Читать книгу Antony and Cleopatra - Колин Маккалоу, Colleen McCullough - Страница 14

SIX

She looked so old and tired, his beloved Lady Roma. From where he stood at the top of the Velia, Octavian could see down into the Forum Romanum and beyond it to the Capitoline Mount; if he turned to face the other way, he could look across the swamps of the Palus Ceroliae all the way along the Sacra Via to the Servian Walls.

Octavian loved Rome with a fierce passion alien to his nature, which tended to be cool and detached. But Goddess Roma, he believed, had no rival on the face of the globe. How he hated to hear this one say that Athens outshone her as the sun does the moon, hear that one say that Pergamum on its heights was far lovelier, hear another say that Alexandria made her look like a Gallic oppidum! Was it her fault that her temples were decayed, her public buildings grimy, her squares and gardens neglected? No, the fault lay with the men who governed in her name, for they cared more about their reputations than they did about hers, who made them. She deserved better, and if he had anything to do with it, she would receive better. Of course there were exceptions: Caesar’s glorious Basilica Julia, the masterpiece that was his Forum, the Basilica Aemilia, Sulla’s Tabularium. But, even on the Capitol, temples as grand as Juno Moneta were in sad need of fresh paint. From the eggs and dolphins of the Circus Maximus to the shrines and fountains of the crossroads, poor Goddess Roma was shabby, a gentlewoman in decline.

If we only had one-tenth of the money Romans have squandered on warring against each other, Roma would be unparalleled for beauty, Octavian thought. Where does it go, all that money? A question that had occurred to him often, and to which he had only an approximate answer, an educated guess: into the purses of the soldiers to be spent on useless things or hoarded according to their natures; into the purses of manufacturers and merchants who took their profits from warmongering; into the purses of foreigners; and into the purses of the very men who waged the wars. But if that last is true, he wondered, why did I not make any profit?

Look at Marcus Antonius, his thoughts went on. He has stolen hundreds of millions, more of them to keep up his hedonistic lifestyle than to pay his legions. And how many millions has he given away to his so-called friends in order to look like a big man? Oh, I have stolen too – I got away with Caesar’s war chest. If I had not, I would be dead today. But, unlike Antonius, I never give a brass farthing away. What I disburse from my hidden treasure-trove I expect to see put to good use, as in paying my army of agents. I cannot survive without my agents. The tragedy is that none of it dare I spend on Roma herself. Most of it goes to pay the legions’ massive bonuses. A bottomless pit that perhaps has only one real asset: it distributes personal wealth more equally than in the old days when the plutocrats could be numbered on the fingers of both hands, and the soldiers didn’t have enough income to belong even to the Fifth Class. That’s not true anymore.

The vista of the Forum blurred as his eyes filled with tears. Caesar, oh, Caesar! What might I have learned if you had lived? It was Antonius enabled them to kill you – he was a part of the plot, I know it in my bones. Believing that he was Caesar’s heir and urgently needing Caesar’s vast fortune, he succumbed to the blandishments of Trebonius and Decimus Brutus. The other Brutus and Cassius were nothings, mere figureheads. Like many before him, Antonius hungers to be the First Man in Rome. Were I not here, he would be. But I am here, and he’s afraid that I will usurp that title as well as Caesar’s name, Caesar’s money. He’s right to be afraid. Caesar the God – Divus Julius – is on my side. If Rome is to prosper, I must win this struggle! Yet I have vowed never to go to war against Antonius, and I will keep that vow.

The zephyr breeze of early summer stirred his mass of bright gold hair; people noticed it first, then noticed the identity of its owner. They stared, usually with a scowl. As the Triumvir present in Rome, it was he who got most of the blame for the hard times – expensive bread, monotonous supplementary foods, high rents, empty purses. But to every scowl he returned Caesar’s smile, a thing so powerful that the scowls became answering smiles.

Though even in Rome Antonius liked to strut around in armor, Octavian always wore his purple-bordered toga; in it he looked small, slight, graceful. The days when he had worn boots with platform soles were gone. Rome now knew him as Caesar’s heir beyond doubt, and many called him what he called himself – Divi Filius, the son of a god. It remained his greatest advantage, even in the face of his unpopularity. Men might scowl and mutter, but mamas and grannies cooed and gushed; Octavian was too clever a politician to discount the impact of mamas and grannies.

From the Velia he walked through the lichen-whiskered ancient pillars of the Porta Mugonia and ascended the Palatine Mount at its less fashionable end. His house had once belonged to the famous advocate Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, Cicero’s rival in the courts. Antonius had blamed the son for the death of his brother Gaius, and had him proscribed. Which didn’t worry young Hortensius, dead in Macedonia, his corpse thrown on Gaius Antonius’s monument. Like most of Rome, Octavian was well aware that Gaius Antonius had been so incompetent that his demise had been a positive blessing.

The domus Hortensia was a very big and luxurious house, though not the size of Pompey the Great’s palace on the Carinae. That, Antonius had snaffled; when Caesar learned of it, he made his cousin pay for it. Upon Caesar’s death, the payments stopped. But Octavian hadn’t wanted a house ostentatious enough to be called a palace, just wanted something large enough to function as offices as well as residence. The domus Hortensia had been knocked down to him at the proscription auctions for two million sesterces, a fraction of its real value. That kind of thing happened often at the proscription auctions, when so much first-class property was sold at one and the same moment.

At the fashionable end of the Palatine, all the crowded houses vied for views of the Forum Romanum, but Hortensius hadn’t cared about outlook. He cared about space. A noted fish fancier, he had huge ponds devoted to gold and silver carp, and grounds and gardens more usual in villas outside the Servian Walls, like the palace Caesar had built for Cleopatra under the Janiculan Hill. Its grounds and gardens were legendary.

The domus Hortensia stood atop a fifty-foot cliff overlooking the Circus Maximus, where on days of parades or chariot races over a hundred and fifty thousand Roman citizens jammed its bleachers to marvel and cheer. Sparing the circus no glance, Octavian entered his house through the garden and ponds behind it, proceeding into a vast reception room that Hortensius had never used, so infirm was he when he added it on.

Octavian liked the house’s design, for the kitchens and the servants’ quarters were off to one side in a separate structure that contained latrines and baths for servile use. The baths and latrines for the owner, his family and guests were inside the main pile and made of priceless marbles. Like most such on the Palatine, they were situated above an underground stream that fed into the immense sewers of the Cloaca Maxima. To Octavian, they were a main reason for his purchasing this domus; he was the most private of persons, especially when it came to voiding his bowels and bladder. No one must see, no one must hear! As was true when he bathed, at least once each day. Thus military campaigns were a torment only made bearable by Agrippa, who contrived to give him privacy whenever possible. Quite why he felt so strongly about this, Octavian didn’t know, as he was well made; save that, without properly arranged clothes, men were vulnerable.

