The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  “My dear, I’ve found a husband for you,” he said without preamble, and looking highly pleased with himself.

  It obviously came as a shock to her, though she kept her face impassive enough. She licked her lips, then managed to ask, “Who, Marcus Livius?”

  He became enthusiastic. “The very best of good fellows, a wonderful friend! Quintus Servilius Junior.”

  Her face froze into a look of absolute horror; she parted her dry lips to speak, but couldn’t.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “I can’t marry him,” Livia Drusa whispered.

  “Why?”

  “He’s disgusting—revolting!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  She began to shake her head, and kept on shaking it with increasing vehemence. “I won’t marry him, I won’t!”

  An awful thought occurred to Drusus, ever conscious of his mother; he got up, came round the table, and stood over his sister. “Have you been meeting someone?”

  The motion of her head ceased, she lifted it to stare up at him, outraged. “Me? How could I possibly meet anyone, stuck in this house every single day of my life? The only men I see come here with you, and I don’t even get the opportunity to converse with them! If you have them to dinner, you don’t ask me—the only time I’m permitted to come to dinner is when you have that frightful oaf Quintus Servilius Junior!”

  “How dare you!” he said, growing angry; it had never occurred to him that she would judge his best friend differently than he did.

  “I won’t marry him!” she cried. “I’d rather be dead!”

  “Go to your room,” he said, looking flinty.

  She got up at once, and walked toward the door which opened onto the colonnade.

  “Not your sitting room, Livia Drusa. Your bedroom. And there you will stay until you come to your senses.”

  A burning look was her only answer, but she turned around and left by the door to the atrium.

  Drusus remained by her vacant chair, and tried to deal with his anger. It was preposterous! How dare she defy him!

  After some moments his emotions quietened; he was able to grasp the tail of this spitting cat, even though he had no idea what to do with it. In all his life no one had ever defied him; no one had ever put him in a position from which he could see no logical way out. Used to being obeyed, and to being treated with a degree of respect and deference not normally accorded to one so young, he had no idea what to do. If he had known his sister better—and he now had to admit that he knew her not at all—if his father were alive—if his mother—oh, what a pickle! And what to do?

  Soften her up a bit, came the answer; he sent for his steward at once.

  “The lady Livia Drusa has offended me,” he said with admirable calm and no expression of ire, “and I have ordered her to her bedroom. Until you can fit a bolt to it, you will keep someone on guard outside her door at all times. Send a woman in to attend to her wants whom she doesn’t know. For no reason whatsoever is she to be permitted to leave her bedroom, is that clear?”

  “Perfectly, Marcus Livius,” said the steward woodenly.

  *

  And so the duel began. Livia Drusa was sent to a smaller prison than she was used to, not so dark or airless as most sleeping cubicles because it lay adjacent to the loggia, and so had a grille high up on the outside wall. But a dismal prison nonetheless. When she asked for books to read and paper to write upon, she found out just how dismal a prison it was, for her request was refused. Four walls enclosing a space some eight feet by eight feet, a bed, a chamber pot, and dreary unpalatable meals on a tray brought by a woman she had never seen before; that was now Livia Drusa’s lot.

  In the meantime, Drusus was faced with the task of keeping his sister’s unwillingness from his best friend, and lost no time commencing. The moment he had issued his orders regarding Livia” Drusa, he donned his toga again and went around the corner to see Caepio Junior.

  “Oh, good!” beamed Caepio Junior.

  “I thought I’d better have a further word with you,” said Drusus, making no attempt to sit down, and having no real idea what the further word was going to be.

  “Well, before you do, Marcus Livius, go and see my sister, will you? She’s very anxious.”

  That at least was a good sign; she must have accepted the news of her betrothal if not with joy, at least with equanimity, thought the disillusioned Drusus.

  He found her in her sitting room, and was left in no doubt at all that his suit was welcome, for she jumped to her feet the moment he filled the doorway, and cast herself upon his chest, much to his discomfort.

  “Oh, Marcus Livius!” she said, gazing up at him with a melting adoration.

