Daughters of Rome

by Kate Quinn

  “I think we can unharness them now.” Marcella rubbed her bare arms again. “I doubt we’ll see any marauding legionaries this morning. They’ll all be too busy sleeping off their hangovers and guarding their loot.” She gestured at the horses. “Can I help?”

  “Fetch them some water? There’s a well outside.”

  Marcella lugged four buckets over, two at a time, as Diana began unbuckling straps and traces. The first stallion shook himself in relief as the bridle slid over his ears, and Diana murmured loving nonsense at him.

  “You really were splendid, Diana.” Marcella heaved up a bucket for the horse to drink. “Lollia says you saved her and Cornelia, and I don’t doubt it.”

  “You were the one in real danger.” Diana unbuckled the breastplate from the old stallion’s heavy chest, looking at Marcella. “What were you doing down there in the Campus Martius?”

  Marcella shrugged. “I wanted to see what would happen.”

  “You could have died.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” She smiled. “You saved me, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.” Diana rubbed the second stallion’s silky nose as he started eagerly for the water bucket. “We might all be dead if Vitellius hadn’t given me the horses.”

  “Vitellius?”

  “He was hiding in the Blues stable.” She hauled an armload of harness to one side. “I spoke with him. He was . . .”

  “What?” Marcella asked eagerly. “Tell me!”

  Diana looked at her. “Nothing. He gave me the horses. I suppose he’s dead now.”

  “Do you have to be so close-mouthed?” Marcella said, exasperated.

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Diana looped ropes about two of the arched chestnut necks, and the stallions followed her docile as ponies to their stalls. Marcella rolled her eyes. But by the time Diana put up all four horses with hay and more fond words, Lollia and Cornelia were awake and there was no more privacy to press Diana for her secrets. The one time she knows anything interesting, Marcella thought, is the one time she keeps her mouth shut!

  “Juno’s mercy, whenever did you find time to pack?” Cornelia was asking as Lollia rummaged in her satchel and triumphantly produced a packet of bread and cheese.

  “Well, I resigned myself to a noble death as was proper.” Lollia began parceling the bread out among them. “But I thought that just in case we had to do the sensible thing and flee instead of the patrician thing and die, it would be nice to have some food and perhaps a little money and an extra palla or two . . .” She produced coins, cloaks, and more food like a conjurer.

  Cornelia laughed, but the laughter died away quickly and she looked out the wide barn doors toward the city. “Worried for your soldier?” Diana said, rummaging about the barn for rags to tie up her blood-crusted hands.

  “Soldier?” Lollia dug to the bottom of the pack.

  “You didn’t know about Cornelia’s lover?” Marcella spread her palla out on the hay to catch the breadcrumbs from Lollia’s bread. “Tullia screamed loud enough to be heard in Gaul.”

  “Of course I knew about Cornelia’s lover, and long before you did! So that was him, the soldier at the house? Of course it was. He came to protect you, how romantic! Who is he? You have to tell us now, my honey.”

  “Centurion Drusus Sempronius Densus.” Cornelia took a chunk of cheese and started to nibble. Even if Cornelia were starving, Marcella thought in amusement, she’d never wolf her food. “Formerly of the Praetorian Guard.”

  “So that’s where I knew him.” Lollia sounded satisfied. “Your old bodyguard. I always used to think he had an eye for you—”

  “How long did it go on?” Marcella wondered. “You never did tell me.”

  “Over four months,” Cornelia said, composed. “And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  “Do you suppose we could return to the city today?” Marcella broke a chunk of bread in half as she gazed out at the road, letting her own eyes drift out toward the city. “Just think what must be happening . . .”

  “If you’re that curious, you can go alone.” Diana was bandaging up her bloody hands. “We stay here a few days until things calm down.”

  “Who are you to give orders?” Marcella said, nettled.

  Diana looked back at her calmly. “I’m the only one who can drive a chariot, that’s who I am. Unless you plan on walking back to the city? Because the horses are staying here, and so should all four of us until things settle down.”

  Marcella glared. Cornelia didn’t look happy either—still worrying for her soldier—but Lollia flopped back into the straw with a groan of contentment.

