Daughters of Rome (11 page)

Even Lollia’s dreamy happiness evaporated as she looked at the forced smiles and tense eyes of the crowd around them. “What’s wrong with everyone?” she whispered.

“I imagine they already know what I noticed at the Campus Martius just now,” Marcella said. “That there are Praetorians massing.” She hadn’t liked the look of them: tight-bunched in their red-and-gold breastplates, gesturing fiercely at each other under the low gray sky.

“The Praetorians are always grumbling. What of it?”

“Perhaps they’re grumbling a little worse than usual.” Marcella thought of the latest rumor—that Piso had tried once again to get Galba to pay his soldiers their bounty, and been refused.

And then there were the slaves she’d seen at the Campus Martius. Wearing, Marcella was certain, Senator Otho’s badge.

The air was stifled from so many bodies in one room. Marcella cleared a path back to a niche where a jade-and-silver lamp had somehow avoided Galba’s auctioneers. The crowd swirled, and for a moment she saw Galba himself, wrinkled as a tortoise in his toga, Old Flaccid at one elbow and Piso at the other. Piso looked worried but stalwart; Cornelia clung to his arm with a crease showing between her dark brows—then the crowd swirled again and hid them.

Marcella felt a little tendril uncoil in her stomach—excitement this time, rather than unease. “Isn’t it rather thrilling?” she couldn’t help saying. “To be right in the thick of it all like this?”
Not just forever stuck in the background, waiting for news.

“If I want thrills, I go to the races.” Diana looked out over the nervous crowd. “I think it’s Senator Otho.”

“Otho isn’t here, Diana.”

“No, but he’s somewhere else. Causing trouble.”

Of course Marcella had long since arrived at
that
conclusion.
Diana never sees anything unless it’s waved under her nose.
They found a slave to bring some wine—passed a few more idle speculations—waited an agonizing, finger-tapping hour before the hysterical messenger brought the news.

The Praetorian Guard had proclaimed Otho as Emperor and were carrying him shoulder-high through the streets.

It was all a great confusion after that. Marcella tried to see everything, take note of everything, but for once her mental pen was overwhelmed. Too much was happening for notes.

She heard Galba’s voice snapping orders but couldn’t make out what he was saying. She saw Piso’s chalk-white face as he squared himself to go address the cohort of guards still here in the palace; he stumbled on the threshold, and his sturdy chestnut-haired centurion had to steady him. She saw a pair of young courtiers playing dice in the corner, calling for wine and laying loud wagers on how soon it would be before someone brought Otho’s head in on a spear. Clearest of all, she saw an old slave woman unconcernedly refilling the wine cups.
And why not?
Marcella thought, bemused.
All this hysterical swapping of emperors has nothing to do with her, not when there are wine cups to be filled.
Marcella stared at the woman until she placidly took herself out.

Cornelia came then, pressing through the crowd. She looked calm as a pillar in her fluted
stola
of smoke blue, lapis lazuli banding her throat and wrists, but her hand was moist and cold when she blindly found Marcella’s and grasped it tight.
When did she last do that?
Marcella thought.
When she was ten years old, maybe, and Father came back from Gaul after two years and didn’t even bother trying to tell us apart.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Cornelia was saying. “It could be dangerous—nothing to fear from Otho, of course, he’ll be in chains as soon as the Praetorians come to their senses. But with so much confusion in the palace, it isn’t proper for you to be here.” She gave a disapproving glance—even now, Marcella thought, her sister cared about the proprieties. “Marcella, did you even bring a slave for a chaperone? Considering that people still whisper about you and Nero—”

“Never mind the chaperone,” Marcella said impatiently. “You shouldn’t be here either.” The lamps were flickering now as purple twilight began to fall outside. She glanced through the window and saw lights at the gates of the Domus Aurea—torches, as the curious citizens of Rome came to watch.
Two emperors at once
, she thought.
Better than a play! Come one, come all, come early, and get your seats for the show!

“They’ve sent emissaries to our other forces in the city.” Cornelia spoke rapidly, twisting her wedding ring around and around her finger. “And Piso spoke to the guards—they received him well, Centurion Densus told me,” she continued, pride in her voice. “He reminded them of the honor of the guards, how they have never betrayed their lawful Emperor for a usurper—”

“Well,” Marcella murmured, “you could call Galba a usurper too, you know.”

