I Am Livia Page 5

  Antony came back to the city, intending to give a speech to the Senate denouncing young Caesar. But he got drunk and forgot about it. Then he announced that he would avenge Julius Caesar after all. He intended to attack Decimus Brutus in Gaul. He went marching off at the head of his legions. I wondered—was this the beginning of a civil war?

  Shortly after Antony’s departure, my father hosted a small dinner party, the first I ever attended at my parents’ home. I had a pleasant sense of my new status as an adult, as I reclined on a dining couch as a married woman should, instead of sitting, as I had always done before I was wed.

  Marcus Cicero came to this dinner. He was sixty-two years old, a plump, red-faced man with a wonderful, stentorian voice. He arrived alone. Everyone knew he had divorced the mother of his children to marry a fifteen-year-old heiress. Then he divorced this girl for quarreling with his beloved daughter Tullia, and for failing to mourn Tullia when she died in childbirth.

  Also at the dinner was young Caesar. He and I were next to each other at the table, he reclining alone, I sharing a couch with my husband. He smiled at me and said, “It’s good to see you again, Livia Drusilla.” He had a sheen about him, the look of a young man pleased with where life was taking him.

  “I’ve been hearing how you and Cicero have become wonderful friends,” I said. Everyone in Rome knew that these days they were often seen in each other’s company.

  “He’s become like a second father to me,” young Caesar said.

  That sounded as likely as pigs flying.

  “A third father,” I said. “Surely your great-uncle who adopted you was your second father.”

  He grinned. “Of course.”

  “You and Cicero have so much in common,” I said. “Naturally you would be friends.”

  “You flatter me.”

  I shook my head and sipped some wine.

  Young Caesar said in a low voice, not meant to be overheard by anyone, “Tell me, what exactly do you think Cicero and I have in common?”

  I had the impression he was testing me. If I simpered and spoke about admirable qualities they shared, he would be disappointed. I said, “What you and Cicero have in common is that you both hate Antony.”

  He asked in the same quiet voice, “And do you think that is sufficient basis for a friendship?”

  I considered the question. “Certainly. For a while.”

  The conversation became general, dominated by Cicero. He spoke about how the consuls who would be coming into office in the new year would go about raising legions to relieve Decimus Brutus. Young Caesar nodded at what Cicero said. I had the feeling the two of them had discussed this already.

  The strangeness of the situation struck me. Antony has gone to wreak revenge on Decimus, one of Caesar’s assassins. Caesar’s adopted son sits here, listening sympathetically to plans to protect Decimus from Antony’s wrath. Here he is with Cicero, who publicly lauded the assassins. With my father, the assassins’ ally. With my husband, who was Caesar’s officer but turned on him. Young Caesar smiles at them all, full of good cheer.

  What is he doing?

  “We have one other important matter to decide,” Cicero said. “An official office for our young friend.”

  “Is consul an option?” young Caesar asked.

  The law reserved the consulship, the most honored office in the Republic, to men at least forty-two years old with distinguished public careers behind them. Other than a dictator, no officeholder approached a consul in power. My father, when he heard this nineteen-year-old suggest he might become consul, looked as if he were about to choke.

  Father had invited Cicero and young Caesar to dinner because he had wished to sound them both out in a general way, and in particular to get a sense of the young man’s mind. Unfortunately, the conversation had already gone in a direction he did not like.

  “I must have the legal right to lead an army,” young Caesar said. “That is necessary.”

  “The idea of a private army is repugnant,” Father said.

  “I absolutely agree,” young Caesar said. “That’s why I want lawful authority. Surely Cicero has told you that I plan to put myself and my army at the Senate’s disposal. I am honored to be able to help protect the Republic from the likes of Antony. If I were at least a praetor—”

  “This is not the place to discuss this,” Father said. Striving for a pleasant tone, he glanced round at my mother and me and added, “We mustn’t bore my wife and daughter.”

  “I don’t think your honored wife, the lady Alfidia, looks bored,” young Caesar said. “And as for your daughter…I suspect Livia Drusilla finds this discussion quite interesting.”

