The Daughters of Palatine Hill: A Novel

by Phyllis T. Smith

  I saw the downhill slope we were on, but felt powerless to resist the slide. Then fate intervened. I discovered I was with child.

  When I told my husband, it was late in the evening and our bedchamber was illumined only by a single candle. The change in Tiberius’s face seemed to light up the room.

  Had I never seen him happy before?

  He pulled me into his arms and kissed me. “A son—oh, gods above, let it be a son.”

  He had a son already, by Vipsania. He rarely spoke of him, never saw him, had left him completely in the care of his mother.

  This child I would bear, however, seemed to matter to him in an entirely different way. As my pregnancy progressed, Tiberius treated me with anxious solicitude.

  He does care about me, I thought. Perhaps he even loves me.

  We were reborn—or at least our marriage was. No baby can heal all its parents’ wounds. And yet my pregnancy worked a great healing.

  A son, a son, I prayed. Oh, gods, let me give Tiberius the boy he wants.

  True happiness never seemed so close, so possible as it did at this time.

  My baby was born on a rainy spring morning. I had a long labor, harder than with any of my other children, perhaps because I was now past thirty. I saw worry on the midwife’s face—and that only served to frighten me. Oh, thank you, gods, I thought when I at last heard her exultant words: “A boy!”

  Later, I lay with the swaddled infant in my arms, and my husband came and sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the baby with shining eyes. “My son. Caesar Augustus’s grandson. He will be a great man. I have had a sense of it, ever since you told me you were pregnant. This child will be nothing ordinary. I am sure of it.”

  He said he would name the boy Tiberius.

  I waited for a loving gesture from him, a caring word, some acknowledgment of the pain and danger I had been through. That did not come.

  “I am tired,” I said, and turned my head away from him on the pillow. After a moment, he got up and left.

  I found a good wet nurse for my new baby, just as I had for my other children. He was never alone; a trusted maidservant sat by his cradle day and night.

  When I held my little one in my arms, often I could not help pitying him. I saw my two older boys, Gaius and Lucius, weighted down by their grandfather’s expectations. I suspected that it would be worse for little Tiberius growing up. He had an exacting father to please and was the carrier of Father and Livia’s joint dynastic hopes. “I will love you no matter what,” I promised my son. “You don’t have to become a great man for me to love you.”

  I whispered many endearments to him every day, as if to fortify him for what lay ahead. It was as if some god prompted me. I wanted him to fully know a mother’s love.

  In late afternoon, I came home from looking at the work of a new sculptor. It was a staid occasion, an opportunity to see some of my women friends who liked art.

  The moment I entered the house, Phoebe came rushing to me. “Oh, my lady, we did not know where you were, but we fetched the physician right away. The baby . . .”

  I rushed into the nursery. Tiberius stood over the child’s cradle with Brocius, a physician we often employed. My husband stared at me. “Where were you?”

  “Is the baby sick?” I directed my question at Brocius.

  “He has a fever.”

  “Where were you?” Tiberius repeated. He added accusingly, “The servants found me at Mars Field. They couldn’t find you.”

  I shook my head. “I was at an exhibit . . . a sculptor . . . What does it matter?” I went to the cradle. I looked at the baby. His little face was flushed. His eyes were shut. I watched his small chest rise and fall, to be sure he was breathing. “Oh, gods above, how sick is he?”

  “Now you care?” Tiberius said.

  “Of course I care!” I cried. “I was only gone for three hours.”

  “You’re lying. You said you wouldn’t lie to me, but you’ve been lying all along, haven’t you? Being where you shouldn’t be?”

  “It was three hours!”

  “You left him.”

  “Am I a captive? Do you think you carried me to Rome in chains?”

  The physician averted his eyes.

  So many people have suffered the horror of seeing a laughing, happy baby in his cradle one day and the next day losing him. But are human souls constituted to bear such a loss without descending into madness?

  In my mind, I see a kind husband comforting his wife on the death of their child, she comforting him in turn.

  But Tiberius had no kindness in him, no pity.

  When we turned away from the cradle that held our dead child, Tiberius spoke to me. “You had be out with your degenerate friends.”

  I could do nothing but weep.

  “How can a mother desert her own son?” He asked this question with such pain and grief that anyone who did not know would have imagined he spoke of something real.

  “I did not desert him,” I said.

  “I know now exactly what you are.”

  I walked back to the cradle, looked at the baby. He could have been sleeping, he seemed so peaceful. Above his head, attached to the cradle, his golden bulla hung. Before he was born, like every mother, I had filled the locket with objects meant to bring good luck, a little charm in the shape of a dolphin, a tiny bronze phallus, a new gold coin.

  “Oh, maybe this is the gods’ mercy,” I sobbed. I turned on Tiberius. “Better the baby died than to have you as a father. All you ever do is make the people around you suffer. Even as a boy you were that way, and you haven’t changed. You are evil—evil.”

  He grabbed my arm in a crushing grip. “Shut your mouth.”

  “Or you’ll do what? I am Caesar Augustus’s daughter. And who are you? The son of some fool no one even remembers?”

  He did not strike me. But he let loose a torrent of all the vilest words that could be applied to a woman.

