The Grass Crown (24 page)

“'Why, no, domine,' said Salonius, 'but rest assured when I do find a good man for her, I shall bring him to you and ask for your judgment and consent.'”

“'There’s no need to look any further,' said my grandfather. 'I have a good husband for her—a prince of fellows Comfortable fortune, stainless reputation, excellent family—everything desirable! Except—well, I’m afraid he’s a bit long in the tooth. Healthy, mind you! But even the most charitably inclined would have to say he’s a very old man.'”

“'Domine, if he is your choice, how can he do otherwise than please me?' Salonius asked. 'My daughter was born while I was your slave, and her mother was your slave too. When you put the cap of liberty on my head, you were kind enough to free my whole family. But my daughter is still your dependent—as I am, and my wife, and my son. Have no fear, Salonia is a good girl. She will marry any man you’ve taken the time and trouble to find for her, no matter what his age.'”

“'Oh, terrific, Salonius!' cried my grandfather, clapping him on the back. 'He’s me!'”

Livia Drusa stirred. “that’s bad grammar,” she said. “I thought Cato the Censor’s Latin was perfect?”

“Mea vita, mea vita,

“I’m not surprised he was flabbergasted,” said Livia Drusa.

Cato hurried on. “My grandfather assured Salonius that he was absolutely serious, the girl Salonia was fetched, and she and my grandfather were married at once, as the day was auspicious.

“But when Marcus Licinianus heard of it an hour or two later—the word flew round Rome!—he gathered a host of his friends, and they went en masse to Cato the Censor.

“'Is it because we disapproved of your slave girl mistress that you disgrace our house still further by offering me such a stepmother?' asked Licinianus, very angry.”

“'How can I disgrace you, my son, when I am about to prove what a formidable man I am by siring more sons at my advanced age?' asked my grandfather, his manner lordly. 'Would you have me marry a noblewoman when I am closer to eighty than I am to seventy? An alliance like that would not be appropriate. In marrying the daughter of my freedman, I am making a marriage suitable to my age and needs.'”

“What an extraordinary thing to do!” said Livia Drusa. “He did it to vex Licinianus and Aemilia Tertia, of course.”

“So we Saloniani think,” said Cato.

“And did they all continue to live in the same house?”

“Certainly. Marcus Licinianus died not long afterward, however—most people thought he suffered a broken heart. And that left Aemilia Tertia alone in the house with her father-in-law and his new wife, Salonia, a fate she richly deserved, in my opinion. Her father being dead, she couldn’t go home, you see.”

“Salonia, I gather, bore your father,” said Livia Drusa.

“She did indeed,” said Cato Salonianus.

“But don’t you feel it keenly, being the grandson of a woman who was born a slave?’ asked Livia Drusa.

Cato blinked. “What’s to feel so keenly?” he asked. “All of us have had to start somewhere! And it seems the censors agreed with my grandfather Cato the Censor, who maintained that his blood was noble enough to sanctify the blood of any slave. They’ve never tried to exclude the Saloniani from the Senate. Salonius came from good Gallic stock. If he had been Greek, now—that was something my grandfather would never have done! He hated Greeks.”

“Have you plastered the farmsteads?” asked Livia Drusa, beginning to move her hips against Cato.

“Of course not,” he answered, breathing quickening.

“And now I know why we have to drink such dreadful wine.”

“Tace, Livia Drusa!” said Cato, and turned her around.

To exist in the midst of a love so great its participants think it perfect usually leads to indiscretions, to careless remarks and eventual discovery; but Livia Drusa and Cato Salonianus pursued their affair with extraordinarily efficient secrecy. Had they been in Rome, of course, things would have been different; luckily sleepy Tusculum remained oblivious to the juicy scandal going on beneath its nose.

Within four weeks Livia Drusa knew she was pregnant, and knew too that the child was not Caepio’s. The very day on which Caepio had left Rome, she had menstruated. Two weeks later she was lying in the arms of Marcus Porcius Cato Salonianus; and when the time came due, no period arrived. Two previous pregnancies had acquainted her with other signs that she was gravid, and now she was prey to them all. She was going to have the child of her lover, Cato, not the child of her husband, Caepio.

In a philosophical spirit, Livia Drusa decided to make no secret of her condition, relieved that the close proximity of Caepio to Cato in the time reference would protect her. What if she hadn’t fallen so quickly? Oh, best not to think of that!

Drusus professed himself quite delighted, as did Servilia Caepionis; Lilla thought a baby brother would be tremendous fun, whereas Servilia just looked even more wooden than usual.