  “A few days to sleep in this delightful hay—bliss, even if it is scratchy. I don’t think I’d even care if some legionary raped me at this point, as long as he didn’t wake me up. I could even sleep through sex with Fabius, and that’s saying something. Gods, I hope he really is dead. Pass the cheese?”

  They slept a great deal over the next day. Lollia made friends with the nameless black dog who haunted the barn, as well as the horses who had saved their lives—even the savage old stallion succumbed to her cooing and let her put braids in his mane. “It appears,” Marcella observed, “that no male of any species can resist Lollia.” Marcella spent a good deal of time staring down the road toward the city, calculating a dozen different possibilities for Rome’s outcome. Vespasian is Emperor? Vitellius is prisoner? Vitellius is dead . . .

  It wasn’t till sunset that the villa’s owner returned. Marcella saw him first from the door of the barn, a lone figure striding up the long slope of the hill toward the barn. Her muscles tensed before she realized it was only one man. His sword was out, but he strode far too unhurriedly to be looking for a fight. “Diana,” Marcella called, “is that our, ah, host?”

  Diana swung off the fence railing where she’d been watching the Anemoi frisk in the long grass, her pale hair gleaming in the fading sun. She looked down the slope a moment, then turned swiftly and jogged to meet the approaching figure. She met him a short distance from the barn’s entrance, and Marcella could hear them without straining. “I wondered if you’d be back, Llyn.”

  “I’m back.” He looked her over, and Marcella wondered if he’d start feeling her legs up and down like he’d check a horse for spavins. “I see you came out unscathed.”

  “Me and my three cousins.” Diana gestured behind her, and Marcella gave a vague wave from the door of the barn and retreated a little into the door’s shadow as if she were out of earshot. “I put them up in your barn—we didn’t have anywhere else safe. Don’t worry,” Diana added, though Marcella didn’t see the Briton’s face move. “We didn’t enter your house. I wouldn’t violate guest-right. Though I did borrow your tunic,” she added, plucking at the coarse cloth. It hung to her shins, and she’d belted it around her waist with a spare length of rein. “My dress was all bloody, and I found this hanging on a nail in the barn. I figured guest-right didn’t extend to old clothes.”

  “It does not,” he said formally. “And I welcome you and your cousins to my hall, as guests—though you can probably return to the city if you wish.”

  “Why?” Diana tilted her head at him. A stray lock of hair curved over her forehead like a little crescent moon: Diana the Huntress more than ever, Marcella thought. “Is the city quiet?”

  “Yes. The legionaries are under control now.” The black dog padded out, tail wagging, and Llyn bent to scratch his ears. “An emergency meeting of the Senate is soon to be convened. They will undoubtedly confirm Vespasian as Emperor. They’re already hailing his son Domitian at the Domus Aurea.”

  So Domitian survived. Marcella was mildly surprised at that. And the Senate was confirming Vespasian already? She drew in a breath, praying the Briton would go on.

  “Another emperor.” Diana put her bandaged hands at the small of her back, stretching. “There will always be one, you know, no matter how many times you take matters into your own hands. I hope you realize that.”

 
The Briton smiled, tilting his long sword up across one shoulder—and Marcella suddenly saw that the blade was dark.

  “He wasn’t worth it,” said Diana. “I hope you realize that, too.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Then why?”

  The Briton paused, fingering the hilt of the blade still tilted across one shoulder. “Eighteen years I’ve been in Rome,” he said finally. “And every morning when I wake up, I think for a moment that I’m in Britannia. Sometimes it’s my friends pounding at the door, shouting at me to go hunting with them. Sometimes it’s my father, planning a raid on a Roman fort and wanting me to lead my scouts for a diversion. But for a moment or two, it’s real. More real than any of this.” His arm encompasses the hill, the horses, the city below. “More real than you.”

  “And?”

  “Emperor Claudius made us swear oaths we’d never leave Rome. I wanted to kill him for that. My father kept the oath, but my father’s dead now. Dead of captivity. I’d go ahead and kill Claudius, if he were still alive, but—” Llyn shrugged. “Another emperor will do just as well.”

