Antony and Cleopatra (59 page)

“Caecilius Antiphanes will know how to cure it,” she said.

“I shit on Caecilius Antiphanes!” Octavian growled, looking fierce. “If I have learned nothing else on this campaign, my dear, I have learned that our army surgeons are infinitely more capable than every Greek physician in Rome. Publius Cornelius donated me the services of Gaius Licinius, and Gaius Licinius will continue to doctor me, is that clear?”

“Yes, Caesar.”

Whether because of Gaius Licinius’s ministrations or because Octavian, at twenty-nine, was far healthier than he had been at twenty, once installed in his own bed with Livia Drusilla beside him, he mended rapidly. When first he ventured out and down to the Forum Romanum, he hobbled between two sticks, but two
nundinae
later he was getting along deedily on one stick, quickly discarded.

People cheered him; no one, even the staunchest of Antony’s senators, spoke of Philippi again. The knee (a handy place to bear a nasty wound, he discovered) could be bared for inspection, tutted and exclaimed over now that bandages were unnecessary. Even the scars on his hands and forearms were impressive, as some of the splinters had been huge. His heroism was manifest.

Hard on the heels of his recovery came news that there had been trouble at Siscia, which Agrippa had reached and taken. He had left Fufius Geminus in command of a garrison, but the Iapudes attacked in force. Octavian and Agrippa set out to relieve it, only to find that Fufius Geminus had managed to contain the uprising without them.

Thus on New Year’s Day the ceremonies could go ahead as planned; Octavian was to be senior consul, and Agrippa, though a consular, took on the duties of curule aedile.

In some ways this was to be the year of Agrippa’s greatest glory, for he commenced a massive overhaul of Rome’s water supply and sewerage. The Aqua Marcia’s reconstruction was finished and the Aqua Julia brought on line to augment water to the Quirinal and Viminal, until now largely reliant upon springs. Wonderful, yes, but insignificant compared to what Agrippa undertook in Rome’s mighty sewers. Three underground streams had made this system of arched tunnels feasible; there were three outlets, one just below the Trigarium of the Tiber, at which point the river was clean and pure for swimming, one at the Port of Rome, and one, the most mammoth, where the Cloaca Maxima flowed out just to one side of the Wooden Bridge. Here the aperture (it had once been the outflow of the river Spinon) was big enough to permit entry into the Cloaca Maxima in a rowboat. All Rome marveled at the journeys Agrippa took in his rowboat, mapping the system, taking note of whereabouts the walls needed shoring up or repairing. There would be, promised Agrippa, no more backing up of the sewers when Father Tiber flooded. What was more, said that amazing man, he did not intend to relinquish supervision of sewers and water supply after he stepped down from office; as long as he lived, Marcus Agrippa would be hunched like a black dog outside the premises of the water companies and the drainage companies, which for far too long had tyrannized over Rome. Only Octavian managed to be half as popular among the people. Having cowed the water and sewerage companies, Agrippa then banished all magicians, prophets, soothsayers, and medical quacks from Rome. He dusted off the sets of standard weights and measures and compelled all vendors of everything to abide by them, then went to work upon the building contractors. For a while he tried to keep the height of all
insulae
apartments to a hundred feet, but this, as he soon learned, was a task beyond even Marcus Agrippa. What he could do—and did—was to make sure that the adjutages leading off water pipes were of the proper size; no more lavish water for smart apartments on the Palatine and Carinae!

“What staggers me,” said Livia Drusilla to her husband, “is how Agrippa manages all of this, yet can still campaign in Illyricum! Until this year, I had thought you were Rome’s most indefatigable worker, but much and all as I love you, Caesar, I have to say that Agrippa does more.”

Octavian hugged her, kissed her brow. “I take no offense,
meum mel
, because I know why that is. Did Agrippa only have a wife as dear as you at home, he wouldn’t need to work so hard. As it is, he finds any excuse to avoid spending time with Attica.”

“You’re right,” she said, looking sad. “What can we do?”

“Nothing.”

“Divorce is the only answer.”

“He has to decide that for himself.”

Then Livia Drusilla’s world was thrown upside-down in a way neither she nor Octavian had expected. Tiberius Claudius Nero, a mere fifty years old, died so suddenly that it was left to his steward to discover the body, still hunched over his desk. The will, which Octavian opened, left everything he had to his elder son, Tiberius, but neglected to say what he wanted done with his boys. Young Tiberius was eight years old; his brother, Drusus, born after his mother married Octavian, was just turned five.

