Daughters of Rome (25 page)

“Let him dry off first.”

The little colt looked around with wide eyes as his mother nosed him. “This might even be better than the races,” Diana said, smiling.

“It’s the part I like best.” Llyn squatted back on his heels. The little colt struggled, trying to get his legs under him, and the mare nudged him encouragingly. In half an hour he was up, wobbly but standing, and his fluffy coat was drying. “Definitely a chestnut,” said Diana.

Llyn rose. “Better leave him to his mother.”

They wandered outside, the black dog tagging behind. It was full dark now, and a fine warm night. The stars were finally free of rain clouds, and Llyn tilted his head up to stare at them. Diana wondered if they looked any different from the stars he grew up with.

She touched his arm. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

Her father didn’t notice how late she was to dinner, but then he never did. Diana supposed he was an odd sort of father, but she reckoned herself for a strange daughter. They were really more like sire and filly than father and daughter—blood ties and a certain fondness, but certainly they would neither have dreamed of interfering in each others’ lives. Strange or not, it suited them both.

“There’s been a battle,” her father said vaguely, his pale hair gray with stone dust after a day in his studio. “Somewhere around Bedriacum, they’re saying.”

“Really?” Diana said, wondering without much interest where Bedriacum was, and skipped upstairs to count her bruises. She looked in her polished mirror and didn’t see the silken Cornelia Quarta of the Cornelii, courted by half of Rome. She saw a girl in an old woolen tunic hacked off at the knee, hair bundled into a careless horse tail down her back, freckles across her nose and bruises up and down her arms. A girl who longed not for a husband but for the grudging praise of a rebel chief turned tamer of horses. She looked in the mirror, and she saw a charioteer.

However many times Marcella began her account of the battle of Bedriacum, it started with those words.
Forty thousand dead.
Later she learned that the number was nowhere near so high—perhaps ten thousand, but not forty. No one knew for sure. But forty thousand was the number that resounded in her mind, the number that the gasping messenger brought to Emperor Otho.

She sat quiet in a storm of shouting voices and shrill laughter, reviewing her notes.

Like madmen
—florid words, not fit for a cool and sober history. But Marcella had seen the Praetorians come like gods of war from the field to report to their Emperor in Bedriacum some miles away. A trio of officers had made the report, giddy and triumphant. One of them was Centurion Drusus Densus.

“The Vitellians are running, Caesar,” the chief centurion had crowed. “We sent them off with their tails between their legs—”

“Ha!” Otho slapped the arm of his chair in delight. He had not traveled light on this campaign; in a rude soldier’s tent he sat ensconced in his own gilded chair from the Domus Aurea, a silver flagon of his favorite wine to hand, his own barber to shave him twice a day, and his own musicians to provide entertainment. The musicians were silent, fingers twitching on their lyre strings, eager as the rest of Otho’s considerable entourage to hear the rest of the Praetorian report. Marcella stood at the back with the few other women who had wheedled their husbands or lovers into taking them along, craning her neck for a better view.

“Our reports say Fabius Valens is some days out, Caesar,” Densus said. A slash on one forearm was oozing blood down over his fingers, but he didn’t seem to notice it. “He and Caecina Alienus have quarreled in the past—they’ll not get along when they join forces.”

“Confusion to the enemy, then!” Otho raised his goblet and a storm of shouts and laughter went up—

One of the observers was Lucius Aelius Lamia, who had barely spoken to Marcella since they’d left Rome. “It isn’t fitting for a woman to witness a battle,” he sputtered when she announced her intention of staying at his side to observe the fight.

“I’m sorry,” Marcella said blandly. “Did I give you the impression I was asking permission?”

He glared at her in open loathing. “You’re making a fool out of me!”

Marcella smiled. “I think you do that all on your own, Lucius.”

“You willful bitch—I’ll divorce you, see if I don’t—”

“Go ahead.” Marcella wandered away. “In the meantime, I’ll be watching the battle.”

Emperor Otho just seemed amused when he heard that. “How valiant,” he laughed. “And how fortunate you were born to a Roman clan, Marcella my dear. If you’d been born a Pict, you’d be painting yourself blue and charging into battle with an ax.”

“No, Caesar.” Marcella bowed. “I’m only the watcher.”

“Well, write up my stunning victory in good style, and be sure to give me a copy.” He patted her hand. “I’d like to read it.” And although Marcella knew he’d forget all about her history as soon as he turned away, his touch was so sincere and his smile so warm that she flushed with pleasure. He went off in great splendor to Brixellum, surrounded by Praetorians, laughing and throwing dice with all the handsome young courtiers who tried so hard to look just like him. Marcella heard later that he went to a play that night as his troops prepared for battle a few miles away, and the whole town marveled at his composure.
I believe that.
He’d have lounged in the tiered seats with his gaudy friends, perfumed and braceleted and perfectly at ease, throwing coins to the actors in their comedy masks.

Otho’s generals entered the battle with two legions, another standing in reserve. In the center position was the Praetorian Guard
.

She got the names of the legions later, when she had time to put her facts together. At the time it was only a mass of armored men and spear points. The legionaries all looked alike from a distance, but one cohort passed quite close below the hillock where Lucius and the other observers were stationed, and suddenly the armored ants became men again. Fair-skinned Gauls with their skins peeling in the sun, swarthy Spaniards, copper-skinned Egyptians, darker Nubians. Men from all over the Empire, once distinct, now hammered into a fearsome and brutal anonymity.

