The Grass Crown Page 21

  Whenever he could be in Tusculum they met at the same hour each morning, for Livia Drusa had established this as her own private and personal time because the children were doing their lessons, and they parted—an emotional business—at noon. Even when Marcus Livius Drusus came down to see how his sister was faring and how the renovations to the farmhouse were proceeding, Livia Drusa continued her "walks." Of course she was so obviously happy in such a simple and artless way that Drusus could only applaud his sister for her good sense in relocating; had she displayed signs of nervousness or guilt, he might have wondered. But she never did, because she thought of her relationship with Cato as just, right, proper—deserved and deserving.

  Naturally there were awkwardnesses, especially in the beginning. To Livia Drusa, the chief one was her beloved's dubious ancestry. This no longer worried her to the extent it had when Servilia Caepionis had first explained who he was, but it did niggle at her still. Luckily she was too intelligent to tax him with it openly. Instead, she sought ways to bring the subject up that would not give him reason to think she looked down on him—though of course she did look down on him. Oh, not with patronization or malice! Only with a regret founded in the security of her own impeccable ancestry; a wish that he too could participate in this most Roman of all securities.

  His grandfather was the illustrious Marcus Porcius Cato Censorius—Cato the Censor. Of wealthy Latin stock, the Porcii Prisci had been sufficiently prominent to have held the Public Horse of Roman knighthood for several generations when Cato the Censor was born; however, though they enjoyed the full citizenship and knight's status, they lived in Tusculum rather than in Rome, and had harbored no aspirations of a public nature.

  Her beloved, she quickly discovered, did not consider his ancestry dubious at all, for, as he said to her,

  "The whole myth originated in my grandfather's character—he masqueraded as a peasant after some rarefied patrician sneered at him when he was a seventeen-year-old cadet, early in Hannibal's war. The peasant pose delighted him so much he never changed it—and we think he was quite right to do so, if for no other reason than that New Men come and go and are forgotten, but who could ever forget Cato the Censor?"

  "The same might be said of Gaius Marius," Livia Drusa ventured diffidently.

  Her beloved reared back as if she had bitten him. "That man? Now he's a genuine New Man—an outright peasant! My grandfather had ancestors! He was only a New Man in that he was the first of his family to sit in the Senate.1"

  "How can you know your grandfather only posed as a peasant?''

  "From his private letters. We still have them."

  “Doesn't the other branch of your family have his papers? After all, it's the senior branch."

  "The Liciniani? Don't even mention them!" said Cato in tones of disgust. "It is our branch, the Saloniani, who will shine the brighter when the historians of tomorrow write about the Rome of our time. We are the true heirs of Cato the Censor! We put on no airs and graces, we honor the kind of man Cato the Censor was—a great man, Livia Drusa!"

  "Yet masqueraded as a peasant."

  "Indeed! Rough, bluff, outspoken, full of the old ways, a real Roman," said Cato, eyes shining. "Do you know, he drank the same wine his slaves drank? He never plastered his farmsteads or his country villas, he wouldn't have a piece of tapestry or purple cloth in his Roman house, and he never paid more than six thousand sesterces for a slave. We of the Saloniani have continued in his tradition, we live the same way."

  "Oh, dear!" said Livia Drusa.

  But he didn't notice this evidence of dismay, he was too involved in explaining to his little Livian love how wonderful a man Cato the Censor had been. "How could he really have been a peasant when he became the best friend of a Valerius Flaccus—and upon moving to Rome, was the best orator and advocate of his or any other time? To this day, even overrated experts like Crassus Orator and old Mucius Scaevola the Augur admit that his rhetoric was peerless, that no one has ever used aphorism and hyperbole better! And look at his written words! Superb! My grandfather was educated in the grand manner, and spoke and wrote a Latin so well thought out that he never needed to draft."

  "I can see I must read him," said Livia Drusa, ever so slightly dryly; her tutor had deemed Cato the Censor beneath her attention.

