I Am Livia (31 page)

Maecenas wrote from Greece that Antony wanted to speak to Tavius personally about allying with him in the war against Sextus. Tavius agreed to meet him in the city of Tarentum. He wanted me to come. It would in a sense be a family gathering since Tavius’s sister—whom I had never met—would be there. There was no question, though, of bringing the children on what would be an uncomfortable overland journey through swampy terrain. Julia’s mother would happily take charge of her, while my boys did not live with me in any case. It would be less than a month’s absence. Still I hesitated to leave them—to leave all three of them, because I oversaw Julia’s care as if she were my own child. But in the end I gave precedence to Tavius’s needs and kissed my little ones good-bye.

Tavius and I traveled five days by carriage. After an uneventful journey, we arrived in Tarentum. It was a beautiful, small city—full of gleaming marble buildings and exquisite public statuary—located in Southern Italy but founded by Greeks. Antony owned a villa here. He greeted Tavius with a boisterous shout and hugged him, then embraced me too. Octavia was more quiet in her greeting, but I saw tender love in her face when she looked at Tavius.

Tavius had once told me that his sister liked nearly everybody. Well, she did not like me. I knew it from the first.
When she smiled and greeted me, her eyes—Tavius’s blue eyes—were empty of warmth. “I’m so pleased to finally have a chance to get to know you,” she said to me, in the strained tone of an inexpert liar.

At twenty-seven she was milky-skinned and girlish looking. She had a quality one hopes to see in Vestal Virgins but usually does not—not quite of this earth. Pregnant with her first child by Antony, she was mother to a boy and two girls by her first husband, an aged senator she had married at fifteen. If I guessed rightly, there had been no awakening to passion in her first marriage, and Antony had not awakened her either. She must have known Cleopatra had borne Antony twins and that people still spoke of their scandalous love affair. I don’t think it occurred to her she ought to try to compete on that particular playing field, the one on which Cleopatra won every prize. But she was aware of her responsibility to the Roman world to help keep peace and amity between her husband and her brother. I knew from her letters to Tavius, which he often shared with me, that she did everything she could to make each see the other in the best possible light.

Given Antony’s power, many would have regarded him as a supremely desirable husband. But with the perquisites of rank came—Antony. I doubted he was remotely the mate Octavia would have picked based on personal affinity. Tavius spoke of her almost reverently, sometimes with a hint of guilt. He knew the burden he had placed on her, and he appreciated the fact that she never reproached him even implicitly by seeming unhappy.

How could Octavia and I have liked each other? When she looked at me she saw a woman who had forsaken husband and children—abandoned duty, when duty was Octavia’s life—for a love match. I saw in her the epitome of a womanly ideal I could have realized only by smothering myself.

Inside the villa, our husbands tried to settle the fate of the world. Meanwhile, Octavia and I sat for hours on end amid roses and irises in a fragrant garden, enduring each other’s company and making endless conversation about our children and domestic matters. I have rarely found it so hard to talk to anybody. Both of us were chary at first about bringing up politics. I could not even discuss clothing or hairstyles with Octavia, because she showed no interest in either. Eventually, I discovered that she read a great deal—far more than I had time for anymore. So we talked about poetry, especially about the new poets Maecenas discovered and acted as patron to. Then she said, “Did you know Tavius once wanted to be a poe
t
?”

“And write tragic plays. Yes, I know.”

“He used to write beautiful poems when he was a boy. My mother saved them, but I couldn’t find them after she died. That’s such a pity. I wanted them to keep. He doesn’t write poems anymore, does he?”

“When would he have time?”

“It’s as if he has killed part of himself.”

I stared at her.

“I mean by abandoning his poetry.” She bit her lip and avoided my eyes.

I finally broached the subject uppermost in my mind. “Do you think Antony will help him with the war?”

“Oh, yes. He’ll join in declaring Sextus an outlaw, and he’ll give Tavius some ships, and then when he goes off to Parthia, he’ll expect Tavius to lend him some legions. To fight yet another war.” She let out a long breath. “It could at least build goodwill between them, but it won’t, because of the way Antony is doing it. He had to make Tavius come, to personally ask for his help.”

“You couldn’t persuade him to do it differently?” I asked.

“No. I tried. I know Tavius is sensitive. It kills him to beg for anything. It kills him to be made to feel weak or small. But Antony doesn’t see that. He only sees that
he
should have been Julius Caesar’s heir. He expected to be, you know. He told me about it, one night when he had a bit too much wine. The way he fought for that man—how he was discounted—” She stopped. “I pity everyone. That’s a weakness of mine.” Her expression changed. It was like a door closing. “You don’t have that weakness, do you?”

I tossed my head, and said, “No.”
Then I added, “Maybe I did once, but I outgrew it.”

It was the wrong thing to say to her. She looked insulted—as if I had called her a child. In truth, I had misspoken and expressed what I truly felt. In some ways, she did strike me as childlike.

We spent two more days in each other’s company, and never said another word to each other that mattered.