His valet met him, signalling anxiety; Octavian hated the slightest mark on tunic or toga, which made life hard for the man, perpetually busy with chalk and clear vinegar.

‘Yes, you can have the toga,’ he said absently, shed it, and walked out into an internal peristyle garden that had the finest fountain in Rome, of rearing horses with fish’s tails, Amphitryon riding a shell chariot. The painting was exquisite, so lifelike that the water god’s weedy hair glimmered and glowered greenish, his skin a network of tiny, silvery scales. The sculpture sat in the middle of a round pool whose pale green marble had cost Hortensius ten talents to buy from the new quarries at Carrara.

Through a pair of bronze doors bearing scenes of Lapiths and centaurs in bas relief, Octavian entered a hall that had his study to one side and the dining room to the other. Thence he passed into a huge atrium whose impluvium pool beneath the complu-vium in the roof shimmered mirrorlike from an overhead sun. And finally through another pair of bronze doors he came onto the loggia, a vast open-air balcony. Hortensius had liked the idea of an arbor as shelter from strong sun, and erected a series of struts over part of the area, then planted grapevines to train over them. With the years they had festooned the frame into a dappled haven, pendant at this season with dangling bunches of pale green beads.

Four men sat in big chairs around a low table, with a fifth chair vacant to complete the circle. Two jugs and a number of beakers sat on the table, of plain Arvernian pottery – no golden goblets or Alexandrian glass flagons for Octavian! The water jug was bigger than the wine one, which held a very light, sparkling white vintage from Alba Fucentia. No connoisseur of oenological bent would have sniffed contemptuously at this wine, for Octavian liked to serve the best of everything. What he disliked were extravagance and imported anythings. The produce of Italia, he was fond of telling those prepared to listen, was superlative, so why play the snob by flaunting wines from Chios, rugs from Miletus, wools dyed in Hierapolis, tapestries from Corduba?

Cat-footed, Octavian gave no warning of his advent, and stood in the doorway for a moment to observe them; his ‘council of elders’, as Maecenas called them, punning on the fact that Quintus Salvidienus, at thirty-one, was the oldest of the group. To these four men – and to them alone – did Octavian voice his thoughts; though not all his thoughts. That privilege was reserved for Agrippa, his coeval and spiritual brother.

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, aged twenty-two, was everything a Roman nobleman ought to be in looks. He was as tall as Caesar had been, heavily muscled in a lean way, and possessed of an unusual yet handsome face whose brows beetled below a shelf of forehead and whose strong chin was tucked firmly beneath a stern mouth. Discovering that his deep-set eyes were hazel was difficult thanks to the bristling brows obscuring them. Yet Agrippa’s birth was so low that a Tiberius Claudius Nero sneered – who had ever heard of a family named Vipsanius? Samnite, if not Apulian or Calabrian. Italian scum at any rate. Only Octavian fully appreciated the depth and breadth of his intellect, which ran to the generaling of armies, the building of bridges and aqueducts, the invention of gadgets and tools to make labor easier. This year he was Rome’s urban praetor, responsible for all civil law suits and the apportioning of criminal cases to the various courts. A heavy job, but not heavy enough to satisfy Agrippa, who had also taken on some of the duties of the aediles. These worthies were supposed to care for Rome’s buildings and services; apostrophizing them as a scabby lot of idlers, he had assumed authority over the water supply and sewerage, much to the dismay of the companies that the city contracted to run them. He talked seriously of doing things to prevent the sewers backing up whenever the Tiber flooded, but feared it would not happen this year, as it necessitated a thorough mapping of many miles of sewers and drains. However, he had managed to get some action on the Aqua Marcia, the best of Rome’s existing aqueducts, and was constructing a new one, the Aqua Julia. Rome’s water supply was the best in the world, but the city’s population was increasing and time was running out.

He was Octavian’s man to the death, not blindly loyal but insight-fully so; he knew Octavian’s weaknesses as well as his strengths, and suffered for him as Octavian never suffered for himself. There could be no question of ambition. Unlike almost all New Men, Agrippa truly understood to the core of his being that it was Octavian, with the birth, who must retain ascendancy. His was the role of fides Achates, and he would always be there for Octavian … who would elevate him far beyond his true social status: what better fate than to be the Second Man in Rome? For Agrippa, that was more than any New Man deserved.

Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, aged thirty, was an Etruscan of the oldest blood; his family were the lords of Arretium, a busy river port on the bend of the Arnus where the Annian, Cassian and Clodian roads met as they traveled from Rome to Italian Gaul. For reasons best known to himself, he had dropped his family name, Cilnius, and called himself plain Gaius Maecenas. His love of the finer things in life showed in his softly plump physique, though he could, when push came to shove, undertake grueling journeys on Octavian’s behalf. The face was a trifle froglike, for his pale blue eyes had a tendency to pop out – exophthalmia, the Greeks called it.

A famous wit and raconteur, he had a mind as broad and deep as Agrippa’s, but in a different way; Maecenas loved literature, art, philosophy, rhetoric, and collected not antique pots but new poets. As Agrippa jokingly observed, he couldn’t general a bun fight in a brothel, but he did know how to stop one. A smoother, more persuasive talker than Maecenas no one had yet found, nor a man more suited for scheming and plotting in the shadows behind the curule chair. Like Agrippa, he had reconciled himself to Octavian’s ascendancy, though his motives were not as pure as Agrippa’s. Maecenas was a grey eminence, a diplomat, a dealer in men’s fates. He could spot a useful flaw in a trice and insert his sweet words painlessly into the weakness to produce a wound worse than any dagger could make. Dangerous, was Maecenas.

Quintus Salvidienus was a man from Picenum, that nest of demagogues and political nuisances that had bred such luminaries as Pompey the Great and Titus Labienus. But he hadn’t won his laurels in the Forum Romanum; his were earned on the battlefield, where he excelled. Fine-looking in the face and body, he had a thatch of bright red hair that had given him his cognomen, Rufus, and shrewd, far-sighted blue eyes. Inside himself he cherished high ambitions, and had tied his career to the tail of Octavian’s comet as the quickest way to the top. From time to time the Picentine vice stirred in him, which was to contemplate changing sides if it seemed prudent to do so. Salvidienus had no intention of ending on a losing side, and wondered sometimes if Octavian really had what it took to win the coming struggle. Of gratitude he had little, of loyalty none, but he had hidden these so successfully that Octavian, for one, did not dream that they existed in him. His guard was good, but there were occasions when he wondered if Agrippa suspected, so, whenever Agrippa was present, he watched what he said and did closely. As for Maecenas – who knew what that oily aristocrat sensed?