  “Coward,” I said.

  He stood perfectly still, hatred transforming his face. He said nothing, but I felt I was looking at the face of a murderer.

  All this took place while our dead baby lay in his cradle.

  Our whole family suffered a terrible loss with the death of little Tiberius. Many years ago, Tavius and I had lost a son who had been born months too early and lived only for a few hours. Now it was as if we once again had to suffer the death of that child whom we had wanted so desperately. Our grandson’s death cut us to the heart. But Tiberius and Julia’s response to the death exceeded all human bounds. Somehow their grief was transmuted into anger. They looked at each other now with silent loathing as if each blamed the other for the child’s death—a death that was an act of the gods no parent could prevent.

  I had often worried that Tiberius seemed to lack the capacity to find great joy in life. But I never before knew him to be as deeply troubled as he was at this time.

  An informant brought a story to me that soon all of Rome knew. On the street one day Tiberius happened to meet his former wife, Vipsania. By then, Tavius had arranged a good marriage for her with a senator named Gaius Gallus. She seemed contented enough with her new husband. I do not know if meeting Tiberius stirred deep feelings on her part, but she greeted him in a seemly way, saying she had been sad to hear he had recently lost a child.

  He, in a voice loud enough to be heard by passersby, told Vipsania that every day of his life he regretted the decision he had made in divorcing her and marrying Julia. He begged her forgiveness for the divorce.

  Vipsania acted very well, speaking soothing words and telling Tiberius that of course she forgave him, or rather, she saw nothing in his actions that required forgiveness. When they parted, Tiberius stood in the street, gazing after her, eyes full of tears.

  I summoned Tiberius to me later that day. We met alone in my private sitting room, with the doors closed. He looked haggard to me, as if he had not slept well for a long time. “I think you are under great strain,” I said.

/>   “Did I embarrass you today, Mother?” He half smiled. “I am so sorry.”

  My son had a knack for turning away compassion. But this was my child. “Has something more happened between you and Julia?”

  “More? What more could there be? She is vile. I know I can’t end our marriage. You don’t have to tell me that. There won’t be any more scenes in the street, Mother, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  He refused to discuss the subject further.

  That evening I learned that Tavius too had been informed of Tiberius’s encounter with Vipsania. He felt no sympathy for my son but was furious with him.

  There could be no recurrence of Tiberius’s meeting with Vipsania. An administrative position in Rhodes was found for Vipsania’s husband. This was the kind of comfortable post senators liked—where they could bring along their wives and children. Tavius and I wanted Vipsania where she and Tiberius would never meet.

  And soon afterward, trouble in Gaul called Tiberius away. He was glad to go. He could not bear to be with Julia.

  I heard about him accosting Vipsania on the street, asking her forgiveness, saying he wished they had remained married. Did he do it to humiliate me? I do not know. But I felt the sting of a public insult.

  I could not keep from upbraiding him about it. “Can we at least keep our misery to ourselves? Must you make it public knowledge?”

  He looked at me as if he hated me. “I gave up the only woman I ever loved, for you and for Rome. And see what I have received in return for my sacrifice.”

  “I don’t believe you loved her,” I said. “I don’t believe you have ever loved anyone.”

  I had thought we could be happy together. I had imagined for a few moments that I had found love. What an ugly joke that was. I had been taken for a fool.

  When he left for Gaul, I was glad to see him go.

  My father never had any great affection for Tiberius. But he valued his competence and loyalty. After Tiberius left, I saw unspoken blame in his eyes. It was my task as a wife to please my husband, and I had failed in that task.

  “I am sorry to see you so unhappy,” Gracchus said to me when we met at a dinner given by one of my women friends. “I am not surprised, though.”

  “You have no liking for my husband.”

  “The wrong brother died.”

  “You were Drusus’s friend?”

  He nodded. “He might have been a bridge between me and my friends in the Senate and your father. Tiberius, on the other hand, will reinforce your father’s worst tendencies. And heaven help us if he succeeds him. He has the character of a tyrant.”

  “Tiberius will never succeed my father,” I said. “My sons will.”

  “Julia, I truly hope so. But your father is growing old, and your sons are still mere boys.”

  “You believe there will be an interval between my father and my sons, when Tiberius will hold power?”

  “I think so.”

  I took a sip of wine. I remembered the fear I had felt after Maecenas died, the terror of Father being suddenly taken from us. But I said, “I think you are wrong. You don’t know my father. He will live to be a hundred.”

  “I would prefer that. Because if Tiberius ever gets power, I don’t see him yielding it. To your sons or anyone else.”

  I felt a chill at these words.

  Later, at the same dinner party, another old friend of mine, Aurelia, sought me out. “We have been missing you. Where have you been hiding?”

  “No place you’d want to hear about.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to dine with me tomorrow? An old friend of yours will be there.”

  “Oh? What old friend is that?”

  “Scipio.”

  It began again. I do not mean my love affair with Scipio, although within days of this conversation with Aurelia, I was in his bed. Rather, the life I had led before my marriage to Tiberius.

