It would have been better not to know a man’s touch at all than to be used the way Agrippa used me. For it whetted my desire without appeasing it. He would move away from me, fall asleep. I would listen to his snores, and would be burning, burning.
If he had been a man my own age, I think I might have screamed at him. I might have paraded naked as I had before Marcellus. But I remembered who he was—my father’s lifelong friend, the greatest general in Rome, the winner of victory after victory, a man of ponderous dignity. How could I tell him he was a maladroit lover? I respected him too much. When I tried to speak to him on this subject, I might as well have been struck dumb. I could get no words out.
It was not just physical affection I wanted. That was not even the most important thing. I wanted a man to love me. I wanted a place in my husband’s heart.
I imagined at times another woman—the woman my husband seemed to think I ought to be. She was one to whom the pleasures of the flesh did not matter, who wished only to serve Rome and her husband by bearing healthy sons. She did not ache to love and be loved. If I could have by some act of will transformed myself into that woman, I likely would have. But the best I could manage was an inept, crippled pretense.
I had one thing in common with that ideal Roman matron—I was fertile. In his brief time at home, my husband impregnated me again.
The next few years seemed spent in a dark mist, though I should have been happy. My little Gaius thrived. I had received a gift from the gods that many women would give their souls for. I conceived easily and gave birth easily too. My daughter Julilla was born nine months after Agrippa’s brief visit to Rome. Agrippa came home again to consult with my father when Julilla was four months old. He took pleasure in both his children and could be surprisingly tender with them. But after a short time, he left for Gaul again. Nine months later, I gave birth to my second son, Lucius.
My children all resembled Agrippa in the square shapes of their faces and their sturdy builds. Gaius’s features were more like my father’s, and he also had his fair hair, though not his blue eyes. As for the other two—anyone could tell at a glance they were Agrippa’s children.
They were raised like royalty. They had the best wet nurses that could be found and the best tutors from the time they were very small. My father eagerly made plans for the education of the two boys. He legally adopted both of them soon after Lucius’s birth.
Of course Agrippa had been delighted to give his consent. It was a common enough thing in Rome for prominent men without sons to adopt young relatives. My father himself had been adopted by his great-uncle, Julius Caesar. Natural fathers acceded to such arrangements when it would bring their children wealth or higher social rank. Gaius and Lucius, by becoming Father’s legal sons, became heirs to the empire.
The adoption ceremony followed antique form—Father paid for the boys with two copper coins. I did not much like this; there was something ugly about the business, something too reminiscent of what happened at the slave market.
My boys would continue to live with me until they were older, but the important figure in their lives would be my father. I realized this would be true even for my daughter. Father would pick her husband. He doted on all his grandchildren; and I knew he had their good in mind. Yet I sometimes had a twinge of dismay about the way things were arranged—a realization of how little power I had. Even my children did not belong to me but to my father.
In gratitude, Father showered me with material gifts—jewelry, exquisite works of art, even a country villa right after Lucius’s birth. From the time I was small, presents had been his favorite way of expressing affection for me. Just as I had as a child, I took what he gave, smiled, and thanked him. And wished for more, for a closer bond that was now further away than ever. I knew he did not want to hear my true thoughts, and so I did not offer them to him. He was pleased with me. And I think, because he himself was pleased, he never questioned whether or not I was happy.
I appeared regularly in public with my father and Livia. I went to the gladiatorial exhibitions as little as Father would permit—he did feel I ought to attend occasionally. But I never developed a taste for watching men hack at each other, let alone watching them die. I loved going to the chariot races with Father, though. Sometimes I bet more than I should—but Father would smile at this and even slip me coins, to make up my losses. I also attended religious observances, the dedication of new public monuments, and theatrical performances—but performances only of the most seemly kind, not the vulgar mime shows that Father disapproved of. And everywhere I went, people called my name and cheered me.
“These people have no earthly reason to love me,” I said to Father once. “Why do they act as if they do?”
“Because the peace of Rome depends on you and on the sons you have brought into the world. Don’t you realize that?” He spoke a little impatiently. Then his gaze softened. “And you are a beautiful young woman and you project—” He stopped and seemed to be searching for the right words. “The other day, when that poor woman in the crowd held out her baby to you—when you took it in your arms and admired it—I could not do something like that so naturally. Neither could Livia.”
“But it was natural to me,” I said.
“That’s my point,” Father said. “You have a . . . humanity. The people find you easy to love, and that is a fine thing.”
I ought to have been pleased when he said this. But instead I felt a swirl of bitterness like a snake moving in my chest. Every gift I possessed—my ability to bear children, what Father called my beauty and humanity—everything was entered into Father’s political account books.
He so enjoyed being seen with me—his dutiful daughter, whom the common people loved.
To me it all seemed bizarre. My own husband did not show the slightest sign of loving me. But when I appeared in public, the people of Rome went into transports of joy.
“Julia!” they would cry. “Julia!” People would say things like, “May the gods bless that sweet face!” They would even toss bouquets of flowers at my feet.