Of course Cato had to be told—only how much, exactly what? The cool Livius Drusus head came to the fore; Livia Drusa sat down to think things out. Terrible to cheat Cato of his child if it were a boy. And yet… And yet… The baby would undoubtedly be born before Caepio returned, and all the world would assume the baby belonged to Caepio. And if Cato’s child were a boy, he would—did he bear the name Quintus Servilius Caepio—fall heir to the Gold of Tolosa. All fifteen thousand talents of it. He would be the richest man in Rome, and own a glorious name. More glorious by far than Cato Salonianus.

“I’m going to have a baby, Marcus Porcius,” she said to Cato when next they met in the two-roomed cottage she had come to regard as her true home.

Alarmed rather than overjoyed, he stared at her fixedly. “Is it mine, or is it your husband’s?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Livia Drusa. “Honestly, I don’t know. I doubt if I will when he’s finally born.”

“He?”

“I’m carrying a boy.”

Cato leaned back against the bedhead, closed his eyes, compressed his beautiful mouth. “Mine,” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“So you’ll let everyone believe he’s your husband’s.”

“I don’t see what other choice I have.”

His eyes opened, he turned his head to look at her, his face sad. “None, I know. I can’t afford to marry you, even if you did have the opportunity to divorce. Which you won’t, unless your husband comes home sooner than you expect. I doubt that. There’s a pattern in all this. The gods are laughing their hardest.”

“Let them! In the end, it’s we men and women who win, not the gods,” said Livia Drusa, and pushed herself up in the bed to kiss him. “I love you, Marcus Porcius. I hope he’s yours.”

“I hope he’s not,” said Cato.

Livia Drusa’s condition made no difference to her routine; she continued to go for her morning walks, and Cato Salonianus continued to spend far more time on his grandfather’s old place near Tusculum than ever before. They made love passionately and without any consideration for the foetus curled up in her womb, Livia Drusa maintaining whenever Cato demurred that so much love could never harm her baby.

“Do you still prefer Rome to Tusculum?” she asked her little daughter Servilia on an idyllic day in late October.

“Oh, yes,” said Servilia, who had proven a hard nut to crack over the months—never forthcoming, never initiating a conversation, and answering her mother’s questions so briefly that the dinner hour was largely a solo effort on Livia Drusa’s part.

“Why, Servilia?”

Servilia eyed her mother’s belly, which was huge. “For one thing, there are good doctors and midwives there,” she said.

“Oh, don’t worry about the baby!” cried Livia Drusa, and laughed. “He’s very content. When his time comes, he’ll be easy. I have at least a month to go.”

“Why do you keep saying ’he,’ Mama?”

“Because I know he’s a boy.”

“No one can really know until the baby comes out.”

“What a little cynic you are,” said Livia Drusa, amused. “I knew you were a girl and I knew Lilla was a girl. Why should I not be right this time too? I’m carrying him differently, and he talks to me differently.”

“Talks to you?”

“Yes. You all talked to me while you were inside me.”

The look Livia Drusa got was derisive. “Truly, Mama, you are queer! And getting queerer. How can a baby talk to you from the inside when babies don’t talk for at least a year after they’re born?”

“You’re just like your father,” said Livia Drusa, and pulled a hideous face.

“So you don’t like tata! I didn’t think you did,” said Servilia, her tone more detached than accusatory.

She was seven now; old enough, thought her mother, for some hard facts. Oh, not couched in a way which would prejudice her against her father, but… Wouldn’t it be lovely to make a real friend of this oldest child?

“No,” said Livia Drusa deliberately, “I don’t like tata. Do you want to know why?”

Servilia shrugged. “I daresay I’m going to be told why.”

“Well, do you like him?”

“Yes, yes! He’s the best person in the world!”

“Oh… Then I have to tell you why I don’t like him. If I don’t, you’ll resent the way I feel. I have justification.”

“No doubt you think so.”

“Darling, I never wanted to marry tata. Your Uncle Marcus forced me to marry him. And that’s a bad start.”

“You must have had a choice,” said Servilia.

“None at all. We rarely do.”

“I think you ought to have accepted the fact that Uncle Marcus knows better than you about everything. I find nothing wrong with his choice of husband for you,” said the seven-year-old judge.

