Daughters of Rome (13 page)

Lollia wondered if Marcella was really the person to look after anybody. “Is she speaking again? Cornelia, I mean. I know it’s too much to hope for that Tullia would ever shut up.”

“Not much. She just sits in her room, staring at walls. We had to fight her to get Piso’s body properly burned. Cornelia kept saying she wouldn’t burn him without his head. But it’s been more than a week and we haven’t found any sign . . .” Marcella trailed off.

“I had my grandfather’s slaves out looking for—” Lollia faltered. “For Piso’s head. I told them to pay anything.”

“So did I.” Marcella shook her head a little. “How is that centurion? Whatever his name is.”

“Drusus Sempronius Densus. The doctors are saying he may recover.” Lollia had had the centurion brought to her grandfather’s house, tended day and night by the best physicians in Rome. Surely it was the least they all owed him.
He couldn’t save Piso, but he’d saved us four.
“What about Diana? She was already half mad before; I suppose now she’s gone completely crazy—”

“Fortuna knows.” Marcella traced her finger along a little ivory statue on an exquisite ebony table by the window. “She keeps disappearing these days.”

“At least Otho will restore the races. That will make her happy.” Lollia held her head steady as the maids draped her red bridal veil. Properly her hair should have been parted first with the spear of a dead gladiator, to ensure a happy marriage. Cornelia had always insisted on it. Lollia didn’t think a spear or anything else could help
this
marriage.

A black shape moved in the mirror over Lollia’s shoulder, and she twisted to see Cornelia in the door. She wore mourning black, her arms bare, her hair bound tight to her head. She’d look wonderful in black if her face didn’t look like a frozen scream.

“Congratulations,” she said. “Marrying the Emperor’s brother, how grand. Did he give the order for my husband’s death?”

Lollia opened her mouth, not knowing what to say, but Marcella moved swiftly to her sister, murmuring. The slaves looked worried, but the one bitter phrase seemed to have taken all the words out of Cornelia. She let Marcella lead her to a window seat and sat there, staring out into the atrium. Lollia thought of how they had all giggled at the end of her wedding to Vinius . . . she felt her eyes prick, but blinked hard and willed the tears away. Cornelia might weep and grieve, but someone else had to make an alliance that would keep the family safe.
I’ve got slave blood as well as patrician, and patricians may not bend but slaves endure.

Her grandfather met them all at the bedchamber door, large and anxious, and Lollia rested a moment against his pillowy soft shoulder, loving him dearly enough to marry a hundred husbands. “My little jewel,” he said, as he’d called her ever since she was small. Maybe her cousins didn’t understand her unhesitating allegiance to her grandfather, why she never had even the slightest grumble when he chose a new husband for her. They didn’t understand that it was an alliance, her grandfather and herself against the world, for all time. An ex-slave with such a fortune had enemies; his lands and monies could be confiscated at any time if he didn’t have powerful connections. Marrying Otho’s brother would shield her grandfather as well as little Flavia and herself. That was worth anything.

More guests pressed close, cooing congratulations, their faces all blurs. Lollia dropped her saffron bridal cloak and Thrax refastened it about her throat. She couldn’t meet his eyes somehow. He’d been so sweet the day Vinius died—when she started giggling and couldn’t stop he’d just picked her up and carried her to bed. But he didn’t try to make love to her. He just held her close until the giggles turned into tears, and then he rocked and sang soft lullabies as if she’d been about as big as Flavia. “How do you know how to be so comforting, Thrax?” she asked.

“I sang to my sister,” he’d replied unexpectedly. “When she was little. When she is four, she goes to the slave market—dry-eyed. Because I sing to her first.”

Lollia wondered what had happened to his sister—what happened to the rest of his family. He shared her bed, and she knew so little about him . . . but he was a slave. Why
should
she know anything about him?

“I don’t know how you can be so calm.” Lollia had pulled away, scrubbing at her wet cheeks. “The world is ending.”