  Why hadn’t Aurelia ever looked at him like this? But resolutely he put that thought away, and smiled down at the palpitating Servilia Caepionis. She wasn’t a beauty and she had the family’s short legs, but she had at least escaped the family tendency to acne—as had his sister—and she had a singularly beautiful pair of eyes, soft and tender in their expression, satisfyingly large, liquidly dark. Though he was not in love with her, he thought that in time he could love her, and he certainly had always liked her.

  So he kissed her on her soft mouth, was surprised and gratified by her response, and stayed long enough with her to have a few sentences of conversation.

  “And your sister, Livia Drusa, is pleased?” asked Servilia Caepionis when he got up to leave.

  Drusus stood very still. “Very pleased,” he said, then added, the words popping out of nowhere, “Unfortunately she isn’t well at the moment.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad! Never mind, tell her that as soon as she feels up to visitors, I’m coming to see her. We are to be sisters-in-law twice over, but I’d rather we were friends.”

  That drew a smile from him. “Thank you,” he said.

  Caepio Junior was waiting impatiently in his father’s study, which he occupied in his father’s absence.

  “I am delighted,” said Drusus, sitting down. “Your sister is pleased at the match.”

  “I told you she liked you,” said Caepio Junior. “But how did Livia Drusa take the news?”

  He was well prepared now. “She was delighted,” he lied blandly. “Unfortunately I found her taken to her bed with a fever. The doctor was already there, and he’s a little worried. Apparently there are complications, and he fears whatever it is might be contagious.”

  “Ye gods!” Caepio Junior exclaimed, face paling.

  “We’ll wait and see,” said Drusus soothingly. “You like her very much, Quintus Servilius, don’t you?”

  “My father says I can’t do better than Livia Drusa. He says I have excellent taste. Did you tell him I liked her?”

  “I did.” Drusus smiled faintly. “It’s been rather obvious for a couple of years now, you know.”

  “I got my father’s letter today, it was waiting when I got home. He says Livia Drusa is as rich as she is noble. He likes her too,” said Caepio Junior.

  “Well, as soon as she’s feeling better we’ll all have dinner together, and talk about the wedding. The beginning of May, eh? Before the unlucky time.’’ Drusus got up. “I can’t stay, Quintus Servilius, I’ll have to get back and see how my sister is.”

  Both Caepio Junior and Drusus had been elected tribunes of the soldiers, and were to go to Further Gaul with Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. But rank and wealth and political conformity told; where the relatively obscure Sextus Caesar couldn’t even get leave from his recruiting duties to attend his brother’s wedding, neither Drusus nor Caepio Junior had yet been called up. Certainly Drusus envisioned no difficulty in planning a double wedding for early May, even though by then both the bridegrooms would be involved with army duties, even if the army itself was already on its way to Further Gaul; they could always catch it up.

  He issued orders to his entire household in case Caepio Junior or his sister should come inquiring after Livia Drusa’s health, and
cut Livia Drusa’s diet back to unleavened bread and water. For five days he left her completely alone, then sent for her to his study.

  She came blinking a little in the brighter light, her feet not quite steady, her hair inexpertly combed. That she had not been sleeping was manifest in the state of her eyes, but her brother could detect no evidence of prolonged tears. Her hands trembled, she had trouble controlling her mouth, and the bottom lip was bitten raw.

  “Sit down,” said Drusus curtly.

  She sat.

  “How do you feel now about marrying Quintus Servilius?”

  Her whole body began to shake; what little color she had preserved now faded completely. “Don’t want to,” she said.

  Her brother leaned forward, his hands clasped together. “Livia Drusa, I am the head of our family. I have absolute control over your life. I even have absolute control over your death. It so happens I’m very fond of you. That means I dislike hurting you, and it distresses me greatly to see yousuffer. You are suffering now. I am distressed. But we are both Romans. That fact means everything to me. It means more to me than you do. Than anyone does! I am very sorry that you cannot like my friend Quintus Servilius. However, you will marry him! It is your duty as a Roman woman to obey me. As you know. Quintus Servilius is the husband our father intended for you, just as his father intended Servilia Caepionis to be my wife. For a while I considered taking a wife of my own choice, but events have only gone to prove that my father—may his shade be appeased—was wiser than I. Besides all of that, we have the embarrassment of a mother who has not proven an ideal Roman woman. Thanks to her, the responsibility which rests on you is much greater. Nothing you do or say can be allowed to give anyone room to think her flaw is also present in you.”