Father would beam at me. I would curve my lips into a smile that everyone took as real.
One afternoon, preparing to attend the theater with my father and Livia, I sat in a chair in front of my dressing table. I could see my own face in a copper mirror that stood on a stand. Phoebe stood behind me. She had learned to dress my hair the way I liked it. No, that would not be accurate. She had learned to dress it the way Father liked it, piled on the top of my head in a style almost as severe as the one Livia favored. I watched her long, pale fingers moving through my locks, arranging everything just so. The look of Republican simplicity took an hour to achieve.
Phoebe had already made up my face—applied a little rouge to my lips and my cheekbones, the barest touch of kohl to my eyelids. If I wore more makeup than that, Father would not say a word, but I could always read the disapproval in his eyes.
I looked at myself in the mirror. I saw the eyes of someone drowning. Phoebe meanwhile fastened on my emerald earrings. They had been one of Father’s gifts to me after little Julilla’s birth.
I began to cry and found I could not stop. I wept with great wrenching sobs; it was shameful how I wept. And I loathed myself, even as the tears rolled down my cheeks. For here I was, the First Citizen’s daughter, wearing those costly baubles on my ears. My three beautiful children, carefully tended by nurses, were at play in another part of this fine stately house, and I was about to go to the theater where strangers would greet me with adulatory cries. And yet I was so unhappy. I did not fit this life I had been given, or it did not fit me, and that surely was my fault.
What added to my sense of abasement was that Phoebe stood staring at me with dismay. She was a slave; she limped; she had no kin at all. But she was not the one weeping. She looked at me with true concern and said, “Mistress, what is it? Are you ill? Has something happened?”
“Nothing has happened,” I sobbed. “I’m a selfish fool, and I wa
nt what I can’t have and—oh, Phoebe, what you must think of me. I have never seen you cry, but here I am crying—all out of pity for myself.”
She made a sound of commiseration, as one might tending a sick child.
“I can’t bear my life. What is wrong with me, to feel such sadness, when everyone says I am so fortunate?”
“Maybe the ones who say it lack eyes to see, mistress,” Phoebe said.
A choked laugh ushered from my throat. “You pity me?”
“There are more ways than one to be a slave.”
At a poetry reading at my father’s home, I met a woman named Aurelia. Her husband was a high-ranking officer serving under Agrippa’s command in Gaul. She was young and had a vivacity I liked, and when she invited me to a dinner party, I accepted her invitation. Through her I made the acquaintance of several other women with husbands serving in far-flung corners of the empire. They often met at each other’s houses to dine. Men attended their parties too, mostly unattached men with patrician names. I was twenty-two years old, but my life had been sheltered. I went to three of these parties before I understood that the people there came for more than company.
One evening I noticed a strikingly handsome young slave serving wine. He had a garland wreath on his head and wore a bright yellow tunic of some clinging fabric. He leaned over me too close as he filled my wine cup, then turned his head and gave me a hint of smile. I just thought this odd behavior by a waiter who was ill trained. But later I noticed him and a woman guest talking. He helped her to her feet. A statuesque woman, about thirty years old, she had a bright, hard look in her eyes. When she left, the young slave quietly followed her.
I was taken aback and must have shown it. A man on the dining couch next to me caught my glance and smiled, then, leaning over the space between our couches, whispered, “Aurelia likes to keep her guests entertained. But there will be a fee.”
I could feel my jaw drop. I said nothing.
“You look like a little lost child. Are you truly the First Citizen’s daughter?”
“Yes.” I had heard other guests addressing this man, and I knew his name. “You’re Sempronius Gracchus.”
“I admit it.”
In the Forum stood a statue of his great-grandfather portrayed as a handsome young paragon. This man had a pockmarked, plain face. I saw no resemblance except, when I looked closely, there was a cleft in his chin, similar to the one the sculptor had given the long-dead hero.
“You have a great name.” You have a great name, but you are a senator of very minor importance, and I know for a fact my father does not take you seriously.
“That, my dear, is true enough, for what it’s worth.” He took a drink of wine. “You’re shocked at Lucilla and that slave boy?”
“You’re not?”
“I am the last person you would expect to find shocked by anything.”
We fell into a prolonged and pleasant conversation—spoke of poetry and art. I found Gracchus to be a witty man with elevated tastes.
It had grown late when he suddenly said, “I don’t give a fig for my name. But when I think about my great-grandfather, I long for what once was and could have been.”
“I see. You’re a democrat. You believe Rome has taken the wrong road.”
He did not speak.
I smiled at him. “And now it suddenly occurs to you that you are talking to the First Citizen’s daughter. You feel a bit uneasy.”
He laughed. “Not really. I’m very sure that your father does not lose sleep over inconsequential people like me. While if Gaius Gracchus were alive”—he named his great-grandfather, Rome’s dead democratic champion—“he would have to kill him.”
“Actually, my father sees himself as carrying on your great-grandfather’s work. All the public building and so on.”
“Yes, indeed. I have heard him say as much.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Gaius Gracchus was a democrat. One-man rule would be anathema to him.”
