Cornelia made her way back to the bathhouse, disrobing hastily and ducking into the caldarium. The air was hot and steamy, and a dozen women lay on marble slabs in the sweating heat, talking languidly of disobedient children and thieving slaves while being pummeled by bathhouse attendants. Cornelia stayed long enough to bring a sweat to her face before ducking out again, wetting her hair hastily in the natatio pool. She returned home in time for dinner, hair damp, face flushed from steam, and not even the sharp-eyed Tullia gave her a second look.

I could be bedding half of Rome, Cornelia thought, moving statue-slow through dinner, and my family would be the last to know. Fools.

She kept her ears pricked, and when Marcella mentioned going to the Campus Martius the following afternoon, Cornelia steeled herself and volunteered to go too. She wouldn’t gather any information hiding in her bedchamber, after all.

“I’m glad to see you getting out again.” Gaius patted her hand. Only Marcella looked curious at the sudden eagerness.

“You’ll need someone to accompany you properly.” Cornelia summoned a tart note to her voice with an effort. “With your husband in town again you owe it to him not to traipse about unescorted like an actress.”

“So nice to see you caring about the proprieties,” Tullia said. “Perhaps you can talk your sister out of this mad idea of accompanying the army north!”

That news had burst on the family like a storm: Marcella had somehow talked the Emperor into letting her accompany the army when they marched to meet Vitellius. “Lucius is livid,” Marcella had chuckled in Cornelia’s ear. “But what can he do? I told Otho I’d write a glowing account of his glorious victory, and he was amused enough to order me along, no matter how much Lucius sputters.”

The family was in an uproar, but they couldn’t do anything either. Cornelia felt certain her sister had planned it that way.

“Don’t even try to talk me out of going,” Marcella warned as they strolled along the edge of the Campus Martius.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Cornelia smiled and put an arm through her sister’s as they used to walk in the old days. Now that Marcella was going with the army, she was ravenous to know everything about it—she had become Cornelia’s best source. Lollia should have been better, being married to the Emperor’s brother, but Lollia had a head like a sieve. The only information she retained was what senator was hosting the next banquet, and what praetor’s wife had a lover behind her husband’s back. Movements of armies and details of supply wagons passed through her mind like water. But Marcella remembered everything.