“I think, my dear, that we have to take them,” Octavian said to a shocked Livia Drusilla.

“Caesar, no!” she gasped. “They have been reared to hate you! Nor do they like me, as far as I can gather—I never see them! Oh, no, please don’t do this to me! Don’t do it to yourself!”

Well, he had never had any illusions about Livia Drusilla; despite her protestations to the contrary, she was not maternal. Her children might not have existed, she thought of them so little, and when someone asked her how often she visited, she trotted out Nero’s ban—she wasn’t wanted. There were times when he wondered how hard she tried to fall pregnant by him, but her barren state wasn’t a grief to him. And how lucky he was! The gods had given him Livia Drusilla’s sons. If little Julia did not have sons, he would still have heirs to his name.

“It will be done,” he said in the voice that told his wife he would not budge. “The poor boys have no one save—oh, I daresay cousins in a fairly remote degree. Neither the Claudii Nerones nor the Livii Drusi are lucky families. You are the mother of these children. People will expect us to take them.”

“I don’t want this, Caesar.”

“I know. Nevertheless, it is already being done. I’ve sent for them and they should be here any moment. Burgundinus is preparing proper quarters for them—a sitting room, two sleeping cubicles, a schoolroom, and a private garden. I believe the suite was young Hortensius’s. Tomorrow I’ll personally buy a pedagogue for them, while Burgundinus goes around to Nero’s house to gather up their stuff. I’m sure there will be toys they’d hate to part with, as well as clothes and books. Though I will not take their present pedagogue, even if they are strongly attached to him. I mean to break them of their dislike for us, and that is better done under the aegis of strangers.”

“Why can’t you put them with Scribonia and little Julia?”

“Because that is a house of women, a species they are not used to. Nero didn’t have a woman in his house, even a laundress,” said Octavian. He went to kiss her, but she jerked her head away. “Don’t be silly, dear, please. Accept your fate as gracefully as Caesar’s wife should.”

Her mind was racing to get ahead of his. How extraordinary, that he should set his heart on her sons! For he had, that was patent. So, loving him—and understanding that her future depended on him—she shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and kissed him of her own volition.

“I suppose I needn’t see a great deal of them,” she said.

“As much and as little as a good Roman mother ought. When I am out of Rome, I expect you to take my place with them.”

The boys arrived stiff and tearless, no red rims around their eyes to suggest that they had already wept themselves dry. Neither remembered his mother, neither had seen their stepfather, even in the Forum; Nero had kept them at home under strict supervision.

Tiberius was black of hair and eye, had an olive skin and quite regular features; he was tall for his age, but painfully thin. As if, thought Octavian, he didn’t get enough exercise. Drusus was adorable; that he went straight to Octavian’s heart lay in his likeness to his mother, though his eyes were bluer. A riot of black curls, a full mouth, high cheekbones. Like Tiberius, he was tall and thin—did Nero never let his children run around, get some muscle on their bones?

“I am sorry for your
tata’s
death,” Octavian said, unsmiling, striving to look sincere.

“I’m not,” said Tiberius.

“Nor am I,” said Drusus.

“Here is your mama, boys,” Octavian said, at a loss.

They bowed, eyes busy.

To Tiberius, this man and woman seemed friendly and relaxed, not at all what he had imagined after so many years of listening to his father talk about them with so much loathing. Had Nero been kind and approachable, his sentiments would have soaked into this older boy; instead, they had seemed unreal. Hurting from a savage beating, concealing both his tears and his sense of injustice, Tiberius would wish, wish, wish for liberation from his awful father, a man who drank too much wine and had forgotten he was ever a boy himself. Now liberation had come, though in the short hours since Nero’s body had been discovered, Tiberius had expected to go from the frying pan into the fire. Instead, he found Octavian especially nice, perhaps because of his alien fairness, those enormous, tranquil grey eyes.

“You’ll have your own rooms,” Octavian was saying, smiling now, “and a terrific garden to play in. You must learn, of course, but I want you to have plenty of time to run around. When you’re older, I’ll take you with me if I travel—it’s important that you see the world. Will you like that?”

“Yes,” said Tiberius.

“Your face is creaky,” said Livia Drusilla, drawing him close. “Does it ever smile, Tiberius?”

