I Am Livia (24 page)

The three had already demonstrated, not just to their old schoolmates but to the world, how foolish it was to discount them. I saw myself as the fourth member of that golden circle. But not ranked number four, no. I would be the one closest to Tavius, his mate in every sense. I’d be content with nothing less. And the world would learn it was wrong to discount me too.

People remember a certain incident that occurred at the wedding banquet. Talos and Antitalos, wearing jeweled sandals for the occasion though otherwise naked, had been brought in to entertain. They sang a funny little song, and afterward went about from table to table, babbling amusing nonsense. Then Antitalos, the wittier of the two, came up to the couch on which Tavius and I reclined. His black eyes rounded with mock incredulity. “Mistress—Mistress—”

“Yes?” I said, and waited for the joke.

His face turned into a mask of comical dismay. “Oh, Mistress,” he said in a loud voice, “what in the world are you doing over here…when your husband is over there?” He pointed at Tiberius Nero.

For a moment, it could have gone either way
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e all could have been greatly embarrassed. But Antitalos, though only nine years old, was a comic genius in the bud, and had a gift for gauging such things. This jest touched on the tension beneath the wedding’s festive mood, and exposed to the light and air what had previously been unmentionable, the peculiar circumstance obvious to all. Everyone exploded with laughter. In particular, Tiberius Nero and Tavius both laughed until they were red-faced and looked ready to choke.

I, too, dissolved in helpless laughter.

Now I remember Antitalos’s years on stage, the acclaim he won. He acted in comedies after I set him and his brother free, and eventually he had his own theater. There are three sets of twins among his grandchildren. In my mind, I picture him as he is today, a dignified old man with a glint of humor in his eyes, and then I again see that little naked child.

As I stroked Antitalos’s silky black hair, his young face glowed. I wondered if he knew what a risk he had taken, and how completely he had conquered us all.

The cook had outdone himself with the main course—tender cuts of beef in a delicious sauce flavored with cumin, dates, and honey. Tavius did not taste it. Throughout the wedding banquet, he adhered to his usual simple diet and drank only a single cup of wine mixed with water.

As I nibbled on a fig pastry, part of the dessert, which he also eschewed, he whispered, “It’ll be over soon, and we can go home.”

I smiled at him.

“Don’t walk there,” he said.

I shook my head.

“Are we going to have our first argument, as man and wife, over this?”

“Very likely,” I said.

“People may shout…ugly things.”

I felt a tightening around my heart. But then I thought of myself running through the forest outside Sparta with my hair and clothes on fire, and I laughed. “I assure you, I’ve been through worse.”

He frowned and said nothing.

“Please, let me do it,” I said. “It is for our benefit that I show myself. And even if some people scorn me, it doesn’t disturb me, because I know I will conduct myself in such a way that they won’t scorn me in the end.”

A little later, we stood outside, hand in hand together as the wedding torch was lit. A great crowd of Tavius’s supporters had gathered. I felt their eyes on me. They shouted good wishes; they were our friends. Tavius squeezed my hand and then let go of it, and disappeared into the crowd. Two little boys, Tavius’s cousins, took my hands.
With a boy of twelve or thirteen carrying the wedding torch before me, I started my walk to the home of my new husband.

I wore my veil raised back over my hair. I wanted people to see my face and know that I was happy.

Tiberius Nero’s house stood only a third of the way up the Palatine Hill. The walk down the slope, into the Forum, and from there to Tavius’s house would be no strain for me, even in my pregnant condition. People sang bawdy songs just as they had when I married Tiberius Nero. But the crowds that came out to watch this wedding procession greatly outnumbered those on that occasion.

Look your fill,
I thought.

The people of Rome
. My eyes fixed upon individuals. A harsh-faced woman in a tattered tunica, who held the hand of a sweet-faced little girl. A long-nosed fellow in a workman’s rough tunic. A somber man in a toga, whom I recognized as an old acquaintance of my father’s. Dozens and dozens of others. They stared at me, and I looked back at them.

The sun had set by the time I reached the foot of the Palatine Hill. Someone deep in the crowd shouted, “Whore!” I pretended I did not hear this, and went on walking.

The faces I saw in the torchlight looked at me without hostility, even with goodwill. These were my people, the people of Rome, and in marrying Tavius I intended also to marry myself to their service. Did they sense this? Did they see something about me to like? Or did they just fear Caesar? Whatever the reason, I heard no more hostile shouts.

Finally, I reached the unprepossessing house in the commercial district. Two young men lifted me over the threshold. Inside the entranceway, I found Tavius waiting for me, smiling with relief.
My husband.
I felt as if I had no heart room for all the joy and love I felt. His eyes glowed like blue jewels.
We looked at each other, dazzled by the dream that had come to pass. Then he concluded the wedding rites by giving me a cup of water and a burning twig—sharing water and fire, elements that sustained life—and leading me into the depths of the house, where I lit the hearth fire.

