Daughters of Rome
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE - GALBA
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
PART TWO - OTHO
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
PART THREE - VITELLIUS
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
PART FOUR - VESPASIAN
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Epilogue
Historical Note
Characters
Teaser chapter
PRAISE FOR
Mistress of Rome
“What a great book!”
—Diana Gabaldon
“Equal parts intrigue and drama, action and good old-fashioned storytelling . . . Destined to please.”
—John Shors, bestselling author of Beneath a Marble Sky
“An intensely emotional spectacle . . . An exhilarating read.”
—Kate Furnivall,
national bestselling author of The Russian Concubine
“For sheer entertainment, drama, and page-turning storytelling, this tumultuous debut novel is well worth reading.”
—Library Journal
“Fans of Philippa Gregory’s books who have had enough of Elizabethan times will be entranced by this Rome-set debut. . . . Awash with historical detail, this is a violent, passionate, compelling read.”
—Elle (UK)
“A riveting tale . . . [A] cinematic-style, epic love story . . . Quinn’s evocation of Rome is glamorous and brutal, a heady mix of intrigue and combat . . . An exhilarating read.”
—Marie Claire (UK)
“A wildly entertaining read, this vivid tale of scandal and romance will have you holding your breath with excitement.”
—Now Magazine (UK),
Book of the Week Selection
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Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2011 by Kate Quinn
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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / April 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Quinn, Kate.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47895-0
PS3617.U578D38 2011
813’.6—dc22
2010032736
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Stephen
A.F. ∞
Prologue
A.D. 58
A hand.
Just a little girl’s hand like any other, plump-fingered and a little sticky, but for a moment he saw blood all over it.
“Interesting,” Nessus gulped. The girl stared up at him, expectant, and he looked at her palm again, hoping it had been a trick of the light. Maybe a shadow. But no, there it was: not a shadow but blood.
You’re seeing things, he told himself. You’re seeing things.
“What?” the child said, curious.
He swallowed a sudden burst of nervous laughter. Wasn’t an astrologer supposed to see things when he looked at the stars, or into a palm?
But he never had before, not once since he’d gotten started in this business. Astrology wasn’t about truth, after all—it was about pleasing the clients. Telling pregnant women that their stars foretold healthy sons; telling legionaries their futures held medals and glory. What successful astrologer told anybody there was enough blood in their hand to soak all Rome?
I could have run a wine shop. The sun was hot overhead, but Nessus felt chill sweat start to creep down his neck. I could have become a trader. But no, I had to become an astrologer. Reading stars, reading palms when business gets slow, oh, why didn’t I just open a wine shop? The only blood anybody saw in a wine shop came from drunks giving each other a swollen nose.
And the morning had started with such promise. Nessus had come early to the Forum Romanum, staking himself a place on the shady side where the afternoon sun wouldn’t beat down on his head like Vulcan’s hammer, and laid out his little display of star charts on threadbare silk. By noon he’d been commissioned for three horoscopes (payment on delivery), read the palm of a grain merchant and spoke mysteriously of fat profits coming on the next harvest; squinted at the hand of a giddy young woman and whispered of a rich husband. Nessus had just been mopping his already balding forehead on his sleeve and contemplating a jug of wine at the nearest tavern when four little girls arrayed themselves expectantly before him.
“We want you to read our futures,” the tallest had announced, and the rest promptly collapsed into giggles.
“There’s no time,” their nursemaid scolded, but Nessus looked them over with a practiced eye. Patrician girls, or he’d eat his straw sun hat: silk dresses, tooled leather sandals, veils over their hair to shield their skin. And patrician girls, even little ones like these, had coins to spend.
“Such futures ahead of you!” he intoned mysteriously. “Your stars sing to me of fame and fortune, beauty and love . . . two sesterces apiece, and cheap at the price. Which of you first?”
“Me, me!” Four hands presented themselves, variously grubby.
“No, me first, I’m the oldest! I’m Cornelia Prima, and that’s my sister, she’s Cornelia Secunda, and that’s Cornelia Tertia and Cornelia Quarta, they’re our cousins—”
Definitely patricians—only patricians had such a complete lack of imagination when it came to naming their daughters. Four girls born to one clan—undoubtedly the Cornelii!—and as was traditional, they’d all just been named Cornelia and then numbered in order. Nessus listened to their chatter with half an ear,
not bothering to figure out which girl was which. They ranged in age from perhaps thirteen to five or six: a girl with dark hair wound in a crown around her head, a taller girl with the beginnings of a bust, a scabby-kneed towhead and a plump little giggler.