  "Do!" said Cato eagerly, putting his arms around her, drawing her body between his legs. "Start with his Carmen de Moribus, it will give you an idea of how moral a man he was, how properly Roman. Of course, he was the first Porcius to bear the cognomen Cato—until then, the Porcii had been cognominated Priscus—and doesn't that tell you how ancient our stock is, that it was called Ancient? Why, my grandfather's grandfather was paid the price of five Public Horses killed under him while fighting for Rome!"

  "It's the Salonianus concerns me, not the Priscus or the Cato. Salonius was a Celtiberian slave, was he not? Whereas the senior branch can claim descent from a noble Licinia, and from the third daughter of the great Aemilius Paullus and Scipio's eldest Cornelia."

  He was frowning now; this statement definitely smacked of Livian snobbishness. But she was gazing up at him wide-eyed and adoring, and he was so very much in love with her; it wasn't her poor little fault that she had not been properly informed about the Porcii Catones. It was up to him to convert her.

  "Surely you know the story of Cato the Censor and Salonia," he said, resting his chin on her shoulder.

  "No, I don't, meum mel. Tell me, please."

  "Well, my grandfather didn't marry for the first time until he was forty-two. By then he had been consul, won a great victory in Further Spain, and celebrated a triumph— he wasn't greedy! He never took a share of the spoils or sold the captured prisoners for his own pocket! He gave everything to his soldiers, and their descendants still love him for it," said Cato, so enamored of his grandfather that he had forgotten the point of his story.

  She proceeded to remind him. "So it was at the age of forty-two that he married the noble Licinia."

  "That's right. He had one child by her, his son Marcus Licinianus, though it seems he was very attached to Licinia. I don't know why there weren't more children. Anyway, Licinia died when my grandfather was seventy-seven years old. After her death he took one of the household slave girls into his bed and kept her there. His son Licinianus and his son's wife, the high-born lady you've already referred to, were living in his house, naturally. And they were outraged by his action. It appears he made no secret of it, and permitted the slave to strut around as if she owned the place. Soon all of Rome knew what was going on, because Marcus Licinianus and Aemilia Tertia told everybody. Everybody, that is, except Cato the Censor. But of course he found out what they were saying all over the city, and instead of asking them why they had said nothing to him of their outrage, my grandfather quietly dismissed the slave girl very early one morning, and set off for the Forum without telling them the girl was gone."

  "How very odd!" said Livia Drusa.

  Cato chose not to comment upon her comment, but went on. "Now Cato the Censor had a freedman client named Salonius, a Celtiberian from Salo who had been one of his slave scribes.

  " 'Ho there, Salonius!' said my grandfather when he reached the Forum. 'Have you found a husband for that pretty daughter of yours yet?'

  "'Why, no, domine,' said Salonius, 'but rest assured when I do find a good man for her, I shall bring him to you and ask for your judgment and consent.'

  " 'There's no need to look any further,' said my grand father. 'I have a good husband for her—a prince of fellows Comfortable fortune, stainless reputation, excellent family—everything desirable! Except—well, I'm afraid he's a bit long in the tooth. Healthy, mind you! But even the most charitably inclined would have to say he's a very old man.'

  " 'Domine, if he is your choice, how can he do otherwise than please me?' Salonius asked. 'My daughter was born while I was your slave, and her mother was your slave too. When you put the cap of liberty on my head, you were kind enough to free my whole fa
mily. But my daughter is still your dependent—as I am, and my wife, and my son. Have no fear, Salonia is a good girl. She will marry any man you've taken the time and trouble to find for her, no matter what his age.'

  " 'Oh, terrific, Salonius!' cried my grandfather, clapping him on the back. 'He's me!' "

  Livia Drusa stirred. "That's bad grammar," she said. "I thought Cato the Censor's Latin was perfect?"

  "Mea vita, mea vita, have you no sense of humor at all?" asked Cato, staring. "He was joking! He wanted to make light of it, is all! Salonius was flabbergasted, of course. He couldn't believe he was being offered a marriage alliance with a noble house which could boast a censor and a triumph!"

