Daughters of Rome

by Kate Quinn

  Diana looked away.

  “Take them.” Vitellius gave Boreas a last pat. “I shouldn’t have taken them from you. That race you drove—girl, on the last lap they lifted off the ground and flew. What a thing to see! They won’t run like that for me. Maybe not for anyone.”

  “Caesar—”

  “Take them!” He pushed roughly past her out of the stall, gathering the purple folds of his robe. “There’s a mob that wants me, and I want to be drunk when they get here.”

  “But Caesar—” She was running after him, trying to find the words to rouse him, when a tall figure came through the stable doors in a few long strides.

  “Hey, you, get away from here.” One of Vitellius’s remaining Praetorians drew his gladius, gesturing the man back, but a long sword came hissing out of its scabbard and buried itself in the Praetorian’s neck. His eyes sprang open whitely, and he folded like an unironed tunic. Vitellius halted in the straw-covered passageway, his mouth wobbling as Llyn ap Caradoc calmly booted the body off his blade.

  “Get back from the Emperor!” The other Praetorian dived at Llyn, swinging his gladius in a massive slash, but the Briton moved with molten ease, sliding out of reach and then back in with a short brutal chop at the man’s face. His eyes disappeared in a sudden gout of blood, and suddenly the third Praetorian and the last nervously lingering hangers-on were all fleeing and stumbling out of the stables.

  “Llyn?” Diana whispered. “No, you can’t—”

  He finished off the second guard and moved forward, his gaze fixed on the Emperor. The rage in his dark eyes was bottomless, far outstripping fat trembling Vitellius and his pathetic little sins. It was a rage big enough for all Rome, and any protests on Vitellius’s tongue died visibly.

  “Well,” he said dully, “whoever you are, get on with it.”

  “Caesar—” Diana began.

  “Leave me!” Vitellius roared, and in that moment at least he looked like an emperor.

  She found herself kneeling, her hands still full of harness.

  Vitellius’s rough hand touched her hair. When she looked up, Llyn was dragging him down the passage by the neck, stumbling and panting.

  “Better get out of here,” Llyn called to her, not looking back. They were suddenly gone, the tall figure and the fat one, gone at the end of the passage into the last of the empty horse stalls, and Diana lingered frozen for a moment. But there was a surge of shouting close by, a sudden wave of noise, and it jerked her back into motion.

  She scrambled up and went to Boreas, dragging a bridle over his ears, and then got the others one by one and led them out to be harnessed. The racing chariot was too conspicuous with its crusting of gilt and bright blue paint, but there were plain practice chariots in the back shed, and she hitched the Anemoi to one of those. She’d never harnessed a team so fast. She looked toward the last stall once or twice, but no one came out, and she dragged a grubby hand across her eyes.

  The Anemoi stood ready, necks curved, noses flared, looking eagerly about them as they smelled excitement. A different kind of excitement today, my loves, Diana thought as she fetched a driving whip and scrambled into the chariot. You won’t smell rose petals today, or palm branches. Just blood.

  She whipped them up, taking them out the broad entrance gate rather than the gate to the arena, but it was too late. She saw torches there, and soldiers pressing in a relentless armored mass toward the palace, and another crush of soldiers spreading toward the fine houses on the Palatine Hill, and all she could do was whip the Anemoi into a gallop. It was too late to do anything but run.

  “WHAT are you DOING?” Lollia shrieked.

  “Climb in.” Diana had steered the Anemoi off the circular drive to the house, over a bed of winter lilies and into the entrance hall. The axles grated on the door frame, but the chariot just fit through the doors. “It isn’t safe here anymore. The fighting’s getting closer. I barely outran a mob getting here.”

  Lollia didn’t need to be told twice. She slung a bundle under one arm and hopped up into the chariot. “You’re utterly mad. You went to fetch your horses?”

  “Good thing I did, because we’re going to need them. They’re the only things that can get us to Cornelia and Marcella in time.” Diana leaned back on the reins, clicking her tongue at the horses. Tiles crunched as a priceless mosaic was destroyed underfoot.