“Yes, what a future!” He put on his most oracular voice, and the first of the girls leaned in with round eyes even as the nursemaid sighed impatiently behind. “A golden-haired man who loves you, and a long journey over water . . . now, for you, let’s see that hand. A dark stranger who adores you from the shadows, who turns out to be a prince in disguise . . . And for you a rich husband, yes, you’ll have six children and dress in silk all your days . . .”
He’d been congratulating himself on a nice fat fee when he got the last palm. His breath stopped in his throat then, and for a moment the whole busy Forum—the housewives bustling past with their baskets, the hoarse-voiced hawkers crying their wares, the stray dogs and noisy children and clouds of white summer dust—seemed to freeze in place.
“What is it?” the girl said again, looking at him quizzically. Nessus felt icy fingers dancing up and down his spine; he had to force himself not to drop her hand like a hot coal and go running around the Forum for a while shrieking. But threadbare young astrologers just getting started in the business of telling the future didn’t last long if they went around shrieking in front of the customers, so he forced a bright smile.
“Little mistress, you have a very grand future ahead of you. All little girls dream of wearing a crown, but you’re going to be Empress of Rome someday! Wife of the Emperor, with more jewels and slaves and palaces than you can count. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“I want to be an empress,” one of the other little Cornelias objected.
“No, me!”
“Horsie,” crowed the youngest, waving chubby fingers at a cart horse plodding by.
Nessus dropped the hand of Cornelia Number Three or Two or whichever one she was. I didn’t lie, he thought queasily. I just didn’t tell . . . all of it.
He looked at the other girls, the ones to whom he’d promised rich husbands and dark lovers and many children, just as he promised all girls, and now he could feel the sweat pouring down his body. Because he didn’t need to look at their hands anymore; he could see futures for all of them.
You’re ill, he told himself. That fish you ate last night. A piece of bad fish, and now you’re hallucinating.
But he wasn’t. Clear as day he saw widowhood for three of the four girls; a fair amount of misery for one and fame for another; a total of eleven husbands and eight children between them—and of course, that one little hand spilling over with blood.
The four girls went skipping off into the Forum after some new diversion, veils fluttering behind them. The nursemaid counted a few coins into Nessus’s hand, gave a censorious sniff at his threadbare tunic for good measure, and swished off after her charges. Nessus quickly packed up his star charts and headed to the nearest tavern.
He had had his first vision of the future, and he needed a drink.
“I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four emperors perished by the sword.”
—TACITUS
PART ONE
GALBA
June A.D. 68–January A.D. 69
“All pronounced him worthy of the empire, until he became emperor.”
—TACITUS
One
WE’RE going to a wedding, not a battle.” Marcella blinked as her sister came into the bedroom hauling a huge spear. “Or are you planning on killing the bride?”
“Don’t tempt me.” Cornelia sighed, looking up the length of the spear. “Lollia and her weddings . . . I sent my maid out for just the spearhead, but of course she came back with the whole spear. Put that pen down for once, won’t you, and help me get the shaft off.”
Marcella shoved her writing tablet to one side and rose from the desk. She and her sister tussled the spear between them, Cornelia yanking at the head and Marcella twisting the long shaft. “It’s not coming,” Marcella complained, just as the blade came loose and sent them tumbling in opposite directions. Marcella banged her elbow against the tiles and swore. Cornelia began a dignified reproof but started to giggle instead. Her stern, serene face cracked for just a moment into a little girl’s, bracketed by those deep dimples she disliked so much. Marcella started to giggle too.
“All this trouble,” she said ruefully, “just so you can part Lollia’s hair with a dead gladiator’s spearhead and give her a happy marriage. Did it work the first two times?”
“I have faith.”
“It didn’t work at my wedding either—”
“Enough!” Cornelia rose, holding out one elegantly ringed hand. Marcella took it and scrambled up. “Aren’t you ready yet? I swore I’d be there early to help Lollia.”
