I Am Livia (3 page)

I was not ignorant about the physical part of marriage. In fact, I had once walked in on our steward and one of the slave girls as they copulated standing up in the kitchen, their clothes bunched up to their waists. I remembered how their legs looked, hers pale and slim, his dark and hairy. The girl had been bent over a table, and the man grunted with pleasure. I was repelled.
What I saw was like the coupling of two animals. I did not want to believe it had anything to do with me, that I could ever be in the girl’s place.

My own longings were different, shrouded in a dreamy mist. I imagined a young man’s face, beautiful as if sculpted by Phidias, the outward sign of spiritual perfection. He and I would share the union of two pure souls, the kind of virtuous love Plato wrote about.

Foolishly, I had imagined one day marrying a paragon and experiencing an exalted love. Now I knew I never would. Instead I would marry Tiberius Nero.

Just as I was about to blow out the lamp’s small flame and get into bed, I heard a knock on my bedchamber door. Father entered. “Come to the atrium with me,” he said.

I draped a shawl over my sleeping tunica and obeyed him. Only one tiny lamp illuminated the atrium. It was set on the altar near the entranceway, before the statuette of the Lar, the god protector of our family.

Father walked to the tall, wide cabinet next to the altar and threw open its door. Shelves held wax portrait masks—rows of stern male faces.

“You know whose portraits these are, don’t you, Livia?”

“They’re of your ancestors.”

“And yours,” Father said. “Generation after generation, they held high office. Some even led armies that fought for Rome. Their blood flows in your veins.”

Father often spoke to me of the history of Rome and the roles our own forebears had played in it. His stories always stirred me and made me feel as if I knew the men who had come before us and shaped our destiny. I would wish it were possible for me to join the line of heroes he told me about. But how could a female perform great deeds for Rome?

“Livia, ever since you were small, I have known you were unusual.” Father touched my head, and I could see the glint of his teeth in the lamplight as, for a moment, he smiled. “Some people would say I have given you a rather odd upbringing, but it never seemed wrong to treat you as a reasonable being like myself, or to encourage you to think. It is possible that one day you will be a very wise woman. See that you are good as well as wise, will you?”

“Yes, Father,” I said, warmed by his words.

“Perhaps Tiberius Nero is not the man you deserve,” he said.

“Then—” I was about to throw my arms around Father, to shower him with thanks for setting me free.

“I do not say he is not a good man. I say it is possible—possible—he is not the man I would pick for you if my hands were untied. Listen to me, my daughter. I will not command you but talk to you as if you were my equal. These are not normal times. We must strike for liberty now. Nothing less than Rome’s future is at stake. It’s necessary to bind Tiberius Nero close. He is one of Caesar’s most admired officers, with many friends among the soldiers. His allegiance matters. Do you understand?”

I pressed my lips together and, looking down, nodded.

“If you were my son, and I asked you to pick up a sword and fight for Rome even if it might cost you your life, would you say no to me?”

I shook my head.

Father put his hand under my chin and raised my face. He stroked a lock of my hair back from my forehead where it had tumbled. “I think you would ride off to battle very bravely. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What you can do for our cause is marry this man.”

“I would rather die in battle,” I said.

As soon as I had spoken those words, I knew they were a lie. Fight in battle? I would do that willingly. But die? Even a heroic death did not appeal to me.

Father smiled sadly.

A thought pierced me: I would never die in battle, but he might. Young as I was, I perceived that the death of Caesar, the man who held the state together, might unleash chaos. All sorts of unknown perils lay ahead. If marrying Tiberius Nero could help keep the ground firm under Father’s feet, I would do it.

“I will marry Tiberius Nero,” I said. I made myself add, “If it’s for the liberty of Rome, I’ll do it gladly.”

Father bent and kissed me. After a moment, he said, “You must not only marry him but be a good influence on him. His allegiance has been doubtful in the past. But if he cares for you—if you serve him and are a loving wife to him and bind him to you with ties of true affection—he may ask your opinion at a moment when it matters. Never be overbearing, but be his confidante and friend. Gently, gently. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“Yes, Father.”

Father gazed at me with pride and tenderness. “You will be the mother of noble sons.”

