by Kate Quinn
Marcella lunged from behind the pillar, and Diana caught her just in time. “You can’t!”
Cornelia was gasping and limping—she’d lost one of her sandals, and her dark hair unraveled down her back. Piso helped her along, wild-eyed, his toga in shreds around him. Behind them, whooping, grinning, fanning out in a leisurely pack, spread half a dozen Praetorian guards.
No, Marcella thought wildly, only five. The one in the lead wasn’t with the rest. He pushed Piso ahead, up the steps of the Temple of Vesta, and he whirled around with his gladius drawn. Cornelia’s centurion, Densus. He’d lost his plumed helmet, and a gash beside one eye masked his face in blood, but his teeth bared in a snarl as he flung himself on the guards.
One went down as Densus’s short sword plunged through his neck and out again, but Cornelia went down too, tripping over the first of the temple steps. A guard lunged at her, and Piso gave a cry and flung himself at the man. Blood bloomed on his sleeve.
Densus booted the first man off his sword and turned on the second, slashing his knee out from behind. The man shouted, crumpling, and Piso staggered back, staring in disbelief at the blood on his arm. Cornelia seized his hand, screaming something, dragging him up the stairs. Densus half-turned, pushing at them both and shouting, and then they took him from behind.
A tall tribune with an ugly stub of a knife found the gap between Densus’s breastplate and back plate and drove the blade in deep. Densus doubled over gasping, but he lunged at the tribune and they tangled drunkenly on the steps. Two more Praetorians lunged around them, grabbing for Piso. One missed, but the other caught the bloody trailing end of Piso’s toga.
Whooping, they yanked him back, reeling him in like a fish, and his last motion was to shove Cornelia ahead of him up the steps. Marcella caught a glimpse of her brother-in-law’s terrified white face, his mouth opening in a square hole to say something—to beg or plead, or maybe just scream. Because even though a patrician was supposed to die proudly, there wasn’t much pride in being an emperor’s heir for five days and then being butchered on a staircase like a stray dog.
The blades slid into his chest and out again. Unhurriedly, they hacked at him until he looked like a bundle of red cloth.
Cornelia shrieked on a rising note that cored Marcella’s ears. She wrenched loose of Diana’s grip, stumbling out from behind the pillars and running down the steps toward her sister. She hauled Cornelia back desperately and saw the two remaining Praetorians turning with grins. A strangled sob sounded behind, and suddenly Lollia was there, wide-eyed and terrified, lunging forward with a bronze bowl in her hands, a sacred vessel of some kind. She emptied it with a wild swing, and a cloud of burning ash gathered from Vesta’s eternal hearth scattered down the temple steps toward the Praetorians. Glowing embers scattered everywhere; the two soldiers fell back a moment, shielding their eyes, and one collapsed with a gurgling shriek as Densus came lurching and bloody up the temple steps and buried a knife to the hilt in the nape of the Praetorian’s neck.
Marcella felt rather than heard her sister screaming, fighting inside the band of her arms to get at the bundle of bloody rags that was Piso. Densus fell, dragged down with the Praetorian’s body, and he tried to get to his feet again but couldn’t. He gave a dogged shake of his head, his bloody hair dripping, and he tried to lever off his knees but he collapsed. He dragged himself in front of Cornelia and managed to raise his short sword halfway. He couldn’t get it any higher than that, but he knelt shaking on the step, the blade half-raised and trembling in his hand, and Marcella saw the knife hilt still wedged in his side.
Diana slipped down from the pillars with her little knife in hand, lunging to stand beside him, teeth bared in a feral hiss. Marcella hoped she wasn’t planning some desperate attack—the knife would be far better employed slitting Densus’s throat before his fellow Praetorians took him down. The only loyal soldier in Rome didn’t deserve to be torn slowly to pieces by his former friends.
