The Daughters of Palatine Hill: A Novel

by Phyllis T. Smith

  “You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “If your father were given time, he could arrange an orderly succession. But now, if I want to be First Citizen, I will have to raise an army and wade through rivers of blood, just as your father did when he was my age.” The look on his face chilled me. He was gazing into the future and recoiling. Rivers of blood . . .

  “Do you want to be First Citizen?”

  “Yes. I want it.”

  “Then if need be, we must fight for it,” I said.

  I told myself I was the daughter of Caesar Augustus, and therefore I would not shrink from what lay ahead. But I was full of fear.

  Later that day, when the physicians and Livia allowed me to visit my father, his appearance shocked me. He did not speak, but his eyes met mine, and I knew he was aware of my presence. “Father, don’t leave me,” I whispered, struggling to keep from sobbing. The physicians hurried me out of the room.

  The next day Agrippa arrived. No one told me he had been sent for. But he had been—and he had come from his country estate, galloping the whole way to reach Father while he still lived. Corvus, head of Father’s bodyguard, greeted him in the atrium with a salute, and then the two embraced. “I thank all the gods you’re here,” Corvus said.

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Barely.”

  “I was afraid I’d be too late.”

  The two spoke like old friends, which I suppose they were.

  I walked forward to greet Agrippa, Marcellus beside me. “Thank you for coming,” I said. My eyes welled up. “It means so much . . .”

  Agrippa patted my shoulder with a large, clumsy hand.

  “I will be depending on your help,” Marcellus said.

  I suppose he spoke his first thought. It was the wrong thing to say at such a moment. Agrippa gave him a contemptuous look. “Your father-in-law is not dead yet.”

  “Of course not, I didn’t mean—”

  I saw the situation plainly. If Father died, Agrippa and no one else would command the army’s allegiance. He could make Marcellus First Citizen—or ruin him.

  “You have been the pillar on whom we have all relied,” I said. “Whatever befalls us, I hope you will always be our friend.”

  Agrippa’s face softened. “My dear Julia, you can always count on my friendship.”

  Livia, informed of Agrippa’s arrival, came and embraced him. “Tavius will want to see you at once.” She looked at Marcellus and me. “You come too.”

  We—Livia, Agrippa, Marcellus, and I—entered the bedchamber. Father lay under a silk coverlet, propped up on pillows. His eyes were sunken in his head, and his flushed skin glistened with sweat. He looked worse than he had the day before, and inside myself I cried out with pain at the sight. I was losing him.

  “I’m here, Augustus,” Agrippa said, his voice husky with emotion.

  Father tried to speak, but instead he let out a series of weak coughs.

  He gazed at me. I felt he was trying to tell me something with his eyes. Then he looked at Marcellus. It was utterly silent in the room.

  Father’s lips moved, but he made no sound. Slowly—as if the task cost him great effort—he removed his signet ring. It was the ring he always wore, a symbol of his imperial authority. I understood what was about to happen. He would give the ring to Marcellus, to designate him as his successor.

  But Father’s eyes shifted away. “Agrippa,” he whispered.

  Agrippa came closer and leaned over him. Father extended his hand, holding out the ring, and grave-faced, Agrippa took it. I heard Marcellus’s sharp intake of breath.

  No words were spoken. None needed to be.

  Father shut his eyes, completely spent. Only the slight rising and falling of his chest told me he still lived.

  There was no gloating in Agrippa’s manner. Wordlessly, he took off his own signet ring and slipped Father’s on his finger.

  Marcellus’s face had gone white. I clutched at his arm and stared back at Father. I felt utterly betrayed. I wanted to scream, What have you done? What have you done to my husband and me?

  Marcellus, Agrippa, and I walked out of the room, leaving Livia with Father. The outer hall was now filled with soldiers—members of the bodyguard and Father’s personal staff. Agrippa did not speak, only held out his hand, on which he had placed Father’s ring. There were no boisterous congratulations, nothing like that—just expressions of solemn assent on men’s faces. No one even glanced at Marcellus.

