Daughters of Rome (41 page)

Drusus picked up her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. “We can’t stay here. A place so isolated, no guards—if the army came to Tarracina—”

“Yes.” She forced a smile. “My family will expect me to come back, anyway. Though they might not stay long in the city, themselves.”

“Only wise.” Drusus forced a little cheer into his voice. “Get out of the city altogether, somewhere safe. Where would you all go?”

“Brundisium, maybe. We have a villa there, and it’s sure to be a long way from the fighting . . .”

“Brundisium,” said Drusus. “That’s—far.” Hundreds of miles to the south.

They stood on the circular white-marbled terrace, the shadows stretching over the cushioned couches, the sea washing violet below, the sky a deepening twilight blue. Dinner cooled on a tray. Cornelia felt sick, remembering the other half of what Lollia had said when she urged a vacation:

Will it go to Hades?
Cornelia had asked.

Well, Lollia knew these things. She’d had lovers before, after all. She’d know how to say good-bye with flair, how to end things with humor and dignity and compassion. All Cornelia could do was wrap herself around Drusus, clutching him desperately close through the night. “Not yet,” she whispered to herself the following morning, as she climbed into the litter and left him for their separate journeys back to Rome. “Oh, not yet!”

December A.D. 69–June A.D. 79

—TACITUS

CORNELIA?”
Marcella called as soon as she entered the atrium, shedding her ice-white
palla
. “Gaius, Tullia—you’ll never believe what I heard at the Forum. Cornelia?”

Sounds of a shriek from the triclinium. “Fortuna’s sake,” Marcella grumbled. With news like this, one might think she’d have an attentive audience for once. But of course not. Marcella caught sight of the slaves, clustered round-eyed and eavesdropping outside the triclinium, and shooed them off. “Gaius, Cornelia, I have such news—” Marcella began as she swept in, but no one was listening. Cornelia sat rigid on a stool, Gaius leaned against a couch nibbling his nails, and Tullia was storming up and down shrieking.

“—saw you, actually saw you sneaking out of the house at night! How many others saw you, you loose-kneed whore—”

“Now, now,” Gaius said nervously.

“Tullia.” Marcella greeted her sister-in-law. “I have news, but clearly it can wait. What’s going on?”

Tullia whirled around, curls vibrating over a reddened face. “Did you know about this?”

“About what?”

“About your
sister
!” Tullia screamed. “About your sister spreading her knees for a
soldier
!”

Marcella’s eyes flew to her sister, gazing straight ahead at the frieze on the wall. Cornelia was as white as the frieze, and she spoke through stiff lips. “Marcella didn’t know anything, Tullia. No one knew.”

“Don’t you
dare
speak to me!” Tullia rounded on her.

“Now, dear—” Gaius began.

Marcella raised an eyebrow and sank onto the nearest couch. “What
is
all this?”

“I questioned Cornelia’s maid yesterday.” Tullia stalked back and forth across the mosaics, coral-colored silks swishing. “I wanted to know why Cornelia’s been so quiet lately—I thought she might be ill! Fine thanks for my thoughtfulness! Her maid was evasive, and after a good beating she finally admitted that Cornelia has been leaving this house every night for
months
. To spend her nights with some
legionary
!”

Marcella glanced at her sister, expecting an explosion. Color flared in Cornelia’s cheeks, but she was silent. Marcella thought of her odd sleepiness the past few months—her long walks—her extended trips to the bathhouse . . .

“Cornelia,” she said admiringly, “I didn’t think you had it in you!”

A flick of a smile from her sister, but it was doused fast enough as Tullia began shrieking again.

“A widow in your position, once wed to an emperor’s heir, taking a lover from the
slums
? Who is he?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Cornelia. “It’s over now.”

“I suppose he wasn’t the only one, was he! As long as they’re rough and common, you don’t care who they are, do you? I always knew that perfect front of yours was a sham—you’re nothing but a common
slut
—”

“Now, now,” Gaius said again.

“—and how long have you been disgracing this family? How long have you been making a fool out of me?”

Cornelia looked at her scornfully. “Tullia,” she said, “you were easy to fool. The next time a woman tells you she spent five hours at the bathhouse, rest assured she was not taking a
bath
.”

Tullia inhaled for a scream of rage, but Gaius put a hasty hand on her arm. “Dear, allow me. Cornelia—”

“I know what you’re going to say, Gaius.” Cornelia sounded tired. “Yes, I’ve been discreet. No one else knows but us.”

“And about twenty-two slaves,” Marcella added. “All eavesdropping as hard as they can.”

“This—
soldier
.” Gaius could barely pronounce the word. “Will he make trouble?”

Cornelia turned her head away. “No.”

“Whore,”
Tullia hissed.

“Really, Cornelia.” Gaius looked reproving. “I would not have thought it of you. Have you no respect for our family name, our position, our reputation—to say nothing of your own—”

“Perhaps that can wait a moment.” Marcella rose. “Fascinating as Cornelia’s clandestine lover is, and I
am
fascinated, I’ve learned something else of interest this afternoon. Fabius Valens was captured and executed in Urvinum, and his troops have surrendered.”

Utter silence. Gaius swung around, and Tullia paused midway through another stream of insults. Cornelia stared blindly into her lap.

“The Emperor and his advisers know by now, and the news is leaking through the Senate,” Marcella continued.

Cornelia looked at her. “How do you know these things?”

“Domitian,” Marcella shrugged.

“The Emperor—” Gaius’s voice came out in a squeak; he cleared his throat. “The Emperor will deploy another army—”

“He doesn’t have another army. And the Moesian legions are marching on Rome. They’re camped about fifty miles north.”