Antony and Tavius sealed a pact, taking sacred oaths to support each other in peace and war for a term of five years. Afterward, Antony hosted an extravagant farewell dinner meant to foster personal ties. All I remember of it is Antony needling Tavius. As he drank cup after cup of wine, the needling got worse. “Drusilla,” Antony said to me—he still refused to call me by my proper name—“I had to respect your father. At Philippi he put up a fight. Believe me, he was no coward. I saw him in the thick of it. But I looked around in the midst of battle—and who did I
not
see?” He laughed. “ ‘Where is he?’ I asked. ‘Where is Julius Caesar’s chosen heir? In his ten
t
? How, by Jupiter’s cock, can he still be in his ten
t
?’ ” He looked at Tavius and shook his head, grinning. “Just your miserable luck, righ
t
? To take sick on that day.”

“Miserable luck,
”
Tavius echoed, and he smiled. But his eyes—his eyes. They looked just the way they had at Vedius’s villa. Cold blue fire. I felt fear. Fear for whom? I suppose for Antony. Incredibly, for Antony. The thought came to me—ridiculous on the face of it—
Tavius will kill him.

Octavia started talking about nothing at all. “Have you noticed how cool the weather has been? It will be hot soon enough. Then we’ll want it cool again, won’t we?”

“This little man will be born, once it gets warm,” Antony said, and placed a hand on her belly. As they lay together on the dining couch, they looked like an affectionate couple, though one of them—Antony, of course—was red-faced with drink.

Next day came the final parting
.
W
e stood in the road outside Antony’s villa, Tavius and I ready to climb into a carriage to begin our journey back to Rome. Antony towered over Tavius by half a head. His shoulder muscles bulged under his tunic. He had a neck like a bull. As he and Tavius stood next to each other, I saw how unequal the two were physically. Antony’s bulk seemed to symbolize the greater strength of his military—the reason why all through the conference Tavius had grimly taken what Antony dished out.

Antony had officially allied himself with Tavius against Sextus, and given him 120 war galleys. Yet the two parted worse friends than they had been before. Still, here stood Octavia, carrying Antony’s child, Tavius’s nephew or niece. She was the unbreakable link that held our world together.

Tavius took her in his arms. He and his sister did not seem able to let go of each other.

Antony gave Octavia a clumsy pat on the shoulder. “Look, honey-girl, you don’t need to be parted from your brother for too long a time. Soon I’ll go to war.
Why should you wait for me in Greece all alone? You can go to Rome then, for a good long visit. I still have a house there; you’ll be comfortable. Take your children and my sons with you—the whole tribe. I don’t want Antyllus and Jullus to forget they’re Romans. Do you like the idea?”

I had never seen Antony be kind to anyone before. It surprised me that he had it in him to be kind.

Octavia let go of Tavius and threw her arms around Antony. “You are so good to me. Oh, yes, I like the idea. And can I really take the boys? I just wish you could come to Rome with me too when I visit.”

I truly think Tavius felt warmed by this exchange. I saw his face soften. Octavia embraced him again and said, “I’ll see you soon then.”

“I’m grateful,
”
T
avius said, looking at Antony. He kissed his sister. “To have you back in Rome, even for a while—”

And then, Antony, being Antony, had to ruin things. “All right, boy,” he said.
Boy
. He gave a great, roaring laugh. “In the meantime, just make sure you don’t sink my boats like you did your own.”

Those were the final words Antony said to Tavius in parting. They were the last words either would ever say to the other, face-to-face.

Maybe some malicious spirit heard those words,
Don’t sink my boats.
Maybe Neptune himself did, when he was in a wrathful mood.

Tavius and Agrippa prepared a two-pronged attack on Sicily. They each headed a huge fleet. By some magic diplomacy, Maecenas induced Lepidus to come from North Africa to assist them; he succeeded in landing twelve legions of his own on Sicily’s shore. Then an enormous storm struck. The fleet under Agrippa’s command managed to ride it out. Tavius ordered his own ships into a bay on Italy’s coast that should have been well-protected. As if directed by some evil intelligence, the storm headed for that bay. It was impossible for the ships to escape by going out to sea; they were pinned.

On the day I heard the news, all Rome heard it too. Another fleet had been lost. Tavius, half drowned, made it to shore and shouted into the wind, “I will win this war even if Neptune doesn’t want me to!”
Then he stood for a long time looking into the bay, which was filled with the bodies of his dead soldiers.

I could not go out this time and smile and pretend nothing dreadful had happened. On many Roman streets one could hear the sounds of mothers wailing for their dead sons. The loss of life dwarfed the first defeat, and now it was disaster piled on disaster. This was a horror, and everyone knew it. I could not even say, as I could have the first time ships were lost, that this resulted from Tavius receiving bad advice. In turning into the bay he had followed his own instincts.

Some street poet, aware of
Tavius’s fondness for gambling, made up a ditty for the occasion. I never saw the wit in it but knew it was repeated everywhere.

He took a beating twice at sea,

And threw two fleets away.

And now to achieve one victory,

He tosses dice all day.