I Am Livia
Page 17
I entered the temple’s bronze doors, which bore scratches and dents, marks of the arrows and spears cast long ago. I promised myself that I would get Tavius to refurbish this place and make it beautiful. With me I brought a white lamb, which I gave to a priestess. She cut its throat, and as its blood fell on the floor’s ancient, broken tiles, I raised my eyes to the statue of Diana. I silently spoke to her of the boy who had died in Perusia holding my hand.
Here, near the place where many of Rome’s best men had died, slain by their own countrymen, I begged her to end the killing. I asked that no more Romans die in useless civil strife, and I prayed that the marriage of the daughter of Marcus Brutus’s noblest supporter to Julius Caesar’s adopted son would help to bring Rome peace. Stretching forth my arms, my heart full of fervor, I also prayed that she extend her benevolent protection to Tavius.
Rome may have seen stranger weddings than mine to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, but people would be hard put to think of one. The role that Tiberius Nero played became a part of our legend—that is, Tavius’s and mine. Some interpreted his giving me away as a deed of patriotic self-sacrifice, some as something much less lofty. But Romans will never forget it.
Early in the morning, long before the wedding guests arrived, Tiberius Nero and I went through the formalities of a mutually consensual divorce. The seven required witnesses arrived at our house, sent by Tavius, who had taken many of the arrangements for the day into his hands. Tiberius Nero and I met them in the atrium, where slaves were dragging in couches for the wedding banquet. I stole a glance at my soon-to-be former husband. How does a man appear when he is about to be incorporated into another man’s legend? Not too happy. But at least he did not look enraged.
Before the seven witnesses, he spoke the traditional words to me. “Take what belongs to you and go.”
“I consent,” I said.
Our marriage was over. Acting as my kinsman and guardian, he glanced at the marriage contract that Tavius had sent him. The main provision transferred my dowry to Tavius’s control. Tiberius Nero pressed his signet ring into the wax seal on the document. “Thank you,” I said. I slipped off my gold betrothal ring and handed it to him. He looked down at it in his palm, closed his fingers around it, gave a little chuckle, and walked out of the room.
An important bond had been severed, and I felt an ache, remembering times of affection and shared joy. I had come to Tiberius Nero a girl and grown into a woman as his wife. I had not wanted him as my husband, but we had come to rely on each other. I told myself I would be a friend to him just as I had promised to be, and there was comfort in that thought.
I went to the nursery, where Rubria was dressing my son. As soon as I saw him, I felt the start of tears. But I had promised myself not to weep anymore about what was already unalterable, and I did not want to act in front of little Tiberius as if some tragedy were befalling us. I blinked away my tears and managed to smile at him.
“I will want to see him tomorrow,” I said to Rubria. “I’ll send the litter, and you’ll bring him to me.”
“Of course,” she said.
“And you will care for him just as you always do.” My son was gazing up at me with puzzled eyes. He was two months short of his third birthday. How could he understand what was happening? I fell silent.
“Of course,” Rubria said again.
I remembered that she had lost her husband and her own child in a tenement fire—a common circumstance in Rome’s slums, one she could certainly not prevent—and I wondered what she thought of me. In her plain, patient face, I could find no clue.
I kissed little Tiberius on the forehead. Then I left him with Rubria and went to prepare for my marriage ceremony.
I have had to pause for a while in my writing. My mind was so full of memories of my son as a small boy. And then I recalled I have yet to reply to a letter he recently sent me.
The waxed tablet stamped with his seal is here on my writing table. He urges me to rest more and to leave my business affairs entirely in the hands of trustworthy servants; he would be glad to suggest able men I could rely on. My holdings are extensive. I have brickyards, a copper mine, granaries. It is too much for me, at my age, he says, to involve myself in overseeing these many ventures. Moreover, I should not go out among the poor, as I still do, and personally distribute largesse. As he has done before, he hints that this activity is hardly suitable even for a woman in the prime of life.
