I’ve given myself the rest of this year to deal with Rome, Italia and Octavianus, so for the rest of this year the legions will be camped around Apollonia. If they’re known to be on the Adriatic, that will tell Octavianus that I mean to squash him like a bug.’
‘Marcus,’ Plancus wailed, ‘everyone is fed up with civil war, and what you’re talking is civil war! The legions won’t fight!’
‘My legions will fight for me,’ said Antony.
Livia Drusilla entered the governor’s residence with all her usual composure, creamy lids lowered over her eyes, which she knew were her best feature. Hide them! As always, she walked a little behind Nero because a good wife did, and Livia Drusilla had vowed to be a good wife. Never, she had sworn, hearing what Antony had done to Fulvia, would she put herself in that position! To don armor and wave a sword about, one would have to be a Hortensia, who had only done it to demonstrate to the leaders of the Roman state that the women of Rome from highest to lowest would never consent to being taxed when they didn’t have the right to vote. Hortensia won the encounter, a bloodless victory, at considerable embarrassment to the Triumvirs Antony, Octavian and Lepidus.
Not that Livia Drusilla intended to be a mouse; she simply masqueraded as someone small and meek and a trifle timid. Huge ambition burned in her, inchoate because she had no idea how she was going to seize that ambition, turn it into a productive thing. Certainly it was shaped in an absolutely Roman mold, which meant no unfeminine behavior, no putting herself forward, no unsubtle manipulating. Not that she wanted to be another Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, worshipped by some women as a truly Roman goddess because she had suffered, borne children, seen them die, never complained of her lot. No, Livia Drusilla sensed that there had to be another way to reach the heights.
The trouble was that three years of marriage had shown her beyond all doubt that the way was not through Tiberius Claudius Nero. Like most girls of her exalted station, she hadn’t known Nero very well before they married, for all that he was her close cousin. Nothing in him, on the few occasions when they had met, had inspired anything in her save contempt for his stupidity and an instinctive detestation of his person. Dark herself, she admired men with golden hair and light eyes. Intelligent herself, she admired men with great intelligence. On neither count could Nero qualify. She had been fifteen when her father Drusus had married her to his first cousin Nero, and in the house where she grew up there had been no priapic wall paintings or phallic lamps whereby a girl might learn something about physical love. So union with Nero had revolted her. He too preferred golden-haired, light-eyed lovers; what pleased him in his wife were her noble ancestry and her fortune.
Only how to be shriven of Tiberius Claudius Nero when she was determined to be a good wife? It didn’t seem possible unless someone offered him a better marriage, and that was highly unlikely. Her cleverness had shown her very early in their marriage that people disliked Nero, tolerated him only because of his patrician status and his consequent right to occupy all the offices that Rome offered her nobility. And oh, he bored her! Many were the tales she had heard about Cato Uticensis, Caesar’s greatest enemy, and his tactless, prating personality, but to Livia Drusilla he seemed an ecstatic god compared to Nero. Nor could she like the son she had borne Nero ten months after their wedding; little Tiberius was dark, skinny, tall, solemn and a trifle sanctimonious, even at two years of age. He had fallen into the habit of criticizing his mother because he heard his father do so and, unlike most small children, he had spent his life thus far in his father’s company. Livia Drusilla suspected that Nero preferred to keep her and little Tiberius close in case some pretty fellow with Caesarean charm tampered with his wife’s virtue. What an irritation that was! Didn’t the fool know that she would never demean herself in that way?
The housebound existence she had led until Nero embarked upon his disastrous Campanian venture in Lucius Antonius’s cause had not allowed her as much as a glimpse of any of the famous men all Rome talked about; she hadn’t laid eyes on Marcus Antonius, Lepidus, Servilius Vatia, Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, Octavianus, or even Caesar, dead in her fifteenth year. Therefore today was exciting, though nothing in her demeanor showed that: she was going to dine with Marcus Antonius, the most powerful man in the world!
A pleasure that almost didn’t happen when Nero discovered that Antony was one of those disgracefully fast fellows who let women recline on the men’s couches.
‘Unless my wife has a chair, I am leaving!’ Nero said with his customary tact.
Had Antony not already found the little oval face of Nero’s wife bewitching, the upshot of that remark would have been a roar and expulsion; as it was, Antony grinned and commanded that a chair be brought for Livia Drusilla. When the chair came he had it placed opposite his own position on the couch, but as there were only the three male diners, Nero couldn’t very well object to that. It wasn’t as if she was around a corner from him, though Nero did think it more evidence of Antony’s uncouth nature that he had relegated him to the end of the couch and put a puffed-up nobody like Plancus in the middle.
Removal of her wrap revealed that Livia Drusilla wore a fawn dress with long sleeves and a high neck, but nothing could disguise the charms of her figure or her flawless ivory skin. As thick and black as night, with the same indigo tinge to its lustre, her hair was done plainly, drawn back to cover her ears and knotted on the nape of her neck. And her face was exquisite! A small, lush red mouth, enormous eyes fringed with long black lashes like fans, pink cheeks, a small but aquiline nose, all combined to form perfection. Just when Antony became annoyed at not being able to decide what color her eyes were, she moved her chair and a thin ray of sun lit them. Oh, amazing! They were a very dark blue, but striated in a magical way with strands of whitish fawn. Like no eyes he had ever seen before, and – eerie. Livia Drusilla, I could eat you up! he said to himself, and set out to make her fall in love with him.
But it wasn’t possible. She was not shy, answered all of his questions frankly yet demurely, wasn’t afraid to add a tiny comment when it was called for. However, she would introduce no topic of conversation of her own volition, and said or did nothing that Nero, watching suspiciously, could fault. None of that would have mattered to Antony had a single spark of interest flared in her eyes, but it didn’t. If he had been a more perceptive man, he would have known that the faint moue crossing her face from time to time spoke of distaste.
Yes, he would beat a wife who grossly erred, she decided, but not as Nero would, coldly, with total calculation. Antonius would do it in a terrible temper, though afterward, cooled down, he wouldn’t rue the deed, for her crime would be unpardonable. Most men would like him, be drawn to him, and most women desire him. Life during those few days in Sextus Pompeius’s lair at Agrigentum had exposed Livia Drusilla to low women, and she had learned a lot about love, and men, and the sexual act. It seemed that women preferred men with large penises because a large penis made it easier for them to achieve climax, whatever that was (she had not found out, afraid to ask for fear of being laughed at). But she did find out that Marcus Antonius was famous for the immensity of his procreative equipment. Well, that was as maybe, when now she could discover nothing in Antonius to like or admire. Especially after she realized that he was trying his hardest to elicit a response from her. It gave her tremendous satisfaction to deny him that response, which taught her a little about how a woman might acquire power. Only not intriguing with an Antonius, whose lusts were transient, unimportant even.
‘What did you think of the Great Man?’ Nero asked as they walked home in the brief, fiery twilight.
Livia Drusilla blinked; her husband didn’t usually ask her what she thought about anyone or anything. ‘High in birth, low in character,’ she said. ‘A vulgar boor.’
‘Emphatic,’ he said, sounding pleased.
For the first time in their relationship, she dared to ask him a political question. ‘Husband,