  “You’ll never get them turned around in this space—”

  “Yes, I will.” Diana leaned back, tendons cording all down her arms, and somehow she got the horses wrenched around and wedged back through the entrance gate. “Hold on.”

  Lollia whimpered as she saw the lights at the foot of the slope, and suddenly there were men whooping everywhere, flashes of bright breastplates and torches brandished overhead. “Hey, my pretties, slow down—!” But they scattered as the Reds barreled through the gates, and Diana lashed the chariot straight down the street.

  “Oh gods, they’re coming to loot.” Lollia jerked, looking back at the torches weaving giddily through her grandfather’s front gates. “Why don’t their commanders stop them? This is Rome, not some barbarian citadel! They can’t just tear it to pieces!”

  “Maybe their commanders can’t stop them. Or maybe they just don’t care it’s Rome.” Diana slowed the Reds to a trot again, and their hooves clashed resoundingly loud along the empty street. Only it didn’t feel empty now. The shadows were lengthening with the onset of night, and Diana didn’t need to see the eyes to know they were there. Lollia clutched the rail of the chariot, teeth crashing together at every bump, but she didn’t complain.

  “You’re marvelous,” she said through her shivering. “You’re mad, and you’re marvelous, and you’ve likely saved my life—” Diana barely listened, all her attention spinning down through the reins in her hands. The horses were close to panic, and as they drove past the Forum Romanum she saw why.

  “Oh, gods,” Lollia moaned. There were twisted crumpled things lying still on the stones, things that had to be bodies, dark pools that had to be blood. Shadows darted in and out of the temples—a soldier in a plumed helmet staggered down the steps of Jupiter’s temple under the weight of a silver urn, behind him an ordinary shopkeeper who had joined the looting troops and was now trundling away a barrow full of prizes. A stray dog lapped at a rivulet of blood leaking down the gutter, and the horses threw up their heads as they caught the stench of it. Diana yanked the chariot around a corner into a darkened side street, and the blood-crawling Forum disappeared from sight.

  “Faster!” Lollia tugged at Diana’s arm. “Can you go faster?”

  Two soldiers staggered out of a tavern, whooping drunkenly. Diana cracked her whip at them and they flinched back. Another side street, another, another—“What’s taking so long?” Lollia groaned.

  “The direct route isn’t safe. I saw soldiers spilling out of the palace earlier.”

  “The palace? But the Emperor—”

  Diana set her lips in a line. “Vitellius is dead.”

  The houses of the Palatine, flashing by—Diana saw a shrieking patrician woman running from her doorway with an armload of clothes, a slave behind her with a jewel box. Somewhere a man was shouting. Lollia nearly spilled out of the chariot on a sharp turn, but one more block passed and they were pulling up before the family house. Zephyrus reared, white showing all around his eyes and sparks striking on the stones under his hooves, and Notus plunged against the reins. “Get down,” Diana shouted at Lollia, fighting them. “Get down and fetch Cornelia and Marcella, I don’t dare let go of the horses!”

  “Cornelia and Marcella—but can’t we—”

  “We can’t stay here, it’s not safe!” Diana heard a roar somewhere behind and Lollia tumbled out of the chariot, stumbling up the pink marble steps to hammer at the door. “Cornelia! CORNELIA!” The door flew open to reveal a legionary with drawn sword, a snarl cutting his face in half, and Lollia screamed.

  “No, Lollia—” Cornelia pushed around the legionary, her h
air wild down her back. “No, he’s with me—”

  “Cornelia, get in.” Lollia yanked her frantically toward the chariot, where Diana had managed to fight the horses down to a bursting standstill. “We have to run—get Marcella—”

  “Marcella isn’t here.”

  “Not here? Oh, gods—Marcella—”

  “No time,” the soldier snapped, jamming his short sword back into its scabbard. His gaze flicked over the trembling horses. “You can hold them?” he barked up at Diana.

  She nodded curtly. “I can.” How long she could keep on holding them was another matter. Her hands were tough as cured leather, but she had no gloves and her palms were already a mass of dark blisters.

  “Aim for the Aurelian Gate,” Cornelia’s soldier said. “That should be deserted by now. If they went for the Emperor, the fighting will be concentrated up at the palace instead.” He grabbed Cornelia’s arm, hauling her toward the chariot. “Get in, love.”

