I Am Livia (36 page)

Tavius drank some wine.

“You aren’t in earnes
t
?” Octavia said. “You’re not asking my brother to pass a law for your exclusive benefi
t
?”

“Forgive me, I was leaving you out, wasn’t I?” I looked at Tavius. “It would be better if you included your sister in the law. After all, we are both wives of Rome’s rulers and equal in rank.”

“I would never want a law passed to set me above other women,” Octavia said.

I tossed my head and did not reply. Her selfless virtue irritated me. I felt myself judged by her and had a perverse desire to live up to her bad opinion. Truly, Octavia had a talent for bringing out the worst in me.

“This is an academic discussion, because I am not passing any such law.”
Tavius leaned over the space in between our couches and kissed me. “I can’t do it because it would make me look ridiculous. Just keep using my seal.”

Our eyes met and held.

“Can you imagine what men would think if I passed a special law for my wife?” he demanded. “So she can buy and sell property without my permission?” A sarcastic edge in his voice, he added, “Forgive me, dear, I don’t plan to make myself a laughingstock.”

I said nothing.
We went on staring at each other for a few more moments. Then I glanced away.

Octavia looked gratified to see me thwarted. “We need to discuss the legions for Antony,” she said to Tavius. My foolishness had been dismissed, and now we would turn to important matters—her husband and what he wanted. “In his last letter to me, he asked when he could expect more troops.”

“I sent him a thousand men.”

“But you promised him twenty thousand,” Octavia said.

“The situation has changed,”
Tavius said.

“But Tavius, dear, one must always keep a promise.” Octavia spoke in the gentle, reproving tone she used to chide her children.

I laughed.

My sister-in-law turned toward me. “What do you find amusing?”

“We’re not in your daughters’ nursery
.
W
e’re talking about legions here,” I said. I thought of Perusia, Antony’s double-dealing. A Roman city destroyed by Romans—because of the conflict Antony provoked and yet would not own up to. I remembered fleeing in terror from that city, carrying my baby son. Octavia had always been safe, everyone’s cosseted darling, but had she closed her eyes, stopped up her ears? Where had she been these last years, if she thought nursery rules applied to Roman politics?

I feared that Tavius might actually accede to her wishes and act to his detriment just to please her. He all but worshipped his sister.

She looked at Tavius, her face tight. “You gave your word.”

“I’ll keep my word. Antony will have his twenty thousand soldiers. Eventually.”

“But he is waging war against Parthia now.”

“He sends constant reports of his victories to the Senate,” Tavius said. “What does he need my soldiers for? He has enormous resources in the east. And the trouble in the north keeps getting worse. I’ll soon be at war myself against the Illyrians.”

“You expect me to write him that you said no?” Octavia looked as if she might weep. “If you don’t honor your pledge, Antony will think you are hostile to him.”

“I can’t spare any legions now,
”
T
avius said. He spoke in a strained voice.

“I think the Illyrians are only an excuse for refusing to keep your word,” Octavia said. “And if you and Antony are not friends, where does that leave me and my little girls? Are we to be torn between the two of you? Antony is still my husband. I am his wife. That has not changed.”

Tavius compressed his lips.

When Antony had dispatched Octavia and the children to Rome, it had seemed like a kindness. Tavius had thanked him for it—and been made to feel a fool. For it now appeared Antony had only wished to clear the way for his mistress. Before launching his invasion of Parthia, Antony had thrown himself back into the arms of Cleopatra. They made no attempt to hide the fact that they had resumed their love affair, and by the time he left for war she, who had previously borne him two children, had conceived again. Just days ago, we had heard of the birth of their new son, to whom Cleopatra gave the royal name Ptolemy.

Antony might have taken any number of mistresses, and Tavius would have shrugged so long as he did it quietly. In Velitrae, where Tavius’s soul had been formed, wives were faithful and men sought their pleasures where they would. But seemliness mattered. No respectable man flaunted his concubines. He might look after his illegitimate children, but there would be no public noise about them; that would be an insult to his wife. This was decency, in Tavius’s view. Contrast that to Cleopatra bearing her third child by Antony in sight of the whole world, a few months after Tavius’s sister gave him a daughter.

In a shaking voice, Octavia said, “So you are saying you’ll deliberately break your word. You won’t give him those legions?” She turned toward me. “I blame you for this.”

I gazed at her in amazement. “Me?”

“You are so selfish.” Her mouth twisted with contempt. “ ‘My villa!’ ‘My money!’ I know the kind of advice you give my brother.”

“Good advice. That’s why he keeps taking it,” I said. She was attacking me—for wha
t
?
Not taking her childish view of the world? Distrusting Antony, a man who had amply earned my distrus
t
?

Tavius broke in. “Octavia—”

Looking at him, she said in a hoarse voice, “Did it never trouble you, how easily she shed her husband and her children? Didn’t that tell you what she was?”

Tavius said, “You need to remember you’re talking about my wife.”

“And I’m your sister. And when I beg you to keep your word to my husband—”

“I can’t do it,”
Tavius said.

Octavia turned from him and gazed at me again. “You’ve alienated him from me.”