But Cornelia rushed on, unhearing. “—and he talked about shame, too, reminding them of their duty. I wish he hadn’t done that, but Galba thought it best if he
shamed
the guards into doing the right thing—and it doesn’t matter, Densus assured me the men received him well enough—”

“Cornelia—”

“And now some people are urging Galba to reinforce the palace and arm the slaves, in case there’s a fight, and others are urging him to go out and meet Otho head-on—”

“Cornelia, come home.” Lollia cut off her babbling. “Wait with us until it’s all safely over.”

“My place is with my husband.” Cornelia’s cold hand flinched in Marcella’s, and then she drew herself visibly together. “But truly, you should all—”

“Lollia!”
Old Flaccid caught sight of his wife for the first time and started flapping his hands. “Go home at once—the
idea
of coming here now—”

“Oh, don’t hiss at me.” Lollia rolled her eyes. “It’s like being married to a gander—”

“I’ve just fetched a litter,” Cornelia said soothingly. The slaves were starting to get excited now, whispering in corners behind their hands, and none of them wanted to listen to her. But she was the Empress of Rome, or something very near to it, and when she clapped her hands they scattered obediently. Marcella had never felt prouder of her sister.

A gap in the babble drew Marcella’s eyes as Cornelia hastened them all out. Galba was tossing his toga aside, snarling at the hovering courtiers as his breastplate and greaves were brought forward.

“It looks like he’ll go out to meet them,” Marcella said.

“Yes.” Cornelia was pale now, but her voice was still composed.

“Do I have to leave?” Marcella begged. “Just when all the excitement is beginning? I may have written about history, but I’ve never
seen
it happen—”

“Out,”
Cornelia ordered in the big-sister voice she had not used since they were small, and bundled Marcella into the hired litter after her cousins.

The bearers jolted below as they swung away from the palace, but none of them called down for a smoother pace. Lollia nibbled her nails anxiously, but Marcella couldn’t help peeking through the curtains and Diana peered over her shoulder. The light was purple with dusk, and after a while Marcella began seeing people—bakers, brewers, old soldiers, beggars and urchins, women with children clinging to their skirts—gathered along the street. Saying nothing, just watching silently. Though there was shouting in the distance.

“Turn ahead,” Marcella called down to the litter-bearers as the surge of shouting grew louder. “Avoid the Forum.”

But the crowds were pressing thicker, and they couldn’t turn anywhere. The litter lurched, lurched again, and then one end fell and Marcella spilled out, hip smacking painfully against the stones. Lollia fell against her legs with a sharp little scream, Diana scrambled more nimbly to her feet, and Marcella looked up to see the litter-bearers dashing away into the night. Several street urchins let out a cheer and leaped into the litter for a game, but the rest of the crowd was silent. Marcella saw eyes glittering like pieces of jet, assessing her, and fear leaped suddenly in her throat. She wore one of her plain pale gowns, and Diana had a dusty smock fit only for grubbing in a stable, but Lollia’s silks and pearls . . .

“Forget about trying to reach the house.” Diana hauled them both up with rough little hands. “We need shelter, and we need it now.”

“Yes,” Marcella agreed faintly. “Maybe this is enough excitement.”

But there was more shouting ahead, and torches being waved in the air, and the crowd was murmuring now, not words so much as a low ominous rumble. Marcella felt herself pushed forward, Lollia’s fingers latched to her elbow, and then Diana managed to yank them all up a rough step into a vestibule.

“Can you see?” Lollia craned her neck, eyes wide and white.

“Yes.” Marcella, far taller than either of her cousins, could see everything—she had a clear line of sight down into the end of the Forum, where a bald head bobbed over a hired chair in the torchlight. Galba’s wrinkled tortoise neck turned this way and that, and Marcella could even see his mouth opening as he shouted orders, but the crowd bore him along hysterically, hearing nothing. She saw Old Flaccid close at his side and looked for Piso, for Cornelia—but there was only Galba in his useless breastplate.

Hoofbeats. Marcella couldn’t hear where they were coming from, but suddenly mounted Praetorians were spilling into the square and surrounding Galba in his chair, and short swords waved overhead and the red plumes of crested helmets looked like smears of blood in the twilight. Galba’s arm thrashed as his chair overturned, and then the swords were rising and falling.