“No,” he said, finding her smell exquisite and her roundness hugely comforting. He pushed his head against her breasts and shut his eyes the better to feel her, suck in that flowery scent.

Time for Drusus, who was gazing at Octavian as if at a bright gold statue. Squatting down to his level, Octavian stroked his cheek, sighed, winked away tears. “Dear little Drusus,” he said, dropped to his knees and cuddled the child. “Be happy with us!”

“It’s my turn, Caesar,” Livia Drusilla said, but didn’t let go of Tiberius. “Come, Drusus, let me hold you.”

But Drusus clung to Octavian for comfort, refused to go.

Over dinner the astonished, vastly relieved new parents found out some of the reasons why the boys had survived Nero without becoming imbued with his hatred. The confidences were innocent, yet appalling; it had been a childhood of cold, impersonal, not always bearable inattention. Their pedagogue had been the least expensive one on Stichus’s books, so neither boy could read or write very well. Though he had not beaten them, he was instructed to report their offenses to their father, who took great pleasure in wielding a switch. The drunker he was, the worse the beating. They had no toys at all, which made Octavian weep; he had been inundated with toys by his doting mama, had the best of everything in Philippus’s house.

A cool and dispassionate man whom many called cold as ice, Octavian yet had a softer side that came to the fore whenever he was with children. Not a day went by when he was in Rome that he didn’t snatch a few moments to see little Julia, an enchanting child now six years old. And while he hadn’t yearned for sons—to do so would have been un-Roman—he had yearned for the company of children, a characteristic he shared with his sister, whose nursery often saw Uncle Caesar, who was funny, jolly, full of ideas for new games. Now, watching his stepsons over dinner, he could tell himself again how lucky he was. Tiberius was clearly going to belong to Livia Drusilla, who seemed to have lost her dislike for her firstborn entirely. Ah, but dear little Drusus! We have one each, thought Octavian, so happy he felt as if he might burst.

Even the dinner itself was a wonder to the boys, who ate ravenously, unconsciously revealing that Nero had rationed both the quality and the quantity of the food served to them. It was Livia Drusilla who cautioned against gorging, Octavian who urged them to try a little of this, a little of that. Luckily eyelids were drooping before the sweeties came in; Octavian carried Drusus and Burgundinus Tiberius to their sleeping cubicles, tucked them up warmly between down mattresses and down quilts; winter was still hanging on grimly.

“So how do you feel now, wife?” Octavian asked Livia Drusilla as they prepared to climb into their bed.

She squeezed his hand. “Much better—oh, so much better! I am ashamed that I didn’t try harder to visit them, but I never expected that Nero’s hatred of us wouldn’t impinge on his sons. How shabbily he treated them! Caesar, they are
patrician
! He had every opportunity to turn them into our implacable enemies, and what did he do? Flogged them into hating him. Didn’t care about their welfare—starved them, ignored them. I am very glad that he’s dead and we can look after our boys properly.”

“Tomorrow I have to conduct his funeral.”

She put his hand on one breast. “Oh, dear, I had forgotten! I suppose Tiberius and Drusus have to go?”

“I am afraid so, yes. I’ll give the eulogy from the rostra.”

“I wonder does Octavia have any black children’s togas?”

Octavian chuckled. “Bound to. I sent Burgundinus around to ask, at any rate. If she doesn’t have a couple in storage, he’ll buy them in the Porticus Margaritaria.”

Snuggling against him, she kissed his cheek. “You must have Julius’s luck, Caesar! Who could ever have predicted that our boys would be ripe for our plucking? Today we’ve gained two important allies for your cause.”

The day after the funeral Octavian took the boys to meet their cousins. Octavia, who had been at the funeral, was anxious to welcome them into the family fold.

Almost sixteen and on the verge of official manhood, Gaius Scribonius Curio was due to leave the nursery and become a
contubernalis
. A red-haired, freckled youth, he wanted to be Mark Antony’s cadet, but Antony had refused him. So he was to go to Agrippa. The elder of Antony’s two sons by Fulvia, Antyllus, was eleven, and already dying for a military career. The other son, Iullus, was eight. They were handsome boys, Antyllus with his father’s reddish coloring, Iullus more like his ice-brown mother. Only in a household like Octavia’s could they have been reared so successfully, for both boys were impetuous, adventurous, and warlike. Octavia’s gentle yet firm hand kept them, as she put it with a laugh, “members of the
gens humana
.”