The Daughters of Palatine Hill: A Novel

by Phyllis T. Smith

  He was almost five years my elder, and for much of our lives, we had lived in what could almost be called one vast household. He had glimpsed me as a baby learning to walk and as a little girl playing with cloth poppets. Just two years ago, I had been a gawky twelve-year-old with no more breasts than a boy. He no doubt remembered all that.

  “Well, this has to be done,” he said. To be kind, he added, “I’ll be gentle.”

  He was gentle. There was only a moment’s twinge of pain. And then there was something else, deep, exquisite sensation. And the weight of his body on mine, the warmth, the closeness. I liked it. It was as if I always had wanted this—a man’s body—without knowing it. My hands stroked his shoulders, his back. I was surprised at how smooth his skin felt.

  Too soon it was over. He pulled away.

  I snuggled up against him, pressed my cheek against his shoulder, but he just lay there. I wanted him to put his arms around me, but he didn’t, and I had no idea of how to entice him to do this. It didn’t seem possible to ask him to hold me. Feeling bereft, I contemplated what had happened. I was no longer a virgin, but no man had ever kissed me with passion. Marcellus had not kissed me at all.

  Catullus’s words came back to me. Give me a thousand kisses . . . But I did not say them.

  It was awkward to spend time with Scribonia at Julia’s wedding. We were civil to each other, as always the case when we met. Then she started weeping over Julia in her bridal finery.

  When my first husband divorced me and I married Tavius, I lost custody of my sons. They were only returned to me when their father passed away. During those five years that we lived in different households, I wept many times, missing them.

  I knew what Scribonia had suffered because I snatched her husband and daughter from her. I would have preferred not to see her tears.

  Scribonia’s crying was not the only unpleasant moment that day. At the feast that followed the ceremony, I happened to look across the atrium and see Jullus Antony and Selene standing together, waiting to congratulate Julia and Marcellus. I had never noticed before just how much Jullus resembled his father. He had Mark Antony’s strong, regular features and powerful build, while Selene took after her mother. Gazing at the brother and sister, one could easily imagine Mark Antony and Cleopatra standing there.

  A chill went through me, and the back of my neck prickled. I pictured two malevolent ghosts, here to curse the festivities and bring misfortunate to the living on the day their enemy’s daughter was wed. I truly had a sense of an evil presence. Then that passed, and I felt foolish. I approached the pair with a smile on my lips.

  “Are you enjoying the feast, Jullus?”

  “We both are.” He added in a low voice, “I count it as a boon that you have taken my sister under your wing. I know your goodness and that you wish her well.”

  I know your goodness. Those words were extravagant, yet he had sounded sincere.

  Gazing at the fresh-faced young man, I saw hints of a sensitivity his father had completely lacked. He was not a ghostly apparition and neither was his sister.

  I put my arm around Selene’s shoulder. I had never touched her before. She gave a slight start, and I felt a small tremor go through her. But then she managed a smile.

  The shades of Antony and Cleopatra at the feast—that was a product of my imagination. What troubled me more was the brooding look I saw on Marcus Agrippa’s face. When I spoke to him, he was polite as always, but incommunicative. The victories he had won had been vital to Tavius’s assumption of power. The army loved and admired him, perhaps more than Tavius himself. In Tavius’s absence, he had command of the army in Italy. I tried to enjoy the feast, but worry about Agrippa tugged at me.

  Later, I sought out Maecenas. He, his new young man, his wife, Terentilla, and her new young man constituted a cheerful foursome and were stretched out on adjacent dining couches.

  I despised Terentilla because Tavius was her former lover and she never truly gave up her efforts to get him back. Maecenas, however, I liked very much. He had been Tavius’s close friend since childhood days and had also become my friend.

  So I did not hesitate to ask Maecenas a question. Sitting on the edge of his couch, I lowered my voice and said, “Why is Agrippa looking so unhappy? No, not unhappy . . . discontented?”

