I Am Livia (25 page)

“I can’t figure out what color your eyes are,
”
T
avius said. He took my chin in his hand and tilted my face so he could see it better.

“I have ordinary brown eyes.”

“There are flecks of gold in them right now. But in certain light, I can’t see those flecks at all. Sometimes, I swear, your eyes are absolutely black.” He kissed me on the mouth, then on the throat.

A shivery sensation ran through my body. I wanted him so. “Soon, my beloved. Soon,” I murmured.

He drew away, his face tense with need. “O god Apollo,” he muttered under his breath.

I was still a not-quite-attainable object to him, the wife he had married but not yet slept with—literally; as usual in noble households when a wife is many months pregnant, we had separate bedchamber. This left Tavius in the grip of passionate, obsessive desire. At times, I would be reading and would raise my eyes from the book to find him sitting there, quietly watching me. Sometimes, wakeful in the middle of the night, he came into my bedchamber with a candle, to sit and watch me sleep. He looked at me the way a man might at some incredibly precious object he had just bought for a great price. It was as if he did not fully believe I belonged to him.

And I? When I gazed at him, sometimes I forgot to breathe. I imagined all the delights ahead and ached with longing. And I visualized a marriage far different from the one I had known, both passionate love and an affinity of mind.

I pressed my hand against his cheek, ran my fingers across his lips. “Tavius…”

“Wha
t
?”

“I want to supervise your mail,” I said. “I’ll be very good at it. If you tell your freedmen to report to me, I promise you won’t regret it.”

“Do you know how much work you’re asking for? Why do you want to work that hard?”

“I just do. I’m peculiar.”

Of course I wanted to help him and ease the load he had to bear. But I also sensed the influence it would give me if I took charge of Tavius’s correspondence. To decide which information came to his attention and which did not, to be ready to urge action or no action on a host of matters, to draft his replies to letters from important men all over the empire…that would surely give me a kind of power. I could foresee, also, that as time went on, it would seem more and more natural that I handle many matters on my own.

“I love you,” I said. “Let me help you.”

“That’s what you wan
t
?”

“More than anything.”

He tilted his head, thinking. Even in the first rapture of love, Caesar Octavianus did not act impulsively when it came to matters that touched on his political survival. I did not press him for a decision. Delicacy, gentleness—those were my tools. I waited.

Then one day he brought me into the study and showed me the pile of scrolls on his wide, oak writing table. “How can I read all those petitions and do anything else?”

I clucked my tongue. “If you only had the right person to sort through all that…”

“All right, we’ll try it,” he said.

Before my child was born, before I was in the full sense Tavius’s wife, I had an unofficial role of authority in his government. I reached for it with both hands, and once I had it, I felt like an eagle chick that for the first time had a chance to fly. That is to say, I took to it.

I might read through a long, rambling missive from the chief magistrate of a little provincial town, and also letters from his groaning subjects.
This is why the magistrate wants to raise taxes, and this is why it might be the wrong time for it,
I would tell Tavius. He would decide what he wanted to do about taxes, and I would draft a reply to the magistrate for him. Our working together was not separate from our personal bond, the heart of our marriage. Rather, it was like our two minds making love. We meshed so well—and this melding came about so quickly—it startled and delighted both of us.

One evening when we dined alone, we had a discussion that greatly moved me. “Sometimes I feel certain the gods favor me,” he said. “Not because they love me, you understand, but because they love Rome, and I’m what Rome happens to require. When both the consuls died right after I became propraetor, it looked so convenient some people thought I must have secretly murdered them. But I didn’t. They just died and cleared the path for me.” Tavius shook his head, remembering. “It seemed uncanny.”

“Fortune favors the brave,” I said.

“Suppose the gods decided what I needed now was to marry an extraordinarily intelligent wife? I think they’re fully capable of arranging that, don’t you?” He spoke earnestly, not as if he meant to flatter me but almost as if he were talking to himself.

If he had written me a dozen poems rhapsodizing about my eyes, my hair, and my dulcet voice, it would have meant far less to me. It is a joy to be appreciated for the thing you want to be appreciated for. To be appreciated as a woman, and also to be appreciated as a creature with a mind—what more could I have wanted?

I had flown high and had great reason to be happy, but there is no such thing as perfect contentment on this earth.
Whenever Tavius left for a session of the Senate I remembered the fate of the man he called his father, and I feared knives. Apart from that, my life had its complement of mundane difficulties.

