Daughters of Rome (10 page)

CORNELIA
put her lips very close to her husband’s ear. “Good morning, Caesar.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Why not?” Cornelia kissed him. “You’re going to be Emperor someday.”

He laughed again, pulling her against him, and Cornelia felt a happy shiver down her spine. Winter sunlight splashed through the windows of the bedchamber—they had gone to bed only hours before, when the last of their entourage—
we have an entourage, now!
—stumbled from the house.

“Just because I’ve been appointed heir doesn’t mean I’ll be Emperor, you know,” Piso was pointing out. “As that sharp sister of yours said to me, think of all those other heirs who never got to take the purple. All those grandsons and nephews of Augustus. . . . One shouldn’t take these things for granted. It would be tempting the gods.”

“Oh, I know.” Cornelia smoothed a hand over his chest. “And I’ll be entirely cautious and respectful in public. But in here, where it’s just us—well, can’t we gloat just a little?”

“Maybe a little.” Piso laughed, and tilted his head down to give her a long, lingering kiss.

“You’ll be late,” Cornelia murmured between more kisses. “Galba wants to present you to the troops this morning.” Of course she couldn’t go to the Praetorian barracks; that wouldn’t be fitting for a woman.

Piso twined his hand through her hair. “They can wait.”

“Mmm . . .” She kissed him drowsily. “Really?”

She hoped he’d stay, but he groaned and sat up. “No, you’re right. I should go.”

Cornelia robed him herself, brushing the slaves away as she brought out his finest toga. “Lift your arm—no, the other one—hold
still
—”

“I really am late,” Piso moaned.

“Blame it all on your lascivious wife.” She aligned the pleats along his shoulder.

“I intend to,” he said, mock stern. “And afterward I shall make you Augusta.”

Cornelia smiled demurely, hiding her excitement. Augusta, the title given to Emperor Augustus’s wife Livia in mark of her virtue and intelligence, giving her the power of sitting alongside her husband in political matters. “The Senate might not approve. I’m very young to be Augusta.”

“They’ll approve. It will be one of my first decrees.” Piso pulled a fold of his toga up over his head. “Though first, my dear, I shall see if I can persuade Galba to pay the Praetorians their bounty. They do expect it, and we don’t want them grumbling.”

“Who could grumble at you?”

His lips found hers and they kissed again until footsteps sounded outside. Piso immediately broke away, and Cornelia felt a little wistful urge that he would just keep kissing her—although of course, the heir to an empire must maintain the decorum due his station. She turned with a smile to see Centurion Drusus Densus in the door, helmet beneath his arm, two Praetorians in red and gold behind him. “We stand ready to escort you to the palace, Senator. Another detail has been assigned to your use.”

Cornelia felt a moment’s embarrassment at having been caught in a loose bed robe with her hair still hanging down her back but couldn’t repress a radiant smile. “I am pleased to put the safety of Rome’s next Emperor in your hands, Centurion.”

Densus smiled. “The pleasure is mine, Lady.”

“Stay with Lady Cornelia today, Centurion,” Piso ordered. “I’ll take the other detail to the barracks.”

“Yes, Senator.” Densus gave a crisp salute.

Piso did not kiss her good-bye, but he did squeeze her hand under cover of his toga’s folds.
“Augusta,”
he mouthed, and was gone: every inch an emperor. Even if it wasn’t proper to think so just yet.

Cornelia waited until he was out of earshot, then couldn’t resist giving a little squeal and whirling in a circle. A stifled laugh, and she realized the centurion was still standing in the doorway. She giggled at him, unable to stop herself. “I’m sorry, Centurion. I shall be more dignified soon, I promise.”

“I won’t tell, Lady.” He bowed. “Where shall I escort you this morning?”

“The Temple of Fortuna.” A sacrifice to the goddess of luck seemed very much in order. “And the Temple of Juno.” For a more personal sacrifice. “After that, I can rejoin my husband at the palace to hear the augurs give a pronouncement. And there’s sure to be a banquet this evening.”

