I Am Livia (45 page)

His face had become an expressionless mask. “You think the baby’s death was the gods’ punishmen
t
? That’s interesting.
What do you imagine we deserved punishment for?”

You, for the blood you shed. Me, for betraying my parents’ memory and leaving my husband and children for you.

I remained silent, but it was as if he heard my unspoken words. His face tightened, and his eyes seemed to go black. “You choose this moment to succumb to nonsensical guilt and superstitious dread, as if you were a peasant woman?” he said. “At this juncture you lose courage?”

“If this war were right and necessary, I would have courage for it,” I said.

“So you’re deserting me.”

“Am I deserting you by refusing to worship with you at the shrine of your destiny?”

He stood up and as he rose, he was overcome by a paroxysm of coughing and nearly stumbled. He pressed his fist to his mouth, looking infuriated.

“Tavius—”

“You said it didn’t matter about the other women,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse and raw. “But that was a lie, wasn’t i
t
? Is that why you’re deserting me?”

I rose and stared at him.

My lack of support was a blow that had sent him reeling. He felt betrayed, and he was deeply shaken or he never would have brought up his liaisons. I thought,
This is the moment to walk back from the edge, before everything good between us is destroyed.
But there was a coil of rage in the center of my chest.

“I thought I could always count on your loyalty,” he said. “But I’ve been watching it erode day by day.”

The coil of rage tightened. “And you’ve been so unfailingly loyal to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so loyal to me, as you chase your sluts.”

His mouth twisted. “Not many men in my position would keep a wife who was barren.”

Pain ripped through me. But rage spoke. “I’m only barren with you,” I said.

I knew how deep my knife went in by the way he smiled. I was glad I had hurt him. I wanted to hurt him more.

I felt anger not only at him but at my whole life, how hobbled I had always been, struggling to shape events despite my bonds, and falling, rising to my feet to try again and finally failing when it mattered most, at this terrifying juncture.

“What a pleasure it is,” he said, “to have a wife like you, who meddles in my business, and never shuts her mouth, and then when I’m beset by enemies, sides with those who hate me. Are you a traitor or only a coward?” He thrust his face close to mine. “Which are you?”

Our eyes locked. I knew he wanted to intimidate me and make me look away. I stood motionless, returning his gaze. I could give blow for blow. “Do you think it’s been a joy to me,” I said, “to be married to a monster? The beast who destroyed the Republic?”

He stiffened and took a step back from me.

His worst anger was not hot. It was cold.
When he spoke he sounded like an accountant or a schoolmaster who was also an executioner. “You ungrateful, perfidious bitch,” he said. “Get out of my sight.”

My heart lurched. I stood there for a moment quivering. Then I whirled and walked out of the room.

We lived together like strangers as he made final preparations for battle. He declared war on Cleopatra in the ancient way of our ancestors. He went outside the city limits, sacrificed a pig, dipped a spear in its blood, and threw the spear in the direction of Egypt. In this manner, he summoned the gods of Rome to fight Egypt’s jackal-headed gods.

The army’s departure day came. He entered my study, where I continued to tend to administrative matters, even sorting his mail. I felt our marriage was over. But I numbly performed my usual tasks, and would continue doing so until he told me to stop.

He glanced over a few letters I had set aside for him. Then without looking up, he said, “You ought to have stood by me. You should have realized I’m acting for Rome’s sake.”

“Every time the Republic was ripped apart, every time murder was done, the assassins said they acted for Rome’s sake. And maybe they all believed it. But it came down to this—they wanted power.”

“You say that to me? You compare me to assassins?” His eyes glittered. “What kind of wife are you?”

No wife at all,
I thought.
No wife at all now.
I did not speak.

His anger ebbed, became something else, perhaps mere indifference. “Tell me,” he said, “because I’m curious. If it goes badly for me, and Antony comes here, what will you do?”

I gazed at the winged figure of victory that was etched on his breastplate. “What do you imagine I’ll do? I’ll twist and turn like an eel to keep the children alive.”

Tavius nodded as if he had expected me to say this. “Feel free to spit on my memory if you have to. Rest assured, I will not care.” He spoke as though we were discussing something of no account. Then in a different tone, he said, “When you say ‘the children,’ are you including Julia?”

“I said the children.”

“You’ll look after her.”

I said nothing.

“Tell me you’ll look after her.”

“Yes. Yes! Are you having misgivings now?”

