“What a fierce face,” Emperor Otho said in amusement as Marcella bowed before him. “You haven’t come to chide me about your husband’s post, have you? I offered him one in the city—”

“And he turned it down.” Marcella straightened, looking the Emperor of Rome in the eye. “So, Caesar—do I still have a favor to claim?”

Ten

Ten

THE hardest part about having a lover was getting out of the house. Cornelia had heard that over and over, from Roman wives of the lesser sort. There were women who took hired litters through torturous backtracking paths to hidden rendezvous, women who dressed as their own slaves to slip out of the house unnoticed, women who rented rooms in brothels to meet their lovers, women who spent small fortunes annually on bribes to keep their maids quiet.

And really, how easy it was.

“I’m going to the bathhouse,” Cornelia announced that afternoon. The nearest bathhouse was a mere block away, close enough for walking on a fine day, and no one looked askance when she took only a slave to walk at her back rather than a litter. She passed through the bathhouse doors, instructing her maid to wait; passed through the apodyterium where half a dozen gossiping women were disrobing, and passed directly out again through the bathhouse’s rear doors. She walked briskly for another four blocks, knocked once at a side door of a gracious house, and was admitted at once.

“My dear lady!” A man with a broad senatorial stripe on his toga rose to clasp her hands: the younger brother of that same Vitellius, who had so recently been proclaimed Emperor by his legions in Germania and was now marching south. “I am so very glad to see you again. May I introduce—”

Half a dozen men nodded around the circular library, but no one rose or offered wine, and Cornelia took a seat without removing her palla. This wasn’t a social call, after all, and it wasn’t any rendezvous with a lover either.

It was war.

“Otho has enlisted Marius Celsus as another of his generals,” Cornelia said crisply. “He’s also sent word to the Danube legions, but they may not be able to join his campaign in time.” She gave all the details gleaned from casual questions to Marcella. Her sister had been such a font of useful information—she seemed to have a talent for putting together one bit of overheard gossip with another, until it formed a complete picture. Of course she was only interested in the complete picture for her scrolls and notes, but she was more than happy to speculate with Cornelia about everything from the size of Otho’s army to the character flaws of his generals.