I Am Livia (43 page)

Then came the part that made my heart die. “What’s come over you?” Antony wrote to Tavius. “Why this hostility? Is it that I’m screwing the queen? What does it matter in whom I insert my prick? And what about you? Is Drusilla the only woman you screw? Good luck to you if, when you read this letter, you haven’t also screwed Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia or all of them.”

Terentilla, of course, was Maecenas’s wife. If I had been a supreme fool, I would have assumed Antony alluded to something long in the past. But I was not such a fool. The other three—I knew them too. I had seen them make eyes at Tavius at dinner parties. I had seen him smile back at them
.
A
nd I had looked away, as if I had seen nothing.

The two of us stood in my study.

“You read i
t
?” he said.

“Of course.”

“I never knew my great-grandfather was a slave.”

I shrugged.

“What he said…about the women…”

“Yes?”

Tavius must have known it was pointless to deny what Antony had said on this score—as pointless to deny as the pedigree tracing his bloodline back to a slave. It is difficult to disprove truth.

“If you understood,”
Tavius said in a low, careful voice, “what a small portion of my life that has been. If you understood how trivial it was—a matter of taking, once in a great while, what was freely offered. It had nothing to do with my life with you.”

“Of course,” I said, keeping my voice level. “I know that.”

I felt that saying anything else would be throwing away all my pride. For who but a fool expected a husband to be faithful? Who? Men of our rank always had other women beside their wives. I had known this. And yet somehow I had refused to believe Tavius could share with someone else what he shared with me. How odd that lack of belief was. It amounted to willful ignorance.

A voice inside my mind cried out:
But he worked so hard, he was so busy! And we were together so much. When in the world did he have time for other women?
But I realized these thoughts were absurd. I would not shame myself by speaking them aloud.

“I never loved any of them,”
Tavius said. Perhaps he knew me well enough to see through my composure to what lay underneath. He touched my shoulder. “Livia…”

“Dearest, you’re talking to me about things that are beneath my notice. Really, I prefer not to hear any more about this.”
Then, because I feared I would cry, or claw his face with my nails, I walked out of the room.

I sat in the garden alone for a time, thinking that whatever else happened, something had been lost to us forever. I had feared his leaving me for a wife who could bear him a child. Now I saw that our marriage would never be what it could have been, whether or not we stayed together.

I watched a bee circle around a long-stemmed iris. Up in a tree, a blackbird sang.

Perhaps I will take a lover,
I thought. But I knew I wouldn’t. Because there was no other man I wanted. I wondered if that meant I loved Tavius, even now. Maybe. At that moment, I felt absolutely no love for him. How strange, how empty I felt.

Later that day, I sat with my husband and Maecenas and tried to plot out strategy in light of new events. Maecenas kept darting uneasy glances at me. I ignored that. “Antony is trying to pass off his liaison with Cleopatra as if it were some frivolous love affair,” I said. “But Rome will see through that. A foreign queen, and he lets her rule him. That is what Rome will not abide.” I looked at Tavius. “Do not even try to answer his slurs. Treat them with cold disdain. That is what Antony deserves. Utter disdain. Denounce him for bowing to Cleopatra, a woman ruler, a foreign queen. You cannot say those two words often enough:
foreign queen
. She wants to rule him, and he, the imbecile, is so blinded—blinded by
lust
—that he will let her do it. That is what you must say.”

Tavius nodded, his face looking as if it were carved in stone.

Later, Maecenas sought me out alone. “I want to say I admire you.
And you are dealing with this exactly as you should.”

A flame of pure rage rose in me. “Oh, am I? Thank you for saying so, Maecenas. You knew it had begun again between him and Terentilla, didn’t you? Of course you did
.
A
nd you just smiled at me.”

“Was I supposed to carry tales to you? Please, keep this in perspective. You’re the only woman Caesar has ever truly cared for. Isn’t that what matters?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “And I wonder if it’s even true. Should I believe it is true, just because you say i
t
? As if you would not willingly lie to smooth his way?”