“Not at all. But one must think of every eventuality.”

Yes,
I thought
. One must
.

I will remember this conversation. I will remember it always. How he looked. The sound of his voice. If he is killed, this is what I will remember.

“Aren’t you going to say some farewell words, Livia? ‘With your shield or on it’? Something sweet like tha
t
?”

I said one word. It came out harsh and guttural.
“Win.”

“I intend to,” he said.

If one of us had made a move toward the other, even held out a hand, what would have happened? But neither of us did. Nor did I weep or scream at him or beg him not to go. I wanted to curse him, and I wanted to cling to him forever.
We were both silent.

He walked away. I heard him in the atrium, saying good-bye to the children. Then he was gone.

H
ave you received any letters lately from Agrippa?” I asked Caecilia.

“I got one just a few days ago,” she said. She was my guest at Prima Porta.
We dined one evening alone in the summer dining room, reclining on couches with green silk cushions. She received letters regularly from her husband. I never heard from mine. But if she sensed this and it puzzled her, she did not show it. “We write to each other in cipher, you know. Just in case the messenger gets captured. That way Agrippa can write freely and not worry.”

“How is he?” I asked. I knew he and Tavius were with the naval fleet, off the shore of Greece on the Ionian Sea.

“Very well. He says everything is going as planned. The new galleys are all he hoped they’d be.” She smiled, her eyes shining bright as the sapphire earrings she wore. She was a devoted wife who had seen her husband off to war with a kiss, and now looked forward to his sure victory. “He is so eager for the fight to get under way,” she said, a lilt of eagerness in her own voice.

I motioned for a slave to pour more wine into my goblet.

“It’s just like being in a garden here.” Caecilia looked around at the murals. On all four sides of us the artist had painted trees and flowering plants. “The details are so exact. You can see that tree is an oak and that one is a cypress.”

The two trees at which she pointed looked as if they had grown so close together you could never disentangle the branches. Yet they were distinct. “Yes, the artist is very skilled.”

“What I like best are the birds,” Caecilia said. “Doves, blackbirds, robins…”

“If only we were birds,” I said. “Imagine how pleasant it would be, to fly wherever we wanted to. To be so free.”

“I would fly to the Ionian today,” Caecilia said, her expression wistful. “Just to pay a little visit and see what is happening.” She nibbled a pastry. “Cleopatra is with Antony. They say she will go into battle at his side. She even has her own warship. She is hardly like a woman at all, is she?”

What was Cleopatra feeling now? Had she believed it would come to war, or had she miscalculated? Did she regret the provocations she and Antony had offered Tavius? Or was she glad that war had come, believing she was about to win an empire?

“Does Agrippa expect the fighting to begin soon?” I asked Caecilia.

She nodded. “He thinks everything will be settled in a great sea battle. He will command half the fleet, and Caesar will command the other half, and they hope to get Antony in between them.” My expression must have changed. Caecilia stared at me and said, “Livia, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head, trying to hide what I felt. A wave of fear had engulfed me.
Agrippa was a skilled admiral and on shipboard always fortune’s darling. But every time in the past when Tavius and Agrippa had split their forces at sea, Tavius had met with disaster.

I imagined Tavius’s voice saying what he would have if miles and estrangement had not separated us.
Of course I will command one wing and Agrippa the other. Gods above, Livia, did you imagine I would just go along on his ship for the ride? How would that look?

Silently I cried out to him,
But you are never fortunate fighting at sea! You almost died three times!

Caecilia gazed at me with dismay. I raised my wine cup and drank. Finally, I managed to speak in a calm voice. “Did Agrippa write when he thinks this naval battle will take place?”

“He thought he might have good news to send me in early September.”

Good news. Of course, Agrippa, staunch and confident, expected the news to be good.

The first of September was only five days away.

By the first, I had returned to our house in Rome. That day I dealt in Tavius’s stead with the city aediles, who came begging for more funds. I looked over the books of one of my commercial farms and wrote a long, reproving letter to the steward. I attended a senator’s dinner party that evening
.
A
nd inside myself I shivered like a sapling in a thunderstorm.

The second day of September, a little before midday I took lunch with the children, Tiberius, Julia, Drusus, and little Marcus. A simple meal, bread, cheese, grapes. Tiberius had spent the morning
drilling at the Field of Mars, then cooled off with a swim. His hair was wet, dark curls plastered to his forehead. Julia, sitting next to him on the same dining couch, said, “I can smell the river. You ought to go and bathe.”

