Augustus (15 page)

That conversation cleared my conscience, or could have done, if my conscience allowed itself to be deceived by words. But I knew I was doing wrong, and yet it was what had to be done.

I explained this to Octavia herself. I told her that Antony and I must hold together and that this was only possible if she agreed to act as the bond.

Octavia said, 'He must promise he will not see the Queen of Egypt alone.'

Antony gave that promise. There are those who talk of Antony and Cleopatra as great lovers. I have noticed this tendency among some of your mother's aristocratic friends. They should know that he gave that promise. There was no deep love between them, believe me.

Octavia also said, 'Caesar married his daughter to Pompey to cement their alliance, and it lasted while she lived. I know what duty demands of me, brother.'

Octavia has a pale face, a priestess's face, and it was very still and lovely, like a priestess before the altar, as she said this.

She said one other thing: 'After all, I have known love with Marcellus. That is more than many women can say. But I have one request, brother. I do not wish my son, the young Marcellus, to grow to manhood in Antony's household. I do not wish to surrender him, but I shall leave him with my mother and ask you to make yourself responsible for his virtue, well-being and education.'

I said, 'I shall love him as a son or younger brother.'

So the marriage went ahead, though my mother was indeed furious and never ceased to reproach me for having, as she put it, 'sacrificed' my sister. She was right, but the sacrifice was necessary. The Treaty of Brindisi confirmed me in possession of Gaul; it left me a free hand to deal with Sextus Pompey, whom Antony abandoned with a readiness that should have chilled the blood of any of his friends (and which I did not fail to remark myself). In return Antony now took control of the whole Empire of Rome from the Ionian Sea to the Euphrates; I promised him five legions from Gaul for the Parthian War on which his mind was fixed.

'Well, this all seems satisfactory. Have we forgotten anything?'

'I don't think so.'

Maecenas tapped me on the shoulder and leaned forward. 'Lepidus,' he said. 'Oh Lepidus,' I said.

'By Jupiter, yes,'Antony said, 'our noble colleague, our fellow triumvir. How could we come to forget him? What about the noble donkey?'

'Let him keep Africa,' I said.

'Why not?' Antony said, and the conference ended on a fit of giggles.

* * *

There are in Germany dark and trackless forests. Huge trees join their branches to deny the sun to the ground below. The undergrowth is thick, tangled and full of briars which lacerate the traveller's legs, and even reach above the protective leggings of ox-hide such as Ulysses wore when he drove his plough in

Ithaca. These forests are numinous, spirit-haunted by the demons of delusion. In the absence of paths, the traveller must trace his journey by notching the trees with his knife. The forests afflict the nerves; no Roman who spends any time there comes out unimpaired, but rather prey to nervous disorders, stomach troubles, strange shudderings. He sighs for the lucidity of the Mediterranean world, for the stark truthful landscape of rock and sky and water; he longs for the certainties of these harsh realities.

For five years after Caesar's murder I lived in a world like that German forest. Though in retrospect I can discern a pattern, at the time I moved from restless day through sleepless and wary night. I had a sense of my general direction, but I moved without precise knowledge, apprehensive, circumspect and often fearful.

Livia brought me into the sunshine, as if I emerged from the forest to find a fruitful plain spread below me. I fell in love with her at first sight; yet for three weeks she refused to see me. She regarded me as an enemy; I was the young disturber of the social order, the champion of those without property and family - her lovely head was full of the stuffiest aristocratic notions, and her gull-witted husband resentfully encouraged them. I sent her letters, flowers, gifts of fruit and shellfish - to no avail -though I had at least the sense not to send her my verses. Then I invited the pair of them to a dinner-party, and sent Maecenas to warn the egregious Tiberius Nero that the invitation was in reality a command. She arrived in a white gown with no jewellery, and her face expressed disdain. I set myself to be charming and failed to charm. Of course I had next to no experience with young girls of good birth, and clearly neither of my marriages had prepared me. I tried to talk nonsense, not realizing that Livia had no taste for it; later she told me she had thought me a disappointing buffoon.

