Antony and Cleopatra (51 page)

“Completely, Caesar,” Fonteius said without hesitation. “She can’t be let leave Athens until all her hope is gone.”

Remembering that exchange, Fonteius felt his face twist; he knew the lady far better now than he had then, and found he cared desperately about her fate.

Well, this was Greece; his offerings should now be to Greek gods—Demeter the mother, Persephone the ravished daughter, Hermes the messenger, Poseidon of the deep, and Hera the queen. Send Antonius to Athens, let him break his ties with Cleopatra! How could he prefer such a scrawny, ugly little woman to the beautiful Octavia? He couldn’t, he just couldn’t!

Octavia concealed her disappointment at the news that Antony was in Antioch, but learned enough of the awful campaign of Phraaspa to understand that he probably preferred to be with his troops at this moment. So she wrote to him immediately to tell him of her arrival in Athens, and of the bounty in her train, from soldiers to battering rams and artillery. The letter was replete with news of his children, her other nursery occupants, the family, and events in Rome, and artlessly implied that, if he couldn’t come to Athens, he would require her to travel on to Antioch.

Between the writing of it and Antony’s reply—a matter of a full month—she had to suffer the renewal of friendships and acquaintances from her previous time in residence. Most of these were innocuous enough, but when the steward announced the arrival of Perdita to call on her, Octavia’s heart sank. This elderly Roman matron was the wife of a merchant plutocrat, immensely rich and dangerously idle. Perdita was her nickname, one she flaunted with pride; it meant not so much that she herself was ruined, but that she contrived at the ruination of others. Perdita was a destroyer, a bringer of bad tidings.

“Oh, my poor, poor sweet dear!” she cried, swanning into the sitting room clad in gauzy wools of the newest color, a jarring magenta, the plethora of necklaces, bracelets, bangles, and earrings clanking like prisoner’s chains.

“Perdita. How nice to see you,” Octavia said mechanically, suffering the kisses on her cheeks, the squeezing of her hands.

“I think it’s a disgrace, and I hope you tell him so when you see him!” Perdita cried, settling into a chair.

“What is a disgrace?” Octavia asked.

“Why, Antonius’s shameless affair with Cleopatra!”

A smile curved Octavia’s lips. “Is it shameless?” she asked.

“My dear, he’s
married
her!”

“Has he?”

“Indeed he has. They married in Antioch, the moment they arrived there from Leuke Kome.”

“How do you know?”

“Peregrinus has had letters from Gnaeus Cinna, Scaurus, Titius, and Poplicola,” Perdita said: Peregrinus was her husband. “It is quite true. She bore him another boy last year.”

Perdita stayed half an hour, stubbornly clinging to her chair despite her hostess’s negligence in not offering her refreshments. During this time she poured out the entire story as she knew it, from Antony’s months-long binge waiting for Cleopatra to all the details of the marriage. Some of it Octavia already knew, though not the way Perdita painted events; she listened intently, her face giving nothing away, and rose as soon as she could to end the unpleasant interlude. No word of men’s tendencies to take lovers when separated from their wives passed her lips, nor other remarks that would fuel Perdita’s retelling of this morning’s work. Of course the woman would lie, but those to whom she lied would find no confirmation of Perdita’s version when they encountered Octavia. Who closed her sitting room door to admission even by servants for a full hour after Perdita had clashed and clattered off into the Attic sun. Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Was this why her brother spoke of Cleopatra so scathingly, even over dinner? How much did others know, while she knew virtually nothing? Of the children her husband had sired on Cleopatra she was aware, including the boy born last year, but they hadn’t chewed at her; she had simply assumed that the Queen of Egypt was a fertile woman who, like herself, did not take precautions against conceiving. Her own impressions had been of a woman who had loved Divus Julius passionately, wholeheartedly, and sought solace in his cousin to provide her with more offspring to safeguard her throne in the next generation. It had certainly never occurred to Octavia that Antony wouldn’t philander; such was his nature, and how could he change that?

But Perdita spoke of an undying love! Oh, she oozed malice and spite, so why believe her? Yet the parasite had been inserted under Octavia's skin and was beginning to tunnel its way through her vitals toward her heart, her hopes, her dreams. She couldn’t deny that her husband had called for aid from Cleopatra, nor that he was still in the arms of this fabulous monarch. But no, the moment he learned of her, Octavia’s, presence in Athens, he would send Cleopatra back to Egypt and come to Athens. She was sure of it, positive of it!

