His voice was clear, carrying over the shouts around the box. “I’m divorcing you.” Calpurnia glanced over.

“What?”

Sabina glanced up at me. Behind her a Numidian shrieked as a little Gaul chopped his knee out from under him.

“You shouldn’t joke, Marcus.” I tossed my head. “You know what the Emperor will do to you if I whisper in his ear.”

“It looks like someone else is whispering in his ear now.” Marcus indicated the Imperial box. The Empress had retired for the afternoon, and a figure in a pink silk stola had just slouched in to perch on the arm of Domitian’s chair. A yellow-haired figure.

“Aurelia Rufina? She’s temporary, just a whim—it’s me Domitian wants—”

“I think he’s done with you, Lepida. And so am I.” Marcus looked at me the way he looked at opposing senators in debates about water rights. “I am hereby divorcing you—legally, of course, I can do that with a word. I’ll give you until the end of the day to remove what possessions you have from my house.”

I thrust the question of the Emperor aside. What did Marcus know about Domitian? Nothing, that’s what, but the other attack had come so suddenly and I unsheathed my claws. “Emperor or no Emperor, Marcus, you know what I’ll do to you if you divorce me. Your precious Paulinus will—”

“In addition,” Marcus overrode me, “I will be charging you with adultery. Within the sixty days prescribed by law I will present the courts with my extensively gathered evidence.” He smiled at me, quite gently. “Yes, Lepida. I’m putting my foot down.”

I stared at him a full minute. Marcus?

Calpurnia’s eyes sparkled. Sabina looked from her father’s face to mine and back. The arena slaves darted swiftly over the bloody sand, dodging the battling gladiators, raking away the dead ones.

“Calpurnia, darling,” I said in a loud voice. “Would you like to know something about Paulinus? He raped me as a young bride, and your future father-in-law let him. Sabina is Paulinus’s child, not Marcus’s, and I’m going to charge Paulinus in the courts with rape. What do you think of that?”

“I think you’re lying,” Calpurnia said equably.

Marcus laid his hand over her square peasant fingers in brief thanks. “Good try, Lepida,” he said. “That story might have worked eight years ago. But bring it out now, and everyone will wonder why you didn’t come forward sooner. And of course there’s the matter of your own reputation, which has hardly remained spotless in eight years. Do you want all the skeletons to come out of your closet into the light of day?”

“You—you wouldn’t dare—”

“The affair with my son when you were—Calpurnia, kindly cover my daughter’s ears—a bride of twenty-one. The affairs with, at my last count, twenty-two senators, nine praetors, three judges, and five provincial governors.”

“It’s—it’s not true, I never—”

“At least they were men of your own class,” Marcus rode over me.

“What about the affairs with the charioteers, and the masseurs at the public bathhouses, and the legionnaires—especially the two brothers from Gaul who took you at the same time, front and back?” Marcus raised his eyebrows, and behind him a trident fighter died with a sword through his gullet. “Governors and senators are one thing, Lepida, but trash from the gutters . . .”