  “Please forgive me, but you’re wrong,” I said. I was a loyal daughter. But I smiled at young Caesar to take some of the sting out of my words. “I’m afraid all this talk of offices and armies makes my head ache.”

  “Yes, please, do you think we might change the subject?” said Mother. Her apologetic smile looked painted on her face.

  “We’ll have to discuss this further, at a more appropriate time,” Father said.

  “I’m sorry to seem impetuous,” young Caesar said with gentle courtesy. “I hope you’ll at least give what I’ve said some thought.”

  “Of course,” Father said.

  All the life drained out of the dinner party. Young Caesar left as soon as he politely could. But in saying his farewells, he smiled at me as if we shared a private joke.

  As soon as young Caesar was out the door, Cicero said, “I suggest we make him propraetor.”

  Praetors ranked second to consuls; propraetors, of course, were praetors whose time in office had been extended. Propraetor as a title for a youth who had never held public office was, on the face of it, absurd.

  I felt a sudden, deep uneasiness. I sipped some wine. It went down my throat, cool and sweet, but did not soothe me.

  Father was staring at Cicero. “You can’t be serious.”

  “He would not, formally speaking, be a sitting magistrate.” Cicero leaned forward on his elbow. He was across from me at the table, his face turned toward my father. “We need young Caesar—or rather, we need the troops whose loyalty he can command—to protect us from Antony.”

  My husband spoke. “I’m not sure that Antony is the only threat.”

  Cicero turned his fierce eyes—wide, round eyes like an old owl’s—on Tiberius Nero. “Have you noticed who is marching at this moment to attack our friend Decimus Brutus? Antony should have died on the Ides of March. Antony! Antony! Antony!” Cicero slapped the table three times for emphasis. “Antony is the threat. All young Caesar wants from us is empty honors. Call him propraetor. Call him offspring of the god Apollo, for all I care.”

  “Call him propraetor, and you give him the legal authority to continue to enroll troops under his own banner and raise an even larger army,” Father said. “I don’t like it.” But he did not speak vehemently. I sensed he would go along with Cicero in the end, and I felt a cold tingle down my spine.

  “His army will be firmly under my control,” Cicero said. “That child was in a schoolroom in Rhodes a few months ago. He trails after me like a puppy. And he comes to us with purses full of money, and with that name Caesar, ready to rally Caesar’s soldiers and give us an army as a gift.”

  “One day he’ll no longer be nineteen,” Tiberius Nero said. “Give some thought to the long term.” Like my father he sounded only doubtful, not as if he were prepared to oppose Cicero.

  “Long term,” Cicero said. A grin settled on his face. It was not a pleasant grin. It made one aware of his yellowed teeth, of his sharp incisors. “Long term, young Caesar does not concern me.”

  I found myself remembering who this man Cicero was. Many saw him as the great champion of the Republic, but during his consulship he had executed a number of citizens. He said they were conspiring to ove
rthrow Republican rule, but some thought they were merely desperate men, agitating for debt relief. This took place before I was born, but I had heard about it from my father, who harbored some doubts about the rightness of Cicero’s action.

  “Long term, do you think I fear a sickly boy?” Cicero demanded. “We must use him for now. If one day he turns on us, we will know how to deal with him. Do you doubt whether you and I and all of us together are a match for him?”

  I doubt it. He is Julius Caesar’s adopted son, and the people and the army love him. They don’t love you. My heart pounded. The room seemed too warm. Maybe I had drunk more wine than I realized. I felt a compulsion to speak.

  It was frightening to feel sure I was seeing something my elders did not see, though it was right before their eyes. I knew—knew—they were miscalculating and that their miscalculation could spell disaster. The knowledge seemed too big for me to hold within myself. I could not contain it.