  It was as if a dagger had been thrust into my husband’s heart, and my father had been the one who wielded it. My father, the man he worshipped, the man he lived his whole life to please. I did not know what to say to Marcellus, and he said nothing to me. He just turned and walked away, out of the house, out into the night.

  I went into our bedchamber and wept.

  Oh, I understood Father’s decision. The army loved Agrippa, and Marcellus was nothing to them but an untested young man. Even I could more easily imagine Agrippa holding the empire together than my husband doing it. But Marcellus was Father’s nephew. And I was Marcellus’s wife. I felt as if Father had thrown Marcellus away and me with him.

  Father loved Livia and he loved Rome. Those two great greedy loves crowded out all else.

  In the end, how little Marcellus had mattered to him. And how little I did.

  When Marcellus came back, it was already morning. There were welts on his arms and legs—he had stumbled in a patch of bramble, wandering in the darkness. And he was shivering. “You should have taken your cloak,” I said. “The nights have been turning cold.”

  He did not reply. There was an emptiness in his eyes.

  “You are young, Marcellus,” I said. “Agrippa has twice your years. No one could expect you to equal him now. But you have years ahead of you, many years to—”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Don’t turn away from me. Please.”

  “My head aches,” he said. He rubbed his temple. “Here. It throbs.”

  “Well, then lie down. You have been up all night.”

  “I think I caught the fever.” He gave a little grimace and a small chuckle, as if he could not take in what he had just said.

  “Oh, no. You’re just tired and cold.” But I knew—in the center of my being, I knew the truth even as I spoke.

  He was twenty-one years old and strong. And yet the fever progressed more quickly with him than it did with many others. On the second day, he fell into a delirium. We had to tie him to the bed, but he kept struggling, exhausting himself. “Don’t you understand?” he told me. “The Senate is meeting now! Important matters are being discussed. What will your father think of me if I’m not there?”

  I swore to him that the Senate was not meeting and tried to explain that he was ill. But he shouted, “No! Why are you deceiving me?”

  I wiped his face with a wet cloth. “Hush, hush, my darling. Please. You are sick and you must rest.” It was useless. He kept on raving. It was as if his own mind had turned against him and he had become his own enemy. He could not rest. When the doctors tried to give him a sleeping draught, he choked on the liquid and spat it out.

  My kiss, my touch—they meant nothing. Again and again, he cursed me for keeping him from his important work.

  Everything that could be done was done. The physicians tried all their cures, dribbled elixirs in his mouth, bathed him in cold water. Nothing helped.

  I held Tavius’s hand. His eyes were shut, yet I sensed he was still conscious. But he was dying, Tavius was dying. The heart of the world would soon cease to beat, and my own heart would break. I held his hand, felt the warmth of his touch, knowing soon I would be alone in the cold.

  We were twin souls. How could I live without him?

  “You did the right thing,” I said. “The boy could never get the army to follow him. But even Agrippa is not you. Rome needs you. I need you.”

  I felt a slight pressure on my hand, and then a letting go. It was like a farewell. But I tightened my own grip
on his hand. “Tavius, I do not give you permission to die. I forbid it.”

  One side of his mouth quirked up in a half smile.

  “I’m glad I amuse you,” I said.

  I leaned forward and stroked his hair—soft, fine hair, always pleasant to the touch. His hair was now moist with the sweat of his fever.

  “Elysium must be very restful. I can understand if it exerts a pull. But, beloved, you must resist.” I kissed his forehead. “I forbid you to die, Tavius.”

  He made no sound.

  “Listen to me, beloved,” I said. “Your will is different, stronger than that of an ordinary man. An ordinary man does not seize an empire. You are not ordinary, and you do not have an ordinary will.”

