Brides of Rome

by Debra May Macleod

  Now alone, Pomponia and Calpurnia fell into easy conversation, slowly making their way back to the crowd of wedding guests in the main part of the house.

  In the large, frescoed triclinium, Antony lay on a couch chatting loudly but idly with Octavia and Maecenas. He openly eyed his new bride, looking up and down her body in obvious anticipation of the wedding night.

  “Do you think there is any affection at all between them?” Pomponia asked Calpurnia.

  “No,” Calpurnia replied, “but in time, there may be. Antony has not had a wife like Octavia. His other wives were shrews, especially that Fulvia. Not one was a proper Roman matron. They were ambitious and wanton. One of Antony’s house slaves once told me that Fulvia used to dress in a toga! Gods, can you imagine such a thing? Octavia is different. Modest, virtuous, subordinate to her husband—those are qualities Antony may grow to admire.” She took a sip of wine. “If he can forget that painted whore-queen of the Nile, that is.”

  “May the gods make it so,” said Pomponia. “Oh, Lady Calpurnia, look—there is Priestess Fabiana with that vicious little dog again. She will not part with it. It dirties her stola and causes the most foolish cooing sounds to come out of her mouth, yet she doesn’t notice any of it, not even the smell that comes from its yellow teeth.”

  “Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur,” Calpurnia replied with a forgiving smile. Even a god cannot love and be wise at the same time.

  Pomponia felt a sudden heaviness in her heart. “Perhaps.” She touched Calpurnia’s shoulder. “You have been kind to accompany me, Lady Calpurnia. Now go visit High Priestess Fabiana and her little white Cerberus. She would like that. I have duties at the temple and must leave soon.”

  Once Calpurnia had taken her leave, Pomponia exhaled deeply for the first time since the episode in the alcove. She mingled duteously with friends and colleagues, relieved that Lady Valeria was nowhere to be seen. Her husband had sent her home.

  But Quintus remained. He stood by a fountain, deep in animated conversation with Agrippa, two or three of Caesar’s other advisers, and the high priest of Mars. He was smiling and drinking wine as if nothing had happened. Detached. Cold.

  She glanced his way, and he met her eyes for a moment, but he only smirked with that all-too-familiar edge of superiority and indifference before ignoring her and laughing with his companions.

  Pomponia put her hands on her stomach to quell the storm of confusion swirling inside her. Lady Valeria’s words filled her mind. You have a sickness, Quintus, a sickness and a perversion in your heart.

  Perhaps he did. Pomponia knew that many men found sport in the conquest of an unattainable woman. To these men, seducing such a woman was a roguish diversion that bolstered their ego.

  And there was no doubt that Quintus had the ego of Hercules himself. She had seen it many times. Every scowl, every criticism, every chastening and condescending rebuke she had endured from him over the years, they all came back to her with renewed clarity.

  Perhaps his wife was not as mad as she appeared. Pomponia thought back to Valeria’s blackened eyes and submissive disposition, to the way she cowered and quickly retreated into obedience when her husband so much as looked at her.

  Slowly, the confusion in Pomponia’s stomach gave way to indignation, and she cursed her own weakness, her womanish imprudence. It hadn’t just stripped her of her dignity. It had cost her the lifelong companionship of Medousa.

  It was not proper for a priestess to weep over the loss of a mere slave, but Pomponia had a sudden memory of the day of her captio ritual. On that day, Julius Caesar as Pontifex Maximus had taken her to be a Vestal. It was the same day that he had taken, or rather purchased, Medousa from the slave market.

  As Pomponia’s hair was being cropped for the Vestal veil, she had started to cry at the sight of the long chestnut locks falling onto the white-and-black-mosaic floor. Medousa—herself just a child of twelve or thirteen years—had picked them up and held them to her face, making herself into a bearded man and shouting mock orders at those around her until Pomponia giggled. That night, the first night Pomponia had spent in the House of the Vestals, Medousa had climbed into the bed with her and hummed a song in her ear until she stopped sobbing and fell asleep.

