On this cold and breezy winter day, the sun lay hidden behind blustery gray clouds. Somewhere Marcella heard thunder. Not a good omen. But all the omens had been bad since the turn of the year this past week, starting with the day when Piso had been presented at the Praetorian barracks. The bull sacrificed by the priests had been diseased, the liver malformed, and the soldiers had muttered that it meant grave ill fortune. But Galba had shouted at them, and they’d quieted.

Or had they?

The anteroom of the Domus Aurea was filled, anxious, jammed: armored guards, courtiers in fine lawn and jewels, slaves looking edgy. Despite the uneasy quiver in her stomach, Marcella couldn’t help looking around at Nero’s famous golden house. A sumptuous palace with three hundred feasting rooms and a hundred sculpted acres of pleasure gardens; a place for intrigue, for beauty, for trysts and secrets while Emperor Nero had sat toying with his silver lute and watching over all: a genial and not entirely sane god.

“Is this the first time you’ve been here?” Lollia whispered as they were ushered into the triclinium. “Since . . . ?”

“Yes.” Marcella looked up at the fanciful ceiling: carved ivory with hidden shutters, built to revolve slowly and send a mist of perfume and rose petals down over the guests. Now it was still and unlit. “At least I’m not the only guest this time.” That night last spring she had been alone, and the slaves had gotten confused and loaded the ceiling with not one but three different kinds of perfume. Marcella left not only feeling like a whore, but smelling like one.

“Don’t go,” her sister had advised her, hearing of Nero’s invitation. “You can’t let him dishonor you, even if he is Emperor!”

“Just tell him you’re sick,” Lollia had said.

But what real options had those been? Marcella’s father had been dead by then, and Lucius had been gone on one of his many journeys. Gaius had been oblivious to everything except his new duties as paterfamilias. Tullia, for all her carping about womanly virtue, would have shoved any of her sisters-in-law into the Emperor’s bed with her own hands to secure Imperial favor. Marcella had seen no option but to grit her teeth, dress in her finest, and go to the palace.

A very different palace now. Dusty and cold, the mosaics and frescoes unlit by lamps, half the furniture stripped away and sold for Galba’s greedy economies, and the smell on the air was sweat rather than rose petals. Nero’s Golden House, golden no longer.

Even Lollia’s dreamy happiness evaporated as she looked at the forced smiles and tense eyes of the crowd around them. “What’s wrong with everyone?” she whispered.