I Am Livia (10 page)

When all of those condemned who had not fled Rome had been killed, the proscriptions ended. Antony, Lepidus, and Caesar left the city to march to Greece, at the head of an army that had swelled to one hundred and twenty thousand men.

Mother lived with my husband and me, a silent, somber presence. Once, as we sat spinning wool together, I said, just to draw her into conversation, “Oh, Mother, I wish I could know if I’m going to have a boy. November is so far away. It seems such a long time to wait.”

“There is a way to know, sooner than that.” Mother did not look up from her spindle. “It’s supposed to be very sure. But it’s troublesome. You must get a newly fertilized chicken’s egg, and hold it in your hands to warm it until it hatches. If the chick is a hen, then you are carrying a girl child. But if the chick is a rooster, then the baby will be a boy.”

In answer to my eager questions, Mother—who had grown up on her father’s farm—told me it took twenty-one days, more or less, for a chick to hatch. My maids could hold the egg when I couldn’t, but it must always be warmed by a woman’s hands.

“Then you must wait at least another thirty days after the chick is born, and see if red bumps appear on its head,” Mother said. “You’re not going to ask me what the red bumps mean, are you?”

“It means it’s growing a comb and is a rooster.”

Without bothering to say if my guess was right, Mother went back to her spinning.

I sent a slave to a farm on the outskirts of Rome to get an egg for me—one the farmer swore was newly fertilized. Every day I held the egg cupped in my hands
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hile I bathed, dressed, ate, or relieved myself, my maid Pelia or Mother held the egg, and while I slept the female servants took turns sitting up in the atrium and holding it.

To some degree, this hatching of the egg was a thing I did for Mother’s sake, to divert her mind from her troubles. It also distracted me a little from fear for my father. I did my best every day to concentrate on cradling the egg in my hands, and on making sure neither I nor my servants were careless with it for a moment. I yearned to bring a boy into the world—a warrior, not a female who would have to wait at home while distant events decided her fate—and I half convinced myself that if only the egg successfully hatched, the chick would be a rooster and I’d have the son I wanted.

“Mistress! Mistress!” A little before dawn, I heard Pelia’s cry from the atrium.

I rose from my bed and in my haste ran out of the bedchamber barefoot. An oil lamp burned in the atrium, and Pelia sat in a chair in the center of a pool of light. She held her hands palms up in her lap, and there lay the egg. Leaning over, I could see a crack in it, and a tiny beak breaking through.

This was the first time I ever saw any living creature born. I have visited many temples, but I never felt such a true sense of the sacred as I did then, as I stood for nearly an hour, all the women of the household gathered round, watching as the chick slowly emerged in Pelia’s hands.

As a gift after I conceived, Tiberius Nero had bought me two little twin boys, pretty Syrians, named Talos and Antitalos. It was a fashion to keep such children as pets and allow them to walk around naked, and train them to sing and tell jokes. They were fascinated by the chick and helped me care for it—keeping it in a small wooden crate in a corner of the atrium and feeding it worms from the garden. They even gave it a name—Aquila, “Eagle”—certainly a grand name for a chicken.

One morning, when the chick was past a month old and had begun to sprout feathers, Antitalos pointed at its head and said, “Look, Mistress.”

I could see tiny red bumps on the chick’s head, and my heart soared. I knew I would bear a son.

Tiberius Nero was as overjoyed as I was, though he pretended skeptical reserve and suggested we fatten the chick—now a little rooster—for the cook pot. I gasped, “You want to eat Aquila?”

For a while, I would not part with Aquila at all. Eventually, though, his crowing proved irritating. Tiberius Nero owned several farms outside the city, and we sent the rooster to one of these, with strict instructions it was never to be eaten but used for siring more chickens.

When I was in the seventh month of my pregnancy, a letter came from Father. Mother read it first, while I sat beside her watching her face. I saw her eyes light up, and when she handed the waxed tablet to me, I read the letter eagerly. It was brief. Father told us that a brave army of over a hundred thousand men had gathered around Brutus, and they looked forward to reclaiming Rome
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e must keep up our courage, pray to the gods, and await a joyous reunion.

The messenger could not tarry long. Mother and I rushed to compose short letters to Father. I wrote,
Beloved and revered Father, in just a few months I pray you will hold a newborn grandson in your arms, in a free Republic. And we will all be together and never part again.

