Daughters of Rome (40 page)

“Is it true she spat in the Emperor’s face, after he gave those horses to the Blues? That’s all over the Forum, too.”

“No,” Cornelia sighed. She’d seen her youngest cousin plead with the Emperor these past weeks—at banquets, at races, not caring about the snickers that rose behind her, but he wouldn’t listen. “All’s fair in victory, girl! You won your race, well, now we’ll see how those horses do for my Blues. Not that they’ll be fit to run for weeks, the way you drove ’em—”

“Fair?”
Diana had demanded. “You think the races these days have anything to do with
fair
?”

“My Blues have won twelve straight since yours, haven’t they?” Vitellius had grinned, but the grin was a spasm in his flushed face, and Cornelia had seen the sudden flick of fear in his eyes. She found herself thinking of Marcella’s prediction that Vitellius’s generals would sell him out. Vitellius always laughed at such rumors, but that day Cornelia saw something small and shivering in his gaze.

As long as Vitellius is drunk and his belly is full and the Blues are winning, the world is blessed and Vespasian can’t touch him.
Such a fragile fantasy, even a lost horse race could set it rocking. And Cornelia felt sorry for him, almost as sorry as she felt for her littlest cousin, whose brash sparkle had all been extinguished.

“Cornelia, you know all about the gods.” Diana came to her almost in tears, looking suddenly ten years old. “Which one do you think would listen, if I prayed to get my horses back? I’ve already been to a handful of fortune-tellers, but they just tell you what you want to hear—even that pet astrologer of Domitian’s just said, ‘Don’t you worry, dear, you’ll drive those horses again and for much bigger stakes—’ ”

“Never mind astrologers,” Cornelia told her gently. “Pray to Diana the Huntress. She has horses too, you know—moon-white mares she drives across the sky, and she loves them. And you’re her namesake, so she’ll listen to you.”

“You think so?” Diana dashed at her eyes with a grubby hand.

“I know so.”

“—retaliation?” Drusus was saying, and Cornelia blinked.

“What?”

“I said, keep some guards around that little cousin of yours. Emperor’s favorite or no, a lot of unsavory people lost money when she won against orders. Someone might be angry enough to try for revenge.”

“Oh, she’s untouchable—too much of a heroine.” Cornelia couldn’t help a smile, nestling closer against Drusus’s chest. “All those young tribunes who race up and down the Campus Martius worship her now. There’s been a whole new spate of marriage proposals. Tullia doesn’t know what to think—she was preparing a great scene, shrieking about the disgrace Diana brought on the family, and she was just working up to full volume when a cluster of the finest bachelors in Rome appeared on the doorstep with flowers. Quite took the wind from her sails. She’s retired to bed from the strain of it all.”

“What about you?” Drusus grinned.

“Oh, I’ve retired to bed from the strain of it all, too.” Kissing him. “Hadn’t you noticed?”

October now. The days were still warm, but the nights cooled quickly. Normally October was a festival time in Rome, when the last patrician families returned from their summer villas and prepared for the fall round of parties and gladiatorial games. But the city this fall was curiously quiet. Fabius Valens had finally gone north with the last of the troops, hurrying to join Alienus and his army against the Moesian legions and leaving Lollia behind on a high tide of bliss. “He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone,” she sang, and all but skipped back to her grandfather’s house to play all day with Flavia. The Emperor had retired to a little villa just outside Rome, declaring himself unwell . . . or maybe fleeing the whispers that the battle up north had not been a victory at all, but a hideous loss.

“If only we’d get some news!” Marcella groaned over and over, feverish to know what was happening, but Cornelia didn’t care.
Lovers are selfish
, she couldn’t help thinking.
All Rome waiting to see if the Moesian legions are coming to murder us in our beds, and all I can think is how easy it’s been to see Drusus.
She’d been sneaking out to him every night for weeks now, and no one in the household seemed to suspect a thing. Not Tullia; not sharp-eyed Marcella, who still hadn’t noticed that her sister could barely stay awake through dinner these days.

“At least it’s quiet family suppers again,” Tullia said that night as they ate. “Not all those dreadful hundred-course affairs at the Domus Aurea.”

“When were you last invited to the Domus Aurea, Tullia?” Marcella said sweetly. “A month? Vitellius hates scolds.”