“Oh, dear!” Livia Drusa stared at her daughter in despair. “Servilia, we can’t always dictate whom we like and whom we dislike. I happened to dislike tata. I always had disliked him, from the time I was your age. But our fathers had arranged that we would marry, and Uncle Marcus saw nothing wrong in it. I couldn’t make him understand that lack of love need not imperil a marriage, whereas dislike must ruin it from the beginning.”

“I think you’re stupid,” said Servilia disdainfully.

Stubborn little mule! Livia Drusa labored on. “Marriage is a very intimate affair, child. To dislike one’s husband or wife is a frightful burden to carry. There’s a lot of touching in marriage. And when you dislike someone, you don’t want them to touch you. Can you understand that?”

“I don’t like anyone to touch me,” said Servilia.

Her mother smiled. “Hopefully that will change! Anyway, I was made to marry a man I don’t like to touch me. A man I dislike. I still dislike him. And yet, some sort of feeling does grow. I love you, and I love Lilla. How then can I not love tata with at least a part of me, when he helped make you and Lilla?”

A look of distaste spread across Servilia’s face. “Oh, really, Mama, you are stupid! First you say you dislike tata, then you say you love him. that’s nonsense!”

“No, it’s human, Servilia. Loving and liking are two utterly different emotions.”

“Well, I intend to like and love the husband my tata chooses for me,” Servilia announced in tones of great superiority.

“I hope time proves you right,” said Livia Drusa, and tried to shift the emphasis of this uncomfortable conversation. “I am very happy at the moment. Do you know why?”

The black head went over to one side as Servilia considered, then she shook it while she nodded it. “I know why, but I don’t know why you ought. You’re happy because you’re living in this awful place, and you’re going to have a baby.” The dark eyes gleamed.” And… 1 think you have a friend.”

A look of terrible fear came into Livia Drusa’s face, a look so alive and haunted that the child shivered in sudden excitement, in surprise; for the shaft had not been aimed in earnest, it was pure instinct arising out of her own keenly felt lack of a friend.

“Of course I have a friend!” cried the mother, wiping all fear from her face. She smiled. “He talks to me from inside.”

“He won’t be my friend,” said Servilia.

“Oh, Servilia, don’t say such things! He will be the best friend you ever have—a brother is, believe me!”

“Uncle Marcus is your brother, but he forced you to marry my tata when you didn’t like him.”

“A fact which doesn’t make him any less my friend. Brothers and sisters grow up together. They know each other better than they ever know anyone else, and they learn to like each other,” said Livia Drusa warmly.

“You can’t learn to like someone you dislike.”

“And there you’re wrong. You can if you try.”

Servilia produced a rude noise. “In that case, why haven’t you learned to like tata?”

“He’s not my brother!” cried Livia Drusa, wondering where she could go next. Why wouldn’t this child cooperate? Why did she persist in being so obdurate, so obtuse? Because, the mother answered herself, she’s her father’s daughter. Oh, she is like him! Only cleverer by far. More cunning.

She said, “Porcella, all I want for you is that you be happy. And I promise you that I’ll never let your tata marry you to someone you dislike.”

“You mightn’t be here when I marry,” said the child.

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Well, your mother wasn’t, was she?”

“My mother is a different case entirely,” said Livia Drusa, looking sorrowful. “She isn’t dead, you know.”

“I know that. She lives with Uncle Mamercus, but we don’t talk to her. She’s a loose woman,” said Servilia.

“Where did you hear that?”

“From tata.’”

“You don’t even know what a loose woman is!”

“I do so. She’s a woman who forgets she’s patrician.”

Livia Drusa suppressed a smile. “that’s an interesting definition, Servilia. Do you think you’ll ever forget you’re a patrician?”

“Never!” said the child scornfully. “I shall grow up to be everything my tata wants me to be.”

“I didn’t know you’d talked to tata so much!”

“We talked together all the time,” lied Servilia, so well that her mother did not detect the lie. Ignored by both her parents, Servilia had aligned herself with her father early in her little life, as he seemed to her more powerful, more necessary than Livia Drusa. So her childish daydreams all revolved around enjoying a degree of intimacy with her father that common sense said would never happen; her father deemed daughters a nuisance, wanted a son. How did she know this? Because she slid like a wraith around her Uncle Marcus’s house, listening to everyone from hidden corners, and hearing much she ought not have heard. And always, it had seemed to Servilia, it was her father who spoke like a true Roman, not her Uncle Marcus—and certainly not that Italian nobody Silo. Missing her father desperately, the child now feared the inevitable—that when her mother produced a boy, all hope of becoming her father’s favorite would be over.