“Maybe.” He dried her eyes deftly. “Then I end with it.”

“That doesn’t trouble you?”

“My Lord died. That turned out all right.” He smiled, touching the rough little wooden cross hanging about his neck. It was something to do with his god—a carpenter or maybe the god of carpenters; Lollia wasn’t sure. “You turn out all right too, Domina.”

How could he say that? How could he
know
that?

Ever since, Lollia found it hard to meet Thrax’s eyes. Somehow, looking at him was just one more thing that made her feel uneasy.

Emperor Otho and his brother and their wedding party of guests were already waiting when Lollia stepped out into the gardens: grouped as artistically as statues, laughing among themselves and making graceful jokes. Beautiful as any Greek frieze, but her unease just increased. For the first time in Rome’s history, an emperor had gained his throne by the sword. Could so many people really just laugh at a party afterward as if everything were exactly the same?

Perhaps it
was
the same. If they could laugh, then so could she: Lady Cornelia Tertia again, known as Lollia the scandalous, who did nothing but go to parties and
enjoyed
them too.

She gulped a goblet of strong wine under the red veil before proceeding out, and her fourth wedding went much the same as the others. The ritual cake, the words
“Quando tu Gaius, ego Gaia,”
the procession to the altar of Juno for the sacrifice. Emperor Otho was there only for a brief blessing at the temple before slipping off—of course he was far too busy establishing himself as Emperor with the Senate to waste much time on weddings. She swallowed another goblet of wine as she saw Cornelia’s dry hating gaze follow him out.

Lollia took her bland and handsome new husband’s hand, kneeling before Juno’s statue. She tried to pray, but the prayer trailed off before it even began. Venus had always been her goddess, not Juno—beauty and love, rather than marriage and children. Besides, Lollia didn’t know if she trusted Juno.
She certainly never answered any of Cornelia’s prayers.

The priest was just leading a white bull out for sacrifice when the guests stirred. Twisting, Lollia saw a slight figure winding through the crowd: Diana, her plain wool robe not at all suitable for a wedding. She had something in her hand, wrapped in a sack, and she went straight to Cornelia.

“I brought you something,” she said. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

She held out the sack, and Lollia saw that it was bloodstained. It couldn’t be heavy, but Cornelia staggered.

“I had to go all over the city,” Diana said sturdily, sunlight slanting on her pale hair. “I must have visited every Praetorian in the barracks before I found the right one. But I got it for you.”

“Oh, Fortuna,” said Marcella, quicker on the uptake than the priest who started fussing, or Lollia’s new husband who just looked bewildered. Lollia quieted them both as Cornelia looked into the sack.

She looked for a long moment.

She looked back up at Diana: so stalwart, so anxious to please.

Then Cornelia’s face broke into pieces.

“No,” Lollia whispered as ripples fluttered through the wedding guests. Horror stirred in their eyes, panic still close to the surface after last week’s storm of murders. “No,” Lollia said again, stupidly, as her new husband looked into the sack that fell from Cornelia’s trembling hand. He leaped back swearing, as Cornelia sobbed into Diana’s shoulder.

“No,” Lollia whimpered, but it was too late. An emperor was murdered, and she’d never be able to laugh giddy and unaware at a party again.

Looking back, Lollia thought she was the first to see it—even before Marcella, who saw everything. The first to see that Rome had tilted on its axis, and that the coming year would bring nothing good. She clutched after herself—Cornelia Tertia, known as Lollia, who could have been a better mother, who could have been a kinder wife, who could have treated the slave in her bed like a man instead of a stud.

A strong hand covered hers. “Domina?” whispered Thrax.

She gave his hand a fierce squeeze. “Call me Lollia.”

The wedding resumed, but everyone was stilted, awkward, cut short. Lollia sleepwalked through it all. So much for the Quiet Wedding. Thanks to her dear, darling, savage little cousin, this would forever be known as the Wedding with the Head.