Titus Statilius Taurus, aged twenty-seven, was the least man among them, and therefore knew the least about Octavian’s ideas and plans. Another military man, he looked what he was, being tall, solidly built and rather beaten around the face – a swollen left ear, scarred left brow and cheek, broken nose. Yet he was, withal, a handsome man with wheat-colored hair, grey eyes, and an easy smile that belied his reputation as a martinet when he commanded legions. He had a horror of homosexuality and would not have anyone so inclined under his authority, no matter how well born. As a soldier he was inferior to Agrippa and Salvidienus, but not by much; what he lacked was their genius for improvisation. Of his loyalty there was no doubt, chiefly because Octavian dazzled him; the undeniable talents and brilliance of Agrippa, Salvidienus and Maecenas were as nothing compared to the extraordinary mind of Caesar’s heir.

‘Greetings,’ said Octavian, going to the vacant chair.

Agrippa smiled. ‘Where have you been? Making eyes at Lady Roma? Forum or Mons Aventinus?’

‘Forum.’ Octavian poured water and drank it thirstily, then sighed. ‘I was planning what to do when I have the money to set Lady Roma to rights.’

‘Planning is all it can be,’ said Maecenas wryly.

‘True. Still, Gaius, nothing is wasted. What plans I make now don’t have to be made later. Have we heard what our consul Pollio is up to? Ventidius?’

‘Skulking in eastern Italian Gaul,’ Maecenas said. ‘Rumor has it that shortly they’ll be marching down the Adriatic coast to help Antonius land his legions, which are clustered around Apollonia. Between Pollio’s seven, Ventidius’s seven and the ten Antonius has with him, we’re in for a terrible drubbing.’

‘I will not go to war against Antonius!’ Octavian cried.

‘You won’t need to,’ said Agrippa with a grin. ‘Their men won’t fight ours, on that I’d stake my life.’

‘I agree,’ said Salvidienus. ‘The men have had a gut-full of wars they don’t understand. What’s the difference to them between Caesar’s nephew and Caesar’s cousin? Once they belonged to Caesar himself, that’s all they remember. Thanks to Caesar’s habit of shifting his soldiers around to plump out this legion or thin down that legion, they identify with Caesar, not a unit.’

‘They mutinied,’ Maecenas said, voice hard.

‘Only the Ninth can be said to have mutinied directly against Caesar, thanks to a dozen corrupt centurions in the pay of Pompeius Magnus’s cronies. For the rest, blame Antonius. He put them up to it, no one else! He kept their centurions drunk and bought their spokesmen. He worked on them!’ Agrippa said contemptuously. ‘Antonius is a mischief maker, not a political genius. He lacks any subtlety. Why else is he even thinking of landing his men in Italia? It makes no sense! Have you declared war on him? Has Lepidus? He’s doing it because he’s afraid of you.’

‘Antonius is no bigger a mischief maker than Sextus Pompeius Magnus Pius, to give him his full name,’ said Maecenas, and laughed. ‘I hear that Sextus sent tata-in-law Libo to Athens to ask Antonius to join him in crushing you.’

‘How do you know that?’ Octavian demanded, sitting upright.

‘Like Ulysses, I have spies everywhere.’

‘So do I, but it’s news to me. What did Antonius answer?’

‘A sort of a no. No official alliance, but he won’t impede Sextus’s activities, provided they’re directed at you.’

‘How considerate of him.’ The extraordinarily beautiful face puckered, the eyes looked strained. ‘As well, then, that I took it upon myself to give Lepidus six legions and send him off to govern Africa. Has Antonius heard of that yet? My agents say no.’

‘So do mine,’ Maecenas said. ‘Antonius won’t be pleased, Caesar, so much is sure. Once Fango was killed, Antonius thought he had Africa in the sinus of his toga. I mean, who counts Lepidus? But now that the new governor is dead too, Lepidus will walk in. With Africa’s four legions and the six he took there with him, Lepidus has become a strong player in the game.’

‘I am aware of that!’ Octavian snapped, nettled. ‘However, Lepidus loathes Antonius far more than he loathes me. He’ll send Italia grain this autumn.’

‘With Sardinia gone, we’re going to need it,’ said Taurus.

Octavian looked at Agrippa. ‘Since we have no ships, we have to start building some. Agrippa, I want you to doff your insignia of office and go on a journey all the way around the peninsula from Tergeste to Liguria. You’ll be commissioning good stout war galleys. To beat Sextus, we need fleets.’

‘How do we pay for them, Caesar?’ Agrippa asked.

‘With the last of the planks.’

A cryptic reply that meant nothing to the other three, but was crystal clear to Agrippa, who nodded. ‘Planks’ was the codeword Octavian and Agrippa employed when they spoke of Caesar’s war chest.

‘Libo returned to Sextus empty-handed, and Sextus took—er—umbrage. Not sufficient umbrage to plague Antonius, but umbrage nonetheless,’ Maecenas said. ‘Libo didn’t like Antonius any better in Athens than he had in other places, therefore Libo is now an enemy dropping poison about Antonius in Sextus’s ear.’

‘What particularly piqued Libo?’ Octavian asked curiously.

‘With Fulvia gone, I think he had rather hoped to secure a third husband for his sister. What cleverer way to cement an alliance than a marriage? Poor Libo! My spies say he baited his hook with great variety. But the subject never came up, and Libo sailed back to Agrigentum a disappointed man.’

‘Hmmm.’ The golden brows knotted, the thick fair lashes came down over Octavian’s remarkable eyes. Suddenly he slapped both hands upon his knees and looked determined. ‘Maecenas, pack your things! You’re off to Agrigentum to see Sextus and Libo.’

‘With what purpose?’ Maecenas asked, misliking the mission.

‘Your purpose is to make a truce with Sextus that enables Italia to have grain this autumn, and for a reasonable price. You will do whatever is necessary to achieve that end, is that understood?’

‘Even if there’s a marriage involved?’

‘Even if.’

‘She’s in her thirties, Caesar. There’s a daughter, Cornelia, almost old enough for marriage.’

‘I don’t care how old Libo’s sister is! All women are the same from the waist down, so what does age matter? At least she won’t have the taint of a strumpet like Fulvia on her.’

No one commented upon the fact that, after two years, Fulvia’s daughter had been sent back to her virgo intacta. Octavian had married the girl to appease Antony, but had never slept with her. However, that couldn’t happen with Libo’s sister. Octavian would have to sleep with her, preferably fruitfully. In all things of the flesh he was as big a prude as Cato the Censor, so pray that Scribonia was neither ugly nor licentious. Everyone looked at the floor of tessellated tiles and pretended to be deaf, dumb, blind.

‘What if Antonius attempts to land in Brundisium?’ Salvidienus asked, to change the subject a little.

‘Brundisium is fortified within an inch of its life; he won’t get a single troop transport past the harbor chain,’ Agrippa said. ‘I supervised the fortification of Brundisium myself, you know that, Salvidienus.’

‘There are other places he can land.’