  Incredibly, I did not even soften my words with polite phrases. “You think because Caesar is young, he is a fool. But he’s no fool,” I said. Cicero looked at me, astonished. I stared into his owl eyes and went on, “My husband is an accomplished man twice his age, and he aspires to the praetorship and has yet to hold it. He is expected to wait patiently; it’s a great prize. Yet you’ll give Caesar the powers of a praetor. What is he giving you in return? Only promises to be guided by you. And you think you’re the one using him? You believe he has forgotten his adoptive father. You assume he doesn’t imagine avenging him. Do you think he is not capable of smiling and hiding his thoughts from you? Don’t you realize any little slave girl can do that much?”

  It was a longish speech, but no one interrupted me. I think everyone was too stunned, as if one of the vases on the side tables had started talking. I fell silent, realizing how far I had trespassed. I flushed.

  Before my marriage, if I had spoken to Cicero in this way in my mother’s presence, she would have dragged me off and beaten me. Now what I saw in her face was not anger so much as disbelief. She said nothing. The only person at the table who had the right to rebuke me before others was my husband. But he chuckled as if I had made some endearing youthful gaffe, took my hand, and kissed my palm.

  Cicero and my father did not respond to what I had said. Father was surely embarrassed into silence. For Cicero, it was as if I had not spoken at all.

  I was fifteen years old. I was a woman. Was it surprising that not one man at the table, not even my beloved father, truly heard a word I said? I had no grounds for surprise, but I felt humiliated. I went hot and cold. And then, I saw my fate. I would not be fifteen forever, but I always would be a woman. I imagined spending all my years having my words discounted.

  Father, Tiberius Nero, and Cicero continued to discuss giving young Caesar the title propraetor just as if I had not spoken. I could hardly bear to listen to them; I tried to withdraw to a place within my own mind. Then something that Cicero said jolted me and brought all my attention back to the conversation.

  “I tell you, the boy must be praised, honored, and”—Cicero made a little waving motion with his hand, pointing at the ceiling, and raising his eyes piously upward—“elevated!”

  Tiberius Nero laughed. My father had the grace to look repelled.

  Maybe Cicero only meant that Caesar was to be first flattered and utilized, and then in due time stripped of power. But reclining across from the man, taking in his smug and predatory smile, I felt he intended something far worse. I flinched at the thought of young Caesar someday finding himself at the mercy of this duplicitous old man.

  The girl who heard Cicero’s famous jibe was not made of ice. Rather, my sympathies went every which way. I was still so tender, I wanted to protect everyone. I wanted to protect Father and his friends from young Caesar’s betrayal. I wanted to protect that handsome boy, Caesar Octavianus, from the savagery I heard in Cicero’s jest. If Mark Antony had made an appearance at dinner, perhaps my sympathy would have flowed even in his direction, and I would have wanted to protect him too.

  When Tiberius Nero and I went home that evening, he commented on what I had said to Cicero. “You’re perfectly right,” he said. “I ought to be praetor by now. If they think they can give praetorian powers to a mere adolescent and go on passing me over, they’re wrong. The next time I see Cicero I’m going to tell him so.” He nuzzled my neck and carried me off to bed.

  The next morning, I went to visit a dressmaker in the market district. I traveled by litter, my personal maid Pelia, a Greek girl, sitting beside me. The litter was roomy, the cushions and the curtains yellow silk. The six bearers had been chosen for both their strength and their looks, and they matched, all being olive-skinned and dark-haired. No elegant lady would have bearers who did not match.

  As I leaned back against my silk cushions, with Pelia waving a peacock feather fan to keep me cool, I tried not to think about last evening’s dinner.

  “Oh, stop fanning me,” I said to Pelia. “Heaven knows, it doesn’t make it any cooler. Are we near the dressmaker’s yet?” I pulled the curtain of the litter aside and looked out. A thrill of surprise went through me.

  There, on the crowded market street, young Caesar came walking along, his fair hair shining in the sunlight. He was flanked by two other well-dressed young men, who I supposed were his friends, and trailed by a knot of servants.

