Sabina laughed at her little sister. “When did you get so opinionated?”

Faustina assessed the snowy marble walls, topped with the frieze of laurel leaves and stern-faced goddesses. “It’s cold.”

“Hadrian will be crushed; he designed that frieze himself. I think he was aiming for ‘classic.’”

“It’s stiff,” Faustina decreed, her eleven-year-old face looking just like Calpurnia’s. “Everything’s stiff. No one could ever get dirty in a house like this.”

Sabina mussed her little sister’s hair. “Do you want to get dirty?”

“No, I want to try on all your dresses! You have the best clothes…”

Hand in hand they wandered across the atrium to the stairs, decorated with mosaics in swirling blues and greens, also designed by Hadrian. This house wasn’t the architectural wonder he had sketched for himself with its never-ending improvements—“That will have to wait,” he told Sabina wistfully, doodling domes and columns in the margins of his official documents—but he had taken an interest in every detail of decoration in the new house on the Palatine Hill that Empress Plotina had finally persuaded him to acquire, from the pristine lines of each column in the triclinium to the matched perfection of the slaves who stood in silent symmetrical rows as Sabina ushered her little sister upstairs.

“Why do they just stand there?” Faustina whispered.

“Because Hadrian likes silence in his household.”

“I like slaves who talk. This is like living in a statue garden!”

Sabina laughed again. Calpurnia had produced three more bouncing boys after Linus, all healthy and handsome, but little blond Faustina with her out-thrust chin was still Sabina’s favorite of the whole brood. “Come on, little bossy. I’ve got a new green dress you can try on.”

“I look like an asparagus in green,” Faustina said decidedly. “Have you got anything blue?”

“I think I can offer you a fine selection, madam.”

Sabina settled herself cross-legged on the long couch in her own bedroom, watching with amusement as her sister picked through the pile of gowns. “I can’t wait to wear a proper stola,” Faustina said, voice muffled as she swam headfirst into a swath of blue silk. “When can I get married?”

“Not until you’re at least sixteen.” Sabina held up two belts. “Pearl or silver?”

“Pearl,” Faustina pointed. “Antonia Lucilla says she’ll be getting married at fourteen—”

“Over our father’s dead body will you do the same.” Sabina tucked up the blue silk skirts for her sister’s shorter limbs. “But at least you’ll get to pick your own husband.”

“I already picked him,” said Faustina. “Earrings?”

“The rosewood box on the table. Who did you pick?”

“Gaius Rupilius! His father brought him to Father’s last dinner party; he’s very handsome and he’s fourteen—”

“I see you inherited your mother’s taste for older men.”