I Am Livia (46 page)

Antony would like to retire the way Lepidus did. As if I could turn my back on him as long as he breathes. Cleopatra assumes rightly that I cannot leave Antony alive. She deals for her own life, does not care what I do with Antony. Or pretends not to care. In any case, she is prepared to sacrifice him. I wonder, Livia, in similar circumstances, would you be prepared to sacrifice me? I’m a man of few illusions, but until recently I would have said nothing could shake your love for me. In this foul world, it was pleasant to believe in something.

I need a more compliant wife, and I need an heir. I find it amazing that you haven’t apologized for the way you spoke to me.

I got too used to you. I know that, because I find myself talking to you in my mind. Arguing. It’s good to be rid of you, because I gave you too much power. I think you bewitched me.

After my victory at Actium, you didn’t even write to congratulate me.

I’m surrounded by idiots here. The stupidity of soldiers is like no other stupidity on earth. Sometimes I think men are physically brave only because they lack imagination and cannot anticipate what a spear in their guts would feel like.

Why do I waste time writing to you? Probably I won’t even send this letter.

You could write and let me know how the children are.

How was I to answer such a letter? How, when in my heart I still cared for the man who wrote it; and when he was the most powerful human being on earth, and only a fool would deliberately provoke his enmity?

I composed a long letter in reply. Some fragments of what I wrote remain in my memory.

My dear Tavius, I was not sure you would welcome a letter from me, so I did not write before, but of course I do congratulate you on your
magnificent victory. The children are all in excellent health and send their greetings and their love.

I would not sacrifice you as Cleopatra would Antony, because compared to her I am foolishly sentimental, so much so that nothing will ever alter my love for you.

Nothing matters to me as much as the fact that you are alive and safe. Even your victory pales next to that. No doubt you consider that foolish, but Diana knows it is the truth.

You say I am not compliant. Of course that is so. If I promised to change, I doubt if you would believe me. I doubt if it is in my power to change.

I
fully understand your need for a wife who can give you an heir. We should think of each other with kindness and try to remember past happiness. Happiness is rare.

I crafted the letter carefully, to blun
t his anger, and yet it contained no lies. I could not bring myself to apologize for any words I had spoken to him, though perhaps a wiser woman would have. The sense of loss I felt was intense, but I had been living with that for some time. As for his need for a male heir, I did understand it. He was a monarch now. A monarch who has established rule over a vast empire needs, above all, a son.

“Now the golden age will come,” Maecenas had said, embracing me when first word came of Actium.

A cynic would say that he looked as overjoyed as any man would after learning he had bet on the right horse. But he would have stuck by Tavius to the death. And he did not hold grudges. My past unkind words had been quickly forgotten. Every day we worked together, shouldering the administrative tasks that needed to be done in Tavius’s absence.

“The golden age, don’t you think that’s aiming a bit high?” I said to him once.

Maecenas laughed. “You can call it a golden age, or just the best possible outcome to an extremely nasty political situation. Rome has survived. The energy that civil war drained now will go to better purposes. And the arts will flourish.”

Yes,
I thought,
I am sure under Tavius the arts will flourish
.

“It will be interesting to see,” I said in a distant voice.

A new era would begin. There would be another woman at Tavius’s side. And me? I began to think about a separate future, a golden age of my own.

News filtered out of Alexandria and eventually reached us in Rome. Cleopatra had massacred those leading citizens whose loyalty she doubted. Caesarion and Antyllus, seventeen and sixteen years old, had, in a public ceremony, been vested with the rights and duties of men, and enrolled in the Egyptian army, to bolster morale in the city.

“What is the point of all tha
t
?” Octavia said. “Of putting those boys in the army? Everyone knows Alexandria will soon fall.”

“Cleopatra will hold things together as long as she can,” I said.

At Actium, she had been the first of the enemy to flee. It was not cowardice but clear-eyed ruthlessness. She saw how it was going and sought to save what she could. Antony had followed after her, eventually boarding her vessel. They had abandoned their forces, leaving them to flounder and face defeat leaderless. She was as ruthless as ever now, holding on to power in her besieged city.

“If you were Cleopatra or Antony, would you let those boys come of age or bear arms?” Octavia asked me.

We sat in a box at the chariot races. The air was full of the smell of horses and manure.
We both felt an obligation to appear in public in Tavius’s stead, though neither of us took much interest in what happened on the racing track.

I shook my head. If Caesarion and Antyllus had been my sons, I would already have sent them running, to the ends of the earth. Away from Tavius.

“I like to think my brother has a conscience,” Octavia said. “He also has a legalistic turn of mind. I imagine he is relieved that those boys are now of age, bearing arms against him.”

“What’s the use of talking about this?” I said.

“Would you kill him? Caesarion? Would you be able to do it if you were Tavius?”

I watched the teams of horses parade onto the track and listened to the cheers. The race began. “If he lives—another Caesar—there is every chance there will eventually be another civil war. That would mean the undoing of everything Tavius has fought and labored for. The slaughter would not end.”

“And so you would be able to kill him in Tavius’s place?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “And I don’t wish to know.”

I looked at a team of white horses and another team of blacks, racing neck and neck, straining under their charioteer’s whips. They were very close together. Too close. Any moment, they might crash into each other. You would hear screams from the horses, shrieks from the spectators. Drivers might die.

“And Antyllus?” Octavia said. Her voice shook. “What will become of him?”

I said nothing.

“Don’t worry, I won’t weep out here in public.” Octavia let out a slow breath. “I ask myself, can I imagine Antyllus peacefully accepting Tavius’s victory, never lifting a hand to strike him down? Never trying to avenge Antony? If I can’t imagine that, then Tavius surely can’t.”

I saw acceptance mingled with the grief in her face. She had already given up hope for Antyllus, I think, and she talked of Antony as if he were already dead.

I had wanted to be part of the world I had first glimpsed as a girl through my father’s eyes, the world of men who wielded power. But had I known I was asking for a front-seat view of butchery? In some way I supposed I had, but the full emotional meaning had eluded me.
No more of this,
I thought.

“Inside myself, I weep for Antyllus, Livia, I weep
.
A
nd I wonder about the little children Antony has by Cleopatra. It is a risk to leave them alive.
Who knows, they might turn into enemies one day. I ask myself if my brother is capable of putting children to death because they could one day threaten him. And I don’t know the answer to that question. Do you?”

“No.”

In a low voice, Octavia said, “Sometimes I want to run away and hide where no news will ever reach me. Do you ever want to run away and hide?”

“No,” I said, “but often lately I picture in my mind a different sort of life. Sometimes a poor girl comes to me, desperate, and I give her a dowry so she can marry some decent fellow, and she comes back to show me the first baby. It makes me happy, as if the gods were smiling down at me. I feel that way when I look at Marcus. It is wonderful, isn’t it, that Marcus is an orphan, but he is still safe and loved?”

“Yes,” Octavia said. “That is wonderful.”

“I think I could have a good life with just my children—I never used to feel that way. Perhaps I’ll take in more orphan children. There are so many children left bereft, with no one to care for them. Maybe I will buy special country estates and send them there and have them reared and cared for. And I will visit and be like a mother to them. If I never bear another child, still I could bring up many children—a great many. Don’t you think that would be a pleasant way to live?”

Octavia studied me. “And what would Tavius think of you taking in more orphan children?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

I saw knowledge in her eyes at that moment. I expected her to say,
Your marriage to my brother is over, isn’t it?
But instead she said, “Livia, is it that you think Tavius will not come back to you? Or that you don’t want him back?”

I did not answer. I did not know the answer to this myself.

On the racetrack, one chariot crossed the finish line. Everyone cheered.