  He did not show any sign he was aware of me. But I somehow knew he was. With his eyes closed, he was listening as a tired child might to a story told to send him to sleep.

  “You must exert that will now, Tavius. Fight. I know what you are capable of. Fight and you will win.”

  His eyelids fluttered. He tried to speak, but it took too much effort.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  He said something else. I made out the word sleep.

  “Of course,” I said. “You need sleep. I’ll sit here and watch by your side, and I’ll be here when you wake up. Go to sleep now.”

  I did not let go of his hand.

  Silently, I prayed to Diana, my patron deity, and to Apollo, whom Tavius venerated before all other gods. I prayed to them to spare him for Rome’s sake and for mine.

  As the night wore on, I continued to sit beside him, immobile. I had had little rest myself these last few days, and my body ached with fatigue. It did not matter.

  Two small oil lamps illuminated the room. I would glance at them sometimes, watch the flames dance, but always my eyes returned to Tavius.

  His face was relaxed. The sleep was a deep one. But I felt that inside himself, he was waging a mighty battle. Once he told me if there were a great shipwreck and only two people survived, the two would be us. We were determined survivors. He said the sea would not drown us. But I knew the sea was mightier even than Caesar Augustus, certainly mightier than me. We were adrift on a great sea now.

  All night long, I tried to reach him with my mind, to give him some of my health and strength. I told him again and again, I forbid you to die.

  He seemed slightly better the next morning. Another day passed before he was strong enough to speak. “Can it be that I’m alive?”

  When he struggled to sit up, I said, “No, don’t tax your strength,” and eased him back down. I did not realize I was weeping until I felt tears on my cheek.

  “Agrippa will have to give the ring back,” he said. “Life is a wonder, isn’t it, Livia?”

  “You are a wonder.”

  By then, Marcellus was already gravely ill. I kept the news from Tavius.

  When the boy died, though, I had to tell him. By then he was strong enough to take the news.

  For Tavius, this was like losing a son. He kept talking about how young Marcellus had been and shaking his head over how illogical it was that the boy had been taken when he himself was spared. It was the kind of loss that one never truly gets over; he would carry the pain of it for the rest of his life. His way of dealing with it was to keep a stern countenance and soldier on.

  He insisted, though he was still weak, on speaking Marcellus’s eulogy himself. And he talked about public buildings he would dedicate in his name. I doubt if any of that comforted Julia. She went through the funeral in silence, did a wife’s duty, gathering the ashes and placing them in an urn. What I saw in her face was not just grief. Plainly, she blamed Tavius for not giving Marcellus his signet ring and, in some odd way, even thought that blow had played a part in his death.

  I wished I could shake her, get her to understand that Tavius had no choice—that grim duty had compelled him to give Agrippa the ring. But I could only hope that her resentment would not fester and that she would get over it in time.

  I think of the pestilence as a great wave that changed all in its path, then swept out to sea again. One day it ceased to take more victims, and we who had survived looked around at the altered landscape. Our lives were irreparably changed. Marcellus was gone; Julia was bereft of a husband and Augustus bereft of an heir. Agrippa had emerged from his brief retirement—and though he returned Augustus’s signet ring, he had been lifted to even greater prominence than he had had before, for all of Rome soon knew that in a time of dire need, Augustus had dubbed him his successor.

  And me—my life had been altered for good and all.

  We had been reckless, Juba and I. Certainly our meetings had been secret. I believe of the whole household only Julia suspected we were lovers, and she told no one. But the fear of death—the fear that the illness would rob us of all chance of love and happiness—had overcome prudence. Whenever we could manage to steal off together, we made love like starved creatures, as if nothing mattered but those brief moments of joy. Only when my courses failed to come at their expected time did I understand how far I had trespassed. I felt terror, not only for myself but for Juba.

