A hot night, spring fading into summer. The slaves, all matched blue-eyed blondes chosen for beauty, brought one meal after another in a graceful ballet. Every dish an aphrodisiac selected to enhance a night of love: sea urchins in almond milk, blue-black oysters from Britannia, cakes sheeted with a haze of edible flowers. Marcella stuffed herself. I’ll need all the aphrodisiacs I can get to keep from being queasy when he finally stops babbling and gets on with it. Nero was tall but pot-bellied, his legs spindly, his chin spotted; he wore a wig of auburn curls over a flaking scalp. And his eyes burned too bright, as if he had a fever. Or the pox.

“Or perhaps I should have been a poet—you’ve heard my poetry, of course? My verse on the love of Adonis and Aphrodite was so much admired in Athens—”

She wished he’d hurry up. He’d set her aside with a casual invitation at the end of a party the night before, hardly bothering to talk to her. Why should he? She was just a passing fancy, hardly likely to last a night. The sooner he climbs on top of me, the sooner it will all be over and the sooner I can go home.

He pushed his golden plate aside, stroking her arm with damp fingers. Marcella tensed despite herself, but he wasn’t looking at her. Those bright eyes were fixed somewhere between a tall vase of lilies and a reclining marble Leda with her amorous swan. “I’ll play for you,” he said, calling for his lute. “A private performance from your Emperor, eh?”

“I would be honored, Caesar.”

He struck a pose with his lyre, false auburn curls gleaming in the lamplight. A little ditty about spring—“my own work! Do tell me what you think?”

“Brilliant, Caesar.”

A long heroic epic about the deeds of Hercules. His voice was shrill and tuneless.

“Incomparable, Caesar.”

He called for wine in between songs, but Marcella pushed her cup away. She didn’t dare get sleepy—Nero had executed senators before for dozing during his recitals. But he drank cup after cup, in frantic haste. “And this one—a little ditty about spring. My own work, of course. Do tell me what you think?”

The same song he’d begun with. “Brilliant, Caesar.”

More songs. His voice grew shriller, his words slurred. The feverish eyes darted everywhere. He sang the epic of Hercules twice more, rapidly. “I do like to write little verses about heroic deeds now and then, as much as I prefer the deeds of love. You know the Senate’s plotting against me?”

Marcella started to say, “Incomparable, Caesar,” before she realized what he’d said. “Um. Caesar?”

“They think I don’t know. But I hear everything.” He cast his lyre aside abruptly. “They’ll vote me a public enemy. They’ll even vote a new emperor.”

“. . . Surely not, Caesar.”