  Livia Drusa dragged in a huge breath, and said again, but more shakily still, “Don’t want to!”

  “Want has nothing to do with it,” said Drusus sternly. “Who do you think you are, Livia Drusa, to hold your personal wants as more important than our family’s honor and standing? Make up your mind to it, you will marry Quintus Servilius, and no other. If you persist in this defiance, you will marry no one at all. In fact, you will never leave your bedroom again as long as you live. There you will stay, without company or diversion, day in and day out, forever.” His eyes stared at her with less feeling than two cold black stones. “I mean what I say, sister. No books, no paper, no food other than bread and water, no bath, no mirror, no maidservants, no clean clothes, no fresh bedding, no brazier during winter, no extra blankets, no shoes or slippers for your feet, no belts or girdles or ribbons whereby to hang yourself, no scissors to cut your nails or your hair, no knives to use to stab yourself—and if you try to starve yourself, I will have the food shoved forcibly down your throat.”

  He snapped his fingers, a small sharp sound that brought the steward in with the kind of suspicious alacrity that suggested he had been listening at the door. “Take my sister back to her room. And bring her to me at dawn tomorrow before you admit any clients to my house.”

  The steward had to help her to her feet, one hand beneath her arm, and guide her out of the room.

  “I will expect your answer tomorrow,” Drusus said.

  Not one word did the steward say to her as he led her across the atrium; firmly but gently he put her inside her bedroom door, stepped back, closed the door, and shot the bolt Drusus had ordered fitted to its outside.

  Darkness was falling; Livia Drusa could tell that she had no more than two hours left to her before the pall of black, empty nothingness enfolded her for the duration of the long late-winter night. So far she hadn’t wept. A strong consciousness that she was in the right coupled with a burning indignation had sustained her for the first three days and nights, and after that she had taken solace from the plights of all the heroines she had discovered through her reading. Penelope’s twenty-year wait came top of the list, of course, but Danae had been shut up in her bedroom by her father, and Ariadne had been abandoned by Theseus on the seashore of Naxos.... In every case, things had changed for the better. Odysseus came home, Perseus was born, and Ariadne was rescued by a god....

  But with her brother’s words still echoing inside her thoughts, Livia Drusa began to understand the difference between great literature and real life. Great literature was never intended to be either facsimile or echo of real life; it was meant to shut out real life for a while, to free the harried mind from mundane considerations, so that the mind could holiday amid glorious language and vivid word-pictures and inspiring or alluring ideas. At least Penelope had enjoyed the freedom of her own palace halls, and the company of her son; and Danae had been dazzled by showers of gold; and Ariadne had suffered no more than the pinprick of Theseus’s rejection before one far greater than Theseus espoused her. But in real life Penelope would have been raped and forcibly married and her son murdered, and Odysseus would never have come home at all; and Danae and her baby would have floated in their chest until the sea drowned them; and Ariadne would have been left pregnant by Theseus, and died in a lonely childbirth....

  Would Zeus appear in a shower of gold to enliven the long imprisonment of a Livia Drusa of modern-day Rome?

  Or Dionysos drive through her frigid little dark hole of a room in his chariot drawn by leopards? Or Odysseus string his great bow and slay her brother and Caepio Junior with the same shaft he had sent through the hollows of the axes? No! Of course not! They had all lived more than a thousand years ago—if they had ever lived at all, save in some poet’s indelible lines. Was that the meaning of immortality, to have life through some poet’s indelible lines rather than because the flesh had ever quickened?

  Somehow she had clung to the thought that her red-haired hero from the balcony of Ahenobarbus thirty feet below would learn of her plight, and break in through the grille in her wall, and spirit her away to live on some enchanted isle in the wine-dark sea. And she had dreamed the awful hours away seeing him in her mind’s eye, so tall and Odysseus-like, brilliant, innovative, fantastically courageous. What a tiny obstacle he would find the house of Marcus Livius Drusus once he discovered she lay captive within it!