  The memory was too much. Knowing the tears would soon come, Pomponia said a brief round of goodbyes and ordered one of Caesar’s litters to take her back to the temple. Fabiana was enjoying herself and could follow later in the Vestal litter.

  Fabiana. Pomponia knew exactly what she’d say when she heard about Medousa: Good riddance. That woman doesn’t just look like Helen of Troy, she causes as much trouble too.

  The Vestalis Maxima had never liked Medousa. Fabiana showed little affection for any slave, but even less for her. If only she could know the truth.

  Pomponia passed into the relative quiet and fresh air of the atrium. In the corner adjacent to Caesar’s family lararium, the sacred flame burned in a bronze firebowl. The priestess took a sacred wafer from the earthenware tray beside it and crumbled it into the fire as an offering to the goddess.

  Divina Vesta, protect Medousa in her new household.

  And then the priestess walked out of Caesar’s house and into the waiting lectica, feeling more foolish and alone than she had ever felt in her entire life.

  * * *

  Somewhere in the dimly lit room, an oil lamp sputtered noisily. Other oil lamps burned with more strength, their tall orange flames casting flickering shadows onto the frescoed walls.

  In one painted scene, Cupid lay on top of his beautiful lover, Psyche, his wings caressing her bare skin and his hands exploring her body.

  Another fresco brought to life the erotic myth of Leda and the Swan: Zeus, in the form of a swan, resting his long neck between the bare breasts of Leda and making love to her in her sleep. The child of their union would be Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world. Helen, the Greek queen whose love affair with the Trojan prince Paris sparked the Trojan War. Helen, the woman whose face launched a thousand warships.

  But one fresco was more prominent than the others. It was painted on the wall opposite the large, luxurious bed. In it, the god Mars lay before a fiery hearth with the Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia. One of his muscled hands held her down in the frenzy of his passion, while the other hand tore at the fabric of her white stola.

  Medousa knew the story well.

  Caesar’s chief house slave, a middle-aged Greek woman named Despina who had served Octavian since he was a young boy, sat beside Medousa on the bed. “Are you a virgin?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Who has had you?”

  “Julius Caesar took me for the first time. He had me several times. He was the only one.”

  “I see.” She paused. “You will find this Caesar to be a less reciprocal lover. More aggressive too. You will remain still at all times. Say nothing. Do nothing. It will not last too long, and you will be cared for afterward.” The slave’s words were blunt but kind.

  A beauty slave entered the bedchamber carrying a tray of grooming tools. She instructed Medousa to sit on a chair and then brought a pair of shears to her scalp. Long locks of auburn hair fell to the marble floor. Another slave quickly swept them up.

  Medousa’s head felt strangely light and airy without her mane of thick hair. She clenched her jaw. She would not cry. It was pointless to cry. It wouldn’t change anything.

  “Stand up and remove your clothing,” said Despina.

  Without a sound, Medousa stood up and stripped out of her fine tunica dress. As she stood naked in the room, the beauty slave brought the blade to her pubic hair and removed every trace of it. She instructed Medousa to raise her arms and then removed the hair from under them as well.

  “Let’s get you dressed.” Despina snapped her fingers, and a young servant girl approached carrying a pure white stola. Medousa stood silently, h
olding out her arms as the slaves worked together to dress her in the stola. A white veil followed. It covered Medousa’s short hair and fell to her midback.

  “Caesar will treat you more favorably if he believes you are a virgin,” said Despina. “He is Mars, you see, and you are Rhea Silvia. That is how it will happen.” She held a hand out to Medousa. In her palm was a small sponge soaked in blood.

  “Put this inside you,” she said. “When he penetrates you, the blood will come out. When it does, you must pretend to feel pain. He will finish more quickly that way, and it will be over.”

  “Thank you for your kindness,” said Medousa. She spread her legs and put the sponge inside her body. Do not cry, she reminded herself. Despina wiped away the blood on her fingers.