Marcella knew battle was all confusion on the ground, but she’d thought it would be clearer observed from above. Lucius and the other observers—herself among them, despite Lucius’s rage and the disdainful glances of the others—were stationed on a hillock well back from the fray. For a while Marcella could follow the agonizingly slow motion as the two masses of men heaved themselves up the causeway like whales giving birth and marched stolidly into each other. But then the dust from so many marching feet kicked up into the warm spring morning, and all she could see was a dust cloud out of which came fearsome screams. She hadn’t known a battle would be so loud. Iron shield bosses grinding together, men grunting as they shoved back and forth in furious swaying lines, swords clashing over the top of the shields, and always the shrieks of wounded men. They’d fall back clutching themselves, bleeding fearsomely, turned from armored ants back to men again, and the next disciplined rank would step forward into the gap, blank-eyed and eager—

On the left flank, the Othonian legion plowed into the Vitellian line and captured their eagle. The Vitellians regrouped and advanced again, surrounding the legionaries on broken ground and slowly cutting them down. The Othonian generals fled, while the Vitellians continued to feed in reinforcements. The central block of the Praetorian Guard was left standing alone
.

All pieced together later, of course—from the hillock Marcella could see nothing. That evening she’d found a legionary, one of the few to escape the horror of the right flank’s massacre. “A bloody mess,” he said, blank eyes fixed somewhere over her head, not knowing or caring who or what she was. “Half of us had friends on their side—we kept lowering our swords and realizing that the one we’re fighting was one we used to get drinks with at the Blue Mermaid tavern two months ago. And we’d smile at each other and look sheepish-like, and then we’d have at it again till one of us was dead. A bloody cock-up, Lady, I’ll tell you that.”

What else could they do? All over the field men fell out of their battle lines and fled, slipping in pools of blood and clambering over fallen bodies. “We go,” Lucius hissed, his hand clamped on Marcella’s arm. “We’re going, it’s a rout, have you seen enough for one day, you bloodthirsty bitch?” They clambered into a chariot left waiting and the driver whipped up the horses in a panic toward the road back to Brixellum. Fleeing legionaries crowded all around, dusty, bloody, exhausted. Several put up their hands and cried to be taken along. One massive aquilifer planted himself screaming in the road, still clutching his ragged standard and hailing them with a clenched fist. Only it wasn’t a fist, it was a ragged stump where some Vitellian had struck off his hand, and Marcella only saw it for an instant before the horses trampled him under.

The Vitellians had no reason to offer quarter to men who could not pay ransom, so thousands of survivors were slaughtered. Others fled to Brixellum, joining Otho’s reserve force there and hoping for a chance at another battle. The rest formally surrendered to Vitellius the following morning, among them the Emperor’s brother
.

Lollia’s husband, who had cracked his knuckles busily and counseled Otho to launch an immediate attack without waiting for the rest of the legions to arrive. He’d been allowed to live, for the time being. Marcella had a moment to reflect that whether he lived or died, Lollia would soon have a different husband. Her fifth, Fortuna help her, and she only nineteen.

Lucius and Marcella were driven at breakneck pace from the battleground to Brixellum, soon leaving the limping legionaries behind. They were swept through a vortex of shouting men, stamping horses, and prowling guards and whisked into Otho’s tent. One look at his taut face told Marcella they were not the first with news of the defeat, but Lucius bowed and gave his report.

“Thank you, Lucius Aelius Lamia,” Otho said, and beckoned a slave for wine. His hand never shook on the goblet; there was even a faint smile on his face, but the dark eyes were turned inward like the blank gaze of a statue. Hours of waiting, then—Marcella knew she should not have been there, huddled in her corner, but no one thought to evict her. She saw Centurion Drusus Densus limp in, holding a wad of rags to a slash on the side of his neck. A final courier fell on his knees, announcing that forty thousand dead littered the field, and a tumult of shouting erupted, whirling around the Emperor in his gilded chair.

There Marcella’s account broke off.

 

D
ON’T
grieve, friends.” Otho spread his hands. “I’ve made my decision.”

They stared at him, dumbstruck: courtiers, generals, messengers, Praetorians, slaves. “Caesar,” someone said, but Otho cut him off with one of his perfect careless gestures.

“To expose men of your spirit and courage to further danger I think too high a price to pay for my life,” he said. “Vitellius began this civil war by forcing us to fight for the throne. I will end it, by ensuring that we fight no more than once. Let this be how posterity judges me: Others may have reigned longer, but none will relinquish his power so bravely.”

His voice rolled around the common soldier’s tent as if it were the marble walls of the Senate, and he threw back his head with a brilliant smile. Perfectly groomed, perfectly poised, perfectly in control. A thought drifted through Marcella’s head:
How long has he been planning this speech?

“Caesar,” someone said again with half a sob, “we can still fight!”

But Otho raised a hand. “You cannot expect me to allow the flower of Rome’s youth, so many splendid legions, to shed their blood a second time. Let me carry away with me the thought that you were ready to die for me, but survive you must.” He clapped his hands. “No more delay! I must not endanger your safety, nor you impede my decision. To dwell on one’s last moments is a coward’s way. The ultimate proof of my determination is that I make no complaints. To find fault with gods or men is the behavior of one who would prefer to go on living.”