Daughters of Rome (30 page)

Derricus the Blues charioteer vaulted up to the Imperial box, dusty and grinning as the Emperor gave him his victory palm. “You’ll share my couch at the feast tonight!” the Emperor shouted, ruddy with triumph, dropping an arm around the charioteer’s shoulder. “And we’ll drink a toast to beating those cowardly bastard Reds—”

A whirl of red silk. Cornelia lunged for Diana’s arm, but too late. Vitellius was already looking with surprise down at the slim scarlet girl under his nose.

“Do
not
”—Diana jabbed a finger at the Emperor of Rome—“insult my Reds. They ran a good race. Better than your Blues.”

Derricus laughed, looking down at her from under the Emperor’s jovial arm. “Lady Diana here is a Reds fan,” he grinned. “And a poor loser, but—”

“Shut up,” she snapped, and a ripple went around the onlookers. Vitellius’s brows beetled. Cornelia froze in her chair. Gaius stopped with his mouth open. Lollia gave a pleading shake of her head, but Diana turned her narrowed blue-green gaze back on the Emperor and kept going.

“The Reds had bad luck, Caesar—the Whites ran them off the track. Plenty of teams would pull up and quit then, but not my Reds. They made a race of it and they nearly beat your Blues, because your precious
Derricus
here was so busy counting his victory palms he’d dropped the pace. Shut up,” she said again as the charioteer bristled. “That’s bad driving, Caesar, and it’s worse than bad luck any day. So don’t you be calling my team cowards.” Jabbing a finger into the massive chest of the Emperor of Rome. “Because my Reds can beat your precious Blues any day of the
week
.”

Complete silence. Diana stood with her scarlet silks fluttering, hair sliding down her back in a tumble of white-molten gold, chin thrust out. The Emperor’s ruddy face was immobile, his eyes glittering, and suddenly Cornelia saw the man whom three legions had proclaimed Emperor in Germania.

Diana glared up at the Emperor, unafraid. Derricus stared daggers at her. Cornelia dragged in a frozen breath and prepared to jump in with some bright social nicety.

Suddenly, the Emperor threw his head back and laughed. “You’re right,” he agreed. “Your Reds ran a good race. I shouldn’t have called them cowards.” Tossing his arm around her shoulders, he turned to the Imperial steward. “Put the spitfire here on my couch tonight too. We’ll talk strategy, Lady, and I’ll get you to admit that my Blues are faster than your Reds.”

“Are not,” said Diana from under his arm, still glaring, and a titter of laughter went around the balcony as Vitellius grinned at her and then turned away, calling for wine. Cornelia laughed too, feeling her knees weaken.
Diana, you mad little fool.
Only Diana could have gotten away with it. Only Diana.

Cornelia heard Fabius murmuring to the steward. “Put Lady Cornelia beside Alienus at the feast tonight, or maybe Suonius—one of the officers who can appreciate a juicy young widow.”

First lady of Rome
, Cornelia thought, her laughter suddenly withering.
I was first lady of Rome once. And now all I am is a juicy young widow.

She willed her fingers not to tremble, willed her eyes not to fill or dart or blink.
Be marble
, she remembered telling herself during the bad weeks after Piso’s death.
Be ice. See how much juice you can squeeze out of a column of black ice, Fabius Valens.

P
AULINUS!
” Cornelia had hardly put one foot into Lollia’s bedchamber before she whirled around again and sent Tullia’s son back the other way. “Why don’t you go play in the atrium?”

“Gods’ sake, my honey.” Silk rustled, and Lollia sounded amused. “No need to hustle him out. It’s nothing he won’t be doing himself in a few years.”

“Paulinus,” Cornelia said firmly as he looked interested. “Go find Flavia and play.”

“Just don’t play like that with
my
daughter,” Lollia giggled. “Not yet, anyway.”

Cornelia kept her eyes on the mosaics as Paulinus dashed out. “Can I turn around yet?”

“Yes, yes. Though really, Cornelia, you are a prude. Seeing a naked cock isn’t going to turn you to stone, you know.”

