I Am Livia (6 page)

“Very much. And I admired him more than any other man I ever met.”

And so you will want to avenge him,
I thought.

“He had the falling sickness, you know,” young Caesar said. “He used to speak to me about that, and about the power of a man’s will to overcome physical obstacles.”

“And he wanted you for his son,” I said. “I can imagine how much that means to you.”

“Can you? Most people can’t begin to, but I somehow believe you can.” Young Caesar ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t usually talk so openly with people I’ve just met.” He gave an uneasy laugh.

“Neither do I,” I said.

He looked puzzled. “What do you mean? I’ve told you a great deal, and you haven’t said much about yourself at all.”

Haven’t I?
I thought
. When a married woman looks at another man the way I look at you, hasn’t she said far, far more than she should?

My husband returned then, and young Caesar and I spoke no more private words.

That night, I said to Tiberius Nero, as we prepared for bed, “Young Caesar—will someone kill him?”

“Not unless he does something to ask for it.” He gave a small, contemptuous grimace. “He’s young and has always been a weakling.”
Tiberius Nero drew me to him. “What are you looking so worried about, my little dove?”

No longer affected by the charm of Caesar Octavianus’s presence, I did a calculation in my mind. I added up his popularity with the people and especially the army, his vast wealth, and his love for his adoptive father, which surely implied hatred for his killers. I recalled the sense I’d had that he would soon reach for great power. A malign spirit possessed me. I imagined my father, my mother, and all I loved, trod into bloody pulp under young Caesar’s boots. In terror, I said, “I’m afraid he’s dangerous, very dangerous. Perhaps you
should
kill him.”

My husband just laughed.

A
s summer became autumn, I walked with quick strides through my house, supervising servants who needed little supervision. I would reach for a book, take the scroll from its leather cover, read a few sentences, then roll the parchment up again.
What I had felt when I was with Caesar Octavianus was well buried. But I would look at the birds and wish I could rise up into the sky as they did, or else become a nymph or a goddess and be lifted far beyond the claims of marriage and duty. Day after day I brimmed over with energy for which no one had any use.

Since my husband and father were both senators, I found it easy to keep informed about politics. I learned that every one of the senators who had stabbed Caesar had, in their fear of the common people, abandoned the city of Rome. Marcus Brutus took ship to Athens, there to await events and, of all things, study philosophy. Decimus Brutus went to govern the province of Cisalpine Gaul.

Meanwhile, Mark Antony took up command of Rome’s legions in Brundisium. The soldiers mocked him for not avenging Julius Caesar. Antony tried to sweeten their mood by offering them a bonus, but they shouted that it was too little, so he had some of the malcontents beaten to death. This reduced the rest to gloomy silence.

Young Caesar remained in Rome, living with his mother, an ailing widow. He offered much more generous bonuses than Antony had, and raised a private army of three thousand men.

Antony came back to the city, intending to give a speech to the Senate denouncing young Caesar. But he got drunk and forgot about it. Then he announced that he would avenge Julius Caesar after all. He intended to attack Decimus Brutus in Gaul. He went marching off at the head of his legions. I wondered—was this the beginning of a civil war?

Shortly after Antony’s departure, my father hosted a small dinner party, the first I ever attended at my parents’ home. I had a pleasant sense of my new status as an adult, as I reclined on a dining couch as a married woman should, instead of sitting, as I had always done before I was wed.

Marcus Cicero came to this dinner. He was sixty-two years old, a plump, red-faced man with a wonderful, stentorian voice. He arrived alone. Everyone knew he had divorced the mother of his children to marry a fifteen-year-old heiress. Then he divorced this girl for quarreling with his beloved daughter Tullia, and for failing to mourn Tullia when she died in childbirth.

Also at the dinner was young Caesar. He and I were next to each other at the table, he reclining alone, I sharing a couch with my husband. He smiled at me and said, “It’s good to see you again, Livia Drusilla.” He had a sheen about him, the look of a young man pleased with where life was taking him.

“I’ve been hearing how you and Cicero have become wonderful friends,” I said. Everyone in Rome knew that these days they were often seen in each other’s company.

