Colleen McCullough - 4. Caesar's Women

Very properly, Servilia left a space of some days between the death of Silanus and a note to Caesar asking for an interview in the rooms on the Vicus Patricii. The Caesar who went to meet her was not the usual Caesar; if the knowledge that this was likely to be a troubled confrontation had not been sufficient to cause a change, then the knowledge that his creditors were suddenly pressing certainly would have. The word was up and down the Clivus Argentarius that there would be no praetorian provinces this year, a state of affairs which turned Caesar from a likely bet into an irretrievable loss. Catulus, Cato, Bibulus and the rest of the boni, of course. They had found a way to deny provinces to the praetors after all, and Fufius Calenus was a very good tribune of the plebs. And if matters could be made worse, the economic situation achieved that; when someone as conservative as Cato saw the need to lower the price of the grain dole, then Rome was in severe straits indeed. Luck, what had suddenly become of Caesar's luck? Or was Goddess Fortuna simply testing him? But it seemed Servilia was not in the mood to sort out her status; she greeted him fully clad and rather soberly, then sat in a chair and asked for wine. "Missing Silanus?" he asked. "Perhaps I am." She began to turn the goblet between her hands, round and round. "Do you know anything about death, Caesar?" "Only that it must come. I don't worry about it as long as it's quick. Were I to suffer Silanus's fate, I'd fall on my sword." "Some of the Greeks say there is a life after it." "Yes." "Do you believe that?" "Not in the conscious sense. Death is an eternal sleep, of that I'm sure. We don't float away disembodied yet continue to be ourselves. But no substance perishes, and there are worlds of forces we neither see nor understand. Our Gods belong in one such world, and they're tangible enough to conclude contracts and pacts with us. But we don't ever belong to it, in life or in death. We balance it. Without us, their world would not exist. So if the Greeks see anything, they see that. And who knows that the Gods are eternal? How long does a force last? Do new ones form when the old ones dwindle? What happens to a force when it is no more? Eternity is a dreamless sleep, even for the Gods. That I believe." "And yet," said Servilia slowly, "when Silanus died something went out of the room. I didn't see it go, I didn't hear it. But it went, Caesar. The room was empty." "I suppose what went was an idea." "An idea?" "Isn't that what all of us are, an idea?" "To ourselves, or to others?" "To both, though not necessarily the same idea." "I don't know. I only know what I sensed. What made Silanus live went away." "Drink your wine." She drained the cup. I feel very strange, but not the way I felt when I was a child and so many people died. Nor the way I felt when Pompeius Magnus sent me Brutus's ashes from Mutina." "Your childhood was an abomination," he said, got up and crossed to her side. "As for your first husband, you neither loved him nor chose him. He was just the man who made your son." She lifted her face for his kiss, never before so aware of what constituted Caesar's kiss because always before she had wanted it too badly to savor and dissect it. A perfect fusion of senses and spirit, she thought, and slid her arms about his neck. His skin was weathered, a little rough, and he smelled faintly of some sacrificial fire, ashes on a darkening hearth. Perhaps, her wondering mind went on through touch and taste, what I try to do is have something of his force with me forever, and the only way I can get it is this way, my body against his, him inside me, the two of us spared for some few moments all knowledge of other things, existing only in each other . . . Neither of them spoke then until both of them had slipped in and out of a little sleep; and there was the world again, babies howling, women shrieking, men hawking and spitting, the rumble of carts on the cobbles, the dull clunk of some machine in a nearby factory, the faint tremble which was Vulcan in the depths below. "Nothing," said Servilia, "lasts forever." "Including us, as I was telling you." "But we have our names, Caesar. If they are not forgotten, it is a kind of immortality." "The only one I'm aiming for." A sudden resentment filled her; she turned away from him. "You're a man, you have a chance at that. But what about me?" "What about you?" he asked, pulling her to face him. "That," she said, "was not a philosophical question." "No, it wasn't." She sat up and linked her arms about her knees, the ridge of down along her spine hidden by a great mass of fallen black hair. "How old are you, Servilia?" "I'll soon be forty three." It was now or never; Caesar sat up too. Do you want to marry again?" he asked. "Oh, yes." "Who?" She turned wide eyes to stare at him. "Who else, Caesar?" "I can't marry you, Servilia." Her shock was perceptible; she cringed. "Why?" "For one thing, there are our children. It isn't against the law for us to marry and for our children to marry each other. The degree of blood is permissible. But it would be too awkward, and I won't do it to them." "That," she said tightly, "is a prevarication." "No, it isn't. To me it's valid." "And what else?" "Haven't you heard what I said when I divorced Pompeia?" he asked. " 'Caesar's wife, like all Caesar's family, must be above suspicion.' " "I am above suspicion." "No, Servilia, you're not." "Caesar, that's just not so! It's said of me that I am too proud to ally myself with Jupiter Optimus Maximus." "But you weren't too proud to ally yourself with me." "Of course not!" He shrugged. "And there you have it." "Have what?" "You're not above suspicion. You're an unfaithful wife." "I am not!" "Rubbish! You've been unfaithful for years." "But with you, Caesar, with you! Never before with anyone, and never since with anyone else, even Silanus!" "It doesn't matter," said Caesar indifferently, "that it was with me. You are an unfaithful wife." "Not to you!" "How do I know that? You were unfaithful to Silanus. Why not later to me?" It was a nightmare; Servilia drew a breath, fought to keep her mind on these incredible things he was saying. "Before you," she said, "all men were insulsus. And after you, all other men are insulsus." "I won't marry you, Servilia. You're not above suspicion, and you're not above reproach." "What I feel for you," she said, struggling on, "cannot be measured in terms of the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. You are unique. Not for any other man or for a god! would I have beggared my pride or my good name. How can you use what I feel for you against me?'' "I'm not using anything against you, Servilia, I'm simply telling you the truth. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." "I am above suspicion!" "No, you're not." "Oh, I don't believe this!" she cried, shaking her head back and forth, hands wrung together. "You are unfair! Unjust!" And clearly the interview was over; Caesar got off the bed. "You must see it that way, of course. But that doesn't change it, Servilia. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." Time went by; she could hear Caesar in the bath, apparently at peace with his world. And finally she dragged herself out of the bed, dressed. "No bath?" he asked, actually smiling at her when she went through to the balcony service room. "Today I'll go home to bathe." "Am I forgiven?" "Do you want to be?" "I am honored to have you as my mistress." "I believe you really do mean that!" "I do," he said sincerely. Her shoulders went back, she pressed her lips together. "I will think about it, Caesar." "Good!" Which she took to mean that he knew she'd be back. And thank all the Gods for a long walk home. How did he manage to do that to me? So deftly, with such horrible civility! As if my feelings were of no moment as if I, a patrician Servilia Caepionis, could not matter. He made me ask for marriage, then he threw it in my face like the contents of a chamber pot. He turned me down as if I had been the daughter of some rich hayseed from Gaul or Sicily. I reasoned! I begged! I lay down and let him wipe his feet on me! I, a patrician Servilia Caepionis! All these years I've held him in thrall when no other woman could how then was I to know he would reject me? I genuinely thought he would marry me. And he knew I thought he would marry me. Oh, the pleasure he must have experienced while we played out that little farce! I thought I could be cold, but I am not cold the way he is cold. Why then do I love him so? Why in this very moment do I go on loving him? Insulsus. That is what he has done to me. After him all other men are utterly insipid. He's won. But I will never forgive him for it. Never!