But Tullia wasn’t listening anymore. She ran out into the atrium, calling for the steward, calling for little Paulinus, calling for the slaves, who all hastily started polishing things to prove they hadn’t been eavesdropping and then started running in circles when they realized their mistress was in hysterics. Gaius rushed upstairs toward his tablinum, and Cornelia and Marcella were left sitting in the atrium. Cornelia was staring at the mosaics, as if trying to imagine those savage advancing legionaries marching over them.

“So—” Marcella looked at her sister. “Who is this lover of yours?”

“Does it matter?” Cornelia blinked hard, her dark hair gleaming and her hands motionless in her lap. “It’s over now. I won’t drag him into trouble with Tullia and Gaius.”

“Lollia and her slave,” Marcella said, amused. “You and your soldier. Diana and her charioteer. All the Cornelias are being scandalous this year.”

“Except you.” Cornelia managed a watery smile.

“Marcella, Cornelia—” Gaius rushed back downstairs, a case exploding with scrolls under one arm. “Surely you should pack a few things. Brundisium, that’s far enough away—”

“I’m not going,” said Cornelia.

“Why?” Gaius glared. “Refusing to leave your pleb lover, are you?”

“No.” She looked at him coldly. “Perhaps I have some idea of patrician duty, Gaius.”

He reddened. “Marcella, talk to her.”

“I’m not leaving either,” Marcella said. “I want to see what happens.”

Gaius reddened even further, scuffing a sandal across a loose tile in the mosaics. He opened his mouth, but then something shattered in the hall and a slave burst into tears and Tullia called “Gaius!” and he bustled away.

Cornelia picked up her palla, moving as slowly as if she were underwater. “I’d better go to Lollia. She should know she’s been widowed again.”

“I’m sure she’ll be delighted.” Marcella picked up her own palla.

Cornelia looked back over one shoulder. “Where are you going?”

Marcella spread her arms. “To tell the world.”

“LEAVE my house?”

Lollia watched her grandfather gaze around the atrium—his pride and joy, still blooming with banks of bronze crocuses in late November, every column imported fluted and perfect from Corinth, every niche adorned with a life-sized ebony statue with carved ivory eyes. A wealth of rooms beyond the atrium, each one spacious and perfect, the mosaics worth a fortune, every vase and statue lovingly chosen from the best the world had to offer. The house he had spent a lifetime assembling for himself piece by piece; the house Lollia knew he had dreamed of when he was a slave boy polishing other people’s possessions.

“The legions won’t get inside Rome,” she promised her grandfather. “Vespasian’s men will set up camp outside the gates, the Senate will flutter, then we’ll surrender and Fortuna knows what will happen to Vitellius. But the house will be safe.”

“Then why leave it?” He fingered a little carved nymph in rosy marble.