I Am Livia (21 page)

“Do you know what troubles me mos
t
?”
Tavius asked. A shadow passed over his face. “That after all this is over, people will say Caesar Octavianus destroyed the Republic. Destroyed a thing that has been in its death throes for much, much longer than most people live. That was actually struck dead the first time a senator murdered his political opponents and was lauded for it.”

“We took the wrong turn in the road,” I said, which was a great understatement.

“Again and again,” he said. “And if there is a way to go back, I don’t know it. But I know a way forward.”

I thought about the ideal my father had died for: a just and harmonious Republic in which the nobility acted for the benefit of the people and the people admired their leaders and followed them loyally. There had been a time, surely, when a Republic of this kind had actually existed, but that had been long before my birth. I no longer dreamed that the Republic could be restored. My hopes for my country were much narrower. I wanted us to live in peace.

“You are saying we were unworthy of the Republic,” I said to Tavius. “And so the Republic is dead, maybe forever, or at least for a very long time. And we are left with one alternative, preferable to complete destruction. You.”

“That is a grim way to put it,” he said, “but yes, it’s what I believe.”

“My father believed in the Republic, with all his heart,” I said. “And yet—the thing he believed in, what had it become but a government run by and for a tiny clique? Run ineptly by them. Those who tried to help the people were slaughtered. And so the Republic, as it was constituted, deserved to die. But you—you must offer the people something real, to make them loyal to you. Your rule must be based on more than fear.”

“Of course,” he said.

I thought he assented too quickly. I studied his face.

He caught the look I gave him. “Livia, don’t assume I’m completely self-serving or that I don’t love my country. Those are wrong assumptions to make.” Ardor entered his voice. “Understand, I come to Rome as a builder, not a destroyer.”

If you gaze into a cup of wine mixed with water, it is hard to tell how much of each liquid is present. It is much easier to say that the cup contains both water and wine. I knew Tavius was driven to seek preeminence, but I was ready to believe he also wished to serve a greater purpose.

He and I had been born in a terrible time. We sought a path out of darkness. My prayer is that when the gods judge us they remember this.

I surrendered my father’s dream, fully aware of the moral gravity of what I did. “The civil strife must end,” I said.

“I will end it,”
Tavius said.

And I will help you do it,
I thought.

I spent most of that day with him. At noon we were served an extremely simple meal of bread and cheese. “Moderation in all things, that’s my motto,”
Tavius said.

He had made himself ruler of half the Roman empire before his twenty-fourth birthday, and he told me his motto was “Moderation in all things.”

We ate out in the garden. It was small, as was to be expected in a crowded, commercial district. “Why do you live in this part of the city?” I asked him.

“It has never mattered much to me where I lived.”

“We will, of course, move to the Palatine Hill.”

He smiled, amused. “Of course.
”
W
e ate in silence for a while, then Tavius said, “I want to marry you immediately.”

I nodded. “As soon as my child is born.”

“No, right away. I’ve consulted the College of Priests.”

“You’ve consulted them—already?”

“Yes. The last thing I want to do is offend the gods. It turns out we can’t have a religious rite while you’re pregnant. The College has advised me that we can go through two separate marriage ceremonies—one immediately, the ordinary ceremony the common people use, and then after the birth, the religious rite proper to patricians.”

“Two marriage ceremonies?” I said.

“I’m told that as long as Tiberius Nero and I agree he is the father of your child, an ordinary wedding won’t compromise the baby’s legitimacy as a religious rite would
.
W
e can hold a religious ceremony after your baby is born.”

“But Tavius, there will be a scandal over our marriage in any case, and all this rush will only add to the talk. For me to marry you when I am carrying another man’s child will reflect badly on both of us.
Why not just have one proper wedding after I deliver my baby?”

“Because I don’t want it that way,” he said, and for the first time I heard steel in his voice.

I felt an inward jolt.
Where was the man who had so sweetly agreed to our moving to the Palatine?

He sensed my dismay. “There are all kinds of strange twists on this path I’m on,” he said. “I might have to go and put down an invasion by Sextus Pompey at any time. Suppose we must part for months, without a marriage to bind us.
What then?”

We could lose each other,
I thought.

“If you prefer it, I won’t touch you until after you have your child. Believe me, I know how to wait. But I want you here, in this house with me for these months, as my wife.”

We had lived through the same cataclysms, even if we had been on opposing sides.
We both had a sense of how quickly unforeseen calamities could overtake us. I understood his sense of urgency.