“What a silly child you are,” I said.

Her chin began to quiver. Her eyes were on Tavius. Maybe she wanted him to reproach me for calling her a silly child.
When he did not, she began to weep, then rose and fled from the dining room. Tavius looked after her, pained.

“You’re doing the right thing,” I said to him. “You’re about to go to war yourself. Antony will have all the power and wealth of Parthia soon, and he could never be trusted to be loyal even to his blood kin. Only a fool would send him more legions.”

Tavius nodded, drawing in a deep breath. After a moment, he said, “He is not going to have all the power and wealth of Parthia.”

“No?” I said.

“
I’ve gotten reports his Parthian campaign has been one disaster after another. His dispatches to the Senate have been full of lies.”

“Truly?” In the circumstances, that was good news. I rose and went to sit on Tavius’s couch. “You’re sure?”

He nodded. Then he said, “Of all the things I’ve had to do for Rome, marrying my sister to Antony is the one that turns my stomach.”

I stroked his cheek. “I know. But you did it for the sake of peace. And she seems fond enough of him, doesn’t she?” I might have alluded to the fact that Octavia’s first loyalty was to Antony these days, not to Tavius, but I restrained myself.

“She is fond enough of him,
”
T
avius agreed in a grim voice.

“Beloved, must you lead the army against the Illyrians yoursel
f
? Can’t Agrippa do it without you?”

“You know the answer to that,
”
T
avius said.

“You must be seen bravely leading your forces into battle,” I said.

He pulled me down beside him, and kissed me, gently and almost tentatively. In a moment he was covering my throat with passionate kisses.

I caressed the back of his neck. It felt fragile, vulnerable. He would go to war again soon. That was a painful thought.

He cursed softly.

“What is i
t
?
” I said.

“I wish—”

“Wha
t
?
”

He shook his head. He had gone away from me. Maybe he was brooding over the situation with Octavia and Antony, or he was thinking of the coming war. I touched his hair.
Come back, come back.

I looked into his remote eyes, and a question nudged me:
Does he love me as much as he once did?
Perhaps I wanted a proof of love, or a proof that I counted
.
W
hat infants we can be, sometimes, wishing to be special.

“Tavius…I want charge of my own property. I can’t explain to you why it matters, but it matters terribly. I know it’s not easy, but don’t you think we could find a way—?”

“It’s impossible. I said no
.
W
hat are you, a child who has to be taught the meaning of the word
no
?”

It was like crashing into a wall. I heard anger in his voice and dropped my eyes. “Forget I spoke,” I said
.
W
hen I looked up again, he was staring at me, his expression cold.

I knew I had been a fool, harrying him when he was already upset. I kissed him and sensed for a moment that he wished to push me away, but finally he yielded to my kiss and all was well again.

Oh, I did not give up the idea of independently handling my own property. I just had to think of how to do it without making Tavius look ridiculous in the public eye. It took the better part of a month, but a scheme finally popped into my head—a series of actions that would not only accomplish my goal but serve purposes close to Tavius’s heart. His own standing and that of his beloved sister would be enhanced. The popularity Antony still had with the Roman people would be undermined.
Also, a heroine whose memory I revered—Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi—would receive an added measure of glory.

I had learned that sometimes it was better to talk over matters with Tavius in bed. “Octavia plays such an important role in maintaining Rome’s peace,” I whispered into his ear as we lay together in sweet darkness. “She is so well loved. Everyone would praise you if you gave her a special honor. That new portico near the Forum that you and Agrippa are building—I think you should call it the Portico of Octavia. It would be a touching gesture.
When the portico is finished, you might make a speech saying she is just what a Roman woman should be—a selfless and virtuous wife and mother. People would be moved.”

“My love,”
Tavius said, “we both know you have no fondness for my sister. So why are you saying this?”

“I respect how much she cares about peace between you and Antony. She deserves to be honored for that. The statue of Cornelia—the one that you are going to have restored—”

“The one you’ve been after me to have restored,”
Tavius said.

“I hate to see it looking shabby. If you had it repaired and put it in Octavia’s portico, it would join the two together in a vision of ideal Roman womanhood.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“And then, after you make the speech at the opening of the portico, you could pass a law conferring the rights and protections of a Vestal Virgin upon Octavia. No one would mind. After all, everyone makes way for her, and she gets the best seats in the theater as it is. So people would say,
What’s the difference?
But it would exalt her in everyone’s eyes.”

As soon as I had said the words “Vestal Virgin” I had felt Tavius shift on the bed. But I had gone on talking in the same easy tone. Now I could feel his breath, warm on my cheek. “You are relentless,” he said.

“If I am, then I’m like you, aren’t I?”

He said nothing.

I said, “Beloved, I’m only relentless about a very few things, the ones that matter.”

He was leaning over me, silent. He ran his fingertip over each feature of my face, my nose, my lips, my chin, as if in the absence of light he needed to remind himself of what I looked like—as if he was trying to comprehend who and what I was. He said, “I wonder sometimes why I put up with you.”
The strange thing was that he said this lovingly.