Otho gave Lucius Lamia the same advice, telling him to find a discreet escape back to Rome and offer his loyalty when the time came—and then he came to Marcella. “My dear girl, it appears I will never read that history of yours.” He raised her up. “Do me a favor, and write it the way it should have happened? Give me a resounding victory over that tub of lard, and a glorious triumphal procession back to Rome.” He leaned in to kiss the corner of her mouth, adding in a whisper, “And write that I dragged you off behind the bushes at least once!”

Her throat thickened then. She nodded, wordless. A tiny pinpoint of panic danced in Otho’s eyes, but the hands that clasped hers were steady.

“Ah.” Making the circle of the tent, Otho paused at last before the door flap to his bedchamber. A slave stood there with a silver tray, sniffing back tears. On the tray lay two daggers. “This one, I think—” Choosing. “It has a better edge. Good night, everyone.”

Marcella didn’t see him die.

He slept that night, she knew that much. Several of his friends huddled all night by the door flap, waiting to be called, but he never called them. In the steel-gray dawn came a single cry. The guards rushed into the chamber, but Otho was already dead, a blade in his heart. He died alone.

He must have wanted it that way, Marcella thought. Perhaps he realized the furor that would surround his body afterward: the Praetorians carrying him to a flaming bier so the Vitellians could not despoil his corpse; the weeping as several of his closest friends stabbed themselves rather than serve a new Emperor; the uneasy grumbles from the soldiers; the panic of the remaining courtiers as they struggled to find passage back to Rome. From coronation to funeral, an emperor’s life was a circus.

But even an emperor had to die alone.

WHEN she looked back, Marcella could never remember the details of her journey back to Rome. Lucius stayed, anxious to proclaim his undying loyalty to Vitellius once the new Emperor arrived, so she found a cart or a wagon or something with wheels and paid for a place. Jolting roads, silent companions. Just flashes, when she tried to remember it. A journey of a week’s duration—two weeks?—and then she was back in the city. She looked about vaguely for a hired litter, something to take her home, but a slave in sumptuous livery recognized her at the city gate and whisked her back to the house in comfort.