Daughters of Rome

  “—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?

  IT 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.”

  “Lollia—”

  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.

  “I don’t know what Nero did to you, because you won’t tell anyone . . .”

  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?

  Nero never laid a finger on me.

  MY 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.

  “Caesar.” She knelt before him, already feeling sticky in a stola of lilac silk draped to show as little of her breasts as possible. Nero waved her up with a beautifully manicured hand.

  “No, my dear, I am no Caesar tonight. We eat alone, like any common fellow and his beloved. I have often wished I could be a common musician, playing for my supper. Or perhaps an actor; you’ve heard me recite, of course—”

  A hot night, spring fading into summer. The slaves, all matched blue-eyed blondes chosen for beauty, brought one meal after another in a graceful ballet. Every dish an aphrodisiac selected to enhance a night of love: sea urchins in almond milk, blue-black oysters from Britannia, cakes sheeted with a haze of edible flowers. Marcella stuffed herself. I’ll need all the aphrodisiacs I can get to keep from being queasy when he finally stops babbling and gets on with it. Nero was tall but pot-bellied, his legs spindly, his chin spotted; he wore a wig of auburn curls over a flaking scalp. And his eyes burned too bright, as if he had a fever. Or the pox.

  “Or perhaps I should have been a poet—you’ve heard my poetry, of course? My verse on the love of Adonis and Aphrodite was so much admired in Athens—”

  She wished he’d hurry up. He’d set her aside with a casual invitation at the end of a party the night before, hardly bothering to talk to her. Why should he? She was just a passing fancy, hardly likely to last a night. The sooner he climbs on top of me, the sooner it will all be over and the sooner I can go home.

  He pushed his golden plate aside, stroking her arm with damp fingers. Marcella tensed despite herself, but he wasn’t looking at her. Those bright eyes were fixed somewhere between a tall vase of lilies and a reclining marble Leda with her amorous swan. “I’ll play for you,” he said, calling for his lute. “A private performance from your Emperor, eh?”

  “I would be honored, Caesar.”

  He struck a pose with his lyre, false auburn curls gleaming in the lamplight. A little ditty about spring—“my own work! Do tell me what you think?”

  “Brilliant, Caesar.”

  A long heroic epic about the deeds of Hercules. His voice was shrill and tuneless.

  “Incomparable, Caesar.”

  He called for wine in between songs, but Marcella pushed her cup away. She didn’t dare get sleepy—Nero had executed senators before for dozing during his recitals. But he drank cup after cup, in frantic haste. “And this one—a little ditty about spring. My own work, of course. Do tell me what you think?”

  The same song he’d begun with. “Brilliant, Caesar.”

  More songs. His voice grew shriller, his words slurred. The feverish eyes darted everywhere. He sang the epic of Hercules twice more, rapidly. “I do like to write little verses about heroic deeds now and then, as much as I prefer the deeds of love. You know the Senate’s plotting against me?”

  Marcella started to say, “Incomparable, Caesar,” before she realized what he’d said. “Um. Caesar?”

  “They think I don’t know. But I hear everything.” He cast his lyre aside abruptly. “They’ll vote me a public enemy. They’ll even vote a new emperor.”

  “. . . Surely not, Caesar.”

  “They’ll try. I’ll fool them. I have spies.” Jerkily. “They’ll be sorry. I’ll make the Senate steps run with blood—”

  He paced to the end of the couch and back again, running his fingers along the chased edge. His nails were varnished pink. “They think you can vote on an emperor,” he said to the tiles. “I am a god. You think I attained divinity by vote?”

  “Of course not, Caesar,” she said cautiously.

  “They’ll look to name some tight-fisted prune like Galba or Sabinus. Break my statues—I have so many statues—my mother always said I had the prettiest profile in marble . . .” He blinked. “I killed my mother. Did you know that? I don’t remember why.”

  Sweet Fortuna, just get me out of here alive. Marcella stayed frozen on her couch, skin crawling. Nero drank another cup of wine, held the goblet out blindly, drank another.

