Fabius’s Germans descended whooping on the wine fountain, grabbing silver cups from the slaves. Fabius led Lollia to the couch of honor, talking over her head to his officers. Cornelia saw her sister send a poisonous look to the steward when she found herself paired on a dining couch beside Tullia: “Wonderful, why didn’t you just seat me in a snake pit?” For herself, Cornelia fared better on a couch with Diana, though she had a moment’s surprise when Diana’s shawl slipped off her shoulders. “What have you been doing?” she exclaimed, eyeing the purple bruises that marched up and down her youngest cousin’s arms. “Did your father finally take a belt to you for all your running about?”

“No.” Diana shrugged. “I fell out of a chariot.”

“You got all that from falling out of a chariot?”

“Well, it rolled on me a little.”

The gustatio courses entered in a stream: white and black olives, sparrows cooked in spiced egg yolk, grilled sausages and damsons and pomegranate seeds, a ragout of oysters and mussels. Lollia turned to wash her fingers first in a basin of rose water, but Fabius plunged a hand directly into a silver dish of sausages. The rest of his officers followed suit, calling to each other across the couches. Of course, legates who had spent half their career in Germania couldn’t be expected to know the niceties.

A trio of flute players entered to play, but sudden trumpets drowned their melodies out. “The Emperor—!” Another flood of men; Praetorians in red and gold, a dozen more Germans in their barbaric trousers, a few brightly painted women, the Emperor himself loud and laughing in a wine-stained synthesis. Lollia’s grandfather bustled forward, bowing very low; the couch of honor was brought forward, and Vitellius flung himself on it with a happy roar, waving Fabius Valens to join him. “And the bride—a pretty one, eh!” as the Emperor patted Lollia’s cheek. The guests streamed up to offer their smiles, their bows, their desperate hopes that no one would ever find out how brightly they had smiled and how low they had bowed to Otho.