A
few days after our wedding, we sat, two lovebirds on a couch, my head on Tavius’s shoulder. On his lap lay a waxed tablet. In his hand he held a stylus. Anyone looking at us might have imagined he was writing me a poem. But no. “Show me the world as you see it,” I had asked him. So he was drawing me a map.

“This is us, Italy. This is Spain, which is also mine. Besides that, I have most of Gaul, where Agrippa is heading right now. His task is to secure the border.”
Tavius drew lines on the western edge of Gaul. “That’s the savages trying to invade our territory.”

“Should I worry about them?” I asked.

“No. Agrippa will defeat them. But I’ll have to keep an eye on that border forever. Now here’s North Africa.” He drew a circle, beneath the Italian boot. “Held by Lepidus, who is not my friend. And here to the east, we come to Antony.”

“I don’t like Antony,” I said.

“Personally, I can’t stand him. But we’re allies. I married my sister to him.”

“Does your sister like him?”

“Yes, strangely enough she does. But she’s so sweet-natured she likes almost everyone. Anyway, for now at least, I don’t worry much about Antony.”

“Good,” I said and nibbled Tavius’s ear.

“Are you sure you want to wait until the baby is born to consummate our marriage?”

I found it hard to keep from touching him, hard to exercise restraint. But the fact that I was carrying my first husband’s child remained a barrier, in my own mind at least. “I’m sure,” I said.

“Now we come to Sextus Pompey,” he said briskly and drew Sicily off the Italian coast.

“I rather like Sextus. He was very kind to me.” Snuggling with Tavius, I felt so comfortable, I spoke without thinking. I recognized my mammoth blunder even before a look of displeasure crossed his face.

Tavius drew one slash mark after another, coming from Sicily into Italy. “He raids my coast. He covets everything I have
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hen we made peace, he broke the terms that same month.”

Maybe Sextus would have said Tavius had broken the terms. Julius Caesar and Sextus’s father had been enemies and rivals, and the enmity had inexorably carried over into the next generation. “It’s all-out war between the two of you?”

Tavius nodded. “There’s a lull now, but yes. It will be war to the finish.”

Since the day of our wedding, I had felt as if no grief could touch me in my happiness. Now I saw how foolish that sense of invulnerability was. I quailed at the thought of more civil war. “That’s a pity,” I said.

Tavius gave me a sharp look. “You truly have a soft spot for Sextus, don’t you?”

“Not if he’s your enemy.”

A brooding expression settled on Tavius’s face. “Most of the nobility in Rome has a soft spot for him. He was born one of you. I wasn’t. So they prefer him.”
Tavius’s mother had been patrician, but his natural father sprang from humbler, rustic roots.

I touched his cheek. “Why should anybody prefer Sextus to you? Or anyone on earth to you? I can’t imagine why anyone would.” I brushed my lips against his. “We will have to open people’s eyes.”

“We,” he said. He spoke the word as if he were not sure he liked the sound of it.

“We,” I said.

There are people who say that from the moment Tavius and I married, I grasped for power. None of them ask, power for wha
t
?
I wanted Rome’s citizens to be content. I knew that all but the most savage form of government depends on the people’s sanction. And the most savage kind does not last long. I dreaded another Ides of March.

With my marriage, I had made a commitment not only to Tavius as a man but as a ruler. I saw his intelligence and strength. Of course I loved him; it would not have been strange if that had affected my view of what his leadership could offer Rome. But many others—military officers, common soldiers, and hard-eyed politicians—shared my assessment of his qualities. And if some followed him only for gain, not a few looked to him to save our country. Like me, they were patriots. Rome cried out for wise government and stability. That was what I hoped Tavius would bring us.

My parents had numbered among those defeated and destroyed. It was natural for me to feel for the plight of the vanquished. I imagined myself making Tavius’s rule gentler than it had been.

“I want people to talk about how great and good you are, not because they’re afraid not to but because they mean it from their hearts,” I told him.

“And you’d bring about that delightful state of affairs…how?”

You will have to become great and good.

“Good works,” I said. “As much as we—or the treasury—can afford. And we should entertain all the people who matter. I want them to see a likable young couple, so devoted to each other.
We must be models of old-fashioned virtue. I’ll make all your clothes at home.
Well, oversee the maids making them. But a woman spinning wool has a special meaning. It’s associated with all the old virtues in people’s minds. Everyone should know that I do spin wool.”

Tavius looked as if he might laugh.

“You don’t believe that symbols can be potent in politics?”

“I believe they can be. But I wonder how much time you plan to spend spinning wool and making my clothes.”

“Not much,” I said.

He grinned. “We shall be virtuous and austere. I’m all for it.”

