“I’d have liked to see that.” Drusus looked envious for a moment, but he looked down at Cornelia’s head in the crook of his shoulder and grinned. “Is it true your cousin was glowing silver when she stepped down from the chariot?”

“Glowing silver? How on earth—”

“From the divine blessing of Diana the Huntress,” Drusus intoned solemnly. “It’s well known around the Forum.”

“Juno’s mercy, my cousin does not glow. As a matter of fact, she had so much dust on her face after that race that she looked like a Nubian, and her hair was plastered flat with sweat, and she could hardly stand. But she was grinning like a fiend.” Cornelia looked up at the ceiling, considering. “You know, I think the family might just have to give up on the idea of getting her married? Men look at Diana, and all they see is her looks. But the real Diana is the dirty grinning fiend who came staggering out of that chariot.”

“Is it true she spat in the Emperor’s face, after he gave those horses to the Blues? That’s all over the Forum, too.”

“No,” Cornelia sighed. She’d seen her youngest cousin plead with the Emperor these past weeks—at banquets, at races, not caring about the snickers that rose behind her, but he wouldn’t listen. “All’s fair in victory, girl! You won your race, well, now we’ll see how those horses do for my Blues. Not that they’ll be fit to run for weeks, the way you drove ’em—”

“Fair?” Diana had demanded. “You think the races these days have anything to do with fair?”

“My Blues have won twelve straight since yours, haven’t they?” Vitellius had grinned, but the grin was a spasm in his flushed face, and Cornelia had seen the sudden flick of fear in his eyes. She found herself thinking of Marcella’s prediction that Vitellius’s generals would sell him out. Vitellius always laughed at such rumors, but that day Cornelia saw something small and shivering in his gaze.

As long as Vitellius is drunk and his belly is full and the Blues are winning, the world is blessed and Vespasian can’t touch him. Such a fragile fantasy, even a lost horse race could set it rocking. And Cornelia felt sorry for him, almost as sorry as she felt for her littlest cousin, whose brash sparkle had all been extinguished.

“Cornelia, you know all about the gods.” Diana came to her almost in tears, looking suddenly ten years old. “Which one do you think would listen, if I prayed to get my horses back? I’ve already been to a handful of fortune-tellers, but they just tell you what you want to hear—even that pet astrologer of Domitian’s just said, ‘Don’t you worry, dear, you’ll drive those horses again and for much bigger stakes—’ ”