you lay the blame for all three Imperial coups at my door?”
“You didn’t meddle for your own advancement,” Diana said, implacable. “Or for your own protection. I could understand that. You meddled for fun.”
Cornelia forced the words out through stiff lips. “And my husband died.”
“I didn’t know that would happen. No one could.” Marcella looked around at them. “You think I wanted harm to come to any of us?”