A beautiful place, the Gardens of Asiaticus. A vast spread of sculptured green acres along the southern flank of the Pincian Hill, in summertime all soft mounds of roses and silky grass and mossed statues. Cold in February but still beautiful, the groves of poplar trees spiking a violet twilight sky, the fountains murmuring, the chain of pleasure lakes like mirrors reflecting the ornamental bridges. Marcella saw lamps flickering ahead on the paths and among the trees too—no better place in Rome to meet a lover than the Gardens of Asiaticus. Lollia had met her share in the laurel groves and behind the banks of violets. Though she looks too tense and snappish nowadays for trysting. Marcella had never seen Lollia lose her temper at anyone, not even at the slave who stole her favorite pearls or the tribune who deserted her for an Egyptian dancer. Just a few weeks ago at the reading she had been melancholy, and now she was losing her temper—the city’s strange hysteria had even infected Lollia.

“I don’t know what Nero did to you, because you won’t tell anyone . . .”

Marcella shivered, wrapping her palla tighter. She left the path, brushing through the winter-dry grass to a sculpted grove of poplars. They waved black branches gently overhead. An empress had died under these poplars, fleeing in terror from the Praetorian guards. Emperor Claudius’s third wife. But they’d caught up to her in the end and chopped her pretty, adulterous little head right off.

Would Lollia laugh, if she knew the truth? Marcella thought. Would Cornelia and Diana, Gaius and Tullia? Would Lucius?

Nero never laid a finger on me.

MY dear.” He had looked up at Marcella as the steward ushered her in, and even though she felt frozen with dread, her inner historian scratched away, taking notes on her surroundings. The ceiling revolving overhead, showering rose petals down on the Emperor of Rome, who sat posed like a musician in Greek tunic and sandals with a golden lyre on his lap.

“Caesar.” She knelt before him, already feeling sticky in a stola of lilac silk draped to show as little of her breasts as possible. Nero waved her up with a beautifully manicured hand.

“No, my dear, I am no Caesar tonight. We eat alone, like any common fellow and his beloved. I have often wished I could be a common musician, playing for my supper. Or perhaps an actor; you’ve heard me recite, of course—”