My son’s tone is almost one of entreaty. I will write him back a polite reply, thanking him for his filial concern. But as always, I will refuse to be bound by his efforts to restrict my actions.
My son Tiberius can be harsh and overbearing in his dealings with others. With me, he at least softens his voice. He takes care to be courteous. But he looks at me—at any woman—with a narrow vision. He is most at home in a military camp, among men.
There were proscriptions in Rome when I was carrying him. While he was a baby, his father and I fled from place to place with him, often in great fear. Then came my divorce and marriage to Tavius. Did those past events affect who he is today? I wonder. Sometimes I think he lost some of his ability to trust—in particular, to put faith in any woman—because I abandoned my marriage to his father.
I remember the confusion in my son’s eyes when I took leave of him on that long-ago wedding day, and even now I could weep.
The wedding’s ridiculous aspects were dwarfed for me by joy—Tavius’s as well as my own. He was marrying a woman big with another man’s child who would not be ready for months to be a true wife to him. But he came through Tiberius Nero’s entranceway smiling with happy anticipation. Then he saw me in my wedding finery—the long white tunica, the sheer crimson veil—and his lips parted as if he were gazing at a miracle. In the head wreath of red and yellow flowers he wore for the occasion, he looked young and pure, like a boy who had never seen a bride before.
He embraced Tiberius Nero like a brother. The strain that might have been expected got swallowed up in Tavius’s happiness and goodwill. The moment when the two men exchanged copies of the marriage contract, even the moment when Tiberius Nero placed my hand in Tavius’s, passed quickly and in a civilized way.
We—Tavius and I—stood with our hands linked. I looked through my sheer red silk veil into his eyes and spoke the words of consent. When I said, “Where thou art Gaius, I am Gaia” to Caesar Octavianus, I meant it. With him, I would stand or fall. I was a young woman in love, but I also felt like a general who chooses the ground for his battle, knowing, whether he has chosen rightly or not, there can be no retreat, that he will either win or die.
Tavius placed a gold ring on my finger, the same finger from which, only hours ago, I had removed Tiberius Nero’s ring. At that moment, I felt no doubts, but rather a sense that what had come to pass was right and inevitable, because Tavius and I were twin souls, and the love between us was vast.
Shouts of “Feliciter!” filled the air.
I lifted my wedding veil. We reclined together, receiving congratulations from numerous guests. Tiberius Nero lay on a couch in the place of honor to our right, as the bride’s nearest relation normally would. I watched out of the corner of my eye as people approached him. They were respectful, but they groped for words, since it did not seem right to congratulate him.
I thought, Well, this is my wedding. I must act as if I am enjoying it. But I will be so much happier once this day is over.
I spoke polite words to guests and listened as Tavius responded to their congratulations. He was never at a loss for what to say; in that, he seemed like any seasoned politician. But he did not rattle on and bore people, as public men are prone to do. I asked myself: If you heard his voice, and did not know him, who would you imagine him to be?
Oh, a well-bred young man, but not a native of the city of Rome; he speaks just a bit too softly and courteously for someone born here. You might think, �
��I hope Rome is not too rough a place for him.”
My sister and her husband came forward to greet us. She wore a pretty light green stola and her finest jewelry. Her husband beamed. Secunda looked at Tavius as if he were a lion and I were reclining there with him on a leash. Poor thing, she had no talent for masking her thoughts. She said, “May the gods bring luck to your marriage,” and tried to smile. Then she darted an amazed look at Tiberius Nero, who was making short work of the first course of the wedding feast while talking with other guests.
Tavius was convivial with her husband and gentle with her. But Secunda looked relieved when she could go back to her dining couch.
Tavius’s sister could not attend the wedding, since she was far away with Mark Antony, her new husband. But I met two men at the wedding banquet who were as close to Tavius as brothers, Marcus Agrippa and Gaius Maecenas.
Agrippa approached us first. He said, “Feliciter,” and Tavius introduced him to me.