  “They’ll strip my pretty palace.” He looked around his beautiful, sumptuous triclinium. “My golden house. I never really lived until I built this palace. They’ll strip it bare, all those stingy old senators—sell off my pretty slaves, and my chorus boys, and the gold plate I ordered in Corinth . . . but I won’t live to see that. They’ll kill me first. Hack me to death with spears in my own bathhouse, or on the privy—it’s no way for a god to die—”

  Marcella groped for words, any words. Her ready mental pen had fallen silent. “The world would lose a great artist in you, Caesar.”

  His fever-bright eyes wandered back to her, surprised. Does he even remember why I’m here? Or had he even wanted her at all? Perhaps he’d just set her aside to show his cronies that the Senate’s grumbling hadn’t made him afraid. “Yes, a great artist.” He nodded vigorously. “I must remember that. There was never another artist like me, was there?”

  “No,” Marcella agreed.

  “No,” he echoed, and suddenly he stumbled across the room, crawling onto the dining couch and laying his head in her lap. “No,” he said again, shivering, and under the perfumes of amber and myrrh and lilies there was the sharp, malodorous stink of terror.

  They said he’d laid his head in his mother’s lap and cried, after her murdered body was brought back for his inspection.

  “No one will hack you to death with spears, Caesar. You’ll defeat them.” Marcella felt herself sweating. He could still have her strangled and thrown down the Gemonian Stairs if she displeased him—this was a man who had kicked his pregnant wife to death when he was in a bad mood. Marcella forced herself to stroke his hair, though her fingertips itched as if fire ants were devouring them. “You’ll defeat them.”

  “If I don’t?” His voice rose, a thin edge higher and higher. His bright eyes snapped open and held hers. “If I don’t?”

  “You will fall on your own sword,” she found herself saying. “Like the kings of old. You’ll never see them strip your palace or deface your statues. You’ll stab yourself and then you’ll sit at Jove’s right hand. You’ll escape it all.”

  “Yes,” he said, voice spiraling down again. “I’ll escape it all. I’ll escape it all.”

  He fell asleep, still muttering. Marcella would have sat all night with the Emperor’s head on her lap, too frozen to move, but the slaves descended and bore him skillfully off without waking him, more used to this t
han she was. She’d staggered home, reeking of scent from that horrible revolving ceiling, to a family that wouldn’t quite look her in the eye. In two days’ time Nero was pronounced a public enemy of Rome by the Senate. Galba was proclaimed Emperor and Nero fled, committing suicide long before the Praetorians could imprison him—escaping it all. His last words, so they said, were “What an artist dies in me!”

  I think I did it, you see, Marcella thought. The one thing she had not put in her history of Nero. I think that in my way, I killed an emperor.

  Eight

  A slave dropped a dish outside the bedroom door with a crash and burst into tears. “Stow that,” Cornelia heard another slave hiss. “Or Domina will have the skin off your back!”

  Feet pattered. She listened at the door, alert for every sound.

  Sandals clicked sharply. “Oh, this rain,” Tullia moaned somewhere down the hall, rapidly coming closer. “Such bad timing; our guests will have to swim to get to the front door.” She and Gaius were hosting a dinner party and the whole house was in an uproar, but that hardly concerned Cornelia. She wasn’t going.

  That is, she was going somewhere, but not their wretched dinner party.

  “Sea urchins and turbot, is it ostentatious?” Tullia’s voice again, hectoring the steward. “Perhaps turtle doves boiled in their plumage instead. Perhaps both. Yes, both. Gaius—”

  Cornelia left the door and went to her window, pushing the shutter aside and looking down at the street outside. Gray waves of rain beat down in gusts, and passersby scurried like mice wrapped in wet wool, wading ankle deep in the gutters. The winter rains had finally arrived last week, and arrived with a vengeance. The Pons Silica had come crashing down just yesterday when the Tiber overflowed. The oldest bridge in the city—Cornelia had heard the slaves whispering about it, saying it was a bad omen for Otho’s reign. Surely Tullia would cancel the party? That would have ruined everything, but no, Tullia hadn’t canceled her party. “Why should we? Nobody we know lives on the other side of the Pons Silica!”