“I’m sorry, I should have knocked.” Cornelia did her best not to blush as she turned. “Paulinus has been missing his father terribly and Tullia just ignores him, so I thought I’d bring him to play with Flavia, but—”

“Goodness, you look red.” Lollia now sat decorously in an orange silk robe on the bed, her big golden-haired slave waving an ostrich feather fan at her side. His tunic was inside out. When Cornelia had first come into the bedchamber, he’d been on top of Lollia with one of her ankles crooked around his hips and the other twined around his neck.

“Didn’t you ever try that one with Piso?” Lollia continued. “One does have to be limber, but it’s bliss.”

“I don’t care to discuss such things.” Cornelia wrinkled her nose, nodding at the slave. “You may go.”

He looked at Lollia. “Yes,” she dimpled, and gave a little giggle as he bowed and dashed gratefully out. “Poor darling, he’s been terribly embarrassed this morning. Fabius caught us too, you see.”

“Your
husband?
”

“Yes, he walked in early this morning when we were doing the bridge. Did you ever try that one? You get down on all fours and then—”

“What did Fabius do?” Cornelia said hastily, feeling the blush come back. Really, Lollia had no more shame than a cat in heat.

“Oh, he glared a lot and stamped out again.” Lollia sashed her robe more tightly around her waist. “Really, I was hoping he’d catch me. It’s about time he learned.”

“Learned what?”

“Well, Fabius is a pleb, so he has all these ridiculous ideas about how a wife should conduct herself. All of a sudden I’m being expected to concern myself with his favorite dishes and the temperature of his bathwater,
and
behave like a Vestal Virgin. In public, anyway. In private, he wants a whore.”

“It’s hardly backward and plebeian to expect good behavior from a wife,” Cornelia pointed out.

“Of
course
it is, my honey. Do you think Vinius or Salvius or any of my other husbands fussed about Thrax? Of course they didn’t. But Fabius has a thing or two to learn about patrician wives.” A flicker of hardness went through Lollia’s eyes as she rose, surprising Cornelia. Lollia might be flippant, but she had never been hard. “I’m paying the bills, after all. Doesn’t that entitle me to something of my own?”

“So where is Fabius?” Privately, Cornelia wasn’t sorry to have missed him.

“Off intimidating the Senate. They waffle, and he stalks around reminding them that his sword put Vitellius on the throne. These days it’s called politics.”

They passed from the bedchamber through the pillared halls to the peristyle. “So this is your new house?” Cornelia asked, looking around the jumbled array of pools and fountains, with banks of jasmine and water lilies and statues all jammed together. “It’s very . . . large.”

“I think you mean ghastly.” Lollia shuddered. “Fabius confiscated it from some Othonian supporter, down to the last slave, statue, and household god, and moved us in wholesale last week. I haven’t even figured out where all the rooms are yet, and he wants me to host a betrothal party.”

“Who’s getting married?”

Lollia settled into a scrolled silver couch beside a mossy urn and beckoned for fruit and barley water. “You, of course.”

“
What
?” Cornelia froze halfway down into her chair.

“Fabius said . . .” Lollia trailed off.

“What did Fabius say?” Cornelia felt suddenly cold, despite the sunlight pouring through the open roof of the atrium. “He hinted something to me at the races, but—”

“Oh, darling. Fabius doesn’t hint. He just gives orders.” Lollia waved away the flagon of barley water before it could be set down. “Wine instead, Phoebe. We’re going to need it.” She poured a cup as soon as the flagon arrived and pushed it into Cornelia’s hand without even bothering to water it down. “Drink up. Fabius, well, he wants you for one of his friends, I’m not even sure which. He’s handing out rewards to all of them. Money, estates, wives—”

“He has no legal authority over me!”

“Things have changed, Cornelia. This isn’t
Rome
anymore, not the Rome we know. The kingmakers rule this Rome. Fabius laughs every time his friends grope me at their parties, and he helps himself to any little knickknack from Grandfather’s house that takes his fancy, and he likes me to walk around the bedroom dressed in nothing but jewels . . .” Lollia massaged her head under her hair, dislodging reddish curls. “He makes me tired.”

“I will not be given away to some victorious soldier like a sack of loot!”

“Now you know how I feel, don’t you?” said Lollia. “One gets used to it.”

“. . . How?” Cornelia whispered.

