I Am Livia

by Phyllis T. Smith

“I am not sick,” he said.

  So we continued on.

  Vedius’s villa resembled a small city more than a house. As I stepped down from the carriage, at the front gate, I stared wide-eyed, amazed by the villa’s sheer size. Vedius came out to greet us. “Caesar!” he cried, and threw his arms around Tavius. “And your beautiful wife!” He did not hug me but contented himself with grabbing my hand and wringing it.

  Despite the cordial greeting, on first sight I did not like the man. I did not like his thick lips or his bulging eyes, or how his graying hair ringed his forehead in pomaded curls swept forward to hide the fact that he was going bald. I did not like his wife, Opimia, with her wide, brittle smile, or their eagerness to show off the house—or rather the palace—they lived in. They took us on a tour, through room after room filled with exquisite Greek statues by famous masters. We also passed wall murals of incredible vulgarity, showing gods and goddesses in sexual congress. Gold and silver glittered everywhere.

  They led us out on a balcony that overlooked a pond. The pond, a perfect oval, was gray beneath the cloudy sky. The banks were paved with black marble. The air had a dank, unpleasant smell. “The pond’s not natural,” Vedius informed us. “Did you think it was? No, no. I created it. It took months to dig.”

  Tavius and I both admired the pond, as Vedius expected us to.

  “And what do you think I have it stocked with? What do you think?” Vedius looked at me.

  “Fish?” I suggested.

  “No, no. Eels! And not just any eels. Lampreys! Their tongues have teeth on them. They can clamp their tongue on a man and drain him of blood. Imagine being attacked by a hundred of them, two hundred! Anybody who falls in that pond dies a very unpleasant death, believe me!”

  Tavius had said the man was eccentric. I did not ask why he would want to have a pond filled with lampreys beside his house. I was mainly interested in getting off that balcony. But Tavius leaned over the balcony railing and gazed into the pond, trying to see the lampreys lurking in its depths. “Do you feed them?”

  “Of course, Caesar,” Vedius said. “Whenever one of my slaves does something to annoy me, I throw him to the lampreys!”

  It was Vedius’s notion of a joke. Tavius chuckled.

  The tour continued. We saw more artwork, more furniture with gold trim. Compared to this, Tavius’s villa—which I had thought luxurious—seemed like a simple country house. I did not feel envy, though, just a strong desire to leave.

  Tavius acted like the soul of amiability during the whole tour. No doubt he reminded himself that the friendship of a man as spectacularly rich as Vedius could come in handy. The house was warm—golden braziers in every room. At least he had stopped wheezing.

  Finally, Vedius led us into his dining room. He introduced us to two other guests, a young couple, his nephew and the nephew’s wife. Slaves scurried about, serving us from huge platters of food. We lay on carved ivory couches with green silk cushions and drank sweet wine from costly crystal goblets that sparkled bright as diamonds. I admired the goblets, I must admit. I had rarely seen any so fine.

  “That’s quite a mural,” Tavius said, gazing at the wall.

  It depicted a centaur ravishing a nymph.

  “Stunningly lifelike, isn’t it?” said Vedius’s nephew.

  Slaves brought in the second course, along with wine of a different vintage. The crystal goblets we were using were being exchanged for new ones, equally beautiful. Suddenly we heard a crash. I turned my head to look. One of the slaves had dropped a crystal cup. A lanky young man with a lantern jaw, he stood stock-still, gazing down at the shards at his feet. His face looked corpse-like, tinged with green.

  “You idiot!” Vedius shouted, getting up from his dining couch. He rushed toward the slave. I was sure he was going to pummel him.

  Well, one does see these scenes sometimes even in the homes of well-bred people, I thought. A server spills some wine, and his mistress slaps him. Or a cook spoils the dinner, and his master insists on flogging him before the dinner guests. I personally found such scenes repulsive, but one cannot tell other people how to treat their own slaves.

  But Vedius did not lay a finger on the man who had broken the goblet. Instead he yelled, “Krito, do you know what this means? I’ll tell you, you clumsy fool! It means you’re going to the lampreys!”

