Daughters of Rome

by Kate Quinn

  “Did I have a choice? My house was confiscated!”

  “—you owe it to me to make a good marriage!” Tullia took her arm, towed her from the bedchamber and down the stairs. At the foot of the steps, Gaius shuffled nervously from foot to foot as Tullia yanked his sister past.

  “Gaius—” Cornelia wrenched her arm out of Tullia’s grip, turning to her brother. They had never been close growing up, but surely—“I’m your sister, Gaius. Please—”

  But Gaius just gave her a guilty smile as Tullia grabbed her by the wrist again and towed her past. “Pinch your cheeks,” Tullia told her. “You’re pale as a corpse. Go out to the garden, they’re waiting by the fountain.”

  “Tullia, I will not—”

  Cornelia rocked back as her sister-in-law’s ringed hand flashed out and slapped her, first one cheek and then the other, so hard tears sprang to her eyes. “At least that gives you some color,” Tullia said, and shoved Cornelia out toward the garden. “Now smile!”

  Two officers in breastplates and greaves turned at the sound of footsteps. “Lady Cornelia,” Fabius Valens smiled, and they both bowed. The other man’s face was just a blur in her eyes. She forced back the tears that had come to her eyes, hearing Tullia click away behind her. Ahead, the fountain threw its spray high in the air behind her prospective suitor, glittering in the sunlight; a dazzling aureole behind his head. The moss was soft and green underfoot, every bush was exploding into bloom, and the smell of jasmine hung on the air. A garden full of flowers, a perfect summer day, a waiting suitor, Cornelia thought distantly. A thousand poems begin like this. She descended the two marble steps into the garden but couldn’t feel the ground under her feet.

  Fabius took possession of her elbow. Her skin crawled at his touch, but he was all smiles today. “You know Caecina Alienus, of course?”

  The man bowed—her next husband—and Cornelia saw the thin handsome face through a haze. Alienus, another of Vitellius’s most trusted advisers, a Roman who had been in Germania so long that he wore shaggy hair and trousers like a tribesman and drank German mead at banquets until he was soddenly unconscious. He grinned, his eyes crawling over her body, and contempt warred in her stomach with nausea.

  “—Emperor will give a wedding feast for you, of course. He’s always valued you, Alienus—”

  Alienus tipped his head back, half-turning Cornelia for a look at her haunches, and rage choked her throat—rage at Tullia and her brother. I was the wife of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus, Imperial heir, descendant of Crassus and Pompey Magnus. And now they sell me to a man like this.

  “—don’t mind if you take her to Baiae after the wedding, Alienus. If you want to try out your wife for a few days, I can handle matters here—”

  It had been winter when Piso came to ask for Cornelia’s hand. He’d gone to her father first, as was proper, and afterward they had been allowed a few moments to walk in the frozen garden, breath steaming white on the air. She had been too excited to feel the cold.

  “—give you a house on the Aventine, the one with the pink marble columns. It’s got a spectacular view over the Tiber—”

  “I know that house,” Cornelia managed to say. “Doesn’t it belong to Senator Septimus Fulvius?”

  Fabius smiled. “Now it belongs to your new husband.”

  Cornelia wanted her own house back, the one where she’d spent eight years of married life. The mosaics with their twining vines and buds, the frescoes of acanthus leaves and bunches of grapes, the statues she’d chosen herself for each niche. Long since confiscated, and doubtless now belonging to some other opportunistic thug.

  “—do a great deal of entertaining, of course. The Emperor expects a feast every time he comes to dine, sixty courses at least, but you’ll manage. You’ll do a damned sight better than that stupid slut I married.”

  Cornelia rallied. “You will not call my cousin—”

  “I suppose I should settle matters with your brother.” Fabius overrode her, rising businesslike from the fountain’s edge. “The dowry and so forth. It won’t take long. Gives you two a chance to know each other.”

  “My dowry isn’t much,” Cornelia managed to say, looking past Fabius to the shaggy Alienus. “You could find a much richer wife than me, sir.”

  “I want you.” The first words he had spoken. He had a guttural voice like a German.

  “I’m barren,” she said desperately. “Eight years I was married to my last husband, and no sign of a child—surely you want a wife who can give you sons?”