‘And undoubtedly will, but with all those troops?’ Octavian looked tranquil. ‘However, Maecenas, I want you back from Agrigentum in a tearing hurry.’

‘The winds are against,’ Maecenas said, sounding desolate. Who needed to spend any part of summer in a cesspit like Sextus Pompey’s Sicilian township of Agrigentum?

‘All the better to bring you home quickly. As for getting there – row! Take a gig to Puteoli and hire the fastest ship and the best oarsmen you can find. Pay them double their going rate. Now, Maecenas, now!’

And so the group broke up; only Agrippa stayed.

‘What’s your latest count on the number of legions we have to oppose Antonius?’

‘Ten, Caesar. Though it wouldn’t matter if all we had were three or four. Neither side will fight. I keep saying it, but every ear is deaf except yours and Salvidienus’s.’

‘I heard you because in that fact lies our salvation. I refuse to believe I’m beaten,’ Octavian said. He sighed, smiled ruefully. ‘Oh, Agrippa, I hope this woman of Libo’s is bearable! I haven’t had much luck with wives.’

‘They’ve been someone else’s choice, no more than political expedients. One day, Caesar, you’ll choose a woman for yourself, and she won’t be a Servilia Vatia or a Clodia. Or, I suspect, a Scribonia Libone, if the deal with Sextus comes off.’ Agrippa cleared his throat, looked uneasy. ‘Maecenas knew, but has left me to tell you the news from Athens.’

‘News? What news?’

‘Fulvia opened her veins.’

For a long moment Octavian said nothing, just stared at the Circus Maximus so fixedly that Agrippa fancied he had gone away to some place beyond this world. A mass of contradictions, was Caesar. Even in his mind, Agrippa never thought of him as Octavianus; he had been the first person to call Octavian by his adopted name, though now all his adherents did. No one could be colder, or harder, or more ruthless; yet, it was plain to see, looking at him now, that he was grieving for Fulvia, a woman he had loathed.

‘She was a part of Rome’s history,’ Octavian finally said, ‘and she deserved a better end. Have her ashes come home? Does she have a tomb?’

‘To my knowledge, no on both counts.’

Octavian got up. ‘I shall speak to Atticus. Between us, we will give her a proper burial, as befits her station. Aren’t her children by Antonius quite young?’

‘Antyllus is five, Iullus is two.’

‘Then I’ll ask my sister to keep an eye on them. Three of her own aren’t enough for Octavia, she’s always got someone else’s children in her care.’

Including, thought Agrippa grimly, your half-sister, Marcia. I will never forget that day on the heights of Petra when we were on our way to meet Brutus and Cassius – Gaius sitting with the tears streaming down his face, mourning the death of his mother. But she isn’t dead! She’s the wife of his stepbrother, Lucius Marcius Philippus. Another one of his contradictions, that he can grieve for Fulvia, while pretending that his mother doesn’t exist. Oh, I know why. She had only donned her widow’s weeds for a month when she began an affair with her stepson. That might have been hushed up, had she not become pregnant. He’d had a letter from his sister that day in Petra, begging him to understand their mother’s plight. But he wouldn’t. To him, Atia was a whore, an immoral woman not worthy to be the mother of a god’s son. So he forced Atia and Philippus to retire to Philippus’s villa at Misenum, and forbade them to enter Rome. An edict he has never lifted, though Atia is ill and her baby girl a permanent member of Octavia’s nursery. One day it will all come back to haunt him, though he cannot see that, anymore than he has ever laid eyes on his half-sister. A beautiful child, fair as any Julian, for all that her father is so dark.

Then came a letter from Further Gaul that put all thought of Antony or his dead wife out of Octavian’s mind, and postponed the date of a marriage Maecenas was busy arranging for him in Agrigentum.

‘Esteemed Caesar,’ it said, ‘I write to inform you that my beloved father, Quintus Fufius Calenus, has died in Narbo. He was fifty-nine years old, I know, but his health was good. Then he fell down dead. It was over in a moment. As his chief legate, I now have charge of the eleven legions stationed throughout Further Gaul: four in Agedincum, four in Narbo, and three in Glanum. At this time the Gauls are quiet, my father having put down a revolt among the Aquitani last year, but I quail to think what might yet happen if the Gauls get wind of my command and inexperience. I felt it right to inform you rather than Marcus Antonius, though the Gauls belong to him. He is so far away. Please send me a new governor, one with the necessary military skills to keep the peace here. Preferably quickly, as I would like to bring my father’s ashes back to Rome in person.’

Octavian read and reread the rather bald communication, his heart fluttering in his chest. For once, happy flutterings. At last a twist of fate that favored him! Who could ever have believed that Calenus would die?

He sent for Agrippa, busy winding up his tenure of the urban praetorship so that he could travel for long periods; the urban praetor could not be absent from Rome for more than ten days.

‘Forget the odds and ends!’ Octavian cried, handing him the letter. ‘Read this and rejoice!’

‘Eleven veteran legions!’ Agrippa breathed, understanding the import immediately. ‘You have to reach Narbo before Pollio and Ventidius beat you to it. They have fewer miles to cover, so pray the news doesn’t find them quickly. Young Calenus isn’t his father’s bootlace, if this is anything to go by.’ Agrippa waved the sheet of paper. ‘Imagine it, Caesar! Further Gaul is about to drop into your lap without a pilum raised in anger.’

‘We take Salvidienus with us,’ Octavian said.

‘Is that wise?’

The grey eyes looked startled. ‘What makes you question my wisdom in this?’

‘Nothing I can put a finger on, except that governing Further Gaul is a great command. Salvidienus might let it go to his head. At least I presume that you mean to give him the command?’

‘Would you rather have it? It’s yours if you want it.’

‘No, Caesar, I don’t want it. Too far from Italia and you.’ He sighed, shrugged in a defeated way. ‘I can’t think of anyone else. Taurus is too young, the rest you can’t trust to deal smartly with the Bellovaci or the Suebi.’

‘Salvidienus will be fine,’ Octavian said confidently, and patted his dearest friend on the arm. ‘We’ll start for Further Gaul at dawn tomorrow, and we’ll travel the way my father the god did – four-mule gigs at the gallop. That means the Via Aemilia and the Via Domitia. To make sure we have no trouble commandeering fresh mules often enough, we’ll take a squadron of German cavalry.’

‘You ought to have a full-time bodyguard, Caesar.’

‘Not now, I’m too busy. Besides, I don’t have the money.’

Agrippa gone, Octavian walked across the Palatine to the Clivus Victoriae and the domus of Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor, who was his brother-in-law. An inadequate and indecisive consul in the year that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, Marcellus was the brother and first cousin of two men whose hatred of Caesar had been beyond reason. He had skulked in Italy while Caesar fought the war against Pompey the Great, and had been rewarded after Caesar won with the hand of Octavia. For Marcellus the union was a mixture of love and expedience; a marriage tie to Caesar’s family meant protection for himself and the massive Claudius Marcellus fortune, now all his. And he truly did love his bride, a priceless jewel. Octavia had borne him a girl, Marcella Major, a boy whom everyone called Marcellus, and a second girl, Marcella Minor, who was known as Cellina.