Maecenas shook his head, wounded.

Of course I knew I was being unfair, venting anger at Tavius on poor Maecenas. I did not care. I patted his cheek. “There, there. We are still friends. But I will know how to value your friendship in the future.”

Antony also wrote Octavia a letter. Her eyes were dry when she told me about it.

“It was short. I can quote it to you, in case you’re curious. ‘Octavia, I divorce you. Take what is yours and leave my house.’ Not another word, just his seal.”

We sat alone in the garden of Antony’s house. Inside, slaves were packing Octavia’s things.

We heard a boy’s loud voice. “My turn!”

“That’s Antyllus,” Octavia said. “The children are all so noisy. If one is not shouting, another one is crying
.
W
hat I would give for a little silence. There was nothing about the children in the letter. I suppose I could send his four to Antony, and he’d have to accept them.”

I stared at her. Send him her own daughters, Antonia and Antonilla, along with Fulvia’s sons?

“I’m joking,” she said. “I’ll take them all with me when I move, my stepsons too. I hope Antony never remembers them.” Her face went stricken. “But they remember
him
. Antyllus especially. He worships his father.”

“Tavius will look after them all,” I said.

“Yes, I know he will.
With a great air of wounded sanctimony.” Her expression grew kind. “I’ve been so full of my own troubles.
We never speak of yours.”

We had become friends over the last months, a thing I once would never have believed possible.

I patted back a wisp of my hair that had come loose. “That hero statue of
Tavius in the Forum—the one with the gold plating—do you know, when they put it up, I thought it was a close likeness of him? Now, I realize it’s not. It’s good to see things clearly.”
Let’s change the subject
.

“I still pray there is no war,” Octavia said
.
W
e could hear Antyllus, his brother, Jullus, and Octavia’s son, Marcellus, yelling at each other. “They always argue like that, but in the end they work things out. Really, they’re good boys.” She paused. “Why do boys grow up to be such beasts? Is it our fault in some way? After all, we raise them.”

I had no answers to her questions.

“Can you imagine what it is like to watch the whole world dissolve in war, and realize you could have prevented it if only you’d managed to hold on to your husband?”

I put my arm around Octavia’s shoulder. She smelled of floral perfume, a light, clean scent. “I don’t think Tavius has decided yet if he will strike if Antony doesn’t,” I said.

“I believe Tavius will kill Antony in the end,” Octavia said. “Or else Antony will kill Tavius, and how is that better?” Her eyes filled with tears. “All the time I was away from Antony, I wrote him letters. I never reproached him. I gave him news of the children, the little things that would strike him funny. I sweated blood over those letters.”

And while she labored in the writing, he was in another woman’s bed. I whispered, “Did you love him?”

“Not as you love Tavius. More as you love a child. But I will never stop loving him.”

She was a good woman. Better than I was in many ways. Looking at her I had a sorrowful sense of the ineffectuality of her sort of goodness in the world.

Tavius and I spoke to each other from a great distance now. And yet a night soon came when he reached for me with anxious need. I did not turn from him, nor did I lay like a cold statue under his caresses.

He began kissing my feet. As I felt his mouth, moving slowly up my body, I closed my eyes. The pleasure came, without my will. But a part of me seemed to hover over the bed, watching with a cynical half-smile.

In the days that followed, I often thought of how for him I had left my first marriage, giving up my sons. Many would say I had abandoned my honor too.
What sacrifice had Tavius ever made for me? Would he be willing to give up anything at all for my sake?

When I managed to banish dark thoughts about my marriage, no peaceful musings came to replace them, only fear of what might be coming. Soon Tavius was spending most of his time away from Rome in army camps in Italy, expanding his forces and fortifying their resolve.
Agrippa believed in the utility of smaller galleys, which he said could outmaneuver Antony’s warships. Tavius began to build these at a frantic pace. Agrippa oversaw the training of the ships’ crews. None of this could be hidden. Rome braced for war.