  “No, not without you, you have to come too—” Cornelia clutched him, but he cut her off.

  “Won’t fit me.” The chariot was built for one; it would barely hold three girls jammed together, much less a stockily built soldier. “Get in.”

  “No,” Cornelia wept. But there was a roar of voices and a sound of breaking timbers from the street beyond.

  “Hurry up,” said Diana. Her arms were burning now as she held the Anemoi, plunging and bucking against their harness, screaming up at her through the reins.

  “Cornelia,” Lollia shouted, scrambling into the chariot, “get in!”

  Cornelia shook her head, still clinging to her soldier, but he took her face between his hands and shook her. “I’ll slip out through the back,” he said. “I’ll blend in—the soldiers will think I’m one of them. Won’t work for you, love. Up you go.”

  He bundled her in, and she was hardly clear of the wheel before the Reds were plunging madly down the street. Cornelia twisted her head to look back, tear tracks marking her white face, and Diana saw the soldier running up the street with his gladius drawn.

  “Marcella,” Lollia was shouting, “where is Marcella?” But Cornelia could only shake her head helplessly. Marcella was gone.

  The Reds careened down the slope of the Palatine Hill, houses and streets a nightmarish blur on their way toward the Campus Martius and the Aurelian Gate. The shouting grew louder, and suddenly it was on them. “Oh gods,” Lollia gulped, gripping the little cross her slave had given her, and Cornelia whispered “Juno’s mercy,” and started reciting the names of her ancestors as if she were preparing the litany for death.

  The Campus Martius had vanished. Usually patricians strolled there to see and be seen; young sparks raced their horses and plebs gathered to gawk at whatever famous face they could find, but now it had all disappeared into an ocean of slaughter. The rampant soldiers had come squeezing in through the Aurelian Gate, but Vitellius’s last troops led charge after charge against them, and Diana could see the tidemarks of the charges in the fallen bodies. Looters were already scurrying among the wounded, scrabbling for valuables, and more people stood in vestibules watching and making bets as they would at a race. A temple was ablaze, flames writhing up to the twilight sky, and the firelight cast mad leaping shadows across the broken writhing men. The legionaries howled and capered, hauling sacks of loot, waving wineskins, dragging their bloodied swords. Diana saw a man run up to a cluster of soldiers, pointing at a doorway and shrieking “Vitellian, Vitellian!” and the legionaries swaggered over to kick down the door. A heartbeat more and a woman began screaming inside. The pleb pocketed a few coins and ran chuckling to another group of soldiers, pointing to a different door.

  “Straight through,” Diana said. “No other way.” She cracked her whip and the Anemoi leaped forward into the madness.

  A legionary looked up, staggering with wine, but they’d already flashed past by the time he stretched out a hand. A wounded man screamed, and Diana heard the thump as his leg was trampled under the rim of the wheel. Two plebs darted for safety, a plumed officer held up a spear to halt the chariot, but they were just blurs. The Anemoi were running wild, ears pinned flat against their heads, mad with the smell of the blood under their hooves and the blood in their veins that told them to go faster, faster, and they yanked Diana half over the side of the chariot as she fought to hold them. A cluster of legionaries hailed her with shouts, drawing their short blades and pointing at the horses, but Diana slashed at them with her whip and saw one stagger with blood oozing in a sharp line from his snarling face before they all slid back into the whirling madness. A tremendous lunge past the fountain where a dozen wounded men were screaming and trying to reach the water, and the chariot was through. Somewhere ahead was the Aurelian Gate, beyond that was a road, and somewhere beyond that was a world that was still sane.

  “Marcella!” Cornelia screamed. “Marcella!” She hauled Diana’s taut arm, pointing, and Diana looked up to see her cousin. She’s dead, surely she’s dead—but Marcella was alive, and gods only knew how Cornelia managed to catch sight of her in this maelstrom. Their cousin stood in her pale-blue stola beside the altar of Mars, her hair whipping about her calm face: a column of ice watching the slaughter. There were a score of plebs around her, cheering various struggling combatants and slapping down coins in bets, but she stood quite still.