  My stomach clenched, but I thought, Of course it’s an empty threat. Who would condemn a man to be eaten alive for breaking a cup? I looked at Tavius. He gave me a slight smile and shook his head. He thought as I did, that we were watching a cruel piece of theater, nothing more.

  I glanced at the slave. His eyes darted around wildly. He took his master at his word.

  Vedius clapped his hands and shouted, “Lecto! Brumio! Phaedo!” Three other slaves—brawny fellows—rushed into the dining room. “To the lampreys,” Vedius said.

  The slaves started toward Krito. He backed away, looking around for an avenue of escape. Then he threw himself down on his knees before the couch on which Tavius and I reclined, grasped the edge of Tavius’s toga, and cried, “Lord, save me! Help me, please!”

  Tavius smiled. It was a rather stiff and embarrassed smile. “Krito, your master doesn’t intend to throw you to the lampreys.” He looked at Vedius and, still smiling but with something hard in his voice, said, “I’m sure Krito has learned his lesson and won’t ever break another of your cups. In any case, we’ve had enough of this, don’t you think?”

  “You’re right about this much, Caesar,” Vedius said. “He’ll never break another of my cups.”

  Tavius went rigid. The smile died on his face. “You’re not serious.”

  “But I am,” Vedius said.

  “For heaven’s sake, Vedius,” Tavius said, “this is absurd. Even if you have no human feeling—it’s a stupid waste of a valuable slave.”

  “It’s worth it to me,” Vedius said.

  “Over a cup?” Tavius stared at him. “Don’t you think it’s out of proportion? To have a man eaten alive over a cup?”

  I imagined being Krito, kneeling there on the floor, listening to this conversation.

  “He’s my slave, and I can do what I want with him,” Vedius said.

  “No one is suggesting otherwise,” Tavius said.

  Krito groaned.

  “Vedius,” Tavius said, “I’d appreciate it if you would change your mind. You see, the man appealed to me for help, and I feel a kind of obligation.” He managed to sound as if he were asking a reasonable person for an ordinary favor.

  “I’m sorry I can’t oblige you, Caesar,” Vedius said.

  No one should ever interfere between master and slave. So I had always been taught. But my heart constricted when Vedius gestured to the men he had summoned to drag Krito away. I looked at Tavius. He compressed his lips, and his face went flinty. And so we will watch, and allow this awful thing to happen, I thought. My mind groped for words to move Vedius. But what words could affect this madman?

  Tavius’s voice rang out. “Aulus!”

  The head of his bodyguard came racing in from the atrium, followed by five soldiers.

  “Get every piece of crystal in this house and bring it in here,” Tavius said. “Every piece, you understand?”

  Aulus stared at him for one moment, then spun on his heel and went off with his men to do Tavius’s bidding. Everyone else in the dining room had frozen: Krito kneeling on the floor, the slaves who had been about to haul him away, Vedius, the other guests. All eyes were on Tavius.

  Tavius stood and picked up the goblet he had been drinking from, looked at it for a moment as if to assess its worth, and then, half-filled with wine as it was, threw it to the floor. It crashed and shattered.

  “Caesar!” Vedius wailed as if a child of his had just been slaughtered.

  Tavius ignored him. He looked at me and wordlessly extended his hand for my
goblet. He was white with rage, his eyes like blue points of fire. I gave him my cup. He flung it to the floor. Then he went in turn to each of the other people at the table. He held out his hand. No one spoke. Each person handed him a crystal goblet. Crash! Crash! Crash!

  Tavius went to Vedius’s place at the table, picked up his goblet, and threw it down. Broken crystal and spilled wine lay all around us. The bodyguards by this time were lugging in a fortune’s worth of fine crystal. Tavius motioned for them to put it on a side table, but it was already piled high with plates and platters. Tavius removed all these objects with a sweep of his arm. They crashed to the floor. The bodyguards piled the crystal on the table. There were goblets, vases, more than one fine decanter.

