by Kate Quinn
And now, Vitellius.
From what Marcella knew of him, he was just a big, beery, bleary sportsman. Not too clever; surely a pawn in the hands of other ambitious men. What could be done with Vitellius?
She sat down on the worn mossy bench, looking out over the city. Rome. She had written Rome’s history in a dozen careful scrolls, but what good were her histories? A woman’s writings could never be published, would never be read. She’d written them anyway, thinking there was nothing else to do. Because women didn’t make history, of course. They could only be the watchers.
But now here she was, Lady Cornelia Secunda known as Marcella, looking down at all Rome with three emperors lying dead at her feet. No one else knew they were there—not the husband who despised her, not the sister who made pained expressions about her writing, not the idiot cousins who cared only for lovers and horses. None of them knew. But I know. Marcella laughed aloud, imagining the look on Tullia’s face if she knew her hated sister-in-law had brought down three emperors.
Making history was much better than writing it.
“Marcella.” A harsh voice behind her. “I went to your house. The slaves said you went out, so I followed your litter.”
“Goodness, Domitian.” She turned and smiled at the stocky figure coming up the slope toward her. “Such devotion.”
“Every day you were gone, I prayed for your safety.” His black eyes had never been so intent. “Nessus said you’d be safe, but I didn’t believe him till I heard the news.”
“Well, you did say your Nessus was never wrong.” Domitian . . . younger son to the brilliant and shrewd Vespasian, who was Governor of Judaea and who had the only army in the Empire to match that of Vitellius. Vespasian had sworn loyalty to Galba, to Otho—would he swear loyalty to Vitellius now? His own men had wanted to make him Emperor after Nero died, or so Marcella had heard . . .
“Thank the gods you’re unharmed,” Domitian said roughly, and seized her.
“Yes, yes, I’m unharmed.” She laughed, pushing him as he began tugging at her skirts, but there was surprising strength in his arms. He dragged her down to the grass, pushing himself inside her before his lips even landed on hers. His eager tongue filled her mouth to gagging, but a savage little tendril uncoiled in Marcella’s stomach and suddenly she was ravenous. She locked her thighs around him and began tearing at his tunic, sinking her teeth into his cheek when he tried to kiss her again. He buried his face in her breasts but she slapped him away, panting as she crushed him down into the grass. She raked his chest with her nails, drawing blood as she rode him. He cried out in the falling dusk, spasming, and Marcella bared her teeth at the sky.
“You’re mine,” he gasped, clutching her. “You’re mine.”
No, you’re the one who belongs to me. She rolled off him, pulling her torn stola around herself. Domitian. Vespasian’s son. What can I do with you?
She’d have to be stealthy, of course. Sneaky, underhanded. But why not? Every time she’d tried to be forthright this year—with her husband, with her brother, with anyone—she’d been ignored, brushed aside, or outright stepped on. Had she ever gotten her own way with honesty? Not once. Only by stealth.
The sun had sunk below the horizon now. The stars were out, shining in a blue-purple sky over the torch-lit city. Rome. The city that in this year alone, even though it was only spring, had already seen three emperors.
Marcella wondered idly, Why not four?
PART THREE
VITELLIUS
April A.D. 69–December A.D. 69
“Had he lived much longer . . . the empire would not have been sufficient for his appetite.”
—JOSEPHUS
Twelve
CORNELIA couldn’t stop herself from smiling, even when Lollia hurled a hairbrush at the mirror.
“That’s it.” Lollia scowled as her maids made soothing noises and swept up the fragments. “I’m done. This is the last wedding. Vitellius had better hang on to his throne, because three husbands in one year are enough.”
Lollia kept scowling and muttering as her maids disposed of the broken mirror and began draping her curls with the red bridal veil. Cornelia just lay back on the couch, smiling up at the carved blue marble ceiling and jingling the bangles on her wrist. She’d put on a bright yellow dress for the wedding, stacked gold bracelets on both arms, and gathered her dark hair into a gold circlet dipping low on the forehead. She’d put her black off the minute she heard the news of Otho’s death. The minute she knew Piso was avenged.
