Colleen McCullough - 4. Caesar's Women

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Julia was easy. When Caesar sent for her, she hurled herself at him and hugged him. "Tata, I understand everything, even why you couldn't see me for five days. How brilliant you are! You've put Cicero in his place for good and all." "Do you think so? I find most people don't know their place well enough to find it when someone like me puts them in it." "Oh," said Julia doubtfully. "And what about Servilia?" She sat on his lap and began to kiss his white fans. "What is there to say, tata! Speaking of places, it isn't my place to stand in judgement on you, and I at least do know where my place is. Brutus feels as I do. We intend to go on as if nothing has changed." She shrugged. "Really, nothing has." "What a wise little bird I have in my nest!" Caesar's arms tightened; he squeezed her so hard she had to gasp for breath. Julia, no father could ever have asked for such a daughter! I am blessed. I wouldn't accept Minerva and Venus rolled in one as a replacement for you." In all her life she had never been as happy as she was at that moment, but was a wise enough little bird not to weep. Men disliked women who wept; men liked women who laughed and made them laugh. To be a man was so very difficult all that public strife, forced to fight tooth and nail for everything, enemies lurking everywhere. A woman who gave the men in her life more joy than anguish would never lack for love, and Julia knew now that she would never lack for love. She was not Caesar's daughter for nothing; some things Aurelia could not teach her, but they were things she had learned for herself. "I take it then," said Caesar, cheek on her hair, "that our Brutus won't punch me in the eye when we next meet?" "Of course he won't! If Brutus thought the worse of you for it, he would have to think the worse of his mother." "Very true." "Have you seen Servilia during the past five days, tata?'' "No." A little silence fell; Julia stirred, screwed up her courage to speak. "Junia Tertia is your daughter." "I believe so." "I wish I could know her!" "It isn't possible, Julia. I don't know her." "Brutus says she's like her mother in nature." "If that is the case," said Caesar, tipping Julia off his lap and getting to his feet, "it's better that you don't know her." "How can you be together with someone you dislike?" "Servilia?" "Yes." His wonderful smile bloomed for her, his eyes creased up at their corners and obliterated those white fans. "If I knew that, little bird, I would be as good a father as you are a daughter. Who knows? I don't. Sometimes I think even the Gods don't begin to understand. It may be that all of us search for some kind of emotional completion in another person, though I believe we never find it. And our bodies make demands at loggerheads with our minds, just to complicate things. As for Servilia" he shrugged wryly "she's my disease." And he was gone. Julia stood for a moment very still, her heart full. Today she had crossed a bridge, the bridge between girlhood and adulthood. Caesar had held out his hand to her, and helped her to his side of it. He had opened his innermost self to her, and somehow she knew he had never done that with anyone before, even with her mother. When she did move she danced, and was still dancing when she reached the hall outside Aurelia's rooms. "Julia! Dancing is vulgar!" And that, thought Julia, was avia. Suddenly she felt so sorry for her grandmother that she flung both arms about Aurelia's stiffening form and kissed her smackingly on both cheeks. Poor, poor avia! How much in life she must have missed, and no wonder she and tata quarreled with such regularity!

