An answer that made sense; Octavia mopped at her tears, blew her nose, gazed at Fonteius’s wet handkerchief in dismay, and smiled. “I have ruined it until it’s laundered,” she said. “I thank you, dear Fonteius. But what should I do?”
“Come to a performance of Aristophanes’s Clouds with me, and then write to Antonius as if this letter were never sent. Ask him what he wants done with Caesar’s gifts.”
“And ask when he intends to come to Athens? May I do that?”
“Definitely. He must come.”
Another month went by, of tragedies, comedies, lectures, excursions, any treat Fonteius could invent to help his poor darling pass the time, before Antony’s reply arrived. Interesting, that not even Perdita could manage to make a scandal out of Fonteius’s dancing attendance on Imperator Caesar’s sister! Simply, no one would—or could—believe that Octavia was the stuff of unfaithful wives. Fonteius was her guardian; Caesar had made no secret of it, and ensured that his wishes were known even as far away as Athens.
By now everyone was talking about Antony’s continuing passion for the woman Octavian had named the Queen of Beasts. Fonteius found himself caught in a cleft stick; half of him longed to come to Antony’s defense, but the other half, by now deeply in love with Octavia, was concerned only with her well-being.
Antony’s letter wasn’t as great a shock as his first one.
Go back to Rome, Octavia! I have no business to take me to Athens in the foreseeable future, so it is pointless to wait there when you ought to be caring for your children in Rome. I say again, return to Rome!
As for the men and the supplies, ship them to Antioch immediately. Fonteius can come with them, or not, as he pleases. It seems from what I have heard that you need him more than I do.
I forbid you to come to Antioch yourself, is that clear? Go to Rome, not to Antioch.
Perhaps it was shock that rendered her tearless; Octavia wasn’t sure. The pain was terrible, but had a life of its own that was somehow not connected to her, Octavia, sister of Imperator Caesar and wife of Marcus Antonius. It ripped and tore, squeezed her dry, while all her mind could think of were his two little girls. They floated in an utterly dark place behind her eyes: Antonia, tall and sandily fair; Mama Atia said she was the image of Divus Julius’s aunt Julia, who had been the wife of Gaius Marius. She was five now, and going through a "good" phase that perhaps wouldn't last. Whereas Tonilla the red of hair and eye was imperious, impatient, implacable, impassioned. Antonia hardly knew her tata, while Tonilla had never set eyes on him.
“You’re just like your father!” Avia Atia would cry, tried beyond endurance by a tantrum or a torrent of feeling from Tonilla.
“You’re just like your father,” Octavia would whisper very tenderly, loving the tiny volcano more because of it.
And now, she knew, it was all over. The day had come that once she had foreseen; for the rest of her life she would love him but have to exist without him. Whatever tied him to Egypt’s queen was very strong, perhaps unbreakable. And yet—and yet—somewhere in her depths Octavia knew that theirs wasn’t a happy union, that Antony railed at it, half hated it. With me, she thought, he had peace and contentment. I soothed and calmed him. With Cleopatra, he has uncertainty and turmoil. She inflames him, goads him, torments him.
“That kind of marriage will madden him,” she said to Fonteius, showing him this letter too.
“Yes, it will,” Fonteius managed around the huge lump in his throat. “Poor Antonius! Cleopatra will mold him to her liking.”
“What is her liking?” Octavia asked, looking hunted.
“I wish I knew, but I don’t.”
“Why didn’t he divorce me?”
Fonteius looked astonished, then chagrined. “Edepol! Why didn’t it occur to me to wonder that? Yes, why didn’t he divorce you? His letter almost demands that he should.”
“Come, Fonteius, think! You must know. Whatever it is has to be political.”
“This second letter hasn’t come as a surprise, has it? You expected it to say what it does.”
“Yes, yes! But why no divorce?” she persisted.
“I think it means he hasn’t quite burned his boats,” Fonteius said slowly. “There’s still a need in him to feel a Roman with a Roman wife.
