The centurion beckoned for the litter, and Cornelia accepted the rough hand that helped her in. “Centurion,” she said impulsively as he made to fall back. “Speak with me a moment.”

“As you wish, Lady.” He fell into step beside the litter as it rose swaying, his eyes now level with Cornelia’s shoulder.

“What do you hear from the Praetorian barracks?” No better source of information than a bodyguard, Cornelia knew, and an empress should have her own sources. “Are they pleased with Galba’s choice of heir?”

“Well enough, Lady.” Guardedly.

“Speak freely, Densus.”

He hesitated, walking along sturdily, hand never far from his short gladius, scarlet plumes nodding over his head. Morning hawkers cried their wares on either side of the street, and the other litters, seeing the Praetorians, fell back to give Cornelia’s litter precedence. “They’d not care if the Emperor chose a mule, Lady, as long as he paid them their bounty.”

“And he hasn’t, yet.”

“No. Senator Otho, he passed out plenty of coin among the Praetorians—there’s those that liked him. My lot are better than that,” Densus hastened to say. “I don’t take any but the best. But most soldiers are greedy bastards, Lady.” He flushed. “I’m sorry—”

“No, you only speak truth.” Even the first lady of Rome could unbend a trifle, now and then—it would only encourage loyalty. “What do you hear of the legions in Germania—are they being, ah, greedy bastards too?”

“There’s a whisper they proclaimed Governor Vitellius as Emperor. But it’s just a whisper, Lady.”

“I can’t believe they’d be such fools,” Cornelia said dismissively. Senator Vitellius, well, he was a fat drunk who cared for nothing but feasts and chariot racing. “He’d never make a real emperor.”

“Senator Piso will.” The words surprised her. “He’ll be a fine one, Lady. Good and steady.”

Cornelia smiled behind her fan. “I’m sure he is glad to have your approval.”

“No disrespect, Lady.” Densus swatted a swarm of shouting urchins away from the litter. “But Praetorians see everything. Yesterday it was Nero, today it’s Galba, tomorrow it will be Senator Piso. I know emperors. He’ll do us fine.”

Better not to underestimate a common soldier’s eyes, Cornelia decided. “I’m glad you think so, Densus.”

He smiled up at her, chestnut eyes friendly under the helmet’s crest of plumes, and Cornelia allowed him to take her arm when she alighted in the crowd before the shrine of Juno. A grand place in the Capitoline Temple, her statue as goddess of wives and mothers towering sternly beside the shrine of Jupiter. The steps thronged, as always, with women: young girls praying for luck in their forthcoming marriages, women far gone in pregnancy praying for an easy birth, matrons praying for grown sons and unruly daughters. Juno heard all.