Antony and Cleopatra

‘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.’