Cornelia took more pains with her appearance than usual. Her hair went up into a more elaborate coil, she chose a
stola
in deep-green silk clasped with gold brooches at the shoulders, and she unhesitatingly took out the necklace Piso had given her at Lupercalia last year: a massive square-cut emerald on a slender gold chain, with square chunks of emerald for her ears. A simple matron might not wear jewels during the day, but the wife of an Imperial heir had to look the part. Galba would expect them to keep up appearances now (though Piso had already noted, dryly, that the Emperor had offered them no increase in allowance to help pay for an Imperial lifestyle). And even though Piso wouldn’t be Emperor until Galba died, Cornelia’s own duties as first lady of Rome would begin much sooner. Galba had no wife, no mother, no sisters—he would certainly call on Cornelia now to act as Imperial hostess!

Centurion Densus bowed very low when she finally appeared, pulling up a gold veil to cover her hair. “Empress,” he said.

“Not yet, Centurion,” Cornelia chided.

“Empress in spirit, Lady.” His eyes went over her admiringly. “Every inch.”

She could feel people whispering as she alighted from the litter before the shrine of Fortuna. “She’s to be Empress,” the whispers flew. “Her husband’s been named heir!” They made way even without the Praetorians clearing a path, and Cornelia knelt alone, center of all eyes, before the statue of Fortuna. The goddess of luck, carved in pink marble with her feet upon the wheel with which she turned the fortunes of men. The wheel that had spun Piso and Cornelia so high. She closed her eyes in heartfelt thanks, and the priests did not hesitate to bring out their best bullock to be sacrificed.

Cornelia rose, careful to avoid the spatters of blood. “She’s to be Empress,” the whisper went up again as she descended the steps.

“Those
emeralds
—”

Definitely, she had been right to wear the emeralds. Plebs were pleased by a bit of display.

The centurion beckoned for the litter, and Cornelia accepted the rough hand that helped her in. “Centurion,” she said impulsively as he made to fall back. “Speak with me a moment.”

“As you wish, Lady.” He fell into step beside the litter as it rose swaying, his eyes now level with Cornelia’s shoulder.

“What do you hear from the Praetorian barracks?” No better source of information than a bodyguard, Cornelia knew, and an empress should have her own sources. “Are they pleased with Galba’s choice of heir?”

“Well enough, Lady.” Guardedly.

“Speak freely, Densus.”

He hesitated, walking along sturdily, hand never far from his short
gladius
, scarlet plumes nodding over his head. Morning hawkers cried their wares on either side of the street, and the other litters, seeing the Praetorians, fell back to give Cornelia’s litter precedence. “They’d not care if the Emperor chose a mule, Lady, as long as he paid them their bounty.”

“And he hasn’t, yet.”

“No. Senator Otho, he passed out plenty of coin among the Praetorians—there’s those that liked him. My lot are better than that,” Densus hastened to say. “I don’t take any but the best. But most soldiers are greedy bastards, Lady.” He flushed. “I’m sorry—”

“No, you only speak truth.” Even the first lady of Rome could unbend a trifle, now and then—it would only encourage loyalty. “What do you hear of the legions in Germania—are they being, ah, greedy bastards too?”

“There’s a whisper they proclaimed Governor Vitellius as Emperor. But it’s just a whisper, Lady.”

“I can’t believe they’d be such fools,” Cornelia said dismissively. Senator Vitellius, well, he was a fat drunk who cared for nothing but feasts and chariot racing. “He’d never make a real emperor.”

“Senator Piso will.” The words surprised her. “He’ll be a fine one, Lady. Good and steady.”

Cornelia smiled behind her fan. “I’m sure he is glad to have your approval.”

“No disrespect, Lady.” Densus swatted a swarm of shouting urchins away from the litter. “But Praetorians see everything. Yesterday it was Nero, today it’s Galba, tomorrow it will be Senator Piso. I know emperors. He’ll do us fine.”

Better not to underestimate a common soldier’s eyes
, Cornelia decided. “I’m glad you think so, Densus.”

He smiled up at her, chestnut eyes friendly under the helmet’s crest of plumes, and Cornelia allowed him to take her arm when she alighted in the crowd before the shrine of Juno. A grand place in the Capitoline Temple, her statue as goddess of wives and mothers towering sternly beside the shrine of Jupiter. The steps thronged, as always, with women: young girls praying for luck in their forthcoming marriages, women far gone in pregnancy praying for an easy birth, matrons praying for grown sons and unruly daughters. Juno heard all.

Cornelia paid no attention to the murmurs this time, the ripple of speculation that greeted her emeralds and Praetorians. She just knelt, one among many, bowing her head.