Tullia sniffed. “He’s welcome to keep his invitations. If I never see another pike liver or elephant ear or peacock brain on my plate again, it won’t be too soon—”

“Yes.” Cornelia took a sip of wine, fighting to keep her lashes from drooping. She hadn’t returned from Drusus’s bed until dawn. At her side, Marcella picked restlessly through a dish of grapes.

“Lovely fish,” Gaius offered. “Delicious, my dear.”

“Yes, from our pond at the villa in Tarracina.” Tullia ate in critical little bites. “I had them salted and sent here, since we never managed to get to Tarracina this year.
Paulinus
, don’t play with your food! Fortuna only knows what condition the house is in. The steward sent me word that the hypocaust in the bathhouse is broken, but I suppose repairs will have to wait until next spring. You can’t trust builders to work without supervision, but I don’t dare leave the city now to oversee everything—”

“Why don’t I go?” Cornelia looked up from her own plate, carefully idle. “I have so little to do these days, I can certainly travel down to Tarracina to put the house right.”

“Travel
alone
—”

“The steward will see to my needs there.” Cornelia kept her voice nonchalant, but felt her palms begin to sweat. “And I certainly shan’t be entertaining in Tarracina. I’ll just put the hypocaust to rights and return in ten days. Best not let a bathhouse go during the winter—pipes freeze, and that’s a much costlier fix.”

Tullia looked suspicious. Cornelia glanced down, fiddling with the fringe on the couch cushion.

“Fortuna’s sake, Tullia, let her go,” Marcella snapped. “You’re always complaining about having the two of us underfoot.”

“Of course I won’t go if Tullia thinks it’s improper,” Cornelia said quickly. “A widow in my position, after all . . . you could ask Lollia to tend to the hypocaust. Her grandfather has a house in Tarracina, so she could easily send the steward to look in on the repairs. I’m sure she’d be happy to do you a favor.”

“I’d never ask
her
,” Tullia bristled. “You’ll go at once, Cornelia.
Paulinus
, if you can’t stop playing legions with your food—”

Cornelia ran into Drusus’s airless little chamber that night and covered his face with kisses. “Can you get away for ten days?”

“What?” He caught her up with a laugh.

“We’re taking a holiday.”

Find some excuse to get out of the city
, Lollia had advised,
and have yourselves a proper idyll
. Cornelia thought it might be the first time in her life she’d ever taken Lollia’s advice.

She kept herself calm in the days before—packing a few things, arranging a comfortable traveling wagon—but Marcella gave her a long look as she closed the trunk. “Cornelia,” she said thoughtfully, “do you have a secret?”

“Of course not.” Though Cornelia sometimes wondered why she had told Lollia about Drusus, and not Marcella. Marcella was her sister, Marcella had a lock instead of a mouth, Marcella knew everything anyway . . . but somehow, she’d spilled her burden to Lollia instead, and felt no impulse to spill it again now. Marcella wasn’t the only one who could keep her sister shut out of her business. “I don’t believe in secrets, and I certainly don’t have any. Do you?”

“Many.” Marcella stretched her pale arms overhead. “That’s how I know the look.”

“Ridiculous.” Cornelia brushed her off, climbing into her wagon for Tarracina, knowing Drusus would be a day behind on a mule drover’s train. Tarracina, beautiful jewel-blue Tarracina, where a white marble villa waited on a cliff top.

“Domina.” The steward bowed when she arrived. “I have prepared the house for you, on Lady Tullia’s instructions. The slaves are prepared to—”

“No slaves, please. I’ll tend to everything myself.”

“Domina?”

“Thank you, you may go.” Cornelia kicked off her sandals as she prowled through the empty villa. A gift from Lollia’s grandfather when Gaius entered the Senate, and as beautiful as any of his houses. Every niche graced with some work of art in marble or silver or ivory, every tile and column and piece of furniture chosen to adorn and not just to serve.
How did I ever think Lollia’s grandfather was vulgar?
Freedman or no, he had more good taste in one finger than Tullia did in her whole patrician-born body.

“You’re sure this is the right place?” Drusus said when he arrived, looking around the airy porticoed halls. “Surely a disgraced ex-soldier like me isn’t allowed in a house like this. Disgraced
filthy
ex-soldier,” he added, looking down at his travel stains as Cornelia dragged him inside.