  A creak of a door and a slant of light pierced the room. Octavian entered the bedchamber with the same stately presence with which he entered every room, strolling to the bed with confident purpose and natural supremacy. The slaves and servants scattered subserviently and disappeared.

  Medousa lowered her head but said nothing and did not look at him. She heard Octavian’s toga fall to the floor. He muttered something as he struggled with a sandal strap, but a moment later he was standing in front of her, naked and already fully erect. His eyes moved up and down her body.

  He pushed her gently toward the bed and then roughly threw her onto her back, quickly mounting her and tearing at the stola and veil. He inhaled sharply at the sight of her close-cropped hair and smooth pubic area and entered her, fast and hard, all at once.

  Medousa cried out in pain, not having to pretend at all.

  Chapter VIII

  Audentis Fortuna Iuvat

  Fortune favors the bold.

  —Virgil

  rome, 39 bce

  One year later

  Livia Drusilla reached down to grab her young son’s arm and yank him up into the carriage. The little brat was pissing on the slaves’ sandals again. She’d be smelling urine until they reached the next milestone. What evil spirit had charged her with such a child? What debt to Dis, that unhappy god, was she fulfilling by enduring such an utterly horrible son?

  His name was Tiberius, so-called after his father, but the similarities didn’t stop there. He had the same dull-wittedness, the same brainless humor, and the same square block of a head.

  A priest of Diana had once told her that a child’s capacity was always superior to that of its parents. Livia vowed to herself that if her path ever crossed that charlatan priest again, she would strip him of his robes on the street and beat him to death with the first piss pot she could find.

  Still, things were looking up. The proscriptions in Rome were over, and Caesar had announced a general amnesty for those Romans who had fled during them. For the time being at least, Rome was at peace, thanks to the marriage between Caesar’s sister Octavia and the general Marc Antony.

  Athens was behind her, and so was that stinking, sticky Greek pig Diodorus. No more would she have to suffer his ribald jokes or feign illness to avoid his vile fondling. The smell of his unwashed genitals still lingered in her nostrils. The taste of his bad wine and salty olives still stuck in her throat.

  She glared at her dozing husband on the other side of the carriage. Tiberius, a dreadful husband at the best of times, had been an absolutely atrocious husband during their years of exile in Greece. He should have been outraged every time Diodorus stumbled into her bedchamber to pound into her with all the finesse of a battering ram.

  Instead, he had turned a blind eye. The coward. Not only had he fled from Rome like a bawling catamite, he had been too chickenhearted to speak against his hairy beast of a benefactor.

  Then again, life hadn’t been as intolerable for him as it had been for her. The wine was wastewater and the food was excrement, but there were plenty of both. There were plenty of slave girls too. Livia, a woman not inclined to sympathy for anyone, never mind slaves, had nonetheless felt sorry for them.

  She had seen them scramble out of Tiberius’s bedchamber night after night, sometimes three or four of them at a time, and the expressions of disgust they wore on their faces were nothing new to her.

  She had seen the same expression stare back at her from her own mirror. The gods only knew what he had made them do to him, to each other, and to themselves.

  The carriage driver shouted an order, and the horses began to move again. Livia held back the curtain and looked out. She sighed contentedly at the sight of the tall cypress trees that lined the long cobblestone road. Little Tiberius kicked her shin as he clambered to sit beside his snoring father, but Livia took no notice. She was going home.

  Home. Her brow furrowed. What condition would their home be in? After years of their absence, what valuables would remain? The letters from the house slave had stopped coming months ago. It was likely that at least some household treasures had been looted, perhaps by the slave himself. Either that or he had been killed or stolen trying to defend his master’s house.

  She offered a silent prayer to Vesta. I don’t give a fig for Tiberius’s wretched marble statues and gold dinnerware, but my jewelry! My good dresses! May they still be where I hid them.

  She smiled as she remembered her favorite—a yellow stola with red and orange embroidered birds—but her smile quickly melted into a scowl of worry.

  Her blood hadn’t come for the past few months. It would be ages before she’d be able to slink into that dress. But her growing waistline wasn’t the worst of her worries.