  Maecenas’s expression became thoughtful. “Is there a difference between unhappiness and discontent?” he asked, lowering his voice too.

  “We suffer through unhappiness, but when were are discontented, we try to change things. Tell me Agrippa looks the way he does because he is still mourning Caecilia, and I’ll believe you. I’d very much like to believe you. She deserves more than a few months’ grief.” Caecilia, Agrippa’s late wife, had been my dear friend.

  “I’m no expert on Agrippa’s state of mind,” Maecenas said, “but I think this wedding has put his nose out of joint.”

  “The wedding and all the preferment given to Marcellus?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Agrippa thinks he should have been Julia’s bridegroom?” I had never imagined him as a candidate for Julia’s hand. “He wants to be Tavius’s heir?”

  Maecenas sighed. “Wouldn’t you, if you were him?”

  If there was a way to sweeten Agrippa’s mood, I did not know what it was. I prayed, Divine Diana, let Tavius come home soon.

  Early in the new year, I had a talk with my son, Tiberius, on a subject unwelcome to me. “I am a man now, Mother,” he said. “I want a military posting. Soon.”

  He had passed his seventeenth birthday only a few months before. “A year or two more with your tutors, perhaps study at Rhodes—”

  “Rhodes!” he cried. “Do you think I want to be a philosopher? I intend to be a soldier!”

  “Kindly lower your voice. I don’t enjoy being shouted at.”

  Tiberius had large dark eyes like mine. I sometimes thought that was the only way he took after me. He was tall like his late father, and also had his love for all things military. As I looked at him, I could almost hear my former husband saying gleefully, He’s my boy.

  “The next time Rome fights a war, I’ll go, Mother. I’d like an appropriate rank, but I’ll go as a common soldier if I must.”

  “I hope there will not be another war.”

  His mouth twisted at my absurdity. “There is always another war.”

  We were standing in my study. As if to add emphasis to his words, at that moment we heard the clamp of military boots in the atrium. A messenger had arrived, carrying a letter from Tavius.

  The steward brought in the letter. I calmly thanked and dismissed him. Inside, every fiber of my being seemed to have gone tense. I had not heard from my husband for three months. Was this the good news I hoped for?

  I saw Tavius’s bold handwriting as I unfurled the papyrus. The first words told me all I truly wished to know: My Livia, All is well, and I will be home soon.

  After I read the letter, I turned to Tiberius, my heart racing with joy. “Your stepfather is returning to Rome.”

  “Good,” Tiberius said flatly.

  I’m so glad you share my happiness, I almost said. But it would be foolish to pick a quarrel when our quarrels were so slow to heal. I loved my son, but we irritated each other.

  “Someday I will return from war too,” Tiberius said. “And on that day, Mother, I swear to you, you will be proud.”

  There was a hint of a plaintive little boy in his tone—the small child I had protected during the many dangers our family had weathered. I still would have given my life to protect him. I patted him on the cheek. “I am proud of you now.” It was pointless to say I would rather he stayed safe at home. He would be a soldier. His younger brother, Drusus, and my foster son, Marcus, would be soldiers too. We are a warrior race, we Romans. “In a month or so our family will be together. We can talk then about what you want to do.”

  “About what I will do,” he said. “Don’t try to hold me back, Mother. You can’t.”

 
I did not reply. Why seek out pain by anticipating it? Why brood now about future wars? One war was over, won. Tavius had recovered from his illness. My beloved was coming home.

  Tavius would return to a changed household. I felt the absence of Julia’s voice and her laughter. Selene, now living with me, did not begin to fill that void as she moved circumspectly on the edge of my vision, on the edge of my family. Tiberius and Julia had never gotten along—the way they goaded each other had irked me since they were small. But my son’s eyes glanced off Selene, indifferent as if she were a slave. Drusus and Marcus were courteous to her, just as they were courteous to the servants. The girl antagonized no one. She kept her head down. It was exactly what I would have done in her position.