  "I'm not surprised he was flabbergasted," said Livia Drusa.

  Cato hurried on. "My grandfather assured Salonius that he was absolutely serious, the girl Salonia was fetched, and she and my grandfather were married at once, as the day was auspicious.

  "But when Marcus Licinianus heard of it an hour or two later—the word flew round Rome!—he gathered a host of his friends, and they went en masse to Cato the Censor.

  " 'Is it because we disapproved of your slave girl mistress that you disgrace our house still further by offering me such a stepmother?' asked Licinianus, very angry.

  " 'How can I disgrace you, my son, when I am about to prove what a formidable man I am by siring more sons at my advanced age?' asked my grandfather, his manner lordly. 'Would you have me marry a noblewoman when I am closer to eighty than I am to seventy? An alliance like that would not be appropriate. In marrying the daughter of my freedman, I am making a marriage suitable to my age and needs.'"

  "What an extraordinary thing to do!" said Livia Drusa. "He did it to vex Licinianus and Aemilia Tertia, of course.''

  "So we Saloniani think," said Cato.

  "And did they all continue to live in the same house?"

  "Certainly. Marcus Licinianus died not long afterward, however—most people thought he suffered a broken heart. And that left Aemilia Tertia alone in the house with her father-in-law and his new wife, Salonia, a fate she richly deserved, in my opinion. Her father being dead, she couldn't go home, you see."

  "Salonia, I gather, bore your father," said Livia Drusa.

  "She did indeed," said Cato Salonianus.

  "But don't you feel it keenly, being the grandson of a woman who was born a slave?' asked Livia Drusa.

  Cato blinked. "What's to feel so keenly?" he asked. "All of us have had to start somewhere! And it seems the censors agreed with my grandfather Cato the Censor, who maintained that his blood was noble enough to sanctify the blood of any slave. They've never tried to exclude the Saloniani from the Senate. Salonius came from good Gallic stock. If he had been Greek, now—that was something my grandfather would never have done! He hated Greeks."

  "Have you plastered the farmsteads?'' asked Livia Drusa, beginning to move her hips against Cato.

  "Of course not," he answered, breathing quickening.

  "And now I know why we have to drink such dreadful wine."

  "Tace, Livia Drusa!" said Cato, and turned her around.

  To exist in the midst of a love so great its participants think it perfect usually leads to indiscretions, to careless remarks and eventual discovery; but Livia Drusa and Cato Salonianus pursued their affair with extraordinarily efficient secrecy. Had they been in Rome, of course, things would have been different; luckily sleepy Tusculum remained oblivious to the juicy scandal going on beneath its nose.

  Within four weeks Livia Drusa knew she was pregnant, and knew too that the child was not Caepio's. The very day on which Caepio had left Rome, she had menstruated. Two weeks later she was lying in the arms of Marcus Porcius Cato Salonianus; and when the time came due, no period arrived. Two previous pregnancies had acquainted her with other signs that she was gravid, and now she was prey to them all. She was going to have the child of her lover, Cato, not the child of her husband, Caepio.

  In a philosophical spirit, Livia Drusa decided to make no secret of her condition, relieved that the close proximity of Caepio to Cato in the time reference would protect her. What if she hadn't fallen so quickly? Oh, best not to think of that!

  Drusus professed himself quite delighted, as did Servilia Caepionis; Lilla thought a baby brother would be tremendous fun, whereas Servilia just looked even more wooden than usual.

  Of course Cato had to be told—only how much, exactly what? The cool Livius Drusus head came to the fore; Livia Drusa sat down to think things out. Terrible to cheat Cato of his child if it were a boy. And yet... And yet. .. The baby would undoubtedly be born before Caepio returned, and all the world would assume the baby belonged to Caepio. And if Cato's child were a boy, he would—did he bear the name Quintus Servilius Caepio—fall heir to the Gold of Tolosa. All fifteen thousand talents of it. He would be the richest man in Rome, and own a glorious name. More glorious by far than Cato Salonianus.