Full of hope, I had no trouble drifting off to sleep that night. But then I had a nightmare. I found myself in the middle of a battlefield, surrounded on all sides by men locked in armed struggle. Two caught my eye. They thrust and parried with huge, glinting swords. I could not see their faces, but though I did not know who the men were, I feared for them both. I shouted, “Stop! Stop!” but they did not hear me. As they fought, I could only watch, sick with horror. Finally, one man lunged with his sword, and the other warrior fell to the ground. I cried out, ran and knelt beside him, and stared up at the man who had slain him. It was my father, who looked at me with stony eyes and said in a contemptuous voice, “A wife should weep for her husband.” I gazed down at the warrior he had killed. I expected to see Tiberius Nero.

The man’s face was like a death mask, frozen, icy cold, but not a corpse’s face, nothing as human as that. It was not Tiberius Nero. The dead man was young Caesar. As soon as I saw who it was, I began to shriek and rend my garments.

When I awoke, my cheeks were wet with tears. I lay in the darkness, Tiberius Nero snoring beside me, and understood something that I had not allowed myself to know before: I would mourn Caesar if he died in battle. Even though he was my father’s enemy, even after the proscriptions. And there was another searing truth, plain in the dream, that I had not previously faced
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hen the two armies met, it was almost certain that either my father or Caesar would not survive. There was not enough room in the world for men like Father and Brutus
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for Antony and Caesar.

I did not know if my nightmare contained any true prophecy. Perhaps a priest of Apollo could have interpreted my dream to me, but I had no desire to confide it to anyone. The self-knowledge it brought me made me feel like a traitor in my heart. I loved my father. But if Caesar died in the coming battle, I would weep.

It was almost November. Soon my child would be born. Heavy and sluggish, I often lay on my bed fully clothed during daylight hours, and sometimes dozed off. I woke one day from a nap, a couple of hours past noon, jarred out of sleep by shouts coming from outside the house. I could not make out the words. It sounded as if two or three men were arguing in the street.

The shouts continued and grew louder.
What did this signify? My mouth went dry with fear. I had to push on the bed with both hands to get myself up since my belly was so huge. I slipped my feet into sandals and went to the atrium.

Mother and Tiberius Nero stood there. Mother had her fist pressed to her teeth, and her expression was all desolation.
When she saw me, she spoke in a controlled voice. “Livia, come here and sit.” She led me to a couch and sat beside me. Tiberius Nero came and sat on the other side of me.

“If it were possible to keep what has happened from you until your son is born, we would do it,” Mother said. “But it’s not possible, so you must hear it. You must keep calm, lest you injure the child. Do you understand me, Livia?” Just at the last, a tremor came into her voice. “Will you be calm?”

“I will be calm,” I said.

Mother tried to speak again, but instead choked and shut her eyes.

Tiberius Nero gripped my hand. “Word’s come—it’s not by an official dispatch, you understand, just a man on a horse racing here with the news. But I think he’s telling the truth. And the news is being shouted through the streets now. The armies met at Philippi in Greece. Antony and Caesar won the battle. Dearest, remember that I’m Antony’s friend, and we’re perfectly safe.”

I looked at Mother. “Is Father alive?”

She shook her head.

I pressed my face against her shoulder. I wept, and Mother wept too. Inside myself, a voice screamed,
Father! Father! Father!
I had never known such tearing grief. But I did not cry out, and I did not rend my garments. My mother had said I must contain myself, for the sake of my son.

Later, reassured by my self-control, Tiberius Nero told me all he knew about the battle and its outcome. He said that Antony alone had led the forces that opposed Brutus, for illness had come upon Caesar—dropsy—and swollen with fluid, unable to rise from his cot, he had taken no part in the fighting.

After the battle was over, Brutus quoted some poetry about virtue and the caprices of fortune, then got a soldier to hold a sword so he could run upon it.

Tiberius Nero volunteered nothing about Father’s death. But I had to know how he had died. I steeled myself and asked, “Did Father survive the battle too?”

“Yes,” my husband said gently.

“Did he die by his own hand?” I asked the question in a quiet, composed voice, so that Tiberius Nero would not hold back the truth.

“He fell on his sword,”
Tiberius Nero said.

No one who fought for the Republic died a more exalted and noble death.