The house was preternaturally quiet. Marcellus was very ill, ill enough that his ordinarily gentle wife had issued iron instructions about servant chatter and clatter.

‘How is he?’ Octavian asked his sister, kissing her cheek.

‘It’s only a matter of days, the physicians say. The growth is extremely malignant, it’s eating up his insides voraciously.’

The large aquamarine eyes brimmed with tears that only fell to soak her pillow after she retired. She genuinely loved this man whom her stepfather had chosen for her with her brother’s full approval; the Claudii Marcelli were not patricians, but of very old and noble plebeian stock, which had made Marcellus Minor a suitable husband for a Julian woman. It had been Caesar who hadn’t liked him, Caesar who at first had disapproved of the match.

Her beauty grew ever greater, her brother thought, wishing he could share her sorrow. For though he had consented to the marriage, he had never really taken to the man who possessed his beloved Octavia. Besides, he had plans, and the death of Marcellus Minor was likely to further them. Octavia would get over her loss. Four years older than he, she had the Julian look: golden hair, eyes with blue in them, high cheekbones, a lovely mouth, and an expression of radiant calmness that drew people to her. More importantly, she had a full measure of the famous gift meted out to most Julian women: she made her men happy.

Cellina was newborn and Octavia was nursing the babe herself, a joy she wouldn’t relinquish to a wet nurse. But it meant that she hardly ever went out, and often had to absent herself from the presence of visitors. Like her brother, Octavia was modest to the point of prudishness, would not bare her breast to give her child milk in front of any man except her husband. Yet one more reason why Octavian loved her. To him, she was Goddess Roma personified and, when he was undisputed master of Rome, he intended to erect statues of her in public places, an honor not accorded to women.

‘May I see Marcellus?’ Octavian asked.

‘He says no visitors, even you.’ Her face twisted. ‘It’s pride, Caesar, the pride of a scrupulous man. His room smells, no matter how hard the servants scrub, or how many sticks of incense I burn. The physicians call it the smell of death and say it’s ineradicable.’

He took her into his arms, kissed her hair. ‘Dearest sister, is there anything I can do?’

‘Nothing, Caesar. You comfort me, but nothing comforts him.’

No use for it; he would have to be brutal. ‘I must go far away for at least a month,’ he said.

She gasped. ‘Oh! Must you? He can’t last half a month!’

‘Yes, I must.’

‘Who will arrange the funeral? Find an undertaker? Find the right man to give the eulogy? Our family has become so small! Wars, murders … Maecenas, perhaps?’

‘He’s in Agrigentum.’

‘Then who is there? Domitius Calvinus? Servilius Vatia?’

He lifted her chin to look directly into her eyes, his mouth stern, his expression one of subtle pain. ‘I think that it must be Lucius Marcius Philippus,’ he said deliberately. ‘Not my choice, but socially the only one who won’t make Rome talk. Since no one believes that our mother is dead, what can it matter? I’ll write to him and tell him he may return to Rome, take up residence in his father’s house.’

‘He’ll be tempted to throw the edict in your teeth.’

‘Huh! Not that one! He’ll knuckle under. He seduced the mother of the Triumvir Caesar, Divi Filius! It’s only she has saved his skin. Oh, I’d dearly love to cook up a treason charge and serve that as a treat for his Epicurean palate! Even my patience has its limits, as he well knows. He’ll knuckle under,’ Octavian said again.

‘Would you like to see little Marcia?’ Octavia asked in a trembling voice. ‘She’s so sweet, Caesar, honestly!’

‘No, I wouldn’t!’ Octavian snapped.

‘But she’s our sister! The blood is linked, Caesar, even on the Marcian side. Divus Julius’s grandmother was a Marcia.’

‘I don’t care if she was Juno!’ Octavian said savagely, and stalked out.

Oh dear, oh dear! Gone before she could tell him that, for the time being at any rate, Fulvia’s two boys by Antonius had been added to her nursery. When she went to see them she had been shocked to find the two little fellows without any kind of supervision, and ten-year-old Curio gone feral. Well, she didn’t have the authority to take Curio under her wing and tame him, but she could take Antyllus and Iullus as a simple act of kindness. Poor, poor Fulvia! The spirit of a Forum demagogue cooped up inside a female shell. Octavia’s friend Pilia insisted that Antonius had beaten Fulvia in Athens, even kicked her, but that Octavia just couldn’t credit. After all, she knew Antonius well, and liked him very much. Some of her liking stemmed out of the fact that he was so different from the other men in her life; it could be wearing to associate with none but brilliant, subtle, devious men. Living with Antonius must have been an adventure, but beat his wife? No, he’d never do that! Never.

She went back to the nursery, there to weep quietly, taking care that Marcella, Marcellus and Antyllus, old enough to notice, didn’t see her tears. Still, she thought, cheering up, it would be wonderful to have Mama back in her life! Mama suffered so from some disease of the bones that she had been forced to send little Marcia to Rome and Octavia; but in the future she would be just around the corner, able to see her daughters. Only when would brother Caesar understand? Would he ever? Somehow Octavia didn’t think so. To him, Mama had done the unforgivable.

Then her mind returned to Marcellus; she went to his room immediately. Aged forty-five the year he had married Octavia, he had been a man in his prime, slender, well kept, erudite in education, good-looking in a Caesarish way. The ruthless attitude of Julian men was entirely missing in him, though he had a certain cunning, a deviousness that had enabled him to elude capture when Italia went mad for Caesar Divus Julius, had enabled him to make a splendid marriage that brought him into Caesar’s camp unplucked. For which he had Antony to thank, and had never forgotten it. Hence Octavia’s knowledge of Antony, a frequent caller.

Now the beautiful, twenty-seven-year-old wife beheld a stick man, eaten away to desiccation by the thing that gnawed and chewed at his vitals. His favorite slave, Admetus, sat by his bed, one hand enfolding Marcellus’s claw, but when Octavia entered Admetus rose quickly and gave her the chair.

‘How is he?’ she whispered.

‘Asleep on syrup of poppies, domina. Nothing else helps the pain, which is a pity. It clouds his mind dreadfully.’

‘I know,’ said Octavia, settling herself. ‘Eat and sleep, do. It will be your shift again before you know it. I wish he’d let someone else take a turn, but he won’t.’

‘If I were dying so slowly and in so much pain, domina, I would want the right face above me when I opened my eyes.’

‘Exactly so, Admetus. Now go, please. Eat and sleep. And he has manumitted you in his will, he told me so. You will be Gaius Claudius Admetus, but I hope you stay on with me.’