  Tavius gazed at the crystal pieces for a moment. Then he said, “Break them.”

  The bodyguards broke all the crystal pieces by hurling them to the floor.

  Vedius stood motionless, like a rabbit watching a hawk descend. Krito, who still crouched on the floor, was surrounded by shards of crystal and looked like Pandora must have when she opened the chest and accidentally loosed all the world’s demons. Even the bodyguards, who now stood straight at attention, appeared scared. As for me, I didn’t move or say anything. I had no idea what Tavius would do next.

  He took a deep breath and gazed down at Krito, pointed at him, and said, “You are set free.” The slave gave a delighted, incredulous cry and clasped Tavius’s knees in gratitude.

  Tavius stared across the table at Vedius. At that moment, I felt true terror. The force in that stare—the deadly force of it—made me quail though I was not the recipient. Vedius trembled. I think he expected Tavius to order him thrown to the lampreys. I half expected that myself. But Tavius said, “You will fill in your pond. You understand me?”

  “Yes, Caesar.”

  “I don’t expect to ever hear again of you doing something like this.”

  Vedius grabbed Tavius’s hand and kissed it.

  Tavius wiped at his hand with a napkin as if someone had smeared mud on it. He spoke a few words to one of his bodyguards, making official provision for freeing Krito. Then he looked at me and said, “Come,” and went striding out of Vedius’s house so quickly that I nearly had to run to keep up with him.

  When we were in our carriage again, riding back to the villa, Tavius said, “He was actually going to have a human being eaten alive for breaking a cup. Gods above, I know what scum men are, and how filthy the world is, but I would not have believed it.”

  His sense of right and wrong had been truly violated, and the anger he had shown was righteous anger. Pity anyone who provokes that anger in him, I thought.

  This side of him, which was so just, appealed to me. I had seen only hints of it before. He kept it buried within himself. Imagine who he might have been, I thought, if he had been born a hundred years ago, when the world was less filthy. Imagine what a champion of right and justice he would have been.

  When we had gotten a mile or two away from Vedius’s estate, Tavius began to wheeze, as he had earlier. The wheezing got worse as the trip continued, until he could only take quick, shallow breaths.

  “What is it?” I asked fearfully.

  “Nothing,” he gasped.

  “You need a physician,” I said.

  He looked at me with anger. “Didn’t you hear me? I said it’s nothing.”

  Soon after, when I was back in Rome while Tavius was away overseeing the final preparations for the invasion of Sicily, I invited Maecenas over for a private discussion. We chatted, and I told him about how Tavius had broken all the crystal in Vedius’s villa. Maecenas chortled. “Every last piece? How fitting! I’m going to see that this story is widely told. It will add to his legend.”

  “Yes. But right now I’m less concerned about his legend than I am with him.” I got down to the purpose of our meeting. “What can you tell me about my husband’s health?”

  “Surely the person to ask about that is Caesar,” Maecenas said.

  “Don’t say that to me, please. He takes it as an insult if you imply he is not well. But he’s not. Why can’t he breathe properly when it’s cold?”

  Maecenas gave a deep sigh. “Livia, dearest Livia, queen of Roman womanhood, flower of all the world, for whom I would ford rivers and climb mountains, fight lions, walk through flame…don’t you see that you’re putting me in an uncomfortable position?”

  I did see it. On the one hand, Maecenas wanted my friendship. He rather relished the role of wise guide to Tavius’s bride. But he kept Tavius’s secrets and was wary of betraying him.

  “Almost every morning when Tavius is in Rome, he goes to the Field of Mars for military exercises,” I said. “I think he hates it, but he goes. Often he comes home limping, and if I ask him what happened, he always has a different story. He pulled a muscle while riding, or he tripped while fencing. But I’ve noticed that it’s always his right leg that gets hurt, never the left one. Then, he will eat only a few foods—a very few, when I think about it. It’s peculiar the way he eats, how he scrapes sauce off his meat, like it was poison.”

  “So he likes a plain diet,” Maecenas said.