It would be more convenient for me if you came to my house in future," said Servilia to Caesar as she marched into his rooms on the lower Vicus Patricii. "It isn't your house, Servilia, it's Silanus's, and the poor wretch has enough trouble looming without having to watch me invade his house to copulate with his wife!" snapped Caesar. "I enjoyed doing that to Cato, but I won't do it to Silanus. For a great patrician lady, you sometimes have the ethics of a brat from the Suburan gutter!" "Have it your own way," said Servilia, sitting down. To Caesar this reaction was significant; dislike Servilia he might, but by now he knew her very well, and the fact that she chose to sit fully clad rather than automatically stood to disrobe herself told him she was not nearly as sure of her ground as her attitude suggested. So he sat down too, in a chair from which he could watch her and in which she could see him from head to toe. His pose was graceful and curule, left foot back, right extended, left arm draped along the chair back, right hand lying in his lap, head level but chin up. "By rights I ought to strangle you," he said after a pause. "Silanus thought you'd chop me into pieces and feed me to the wolves." "Did he now? That's interesting." "Oh, he was all on your side! How you men do stick together! He actually had the temerity to be angry with me because though I fail to see why! my letter to you forced him to vote to execute the conspirators. A nonsense if ever I heard one!" "You fancy yourself a political expert, my dear, but the truth is that you're a political ignoramus. You can never watch senatorial politics in action, and there's a vast difference between senatorial politics and comitial politics. I suppose men go about their public life armed with the knowledge that sooner or later they'll wear a pair of horns, but no man expects to have to don his horns in the Senate during a critical debate," said Caesar harshly. "Of course you forced him to vote for execution! Had he voted with me, the whole House would have assumed that he was my pander. Silanus is not a well man, but he is a proud one. Why else do you think he kept silent after he was informed what was occurring between us? A note read by half the Senate, and that the important half? You really did rub his nose in it, didn't you?" "I see you're on his side as much as he's on yours." He gave an explosive sigh and rolled his eyes ceilingward. "The only side I'm on, Servilia, is my own." "You would be!" A silence fell; he broke it. "Our children surpass us for maturity. They've taken it very well, and very sensibly." "Have they?" she asked indifferently. "You've not spoken to Brutus about it?" "Not since the day it happened and Cato arrived to inform Brutus that his mother is a slut. 'Strumpet' is the word he used, actually." She smiled reminiscently. "I made mincemeat of his face." "Ah, so that's the answer! Next time I see Cato I must tell him that I feel for him. I too have sampled your claws." "Only where the marks are not on public display." "I see I must be thankful for small mercies." She leaned forward eagerly. "Did he look frightful? Did I scar him badly?" "Shockingly. He looked as if a harpy had been at him." A grin came. "Come to think of it, 'harpy' is a better word for you than 'slut' or 'strumpet.' However, don't congratulate yourself too much. Cato has good skin, so in time the marks will disappear." "You don't scar easily either." Because Cato and I have the same kind of skin. War experience teaches a man what will stay and what will go." Another explosive sigh. "What am I going to do with you, Servilia?" Perhaps to ask that question is putting your left shoe on your right foot, Caesar. The initiative might belong to me, not to you." That provoked a chuckle. "Rubbish," he said gently. She went pale. "You mean I love you more than you love me." "I don't love you at all." "Then why are we together?" "You please me in bed, which is rare in women of your class. I like the combination. And you have more between your ears than most women, even though you're a harpy." "Is that where you think it is?" she asked, desperate to get him away from her failings. "What?" "Our thinking apparatus." "Ask any army surgeon or soldier and he'll tell you. It's blows to the head damage our thinking apparatus. Cerebrum, the brain. What all the philosophers argue about isn't cerebrum, it's animus. The animating spirit, the soul. The part which can conceive ideas bearing no relation to our senses, from music to geometry. The part which soars. That's in a place we do not know. Head, chest, belly ..." He smiled. "It might even live in our big toes. Logical, when you think of how gout can destroy Hortensius." "I believe you have answered my question. I now know why we are together." "Why?" "Because of that. I am your hone. You sharpen your wits on me, Caesar." She got out of the chair and began to remove her clothing. Suddenly Caesar wanted her badly, but not to cradle her or treat her tenderly. One didn't tame a harpy by kindness. A harpy was a grotesque one took on the floor with teeth in her neck and her claws locked behind her back, then took again, and again. Rough usage always did tame her; she became soft and slightly kittenish after he transferred her from the floor to the bed. "Have you ever loved any woman?" she asked then. "Cinnilla," he said abruptly, and closed his eyes on tears. "Why?" asked the harpy. "There was nothing special about her, she wasn't witty or intelligent. Though she was patrician." In answer he turned on his side away from her, and pretended to nap. Talk to Servilia about Cinnilla? Never! Why did I love her so, if that is what it was I felt? Cinnilla was mine from the time I took her hand and led her home from the house of Gaius Marius in the days when he had become a demented shadow of himself. How old was I, thirteen? And she was all of seven, the adorable little thing. So dark and plump and sweet... The way her upper lip folded under when she smiled, and she smiled a lot. Gentleness personified. No cause of her own, unless her cause was I. Did I love her so much because we were children together first? Or was it that in chaining me to a priesthood and marrying me to a child he didn't know, old Gaius Marius gifted me with something so precious I will never meet it again? He sat up convulsively and slapped Servilia so hard on the behind that she wore the mark for the rest of the day. "Time to go," he said. "Go on, Servilia, go! Go now!" She went without a word, and she hurried, something in his face filling her with the same kind of terror she inspired in Brutus. As soon as she had gone Caesar turned his head into the pillow and wept as he had not wept since Cinnilla died.