Antony and Cleopatra. Colleen McCullough
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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