“He’s become like a second father to me,” young Caesar said.

That sounded as likely as pigs flying.

“A third father,” I said. “Surely your great-uncle who adopted you was your second father.”

He grinned. “Of course.”

“You and Cicero have so much in common,” I said. “Naturally you would be friends.”

“You flatter me.”

I shook my head and sipped some wine.

Young Caesar said in a low voice, not meant to be overheard by anyone, “Tell me, what exactly do you think Cicero and I have in common?”

I had the impression he was testing me. If I simpered and spoke about admirable qualities they shared, he would be disappointed. I said, “What you and Cicero have in common is that you both hate Antony.”

He asked in the same quiet voice, “And do you think that is sufficient basis for a friendship?”

I considered the question. “Certainly. For a while.”

The conversation became general, dominated by Cicero. He spoke about how the consuls who would be coming into office in the new year would go about raising legions to relieve Decimus Brutus. Young Caesar nodded at what Cicero said. I had the feeling the two of them had discussed this already.

The strangeness of the situation struck me.
Antony has gone to wreak revenge on Decimus, one of Caesar’s assassins. Caesar’s adopted
son sits here, listening sympathetically to plans to protect Decimus from Antony’s wrath. Here he is with Cicero, who publicly lauded the assassins.
With my father, the assassins’ ally. With my husband, who was Caesar’s officer but turned on him. Young Caesar smiles at them all, full of good cheer.

What is he doing?

“We have one other important matter to decide,” Cicero said. “An official office for our young friend.”

“Is consul an option?” young Caesar asked.

The law reserved the consulship, the most honored office in the Republic, to men at least forty-two years old with distinguished public careers behind them. Other than a dictator, no officeholder approached a consul in power. My father, when he heard this nineteen-year-old suggest he might become consul, looked as if he were about to choke.

Father had invited Cicero and young Caesar to dinner because he had wished to sound them both out in a general way, and in particular to get a sense of the young man’s mind. Unfortunately, the conversation had already gone in a direction he did not like.

“I must have the legal right to lead an army,” young Caesar said. “That is necessary.”

“The idea of a private army is repugnant,” Father said.

“I absolutely agree,” young Caesar said. “That’s why I want lawful authority. Surely Cicero has told you that I plan to put myself and my army at the Senate’s disposal. I am honored to be able to help protect the Republic from the likes of Antony. If I were at least a praetor—”

“This is not the place to discuss this,” Father said. Striving for a pleasant tone, he glanced round at my mother and me and added, “We mustn’t bore my wife and daughter.”

“I don’t think your honored wife, the lady Alfidia, looks bored,” young Caesar said. “And as for your daughter…I suspect Livia Drusilla finds this discussion quite interesting.”

“Please forgive me, but you’re wrong,” I said. I was a loyal daughter. But I smiled at young Caesar to take some of the sting out of my words. “I’m afraid all this talk of offices and armies makes my head ache.”

“Yes, please, do you think we might change the subjec
t
?” said Mother. Her apologetic smile looked painted on her face.

“We’ll have to discuss this further, at a more appropriate time,” Father said.

“I’m sorry to seem impetuous,” young Caesar said with gentle courtesy. “I hope you’ll at least give what I’ve said some thought.”

“Of course,” Father said.

All the life drained out of the dinner party. Young Caesar left as soon as he politely could. But in saying his farewells, he smiled at me as if we shared a private joke.

As soon as young Caesar was out the door, Cicero said, “I suggest we make him propraetor.”

Praetors ranked second to consuls; propraetors, of course, were praetors whose time in office had been extended. Propraetor as a title for a youth who had never held public office was, on the face of it, absurd.

I felt a sudden, deep uneasiness. I sipped some wine. It went down my throat, cool and sweet, but did not soothe me.

Father was staring at Cicero. “You can’t be serious.”

“He would not, formally speaking, be a sitting magistrate.” Cicero leaned forward on his elbow. He was across from me at the table, his face turned toward my father. “We need young Caesar—or rather, we need the troops whose loyalty he can command—to protect us from Antony.”

My husband spoke. “I’m not sure that Antony is the only threat.”

