Daughters of Rome (17 page)

“Later.” Lucius waved a hand vaguely. “When things are more settled.”

“You’ve been saying that for four years.” Disgusted. “You don’t have any intention of giving me a home, do you? Are you that stingy, or is my company that unpleasant?”

“Sometimes it is,” Lucius grumbled, turning over.

“You might find yourself in the minority with that opinion.” Marcella addressed her husband’s back, her fingers throbbing with the urge to sink themselves into the soft flesh of her husband’s throat and just
squeeze
. “You may not have the sense to appreciate me, Lucius, but plenty of other men do. Including Emperor Otho.”

“Is that how you got that promise out of him?” Lucius glanced back over his shoulder at her, amused. “I hope you got some decent jewelry out of it too. He’s had everyone’s wives, you know—more than he can remember. Don’t think you’re special.”

“That’s it,” Marcella hissed, scrambling out of bed. Her naked skin was burning so fiercely it was a wonder the sheets didn’t ignite. “I’d rather have a
snail
for a husband, Lucius. I’m divorcing you.”

“Your brother won’t allow it.” Maddeningly, Lucius’s eyes were still closed. “He finds me very useful—the contacts I’ve made in my Judaean travels this year are keeping him in support for the Senate.”

“Then I’ll go to the Emperor for permission!”

“Yes, and he’ll marry you off right away to one of his own supporters. Who knows which?” Lucius yawned again. “Let me sleep, won’t you?”

Marcella felt her hair lifting off her scalp like a handful of red-hot wires. Childishly, she yanked all the sheets off Lucius onto the floor, giving a wordless snarl at his yelp as she picked up her gown from the chair and stalked out of the bedroom.

“Marcella.” Tullia accosted her as she stamped across the atrium. “The slaves tell me your husband is home? How nice to have him back in Rome after such a long journey. We’ll have a dinner party in his honor—”

“Do that.” Marcella yanked the sash of her dress tight with such a snap that she nearly cut herself in half at the waist. “I’ll provide the hemlock.”

Tullia didn’t hear. “—and I’m sure he’s a little threadbare after so much time on the road, so you should drop a word in Lollia’s ear and arrange a loan from that appalling grandfather of hers—”

“Oh, should I? Lollia’s grandfather usually likes a return on his investments. What has Lucius ever done for him?”

“Why, the honor of associating with such a distinguished—”

“Tullia”—Marcella bared all her teeth in a smile—“Lucius is a common mooch. He sticks his wife on her relatives, he sticks his debts on anyone who will take them—”

“I won’t hear another word against a fine man—”

“Of course you and Lucius get along, one mooch to another. As far as I’m concerned you can both go jump in the Tiber—”

“—more than forbearing about your faults!” Tullia flared, her silk frills vibrating. “No reproaches from him about your stupid writings! Not one word about the fact that you were one of Nero’s
whores
—”

“And what really bothers you about that, Tullia?” Marcella asked. Slaves were gathering round-eyed at the door of the atrium now, but she couldn’t stop herself. “That I whored for Nero, or that I didn’t get a province out of it for Gaius to govern?”

“You insolent slut, how dare you—”

“
She’s
the slut?” Cornelia’s screech cut them all off abruptly as she appeared at the doorway, a dark cormorant in her mourning black with her hair wild about her white face. “Marcella’s the whore? You’re all whores. Gaius hosted a party for Piso’s accession as heir, Tullia was happy to claim him as her brother-in-law, Marcella stood with me on the steps of the Temple of Vesta when he died—and now you all drink wine with his murderers. Whores!” Cornelia shrieked. “You’re all
whores
—”

“Now you’re being repetitive.” Marcella had hardly seen her sister for weeks, she was always cooped up in her bedchamber weeping—and now all she felt was irritation. “Fortuna’s sake, Cornelia, at least think of a new insult.”

Tullia bristled. “I’ll not be called a whore in my own house!”

“Would you rather be called a whore in someone else’s house?” Marcella snapped. “I’m sure it could be arranged—”

“—let her speak to me like this!
Gaius!
” Tullia shrieked, as Marcella’s brother tiptoed into the atrium. “What are you going to say to your sister?”

“Now, now,” Gaius said nervously. “I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

“
Gaius
, you never support me—”

“I hate you all!” Cornelia sobbed, slamming back out of the atrium.

