I Am Livia (29 page)

Tavius went to Vedius’s place at the table, picked up his goblet, and threw it down. Broken crystal and spilled wine lay all around us. The bodyguards by this time were lugging in a fortune’s worth of fine crystal. Tavius motioned for them to put it on a side table, but it was already piled high with plates and platters. Tavius removed all these objects with a sweep of his arm. They crashed to the floor. The bodyguards piled the crystal on the table. There were goblets, vases, more than one fine decanter.

Tavius gazed at the crystal pieces for a moment. Then he said, “Break them.”

The bodyguards broke all the crystal pieces by hurling them to the floor.

Vedius stood motionless, like a rabbit watching a hawk descend. Krito, who still crouched on the floor, was surrounded by shards of crystal and looked like Pandora must have when she opened the chest and accidentally loosed all the world’s demons. Even the bodyguards, who now stood straight at attention, appeared scared. As for me, I didn’t move or say anything. I had no idea what Tavius would do next.

He took a deep breath and gazed down at Krito, pointed at him, and said, “You are set free.”
The slave gave a delighted, incredulous cry and clasped Tavius’s knees in gratitude.

Tavius stared across the table at Vedius. At that moment, I felt true terror. The force in that stare—the deadly force of it—made me quail though I was not the recipient
.
V
edius trembled. I think he expected Tavius to order him thrown to the lampreys. I half expected that myself. But Tavius said, “You will fill in your pond. You understand me?”

“Yes, Caesar.”

“I don’t expect to ever hear again of you doing something like this.”

Vedius grabbed Tavius’s hand and kissed it.

Tavius wiped at his hand with a napkin as if someone had smeared mud on it. He spoke a few words to one of his bodyguards, making official provision for freeing Krito. Then he looked at me and said, “Come,” and went striding out of
Vedius’s house so quickly that I nearly had to run to keep up with him.

When we were in our carriage again, riding back to the villa, Tavius said, “He was actually going to have a human being eaten alive for breaking a cup. Gods above, I know what scum men are, and how filthy the world is, but I would not have believed it.”

His sense of right and wrong had been truly violated, and the anger he had shown was righteous anger.
Pity anyone who provokes that anger in him,
I thought.

This side of him, which was so just, appealed to me. I had seen only hints of it before. He kept it buried within himself.
Imagine who he might have been,
I thought,
if he had been born a hundred years ago, when the world was less filthy. Imagine what a champion of right and justice he would have been.

When we had gotten a mile or two away from Vedius’s estate, Tavius began to wheeze, as he had earlier. The wheezing got worse as the trip continued, until he could only take quick, shallow breaths.

“What is i
t
?” I asked fearfully.

“Nothing,” he gasped.

“You need a physician,” I said.

He looked at me with anger. “Didn’t you hear me? I said it’s nothing.”

Soon after, when I was back in Rome while Tavius was away overseeing the final preparations for the invasion of Sicily, I invited Maecenas over for a private discussion.
We chatted, and I told him about how Tavius had broken all the crystal in Vedius’s villa. Maecenas chortled. “Every last piece? How fitting! I’m going to see that this story is widely told. It will add to his legend.”

“Yes. But right now I’m less concerned about his legend than I am with him.” I got down to the purpose of our meeting. “What can you tell me about my husband’s health?”

“Surely the person to ask about that is Caesar,” Maecenas said.

“Don’t say that to me, please. He takes it as an insult if you imply he is not well. But he’s not.
Why can’t he breathe properly when it’s cold?”

Maecenas gave a deep sigh. “Livia, dearest Livia, queen of Roman womanhood, flower of all the world, for whom I would ford rivers and climb mountains, fight lions, walk through flame…don’t you see that you’re putting me in an uncomfortable position?”

I did see it. On the one hand, Maecenas wanted my friendship. He rather relished the role of wise guide to Tavius’s bride. But he kept Tavius’s secrets and was wary of betraying him.

“Almost every morning when Tavius is in Rome, he goes to the Field of Mars for military exercises,” I said. “I think he hates it, but he goes. Often he comes home limping, and if I ask him what happened, he always has a different story. He pulled a muscle while riding, or he tripped while fencing. But I’ve noticed that it’s always his right leg that gets hurt, never the left one. Then, he will eat only a few foods—a very few, when I think about it. It’s peculiar the way he eats, how he scrapes sauce off his meat, like it was poison.”

“So he likes a plain diet,” Maecenas said.