  “If I want sons,” he grinned, “I’ll just get another wife. Keep you for a concubine.”

  Fabius guffawed, and Cornelia looked at him. He’s enjoying himself even more than Alienus. She wondered how long Fabius Valens had looked at patrician girls like her, aloof untouchable girls he could never have. He can have us all now, either to take for his own or dispose of as he likes. We’re all his, and we hate it. He likes that.

  “I’m busy with the new Praetorian Prefects all afternoon,” Fabius was saying, “but you’ll both dine with me tonight. Dusk—no, better make it an hour after.”

  It’s your duty, Cornelia reminded herself. Your duty.

  She nodded, and Alienus’s hard fingers closed on hers.

  “Your betrothed’s a pretty one, Alienus.” Fabius’s fingers brushed along her arm. “Maybe she and I should dine alone tonight instead. I’ll try her out for you.”

  His fingers brushed along her breast, closing on the nipple. Cornelia sank her teeth into the inside of her lip. Duty. Duty.

  His smile broadened, fingers stroking her as he looked at the grinning Alienus. She could smell his hair pomade. “I’ll see she’s wet for your wedding.”

  Cornelia threw his hand away and slapped his grinning face, as she would have slapped an insolent slave. “Go to Hades, you sticky little pleb.” She jerked her hand from Alienus’s. “And take your German thug with you.”

  She turned and stalked away, past the fountain with its sparkling spray, past the slave who stood ready with a congratulatory flagon of wine, past Gaius where he waited to give his formal consent to the betrothal. “Cornelia?” he said, puzzled, but she walked straight past him to the stairs, to her bedchamber, and shut the door. It was quiet inside, cooling the blood that thundered in her ears. Probably the last quiet she would get in quite some time. Cornelia sat on the bed, waiting. Didn’t have to wait long.

  “Why, WHY?” Tullia shrieked, banging through the door. “You told the Emperor’s right-hand man to go to Hades—you selfish, selfish, inconsiderate—”

  “In future, Tullia,” Cornelia said coldly, “I would rather you didn’t eavesdrop on my marriage proposals.”

  “Gaius—!”

  “Now, now, I’m sure there’s no harm done.” Gaius tried a coaxing tone. “A man like Fabius Valens isn’t one to be put off by a flighty woman. He’ll be back, and with a proper apology Cornelia can still—”

  “No apology,” Cornelia said. “No marriage. No arguments. I will not marry any of Fabius Valens’s thugs, and if he comes back I’ll tell him so again.”

  “But you must!” Gaius turned red to match Tullia’s purple. “You know what he said to me on the way out? ‘Keep your women in better order, Senator—’ ”

  “You think a man like that won’t be vindictive?” Tullia screeched. “He could cook up charges against us, have our property confiscated—”

  “With Diana in such favor with the Emperor, I doubt it,” Cornelia said. But Gaius rode over her.

  “You want to ruin this family, Cornelia? These are different times! It’s for me to say who you will marry—”

  “Yes, and if you made a proper match for me, I’d consider it!” Cornelia flashed back. “But you’re just shoving me into the bed of some German savage for an Imperial favor or two—no, don’t look at her!” As his eyes crept to Tullia. “I know this was all her idea. But you’re master here, Gaius, not her. Grow a spine!”

  “This is all your fault, Gaius!�
�� Tullia rounded on him. “If you hadn’t indulged her in everything she wanted, her and all the rest of your cousins—”

  “What’s all the shouting?” Marcella blinked from the doorway, still holding a pen.

  “Your sister has refused to marry Fabius Valens’s friend!” Tullia screamed. “Refused!”

  Marcella looked at her sister a moment. “Not very wise,” she said at last. “Though I wouldn’t want to marry any of his friends either.” She wrinkled her nose in sympathy and went away again, tucking her pen behind her ear, and Cornelia spared a split second in all the chaos to choke on a wave of pure fury at her sister. She could have used Marcella’s support in all this screaming abuse, Marcella’s comforting arm at her waist and Marcella’s voice backing up hers. Once, Marcella wouldn’t have left her to face it alone—it would have been the two of them, shoulder to shoulder against the storm. But now, if it takes her away from her writing and scheming, it’s too much to ask.