Enough said.

January A.D. 69–April A.D. 69

—TACITUS

WHY
am I doing this for you again?” Lollia whispered.

“Because Gaius wouldn’t let me go alone,” Marcella whispered back. “Which really means Tullia won’t let me go alone, that curled cow.”

At the front of the long room, a man in the stiff pleats of his best toga was declaiming in a nasal voice. He had a good turnout for his reading, Marcella thought—the long hall had been filled with rows of chairs, and every chair was occupied by an attentive listener. Or at least, they’d been attentive at the beginning. Now everyone was beginning to yawn and fidget.

“What’s he going on about now?” Lollia whispered. “Whatever his name is.”

“Quintus Numerius, and it’s his latest work.” Marcella made dutiful notes on her tablet. “ ‘The Administrative Problem of Cisalpine Gaul during the Consulship of Cornelius Maluginensis.’ ”

“Fascinating,” Lollia sighed.

“He was an ancestor of ours.”

“He was a crashing bore, and so is Cisalpine Gaul.”

“You owe me, Lollia! All the times I’ve listened to you rave on about your pet stud—”

Lollia’s eyes flicked toward the big blond Gaul who stood beside her, gently waving a fan. “Don’t call him that.”

Quintus Numerius concluded the latest quotation and bowed. A bored ripple of applause crossed his audience. “A brief pause,” he said, and everyone broke into a buzz of conversation.

“Thank the gods,” Lollia groaned, and peered around the throng of guests: senators, scholars, and historians all. “There’s not a one under sixty besides us!”

“Not your kind of party, perhaps,” Marcella agreed. Certainly not like the glittering parties Emperor Otho threw every night now to light up the Domus Aurea. Here the room was undecorated, the buzz of conversation was sober and sprinkled with Greek quotations, and there were far more togas and bald heads than silk dresses and painted faces. “Don’t yawn! At least not openly.”

“You should have taken Cornelia. She never yawns in public.”

“She’s still in her bedroom, slinging vases at the door if anyone knocks.” Marcella didn’t know what to do about her sister, but there didn’t seem to be anything she
could
do until Cornelia unlocked her door.

“I wish she’d let me visit,” Lollia fretted.

“I’d leave it a while. She still won’t speak your name, since you married Otho’s brother.”

“Oh, dear. I don’t even like him all that much. He’s handsome enough, but he cracks his knuckles all the time . . .”

“Well, it’s not just him. You’re first lady of Rome now, since Otho doesn’t have any wife or sisters. You got Cornelia’s place.”

“Like I wanted it to begin with. It’s not as grand as it sounds, you know—Otho doesn’t need me to host his parties or manage his guests. He does that himself, and I just pay for everything. That’s what being the first lady in Rome is.” Lollia shook her head, half weary and half angry. “Even if it were different—Marcella, I’m not like you and Cornelia. I don’t want to be important. I just want a few pretty dresses, and nice parties with people who tell good jokes, and a handsome man to come home to. Does an empress ever really get that?” Lollia shook her head again. “I don’t think so.”

Marcella eyed her cousin a moment—was everyone in the family turning moody now?
She’s been quieter since her last wedding. Quieter for her, anyway.
“Lollia—”

“I thought you’d come,” a voice interrupted them. Marcella looked up from her chair to see a stocky boy in a tunic, perhaps eighteen, staring down at her. He looked vaguely familiar. “I asked about you, and they said you liked histories and readings—this kind of thing. So I came to see you.”

He was the younger son of the Governor of Judaea—Marcella vaguely remembered meeting him the night Piso had been acclaimed heir. Awkward, black-eyed, eighteen-year-old Titus Flavius Domitianus. “How nice of you.”

“I like histories too,” the boy continued abruptly. “I’ll visit you, and we can talk about them.” He continued to stare at her, hands clasped behind his back.
Like a child looking at a toy he wants to take home.