He was tall, muscular, and ruddy-faced, good-looking in a rugged way. I knew he’d had operational command of Tavius’s forces during the siege of Perusia. I pushed thoughts of Perusia away and said, “I’m happy to meet you.”
“And I to finally meet you.”
Tavius had talked to him about me, obviously.
I caught the wariness in Agrippa’s eyes. I did not hold it against him. His future, his whole life, was bound up with serving Tavius. He had never had to take Tavius’s first two wives into account. It would be different with me, and he knew it.
People gossiped about Agrippa’s low birth. His father owned a rich estate near Velitrae, where he, like Tavius, had grown up, but his grandparents had been freed slaves. I was a daughter of the Claudians. I think he feared my scorn. We exchanged pleasantries, sizing each other up.
Soon afterward, I met Maecenas. Physically he was Agrippa’s opposite—short, dark, and plump. I had heard he had royal Etruscan blood.
“Feliciter, my dear,” he said to me. His voice was extremely pleasant, almost musical, but a bit high for a man. He gave me a charming smile. “I won’t keep you now, but I’m looking forward to getting to know you. I’m determined that we’ll be the best of friends.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“Oh, we will be,” he assured me.
He has made a decision, I thought. He will befriend Tavius’s new bride, to reinforce his position in Tavius’s innermost circle.
I smiled back at him. We understood each other.
In the past years, as he jockeyed for power, Tavius had had only two advisors who mattered, not wise graybeards but these friends his own age. The two had certainly served him well, judging by the results. I would therefore never do anything to injure their relationship with my husband. On the contrary, I would make it my business to win their gratitude and loyalty.
Most of the Roman nobility looked down on both of them, of course. Agrippa could never be forgiven his forebears. And Maecenas—well, his royal descent would pass muster even with patricians. But the impression he gave, not only of softness but effeminacy, brought him mockery. These two had been Tavius’s closest friends at school. Who was he when he first met them but the sick one, the boy who could not endure exercise or military training? It struck me that in that school for the sons of the provincial elite of Velitrae, he, Agrippa, and Maecenas all likely had been, for different reasons, outsiders.
The three had already demonstrated, not just to their old schoolmates but to the world, how foolish it was to discount them. I saw myself as the fourth member of that golden circle. But not ranked number four, no. I would be the one closest to Tavius, his mate in every sense. I’d be content with nothing less. And the world would learn it was wrong to discount me too.
People remember a certain incident that occurred at the wedding banquet. Talos and Antitalos, wearing jeweled sandals for the occasion though otherwise naked, had been brought in to entertain. They sang a funny little song, and afterward went about from table to table, babbling amusing nonsense. Then Antitalos, the wittier of the two, came up to the couch on which Tavius and I reclined. His black eyes rounded with mock incredulity. “Mistress—Mistress—”
“Yes?” I said, and waited for the joke.
His face turned into a mask of comical dismay. “Oh, Mistress,” he said in a loud voice, “what in the world are you doing over here…when your husband is over there?” He pointed at Tiberius Nero.
For a moment, it could have gone either way. We all could have been greatly embarrassed. But Antitalos, though only nine years old, was a comic genius in the bud, and had a gift for gauging such things. This jest touched on the tension beneath the wedding’s festive mood, and exposed to the light and air what had previously been unmentionable, the peculiar circumstance obvious to all. Everyone exploded with laughter. In particular, Tiberius Nero and Tavius both laughed until they were red-faced and looked ready to choke.
I, too, dissolved in helpless laughter.
Now I remember Antitalos’s years on stage, the acclaim he won. He acted in comedies after I set him and his brother free, and eventually he had his own theater. There are three sets of twins among his grandchildren. In my mind, I picture him as he is today, a dignified old man with a glint of humor in his eyes, and then I again see that little naked child.
As I stroked Antitalos’s silky black hair, his young face glowed. I wondered if he knew what a risk he had taken, and how completely he had conquered us all.