  I called her into my study one day, waved her to a seat on the couch. “You have heard Augustus is returning to Rome soon.”

  “Yes, I am so glad. That must give you great happiness.” She smiled, but her face had tightened. Of course she feared my husband and wondered what his return boded for her.

  “I will be able to tell him your behavior has been exemplary. Your tutor says you work hard.”

  Selene had brown, almond-shaped eyes, eyes of great depth. Her father had not had eyes like that. I was sure they were an inheritance from her mother. I imagined Cleopatra looking at me through this young girl’s eyes, for they were not those of a child. “I am glad I have pleased you, Aunt,” Selene said. She always took care to call me Aunt as I had instructed her.

  “One small thing that might be better . . . your Latin.”

  She looked startled. “People say I speak the language quite well.”

  “You do, for someone not a native of Italy. Your grammar is flawless, and your Greek accent is very slight and actually quite charming. Greek was your first language, was it not?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It was what we always spoke when . . .” Emotion flickered over her face but was gone in an instant. “I did not realize that was so obvious.”

  “I will provide you with another tutor who will concern himself only with your spoken Latin. I am sure that in a little time you can speak like a native-born Roman.”

  “That is what you wish . . . for me to speak like a Roman?”

  “I think it would be better that people see you as Roman, and not be reminded of . . . well, your foreign birth.” Better for you if every time you open your mouth, Tavius does not think of Cleopatra, who wished to grind him—and Rome—under her pretty feet.

  “Is it that you think if I speak like a Roman, it would be better for my . . . my future?”

  “Yes, for your future, Selene.”

  Her face lit with relief and gratitude. You don’t bother to give a girl elocution lessons if you believe she will soon be executed.

  I awaited Tavius’s return at our villa in Prima Porta, outside Rome. It was here that he returned to me after he defeated Antony and Cleopatra, making himself master of the empire; and it was here, away from prying eyes, that we could be most fully ourselves. I invited no one to come with me—not my children, not Julia. For a day at least, I wanted my husband to myself. Before he once again belonged to all of Rome.

  One might expect a blast of trumpet music when an imperator returns, but his homecoming was not like that. He entered the villa at a time when I was not expecting him and found me in my sitting room. Our first moments together resembled the quiet homecoming of any soldier—kisses, embraces, joyful murmurs. But a dagger went through my heart when I saw him. I knew then what this last war had done to him.

  He had not yet reached his thirty-ninth birthday. He had been born with a weakness in his left leg, but the limp that had been slight when he was thirty had become more pronounced, and he moved like a much older man. His face was still handsome but also gaunt. He had driven himself all his life far beyond his physical strength. I knew at that instant he could not go on doing it forever.

  “You are not going to war again,” I said as I held him. “Never again. Send Agrippa. Send Marcellus. Even send my foolish son, he’s so wild to wade through carnage. But not you—you must not go. And if you travel again to distant parts of the empire, I will accompany you. I am not asking, Tavius. I am demanding.”

  “Do I look as bad as that?”

  “You look as though you almost died.”

  “Almost doesn’t count.”

  “You must let me take care of you.”

  “Do you know that all the time I was gone, not one person dared say ‘you must’ to me?”

  I kissed him. “I love you. To the point of madness, I sometimes think. That is what gives me the right.”

  Much later, in our bedchamber, he whispered, “You see, I’m in better health than you imagined. Aren’t you reassured?”

  We lay together under a coverlet of purple silk. I could smell the first buds of spring, flowering in the garden. The windows were only half shuttered. It was still light outside, though twilight was coming on. Tavius’s skin looked amber where the sun illuminated it. My fingertip traced the new scar on his upper arm.

  “That kind of wound is trivial,” he said, “a common thing for any soldier.”

  I began to weep then—I who never cried anymore, certainly not where anyone could see me. That he had been wounded, that this wound was an ordinary thing, reduced me to tears. I did not try to explain myself. Rome’s First Citizen held me and made soothing sounds as one might to a baby as I cried and cried.