Marcella, trying frantically to soothe her screaming sister, found herself making disjointed calculations. Lollia certainly couldn’t be counted on to stab herself with any degree of competence, but perhaps Diana would take care of that before tending to herself? Just as Marcella would take care of her sister. So I’m the last one who gets the knife; well, at least a blade through the heart tends to be quick. The Cornelii women would die on their feet and by their own hands, not on their backs after being ravaged by a band of thugs. “Hush, Cornelia, hush—”
Dimly Marcella heard Densus’s breath sawing in and out, heard her sister’s screams, heard Lollia’s low moans behind, and over that was the sound of shouting men and breaking glass coming from the Forum—but here before the Temple of Vesta, all was somehow muffled.
The Praetorian before them shrugged, and Marcella realized in a jolt of shock that he was the last one. Three bodies at the foot of the steps, another beside Piso—and the last one, grimy and chuckling as he lowered his gladius.
“You’re lucky I’ve got better things to do,” he said, and the sound of his voice cut Cornelia’s screaming off like a knife blade. Marcella gazed at him as he turned to squat down by Piso’s silent body. A few sawing strokes of the gladius and Piso’s head rolled free, but Cornelia didn’t make a sound.
“Reckon Emperor Otho will want to see this,” the soldier said. “Might make my fortune for me.”
The short hair was too slippery with blood to hold, so he hooked a thumb through Piso’s gaping mouth and carried the head that way. Densus blinked, still struggling to hold his blade up halfway, and the Praetorian chuckled again as he sauntered past the still bodies at the foot of the stairs. “You’re a tough bastard, Densus,” he said over one shoulder. “But I knew five of us could do for you.”
He jogged up the street, whistling.
Marcella felt air start to flow into her frozen lungs again. She became aware that she was still crooning to her sister, but the woman who had nearly become an empress just stood staring at her husband’s truncated body, still as marble.
“Tell me this is a dream,” Lollia said behind them. “Please tell me this is a dream.” She turned and vomited over the stone steps. Diana put an arm around her, sheathing the little knife.
Densus gave a quiet cough. The gladius clattered unnoticed down the steps, and he reached around and tugged the knife from his own side. He looked at it a moment, gray-faced under all the gore, and he collapsed, breathing harshly up at the purple sky. One bloody hand found Cornelia’s ankle, and he gripped it. “They turned on me,” he muttered thickly. “They turned on me.” He spat out a basinful of blood, but he never let go of Cornelia.
Marcella found herself staring back up at the Temple of Vesta. The roof no longer vented its usual plume of smoke—the eternal hearth must have died. She hoped the Vestals wouldn’t be punished for letting the sacred flame die out.
Five
IF you’ve had four weddings by the age of nineteen, Lollia reflected, you have to do something to tell them apart.
Initially, of course, came the First Wedding, when the red veil and bridal wreath still seemed terribly fresh and exciting. Little did I know. Then there was the Drunk Wedding, when Lollia’s second husband-to-be had swilled down so much wine at the feast that he had to be carried to their new house and laid out on the bridal couch like a corpse. The longest wedding night on earth, getting waked every hour by snores. Then there was the Ancient Wedding, just a few months back, with Flaccus Vinius and all his wrinkled, balding friends hissing disapproval at anybody younger, which was everybody. Not that it stopped us having a good time.
But this wedding, Lollia thought, looked like it was destined to be the Quiet Wedding.
“Scandalous,” Tullia sniffed when she heard the news that Lollia was to marry again barely ten days after being widowed. “Before poor Senator Vinius’s ashes are even cold!”
Scandalous. For once Lollia found herself agreeing with Tullia. It wasn’t right, though she couldn’t think what else she could
possibly do. “M’dear,” her grandfather had said not four days after Otho had been made Emperor by the sword. “I wish I didn’t have to rush you, but—well, that marriage to Vinius tied you strongly with the Galban faction. We must consider a new alliance.”
“Yes.” But—
“An heiress like you won’t be allowed to remain single, after all. If I start casting my nets now, I can find you the best match possible, someone to protect you.” He patted her hand. “I just want my jewel to be safe.”
“Yes.” But—
“And surely you aren’t grieving too hard? I know you weren’t terribly fond of poor Senator Vinius.”
“No.” But . . .
Lollia felt a queasy pang in her stomach every time she thought of Old Flaccid. He’d been an old stick and she’d hated him passionately . . . or at least found him very irritating . . . but he hadn’t deserved to be torn to pieces by maddened guardsmen. And it wasn’t very kind of me, calling him Old Flaccid to everyone I knew. Even if it was perfectly true.