I was filled with frustration and fear. Something was the matter with Tavius—gravely the matter—and nobody would tell me what it was. “Liar, liar, liar,” I said. “How can you look at me and lie?”

Maecenas rubbed the side of his face.

“Tell me the truth. For heaven’s sake, I’m his wife.
Why must he keep things from me?”

“Think of how he is situated. He needs to project strength and invincibility.”

“He needs to project invincibility—with me?”

“Do you expect instant and total trus
t
? He already lets you read his mail. Have a little patience.”

“Have a little patience? I would like to know if he is fatally ill.”

Maecenas shook his head. “He’s not.
When we were younger I used to stand vigil at his sickbeds and go home and weep. But he would always come bounding up again. I finally realized he is one of those people who is never truly well, but still will probably outlive me.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“This and that.
”
We were in a small sitting room, and I had ordered fruits, nuts, and wine served on a side table. Maecenas ate a fig, frowning, then sighed and said, “He has a weakness in his right side, so sometimes he limps. If it’s too cold or too hot he has trouble breathing. I don’t know why. It’s strange. He can’t take smoke or dust or— Once a bee stung him, and he swelled up and almost died. There’s a lot of food he can’t eat, because if he does he gets violently sick.”

“Violently sick?”

“Livia, please try not to get so distressed,” Maecenas said. “The difficulties with his health come and go, but they will never be allowed to impede him. And they will certainly never kill him.”

“How do you know they won’
t
?”

“I know his strength of will. He’ll do what he has been put on earth to do.”

“How in the world can he go off and lead an army when he’s so…sickly?”

Maecenas looked around as if he feared someone were listening to us. “Please, don’t ever let anyone hear you call him that—least of all him.” He added, “Do you know what is going to happen to me if you let him know I discussed this with you?”

“Wha
t
?”

Maecenas ran his finger across his throat.

“Truly?”

He grinned. “No. But he’ll be furious. So use some discretion, will you?”

I kept Maecenas’s confidence. And when Tavius returned to dispose of business at home before leaving for war, I did not say,
You can’t possibly go, because you are not a well man.
The girl I had been at fourteen would have said it. The woman knew he would go whatever I said.

“Dearest,” I murmured one night in bed, “I have something important to ask you.”

Tavius paused from nibbling my neck. “What do you wan
t
?”

I want you home and safe. I want an end to the civil wars.
“When you’re away, someone who truly cares ought to be overseeing your finances. I think it should be me.”

He chuckled. “You like to be in charge, don’t you? Do you know who you remind me o
f
?” He whispered the answer in my ear: “Me.”

Only a few days before, I had wished to sell a little farm that was part of my dowry. Of course I had to ask Tavius’s permission to do it. As my husband, he was my financial guardian, and I needed him to stamp with his seal every business contract I made. He readily acceded to my request, and yet I felt angry, as if it humbled me to ask him. Here I was helping him to govern Rome, but because of the laws that applied to women, I could not freely dispose of a bit of my own inheritance. I certainly did not want some male factotum controlling all our money while Tavius was gone.

“I’ll hold your seal for you while you’re away?”

“Oh, let me consider that a little,”
Tavius said. But his tone told me he would agree.

He did give me his seal without my having to ask again. But the thing I wanted more—peace—
that
I could not get so simply.

A few days later, I stood in the atrium, clutching Tavius in my arms. Fear of loss had turned me into a coward.

The knowledge of
Tavius’s infirmities tore at me. Military life was so difficult.
What if hardship made him fall seriously ill? I wished I could go to war in his place. At least I didn’t have his host of physical ailments.

The woman who had coolly asked to hold the purse strings while her husband was away—that woman had vanished. I felt as if something had broken inside me. I remembered my last parting with my father, and pressed my face against Tavius’s shoulder. The metal of his breastplate was hard against my cheek. Civil war had robbed me of my parents, and now it would rob me of my love. I wept.

Tavius had never anticipated this sort of parting. “Livia, please, don’t act this way.”

“I love you too much,” I said.

“For heaven’s sake, I’m coming back.”

How do you know?

“Wipe your eyes, will you?”

“Forgive me. You’ll come home in triumph, and I’ll laugh at what a fool I was.”

He kissed me, and I let him go.

I looked after our affairs in Rome. Lonely months passed. I waited for news of success in Sicily, and felt dread—dread that was not completely misplaced. One day a message came from Tavius: