I Am Livia (40 page)

Every day Tavius depended on me to shoulder a share of the burden of work he carried. He often said he was lucky in the wife he had chosen. But I felt my failure every time I saw a baby—and at this time, it seemed as if every woman I was close to was giving birth. First, my sister had her second daughter. Then Caecilia, now happily wed to Agrippa, had a daughter too. Shortly after that, Rubria, who still looked after my boys like a kindly aunt, brought her little Marcus into the world.

Tavius and I made an appearance at the naming ceremony that her husband, Ortho, held for his son. Ortho greeted us, flushed with pride. A few years before, he never would have dreamed of having Caesar as his guest, but now the house he welcomed us to was large and grand, and his baby son lay in an ornate cradle, trimmed with carved ivory flowers.

Little Marcus was not red and wrinkled, as many nine-day-old children are, but already handsome.
When I peered at him in his cradle, I swear he smiled as if he knew me. I, not one to gush over infants, felt a fluttering in my heart and a rush of longing.

I tore my eyes away from the child and noticed a statue of Minerva in a wall niche across the atrium: a costly statue, delicately painted. It pleased me that Ortho and Rubria could afford such artwork. The celebration, itself, pleased me—the happy guests, the smell of sweet cakes in the air, the wine poured into silver goblets.

Rubria, still recovering from childbirth and looking a bit pale, sat beside the cradle greeting her guests.
When I sat down beside her, she gave me a searching, almost stricken look.

“Why, dear, what is i
t
?” I said. “Surely you are happy?”

“It just feels like a dream to me.”

I laughed and patted her hand. “It’s no dream.”

She looked across the room at her husband. “He has become so wealthy, so quickly. Oh, with your help, and we are grateful for it. But it’s like watching a shooting star
.
A
nd a shooting star rises—and then it falls.”

Her words chilled me, the more so because Rubria had never before spoken in such a fashion. I said, “After women give birth, they can have strange moods. But that passes.”

“I think sometimes that I’m still alone and poor. I’m not a merchant’s wife with a house and a son. I have fallen asleep and dreamed this, but I will wake and realize—”

“Stop it,” I said, but gently because I was so fond of her. “You mustn’t give in to such fancies.”

“Is it just a fancy?”

“Of course it is.” I knocked on the gilded arm of her chair. “This is solid. And look around you. Here is your house, your husband, your son
.
A
nd here am I, your loving friend. I assure you, I’m not some dream phantasm.”

“Lady Livia, do you think of the forest fire and the cave? Does it never seem dreamlike to you, to have risen so high, after all tha
t
? Oh, I am not comparing myself to you. But don’t you, yourself, sometimes wonder if you’re dreaming?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think such thoughts. For one thing, I’m much too busy.”
The truth was that when such ideas entered my mind, I did my best to push them away.

“And you don’t fear that you might fall?”

“I will never allow myself to fall,” I said.

Soon Tavius came to whisper in my ear that we had other engagements that day. So we left, borne off in the large and comfortable litter we used when we traveled about the city together. People stood in the street to cheer, and we kept the litter curtains open so they could see us.

“Do you feel i
t
?” I asked Tavius in a low voice. “Do you feel how the people adore you?”

He smiled and lifted his hand to wave at the crowd.

“And I adore you,” I whispered. “Do you know how much?”

I think he sensed some need for reassurance in me. He turned his head and gave me a questioning look, but then the shouts of the crowd distracted him, and he looked away.

At that moment—strangely—I had the impulse to pray. Inwardly, I supplicated myself before Diana. I begged her, as I always did in my prayers, to protect Tavius. I begged for continued peace
.
A
nd I asked for one thing more, a vital thing. I asked that I be allowed to bear Tavius a son.

Sometimes you are going down a particular road, and the journey seems so long that you can almost imagine it will never end. Then you reach a landmark, and that is enough to make you understand that indeed you are covering distance, and reaching your destination is only a matter of time. But what if you don’t want to reach the destination at all? What if you wish to pretend to yourself that you are not traveling? A change in terrain can be so unwelcome.

I wanted to believe that Antony and Octavia could live married though apart forever, and that Tavius and Antony could continue to growl at each other but never come to blows. They were not, after all, living in adjoining towns but in distant lands within a vast empire. Maybe Tavius and Antony could just go on, tolerating each other’s existence.

Then one day Tavius entered the room in which I was inspecting some weaving done by my maids. “Come into my study,” he said. It was unusual for him to fetch me this way, and his eyes were as fierce as they had been at Vedius’s house when he smashed all the precious crystal.

We closed the study door behind us. I sat on the couch. “What has happened?”

Tavius did not sit. I felt almost afraid of him, as he loomed above me. His hands were clenched into fists, and he looked as if he wanted to find someone to strike. “I’ve gotten a report on Antony’s doings. He annexed Armenia.”

“We expected that, didn’t we?” I blurted.

“Livia, will you be quiet and listen? He returned to Alexandria, to Cleopatra
.
A
nd he went through some kind of marriage ceremony with her.”

Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.

“And he made a speech to the people of Alexandria,”
Tavius went on relentlessly. “And in the speech he said this—that Cleopatra had been the legitimate wife of Julius Caesar. That her son Caesarion is Julius Caesar’s only true heir.”

“Antony has always been a fool,” I said in a rush. “He does and says stupid things without realizing the implications. He did this, likely, only to please Cleopatra. Knowing him, he might have been drunk.”

Tavius said in a furious voice, “He has dishonored my sister, his wife. He has publicly said I am not the heir of Julius Caesar
.
A
nd you make excuses for him?”

A voice in my mind spoke. It was like a child’s voice.
I’m afraid. Please. There must not be war.
I drew in a breath. “Beloved, you mistake me. I don’t excuse him. I am pointing out that he is a fool. If he were a rational, sober man and acted this way, I would take it as a declaration of uncompromising enmity against you. But he is Antony.”

Tavius nodded, becoming calmer. “Yes. He’s a fool.” He sat beside me. “My informant sent me this.” He opened his hand. In his palm lay a large silver coin. I took it and examined it. On one side of it was a portrait of Antony in profile, on the other the profile of Cleopatra. I knew that in the kingdoms of the east, this was how kings and queens symbolized their rule.

There were inscriptions in Greek on both sides of the coin. Above Antony’s portrait: “Antony after the conquest of Armenia.” Above Cleopatra’s: “Cleopatra, queen of kings and mother of kings.”

“He wishes to establish a monarchy independent of and even hostile to Rome,”
Tavius said. “He wishes to dismember the empire that generations shed blood to win, so he can become an eastern potentate, with her by his side.”

Was that truly his aim? How could we know? “He is erratic. Sometimes he acts with no serious aim at all. He may intend only to gratify her.”

“And what does she intend?”
Tavius said.

“She?” I said. I had often wondered about Cleopatra’s motives. But Tavius had previously spoken of her as if she had no existence apart from Antony.

He gave a mirthless chuckle. “Do you discount her because she is a woman? I don’t. Haven’t you ever given thought to who and what she is?”

“She is a queen,” I said, “and I do not discount her.”

“I met her when my father was consorting with her,”
Tavius said. “She never struck me as beautiful, but she has, when she wishes to exert it, enormous charm. She speaks six languages fluently—oh, she is learned. Learned and also savage. The royal line from which she springs is known for treachery and murder.”

I nodded; I knew this. But Tavius went on speaking as if reciting the ugly details gave him a perverse pleasure.

“When Cleopatra was small, her older sister rose in rebellion against her father. He executed his own daughter
.
A
fter her father died, to secure the throne, Cleopatra murdered both her brothers. This included the one who was also her husband. The royal family of Egypt practices incest—though the boy did not live long enough to consummate the marriage. Cleopatra’s younger sister, Arsinoe, showed herself no friend of Rome, but because she was just a young girl, my father spared her life. Do you know what happened to Arsinoe, a few years ago?”

Of course I knew. Cleopatra had insisted that Antony order Arsinoe put to death. He had her dragged out of a temple sanctuary and executed.

Cleopatra had used every gift of guile and feminine allure to maintain her rule of Egypt. She had slaughtered members of her own family to keep her power. But what would she have said if forced to explain hersel
f
? No doubt she would have spoken of the struggle with disloyal kin and the need to hold her kingdom against Rome. She might have maintained that her choices were dictated by necessity.

It would be wrong to say I felt a shred of kinship with Cleopatra. But I remembered that Tavius and I had gone down twisted paths we never would have trodden if we had been born in a well-ordered Republic.
Who could say what I would have done in Cleopatra’s situation? It might be that she and I had more in common than I could comfortably admit. I wondered, did she love Antony as I loved Tavius?

Was she simply laying claim to a husband now? Or was it an empire Cleopatra was claiming?

“I don’t know how any man, even Antony, could prefer that woman to my sister, who is kind and good, and I swear to you, more beautiful,”
Tavius said. “But he’s become her creature. They had a great public ceremony, at which he awarded his older son by her the whole Parthian empire he has yet to conquer. Their daughter, he gave Crete and Cyrenaica, and the younger boy got Syria and Asia Minor. Caesarion he dubbed ‘king of kings’ just as his mother is ‘queen of kings.’ ”

From a Roman point of view, these were bizarre doings. But several kings reigned in the territories Antony governed, subordinate to Rome and to Antony himself. If he wanted to make his children vassal rulers, some would argue that was within his authority and need not injure Rome. I said this to Tavius, and he did not contradict me. Still, I felt he did not hear me.

“Antony has obviously lost his reason,” I said. “And who can predict what a madman will do? Just because of that, you should not take any precipitate action. You need to know his and Cleopatra’s true aim
.
A
nd if there is to be war—” I nearly choked on the word. “If there is to be war, all of Rome must be on your side. They look upon you, with good reason, as the man who has brought them peace. They love you for that. You must keep their love, now more than ever. They must be made to understand that war, if it comes, is Antony’s fault, not yours. Then they will support you. And then you will win.”

“Those are exactly my own thoughts,”
Tavius said.

So we would wait.

T
he next day, Tavius, Octavia, and I had another of our three-sided talks. Speaking as gently as I had ever heard him, Tavius apologized to his sister for ever asking her to marry Antony, and acknowledged that she had done it for his sake. “I never should have tied you to that man. I made a foolish mistake, at great cost to you. It’s time to undo my error. You must divorce him.” As he had before, he said she should come and stay with us, that he and I would do everything we could to ensure her comfort and happiness.

“I will not initiate a divorce. I will not leave Antony’s house,” Octavia said.

Tavius’s entire manner changed. “Antony has married another woman,” he said angrily. “What do you plan to do, live in a polygamous arrangement as if you were some barbarian slu
t
?”

“Whatever he has done, he has not married her. He could not do that, not lawfully. He is married to me.”

Tavius fell into a paroxysm of coughing. He coughed more, lately; I took it as a sign of his unquiet mind. I felt his anguish and wanted to help him but was at a loss. I feared what would happen if Octavia divorced Antony. I imagined a war that Tavius might lose, a war that might take him from me forever.

When Tavius could speak again, he addressed his sister in a low voice. “Do you realize that the man you call your husband announced that Julius Caesar had one heir, and it wasn’t me? It’s as if he drew a dagger and aimed it at my heart. He spat on both of us. Don’t you have any pride?”

“I don’t want anyone to die for my pride.” She reached out and stroked his hand. “Least of all you.”

He suffered her touch for a moment, then jerked his hand away and got to his feet.
We were in the garden of Antony’s house. Tavius looked around him as if even the flowers and the trees were his enemies. “Stay here then,” he said to Octavia. “If I loved and honored you less, I would have you carried out of here. But go ahead, stay. I see that you’ve gone insane. I can only hope you will recover.” His gaze shifted to me. “If I did to you what Antony has done to her, you would want to dine on my kidneys, and you know it. But you sit there and say not a word. I think you want my sister to tolerate this disgraceful treatment.
Why?”

I felt his anger like a blow. Once we were so united we were like twin souls. Now it was as if walls had sprung up between us. “I only want peace,” I said in a shaking voice.

“Peace,” he repeated, as if the word disgusted him. He swung around and strode out of the house.

Octavia and I sat silently for a while. I struggled to keep from weeping. “I heard something about this so-called marriage of Antony’s,” she said finally. “Oh yes, I have my own sources. It was a strange half-Greek, half-Egyptian ritual. He dressed as Dionysus and she as some Egyptian goddess or other. They played at being god and goddess, as they and their guests feasted and drank. It was nothing like a Roman wedding.”

“It was a public event,” I said.

“It was foolishness.
Antony is like a boy in some ways. Children can be cruel, but it’s unthinking cruelty. So we have to forgive them.”

Do we?
I almost said. Antony had gone beyond all possibility of forgiveness, as far as Tavius was concerned. And to my mind he deserved whatever disaster came of this. But we did not. Rome did not. I imagined mothers mourning their sons because of Antony’s folly. Romans killing Romans again as we were all dragged into a civil war. A war that might destroy Tavius.

There was coolness now between Tavius and me. He had wanted me to help persuade Octavia to leave Antony’s house, and I had not done it. I daily felt his silent displeasure. And then, to further darken the skies, a fever swept through Rome. It had happened before; it would happen again. Physicians could do little. At night, one heard wagons rolling through the streets, collecting bodies. Tavius conducted a great sacrifice on behalf of Rome at the Temple of Jupiter to mitigate heavenly wrath, but this had no effect. Tiberius Nero went away to the country with our two boys, for there were few deaths in the countryside. Octavia left the city as well, taking her children and Antony’s sons, and little Julia too. Tavius and I were too busy with affairs to leave Rome.

I worried about Tavius’s precarious health. But he did not come down with the fever. Meanwhile, several senators I knew died, and so did two of my slaves. Then word came that Marcus Ortho had fallen ill. “I should go to Rubria,” I told Tavius.

“Send her husband the best physician we know,”
Tavius said.
“But I won’t have you going there to expose yourself to contagion.”

“There is contagion here in our own house, among the slaves,” I said.