Cornelia drank a silent toast to that now, emptying her cup of summer-light rose wine in a gulp, and rose restlessly. “Let me fix your hair, Lollia. Those plaits aren’t straight in back.”
“Have at it. I suppose I should be grateful you’re at least talking to me again.”
“Well, I’ve come to see it wasn’t your fault,” Cornelia said generously, repinning Lollia’s unruly plaits. “Supporting Otho, I mean. It wasn’t your idea to marry his brother, after all.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Lollia said shortly. “So you’d better not be expecting an apology, because I didn’t do anything wrong.”
They eyed each other a moment in the looking glass the maids had brought to replace the broken one. Lollia yanked a stray thread out of her sleeve with unnecessary force. Cornelia slid a jeweled pin into the piled red curls. “Will the Emperor be coming to your wedding feast?” she murmured, conciliatory.
“He’d better,” Lollia scowled. “Two hundred thousand sesterces my grandfather spent on the feast, all because Vitellius has a taste for delicacies. The cooks are in an uproar.”
Cornelia thought of the newest Emperor’s pleasant beefy face. Vitellius had taken a slow triumphal procession through Italy after the victory at Bedriacum, stopping in every town to be feted and feasted. Spring had fluttered away into a liquid, molten summer before Vitellius made his entry into Rome: walking along on foot, followed by the proud eagles of the legions, the legionaries in smart formation, the German auxiliaries in their wolf skins. Cornelia had stared eagerly at the new Emperor as he climbed the Capitol to make a sacrifice to Jupiter for his victory: a tall man with a slight limp, massive shouldered and massive bellied, ruddy-faced and beaming. A big, rugged, good-natured sportsman. Not a treacherous perfumed sophisticate like Otho.
“—know if Diana will even come today?” Lollia was grumbling. “She’s gotten very strange. Keeps disappearing and coming back with bruises all over. Well, maybe it’s better if she doesn’t come. Emperor Vitellius is a Blues fan, and we don’t want her cursing him to his face.” Lollia tilted her head, regarding her rouged cheeks in the mirror. “Will Marcella come, at least?”
“I don’t know.” Cornelia gave a last pat to Lollia’s piled hair, and retreated back to her couch. “She’s still very withdrawn—you know, after what happened at Brixellum.”
“Did anything happen to her at Brixellum?” Lollia sounded tart. “She didn’t seem all that terribly scarred to me, when she came back. She still doesn’t. ‘Oh, poor me, I had to watch a battle.’ Just like that incident with Emperor Nero, whatever it was—a convenient excuse to duck everything she doesn’t want to do.”
Cornelia shifted uncomfortably. It didn’t matter if she privately agreed—she still always defended her sister. “You shouldn’t say that, Lollia.”
“Isn’t it true?”
“Of course not.” Cornelia thought of Gaius’s last dinner party, the most recent set of races at the Circus Maximus, Lollia’s last betrothal feast—Marcella had ducked them all. “I can’t face it,” she said, her eyelids trembling, and everyone was quick to urge her to lie down and rest. Only whenever Cornelia ventured up to her little study, she didn’t appear to be resting . . . more like sitting at her desk with a pen in her hand and a gleam in her eyes. “Won’t you tell me about Brixellum?” Cornelia said. “I’d understand, you know—I’m not Tullia.”
“What’s to tell?” Marcella shrugged—a hard shrug, Cornelia thought. “Another emperor
died. We’re getting rather a lot of that, this year.”
“I wouldn’t have minded seeing Otho die.” Savage satisfaction coiled in Cornelia’s stomach. “I wish I’d been with you at Brixellum. So I could have spit on his corpse.”
“I don’t think you would have.” Marcella sounded thoughtful. “He died quite heroically, you know.”
“My husband died heroically too!”
Marcella’s thoughtfulness had vanished in a smooth blink. “Of course he did.”
Cornelia looked at her sister’s impassive face. “. . . Should I leave you alone?”
“I’m very tired,” Marcella said at once. “Ever since Brixellum . . .”
“Ever since Brixellum, you’ve been shutting me out!” Cornelia snapped, and stamped off.