“I’ll only have you thrown out if you don’t carry me to bed.” Cornelia tugged him toward the bedchamber. “Right
now
.”

“Is it safe?” he asked, shedding his travel-dusty cloak.

“No one here but us.” She tossed back the bed’s airy white curtains, spinning a happy circle. “I left my maid behind, dismissed the slaves, and got rid of the steward. No one but us for ten days.”

Days and days in a wide bed that smelled of lilac, broad windows open to a horizon of blue sea framed by billowing curtains so that they slept nearly afloat in the sky. Days and days of home-cooked breakfasts on the circular terrace—or so Cornelia imagined, until she tried to make bread and it refused to rise.

“I don’t understand it.” She contemplated the sullen lump of dough on the slab. “I used to supervise the baking every week in my household. I was known for my bread!”

“Ahh.” Drusus rubbed his jaw. “And did you actually bake the bread yourself, or did you just watch the slaves do it?”

“Well, of course the slaves did the actual mixing and kneading, but I know how it’s done.” She poked at the grimy lump of dough. “How hard could it be?”

The bread never rose, and the fish Cornelia purchased for their dinner proved difficult to bone. “I can cook,” she said defensively as Drusus grinned at the raw flayed mess that had once been a salmon. “I set one of the best tables in Rome! My husband always praised me for my sauces!”

“My love”—Drusus kissed her eyebrow—“I’m sure you’re perfect in every other way. But you’re useless in the kitchen.”

After that he tugged on his tunic and sandals in the mornings and padded down to the street vendors for bread and sausage, fresh fruit, and slabs of fish. They ate on the terrace every day, watching the galleys pass by in the harbor below with their oar banks flashing in the sun.

“What’s that?” Drusus asked as Cornelia surveyed a lengthy scroll.

“A list of household tasks Tullia wants me to see to. First there was just the broken hypocaust, but she thought of a few other little things.” Producing a second scroll.

“Well, I can help if you need—”

“No need.” Cornelia tossed both scrolls off the balcony into the sea. The bathhouse never did get fixed. They bathed every day in the gentle waves, where a small rocky crescent of beach kept them private from spying eyes. Cornelia shrieked in dismay, looking in the glass afterward. “As if a snub nose weren’t bad enough. Now it’s a
freckled
snub nose!”

Drusus took to padding about the cliff-top garden in a decrepit old tunic, redesigning the flower beds. “All you’ve got here is flowers,” he complained. “Don’t you want grapevines, a few nut trees—something useful?”

“Flowers are useful. They’re beautiful to look at.” Cornelia sat cross-legged on a marble bench in one of Drusus’s old tunics, hair loose down her back, eating a pear. “Isn’t beauty useful?”

“You shouldn’t even be growing lilies up so high on a cliff,” Drusus said critically. “The soil’s too sandy.”

“You’re a gardener now?” she teased.

“My grandfather owned a vineyard. I wouldn’t mind having a vineyard.” He looked around the garden as if seeing rows of orderly vines. “Making my own wine, tending the vines, watching the women climb into tubs full of grapes at pressing time—”

“Children running up and down the rows,” Cornelia said. Easy to imagine them, little girls with dirty feet and little boys throwing grapes at each other . . . A painful thought, and she put down the pear.

“Cornelia—” Drusus picked up her hand, straddling the bench.

“No, I’m all right.” She looked out over the terrace. “I just always assumed I’d have children, running all over a house just like this. But I assumed I’d be Empress too, and look how that turned out.”

He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he just leaned forward and folded her in his arms. Cornelia looked over his shoulder at the blue sea beyond the terrace, blinking a little.

She managed to stretch ten days into two weeks, sending Tullia complaint-filled messages of dawdling workmen and chipped tiles. Two weeks of sunlight and blue water and lovemaking as October slipped past—and then it was over.

Drusus had the news first, from a gibbering fruit seller when he went down to buy breakfast: Caecina Alienus had turned traitor and joined the Moesian legions. His men were disorganized, slaughtered on the field after ten hours of battle. The city of Cremona had been sacked and destroyed . . . and now the victorious legions were marching on Rome.

“I wonder how many men Vitellius can muster to protect the city?” Cornelia asked without curiosity, standing on the terrace with her arms wrapped around her own waist. “My sister will be sure to know.”