Too moved to speak, the young Greek kissed Octavia’s hand.

Hours went by, their silence broken only when a nursemaid brought Cellina to be fed. Luckily she was a good baby; didn’t cry loudly even when hungry. Marcellus slept on, oblivious.

Then he stirred, opened dazed dark eyes that cleared when they saw her.

‘Octavia, my love!’ he croaked.

‘Marcellus, my love,’ she said with a radiant smile, rising to fetch a beaker of sweet watered wine. He sucked at it through a hollowed reed, not very much. Then she brought a basin of water and a cloth. She peeled back the linen cover from his skin and bones, removed his soiled diaper, and began to wash him with a featherlight hand, talking to him gently. No matter where she was in the room, his eyes followed her, bright with love.

‘Old men shouldn’t marry young girls,’ he said.

‘I disagree. If young girls marry young men, they never grow or learn except tritely, for both are equally green.’ She took the basin away. ‘There! Does that feel better?’

‘Yes,’ he lied, then suddenly spasmed from head to toes, a rictus of agony tugging at his teeth. ‘Oh, Jupiter, Jupiter! The pain, the pain! My syrup, where’s my syrup?’

So she gave him syrup of poppies and sat down again to watch him sleep until Admetus arrived to relieve her.

Maecenas found his task made easier because Sextus Pompey had taken offense at Mark Antony’s reaction to his proposal. ‘Pirate’ indeed! Willing to agree to a fly-by-night conspiracy to badger Octavian, but not willing to declare a public alliance. ‘Pirate’ was not how Sextus Pompey saw himself – ever had, ever would. Having discovered that he loved being at sea and commanding three or four hundred war ships, he saw himself as a maritime Caesar, incapable of losing a battle. Yes, unbeatable on the waves and a big contender for the title of First Man in Rome. In that respect he feared both Antony and Octavian, even bigger contenders. What he needed was an alliance with one of them against the other, to reduce the number of contenders. Three down to two. In actual fact he had never met Antonius, hadn’t even managed to be in the crowds outside the Senate doors when Antony had thundered against the Republicans as Caesar’s tame tribune of the plebs. A sixteen-year-old had better things to do, and Sextus was not politically inclined, then or now. Whereas he had once met Octavian, in a little port on the Italian instep, and found a formidable foe in the guise of a sweet-faced boy, twenty to his own twenty-five. The first thing that had struck him about Octavian was that he beheld a natural outlaw who would never put himself in a position where he might be outlawed. They had done some dealing, then Octavian had resumed his march to Brundisium and Sextus had sailed away. Since then, allegiances had changed; Brutus and Cassius were defeated and dead; the world belonged to the Triumvirs.

He hadn’t been able to credit Antony’s short-sightedness in choosing to center himself in the East. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence could see that the East was a trap, gold the bait on its terrible barbed hook. Dominion over the world would go to the man who controlled Italia and the West, and that was Octavian. Of course it was the hardest job, the least popular, which was why Lepidus, given Lucius Antonius’s six legions, had scuttled off to Africa, there to play a waiting game and accumulate more troops. Another fool. Yes, Octavian was to be feared the most because he hadn’t balked at taking on the hardest task.

If he had consented to a formal alliance, Antony would have made Sextus’s grab for First Man in Rome status easier. But no, he refused to associate with a pirate!

‘So it goes on as it is,’ Sextus said to Libo, his dark blue eyes stony. ‘It will just take longer to wear Octavianus down.’

‘My dear Sextus, you will never wear Octavianus down,’ said Maecenas, turning up in Agrigentum a few days later. ‘He has no weaknesses for you to work on.’

‘Gerrae!’ Sextus snapped. ‘To start with, he has no ships and no admirals worthy of the name. Fancy sending an effete Greek freedman like Helenus to wrest Sardinia off me! I have the fellow here, by the way. He’s safe and unharmed. Ships and admirals – two weaknesses. He has no money, a third. Enemies in every walk of life – four. Shall I go on?’

‘They’re not weaknesses, they’re deficiencies,’ said Maecenas, savoring a mouthful of tiny shrimps. ‘Oh, these are delicious! Why are they so much tastier than the ones I eat in Rome?’

‘Muddier waters, better feeding grounds.’

‘You do know a lot about the sea.’

‘Enough to know that Octavianus can’t beat me on it, even if he did find some ships. Organizing a sea battle is an art all its own, and I happen to be the best at it in Rome’s entire span of history. My brother, Gnaeus, was superb, but not in my class.’ Sextus sat back and looked complacent.

What is it about this generation of young men? wondered the fascinated Maecenas. At school we learned that there would never be another Scipio Africanus, another Scipio Aemilianus, but each of them was a generation apart, unique in his time. Not so today. I suppose the young men have been given a chance to show what they can do because so many men in their forties and fifties have died or gone into permanent exile. This specimen isn’t thirty yet.

Sextus came out of his self-congratulatory reverie. ‘I must say, Maecenas, that I’m disappointed that your master didn’t come to see me in person. Too important, is he?’

‘No, I assure you,’ said Maecenas, at his oiliest. ‘He sends his profuse apologies, but something has come up in Further Gaul that made his presence there mandatory.’

‘Yes, I heard, probably before he did. Further Gaul! What a cornucopia of riches will become his! The best of the veteran legions, grain, hams and salt pork, sugar beets … Not to mention the land route to the Spains, though he doesn’t have Italian Gaul yet. No doubt he will when Pollio decides to don his consular regalia, though rumor has it that won’t be for some time. Rumor has it that Pollio is marching his seven legions down the Adriatic coast to assist Antonius when he lands at Brundisium.’

Maecenas looked surprised. ‘Why should Antonius need military help to land in Italia? As the senior of the Triumvirs, he’s free to come and go as he pleases.’

‘Not if Brundisium has anything to do with it. Why do the Brundisians hate Antonius so? They’d spit on his ashes.’

‘He was very hard on them when Divus Julius left him behind there to get the rest of the legions across the Adriatic the year before Pharsalus,’ said Maecenas, ignoring the darkening of Sextus’s face at mention of the battle that had seen his father crushed, the world changed. ‘Antonius can be unreasonable, never more so than at that time, with Divus Julius breathing down his neck. Besides, his military discipline was slack. He let the legionaries run wild – raping, looting. Then, when Divus Julius made him Master of the Horse, he took out a lot of his spleen at Brundisium on Brundisium.’

‘That would do it,’ said Sextus, grinning. ‘However, it does look a bit like an invasion when a Triumvir brings his entire army with him.’

‘A show of strength, a signal to Imperator Caesar—’

‘Who?’

‘Imperator Caesar. We don’t call him Octavianus. Nor does Rome.’ Maecenas looked demure. ‘Perhaps that’s why Pollio hasn’t come to Rome, even as her elected junior consul.’