  I was filled with frustration and fear. Something was the matter with Tavius—gravely the matter—and nobody would tell me what it was. “Liar, liar, liar,” I said. “How can you look at me and lie?”

  Maecenas rubbed the side of his face.

  “Tell me the truth. For heaven’s sake, I’m his wife. Why must he keep things from me?”

  “Think of how he is situated. He needs to project strength and invincibility.”

  “He needs to project invincibility—with me?”

  “Do you expect instant and total trust? He already lets you read his mail. Have a little patience.”

  “Have a little patience? I would like to know if he is fatally ill.”

  Maecenas shook his head. “He’s not. When we were younger I used to stand vigil at his sickbeds and go home and weep. But he would always come bounding up again. I finally realized he is one of those people who is never truly well, but still will probably outlive me.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “This and that.” We were in a small sitting room, and I had ordered fruits, nuts, and wine served on a side table. Maecenas ate a fig, frowning, then sighed and said, “He has a weakness in his right side, so sometimes he limps. If it’s too cold or too hot he has trouble breathing. I don’t know why. It’s strange. He can’t take smoke or dust or— Once a bee stung him, and he swelled up and almost died. There’s a lot of food he can’t eat, because if he does he gets violently sick.”

  “Violently sick?”

  “Livia, please try not to get so distressed,” Maecenas said. “The difficulties with his health come and go, but they will never be allowed to impede him. And they will certainly never kill him.”

  “How do you know they won’t?”

  “I know his strength of will. He’ll do what he has been put on earth to do.”

  “How in the world can he go off and lead an army when he’s so…sickly?”

  Maecenas looked around as if he feared someone were listening to us. “Please, don’t ever let anyone hear you call him that—least of all him.” He added, “Do you know what is going to happen to me if you let him know I discussed this with you?”

  “What?”

  Maecenas ran his finger across his throat.

  “Truly?”

  He grinned. “No. But he’ll be furious. So use some discretion, will you?”

  I kept Maecenas’s confidence. And when Tavius returned to dispose of business at home before leaving for war, I did not say, You can’t possibly go, because you are not a well man. The girl I had been at fourteen would have said it. The woman knew he would go whatever I said.

  “Dearest,” I murmured one night in bed, “I have something important
to ask you.”

  Tavius paused from nibbling my neck. “What do you want?”

  I want you home and safe. I want an end to the civil wars. “When you’re away, someone who truly cares ought to be overseeing your finances. I think it should be me.”

  He chuckled. “You like to be in charge, don’t you? Do you know who you remind me of?” He whispered the answer in my ear: “Me.”

  Only a few days before, I had wished to sell a little farm that was part of my dowry. Of course I had to ask Tavius’s permission to do it. As my husband, he was my financial guardian, and I needed him to stamp with his seal every business contract I made. He readily acceded to my request, and yet I felt angry, as if it humbled me to ask him. Here I was helping him to govern Rome, but because of the laws that applied to women, I could not freely dispose of a bit of my own inheritance. I certainly did not want some male factotum controlling all our money while Tavius was gone.

  “I’ll hold your seal for you while you’re away?”

  “Oh, let me consider that a little,” Tavius said. But his tone told me he would agree.

  He did give me his seal without my having to ask again. But the thing I wanted more—peace—that I could not get so simply.

  A few days later, I stood in the atrium, clutching Tavius in my arms. Fear of loss had turned me into a coward.

  The knowledge of Tavius’s infirmities tore at me. Military life was so difficult. What if hardship made him fall seriously ill? I wished I could go to war in his place. At least I didn’t have his host of physical ailments.

  The woman who had coolly asked to hold the purse strings while her husband was away—that woman had vanished. I felt as if something had broken inside me. I remembered my last parting with my father, and pressed my face against Tavius’s shoulder. The metal of his breastplate was hard against my cheek. Civil war had robbed me of my parents, and now it would rob me of my love. I wept.

  Tavius had never anticipated this sort of parting. “Livia, please, don’t act this way.”

  “I love you too much,” I said.