Another frozen silence. All through November, Marcella thought, everyone had been so sure something would come to save Rome. Fabius Valens, or loyal legions in the south—or maybe the gods. Anyone or anything.

“Oh, no.” Tullia resumed her pacing, back and forth across the mosaics. “Oh no, oh no. Oh no. We can’t stay, Gaius, we can’t stay. Barbarians knocking at the gates, all those legionaries from Dacia and Germania—”

“Might I recommend Tarracina?” Color was coming back into Cornelia’s face now. “I spent two weeks there with my soldier from the slums. I admit I never got around to fixing the hypocaust, but the weather is lovely this time of year.”

But Tullia wasn’t listening anymore. She ran out into the atrium, calling for the steward, calling for little Paulinus, calling for the slaves, who all hastily started polishing things to prove they hadn’t been eavesdropping and then started running in circles when they realized their mistress was in hysterics. Gaius rushed upstairs toward his
tablinum
, and Cornelia and Marcella were left sitting in the atrium. Cornelia was staring at the mosaics, as if trying to imagine those savage advancing legionaries marching over them.

“So—” Marcella looked at her sister. “Who is this lover of yours?”

“Does it matter?” Cornelia blinked hard, her dark hair gleaming and her hands motionless in her lap. “It’s over now. I won’t drag him into trouble with Tullia and Gaius.”

“Lollia and her slave,” Marcella said, amused. “You and your soldier. Diana and her charioteer. All the Cornelias are being scandalous this year.”

“Except you.” Cornelia managed a watery smile.

“Marcella, Cornelia—” Gaius rushed back downstairs, a case exploding with scrolls under one arm. “Surely you should pack a few things. Brundisium, that’s far enough away—”

“I’m not going,” said Cornelia.

“Why?” Gaius glared. “Refusing to leave your pleb lover, are you?”

“No.” She looked at him coldly. “Perhaps I have some idea of patrician duty, Gaius.”

He reddened. “Marcella, talk to her.”

“I’m not leaving either,” Marcella said. “I want to see what happens.”

Gaius reddened even further, scuffing a sandal across a loose tile in the mosaics. He opened his mouth, but then something shattered in the hall and a slave burst into tears and Tullia called
“Gaius!”
and he bustled away.

Cornelia picked up her
palla
, moving as slowly as if she were underwater. “I’d better go to Lollia. She should know she’s been widowed again.”

“I’m sure she’ll be delighted.” Marcella picked up her own
palla
.

Cornelia looked back over one shoulder. “Where are you going?”

Marcella spread her arms. “To tell the
world
.”

 

“
L
EAVE
my house?”

Lollia watched her grandfather gaze around the atrium—his pride and joy, still blooming with banks of bronze crocuses in late November, every column imported fluted and perfect from Corinth, every niche adorned with a life-sized ebony statue with carved ivory eyes. A wealth of rooms beyond the atrium, each one spacious and perfect, the mosaics worth a fortune, every vase and statue lovingly chosen from the best the world had to offer. The house he had spent a lifetime assembling for himself piece by piece; the house Lollia knew he had dreamed of when he was a slave boy polishing other people’s possessions.

“The legions won’t get inside Rome,” she promised her grandfather. “Vespasian’s men will set up camp outside the gates, the Senate will flutter, then we’ll surrender and Fortuna knows what will happen to Vitellius. But the house will be safe.”

“Then why leave it?” He fingered a little carved nymph in rosy marble.

“Because I want my daughter out of Rome,” Lollia said grimly.

“The house in Ostia,” her grandfather relented after another hour of browbeating. “Is that far enough for you, my jewel? We’ll leave in two days—”

“No, you go tomorrow. Take Flavia. I’ll go with Cornelia and Marcella and Uncle Paris when they leave for Brundisium.”

“Aren’t they going with Gaius and Tullia?” Lollia’s grandfather winced. “That woman has a voice like a cart over flagstones.”

“I’m sure I can put up with it for a few days.”

Lies, of course. Lollia had no intention of going with Gaius and Tullia to Brundisium, and she knew Cornelia and Marcella didn’t either. They would stay together in Rome, and Lollia couldn’t help wondering why. Well, Cornelia would stay because of patrician duty, and Marcella would stay because of boundless curiosity.
But why me?
Why didn’t she feel the urge to pack her jewels and her daughter and go with her grandfather to Ostia? A few weeks on his sunlit terrace overlooking the sea—playing with Flavia, celebrating her widowhood now that Fabius was dead, and waiting for the trouble in Rome to be over. Half the patricians in Rome were making discreet and speedy exits.
Why not me?

Lollia didn’t know. Most of the time she prided herself on being practical, like her grandfather with his slave good sense . . . but she’d had a patrician father, and sometimes patrician duty bit her too.

She made soothing noises and set her grandfather to packing before he could change his mind. For herself, Lollia retired down to one of the storerooms to hide as many of his beautiful things as she could. His collection of African ivories, the lacquered bowls from India, the white and green jade figurines, the rare books in their inlaid cases . . . She had just filled one of his many hidden caches when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Domina?”

“Hello, Thrax.” Lollia picked up a malachite gaming board imported from Crete and packed it carefully away into another little paneled cupboard cut into the wall. She heard Thrax descending the last step, coming into the dim coolness of the storeroom.

“The steward—he says you won’t go to Ostia, Domina?”

“No, I won’t.” She looked at a marble nymph—too tall for the cupboard. “Shouldn’t you be helping Flavia pack, Thrax? Make sure she takes her jade menagerie animals and her pearls. They’re her favorite things.”

He ignored that, coming closer. Lollia had never seen him agitated before, but now his hands were clenching at his sides. “Domina, you won’t be safe here.”

“Oh, I won’t be here in Rome. I’ll be leaving for Brundisium with my cousins—”