Great Juno, an emperor must have a son and heir. Give me a son.
Surely with Fortuna’s wheel spinning herself and Piso so high, they would find good luck in this as well?

Eight years married, and never a sign of a child. Never a miscarriage. Never even one week’s lateness with her monthly bleeding.

Cornelia stared up at the stern marble face.
Oh, Juno. Just
hear
me
.

The crush was thicker as the Praetorians beat a path back to the litter—curious women crowding close to see every detail of their future Empress: what she wore, how she carried myself, what she looked like. Cornelia did not find it quite so comforting as she had before. She sighed a little as Densus assisted her back into the litter.

He spoke unexpectedly. “Juno will answer your prayers, Lady.”

“Prayers?” Cornelia blinked.

“For—whatever you pray for. She’ll hear you.” He fell back before Cornelia could wonder if he knew what it was she prayed for so hard.

 

“—so big and
golden
, Marcella, you can’t imagine! And so strong—he can hump me while standing up and holding me in the air, it’s absolutely divine. He was shy at first, but I just kept asking for massages until he got the idea—”

“—settled in well to the Reds stables, though there was a bout of bad grain. I’m not ruling out poison, those Blues will try anything—”

“Both of you hurry up,” Marcella said, not troubling to hide her annoyance. Lollia on one arm droning about her pet stud, Diana on the other droning about her blasted Reds—between the two of them, it was a wonder she wasn’t dead from boredom. Dear Fortuna, didn’t her cousins have
any
unexpressed thoughts? “Hurry up! I want to get to the Domus Aurea.”

“—don’t know why you had to drag us away from the Campus Martius,” Diana complained. “I was watching the tribunes race their teams. Not one of them fit to drive a real race, of course—”

“—to put it in words Diana can understand, Thrax is an absolute
stallion
!” Lollia was bubbling, oblivious. “I suppose I shouldn’t be saying such things, Diana being unmarried and all, but surely you know the facts of life, my honey. Horses are always humping each other.”

“Maybe so,” Marcella snapped, “but at least they don’t talk about it.”

On this cold and breezy winter day, the sun lay hidden behind blustery gray clouds. Somewhere Marcella heard thunder.
Not a good omen.
But all the omens had been bad since the turn of the year this past week, starting with the day when Piso had been presented at the Praetorian barracks. The bull sacrificed by the priests had been diseased, the liver malformed, and the soldiers had muttered that it meant grave ill fortune. But Galba had shouted at them, and they’d quieted.

Or had they?

The anteroom of the Domus Aurea was filled, anxious, jammed: armored guards, courtiers in fine lawn and jewels, slaves looking edgy. Despite the uneasy quiver in her stomach, Marcella couldn’t help looking around at Nero’s famous golden house. A sumptuous palace with three hundred feasting rooms and a hundred sculpted acres of pleasure gardens; a place for intrigue, for beauty, for trysts and secrets while Emperor Nero had sat toying with his silver lute and watching over all: a genial and not entirely sane god.

“Is this the first time you’ve been here?” Lollia whispered as they were ushered into the triclinium. “Since . . . ?”

“Yes.” Marcella looked up at the fanciful ceiling: carved ivory with hidden shutters, built to revolve slowly and send a mist of perfume and rose petals down over the guests. Now it was still and unlit. “At least I’m not the only guest this time.” That night last spring she
had
been alone, and the slaves had gotten confused and loaded the ceiling with not one but three different kinds of perfume. Marcella left not only feeling like a whore, but smelling like one.

“Don’t go,” her sister had advised her, hearing of Nero’s invitation. “You can’t let him dishonor you, even if he is Emperor!”

“Just tell him you’re sick,” Lollia had said.

But what real options had those been? Marcella’s father had been dead by then, and Lucius had been gone on one of his many journeys. Gaius had been oblivious to everything except his new duties as paterfamilias. Tullia, for all her carping about womanly virtue, would have shoved any of her sisters-in-law into the Emperor’s bed with her own hands to secure Imperial favor. Marcella had seen no option but to grit her teeth, dress in her finest, and go to the palace.

A very different palace now. Dusty and cold, the mosaics and frescoes unlit by lamps, half the furniture stripped away and sold for Galba’s greedy economies, and the smell on the air was sweat rather than rose petals.
Nero’s Golden House, golden no longer.