O
n the morning of the Ides of March, my sister and I sat reading a Greek play with Xeno, our tutor. Antigone was
about to be sealed alive inside her tomb. On the fourth finger of my left hand I wore a gold band—the betrothal ring that Tiberius Nero had sent me, in token of our coming marriage.

A slave entered the schoolroom and said that our father wished to speak to us at once, that an event of great importance had taken place. He added that our tutor was free to leave for the day. Xeno looked amazed to be dismissed in this abrupt fashion by a slave. Secunda, too, was astonished. Father never called us away from our lessons.

I felt sure that the event could only be an attempt to assassinate Caesar. My mouth went dry
.
W
as Caesar dead? Or could the plot have failed? Might he still be alive, and ready to avenge himself on his enemies, including my father?

Mother stood with Father in his study. Father’s hand rested on her shoulder. Mother looked as if the earth had split open beneath her feet.

“This is a great day, my daughters,” Father said. “Word has come that Caesar is dead. The tyrant—the man who would be
king
—” Father’s lip curled as he spoke that last word, anathema to Romans. “He has been put to death by members of the Senate.” Dispassionately, he told us some of the details of Caesar’s death, then glanced round at my mother, my sister, and me. “You three must stay inside. There may be upheaval. I’ll go down to the Forum and see how matters stand.”

“You should stay inside too,” Mother said.

Father shook his head. “My place is at Marcus Brutus’s side.” Without another word, he left us.

Mother said there was no point in being idle while we waited for news, and she led my sister and me into the spinning room. All three of us got busy spinning wool. Even as I worked, fear gripped me. “I wish Father hadn’t gone out,” I said. “There will surely be uproar. The common people loved Caesar.
”
T
hey admired him, I knew, for his military victories, and he had wooed them with public games and festivals and with largesse. In particular, he was the hero of the poor. By contrast, the Senate—six hundred men appointed for life, mostly aristocrats—had little claim on the people’s love.

“If the rabble riot, I hope the Senate will deal firmly with them,” Mother said. “They require an iron hand.”

“If they riot, will they come up the Palatine?” Secunda asked.

“I don’t know,” Mother said.

We lived on the Palatine Hill, the premier dwelling of Rome’s aristocratic families, and our house was on the north side, overlooking the Forum. If the common people sought to avenge Caesar, they might surge up the Palatine’s slope, into our neighborhood. I imagined them breaking into the house to vent their fury on us.

“Mother,” I said, “if I go outside and stand on the doorstep and look down the hill, maybe I’ll see something. I won’t be in danger if I just slip out for a moment and look.”

“Didn’t you hear your father say we must all stay inside?”

“But if only we could know what is happening!”

Mother forbade me to go out, but she dispatched our steward, Statius, to go to the Forum and gather news. After he had gone, she said, “Livia, your father’s friends killed no one but Caesar. They did not harm Mark Antony.
Why do you think they let him live?”

“They did it to show that they are just and not vengeful.”

“But Antony was Caesar’s right-hand man, was he no
t
?”

“Yes.”

“Your father is a wise and learned man,” Mother said, “but he can be too noble for his own good.” Her face tightened. “Gods above, the rest of them—the leaders—what if they are all too noble?”

I knew—as all Rome did—that Caesar had carried on a love affair and fathered a son by the queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. He continued to live with his Roman wife, Calpurnia, a plump matron I had seen carried through the streets in her litter. On the eve of his assassination, Calpurnia had a nightmare. She awoke in terror, convinced that her husband would not return from the next day’s Senate session alive. She begged Caesar to stay home, and he agreed. But the next morning Decimus Brutus—Marcus Brutus’s co-conspirator and distant cousin—arrived to escort Caesar to the Senate meeting. The assassins planned to strike that day, and Decimus feared that the plot would be discovered if there was a delay. So he pricked Caesar’s pride. How, he asked, could the ruler of Rome cower in his house because his wife had a bad dream?

In the end, Caesar went to the Senate session, held in Pompey’s theater. Inside the theater, a senator fell at Caesar’s feet and clutched at the folds of his toga like a desperate supplicant. Caesar tried to pull away, but before he could, the other conspirators set upon him. More than fifty men stabbed him, wounding each other in their frenzy. Many of them had fought against him in the last civil war and afterward received his mercy.

When Caesar lay dead, the assassins raced to the Forum. They held up their bloody knives and shouted, “Rome is free! Rome is free!”

