Daughters of Rome by Kate Quinn Page A

rolled her eyes. “It’s like being married to a gander—”
    “I’ve just fetched a litter,” Cornelia said soothingly. The slaves were starting to get excited now, whispering in corners behind their hands, and none of them wanted to listen to her. But she was the Empress of Rome, or something very near to it, and when she clapped her hands they scattered obediently. Marcella had never felt prouder of her sister.
    A gap in the babble drew Marcella’s eyes as Cornelia hastened them all out. Galba was tossing his toga aside, snarling at the hovering courtiers as his breastplate and greaves were brought forward.
    “It looks like he’ll go out to meet them,” Marcella said.
    “Yes.” Cornelia was pale now, but her voice was still composed.
    “Do I have to leave?” Marcella begged. “Just when all the excitement is beginning? I may have written about history, but I’ve never seen it happen—”
    “Out,” Cornelia ordered in the big-sister voice she had not used since they were small, and bundled Marcella into the hired litter after her cousins.
    The bearers jolted below as they swung away from the palace, but none of them called down for a smoother pace. Lollia nibbled her nails anxiously, but Marcella couldn’t help peeking through the curtains and Diana peered over her shoulder. The light was purple with dusk, and after a while Marcella began seeing people—bakers, brewers, old soldiers, beggars and urchins, women with children clinging to their skirts—gathered along the street. Saying nothing, just watching silently. Though there was shouting in the distance.
    “Turn ahead,” Marcella called down to the litter-bearers as the surge of shouting grew louder. “Avoid the Forum.”
    But the crowds were pressing thicker, and they couldn’t turn anywhere. The litter lurched, lurched again, and then one end fell and Marcella spilled out, hip smacking painfully against the stones. Lollia fell against her legs with a sharp little scream, Diana scrambled more nimbly to her feet, and Marcella looked up to see the litter-bearers dashing away into the night. Several street urchins let out a cheer and leaped into the litter for a game, but the rest of the crowd was silent. Marcella saw eyes glittering like pieces of jet, assessing her, and fear leaped suddenly in her throat. She wore one of her plain pale gowns, and Diana had a dusty smock fit only for grubbing in a stable, but Lollia’s silks and pearls . . .
    “Forget about trying to reach the house.” Diana hauled them both up with rough little hands. “We need shelter, and we need it now.”
    “Yes,” Marcella agreed faintly. “Maybe this is enough excitement.”
    But there was more shouting ahead, and torches being waved in the air, and the crowd was murmuring now, not words so much as a low ominous rumble. Marcella felt herself pushed forward, Lollia’s fingers latched to her elbow, and then Diana managed to yank them all up a rough step into a vestibule.
    “Can you see?” Lollia craned her neck, eyes wide and white.
    “Yes.” Marcella, far taller than either of her cousins, could see everything—she had a clear line of sight down into the end of the Forum, where a bald head bobbed over a hired chair in the torchlight. Galba’s wrinkled tortoise neck turned this way and that, and Marcella could even see his mouth opening as he shouted orders, but the crowd bore him along hysterically, hearing nothing. She saw Old Flaccid close at his side and looked for Piso, for Cornelia—but there was only Galba in his useless breastplate.
    Hoofbeats. Marcella couldn’t hear where they were coming from, but suddenly mounted Praetorians were spilling into the square and surrounding Galba in his chair, and short swords waved overhead and the red plumes of crested helmets looked like smears of blood in the twilight. Galba’s arm thrashed as his chair overturned, and then the swords were rising and falling.
    “Marcella!” Lollia was screaming, pulling at her