  It was a grave matter. I would bring into the world the grandchild of Augustus’s greatest enemies. Juba and I had formed an alliance of the flesh, behind Augustus and Livia’s back. We two, children of the defeated, only lived at all by Augustus’s sufferance. I expected to be punished, and I feared Juba would be punished too. And the child—the child of our love, the child I longed for—would it suffer the fate of unwanted, illegitimate infants, be left on some roadway, abandoned to the elements?

  We were still staying at the villa. Augustus was recuperating from his illness. Juba continued to work on his book in the huge library—his presence welcome, the scholarly work an apt reason for staying. He was thrown into Augustus and Livia’s company, and this only fostered trust. One day he came to me in the garden, deeply troubled. “Augustus has decided to send me to Mauretania.”

  “You mean, you are to be the king of that country?”

  “Yes, king.”

  “That is wonderful.” I forced out the words.

  “Selene, how can I leave you?”

  I had not told him yet that I was with child.

  The thought came to me that perhaps he would be better off if I were dead, and my baby with me. Love for me could only be an encumbrance. It might keep Juba from his destiny.

  “Do you wish to be my wife?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then I’ll ask Augustus for your hand. I will tell him I’ll refuse the throne, without you.”

  “No! Don’t do that. Where we see love, Augustus will see political alliance. The son of a dead rebel king, and Antony and Cleopatra’s daughter . . . He will be suspicious the instant you suggest marrying me. Juba, you know this is true.”

  “But I can’t go to Mauretania and leave you.”

  A wonderful gift had come to me—this fine man loved me. And I carried his child. I was so blessed . . . and so cursed.

  I knew I had come to a fork in my life path, a moment that had been waiting for me all along. I did not want a half life. I wanted to be Juba’s queen and bear our child in honor.

  It will be life or death for me, I thought. But if I face destruction, I will not bring Juba down with me.

  I said softly, “Sometimes the most direct road is not the best one. Often men do not know this, but it is something girls learn young. I don’t want you to talk to Augustus. Please. Leave matters to me.”

  “But what do you intend to do?”

  “I’ll speak to Livia, and see if I can move her heart.”

  “You think she would help us?”

  “Perhaps. If I approach her in the right way.”

  My mother had known the stakes, and she had gambled. When she lost, she paid the price never flinching. The price was her life, not her honor. So too my father. He fought for imperium and faced defeat as a great Roman general must, salvaging honor.
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br />   I was a daughter of the Egyptian royal house and a daughter of Rome. I was not made for a life of degradation. One throw of the dice, win or lose; that was better.

  I told Livia I wished to speak to her alone about a matter of importance. She looked puzzled by this formal approach, but set a time. I dressed carefully for that appointment, as carefully as might a girl preparing for her bridal day. I had my hair becomingly arranged, and I wore a fine linen tunica and my best jewels. When I looked at my face in the mirror, it was with a feeling of saying farewell.

  I saw the shadow of my parents’ faces in my own visage, my mother looking out from behind my eyes.

  Live or die, I thought, and my heart pounded. I tied a small drawstring pouch to my belt, the kind women carried coins or cosmetics in. Among my possessions was a small, sharp dagger I used for such homely tasks as cutting thread. I examined it, decided it suited the task at hand. There was a metallic taste in my mouth I recognized. I slipped the dagger into the pouch on my belt and prayed my courage would not falter.

  It was early in the morning. I had yet to begin my day. I wondered what Selene wished to talk to me so urgently about and in private, but I had made time for her. I sat in a cushioned chair in the small room off my bedchamber, and when Selene arrived I told her to close the door and gestured for her to sit across from me. She, however, remained standing. “We are quite alone,” I said. “Now what is this great matter you wish to discuss with me?” I spoke with a forced lightness. The tension in her face had put my nerves on edge.

  She sank to her knees and stretched out her arms, grasped my knees in the attitude of a suppliant. “I am with child. Help me.”

  For a moment I was so startled I could not speak. “Who is the father?” I asked finally between my teeth.

  “Prince Juba.”