“Marcella!” Lollia was screaming, pulling at her arm. The crowd’s silence shattered; half of them were screaming and buffeting to get away, and half were screaming and pushing forward to see an emperor get hacked to pieces. Marcella saw Lollia’s husband dragged from behind Galba’s fallen chair and stabbed through the gut as he shrieked for mercy.

Lollia gave a strangled whimper.

“Run!”
Diana snarled, and gave such a yank to both their elbows that Lollia staggered halfway to her knees. Marcella steadied her, and suddenly they were all running. “The temple,” Marcella gasped, and suddenly the crowds were behind them and the round curve of the Temple of Vesta loomed ahead, impossibly serene, as they lunged up the steps to the sanctuary.

Silence inside, incredible silence. The flame crackled quietly in its eternal hearth, and the marble coolness of the temple was empty. Marcella skidded to a halt, feeling the breath burn in her lungs, and Lollia collapsed at the base of the nearest pillar. “He’s not dead,” she kept saying blankly. “He’s not dead.” Marcella didn’t bother answering her. The word kept throbbing in her own mind—
dead, dead, the Emperor dead.

Oh, Fortuna, where was Cornelia?

Diana went to hammer on the inner sanctum and came back with a string of curses, flinging the hair out of her eyes with a savage hand. “We’re locked out. It looks like the Vestal Virgins have fled.”

“Wise,” Lollia said with blank calm. “They won’t stay virgins long if the Praetorians find their way in.”

“Nor will we,” Marcella said, looking around the temple. Just a few pillars to hide behind—no doors to bar and close.

“You can’t be much of a virgin by this time, unless your husband doesn’t know his job.” Lollia managed to stand, her red curls sticking to her temples with sweat although she still shivered violently.

“Well, I still don’t fancy being ravished by half a cohort of Praetorians,” Marcella retorted. “Does any of us have a knife, in case it gets to that?”

“I have one,” Diana volunteered, producing a neat little blade.

“You would,” Marcella said, somehow feeling irritated.

More shouting, and they all froze. The street below was empty, the crowd long scattered into the side alleys or gorging itself on the Forum’s hysteria, but there was shouting, and suddenly torches. A knot of Praetorians, and two figures before them, running and stumbling. It wasn’t dark yet—plenty of light to see who they were.

Marcella lunged from behind the pillar, and Diana caught her just in time. “You can’t!”

Cornelia was gasping and limping—she’d lost one of her sandals, and her dark hair unraveled down her back. Piso helped her along, wild-eyed, his toga in shreds around him. Behind them, whooping, grinning, fanning out in a leisurely pack, spread half a dozen Praetorian guards.

No
, Marcella thought wildly,
only five
. The one in the lead wasn’t with the rest. He pushed Piso ahead, up the steps of the Temple of Vesta, and he whirled around with his
gladius
drawn. Cornelia’s centurion, Densus. He’d lost his plumed helmet, and a gash beside one eye masked his face in blood, but his teeth bared in a snarl as he flung himself on the guards.

One went down as Densus’s short sword plunged through his neck and out again, but Cornelia went down too, tripping over the first of the temple steps. A guard lunged at her, and Piso gave a cry and flung himself at the man. Blood bloomed on his sleeve.

Densus booted the first man off his sword and turned on the second, slashing his knee out from behind. The man shouted, crumpling, and Piso staggered back, staring in disbelief at the blood on his arm. Cornelia seized his hand, screaming something, dragging him up the stairs. Densus half-turned, pushing at them both and shouting, and then they took him from behind.

A tall tribune with an ugly stub of a knife found the gap between Densus’s breastplate and back plate and drove the blade in deep. Densus doubled over gasping, but he lunged at the tribune and they tangled drunkenly on the steps. Two more Praetorians lunged around them, grabbing for Piso. One missed, but the other caught the bloody trailing end of Piso’s toga.

Whooping, they yanked him back, reeling him in like a fish, and his last motion was to shove Cornelia ahead of him up the steps. Marcella caught a glimpse of her brother-in-law’s terrified white face, his mouth opening in a square hole to say something—to beg or plead, or maybe just scream. Because even though a patrician was supposed to die proudly, there wasn’t much pride in being an emperor’s heir for five days and then being butchered on a staircase like a stray dog.