  Cornelia staggered then as Tullia flew across the room and began raining slaps wildly down around her head. “Selfish slut—you need a husband; one of Fabius’s favorites could protect this family—we’re all on a precipice with emperors changing every month! Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m not you,” Cornelia managed to say, warding off the slaps. “I’m not a whore.”

  Tullia began to choke and weep, her face the color of a pomegranate, and Gaius pulled her off. The slaves rushed in making soothing noises, and Cornelia put her hands over her ears and walked out of the room. She went down the stairs again, past the staring slaves, past little Paulinus who with his father in prison was still trailing forlornly about the house. “Aunt Cornelia?” he said hopefully around his thumb, but though she would usually pick him up and fuss over him and spend an afternoon playing games with him, Cornelia just dropped a kiss on his forehead and kept walking, out the front door.

  She walked past the bathhouse where she had so often met with Vitellius’s supporters, passing the information that helped put Vitellius on the throne and bring Fabius Valens to power. How stupid I was. An acquaintance called out from the bathhouse gate, a matron in a blue stola, and Cornelia turned in the opposite direction, down a narrow little street with cramped houses.

  Maybe I’ll be exiled. She felt very calm and cold. Tullia was right; a man like Fabius Valens would be vindictive if Cornelia kept refusing him, would want revenge even if their family was in favor with the Emperor. Exile—a little island covered in sea grass, perhaps. At least it would be quiet. All Cornelia wanted was quiet. She heard the raucous voices of a forum somewhere up ahead and turned down another dim little side street.

  If they make me marry that thug, I’ll kill myself on the wedding day. Diana can bring my head out to the ceremony, and he can kiss it if he wants, but that’s all he’ll get of me.

  Cornelia halted, looking around. How long had she been walking? It wasn’t a quarter of town she knew. Not a quarter of town she wanted to know either—tenements leaning crookedly overhead, the smell of sewage leaking along the gutters. A stray dog bared its teeth, slinking by, and a crowd of naked children ran past, shouting and chasing one another. Two ragged women in a low doorway whispered behind their hands, and Cornelia was suddenly conscious of her fine linen, her tooled sandals, her gold-and-ebony earrings. Perhaps I’ll be robbed and murdered before Fabius can even order my execution. She reversed her steps, looking for the turn that had taken her from the Palatine Hill into the slums, but found only more tenements, more dim streets, more foul smells. A cluster of manure-stained mule drovers staggered past, stinking of wine, whooping. Cornelia put up her chin, forcing herself not to hurry. She’d have to ask for directions . . . there was a man on a stool, leaning against a dingy tenement wall and looking up the street. At least he appeared sober.

  “Excuse me,” she said, approaching, and halted as he looked up. “. . . Centurion?”

  “Not Centurion,” said Drusus Sempronius Densus. “I was thrown out of the Praetorian Guard, Lady. Or didn’t you know?”

  “. . . I heard. It was very unjust.”

  He shrugged, very different now from the proud soldier in his breastplate and red plumes. Just a stockily built man in a rough tunic, sitting against the wall of a slum tenement. His eyes were flat and unfriendly.

  “I’m lost.” Cornelia felt foolish.

  “Thought you must be.” The old tone of dogged courtesy had utterly gone. “Don’t usually see patrician ladies in the slums otherwise.”

  “Can you show me the way out?”

  “Give me those earrings of yours, and I will.”

  Cornelia’s hand flew up to the gold-and-ebony drops swinging by her throat. “My earrings—”

  “I don’t draw my centurion’s pay anymore, Lady. I need money.”

  She pulled off the earrings Piso had given her and dropped them into Drusus Densus’s callused hand. He came up off his stool in one swift movement, gesturing to the doorway behind him. “I should tell the madam I’ll be gone.”

  “The madam—?”

  “Wait inside. You’ll be robbed if you stand out here alone.”

  Gingerly, Cornelia followed him through the low doorway. A dark hall beyond, ragged strips of cloth curtaining off niches. There was a perch for cloaks by the first door, but she came closer and saw that it was a crude little statue of the god Priapus with his leer and his huge jutting phallus. Then she got a look at the fading frescoes that lined the walls and felt herself turning red.