You’re protection, Octavia. It may be too that in not divorcing you, he’s making a bid for independence. The woman fixed her claws in him at a moment of deepest despair, when he would have turned for comfort to whoever was at hand—her.”
“She made sure of that.”
“Yes, obviously.”
“But why, Fonteius? What does she want of him?”
“Territory. Power. She’s an eastern monarch, granddaughter of Mithridates the Great. It’s not the Ptolemy in her, they’ve been torpid and narrowly ambitious for generations, more concerned with filching the throne of Egypt off each other than in looking farther afield. Cleopatra is hungry for expansion—Mithridatic and Seleucid appetites.”
“How do you know so much about her?” Octavia asked curiously.
“I talked to people when I was in Alexandria and Antioch.”
“And what did you think of her when you met her?”
“Two things, more than any others. One, that she was utterly obsessed with her son by Divus Julius. The second, that she was a little like Thetis—able to change herself into whatever she felt necessary to achieve her ends.”
“Shark, cuttlefish—I forget the rest, only that Peleus hung on no matter what Thetis became.” She shivered. “Indeed, poor Antonius! He’s determined to hang on to her.”
He decided to change the subject, though he could think of nothing that would cheer her. “And are you going home?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I hate to impose, but could you find me a ship?”
“Better than that,” he said easily. “Your brother charged me with your welfare, which means I’ll be going with you.”
A relief, if not a joy; Fonteius watched her face relax a little, wishing with might and main that he, Gaius Fonteius Capito, could persuade her to love him. Quite a number of women had said they could love him, and two wives certainly had, but they were nothings. Long after he had ever expected to, he had found the woman of his heart, his dreams. But she loved another, and would go on doing so. Just as he would go on loving her.
“What a strange world we live in,” he said, and managed a wry laugh. “Could you bear to see The Trojan Women this afternoon? I admit the subject is close to our present bone—women who have lost their men—but Euripides is a true master, and the cast is splendid. Demetrius of Corinth is playing Hekabe, Doriscus is playing Andromache, and—they say he is amazing in the part—Aristogenes is Helen. Will you come?”
“Yes, please,” she said, smiling at him, even with her eyes. “What are my woes, compared to theirs? At least I have my home, my children, and my freedom. It will do me good to witness the plight of the Trojan women, especially as I’ve never seen the play. I’ve heard it tears at the heart, so I’ll be able to weep for someone else’s troubles.”
Octavian wept for his sister’s troubles when she arrived in Rome a month later. It was September, and he was about to embark on his first campaign against the tribes of Illyricum. Dashing his tears away, he threw the two letters Fonteius had given him onto his desk and fought for composure. The battle won, he ground his teeth in anger, but not anger at Fonteius.
“Thank you for coming to see me before I could see Octavia,” he said to Fonteius, and held out his hand. “You have acquitted yourself with honor and kindness to my sister, and I don’t need her to tell me that. Is she—is she very downcast?”
“No, Caesar, that’s not her way. Antonius’s behavior has crushed her, but not defeated her.”
A verdict Octavian agreed with, once he saw her.
“You must come and live here with me,” he said, his arm around her shoulders. “Bring the children, of course. Livia Drusilla is anxious that you have company, and the Carinae is to
o far away.”
“No, Caesar, that I cannot do,” Octavia said strongly. “I am Antonius’s wife, and will live in his house until he bids me go. Please don’t nag or bully me about it! I won’t change my mind.”
Sighing, he put her in a chair and drew another up close to hers, taking her hands. “Octavia, he won’t come home to you.”
“I know that, Little Gaius, but it makes no difference. I am still his wife, which means he expects me to care for his children and his house as a wife must when her husband is abroad.”
“What about money? He can’t be providing for you.”
“I have my own money.”
That annoyed him, though his anger was reserved for Antony’s emotional callousness. “Your money is yours, Octavia! I’ll have the Senate grant you sufficient funds from Antonius’s stipend to care for his property here in Rome. His villas as well.”