“Can’t we all just get along?” Gaius stood wringing his hands.

Marcella fled upstairs to her
tablinum
, taking the steps two at a time, and tried to compose a good epigram on the absolute horror of family life, but for once her pen failed her. She took out her unfinished account of Galba’s reign instead and penned his death in a few vicious paragraphs. Rage made the words come easily: every drop of blood that fell, every cry of terror and roar of the mob.
Purple prose.
She mocked herself savagely.
Where’s the impartiality you bragged about to Lucius?
But Marcella wasn’t in the mood for impartiality anymore. Or for subtlety, or for decorum, or for good behavior. Where had it gotten her?

Where had it gotten anyone this year?

 

I
T
was some days before her fury subsided enough to give cool consideration to the news Lucius had brought her: the news about Vitellius. The city had already seen two emperors within two months—and now, these rumblings about a third.

No one, Marcella thought, knew exactly which way to turn. Galba had been sober, frugal, distinguished and suitable; Otho was madcap, extravagant, charming, and shrewd.
Women who walked the streets with their heads covered under Galba’s eye bare their hair and their shoulders too under Otho’s rules
, Marcella wrote on a new tablet, shoving the scroll on Galba aside.
Senators who struggled to look serious and well informed for Galba now hire poets to make up epigrams so Otho will think them witty and entertaining. Rome is . . .

What? Dazed? Spinning? Staggering?

Whatever it was, Marcella didn’t know if her pen could ever capture the strange febrile excitement that now gripped the streets. The fever that gripped them all—Cornelia, who kept hurling vases at her bedroom door if anyone dared knock on it; Diana, who ranted on about her damned Reds until they all wanted to throttle her; Lollia, whose laughter at every party got shriller and whose eyes behind the painted lines of kohl got sadder. The tide was rising, catching them all in its restless grip.

Even me
, Marcella thought.

“Don’t you feel it?” she asked Lollia the next day as they were being fitted for new gowns. “Like the whole city is on edge, and everyone in it?”

“Oh, I’ve felt it.” Lollia stirred restlessly. “Don’t we all? Except Cornelia, maybe. She’s the lucky one.”

“I’d hardly call her lucky.” The bedchamber was a riot of color: bolts of silk unrolled everywhere, maids dashing here and there with pins and needles and reels of thread. Marcella brushed away the coral silk the maid held up for her approval. “No, too bright. Let me see the pale yellow—”

“Well, I’d call Cornelia lucky. She didn’t get to be Empress, but at least she has a tragic love.” Lollia twisted before the glass, surveying a new
stola
in oyster silk hemmed with pearls. “Too plain . . .”

“What do you mean, a tragic love?” Marcella held out her arms so the maids could drape the pale yellow silk about her. “Nothing tragic about it, except the ending. She and Piso were very happy.”

“I’m sure they were. But an emperor needs heirs.” Lollia stepped out of the oyster silk, strolling naked over to her dressing table. “Mark my words, a year or two after taking the purple, Piso would have divorced Cornelia and married some fresh-faced little thing who could push out plenty of sons.”

“No, he wouldn’t. He could have adopted an heir, like Galba. None of our Emperors have passed their throne to their sons.”

“Yes, and look where that’s getting us. Murders and coups everywhere.” Lollia frowned in the mirror at her naked self: pink and smooth-skinned as ever, her riotous red curls standing out in wiry disarray. Marcella saw her own reflection in the glass over Lollia’s shoulder, a tall column in yellow silk, a line showing between her brows.
A line placed there by Lucius and Tullia,
she thought resentfully.

“I tell you,” Lollia was saying, oblivious, “Cornelia might have been a perfect empress, but she wouldn’t have kept the position for long. A year or two of senators whispering how an emperor with sons brings stability to the Empire, droning about all the jostling that goes on when an emperor adopts an heir, intoning platitudes about the sacrifices an emperor must make for the good of Rome—do you think Piso would have refused?”

“Well, we’ll never know.” Marcella looked down at the seamstress tacking up her pale-yellow hem. “A little white embroidery around the bottom, I think—”

“Oh, Cornelia knows,” said Lollia. “But now Piso’s dead, so she can pretend it never would have happened; that Piso would have been an emperor to rival Augustus and she would have been his Augusta for all time. When really he was just a bland bore, and she had all the ambition for both of them.” Lollia gave a hard shrug as the maids came forward and began draping her in bright-green silk embroidered in tiny golden flowers and vines. “What she needs is a good hump.”