  “Room at the end, Lady,” said Densus curtly. “Wait there unless you want to be taken for the new girl.”

  He disappeared into one of the curtained alcoves, and Cornelia fled down the passage. She heard moans from behind the thin curtains, panting, rhythmic thumping. A man brushed past, adjusting his belt, and Cornelia fell gratefully into the last room and shut the door. You’re no innocent girl, she reminded herself. You know what a whorehouse is. But she still felt herself blushing, and looked hastily around the empty room.

  It was small, painfully neat, chokingly hot. There was a narrow bed that sagged in the middle, a stool, an unlit lamp. A niche in the wall with two crude figurines. She picked them up. Mars and Minerva, gods of war and strategy. A soldier’s gods.

  The door banged as Densus came in. Cornelia turned, still holding the little statues. “You live here.”

  “Shocked, Lady?” He rummaged under the thin mattress.

  “. . . No.”

  “I throw out the customers if they get rough on the girls. In return, the madam lets me have the room.” He retrieved his short gladius from under the mattress.

  “You kept that?”

  “I earned it. Twelve years in the Praetorian Guards.” He scowled at the edge, rummaged under the mattress again, and came up with a whetstone.

  She gestured at the little room around them. “You don’t decorate much, do you?” Striving for a little lightness.

  “Keep anything here but the household gods and the bed, and it’ll get stolen.” He rasped the whetstone down the short blade. “The whores lift anything that isn’t nailed down.”

  Cornelia sat on the rickety little stool. “Maybe you shouldn’t take me home. My family knows what you look like, and the slaves—someone might turn you in.”

  “You could turn me in, Lady.” He tossed the whetstone aside.

  “I won’t. And even if I did, I don’t think anyone would listen to me. I’m very unpopular with the Vitellians right now. At least some of them.”

  “Are you a traitor too?” He turned his back on her, rummaging for his cloak.

  “Maybe. Commander Valens wants me to marry one of his officers, you see.”

  “That’s not treason.”

  “It might be if you tell him to go to Hades.” Cornelia smiled, feeling very light inside somehow. “Maybe I’ll be arrested when I go home.”

  “You can’t be arrested for refusing a marriage proposal, Lady.”

  “You can now.” She s
hrugged. “You can be arrested for anything the Vitellians don’t like. So maybe you’d better steer clear.”

  “I’m not giving your earrings back either way, so I might as well take you.” Densus turned, a rough brown cloak over one arm. “Let’s go.”

  Cornelia looked up at him from the stool. “My sister was at Bedriacum. She said you fought very bravely.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  “They never should have accused you of treason.” Rising. “I know you didn’t sell Galba and Piso—”

  “Generous of you, Lady.” His chestnut eyes stared into hers. “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “You’re glad I was booted out of the guard, aren’t you? You think I deserved it. I didn’t save Senator Piso, did I, so I’m not worthy to be a Praetorian.”

  “No.” She fell back a step under his rage.

  “You think I’ll bow and feel grateful, because you’re telling me I’m not a traitor? Think I’ll apologize again for getting your precious husband killed?” Densus hurled his cloak down. “Piss on that, Lady. I did my best to save him. It wasn’t good enough, but I did my best. I’m done apologizing.”

  He turned away, his breath coming harsh and fast in the little room. Cornelia saw his hand opening and closing on the hilt of the gladius and addressed the tense knotted back. “I never thought you should have been thrown out of the Praetorians. You’re the best of them. Better than the Prefects who give you your orders—”

  “The ones you let suck on your neck behind closed curtains?” Densus swung around again, jaw clamped. “Not much of a compliment.”

  “I wanted information,” she said miserably. “The Prefect gave me information, and I passed it on to the Vitellians. I just wanted Otho dead—”

  “Well, it worked. You like the results?” Densus flung the sheathed gladius across the room. It crashed into the little niche, and the figurines of Mars and Minerva tumbled over with a tinny rattle. “All you meddling patrician bitches, playing with lives—”

  “I didn’t mean—”