  Ah, but tonight was different. Tonight was the real beginning of a confinement that had no happy ending, no miraculous deliverance. Who knew she was imprisoned, save her brother and his servants? And who among his servants would dare to flout her brother’s orders, or pity her more than they feared him? He was not a cruel man; she understood that very well. But he was used to being obeyed, and she, his young sister, was as much his creature as the least of his slaves, or the dogs he kept in his hunting lodge in Umbria. His word was her law. His wishes her commands. What she wanted had no validity, and therefore no existence outside her own mind.

  She felt an itching beneath her left eye, and then a hot, itching trail down her left cheek. Something splashed onto the back of her hand. The right eye itched, the right cheek was seared; the splashes grew more frequent, like short summer rain getting started, the drops falling faster and faster. Livia Drusa wept, for her heart was broken. Rocked back and forth; mopped her face, her streaming eyes, and her running nose; and wept again, for her heart was truly broken. Many hours she wept, alone in an ocean of Stygian gloom, the prisoner of her brother’s will and her own unwillingness to do his will.

  But when the steward came to unbolt her door and admit the blinding glare of his lamp into the smelly coldness of her bedroom, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, dry-eyed and calm. And rose to her feet and walked out of the room ahead of him, across the vast vivid atrium to her brother’s study.

  “Well?” asked Drusus.

  “I will marry Quintus Servilius,” she said.

  “Good. But I require more of you, Livia Drusa.”

  “I will endeavor to please you in everything, Marcus Livius,” she said steadily.

  “Good.” He snapped his fingers, the steward obeyed the summons immediately. “Send some hot honeyed wine and some honey cakes to the lady Livia Drusa’s sittin
g room, and tell her maidservant to prepare a bath.”

  “Thank you,” she said colorlessly.

  “It is my genuine pleasure to make you happy, Livia Drusa—so long as you behave like a proper Roman woman, and do what is expected of you. I expect you to behave toward Quintus Servilius as any young woman would who welcomed her marriage. You will let him know that you are pleased, and you will treat him with unfailing deference, respect, interest, and concern. At no time—even in the privacy of your bedroom after you are married—will you give Quintus Servilius the slightest indication that he is not the husband of your choice. Do you understand?” he asked sternly.

  “I understand, Marcus Livius,” she said.

  “Come with me.”

  He led her into the atrium, where the great rectangle in the roof was beginning to pale and a pearly light stole inside, purer than the lamps, fainter yet more luminous. In the wall was a small shrine to the household gods, the Lares and the Penates, flanked on either side by the exquisitely painted miniature temples which housed the imagines of the famous men of the Livius Drusus family, from her dead father the censor all the way back to the beginning. And there Marcus Livius Drusus made her swear a terrible oath to terrible Roman gods who had no statues and no mythologies and no humanity, who were personifications of qualities inside the mind, not divine men and women; under pain of their displeasure she swore to be a warm and loving wife to Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior.

  After it. was done he dismissed her to her sitting room, where the hot honeyed wine and honey cakes were waiting. She got some of the wine down and felt the benefit of it at once, but her throat closed up at the very thought of swallowing the cakes, so she put them to one side with a smile at her maid, and rose to her feet.

  “I want my bath,” she said.

  And that afternoon Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior and his sister, Servilia Caepionis, came to dine with Marcus Livius Drusus and his sister, Livia Drusa, a cozy quartet with marriages to plan. Livia Drusa abided by her oath, thanking every god that she did not belong to a smiling family; no one thought it a bit odd that she remained absolutely solemn, for they all did. Low-voiced and interested, she conversed with Caepio Junior while her brother concentrated upon Servilia Caepionis, and slowly Caepio Junior’s inchoate fears subsided. Why had he ever thought Livia Drusa didn’t like him? Wan from her illness she might be, but there could be no mistaking the gentle enthusiasm with which she greeted her masterful brother’s plans for a double wedding at the beginning of May, before Gnaeus Mallius Maximus began his march across the Alps.