“Livia, don’t you
want
to be with me?”

“More than anything on this earth.”

Just before I left him to go home as I must, Tavius said, “Would you like to see the baby?” A few times during the hours I had spent with him, I had heard an infant crying somewhere in the house. With my mind elsewhere, I barely noticed the sound; it might have been a servant’s child. Now I realized the baby he referred to was his new daughter. I wondered if Tavius’s former wife, Scribonia, often visited her child, and how much of a presence she would be in our lives.

I said that of course I wanted to see his daughter. I realized I would soon become this little girl’s stepmother. So we went into the nursery, where a maidservant sat rocking the cradle. Smiling, Tavius lifted the infant.

I am not the sort of woman whose heart thrills with tenderness whenever she sees a baby.
What moved me, became a picture I always would carry in memory, was the vision of
Tavius, the happy and loving new father.

“Julia,” he crooned to the child. He looked up at me. “Isn’t she pretty?”

To me, she was only a tiny red mite, no different from any other child. She was not mine. But I promised her silently that I would be no evil stepmother to her. It struck me that by the nature of things I would spend more time in the future with Tavius’s daughter than I did with my own children. Certainly I would visit little Tiberius and my baby after it was born. But I would miss those small, important moments—when my son wept and needed soothing, when the baby spoke its first words or took its first steps. I would not be there with my little ones but living in another house. This thought hurt me and made me question the course I was taking. How could I leave my children?

Tavius gave the infant to her nurse, and we walked to the entranceway. He put his arms around me. “I can’t stand to let you go,” he said.

“But I must go,” I told him.

“I know. And it will only be for a little while. But it’s hard.”

My pregnant state felt like a physical barrier between us. But we kissed, and when I drew away, I whispered, “Beloved.” I had never spoken that word before, to anyone.

I rode back home in my litter, the curtains drawn, my mind pulled this way and that. And yet my thoughts came back to Tavius, always to Tavius. I dreaded that the huge scandal attached to our marriage might threaten his rule.

Many Romans would have said Caesar Octavianus needed as much protection as a scorpion did. But mixed in with my passion for him there was, from the first, fear for him, and a desire to keep him safe.

He had said he had the right to act foolishly just this once, that is, to act on the basis of desire and human emotion. But his rule was still new and fragile. He could be doomed by even one foolish action. I did not want my marriage to him to cause more bloodshed, least of all for it to bring him harm.

Men might look at his taking me from Tiberius Nero as one more exchange of partners among the sophisticated Roman elite, an ordinary divorce and remarriage. Or they might believe they saw an act of infamy, a tyrant wrenching a wife away from her lawful husband.

Tiberius Nero might smolder in the Senate House. I could imagine a group of malcontents gathering around him, and finally striking Tavius down. I could just as easily see Tavius recognizing the threat and putting Tiberius Nero and others to death. I wanted neither of these eventualities. I was not like Fulvia, ready to exacerbate our rifts. My marriage must somehow become a part of Rome’s healing. I came to the conclusion that how the wedding was conducted mattered; and Tiberius Nero’s attitude mattered greatly.

As soon as I entered the house, I went looking for my husband. I found him in his study, staring grimly into space. Awkwardly, because of my pregnancy, I sank to my knees before him. “Forgive me,” I said.

Surprise flickered across Tiberius Nero’s face, but he said nothing.

“I will marry him. Forgive me,” I said.

Still, he did not speak.

“Do you know what I have been asking mysel
f
?”
Though I remained on my knees, my voice sounded ordinary to my own ears. I was speaking, as a friend, to a man I had known well for a quarter of my life. “I’ve been wondering who will give me away, at the wedding. There must be a man to stand up with me. But my father is dead. And my male cousins are scattered to the wind. So who will do i
t
?”

Seeing me kneeling softened Tiberius Nero somewhat, I think. He said in a reasonable enough tone, “All you have to do is let Caesar know the difficulty, and he’ll snap his fingers and some senator will leap at the chance to do you this service. This is really a very small problem
.
W
hy you are talking to me about it I can’t imagine.”

“I’m sure you’re right. I just—I want my father. And if it can’t be him—well, I think to myself that I should ask one of his friends. And then I go down the list in my mind, and I find that they’re all dead.
Who will give me away, in place of my father? Marcus Brutus? Decimus Brutus? Cicero?”