Conversation was sticky; no doubt about that. I knew Maecenas was laughing at me, and should have realized that his was just the sort of presence to revolt Livia. What, I wondered, itching with impatience and almost stammering with nervousness, would the girl like to talk about? War and politics were out; we would only disagree. I tried poetry; she said she never read it. I asked her about her family:

'I loved my father,' she said, 'he was an honourable man. He was killed at Philippi. I have been told he was killed after the battle.'

Her chin tilted upwards and she looked me full in the eyes with no flicker of understanding, but only challenge.

I said to myself: she is going to despise me if I knuckle under and don't meet her defiance.

I leaned across the table and poured wine into her cup.

'It was an ugly business, Philippi,' I said, 'and it followed on an uglier - the murder of my father. But I am sorry to hear of your father, believe me. There can never be anything but pain and grief in shedding the blood of a fellow-citizen.'

'That is easy to say, Caesar.'

'And difficult to prove?'

'Impossible, I should say.'

Her eyes held mine.

'You are right,' I said. 'It is impossible. I can only ask you to believe me, and to remember this: had Philippi gone differently I would be in my grave myself, and I do not think it would be honoured. War between Romans is foul, wicked and wrong. If I have one aim in life, it is to bring an end to these civil wars, which have disfigured and deformed the Republic since the days of Sulla and Marius. But to bring them to an end it is not sufficient to conquer; the social causes of civil strife must be treated, for the body politic is diseased. The true mission of any Roman of conscience today is that of healer, but to cure disease requires first the surgeon's knife . . .'

A smile, like the first shaft of dawn sunlight striking a cold wall, touched the corner of her mouth.

'I am glad you are no longer talking to me as if I were just a pretty girl,' she said. 'I am glad you can be serious with me, Caesar.'

She rose from her couch, and, either catching her foot in the hem of her gown or slipping on the marble, tumbled abruptly to the floor. I was at her side in a moment.

'My ankle,' she said.

I glanced down the table. Tiberius Nero was blearily deep in the wine-flask, paying no heed to his wife. I picked her up. 'We'll have it seen to,' I said.

'Ouch,' she said, 'you're stronger than you look, though.'

'It's very difficult,' I said, laying her on a couch in the antechamber and feeling the ankle, which was already swelling, 'to forget that you are a lovely girl.'

'Why do you wear that disgusting beard?' she murmured.

'To please you, I'll remove it.'

The ankle was badly sprained. I ordered the surgeon to instruct that she should be moved as little as possible, and so invited her and Tiberius Nero to be my guests. And that was how it began.

'Tell me about yourself?' 'What do you want to know?' 'Everything.'

'You can't know everything.' 'But I must' 'Must, Caesar?'

'Must. If we are going to pass our life together.' 'Oh, are we?'

'I'm working on it.' I took her hand and placed it against my cheek. 'Feel,' I said, 'I've sacrificed my beard. For you. It's the end of one period in my life. I stopped shaving on the day I heard of my father's murder. Now I'm shaving again. You've changed the pattern.'

'I wish you wouldn't call that man your father. You had a real father, I suppose. What was he like?'

'An average man. Nothing remarkable. He liked fishing in mountain streams.'

'Very informative, that tells me a lot.'

She had a quick abrupt way of speaking, a slightly metallic voice. There was some nervousness behind it, some sense of insufficiency. It was quick and decisive and yet it suggested, even from those first days, when just to look at her lying back on the pillows, her pale face with its translucent skin and huge blue-grey eyes framed by the tresses of hair the colour of beech-leaves in autumn forests, sent my blood coursing, pricked me with sharp and anguished desire (and the fear that I might never have her, that she might always in the end deny herself, retain a mysterious and secret part). Her voice, I say, suggested even then a limitation of sympathy, a narrowness of understanding; it was perhaps this that made her so complete, and so completely desirable. She was so certain and yet at the same time so vulnerable because the world was more complicated than she found it to be, and somewhere in the recesses of her spirit she apprehended this, and, for all her courage, feared the knowledge.