‘Here’s some less palatable news for Imperator Caesar than Further Gaul,’ Sextus said waspishly. ‘Pollio has won Ahenobarbus over to Antonius’s side. Won’t Imperator Caesar love that!’

‘Oh, side, side,’ Maecenas exclaimed, but without passion. ‘The only side is Rome’s. Ahenobarbus is a hothead, Sextus, as you well know. He “belongs” to nobody save Ahenobarbus, and he revels in roaring up and down his little patch of sea playing at being Father Neptune. No doubt this means you’ll be having more to do with Ahenobarbus yourself in future?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sextus, looking inscrutable.

‘More to the point, that busy bird rumor says that you’re not getting on well with Lucius Staius Murcus these days.’

‘Murcus wants the co-command,’ Sextus said before he could put a brake on his tongue. That was the trouble with Maecenas, he lulled his listeners into a cosy rapport that somehow turned him from Octavian’s creature into a trusted friend. Annoyed at his indiscretion, Sextus tried to pass it off with a shrug. ‘Of course he can’t have the co-command, I don’t believe in them. I succeed because I make all the decisions myself. Murcus is an Apulian goatherder who thinks he’s a Roman nobleman.’

Look at who’s talking, thought Maecenas. So it’s goodbye to Murcus, eh? By this time next year he’ll be dead, accused of some transgression or other. This haughty young reprobate brooks no equals, hence his predilection for freedmen admirals. His romance with Ahenobarbus won’t last any longer than it takes Ahenobarbus to call him a Picentine upstart.

All useful information, but not why he was here. Abandoning the shrimps and the fishing for news, Maecenas got down to his real business, which was to make it clear to Sextus Pompey that he had to give Octavian and Italia a chance to survive. For Italia, that meant full bellies; for Octavian, that meant hanging on to what he had.

‘Sextus Pompeius,’ Maecenas said very earnestly two days later, ‘it is not my place to sit in judgement upon you, or upon anyone else. But you cannot deny that the rats of Sicilia eat better than the people of Italia, your own country from Picenum, Umbria and Etruria to Bruttium and Calabria. Home of your city, which your father adorned for such a long time. In the six years since Munda you’ve made thousands of millions of sesterces reselling wheat, so it isn’t money you’re after. But if, as you insist, it is to force the Senate and People of Rome to restore your citizenship and all its attendant rights, then surely you must see that you will require powerful allies inside Rome. In fact, there are only two who wield the power necessary to help you – Marcus Antonius and Imperator Caesar. Why are you so determined that it be Antonius, a less rational and, if I dare say it, a less reliable man than Imperator Caesar? Antonius called you a pirate, wouldn’t listen to Lucius Libo when you made the overtures. Whereas now it is Imperator Caesar making the overtures. Doesn’t that shout his sincerity, his regard for you, his wish to help you? You’ll hear no aspersions about pirates from Caesar Imperator’s lips! Cast your vote for him! Antonius is not interested, and that’s unarguable. If there are sides to choose, then choose the right one.’

‘All right,’ Sextus said, sounding angry. ‘I’ll cast my vote for Octavianus. But I require concrete guarantees that he’ll work for me in the Senate and Assemblies.’

‘Imperator Caesar will do that. What evidence of his good faith will satisfy you?’

‘How would he feel about marrying into my family?’

‘Overjoyed.’

‘He has no wife, I understand?’

‘None. Neither of his marriages was consummated. He felt that the daughters of strumpets might become strumpets themselves.’

‘I hope he can get it up for this one. My father-in-law, Lucius Libo, has a sister, a widow of the utmost respectability. You can take her on approval.’

The pop-eyes widened even more, as if the news of this lady came as a thrilling surprise. ‘Sextus Pompeius, Imperator Caesar will be honored! I know something of her … eminently suitable.’

‘If the marriage goes through, I’ll let the African grain fleets go through. And I’ll sell all comers from Octavianus to the smallest dealer my wheat at thirteen sesterces the modius.’

‘An unlucky number.’

Sextus grinned. ‘For Octavianus, maybe, but not for me.’

‘You never can tell,’ said Maecenas softly.

When Octavian set eyes on Scribonia he was secretly pleased, though the few people present at their wedding would never have guessed it from his unsmiling demeanor and the careful eyes that never gave away his feelings. Yes, he was pleased. Scribonia didn’t look thirty-three, she looked his own age, twenty-three next birthday. Her hair and eyes were dark brown, her smooth skin clear and milky, her face pretty, her figure excellent. She had not worn the flame and saffron of a virgin bride, but chosen pink in gauzy layers over a cerise petticoat. The scant words they exchanged at the ceremony revealed that she wasn’t shy, but was not a chatterbox either, and further conversation afterward told him that she was literate, well read, and spoke much better Greek than he did. Perhaps the only quality that gave him qualms was her sense of the ridiculous. Not owning a well-developed sense of humor himself, Octavian feared those who did, especially if they were women – how could he be sure they weren’t laughing at him? Still, Scribonia was hardly likely to find a husband so far above her station as the son of a god humorously or peculiarly funny.

‘I’m sorry to part you from your father,’ he said.

Her eyes danced. ‘I’m not, Caesar. He’s an old nuisance.’

‘Really?’ he asked, startled. ‘I’ve always believed that parting from her father is a blow for a female.’

‘That particular blow has fallen twice before you, Caesar, and each time it falls, it hurts less. At this stage, it’s more a pat than a slap. Besides, I never imagined that my third husband would be a beautiful young man like you.’ She giggled. ‘The best I was hoping for was a spry eighty-year-old.’

‘Oh!’ was all he could manage, floundering.

‘I heard that your brother-in-law Gaius Marcellus Minor has died,’ she said, taking pity on his confusion. ‘When should I go to pay my condolences to your sister?’

‘Yes, Octavia was sorry not to be able to come to my wedding, but she’s overcome with grief, quite why I don’t know. I think emotional excesses are a trifle unseemly.’

‘Oh, not unseemly,’ she said gently, discovering more about him by the moment, and a part of her dismayed at what she learned. Somehow she had envisioned Caesar as in the mold of a Sextus Pompeius – brash, conceited, callow, very male, somewhat smelly. Instead she had found the composure of a venerable consular laid atop a beauty that she suspected would come to haunt her. His luminous, silvery eyes honed his looks to spectacular, but they hadn’t gazed on her with any desire. This was his third marriage too, and if his behavior in sending his two previous wives back to their mothers untouched was anything to go by, these political brides were accepted from necessity, then placed in storage to be returned in the same condition as they came in. Her father had told her that he and Sextus Pompey had a bet going: Sextus had laid long odds that Octavian wouldn’t go through with it, whereas Libo believed that Octavian would go through with it for the sake of the people of Italia. So if the marriage was consummated and issue resulted to prove that, Libo stood to win a huge sum. News of the bet had made her rock with laughter, but she knew enough of Octavian already to know that she didn’t dare tell him about it. Odd, that. His uncle Divus Julius would have shared her mirth, from what she knew about him. Yet in the nephew, not a spark.