People fled from them. Fear, not rejoicing, was the reaction of most of Rome’s citizens. And we—my mother, sister, and I—felt fear, too.

“Oh, Mistress, Pompey’s theater was set afire, and there are looters all over the market district,” Statius told my mother when he returned home. “They are smashing their way into houses and shops.”

“Board up our windows and nail the door shut!” Mother cried.

For a long time, the whole house reverberated with hammer blows. Mother, Secunda, and I stood near the entranceway. Four of the slaves nailed planks over the windows. I looked at Secunda. My sister’s face had turned a milky white.

Anything could happen to us. The savage rabble might break into our home, and Father was not there to protect us. Who would? The slaves? They would flee. Law and order had broken down.
We might be raped, murdered.

When the house was boarded up, the sudden silence seemed eerie. I felt like some small helpless beast in a hunter’s snare. The sensation was new to me.
Whatever Rome’s political troubles, I had never before had cause to fear.
We could do nothing but wait. Mother, Secunda, and I had no heart for spinning wool.
We sat in Father’s study and spoke little. Then, suddenly, we heard a tremendous banging on the front door.

Mother pulled Secunda and me into her arms and pressed our faces into her bosom, as if she wanted to shield us from the sight of what was coming, a crowd of killers bursting into our house. My nostrils filled with the scent of her perfume, and I could hear her racing heart.

I had an awareness of my own soft flesh, my vulnerable body. In my imagination, savage hands dragged me away from my mother. Enemies surrounded me on all sides, as Caesar had been surrounded. They violated me, and then stabbed me again and again with knives, just as Caesar had been stabbed. A well of fear swallowed me up.

Then I heard a familiar voice that almost sang with relief. “It’s the master!” Statius called from the entranceway. “Take the nails out of the door! He’s shouting to be let in!”

Mother released Secunda and me, rose, and smoothed her stola.

Soon Father was with us, saying that there had been some looting, rioting, and deaths, but the city was by and large peaceful now. The horrors we had conjured up seemed ridiculous. Secunda and I looked at each other and giggled. Even Mother laughed. But we were wrong to imagine that we were safe.

Caesar’s funeral was strictly a political event; my mother, sister, and I did not go, but Father did. So did Marcus Brutus and Caesar’s other assassins. “Will there be a funeral address?” I asked Father as we stood in the entranceway before he took leave of us. He wore a toga, its folds carefully arranged.

“Of course,” Father said. “That’s customary. Caesar served Rome well in some respects.
We will honor him for that.”

“Who will the speaker be?”

“Antony.”

I heard Mother draw in a sharp breath. “Are you saying, husband, that Antony will be allowed to give a speech to people in the Forum?”

An uneasy expression flickered across Father’s face. “That was Brutus’s decision. He put all the arrangements for the funeral in Antony’s hands.”

“But why?” Mother asked.

“To conciliate Antony.” Father spoke in a clipped voice. “Alfidia, Antony is no Caesar. He is a pleasure-loving fool, drunk half the time. He can be appeased. Brutus is right to smooth his ruffled feathers.”

Father always spoke Marcus Brutus’s name with deep respect. He had a reputation for integrity, and by some alchemy of personality, he inspired confidence in others much as Caesar had—though Brutus’s magic worked within a narrower, more select group.

After Father left for the Forum, Mother looked at me and said, “I met Antony once. He has small eyes, like a pig. My father used to say pigs are more cunning than dogs, but without a dog’s loyalty.”

“Mother, on Grandfather’s farm—” my sister began.

“Be quiet,” Mother said. “I’m not talking to you, you foolish child, I am talking to your sister. Go inside to your tutor.” She glanced at me. “You come into my sitting room.”

We went into the small alcove that Mother kept for her own private use. Like Father’s study, it was divided from the atrium by a curtain. There was a couch, and wall shelves holding rare Greek pottery, very old pieces that had come down to her from her own family. “Sit,” Mother commanded me.

I sat.

Mother sat on the couch beside me. “I have often thought,” she said, “that women are the only true adults in the world, and men are a species of children.
When babies are born, when the sick are struggling for life, when the old die, you will see women about, but rarely men.
Women carry the burden of the family’s survival on their backs. Do you understand what I am saying?”