Tiberius made a face at her.

“I want to swim in the Tiber too,” Julia said to me.

“Don’t be silly,”
Tiberius said. “Girls can’t swim.”

“Fool, I can swim better than you can. Mama Livia, why can’t I swim in the Tiber?”

“Because it would be considered immodest for a girl to do that,” I said.

“See?”
Tiberius said. He poked her. She poked him back.

“Stop it,” I said. “Julia, you’re free to swim in the pool at the villa. That’s much nicer.”

Water. The image came into my mind of green and blue waves under the late summer sky.

“The Tiber is mucky and filthy anyway,” Julia said.

“Mucky and filthy, mucky and filthy,” Marcus singsonged.

“Mucky and filthy!” Drusus cried. He laughed as if it were the most wonderful joke.

“Enough,” I said. The children quieted.

Waves. And ships, galleys. Two fleets. One made up of small ships quick as darting fish. The other fleet’s ships were slower but much larger, like ponderous beasts of prey.

“The Tiber isn’t filthy,”
Tiberius said.

“Yes, it is,” Julia said. “People pass water in it
.
A
nd you’re named after it, aren’t you? After the mucky, filthy Tiber.”

“Oh, keep quiet,”
Tiberius said.

“You’re rude. Mama Livia, he’s rude to me.”

In my mind, the two fleets approached each other. The fleet of darting fish split in two.

It’s happening now,
I thought.
One great sea battle that will decide everything, just as Agrippa told Caecilia. It’s happening now.

“If my father were home, he wouldn’t let him be rude to me.” Julia’s lower lip trembled.

It’s happening now.
“Silence,” I said. “Julia, that’s enough.”

Who can say what the heart is capable of knowing? Ships with bronze-armored bows rammed each other. Showers of arrows and javelins and catapult stones fell. Missiles tipped with flaming pitch were hurled. Ships went up in flames. Men shrieked as they leaped into the water, burning.

“Mama, why don’t you ea
t
?” Drusus asked.

“I’m not hungry.” I rose. “You children finish eating. And behave yourselves.”

A drumbeat in my mind:
It’s happening now, it’s happening now.
Tavius aboard a war galley, a faint smile on his face. His own words came back to him:
My bad luck at sea is a constant in a world in flux.
He remembered three lost naval battles, the sinking ships, the sense of the sea reaching out to drown him. A huge armored galley came sweeping through the water, closer, closer. He watched it approach. Men looked at him, waited for his orders.

I entered the small room off the atrium that held a life-sized statue of Diana. I stood before the marble image, my arms stretched out, palms upward in supplication. “Goddess, the fate of Rome will be decided now,” I said. “Don’t withhold your aid. Protect your people.” My voice had been strong and steady, but all at once I choked. “It must not be Antony who wins. Not Antony and his queen, who doesn’t even know you. Tavius loves Rome. He will be a good and just ruler. I beg you—I beg you—make Tavius the victor, not Antony.”

I remembered how Tavius and I had said farewell.
Were those our last moments together? Not a word of love had been spoken. How had I let him leave without saying that I loved him? Imagining Antony’s victory, imagining I would never again hold my beloved in my arms, I sank to my knees and could not restrain my tears.

The eyes of the statue seemed to search my face.
My child, is it Rome you are weeping for?

No, for him. Tavius. Oh, goddess, please—

I
crouched on the floor now, my arms stretched out before me. I wept and knew I would weep forever. I imagined him dead, his eyes open and staring sightlessly, as his body sank into the sea.
Tavius
.

The Battle of Actium began on September 2, 722 years after the founding of Rome, at midday. Long before the sun set, all had been decided, though even at midnight men were being rescued from burning ships. The news of what had happened reached Rome with surprising swiftness. The letter I received came later, and confirmed what by then I already knew.

Scrawled on wax stamped with his seal. Just two words.
I won
.

Much later, in wintertime, another letter came, a rolled sheet of papyrus, bound in a leather case, but not bearing the impression of his signet ring. There was no salutation either.

We will take Alexandria in due time, and then the civil wars will be over. Antony and Cleopatra are within the city walls, and have both been trying to bargain for their lives. Antony sent me a present, the last man alive of those who wielded a knife to kill my father. He had been harboring him for years. I had this murderer decapitated and his body left for the vultures. My father now is fully avenged, just as I swore he would be.