Marcella looked at her cousin as another maid pinched the yellow silk folds into place at the shoulders. “You’re very hard on Cornelia.”

“Well, I don’t like being called a whore just because I married Otho’s brother,” Lollia said shortly. “We lost your father to Nero’s whims. You know how easy it would be to lose the rest? For Otho to confiscate the family estates and exile the lot of us? He’s a charmer, but don’t think he wouldn’t do it if the mood took him. I’m on my knees to his brother every other night, asserting the family loyalty, but that doesn’t make me a whore. I keep all of us in food and roofs and silk dresses.” Lollia plucked at her airy green draperies. “I keep my grandfather alive and making money that the rest of you are only too happy to borrow, as long as you don’t have to acknowledge where I came from. I keep my
daughter
safe.”

“Lollia, I’m sure Cornelia doesn’t think you’re a whore—”

“Oh, she does. But I don’t mind. Someone has to do it, after all. It’s what women are for: whoring themselves out to useful men. And who will do it in this family, if not me?” Lollia’s lush curving mouth was set in a straight line. “Cornelia isn’t much use, carrying on like a pleb who lost her man in a tavern fight. Diana could have her pick of important suitors, but she’d rather run around with her horses all day. And frankly, Marcella, you aren’t much use either. Keeping to your loom and your scrolls, watching us all, keeping above everything. I don’t know what Nero did to you, because you won’t tell anyone, but you’ve certainly milked it for all it’s worth. Any excuse to stay locked in your
tablinum
.”

Little Flavia ran in at that moment, dripping wet, a scolding nurse behind her as she dumped a soggy handful of water lilies into her mother’s hands. Lollia bent and exclaimed over them, her voice brittle, and Marcella looked away, clamping down hot words as the maids busied themselves with the yellow silk
stola
. “Lollia,” she said finally. “I wish you hadn’t said those things.”

“I wish I hadn’t either.” The words were muffled in Flavia’s curls. “I think I’m done fitting dresses today.” Lollia picked up her daughter and held her tight, moving off in a flutter of half-pinned silk with maids fluttering behind.

“I think I’m done too.” Marcella unpicked the yellow silk, slipped into her own
stola
again, and climbed slowly into her litter. She didn’t go home, though. She ordered the bearers to the Gardens of Asiaticus. “Leave me,” she snapped as the litter came down, and set off alone down one of the wide curving paths.

A beautiful place, the Gardens of Asiaticus. A vast spread of sculptured green acres along the southern flank of the Pincian Hill, in summertime all soft mounds of roses and silky grass and mossed statues. Cold in February but still beautiful, the groves of poplar trees spiking a violet twilight sky, the fountains murmuring, the chain of pleasure lakes like mirrors reflecting the ornamental bridges. Marcella saw lamps flickering ahead on the paths and among the trees too—no better place in Rome to meet a lover than the Gardens of Asiaticus. Lollia had met her share in the laurel groves and behind the banks of violets.
Though she looks too tense and snappish nowadays for trysting.
Marcella had never seen Lollia lose her temper at anyone, not even at the slave who stole her favorite pearls or the tribune who deserted her for an Egyptian dancer. Just a few weeks ago at the reading she had been melancholy, and now she was losing her temper—the city’s strange hysteria had even infected Lollia.

Marcella shivered, wrapping her
palla
tighter. She left the path, brushing through the winter-dry grass to a sculpted grove of poplars. They waved black branches gently overhead. An empress had died under these poplars, fleeing in terror from the Praetorian guards. Emperor Claudius’s third wife. But they’d caught up to her in the end and chopped her pretty, adulterous little head right off.

Would Lollia laugh, if she knew the truth?
Marcella thought. Would Cornelia and Diana, Gaius and Tullia? Would Lucius?

 

M
Y
dear.” He had looked up at Marcella as the steward ushered her in, and even though she felt frozen with dread, her inner historian scratched away, taking notes on her surroundings. The ceiling revolving overhead, showering rose petals down on the Emperor of Rome, who sat posed like a musician in Greek tunic and sandals with a golden lyre on his lap.