  I would ask myself afterward why I did what I did then. Certainly I felt a pull of attraction and a nudge of sympathy. Maybe Caesar’s youth called to me because I was also young. I would not have sought Caesar out, but now, seeing him, I acted on impulse. I ordered my litter bearers to stop and said to Pelia, “That young man—” I pointed. “Run and tell him that the lady Livia Drusilla would like a word with him.”

  She jumped out of the litter and did my bidding. When Caesar came walking back with her, he looked rather grim, but I did not stop to wonder why that was.

  “Last night, at dinner, after you left—” I spoke in a whisper because I did not want the litter bearers to hear. I knew I could secure Pelia’s silence, but I did not trust them.

  “Last night?” Caesar said. He leaned close to hear, so close his nose was almost through the parted curtain.

  “There was talk about you—your future. And Cicero said something.” I repeated the words and made the little gesture Cicero had used, pointing upward.

  Even as I spoke, I feared that Caesar would look at me as if I were a fool and say, So what? Praised, honored, elevated? What could be better?

  But he did not. “Elevated?” he said. “You heard the way he spoke. What do you think he meant by that word?”

  “I can’t be certain if he meant removed from power or…”

  “From this earth?”

  “It could be dangerous for you to trust him.”

  “There could never be any question of my trusting him. But ‘the boy must be praised, honored, and elevated’? Those were his exact words?” Caesar shook his head. “And here I thought he was getting to like me a little. But obviously, he has no liking for me at all.” He added in a hard voice, “And what’s more, he has no respect.”

  I noticed only at that moment the change in Caesar’s appearance. The evening before, he had looked positively blithe. Now his eyes were bloodshot, and there was tension and pain in his features. “Something else has happened, hasn’t it?” I said. “Something bad?”

  “My mother died suddenly last night.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry.”

  He looked away. “She always worried about me. Too much. I think worry helped kill her.” He shifted his focus back to me. “Thank you for what you just told me. Did I say that already? I’m a little distracted. But thank you.”

  The implications of what I had done pressed in on me. I reached out and gripped his hand. “I don’t ask for thanks.” I kept my voice down. “But please, promise me no one will ever know I to
ld you what Cicero said.”

  “I promise.” He added, “You can take my word.”

  “I know I can take your word.” Somehow I did.

  “I would value your friendship.”

  There was a world of meaning in how he said the word “friendship.” Oh, no romantic meaning, which was how some women might have heard it. I released his hand, as quickly as if it had burnt my fingers. “I won’t be your spy.”

  He nodded, unsurprised.

  “The truth is, I can’t be your friend.” These words stuck in my throat.

  His mouth tightened. “I understand. Obviously your loyalties lie elsewhere.”

  My loyalties. Yes, I had loyalties. But I had betrayed them, betrayed the confidence of Cicero, who was my father’s ally. It amounted to a betrayal of my father. I felt disbelief at what I had done just moments before, and I almost blamed Caesar for it, as if he had exerted some iniquitous pull on me. But the fault was mine. I was drawn to him, and should not be. I raised my hands and covered my face, shaken and ashamed.

  “Livia Drusilla, what’s wrong?”

  I lowered my hands. “I regret what I’ve done. I owe my father every loyalty.”

  He nodded, and said in a bleak voice, “Of course. Loyalty to your own blood is the foundation of all virtue.” Then he smiled faintly. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. After all, your motives were good, weren’t they? Just pure kindness?”

  I did not answer.

  “My mother was so kind,” he said. “I’ve been feeling today as if most of the kindness has gone out of the world. For me, anyway. In general, women are much kinder than men. No man living would have brought me a warning about Cicero and asked nothing in return.”

  “No?” I said.

  “Don’t you realize that?” He shook his head, as one might over the simplicity of a child. “Livia Drusilla, I’ve been keeping you here talking, but sooner or later someone may notice, and that could be awkward for you. So in a moment I’ll say farewell and walk away. But I want you to know that I never forget a favor or an injury, and I make it a practice to pay both back with interest. Thank you for the kindness you just did me. Maybe you won’t end up regretting it after all.”