The fact was, Lollia concluded, she might be used to getting divorced but she wasn’t at all used to being widowed. It didn’t feel the same at all. She felt guilty, of all things, and why was that? All Vinius wanted was her money, and he’d gotten that—no one could say she cheated him out of anything. Maybe it was the way she’d reacted when she finally went home and announced to a house full of pop-eyed slaves and hangers-on that their master was dead. No one had said a word.
“Don’t just stand there like sheep,” Lollia had snapped, still splashed in blood—Piso’s blood, Centurion Densus’s blood, who knew. But they still kept staring, just like a herd of stupid sheep, and suddenly that was funny, sheep, how hilarious. “Sheep,” Lollia giggled, and couldn’t stop giggling. They stared at her, horrified, and she’d been giggling too hard to explain that it was horror and not laughter.
I’m a widow. Was that why she felt so strange now, on the eve of another wedding? Cornelia was a widow too, but at least she looked the part—lying blank-eyed in her black-draped bed, devoured by grief. Lollia looked at herself in the mirror and just saw a bride in a red veil: trussed, varnished, painted, and perfect.
“You look lovely,” Marcella said as the maid took the veil off for brushing, but her voice was halfhearted. She looked the same as ever in a pale-green stola, bare-armed, unjeweled, and calm in the wash of winter sunshine through the window of the bedchamber, but she’d been very quiet lately. Lollia didn’t press her—with Marcella, it was better not to. She’d learned that the day she’d asked a few too many questions about the incident with Emperor Nero. Marcella could cut you up and down with that tongue of hers as good as any gladius, if she was in the mood.
“Which one?” Lollia said brightly, holding up two different eye pencils, but Marcella just shook an indifferent head. The cosmetician came forward, and Lollia closed her eyes for the application of kohl. It was nice being back in her grandfather’s house again: the airy lofty spaces, the jewel-like rooms, the slaves who had known Lollia since childhood and now clucked over her like a baby. But something still felt different, like a shadow at the corner of her eye that faded away whenever she turned to look at it. Something felt off. Maybe it was just the feeling in the streets of Rome, as the plebs slunk through their days looking half excited at Otho’s gleaming future and half ashamed of Galba’s bloody past. Lollia had never seen anything like it.
“Uncle Paris promises you a bust of your new husband soon,” Marcella said, fiddling with the beaded fringe on a cushion. “Salvius Titianus.”
“Is that his name?” Lollia sighed. “I keep forgetting.”
“What do you think of him?”
“He seems decent enough.” She’d met him twice: a tall elegant man of forty, graying at the temples, with a lean handsome face very like his brother’s. “He has this habit of cracking his knuckles, though . . .”
“An emperor’s brother can have all the faults he wants,” said Marcella. “Your grandfather certainly has friends in high places, if he can bag an Imperial husband for you.”
Lollia’s latest betrothed: one Lucius Salvius Otho Titianus, who had divorced his wife in record time when he learned that Lollia was available. Along with my dowry, Lollia thought. The villa in Baiae and the villa in Capri and the villa in Brundisium, the two marble mines in Carrara, the blocks of tenement flats on the Aventine, the shares in the docks of Ostia, the six merchant ships, the estates in Apulia and Praeneste and Toscana and Tarracina and Misenum, the vineyards in Ravenna and Pompeii, the olive groves in Greece, the shares in the racing factions and the gladiator school on Mars Street, the percentage in the Egyptian grain fleets, the rents from the land in Gaul and Hispania and Germania and Syria . . . Oh yes, the new Emperor’s brother had been more than eager for a new wife. He hadn’t looked at Lollia at all, but they rarely did. They just looked at the pile of gold shining invisibly around her.
“So you’ll be first lady of Rome now, instead of Cornelia.” Marcella sounded more animated at that.
“So?” Lollia shrugged.
“Haven’t you even thought about what that means? It’s power, Lollia. Prestige. Position.”
“It means I have to host all those endless Imperial dinner parties now, instead of going as a guest. Much more work.”