“I got wrapped up in chronicling Nero’s death,” Marcella shrugged. “You know I’m writing up Nero now? It’ll make a short account, but not as short as my history of Caligula.” “You and your scribbling!” Cornelia scolded, rummaging through Marcella’s dresses. “Here, wear your yellow . . . when did you change bedrooms?”
“When Tullia decided she preferred my view to her own.” Marcella made a face at the narrow little corner chamber that had recently become hers, tugging her plain wool robe over her head and dropping it on the narrow bed. “So our dear new sister-in-law got the nice bedchamber with the window over the garden, and I got the view of the kitchens and the mosaic with the cross-eyed nymphs. No, put that yellow dress back, I want the pale blue—”
“Pale blue, too plain,” Cornelia disapproved. “Don’t you ever want to be noticed?”
“Who’s going to be looking at me?” Marcella dived into the pale-blue stola, shivering in the November chill that crept into the bedchamber despite the drawn shutters. “For that matter, who’s going to be looking at the bride? You’re the one they all want to see—the future Empress of Rome.”
“Nonsense.” Cornelia looped the silver girdle about Marcella’s waist, but a little smile hovered at her lips.
“If it’s such nonsense, then why did you dress the part?” Marcella surveyed her sister: Cornelia Prima, twenty-four to Marcella’s twenty-one; the oldest of the four cousins collectively known as the Cornelias, and the only one of them not to get a nickname. A severely elegant figure in amber-brown silk, a wreath of topaz about her throat and coiled mahogany hair crowning her head like a diadem, her oval face as classic as any statue’s. As somber as any statue’s too, because when Cornelia smiled a dimple appeared on each side of her mouth, deep enough to sink a finger into, and she’d long since decided that dimples weren’t dignified. Smiling, she looked like the sister who had helped Marcella steal sweets from the kitchens when they were little girls. Unsmiling, Cornelia could have been a statue of Juno herself. “You look very queenly.”
“Not queenly enough. Oh, why didn’t I get your height?” Cornelia mourned, looking into the glass. “And your figure, and your nose—this little snub of mine just isn’t dignified.”
“Isn’t Imperial, you mean?”
“Don’t say it! You’ll spoil Piso’s luck.”
“Where is he, anyway?” Marcella reclaimed the mirror, coiling her hair quickly on her neck and reaching for the box of silver pins.
“He’ll come later, with the Emperor.” Cornelia’s voice sounded quite casual, but Marcella slanted a brow at her and she blushed. “Maybe the announcement will come today . . . ?”
Marcella didn’t bother asking what announcement. All Rome knew Emperor Galba needed an heir. And all Rome knew how highly Galba regarded Cornelia’s husband, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus . . .
The November morning had dawned blue and cold. Breath puffed white on the air as Marcella slipped down from the litter at the outdoor shrine of Juno and went to join the wedding guests already waiting. Cornelia had gone to assist the bride, still toting the spearhead. We
’ll see if it works any better this time, Marcella thought as she slipped in with a group of cousins, avoiding her brother and his loathsome new wife. At the shrine stood Lollia’s latest betrothed with his own entourage—Marcella had to admit he wasn’t an appetizing sight. Fifty-seven, bald, wrinkled, and glaring . . . but he was very eminent; consul and adviser to Emperor Galba. All Lollia’s husbands were eminent. The richest heiress in Rome can afford to choose.
Strains of music came fading through the crisp air at last, and the guests rustled. The bridal procession: flute players, slaves tossing flowers into the street . . . Lollia’s proud grandfather, born a slave and now one of the richest men in Rome, a festival wreath perched atop his wig . . . a curly-haired doll of a little girl, Lollia’s daughter from the first of her short marriages, beaming from her great-grandfather’s arms . . . Cornelia, regal as any empress, leading the bride by the hand to her newest husband . . . and the bride herself in her long white tunica: Cornelia Tertia, known to everyone as Lollia. Not the prettiest of the four cousins, most agreed, but Lollia did have a soft chin, a lush mouth that looked almost bruised, and merry painted eyes. Her mass of curls, dutifully parted by Cornelia with a gladiator’s spear to ensure luck for her coming marriage, had this month been dyed a violent red that clashed cheerfully with the flame-colored bridal veil. Lollia’s kohl-rimmed eye gave a wink to Marcella as she passed, and Marcella smothered a snort of laughter.