Lollia was surveying herself in the mirror, still chattering gloomily. “Rubies,” she said to her maid. “I’d better remind Fabius exactly how rich I am. It’s all he’s interested in, after all.” She held out both arms for the ruby cuffs to be shackled about her wrists and tipped her head back for the heavy shoulder-sweeping earrings.
“So, this new husband of yours—does he suit you?” Cornelia dragged her thoughts away from her sister, back to the niceties. For months she’d been so consumed by grief and then by vengeance that she’d had no time for polite conversation—and of course, she had hardly been talking to Lollia anyway. But now all could be forgiven. “Commander Fabius Valens,” Cornelia smiled. “Your grandfather certainly didn’t waste any time catching him for you.”
“Grandfather didn’t do a thing. Fabius spent a few days sniffing out the city’s richest heiresses and came knocking right on my door. And Grandfather wasn’t pleased, I’ll have you know—he likes to check all my husbands out thoroughly, make sure they’re decent sorts before anyone starts talking wedding plans. But Vitellius gave his generals their pick of any bride in the city as rewards, so Grandfather didn’t have any choice in the matter and neither did I.” Lollia sighed. “Well, if it wasn’t Fabius Valens, it would just be somebody else.”
“A man of very little family,” Cornelia sniffed, but tolerantly. Fabius Valens might be a common adventurer but he was Vitellius’s right-hand man, the winning general of Bedriacum—the man who had defeated Otho.
“Vitellius thinks the world of him.” Lollia twisted a massive pearl-and-ruby ring into place. “We’re to live in the Domus Aurea for the time being, but Fabius has informed me he’ll have a palace of his own by the end of the week. I think he’s booting Senator Quintilius out of his huge new place on the Caelian Hill with all the water gardens.” She gave a little sigh. “He’s already turned some praetor out of a summer villa in Baiae. And he confiscated poor Salvius’s house in Brundisium.”
“Poor Salvius.” In the wake of Otho’s death, Cornelia could feel tolerant toward his brother. He’d returned to Rome with a great deal less swagger than he’d left it, small and ordinary without his brother’s cloak of power. “Not even cracking his knuckles anymore,” Lollia had said rather sadly. Vitellius let him live, at least for the time being, but everyone in Rome avoided his company. Lollia’s grandfather had prudently arranged a divorce for his little jewel, reclaiming her dowry down to its last aureus, and not two days later Fabius Valens came along and snapped her up.
“There.” Lollia surveyed herself without much joy. The maids clustered around her to add a final dusting of powder or a jeweled hairpin—her cosmetician, her hairdresser, her manicurist, her dresser, her seamstress, and the girl who looked after her skin; all arrayed like centurions with attending slave girls filed behind like legionaries, and all beaming pride in their handiwork. “Don’t I look marvelous.” Lollia made a face, but she passed out coins freely among all the maids. “Sorry about the mirror. You all go have yourselves a day off. Likely it’ll be a better day than mine.”
Cornelia flicked her cup aside and followed Lollia out. For three of Lollia’s previous weddings, she had acted as bridal escort. But now it was Tullia who stood waiting for Lollia with the rest of the bridal party, fussing with her coral silks and snapping at her four-year-old son Paulinus.
“Well, well.” Tullia looked Lollia up and down. “A new husband for the summer. Let’s hope you keep this one longer.”
“I’m surprised you’ve kept Gaius as long as you have,” Lollia said sweetly. “Marcus Norbanus had the patience of a god for putting up with that voice of yours as long as he did. Like fingernails on slate.”
Tullia tossed her false ringlets, ignoring little Paulinus, who was climbing determinedly up onto the rim of the fountain. “Gaius doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Dear, you haven’t let Gaius get a word in edgewise for months. Who’s to know what he thinks about anything anymore?”
“So lovely to see little Paulinus again,” Cornelia put in quickly, hauling Tullia’s son off the fountain’s rim. “Has Marcus come too?”
“No, didn’t you hear?” Tullia yawned. “Vitellius had him imprisoned for something or other, so I’ve got Paulinus for the time being. I may send him out of the city for a while. I certainly don’t want anyone associating the Norbanus name with me anymore.”