  My father came home. At last! He looked thin and tired, but he was still the iron pillar on which my own life had always rested. I hardly took in his frailty as I rushed into his arms. “Father! Father!”

  He embraced me, then pushed me away so he could see me better. “Look at you! All grown up.”

  I wore a married woman’s flowing stola, not a girl’s tunica. “All grown up, Father,” I said.

  He had been home for an entire day before Marcellus and I were invited to join him and Livia at Prima Porta. I must have become more of an adult with my marriage, because I understood this, though I did not like it. The delay was Livia’s doing, and she acted out of love not spite.

  For as long as I could remember, I had known about Father wrenching Livia away from her first husband—doing this after shedding his own wife. But now I understood Father’s actions, and also knew why Father refused to divorce Livia even though she did not bear him an heir. I was a new bride, with eyes suddenly opened, and I understood what bound my father and my stepmother. I saw it in their every glance, every small touch.

  They were delighted to be with each other after their long separation, so delighted that I think after his first warm greeting, Father had to force himself to attend to my husband and me. Fourteen years into their marriage, he could barely make himself look away from her. At dinner that evening, she sat on his supper couch and ensured that his wine was properly mixed with water and the slaves placed the most perfectly cooked morsels of food before him, and she herself hardly touched either wine or meat. Instead, she ate up my father with her eyes. Gods above, maybe I should have been revolted. But I wasn’t. I saw what they had, and I felt like weeping, because Marcellus and I did not have that love, that passion, and we never would; and it was the only thing on earth worth having.

  Marcellus had eyes only for Father too. I am not suggesting he was in love with his uncle, now his father-in-law. He merely worshipped him. If Jupiter himself had dropped down from Olympus and joined us for dinner, Marcellus could not have been much more overcome with awe.

  “Do you find attending the meetings of the aediles informative?” Father asked him.

  “Extremely,” Marcellus said. “It’s been an education, sir, just as you said it would be.”

  “I think you should stand for aedile yourself next year.”

  “Next year? Truly?” He would have a place on the board of magistrates charged with the day-to-day government of the city of Rome.

  Father smiled. “You’re young for it, I know. But I think with my endorsement, the people
of Rome will elect you.” The elections of course were a matter of form. Father’s candidates always won. “Be warned, it’s not an empty honor. It’s a lot of work.”

  “I’m willing to work,” Marcellus said. “I’ve taken instruction in law, as you advised. I won’t disappoint you, Uncle.”

  Father nodded benignly. “I’ve heard only good things about how you have conducted yourself while I was away. But you must show you’re worthy of all I envision for you. I won’t sacrifice the welfare of Rome because I love my nephew. I won’t leave this empire to a man who can’t rule at least as well as I have. Remember that—and prove yourself worthy.”

  “Sir, I promise you, I will.” Marcellus stammered out the words.

  Father grinned. “Good!” He looked at me, winked, then went back to eating his dinner.

  Marcellus and I returned to Rome. I would have preferred to stay at the villa longer, but he was more eager than ever to throw himself into his work and could not wait to get back to the city.

  Once back home, melancholy dogged me. I had spent hardly any time alone with my father, and it struck me this was often how it was, how it had been all through my childhood. It seemed I never got as much of him as I wanted.

  Hardly anything was required of me. I helped my aunt Octavia in supervising the household servants, but she actually needed little assistance from me. I read poetry to divert myself, but it filled me with longing, for I wished to feel the exalted emotions the poets wrote about.

  As days passed, my husband redoubled his effort to prepare himself for a role in government. During daylight hours, I hardly ever heard his voice except coming from another room when he practiced speechmaking with his rhetoric teacher. We coupled regularly; Marcellus was conscientious in that regard, as in all else. But our lovemaking remained as perfunctory as it had been on our wedding night.

  “For you, it’s all about giving my father a grandson, isn’t it?” I said to him one night after he had taken me in his usual dutiful fashion.