“No, I beg you, don’t do that! I’ll keep a faithful account of what I spend, and he can pay me back when he comes home.”
“Octavia, he isn’t coming home!”
“You can’t say that for sure, Caesar. I don’t claim to understand men’s passions, but I do know Antonius. This Egyptian woman might be another Glaphyra, another Fulvia, even. He tires of women when they become importunate.”
“He has tired of you, my dear.”
“No, he hasn’t,” she said valiantly. “I am still his wife, he didn’t divorce me.”
“That was to keep his tame senators and knights in his camp. No one can say he’s permanently in the clutches of the Queen of Egypt when he hasn’t divorced you, his true wife.”
“No one can say? Oh, come, Caesar! You can’t say, is what you mean! I am not blind! You want Antonius to seem a traitor—for your own ends, not mine.”
“Believe that if you must, but it isn’t true.”
“Here I stay” was all she said.
Octavian left her, feeling neither surprise nor more than a minor irritation; he knew her as only a little brother could, following someone four years older as if tethered to a leash, privy to thoughts expressed aloud, girlish conversations with her friends, adolescent swoons and crushes. Antony had inspired those swoons long before she was old enough to love him as a woman did. When Marcellus applied to marry her, she had gone to her fate without a murmur of protest because she knew her duty and never dreamed of marriage to Antony. He was so much in Fulvia’s toils at the time that an eighteen-year-old as sensible as Octavia abandoned what hope she had ever cherished—probably none.
“She wouldn’t move here?” asked Livia Drusilla when he returned.
“No.”
Livia Drusilla clicked her tongue. “Tch! What a pity!”
He laughed, brushed his hand down her cheek affectionately. “What nonsense! You’re profoundly glad. A child lover you are not, wife, and you are well aware that those overindulged, underdisciplined children would swarm everywhere if they lived here, no matter how we tried to contain them.”
She giggled. “Alas, too true! Though, Caesar, it isn’t I who is out of the ordinary, it is Octavia. Children are greatly to be desired, and I would rejoice were I to fall pregnant. But Octavia makes a female cat look negligent. I’m surprised she consented to go to Athens without them.”
“She went without them because—keeping up the feline metaphor—she knows Antonius is a tomcat and feels the way you do about children. Poor Octavia!”
“Be sorry for her, Caesar, by all means, but don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s better her pain comes now than later.”
20
While Publius Canidius and his seven legions had penetrated Armenia and done good work, Antony had remained in Syria, ostensibly to oversee the war against Sextus Pompey in Asia Province and get a grand army together for his next campaign into Median Parthia. No more than an excuse; it had taken him that year to emerge, slowly and painfully, from his wine-caused illness. While Uncle Plancus governed Syria, Nephew Titius had deputed for Antony and taken an army to Ephesus to help Furnius, Ahenobarbus, and Amyntas of Galatia subdue Sextus Pompey. It was Titius who cornered him in Phrygian Midaeum, and Titius who escorted him to the Asian coast at Miletus. There he was put to death at Titius’s orders, an act Antony loudly deplored. He accused Uncle Plancus of putting Titius up to it, but Uncle Plancus stoutly insisted that the order, a secret one, had come from Antony, who should wear the blame. Not so! roared Antony.
Whose was the blame might never be known, but certainly Antony benefited from this short little war. He inherited the three good legions of bored veterans Sextus had recruited, and two splendid sea-faring Romans in Decimus Turullius and Cassius Parmensis, the last of Divus Julius’s assassins left alive. After they offered Antony their services and Antony accepted, Octavian wrote an almost hysterical letter to Antony.