  “Marcella!” Lollia added her voice to Cornelia’s, shouting, and finally Marcella heard. Her head turned and Diana saw the calm carved face, the watchful eyes, and then she was running toward the chariot.

  “Diana, stop the horses, you have to stop them—”

  “—Can’t—” she gritted through bared teeth, her blistered palms weeping blood, but she threw her whole body back on the reins and the Anemoi pulled up in a thrash of hooves, dripping foam, shrieking like the wounded men in the fountain. The chariot tilted perilously on one wheel and they all clutched at the rail, but it righted itself and the horses gathered to run again, and this time they tore the reins through Diana’s hands in a blaze of agony. She knew she’d never hold them now, but Marcella was close, and Lollia and Cornelia put out their hands and brought her flying up into the chariot as the Reds lunged into a crazed gallop. A legionary tried to grab for Boreas’s reins but recoiled screaming as the old stallion swiped foam-flecked teeth at him and took off his ear and half his cheek. Diana fumbled whitely for the reins, every finger sawed open and bleeding, but Marcella was clinging safe to the chariot rail, squashed up against Lollia with Cornelia on her other side. There was barely room for the four of them and Marcella hung perilously off the back, but her eyes were gleaming. “Where are we going?” she shouted, but Diana was fighting the horses and had no breath left to answer.

  The Aurelian Gate was open, littered by half a dozen prowling guards. They stepped into the path at the sound of hooves, holding their spears up to halt the chariot, but the Anemoi ran them down without a blink. Diana felt the bodies bump under the wheels and Cornelia nearly slipped off the back of the chariot, but Lollia flung an arm around her waist and hauled her back in. They clung to each other, the four Cornelias crammed close behind four runaway horses, and first Diana looked up at the sky and saw that night had fallen, and then she looked back and realized they’d left the city behind.

  Twenty-one

  “WHAT is this place?” Marcella blinked sleepily in the dawn light, looking up at the dusty rafters overhead.

  “It belongs to Llyn ap Caradoc.” Diana yawned, stretching her arms overhead as Marcella looked around the hay bales, the harness hooks, the rows of stalls. “He usually has a steward and a few slaves, but they must have fled. Still, I knew Llyn wouldn’t mind if we borrowed his barn.”

  “Couldn’t we have borrowed his house?” Marcella shivered in the morning chill, rubbing her bare arms.

  “Oh, no. Britons take guest-right very seriously. You don’t ever just invite yourself into a Briton’s house.”

  “You know the oddest things, Diana.”

  Still,
Marcella thought, a haystack was better than nothing. Even if they’d trotted half the night to get to it. The villa wasn’t far outside city walls, Diana had explained at some point last night during the long dark drive, but it was a good distance around from the Aurelian Gate, where they’d had to make their escape. She’d pulled up the horses in the yard well past midnight, and Marcella had been only too happy to pile off the chariot in Lollia and Cornelia’s wake, stagger into the barn, and collapse without a further word into the haystack.

  Lollia was still asleep, curled into a ball in the hay and looking no older than Flavia, but Cornelia was just starting to stir. Marcella yawned again, and Diana put her hands to the small of her back and grimaced as she stretched. “Gods’ wheels, I’ve never hurt so much in my life,” she groaned. “Not even after my Circus Maximus race.”

  She held up her hands in the gray dawn light and Marcella saw that blood had spiraled down from her blistered, sawed-open palms and dried around her wrists in brown ribbons. “Those horses pulled your hands to pieces, didn’t they?”

  “I don’t mind.” Diana tugged affectionately at the old stallion’s drooping ears. “They ran like gods.” The Anemoi looked as exhausted as Diana, still standing harnessed to the chariot with their noses hanging at their knees. They’d galloped half the night and trotted the other half once they ran themselves tired, and even when Diana pulled them up in the barn she said she didn’t dare unharness them. “What if a stray raiding party comes along? We might need to make another fast escape.” The last thing Marcella had seen before her eyes snapped shut in sleep had been Diana curled up against the old stallion’s legs, stroking the heavy nose that dropped on her shoulder and gazing at the road below in search of further danger.