“And we all know you’d do anything to avoid that. You and your parties!”
I don’t ever want to go to another party, Lollia thought. Not even my own wedding party. Not even this wedding party, which was bound to be even more spectacular than the last one since she was marrying into the Imperial family. Why can’t I seem to care? Lollia wondered. It wasn’t like she did anything but go to parties—why couldn’t she enjoy it now? She was just longing for it all to be over, longing for wine, longing with all her heart that Cornelia would bustle in to give her trite little speech about the world looking different once the red veil came off. But she wouldn’t.
“How is Cornelia?” Lollia asked as the maids began dressing her hair in the traditional six locks across her head. Soon there’d be a lock for every husband . . .
“She’s moved in to live with Gaius and Tullia and me.” Marcella wandered to the window. “Tullia said it wasn’t fitting for a young widow to live alone.”
“Who cares what Tullia thinks?”
“What she thinks, Gaius thinks, and he can make Cornelia come home. He has charge of her, now Piso’s dead. And besides, Cornelia doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Otho made sure to confiscate Piso’s house and all his assets for the Imperium.” A sigh. “At least she’s at home with me now, and I can look after her.”
Lollia wondered if Marcella was really the person to look after anybody. “Is she speaking again? Cornelia, I mean. I know it’s too much to hope for that Tullia would ever shut up.”
“Not much. She just sits in her room, staring at walls. We had to fight her to get Piso’s body properly burned. Cornelia kept saying she wouldn’t burn him without his head. But it’s been more than a week and we haven’t found any sign . . .” Marcella trailed off.
“I had my grandfather’s slaves out looking for—” Lollia faltered. “For Piso’s head. I told them to pay anything.”
“So did I.” Marcella shook her head a little. “How is that centurion? Whatever his name is.”
“Drusus Sempronius Densus. The doctors are saying he may recover.” Lollia had had the centurion brought to her grandfather’s house, tended day and night by the best physicians in Rome. Surely it was the least they all owed him. He couldn’t save Piso, but he’d saved us four. “What about Diana? She was already half mad before; I suppose now she’s gone completely crazy—”
“Fortuna knows.” Marcella traced her finger along a little ivory statue on an exquisite ebony table by the window. “She keeps disappearing these days.”
“At least Otho will restore the races. That will make her happy.” Lollia held her head steady as the maids draped her red bridal veil. Properly her hair should have been parted first wit
h the spear of a dead gladiator, to ensure a happy marriage. Cornelia had always insisted on it. Lollia didn’t think a spear or anything else could help this marriage.
A black shape moved in the mirror over Lollia’s shoulder, and she twisted to see Cornelia in the door. She wore mourning black, her arms bare, her hair bound tight to her head. She’d look wonderful in black if her face didn’t look like a frozen scream.
“Congratulations,” she said. “Marrying the Emperor’s brother, how grand. Did he give the order for my husband’s death?”
Lollia opened her mouth, not knowing what to say, but Marcella moved swiftly to her sister, murmuring. The slaves looked worried, but the one bitter phrase seemed to have taken all the words out of Cornelia. She let Marcella lead her to a window seat and sat there, staring out into the atrium. Lollia thought of how they had all giggled at the end of her wedding to Vinius . . . she felt her eyes prick, but blinked hard and willed the tears away. Cornelia might weep and grieve, but someone else had to make an alliance that would keep the family safe. I’ve got slave blood as well as patrician, and patricians may not bend but slaves endure.
Her grandfather met them all at the bedchamber door, large and anxious, and Lollia rested a moment against his pillowy soft shoulder, loving him dearly enough to marry a hundred husbands. “My little jewel,” he said, as he’d called her ever since she was small. Maybe her cousins didn’t understand her unhesitating allegiance to her grandfather, why she never had even the slightest grumble when he chose a new husband for her. They didn’t understand that it was an alliance, her grandfather and herself against the world, for all time. An ex-slave with such a fortune had enemies; his lands and monies could be confiscated at any time if he didn’t have powerful connections. Marrying Otho’s brother would shield her grandfather as well as little Flavia and herself. That was worth anything.