“And to you . . . ?”
He did not answer.
Gracchus interested me. He was different from the usual run of people I met. He was in his midthirties, but still unmarried, and at the slightest provocation would proclaim his disinterest in marriage and family life. He did not revere my father, or even pretend to, and that set him apart from most people I knew. It occurred to me that perhaps that was what I liked most about him—he did not feel admiration for my father or even feign it.
We met at dinner parties and at poetry readings. We knew many of the same people. He was not rushed or crude. What happened between us came to fruition slowly.
“You ought to let me make love to you,” he said to me one evening. He spoke lightly, without emphasis, the way one might say, You ought to sample this new wine.
A slave musician was entertaining us before the last dinner course was served. She plucked on a harp while singing of love in a high, flutelike voice. We were in an opulent dining room packed with guests, most of them wellborn, all of them rich. The mural on the wall showed Jupiter entering Leda’s bedchamber in the shape of a swan.
“You know that I am married,” I said.
Gracchus nodded toward Pompeia, our hostess, a matron of middle years, across the room, chatting with a young man who looked like he had only lately begun to shave. “Marriage doesn’t stop her.”
“You’ve made love to her?”
“I wouldn’t speak of such things. It might damage the lady’s reputation.” He smiled because we both knew Pompeia had no reputation to lose. Then he began walking his fingers up and down my arm, tickling me.
Agrippa was in Gaul. It was the first time in a long while that a man had touched me. “Stop,” I said, and he stopped.
“It wouldn’t have to disrupt your life,” Gracchus said. “I could give you pleasure. You deserve it.”
“What makes you think I do?”
“You are a good person. Very kind, very sweet. You deserve some joy in life.”
“And you could give me joy?”
“That is one area in which I am actually quite competent.” He lowered his voice. “We would be discreet. I would never do anything to hurt you, Julia.”
Strangely enough, I believed him. He did not support Father. Was he intending to use me against him politically? Planning perhaps to dirty our family name? It could be, but I didn’t think it at all likely. There was a gentleness and a lack of guile about Gracchus that won my trust.
“And when I have a child and he bears no resemblance to my husband, but has a cleft in his chin just like yours . . . ?”
He laughed. “What a narrow experience of life you have had. It is terrible how you have been kept imprisoned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know that there are many ways for a man to give a woman exquisite pleasure, without running the slightest risk of getting her with child?”
A little shiver went through me. I suddenly felt very warm. I looked away. “No more of such talk.”
“As you wish.”
Of course there was more of such talk. Sempronius Gracchus never spoke of love as the poets did, never claimed to be in the grip of deathless passion. But I felt he liked and valued me. In appearance, he did not approach a sculptor’s ideal. He had the soft body of a man who did no work, eschewed athletics, and did not keep himself fit for war. But my flesh came alive in his presence. And I felt the most elemental need. To be touched, gently, carefully, with understanding, by a man who wished to give me pleasure. Not rutted with for the purpose of giving Rome an heir.
Perhaps I did not want Gracchus, really. Perhaps I wanted Marcellus back, alive, wanted the man he might have become. I did like Gracchus, though.
I considered the danger—how could I not? I imagined bedding Gracchus, and my husband finding out. Or my father finding out. Their fury. Maybe a great public scandal. Many of the wives of the nobility had lovers, but almost all tried to keep the fact a secret. Cuckolded husbands a
lmost never killed their wives or their wives’ lovers as they sometimes had a hundred years ago—but there could be nasty divorces, the confiscation of the wife’s dowry, and, worse, far worse, her separation from her children. For me, the ugliness of the scandal if it broke would be in proportion to my husband’s fame and my father’s power.
“Do you think it is wrong for a woman to let a man who is not her husband make love to her?” I asked Phoebe one night as she brushed my hair before bed.
She looked at me speculatively. “It depends on the circumstances, mistress.”
“What kind of circumstances?”
“Well, for one thing, the love between her and her husband. Or the lack of love.”
Of course she knew I was not talking about an abstract woman, but about myself. I almost told her everything. The truth was, she had become my closest confidante.
There are more ways than one to be a slave . . . Those words of hers often echoed in my head.
“If a woman has a chance for some little bit of happiness without risking too much, well, then I say why not?” Phoebe spoke vehemently. “Men always couple with women other than their wives—they do that and worse.”
She did not like men. Most of the slave women of my household had husbands—marriages unrecognized in law but treasured just the same. Phoebe did not, and not because men did not seek her out. Something had happened to her—she hinted at it sometimes. My guess was that Roman soldiers had had their way with her when she was still a child—and she would never let a man touch her again, if she could help it.
She did not fuss much with her own hair, as some of the other slave women did, nor did she like to look at herself in the mirror. But she did enjoy helping me look pretty and appeared to find pleasure in seeing me beautifully dressed. Now she seemed to be encouraging me to find a lover. Perhaps she would take some vicarious satisfaction in that.
The Daughters of Palatine Hill: A Novel Page 15