  Diana gestured at his sword. “Better hide that.” The Briton paused, looking up at her as he squatted down to shove the sword under a pile of harness at the corner of the yard, and Marcella wondered if she’d ever get the full story.

  “IS it over?”

  Marcella could hear the question being asked everywhere as the blood was cleared away and people came creeping back to their daily lives. “Is it over?” Not just a matter of the bloodshed being over, or Vitellius’s reign being over. Is it all over?

  Rome was silent. Plebs scurried hastily back to their bolted homes, blood dried in the gutters, slaves who had fled their masters in panic crept shamefacedly back. The Cornelii family home was a wreck, the furniture smashed or stolen, half the statues broken, the doors gaping wide. The house of Lollia’s grandfather had fared better—his wine cellar was empty, but the task of emptying it had clearly distracted the looting soldiers, who had otherwise left the house untouched except for a few broken statues, sundry small stolen valuables, and a wrecked mosaic in the entrance hall. “And the mosaic,” Lollia said affectionately, “can be blamed on Diana the Huntress here. You must all stay with me until everything else is put in order, of course—”

  “Not me,” said Cornelia. She was still pale with the nausea she couldn’t quite seem to shake off, but she threw her palla over her head and started resolutely for the door. “I’m going to find Drusus.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Marcella wondered, then blinked as her cousins both turned and eyed her a little oddly. “What?”

  “You didn’t guess?” Lollia raised her eyebrows. “It’s plain as the nose on Cornelia’s face.”

  “What is?”

  “She’s pregnant.” Diana said. “Mares get that same look. Edgy.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?” Marcella complained.

  “You never tell anybody anything,” Lollia pointed out. “Why should we?”

  “But she’s my sister!” Marcella accosted Cornelia as soon as she returned the following day, her eyes soft and shining. “You could have told me your news, Cornelia.”

  Cornelia looked puzzled. “Why?” But Marcella forgot to be annoyed with her when Cornelia relayed some different news: Vitellius, beyond all shadow of a doubt, was dead. “No one seems to know quite how it happened,” Cornelia winced. “He hid in the stables and a mob tore him to pieces, or he was paraded out on the palace steps and beheaded—but however he died, they threw his body down the Gemonian Stairs. Drusus saw it.”

  Marcella saw Diana bow her head. And later, she went out with a black veil over her hair and came back with a somber face. “What have you been doing?”

  “I bought a little medallion for the Blues,” said Diana, “and I buried it at the foot of the Gemonian Stairs. Vitellius would have liked that.” She scrubbed her hands down the front of her dress. “He’d better appreciate it—that’s the first and last time I ever buy a Blues medallion. Maybe we’ll race our teams together in the afterlife.”

  “So what did Vitellius say to you before he died?” Marcella urged.

  Diana gave her a long contemptuous look.

  “I’ll just get it from someone else, you know.”

  “Not from me,” said Diana, yanking the black veil off her hair and stamping off.

  Vitellius gone, Marcella thought. He’d lasted the longest of all three emperors that year, and now there was a fourth. The Senate had certainly wasted no time acclaiming Vespasian, and all the provinces were united behind him. His brilliant elder son, little Flavia’s father Titus, was marching to take control of the chastened eastern legions, and Vespasian himself was supposedly only weeks behind. Domitian was already being feted as a prince of Rome at the Domus Aurea. Marcella saw him two days after returning to the city, striding like a conqueror through Lollia’s atrium with six Praetorians marching smartly behind.

  “I heard you were back.” His eyes flew past the slaves, whom Marcella had been supervising as they swept up the broken tiles of the mosaic. “I had my guards watching for you.”

  “As you can see, I’m safe.” Marcella waved the slaves away, giving Domitian a curved smile. “And so are you.” He’d survived, she heard, by skulking in the Temple of Isis among the worshipers until the violence was over. Not terribly brave, perhaps, but prudent.

  “I’m prince of Rome now—did you hear?” He had the Imperial purple stripe on his tunic already. “I told you I’d be prince someday.”

  “Well, you’re not Rome’s only prince,” Marcella said lightly. “When does your brother arrive with his armies? I suppose your father will pronounce him heir . . .”