'And the Dictator,' she said, 'what was he really like . . . ?'

I looked away, out of the window. The sun shone on the heights of distant Aspromonte; in the nearer foothills the woods of chestnut glowed with a deep refulgent green; a rose-bush thrust pink flowers in through the window; purple wisteria spread itself over the terrace wall; a lizard basked on the broken masonry.

I said, 'He had charm. I was afraid of him. I owe everything to him. I didn't like him.'

She pressed her hand against mine. 'Oh,' she said, 'I am so glad to hear you say that.'

Her hand was strong, as big as mine (which as you know is rather small); her grip firm and dry.

I said, 'He was an egoist. He used people shamelessly. There was something cruel and self-regarding in his clemency.'

(As I spoke, I thought: Am I describing myself?)

Livia said, 'How can you love me? In my condition?'

'It's what my mother's friends genteelly call "an interesting condition".'

‘I’
m six months in pig,' she said.

'Oh Livia, as if that mattered . . .'

I leant forward. I put my arm round her and raised her head. I kissed her on the lips. It was like burying one's face in rose-petals. There was a faint smell of musk. She leant back, receiving the kiss.

She breathed: 'You're not one of these boys who just likes pregnant ladies, are you?'

'Will you marry me?' I said.

'Is that a polite command, Caesar?'

'No, Livia, I shall never command you'; and I never have.

'You have a wife, I have a husband.'

'Let's divorce them. They can marry each other
..."

'No,' she said, 'not that. Still, you did shave your beard . . .'

I kissed her again. This time she responded. Her arms folded round my neck. We lay some minutes in joy, basking in love and desire, like the lizard in sunlight.

I divorced Scribonia as soon as possible. The timing was unfortunate for the divorce was ratified on the day that your mother, Julia, was born. However, I made it clear from the start that she was my responsibility, not Scribonia's. Tiberius Nero made no difficulties. In fact he said, 'Frankly Caesar, you'll find she has a mind of her own. And quite a temper. I can't say I'm sorry you're taking her off my hands. You'll look after the boy won't you, and whatever's on the way. I'll expect, mind you, that you put a few things in my way yourself.'

Livia's second son, poor Drusus, was born three days after our wedding. I know some people say I was his father, but this is not true.

SEVEN

The rain, blowing on a squally horizontal, reached us even in the shallow cave. Septimus, the thin-faced boy with the cauliflower ear, whom I had taken into my personal service, tried to shield a spluttering fire with his cloak. I drew my own about me and shivered. The gash in my thigh throbbed. I rested my hand on the bandage and it came away damp and sticky. My stomach heaved and my head ached. I laid my helmet aside; there was a dent that ran from the crown down to my left temple. I hadn't realized the Nubian had hit me so hard; no wonder I had a headache.

There were just six of us crowded in the cave which was really little more than a depression in the rock-face. The wind blew hard out in the bay. The ship that might have taken us off swayed like a drunken man on the jagged rock which it had struck. I watched it toss for a long time in the gathering gloom of the October afternoon. The last push of the year, I thought to myself, and it has come to this. It was a long time since the last desperate boat, launched from the ship, had disappeared from sight. Another had been carried round the point; it was possible it might be swept to land. But for a long passage we had gazed at the heads bobbing in the water. They were no more than sixty or seventy paces out to sea. We could hear their cries clearly; even, over the wind, identify the Gods whose aid they implored and who were deaf to them. And then there had been no voices, only the cry of gulls.

The light began to die. The sea still growled against the rocks away to the right, but below us, as the beach darkened, it was hard to tell where water stopped and sand began. A pall of grey-black enveloped everything. Then Septimus conjured his fire into being. The flames danced on the men's streaked and stricken faces. Eyes glinted red. Nobody spoke. All huddled as close to the fire as they could.