‘You may see Octavia at any time,’ he was saying to her, ‘but be prepared for tears and children.’

That was all the conversation they managed to hold together before her new serving maids put her into his bed.

The house was very large and made of gloriously colored marbles, but its new owner hadn’t bothered furnishing it properly or hanging any paintings on the walls in places clearly designed for that purpose. The bed was very small for such a huge sleeping room. She had no idea that Hortensius had abhorred the tiny cubicles Romans slept in, so caused his own sleeping room to be the size of another man’s study.

‘Tomorrow your servants will install you in your own suite of rooms,’ he said, getting into the bed in pitch darkness; he had snuffed out the candle in the doorway.

That became the first evidence of his innate modesty, which she would find difficult to overcome. Having shared the marriage bed with two other men, she expected urgent fumbling, pokes and pinches, an assault that she assumed was structured to arouse her to the same degree of want, though it never had.

But that was not Caesar’s way (she must, must, must remember to call him Caesar!). The bed was too narrow not to feel his naked length alongside hers, yet he made no attempt to touch her otherwise. Suddenly he climbed on top of her, used his knees to push her legs apart, and inserted his penis into a sadly juiceless receptacle, so unprepared was she. However, it didn’t seem to put him off; he worked diligently to a silent climax, removed himself from her and the bed with a muttered word that he must wash, and left the room. When he didn’t come back she lay there bewildered, then called for a servant and a light.

He was in his study, seated behind a battered old desk loaded with scrolls, loose sheets of paper under his right hand, which held a simple, unadorned reed pen. Her father Libo’s pen was sheathed in gold, had a pearl on top. But Octavian – Caesar – clearly cared nothing for those kinds of appearances.

‘Husband, are you well?’ she asked.

He had looked up at the advent of another light; now he gave her the loveliest smile she had ever seen. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Did I displease you?’ she asked.

‘Not at all. You were very nice.’

‘Do you do this often?’

‘Do what?’

‘Um – ah – work rather than sleep?’

‘All the time. I like the peace and quiet.’

‘And I’ve disturbed you. I’m sorry. I won’t again.’

He put his head down absently. ‘Goodnight, Scribonia.’

Only hours later did he lift his head again, remember that little encounter. And thought with a sense of enormous relief that he liked his new wife. She understood the boundaries and, if he could quicken her, the pact with Sextus Pompey would hold.

Octavia was not at all what she had expected, Scribonia discovered when she went to pay that condolence call. To her surprise, she found her new sister-in-law tearless and cheerful. It must have shown in her eyes, for Octavia laughed, pressed her into a comfort able chair.

‘Little Gaius told you I was prostrate with grief.’

‘Little Gaius?’

‘Caesar. I can’t get out of the habit of calling him Little Gaius because that’s how I see him – as a dear little boy toddling around behind me making a thorough nuisance of himself.’

‘You love him very much.’

‘To distraction. But these days he’s so grand and terribly important that big sisters and their “Little Gaiuses” do not sit well. However, you appear to be a woman of good sense, so I trust you not to tell him what I say about him.’

‘Dumb and blind. Also deaf.’

‘The pity of it is that he never had a proper childhood. The asthma plagued him so dreadfully that he couldn’t mix with other boys or do his military exercises on the Campus Martius.’

Scribonia looked blank. ‘Asthma? What is that?’

‘He wheezes until he goes black in the face. Sometimes he nearly dies of it. Oh, it’s awful to watch!’ Octavia’s eyes looked at an old, familiar horror. ‘It’s worst when there’s dust in the air, or around horses from the chaff. That’s why Marcus Antonius was able to say that Little Gaius hid in the marshes at Philippi and contributed nothing to the victory. The truth is that there was a shocking drought. The battlefield was a thick fog of dust and dead grass – certain death. The only place where Little Gaius could find relief was in the marshland between the plain and the sea. It is a worse grief to him that he appeared to be avoiding combat than the loss of Marcellus is to me. I do not say that lightly, believe me.’

‘But people would understand if only they knew!’ Scribonia cried. ‘I too heard that canard, and I simply assumed it was true. Couldn’t Caesar have published a pamphlet or something?’

‘His pride wouldn’t let him. Nor would it have been prudent. People don’t want senior magistrates who are likely to die early. Besides, Antonius got in first.’ Octavia looked miserable. ‘He isn’t a bad man, but he’s so healthy himself that he has no patience with those who are sickly or delicate. To Antonius, the asthma is an act, a pretext to excuse cowardice. We’re all cousins, but we’re all very different, and Little Gaius is the most different. He’s desperately driven. The asthma is a symptom of it, so the Egyptian physician who ministered to Divus Julius said.’

Scribonia shivered. ‘What do I do if he can’t breathe?’

‘You’ll probably never see it,’ said Octavia, having no trouble seeing that her new sister-in-law was falling in love with Little Gaius. Not a thing she could avert, but understandably a thing that was bound to lead to bitter sorrow. Scribonia was a lovely woman, but not capable of fascinating either Little Gaius or Imperator Caesar. ‘In Rome his breathing is usually normal unless there’s drought. This year has been halcyon. I don’t worry about him while he’s here, nor should you. He knows what to do if he has an attack, and there’s always Agrippa.’

‘The stern young man who stood with him at our wedding.’

‘Yes. They’re not like twins,’ Octavia said with the air of one who has puzzled a conundrum through to its solution. ‘No rivalry exists between them. It’s more as if Agrippa fits into the voids in Little Gaius. Sometimes when the children are being particularly naughty, I wish I could split myself into two of me. Well, Little Gaius has succeeded in doing that. He has Marcus Agrippa, his other half.’

By the time that Scribonia left Octavia’s house, she had met the children, a tribe whom Octavia treated as if all of them were born of her own womb, and learned that next time she came, Atia would be there. Atia, her mother-in-law. She also dug deeper into the secrets of this extraordinary family. How could Caesar pretend that his mother was dead? How great were his pride and hauteur, that he couldn’t excuse the understandable lapse of an otherwise unimpeachable woman? According to Octavia, the mother of Imperator Caesar Divi Filius could have absolutely no failings. His attitude spoke volumes about what he expected from a wife. Poor Servilia Vatia and Clodia, virgins both, but hampered by having morally unsatisfactory mothers. As he did himself, and better Atia was dead than living proof of it.

Yet, walking home between two gigantic and fierce German guards, his face filled her thoughts. Could she make him love her? Oh, pray she could make him love her! Tomorrow, she resolved, I will offer to Juno Sospita for a pregnancy, and to Venus Erucina that I please him in bed, and to the Bona Dea for uterine harmony, and to Vediovis just in case disappointment is lurking. And to Spes, who is Hope.