  Would the child have Tiberius’s blockhead or Diodorus’s hairy back? Pray Juno it would be another boy. Pray the gods would be merciful and not burden a girl with the attributes of either man. It would take a dowry the size of Olympus to marry off such a creature.

  The pace of the carriage slowed, and Livia cranked her head out to see the massive stone blocks of the Servian Wall ahead. It reached ten meters into the sky and surrounded Rome, protecting the Eternal City from the barbarians and invaders that always seemed to be at its door.

  The Porta Collina, a major gate that led into the city of Rome, was visible in the distance, although a bottleneck of congestion forced the carriage driver to stop once again as a throng of people, animals, wagons, litters, and vendor carts of all kinds slowly filtered past the inspectors, through the gate, and into the great city.

  Normally, such a delay would have angered Livia. But not today. She had waited years to return to Rome. Another hour or two to pass through the gate was nothing to be upset about.

  A dirty child managed to slip past the slaves who guarded the carriage and stick his grimy hand inside, begging for coin. Livia was about to stab his hand with a hairpin, when she noticed the temple that stood not far from the Porta Collina—the Temple of Fortuna. It would be bad luck to stab a child, even a peasant one, so close to the temple. The goddess would not like it.

  Instead, she reached for a small sack of coins on the floor of the carriage and sprinkled a couple of denarii into her palm. The peasant boy’s eyes opened wide, and she tossed the coins outside, watching him dive to the muddy ground and roughly shoulder two other children aside to retrieve them.

  A snort and a cough from Tiberius. “Juno’s tight ass, woman! Are you throwing money away?”

  “How remarkable,” Livia said to her husband. “You manage to sleep through a brawl of drunken Dacians rushing the carriage and shouting war cries, but you awaken at the soft chink of coin.”

  Tiberius huffed and Livia curled up on her cushioned seat as the carriage driver shouted something and the horses slowly moved forward in stops and starts, making their way through the clattering, clamoring gridlock of congestion at the gate.

  The journey is so much more pleasant when he’s asleep, she thought.

  Eventually, they passed through the Porta Collina. Just inside the walls of Rome, the booming voice of a public herald shouted out the latest news t
hat would be relevant to returning citizens or visitors to the city: upcoming market and religious days, the latest laws passed by the Senate, current games and chariot races, Caesar’s building projects, road closures, and so on.

  Tiberius elbowed his son and pointed to the field beyond the road. “That is the Evil Field,” he said. The blockheaded toddler squealed with excitement. “Do you know what they do there?” he asked the child, who blinked stupidly back at his father, opening and closing his mouth like a carp. “They bury Vestal priestesses alive!” Tiberius made a spooky look, and the child squealed again. The sound pierced Livia’s ears.

  “Well,” she groaned to herself. “That’s one way to get some peace.”

  * * *

  “Ave, Caesar! ” Hail, Caesar!

  Octavian stood at the front balustrade of the large, ornate marble balcony that had been designed specifically for him and his guests. He looked down into the arena to acknowledge the two gladiators, who saluted up at him.

  “Avete,” he shouted to them. Fare you well.

  Octavian sat back down next to his well-groomed friend, a man by the name of Titus Statilius Taurus. Taurus was the wealthy senator who had commissioned construction of the new amphitheater the games were being held in, and he was having a very good day.

  The first permanent amphitheater of its kind in Rome, the arena was located in the Campus Martius. Its oval shape, massive size, and stone construction made it a spectacular improvement on the temporary wooden semicircular structures that had in the past been erected there to house the games.

  Although construction in the sublevels wasn’t quite complete, the amphitheater was nonetheless functional enough to comfortably seat and impress many thousands of spectators. Its arched walkways, fine sculptures, vibrantly painted walls, and gold-and-scarlet banners brought beauty to the bloodshed.

  The oval fighting arena was covered in sand to prevent the gladiators from slipping on their own or their opponent’s spilled blood. The sand also made clean-up easier by absorbing the blood of the brave, as well as the urine and feces of the less brave.