Even so, during that hour alone she paced the room, struggled with the burrowing worm of Perdita’s making, reasoned her way to sanity, called upon all her formidable resources of common sense. For it made no sense that Antony would have fallen in love with a woman whose chief claim to fame was her seduction of Divus Julius, an intellectual, an aesthete, a man of unusual and fastidious tastes. As much like Antony as chalk was like cheese. The usual metaphor, yet it didn’t properly distinguish them. As much like Antony as a ruby was like a red glass bead? No, no, why was she wasting time on silly metaphors? The only thing Divus Julius and Antony had in common was Julian blood, and from what brother Caesar said, it was this alone had spurred Cleopatra to seek out Antony. She had, brother Caesar revealed, once propositioned
him
because of his Julian blood; her children had to have Julian blood. To bed a ruling queen with the aim of providing her with children would have appealed enormously to Antony, and so Octavia had regarded the affair when first it came to her attention. But
love
? No, never! Impossible!

When Fonteius called on his usual quick daily visit, he found Octavia subtly blighted; there were shadows under those wonderful eyes, the smile had a tendency to slip, and her hands were aimless. He decided to be blunt.

“Who’s been blabbing to you?” he demanded.

She shivered, looked rueful. “Does it show?” she asked.

“Not to anyone save me. Your brother charged me with your welfare, and I have taken that charge to heart. Who?”

“Perdita.”

“Abominable woman! What did she tell you?”

“Nothing really that I didn’t know, except for the marriage.”

“But it’s not what she said, it’s how she said it, yes?”

“Yes.”

He dared to take those purposeless hands, rub his thumbs over their backs in what might have been construed as comfort—or love. “Octavia, listen to me!” he said very seriously. “Don’t think the worst, please. It’s far too early and too ephemeral for you—or anyone!—to form conclusions. I’m a good friend of Antonius’s, I
know
him. Perhaps not as well as you, his wife, but differently. It may well be that a marriage with Egypt was something he deemed necessary to his own rule as Triumvir of the East. It can’t affect you—you’re his legal wife. This invalid union is a symptom of his trials in the East, where nothing has gone as he imagined. It is, I think, a way of stemming the spate of his disappointments.” He released her hands before she could find their touch intimate. “Do you understand?”

She looked better, more relaxed. “Yes, Fonteius, I do. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“In future, you’re not at home to Perdita. Oh, she’ll come running the next time Peregrinus has a letter from one of his boon companions! But you won’t see her. Promise?”

“I promise,” she said, smiling.

“Then I have good news. There’s a performance of
Oedipus Rex
this afternoon. I’ll give you a few moments to primp, then we’re off to see how good the actors are. Rumor has it, they’re terrific.”

A month after Octavia’s letter went to Antioch, Antony’s reply reached her.

 

What are you doing in Athens without the twenty thousand men I am owed by your brother? Here I am, preparing for an expedition back to Parthian Media, shockingly short of good Roman troops, and Octavianus has the presumption to send me two thousand only? It is too much, Octavia, far too much. Octavianus knows full well that I cannot return to Italia at the moment to recruit legionaries in person, and it was part of our agreement that he recruit me four legions. Legions I need badly.

Now I receive a silly letter from you, burbling about this child and that child—do you think the nursery and its occupants concern me one scrap at such a time as this? What concerns me is Octavianus’s broken agreement. Four legions, not four cohorts! The finest of the finest, indeed! And does your brother think I have need of a gigantic battering ram, when I’m sitting not far from the cedars of the Libanus?

May a plague take him, and all associated with him!

 

She put the letter down, bathed in cold perspiration. No words of love, no terms of endearment, no reference to her arrival beyond a diatribe aimed at Caesar.

“He doesn’t even tell me what he wants done with the men and supplies I’ve brought,” she said to Fonteius.

His face felt stiff, its skin prickling as if hit by a blast of sand in a dust storm. The big eyes fixed on him, so translucent that they were windows into her most private thoughts, filled with tears that began to course down her cheeks as if she didn’t know they did. Fonteius reached into the sinus of his toga and pulled out his handkerchief, gave it to her.

“Cheer up, Octavia,” he said, voice hardly under control. “I think two things, reading your letter. The first, that it reflects a side of Antonius that we both know—angry, impatient, thwarted. I can see and hear him rampaging up and down the room, coming out with a typical initial reaction to what he sees as Caesar’s insult. You just happen to be the intermediary, the messenger he kills to vent his spleen. But the second is more serious. I think that Cleopatra sat listening, jotted down notes, and dictated this reply herself. Had Antonius replied, he would at least have indicated what he wants done with what is, after all, a donation of materials and engines of war, as well as soldiers, that he needs very badly. Whereas Cleopatra, a military tyro, wouldn’t be bothered with a directive.
She
wrote it, not Antonius.”

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.