“If nothing more was necessary to prove to me that you were a party to the plot to murder my divine father, Antonius, this is it,” said Octavian in his own small, meticulous hand. “Of all the infamous, treacherous, disgusting acts of your hideous career, this is the worst. Knowing these two men are assassins, you have taken them into your service instead of publicly executing them. You do not deserve to hold a Roman magistracy, even of the lowest kind. You are not my colleague, you are my enemy, just as you are the enemy of all decent, honorable Roman men. You will pay for this, Antonius, so I swear by Divus Julius. You will pay.”
“Were you a party to the plot?” Cleopatra demanded.
Antony looked injured. “No, of course I wasn’t! Jupiter, it’s ten years since Caesar was murdered, and ask me which I would prefer—two dead suspected assassins, or two live Roman admirals? There is no contest.”
“Yes, I see your logic. Still…”
“Still what?”
“I’m not sure I believe your denials about Caesar’s murder.”
“Well, I don’t happen to care whether you believe or you don’t believe! Why don’t you go home to Alexandria and rule in person for a change? Then I can deal with my war plans in peace.”
Cleopatra did as Antony suggested; within one nundinum the Philopator sailed for Alexandria with Pharaoh on board. Her willingness to leave him was evidence of her confidence that he had finally repaired the ravages wine had wreaked upon his body and, more important, his mind. He really was extraordinary! Any other man of his age would have emerged showing physical scars of dissipation, but not Mark Antony. As fit as ever, certainly fit enough to conduct his ridiculous campaign. But this time he would not be marching for Phraaspa, of that she could be sure. Without the absent Canidius to back her up it had been hard going, but she had kept grinding away at Antony’s ambitions over the months, shaping them into a different form. Of course she hadn’t implied by word or look that he should turn his eyes westward to Rome; instead, she had harped upon the fact that Octavian was bound to come east now that he had conquered Sextus Pompey, whose execution had been her idea. A fat bribe to Lucius Munatius Plancus, another to his sister’s boy, Titius, and the deed was done.
With Lepidus forced into retirement and Sextus Pompey gone for good, she had argued, there was no one to prevent Octavian’s ruling the world except Mark Antony. It hadn’t been difficult to convince Antony that Octavian wanted to rule the world, especially after she found an unexpected ally to reinforce her contentions. As if his nose had the ability to scent a vacant space around Antony, Quintus Dellius had appeared in Antioch to take the place Gaius Fonteius had relinquished, full of mischief about Fonteius, who he swore was now Octavia’s slave, a lovesick laughingstock. As Dellius utterly lacked Fonteius’s integrity and suavity, he was no real substitute. However, he could be bought, and once a Roman noble had sold his services, he stayed bought. It was, apparently, a matter of honor, even were the honor tawdry. Cleopatra bought him.
She put Dellius to work in the slot Fonteius had vacated; once more he functioned as Antony’s ambassador. The business of Ventidius and Samosata had faded from the forefront of Antony’s mind, didn’t seem such a
crime anymore. Antony was, besides, missing Fonteius’s manly company, so he seized upon Dellius as a substitute, albeit a pitifully inadequate one. Had Ahenobarbus been in Syria things would have fallen out differently, but Ahenobarbus was busy in Bithynia. Nothing stood in Dellius’s way. Or in Cleopatra’s.
At the moment Dellius was engaged in a task of Cleopatra’s devising. Between the two of them, he and Cleopatra had experienced little trouble in convincing Antony that it was a task of great moment; he was to journey as Antony’s ambassador to the court of Artavasdes of Media, and there propose an alliance between Rome and Media that ran counter to Parthian interests. Media proper, of which Phraaspa was the capital, belonged to the King of the Parthians; Artavasdes ruled Media Atropatene, smaller and less clement. Since all his borders save the one with Armenia were Parthian, Artavasdes was in conflict; self-preservation dictated that he should do nothing to offend the King of the Parthians, whereas ambition prompted him to cast hungry eyes on Media proper. When Antony’s disastrous campaign had commenced, he and his Armenian namesake had been positive that no one could beat Rome, but by the time that Antony had set out from Artaxata on that terrible march, both Artavasdeses had thought differently.