The cook had outdone himself with the main course—tender cuts of beef in a delicious sauce flavored with cumin, dates, and honey. Tavius did not taste it. Throughout the wedding banquet, he adhered to his usual simple diet and drank only a single cup of wine mixed with water.
As I nibbled on a fig pastry, part of the dessert, which he also eschewed, he whispered, “It’ll be over soon, and we can go home.”
I smiled at him.
“Don’t walk there,” he said.
I shook my head.
“Are we going to have our first argument, as man and wife, over this?”
“Very likely,” I said.
“People may shout…ugly things.”
I felt a tightening around my heart. But then I thought of myself running through the forest outside Sparta with my hair and clothes on fire, and I laughed. “I assure you, I’ve been through worse.”
He frowned and said nothing.
“Please, let me do it,” I said. “It is for our benefit that I show myself. And even if some people scorn me, it doesn’t disturb me, because I know I will conduct myself in such a way that they won’t scorn me in the end.”
A little later, we stood outside, hand in hand together as the wedding torch was lit. A great crowd of Tavius’s supporters had gathered. I felt their eyes on me. They shouted good wishes; they were our friends. Tavius squeezed my hand and then let go of it, and disappeared into the crowd. Two little boys, Tavius’s cousins, took my hands. With a boy of twelve or thirteen carrying the wedding torch before me, I started my walk to the home of my new husband.
I wore my veil raised back over my hair. I wanted people to see my face and know that I was happy.
Tiberius Nero’s house stood only a third of the way up the Palatine Hill. The walk down the slope, into the Forum, and from there to Tavius’s house would be no strain for me, even in my pregnant condition. People sang bawdy songs just as they had when I married Tiberius Nero. But the crowds that came out to watch this wedding procession greatly outnumbered those on that occasion.
Look your fill, I thought.
The people of Rome. My eyes fixed upon individuals. A harsh-faced woman in a tattered tunica, who held the hand of a sweet-faced little girl. A long-nosed fellow in a workman’s rough tunic. A somber man in a toga, whom I recognized as an old acquaintance of my father’s. Dozens and dozens of others. They stared at me, and I looked back at them.
> The sun had set by the time I reached the foot of the Palatine Hill. Someone deep in the crowd shouted, “Whore!” I pretended I did not hear this, and went on walking.
The faces I saw in the torchlight looked at me without hostility, even with goodwill. These were my people, the people of Rome, and in marrying Tavius I intended also to marry myself to their service. Did they sense this? Did they see something about me to like? Or did they just fear Caesar? Whatever the reason, I heard no more hostile shouts.
Finally, I reached the unprepossessing house in the commercial district. Two young men lifted me over the threshold. Inside the entranceway, I found Tavius waiting for me, smiling with relief. My husband. I felt as if I had no heart room for all the joy and love I felt. His eyes glowed like blue jewels. We looked at each other, dazzled by the dream that had come to pass. Then he concluded the wedding rites by giving me a cup of water and a burning twig—sharing water and fire, elements that sustained life—and leading me into the depths of the house, where I lit the hearth fire.
A few days after our wedding, we sat, two lovebirds on a couch, my head on Tavius’s shoulder. On his lap lay a waxed tablet. In his hand he held a stylus. Anyone looking at us might have imagined he was writing me a poem. But no. “Show me the world as you see it,” I had asked him. So he was drawing me a map.
“This is us, Italy. This is Spain, which is also mine. Besides that, I have most of Gaul, where Agrippa is heading right now. His task is to secure the border.” Tavius drew lines on the western edge of Gaul. “That’s the savages trying to invade our territory.”
“Should I worry about them?” I asked.
“No. Agrippa will defeat them. But I’ll have to keep an eye on that border forever. Now here’s North Africa.” He drew a circle, beneath the Italian boot. “Held by Lepidus, who is not my friend. And here to the east, we come to Antony.”