Poor Marcus. Cornelia had been profoundly shocked when she first heard the news, and still couldn’t help a pang of unease every time she thought of it. Marcus Norbanus, imprisoned for the crime of carrying Emperor Augustus’s blood in his veins . . . surely Vitellius would release him soon? It was a new era now. Nothing bad could happen now that Otho was dead, nothing.
Well, at the very least, she could see little Paulinus well cared for during his father’s imprisonment. Especially since Tullia was about as maternal as a stone. . . . Cornelia had always adored Paulinus, vigorous funny little charmer that he was. “You can chase frogs later,” she chided, pulling him back from the fountain again. “Juno’s mercy, Paulinus, you need a haircut! I’ll do it myself tomorrow, and then I promise I’ll play with you all day—”
“Oh, gods.” Lollia sent a page to fetch her grandfather from the triclinium, where he was fussing over the banquet arrangements. “Almost time to begin, and where’s Fabius?”
Tullia eyed Lollia’s rubies—bigger than her own. “Perhaps he got tired of you a little quicker than the others.”
“It’s my money he wants, Tullia dear, and how does one get tired of money? Certainly you never do.” Lollia smiled. “Fortunately, it should take Fabius longer to run through mine than it’s taking you to run through Gaius’s. You certainly sucked Marcus dry before you divorced him.”
“I have other charms besides money to offer my husbands,” Tullia snapped.
“Like what?” said Lollia. “Rome’s driest hump under the sheets?”
Lollia’s grandfather appeared then, tugging his wig into place, and glowered at them all. Tullia subsided with a disapproving sniff, and Lollia came forward to kiss little Flavia, who beamed from her great-grandfather’s arms with a wreath of festival flowers in her curly hair. Juno’s mercy, Cornelia thought, Flavia’s the only one smiling. The wedding procession toiled grimly out the door.
“Would you like to walk with me, Paulinus?” Cornelia asked, since his mother was utterly ignoring him.
“Yes, please,” he said sunnily, slipping his hand into hers. “My mama hates weddings.”
“Does she?”
“Maybe she just hates Aunt Lollia’s weddings.” He considered. “Or Aunt Lollia.”
“Quando tu Gaius, ego Gaia.” Another wedding. Cornelia made a saddle of her hip for Paulinus to sit on, watching Lollia’s rubies blink in the sunlight like dozens of crimson eyes, watching the priest look irked as the absence of Lollia’s husband-to-be held up the ceremony, watching Fabius Valens bound up the steps at last with a band of his officers and German auxiliaries behind him. What a strange lot they all were, rough provincials with shaggy hair and scarred arms and rough-edged Latin. So different from Galba’s entourage of sober toga-clad senators and Otho’s crowd of elegant courtiers. Hardly Romans at all—but however rough Fabiu
s Valens might be, he and his men and their accents, they were now the kingmakers of Rome. Yesterday he was nobody, Cornelia marveled as Lollia’s newest betrothed repeated his vows with a wink at his men. Just an ordinary legionary commander. Today everyone’s bowing and scraping in his presence. What strange times they lived in.
Fabius Valens was a handsome man at least—Cornelia was glad of that, for Lollia’s sake. He stood tall and dark and well-built in the breastplate he had not bothered to remove for his wedding, forty-six years old but as vigorous as a man half his age. His eyes resting appreciatively on Lollia’s rubies, he grinned his way through the ceremony. The sacrificial bull panicked on the steps of the altar and required three strokes of the knife before the neck could be opened. A bad omen, but when were any of Lollia’s weddings well-omened?
Cornelia felt her sister at her side, silent and indifferent in pale green embroidered with jade beads. “Are you all right?” she whispered.
“Of course,” Marcella said, bland. The same look she gave everyone else in the family when they pried, only she used to follow it with a private wicked glance behind their backs that was all for Cornelia. But Cornelia couldn’t see any sign of that sisterly gleam now. Since when did she start lumping me with them? Just another family member to be tolerated?
“Gaius!” Tullia’s hissing whisper came behind them. “Why didn’t you buy me those sapphires I wanted? Everyone else is jeweled to the skies!”