No marriage ends with absolute finality when a child of that marriage is loved by both parents. Scribonia regularly came to visit her little Julia. She would fuss over the baby and imply that much was lacking in the child’s care. Tavius had a way of being nowhere to be found when she arrived. I would be left to placate her. Meanwhile, my son was being reared in his father’s household. I saw little Tiberius as frequently as I wished, just as Tavius had promised. Tiberius Nero also remained a presence in my life. My heart was not rent by guilt when I saw my former husband; there was too much steel in my character for that. But I felt a sense of obligation. He knew it. He had a way of finding little chores for me, small domestic problems he expected me to solve. Luckily Rubria was extremely competent, and willing to help me, for I essentially had charge of two households. All in all, my life was extraordinarily busy.

I gave birth in mid-January. My second son arrived with much less travail than his brother had. Afterward, I lay in my bedchamber, the swaddled infant in my arms. The baby looked so beautiful to me, so perfect. He even smelled sweet. He had wailed just after his birth, but now slept peacefully. I wanted to hold him forever.

Tavius came and sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you know what I wish?” I asked.

“The same thing that I’m wishing.”

If only that baby had been Tavius’s son.

“He’ll always be special to me,”
Tavius said, “because he was born to you, here in my house.” He peered at the baby, a tender half-smile on his face. “Livia Drusilla’s son. Little Drusus.”

“His father intends to name him Decimus Claudius Nero,” I said.

“Why shouldn’t he have two names? And two fathers? I can testify that more than one father can be a great advantage to a man.”

I smiled. But my son had to be acknowledged by Tiberius Nero. His place in the world depended on my former husband’s prompt assertion of paternity. “The baby must be wrapped up warmly and carried to Tiberius Nero’s house,” I said to Tavius. “Will you give the orders, please?”

Tavius nodded. “You should rest now.” He grinned. “The sooner you recover from the birth, the sooner we can set about making sons of our own.” Clearly he did not understand what it would cost me, to send my newborn baby away. I felt as if I were tearing out a piece of my heart.

Jokes circulated about how Tavius and I had managed to produce a child so soon after our marriage:

Fortunate are the parents for whom

The child is only three months in the womb.

But little Drusus—the nickname stuck—was acknowledged by his father on the day he was born, and well-informed people did not doubt his legitimacy. This included, of course, Tiberius Nero. He rejoiced, as well he should have, at the birth of a second fine son.

I engaged a wet nurse for Drusus, just as I had for little Tiberius. My former husband was only too happy for me to supervise the care of both my sons. I told myself I was doing what any woman of my rank would do—overseeing servants who looked after my children. I tried to believe it did not make a great difference that we lived in separate households. But of course it did. If they woke up sick or afraid in the night, Rubria and a staff of servants would tend to them. Their father was there too. But not their mother. Never their mother.

There were times when I imagined my sons crying for me, in their father’s house. I ached to hold them. And sometimes when we were together I thought I saw an accusation in little Tiberius’s eyes.
Why did you leave me?

Tavius and I had a second marriage ceremony just three days after my second son’s birth. The timing was my choice. Tavius said, “Why rush? It’s not as if we can consummate the marriage yet, so why put yourself through a wedding ceremony before you’re fully up to i
t
?”

“We are a traditional patrician couple,” I informed him. “We would not dream of living together one day more than necessary before we have our marriage sanctified.”

I spared Tiberius Nero the duty of giving me away a second time, but I put on a bride’s scarlet veil again. The priest of Jupiter sacrificed a pig, examined its entrails, and said that heaven smiled. Tavius and I ate the consecrated cake. Then after we shared dinner with a handful of guests, we kissed, and I went back to my own bedchamber and fell asleep.

On the ninth day after Drusus’s birth, Tavius and I attended the naming ceremony Tiberius Nero held for him. I expected Tavius and Tiberius Nero to be cautiously polite with each other, but they seemed at ease. At one point, Tavius said something—I was not close enough to hear his words—and Tiberius Nero’s face lit up with a smile.

“What did you do, offer to make him consul?” I asked Tavius later.

He shook his head.

“What then?” I asked.

He touched the tip of my nose. “Must you know everything? I promised him that I would always do whatever I could to further his sons’ future careers.”

My first thought was
Their future careers? One is a newborn baby, and the other is a three-year-old.
But I could see from Tavius’s face that he meant it as a solemn pledge, and I sensed that this promise could someday matter greatly to my boys. So I threw my arms around his neck and told him how kind he was. He smiled and shrugged. He loved nothing better than being congratulated on his benevolence.