“No,” he said. “The ones who were sick have either died or gotten well. You’re not to go to Rubria’s house.”

So I stayed away and only sent physicians. Then I heard that Ortho had died and Rubria herself had fallen sick.

“I might have been burned alive if not for her,” I told Tavius. “I have to be with her now.”

We were in his study. Tablets and papyrus scrolls covered his writing table. I always kept them in order, but it was still daunting to look at the piles of documents and think of all the matters that demanded his attention. Gaul, North Africa, Sicily—a thousand voices clamored for Caesar’s notice. He had taken on this burden gladly, but that did not mean it did not wear on him. Beyond that, there was this sickness in Rome, and always, casting a cloud over everything, the threat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. His face tight with strain, Tavius said, “Is it impossible for you to obey me for once, instead of adding to my worries? Can’t you just obey me as a wife is supposed to obey her husband?”

“Forgive me, I can’t. Not in this.”

I summoned my litter and started out for Rubria’s house. I could not do otherwise. The fear of losing Rubria clawed at me, and somehow I felt that if only I were with her, I would be able to save her from death as she had once saved me.

Her house, so festive mere months before, now seemed like an ornately decorated tomb. Entering, I immediately heard weeping. Slaves weeping for their master or for fellow servants who had also died? Or for their mistress who might soon set out on the same journey? Fustinius, the physician I had dispatched here, came into the atrium to greet me, grim-faced. He said, “She is dying. It can’t be helped. There’s no good you can do here. I advise you to leave.”

“Is she awake?”

“At times.”

“Then I will see her,” I said.

She lay looking pale as a wax image, covered with a blanket of clean white wool. I would not have known that she still lived except I could see the blanket move slightly with the rise and fall of her chest. Her eyes were closed. She did not stir when I entered and took a chair near her bed. I thought:
She will not awake. I should leave now, for safety’s sake.
But then I noticed her burn-scarred hands, resting above the blanket, and whispered, “Rubria, I am here.” She surprised me by opening her eyes. “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “You will get better.”

She stared blankly at me, as if I were a stranger.

“Do you know who I am?”

She nodded her head.

“Then you know I can’t do without you. You must not leave me.”

“The gods say differently.” She barely breathed the words.

“You deserve a long and good life, and to watch your son grow up. I say you will get well. Do you understand me?”

She whispered, “Do you think you can control life and death?”

I felt myself rebuked and pressed my lips together.

“I was happy…for a little while.” She spoke with effort, to console me.

“Were you?”

She did not answer. She seemed to sleep. Then she opened her eyes and said, “My son.
Who…?” A look of terror came over her face. “He has no one.”

“I will care for him,” I said.

The fear did not leave her face. I wondered if she had even heard me.

I said in a louder voice, “Rubria, may Diana witness my oath, I will raise him as if he were my own child.”

She looked doubtfully at me.

“He will be my son,” I said. “I swear it.”

Gradually her face became peaceful. I waited, to see if she would speak again. But she never did. I could not tell the moment of her passing, it was so gentle.

After I closed her eyes and put coins on her eyes to pay the ferryman, I ordered Rubria’s servants to bring little Marcus to me. I carried him out to my litter and held him cradled against my breast all the way home.

“I just hope he doesn’t infect us all,”
Tavius said when I told him Rubria had died and I had brought her child with me.

“Oh, thank you for those kind words,” I said, tears of grief in my eyes.

“Let me see him.”

We walked into a side room, where the baby lay in a cradle. Tavius looked down at the child.

“You see? He is healthy,” I said.

Tavius’s expression was bleak. Perhaps at that instant he imagined, as I did, how it would have been for the two of us to stand like this over the cradle of our own son.

“I gave my word to his mother I would raise him as my own,” I said.

“As your own?”
He stared at me. “Without asking me, you swore tha
t
?”

At that moment terror filled me—terror of the chasm opening between us. I felt such a deep dread that we could lose each other that I think I must have pleaded with him with my eyes. “Beloved, how could I not go to Rubria? And how can I not care for her child now? You and I—we pay our debts. You would do the same thing in my place.”

“You’re that sure of what I would do?”

“Oh, yes. I know you.”

Tavius stood frowning, and I felt a chill around my heart. But finally he said, “Well, his mother was a loyal woman, and his father always kept faith. I suppose we can make something of him.”

I kissed his cheek.

He did not offer to legally adopt little Marcus; making the child one of his heirs would have been a great matter. But he tolerated the child’s presence in our home, and soon began to take the same kindly, if rather distant, interest in him he did in my other two children. There were fewer silences between us. And so my deepest fear passed, and I did my best to forget about it.

There were no more deaths from fever among people I knew, and few new deaths in the city. Rubria’s passing was a great blow to my sons, and to Tiberius in particular. He wept long and hard when he heard the news. Then he never spoke her name again.