“One husband at a time.”

They were both silent for a while at that. Cornelia thought of Fabius’s smug smile and smugger voice:
A young widow like you, surely you’re wet for a new husband.
She shivered.

Lollia had turned her face away, talking in a brittle voice of something else. Diana. Of course, everyone talked about Diana these days. With an enormous effort, Cornelia forced herself to hear what Lollia was saying. “—hear the new epigram about her from Martial?
‘The huntress in her chaste flight, bagged at last by Imperial might.
’ ”

“Surely Diana wouldn’t . . .” Cornelia couldn’t help but make a face, thinking of the Emperor of Rome’s red face and food-swollen body. “Not with Vitellius?”

“Oh, I doubt it. You know Diana—she’d tell an emperor
no
if she felt like it. And she isn’t really mistress material, is she?” Lollia dandled her fingers in the spray of a silver wall fountain beside the couch. “If any man took her to bed, she’d lie there looking up at him with those gorgeous eyes until he was finished, and then she’d ask him what he thought of the Reds’ chances at Saturnalia. Bit of a flattener.”

Cornelia thought of the Imperial banquet after the races last week, where she’d watched her youngest cousin sit cross-legged on a dining couch beside Vitellius, waving a goose leg and arguing race tactics with him until dawn. He seemed to find his new little pet very amusing, and now the rest of his entourage did too; a trickle of courtiers soon followed Diana wherever she went, murmuring about the word or two she might drop in the Emperor’s ear on their behalf. “Unless it’s to do with horses,” Cornelia heard Diana say bluntly to these requests, “go away.”

“You know, I used to worry about Diana’s reputation,” Cornelia said. “But now I think she’s too odd to be wanton. It would be too commonplace for her, somehow. Of course Tullia goes on and on about Diana being the Emperor’s whore—”

“Tullia’s the whore,” Lollia snorted, pouring herself a goblet of wine and taking a generous gulp. “Not that she’d ever break
her
vows, oh no. But she’d shove any one of us into the Emperor’s bed if it would benefit her. Is she carping at Diana to get Gaius made a legate yet?”

“A governor.”

“See?” Lollia gave a disgusted shrug. “I may like a tumble with my body slave, but I’m better than Tullia. At least I’m no hypocrite.”

Cornelia surprised herself with a laugh. “No, you aren’t.”

Little Flavia and Paulinus ran in then, and Lollia promptly swept them both into her lap and blew loud kisses everywhere. Cornelia watched wistfully as Flavia giggled and Paulinus yelled objections.

“Flavia, your aunt Cornelia needs cheering up,” Lollia consulted her daughter gravely. “What do you say? Shall we all dress up and take ourselves out somewhere fancy? To the theatre, perhaps, or the Campus Martius?”

“Circus,” Paulinus said at once.

“Uncle Paris,” Flavia said.

“I wouldn’t call Uncle Paris fancy, exactly—”

“Uncle
Paris
, ’cause he said he’d make me a little statue of a
dog
!”

“Well, that settles it.”

“Why does
she
get to decide?” Paulinus scowled.

“Because she’s a girl, and girls always get their way. Your future wife will thank me, Paulinus, if I pound that into you young. Uncle Paris’s house it is.”

Cornelia watched in some surprise as Lollia swept off to dress Flavia herself rather than calling the nursemaid, tethering Paulinus capably with her other hand. “—yes, we’ll call for Aunt Marcella too,” Lollia was promising her daughter as they returned ten minutes later in matching rose-colored gowns. “It will be just like old times.”

“Don’t bother stopping for Marcella,” Cornelia advised. “She’ll be too busy scribbling in her
tablinum
to make time for us.”

“Scribbling about what?”

“Who knows?”

Trying to find words for this new Rome, perhaps? Cornelia certainly found it a stranger place every time she went outside. Rome in summer was usually such a sleepy place; slaves moving languidly through their errands, oxen and mules dozing somnolent under a brass coin of a sun, plebs sweltering in hot stinking rooms. Everyone who could escaped to their summer villas in Baiae or Brundisium or Tivoli, sitting on sea terraces eating grapes and being cooled by ocean breezes, not returning to the city until Volturnalia at the earliest. But now . . .