  I had lost the dream of marriage to a husband who loved me. I had lost a child. There was a void in me. Being in a man’s arms filled it for the moment at least. I longed for . . . something, someone. It was as if I were lost in the desert searching for water.

  It surely was that thirst that drove me to attend what Aurelia called her special celebrations. Much laughter, much wine. Rooms lit by candles. In the half darkness, people coupling. Sometimes we dressed as gods and goddesses. Often we wore masks. We became tigers, lions, creatures that existed only in the ancient tales. Men, women, what did it matter? Flesh was flesh, flesh was sweet. There was too much wine, too much heat.

  Sometimes I wanted to flee. I knew I was in a place where I should not be. But at the same time, I wanted to stay—to feel something, anything rather than the bleakness I knew at home. And there was that terrible need in me, that ache to be touched.

  Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Are you the one I am looking for? My head swimming from all the wine, sometimes I voiced my question aloud. Men would laugh. “Oh, yes, darling, it’s definitely me.”

  Phoebe nursed me when I came home sick, saw to it that I did not show myself to my children when I had had too much wine. She was the message bearer when I needed to send notes to my lovers. Phoebe, faithful Phoebe. She was my truest friend. She knew about all my doings, and yet I never saw disapproval in her eyes. On the contrary. “Why shouldn’t you live your life as you see fit?” she told me. “Why shouldn’t you be happy?”

  I would wake up in a strange house, sick from all the wine. Sometimes I forgot to be cautious at all. There were months when I was relieved when my courses came.

  “No one will ever stop me again from doing just as I wish,” I told Phoebe.

  But how empty my life seemed, how loveless.

  One day Livia came to see me. Her severe manner instantly put me on guard. She dispensed with all niceties in a way that was unlike her and said quite bluntly that unpleasant tales about me had come to her ears. “I have not repeated them to your father. I do not want to hurt him . . . or you. But if things go on as they have, these stories will reach your father’s ears. And they will reach Tiberius’s ears as well. You are courting disaster.”

  I felt a prickling up the length of my spine, but I said coolly, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  A few days later my mother visited. “I am so worried about you,” Scribonia said.

  Incredibly, it was Livia who had persuaded her to come and talk to me. Just the same it was a source of comfort to me to weep in my mother’s arms. I told her I would be cautious in what I did—much, much more cautious. I wanted to ease her mind.

  She was aghast. “You must be faithful to your husband,” she said. “My dear child, it is not a matter of right and wrong but of who has the power. You cannot set yourself against your father and your husband.”

  “Mother,” I said in a low voice, “there is something that drives me. Even against my will. I wish you could understand. But I hardly understand it myself.”

  She gave a kind of keening wail. “Oh, Julia, Julia . . .”

  I continued on the same path. For months, nothing changed.

  And then Tiberius came home from Gaul.

  He would not let me live my life as I wished to live it.

  There were terrible arguments. Nights when we were both hoarse with screaming at each other. We had no dignity. We had no restraint. The passion that we had once shared was dead, dead with our baby, and this is what we had in its place. This rage.

  Once he blocked the entranceway when I wanted to leave the house. “Where are you going?” Tiberius said.

  “Out. To see my friends.”

  “You’re going nowhere,” he said.

  “I go where I like,” I said.

  He grabbed me by the shoulder.

  “Do you want me to scream? Shall I scream to the world what I think of you?”

  He raised his clenched fist. “Go ahead.”

  I smiled at him. “Oh, hit me. Please do. I would so like bruises to show my father.”

  He l
et out a stream of curses, vile barracks obscenities.

  “Why don’t you hit me, you brave man? Hurt me, kill me, what does it matter? Just as long as you’re ready to face my father.”

  He lowered his fist, let go of me. “Why get filth on my hands?”

  Shouldn’t someone tell Augustus what his daughter is?” Tiberius asked me the question between clenched teeth.

  “No. And if you are the one to do it, believe me he will hate you for it.”

  My husband would never forgive the person who made him directly face the reality of Julia’s promiscuity. I knew the man I had been married to for the past three decades. If he had been able to confront Julia’s behavior, he would already have done it. He loved her too much to punish her for what she was doing. It was all so painful, so shaming. So he had chosen not to see.

  Tiberius stood, leaning back against a balcony railing. It was a sunny summer day at Prima Porta. Behind him, I glimpsed an expanse of countryside, everything verdant and in bloom. His face was congested with anger, his eyes burning. “So I am expected to tolerate this?”

  “Come inside. Sit down.” No one would hear us, and yet it felt wrong to be having this talk out in the air. We entered a small side room and closed the door. I sat. Tiberius stood. He stared at the mural on the wall, which showed Jupiter coming to Danae in a shower of gold, looked at it as if it were a vision of surpassing ugliness.

  “If you could win back her affections—”

  “Mother!” His shout made me jump. He stood over me. His hands were clenched, and for an instant I felt almost a sense of menace. “I wonder how much shame you would like me to bear.”

  Do you think I wished for this? Do you not remember I counseled you not to marry Julia? I knew these words from me could only do harm, and so I kept silent.

  “I will never touch her again,” Tiberius said. “She has dishonored me.”

  “She does not have that power,” I said. “Only you can dishonor yourself, my son, by your own actions.”