  “Don’t count on it,” Domitian scowled, and, trapping Marcella in his arms, he kissed her. She let him plaster kisses on her neck for a while, wondering how long this obsession of his was going to last now that he was a member of the Imperial family and could have any woman he wanted. I might have the best breasts in Rome, but now he has all the breasts in Rome to choose from. Well, Domitian had had his uses, but Marcella thought she wouldn’t be entirely sorry when his eye wandered on to someone new. Perhaps she could find another man to nurture along in some interesting new direction. Someone older than Domitian, more intelligent and promising . . .

  Vespasian’s older son, Titus, arrived a week later with the first of the eastern legions and proceeded to restore order, efficiently preparing the celebrations that would welcome his father to Rome in another few weeks. Titus: Marcella’s mental pen sketched him thoughtfully. Perhaps ten years older than Domitian, black-eyed and ruddy-faced like his brother but with a constant smile instead of his brother’s scowl.

  “Titus was always the nicest of my husbands.” Lollia wrinkled her nose affectionately at Titus’s stocky figure as he strode into the Senate house in the armor he wore like a second skin. “I hardly ever saw him, but he was always kind. He’s already sent me a message, saying of course he won’t take Flavia away from me to raise now that he’s back in Rome. He just wants me to bring her for a visit soon, so she can meet his other daughter. Julia, I think her name is. I’m sure they’ll be great friends, just like all of us. Sisters need each other. But wasn’t that nice of Titus to take a moment to put my mind at ease with everything else he has going on? He was always splendid, but never too grand to be kind. Not like Domitian—royal or not he’s just a pimply black-eyed thug.” She shuddered. “Always sneaking into the bathhouse when he was younger, trying to watch me bathing. Is he still in love with you, Marcella?”

  “Not for long, I’m sure.”

  Titus declared the formal resumption of trade in Rome, and with such reassurances Lollia’s grandfather was back in a trice from Ostia. He was ordering new mosaics and new wine barrels before he even got through the door, and within two days he hosted a lavish banquet to cultivate every contact he had with the new Emperor. The guest of honor was little Flavia. “She’s a person of importance now,” Lollia�
�s grandfather said happily the following day, watching his great-granddaughter drive Diana around his atrium on all fours, lashing a long-stemmed lily for a driving whip. “Granddaughter to the Emperor! Lollia, my jewel, there’s not an ambitious man in Rome who doesn’t want to be Flavia’s newest stepfather. I’ve had inquiries already for your hand, and vetted every suitor—not a man among them to lay a hand on you! You could have your pick, and we might arrange a wedding in the new year—”

  “No one ever offered me my pick of suitors,” Marcella complained. “It was just ‘Here’s a husband for you; I hope you have a dress; be ready in a week.’ ”

  But Lollia wasn’t listening, just giving a deep dreamy smile as Thrax came into the atrium, scooping up Flavia and scolding her softly.

  “Thanks.” Diana sat back on her heels, spitting out the ribbon Flavia had strung between her teeth for a bridle. “I’ve got more sympathy for my team now.”

  Diana was back with her father, who had returned to the city lugging a just-begun bust of the new Emperor. Gaius and Tullia were slower to return, so slow Cornelia had the house entirely tidied by the time they came back. Small thanks she got for it, Marcella thought, since Tullia embarked at once on the rant over Cornelia’s ruined morals that had been so inconveniently interrupted by the invasion of Rome.

  “I’m afraid that will have to wait, Tullia.” Cornelia fixed Gaius with a stern gaze. “Brother, I need to speak with you.” Doors closed firmly behind them.

  “And I should inspect the house!” Tullia clicked off down the hall. “Though what condition it’s in, I don’t like to think—if that slut Cornelia can’t keep her own morals in order, I shudder to think what she’s made of my spare rooms.”

  “Actually, everything looks perfect,” Marcella said as Tullia bustled upstairs. “Though doubtless you’ll still find something to complain about.”

  “Just wait till I tell Gaius!” Tullia’s voice floated down the stairs. “Not two minutes home, and you’re picking quarrels!”

  “Only with you, Tullia. Only with you.”