Cicero turned his fierce eyes—wide, round eyes like an old owl’s—on Tiberius Nero. “Have you noticed who is marching at this moment to attack our friend Decimus Brutus? Antony should have died on the Ides of March. Antony! Antony! Antony!” Cicero slapped the table three times for emphasis. “Antony is the threat. All young Caesar wants from us is empty honors. Call him propraetor. Call him offspring of the god Apollo, for all I care.”

“Call him propraetor, and you give him the legal authority to continue to enroll troops under his own banner and raise an even larger army,” Father said. “I don’t like it.” But he did not speak vehemently. I sensed he would go along with Cicero in the end, and I felt a cold tingle down my spine.

“His army will be firmly under my control,” Cicero said. “That child was in a schoolroom in Rhodes a few months ago. He trails after me like a puppy. And he comes to us with purses full of money, and with that name Caesar, ready to rally Caesar’s soldiers and give us an army as a gift.”

“One day he’ll no longer be nineteen,”
Tiberius Nero said. “Give some thought to the long term.” Like my father he sounded only doubtful, not as if he were prepared to oppose Cicero.

“Long term,” Cicero said. A grin settled on his face. It was not a pleasant grin. It made one aware of his yellowed teeth, of his sharp incisors. “Long term, young Caesar does not concern me.”

I found myself remembering who this man Cicero was. Many saw him as the great champion of the Republic, but during his consulship he had executed a number of citizens. He said they were conspiring to overthrow Republican rule, but some thought they were merely desperate men, agitating for debt relief. This took place before I was born, but I had heard about it from my father, who harbored some doubts about the rightness of Cicero’s action.

“Long term, do you think I fear a sickly boy?” Cicero demanded. “We must use him for now. If one day he turns on us, we will know how to deal with him. Do you doubt whether you and I and all of us together are a match for him?”

I doubt it. He is Julius Caesar’s adopted son, and the people and the army love him. They don’t love you.
My heart pounded. The room seemed too warm. Maybe I had drunk more wine than I realized. I felt a compulsion to speak.

It was frightening to feel sure I was seeing something my elders did not see, though it was right before their eyes. I knew—
knew
—they were miscalculating and that their miscalculation could spell disaster. The knowledge seemed too big for me to hold within myself. I could not contain it.

Incredibly, I did not even soften my words with polite phrases. “You think because Caesar is young, he is a fool. But he’s no fool,” I said. Cicero looked at me, astonished. I stared into his owl eyes and went on, “My husband is an accomplished man twice his age, and he aspires to the praetorship and has yet to hold it. He is expected to wait patiently; it’s a great prize. Yet you’ll give Caesar the powers of a praetor.
What is he giving you in return? Only promises to be guided by you. And you think you’re the one using him? You believe he has forgotten his adoptive father. You assume he doesn’t imagine avenging him. Do you think he is not capable of smiling and hiding his thoughts from you? Don’t you realize any little slave girl can do that much?”

It was a longish speech, but no one interrupted me. I think everyone was too stunned, as if one of the vases on the side tables had started talking. I fell silent, realizing how far I had trespassed. I flushed.

Before my marriage, if I had spoken to Cicero in this way in my mother’s presence, she would have dragged me off and beaten me. Now what I saw in her face was not anger so much as disbelief. She said nothing. The only person at the table who had the right to rebuke me before others was my husband. But he chuckled as if I had made some endearing youthful gaffe, took my hand, and kissed my palm.

Cicero and my father did not respond to what I had said. Father was surely embarrassed into silence. For Cicero, it was as if I had not spoken at all.

I was fifteen years old. I was a woman. Was it surprising that not one man at the table, not even my beloved father, truly heard a word I said? I had no grounds for surprise, but I felt humiliated. I went hot and cold. And then, I saw my fate. I would not be fifteen forever, but I always would be a woman. I imagined spending all my years having my words discounted.

Father, Tiberius Nero, and Cicero continued to discuss giving young Caesar the title propraetor just as if I had not spoken. I could hardly bear to listen to them; I tried to withdraw to a place within my own mind. Then something that Cicero said jolted me and brought all my attention back to the conversation.