  "I'm going to have a baby, Marcus Porcius," she said to Cato when next they met in the two-roomed cottage she had come to regard as her true home.

  Alarmed rather than overjoyed, he stared at her fixedly. "Is it mine, or is it your husband's?" he asked.

  "I don't know," said Livia Drusa. "Honestly, I don't know. I doubt if I will when he's finally born."

  "He?"

  "I'm carrying a boy."

  Cato leaned back against the bedhead, closed his eyes, compressed his beautiful mouth. "Mine," he said.

  "I don't know," she said.

  "So you'll let everyone believe he's your husband's."

  "I don't see what other choice I have."

  His eyes opened, he turned his head to look at her, his face sad. "None, I know. I can't afford to marry you, even if you did have the opportunity to divorce. Which you won't, unless your husband comes home sooner than you expect. I doubt that. There's a pattern in all this. The gods are laughing their hardest."

  "Let them! In the end, it's we men and women who win, not the gods," said Livia Drusa, and pushed herself up in the bed to kiss him. "I love you, Marcus Porcius. I hope he's yours."

  "I hope he's not," said Cato.

  Livia Drusa's condition made no difference to her routine; she continued to go for her morning walks, and Cato Salonianus continued to spend far more time on his grandfather's old place near Tusculum than ever before. They made love passionately and without any consideration for the foetus curled up in her womb, Livia Drusa maintaining whenever Cato demurred that so much love could never harm her baby.

  "Do you still prefer Rome to Tusculum?" she asked her little daughter Servilia on an idyllic day in late October.

  "Oh, yes," said Servilia, who had proven a hard nut to crack over the months—never forthcoming, never initiating a conversation, and answering her mother's questions so briefly that the dinner hour was largely a solo effort on Livia Drusa's part.

  "Why, Servilia?"

  Servilia eyed her mother's belly, which was huge. "For one thing, there are good doctors and midwives there," she said.

  "Oh, don't worry about the baby!" cried Livia Drusa, and laughed. "He's very content. When his time comes, he'll be easy. I have at least a month to go."

  "Why do you keep saying 'he,' Mama?"

  "Because I know he's a boy."

  "No one can really know until the baby comes out."

  "What a little cynic you are," said Livia Drusa, amused. "I knew you were a girl and I knew Lilla was a girl. Why should I not be right this time too? I'm carrying him differently, and he talks to me differently."

  "Talks to you?"

  "Yes. You all talked to me while you were inside me."

  The look Livia Drusa got was derisive. "Truly, Mama, you are queer! And getting queerer. How can a baby talk to you from the inside when babies don't talk for at least a year after they're born?"

  "You're just like your father," said Livia Drusa, and pulled a hideous face.

  "So you don't like tata! I didn't think you did," said Servilia, her tone more detached than
accusatory.

  She was seven now; old enough, thought her mother, for some hard facts. Oh, not couched in a way which would prejudice her against her father, but... Wouldn't it be lovely to make a real friend of this oldest child?

  "No," said Livia Drusa deliberately, "I don't like tata. Do you want to know why?"

  Servilia shrugged. “I daresay I'm going to be told why.''

  "Well, do you like him?"

  "Yes, yes! He's the best person in the world!"

  "Oh... Then I have to tell you why I don't like him. If I don't, you'll resent the way I feel. I have justification."

  "No doubt you think so."

  "Darling, I never wanted to marry tata. Your Uncle Marcus forced me to marry him. And that's a bad start."

  "You must have had a choice," said Servilia.

  "None at all. We rarely do."

  "I think you ought to have accepted the fact that Uncle Marcus knows better than you about everything. I find nothing wrong with his choice of husband for you," said the seven-year-old judge.

  “Oh, dear!'' Livia Drusa stared at her daughter in despair. "Servilia, we can't always dictate whom we like and whom we dislike. I happened to dislike tata. I always had disliked him, from the time I was your age. But our fathers had arranged that we would marry, and Uncle Marcus saw nothing wrong in it. I couldn't make him understand that lack of love need not imperil a marriage, whereas dislike must ruin it from the beginning."