Of course he was humoring me. I charmed him, I amused him, he desired me. Did that mean I could take him down a road he never would have stepped on otherwise? I did not know. But I had a vision of what we could be together. “I’m in no rush to move to the Palatine Hill,” I said, “because this house is ideal in a sense. It’s so humble. Even when we move, I don’t want a very grand house, just the kind any senator might have. No one should look at any aspect of our lives, and say, ‘That’s how a king and his queen would live.’ It’s so important that we shape how people see us.”

“What’s important is how the army sees me. And I have vigilantly attended to that.”

“You think popular opinion doesn’t matter?”

“I didn’t say that.”
Tavius almost snapped out the words.

Perhaps he had heard criticisms in what I intended as helpful suggestions. It struck me—not for the first time, but forcefully—that I must make a regular study of this complicated being who was my husband. I had not yet completely gained his confidence.

He carried crushing burdens, and felt himself alone with them. I perceived and spoke to his loneliness. “Do you know why I care so much about these matters?” I asked. “Because I love you. Everyone else has interests of their own, which are separate from yours. How can they no
t
? If Agrippa or Maecenas did not have their own ambitions, you would be the first to say they were pathetic creatures. But I—I just love you.”

I reached up to stroke his hair. Just perceptibly, he narrowed his eyes. An image came into my mind of a boy I had once seen taming a half-wild puppy. Soft words and gentle pats had done the trick; before long the puppy ate right out of his hand. Here was my poor love, who had lived through such great dangers. He needed kind handling.

“Do you understand how much I adore you?” I said. “How close to you I want to be—how very close? You can tell me anything, and no matter what, I’ll always be on your side. I’ll always think first of you.”

He said in a constricted voice, “But just a little while ago you were saying you ‘rather like’ Sextus Pompey.” His eyes stared into mine. “Is that true? Do you like him?”

I thought of that sad young man, Sextus, who had gone out of his way to do Tiberius Nero and me an enormous, unexpected favor. From the bottom of my heart, I wished him well. “I barely know Sextus Pompey.”

“He is my enemy. Do you like him?”

I faced a test. I could not have Tavius doubting my loyalty. “He did me a kindness. I would prefer he were your friend. But if he makes war on you, then he is my enemy.” I sensed these words were not enough. Part of me recoiled, but I said, “If he makes war on you—if he would harm you—then I want him dead.”

Tavius watched me carefully. “Well, then you should be happy soon. Because he’ll meet the shade of his beloved father, and I’ll have Sicily.
Will you be happy?”

“As long as you’re safe and glorious, I will always be happy.”

Tavius must have heard the ring of truth in my voice, because he smiled. “I probably haven’t paid as much attention lately as I should to popular opinion, or to cultivating the nobility,” he said. “It’s stupid to be neglectful, but with war in Gaul and with that viper’s son Sextus—well, you can only attend to so much at a time. I’m only one person.”

“You used to be only one person,” I said.

His expression turned slightly skeptical, but he did not contradict me.

I set myself the task of winning Tavius’s unlimited trust
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as it hard? Not really. Occasionally I had to choose my words carefully and even shade the truth, in order to convince him of my all-embracing commitment to him. But it is not so difficult to convince a man of what he wants to believe. After all, he was in love with me. He wanted to trust me. And I suppose he sensed my fundamental sincerity. I did adore him.

If ever a man needed a wife ready to be a true partner, Tavius did. He governed a vast territory and was fielding two armies, one in Gaul, the other readying to do battle with Sextus Pompey. Soon after we married, he showed me into a great room he had set aside in the house just for the three freedmen who screened petitions and letters that arrived for him. In the midst of stacks of waxed tablets and parchment scrolls, the secretaries scrambled to keep up with a constant inundation.

“Somewhere here there’s important information I absolutely need,”
Tavius said. “But it’s hard for anyone else to sort out what I should know about. So I read a lot of letters and petitions myself. I could spend all day every day just reading my mail.”

Tavius hungered for real achievement, not empty honors. He wanted to bring effective government to Rome and the provinces under his rule. Often, he would work all day, and then after dinner with me go back into his study and work some more. His conscientious drudgery would have amused Mark Antony and other public men who lacked his diligence.

If there was an administrative snarl in some wretched backwater he governed, people appealed to him, and he tried to unravel it.
When a road leading into Rome fell into disrepair, someone would come whining to Tavius, and he would see that it was fixed. Every time the grain deliveries for the bread distribution to the city’s poor arrived late, that became his personal problem. He labored to set up efficient governmental structures that would not require his constant attention. Meanwhile, day to day, he juggled a thousand details, trying to bring order out of chaos. This was his reward for winning a desperate struggle for power—exhausting labor and a constant flood of supplications.

The three freedmen overseeing his correspondence had been picked for their acumen and efficiency. But naturally, they enjoyed only so much of Tavius’s trust and could exercise only so much authority.

“You can’t do everything, dearest,” I said to him one day as we sat on the couch in his study. “You need a helper you can truly rely on, who understands your goals and can exercise discretion.”