Antony and Cleopatra. Colleen McCullough

were best left unsaid. I ought, thought Antony savagely, to seduce her! What a life she must lead, married to this inepte!

      ‘Bring her to dinner this afternoon, Nero,’ he said jovially. ‘Think of it as money saved – no need to send your cook to the market until tomorrow.’

      ‘I thank you,’ Nero said, unwinding to his full, spindling height. Left arm cuddling folds of toga, he stalked out, leaving Antony chuckling softly.

      Plancus came in, horror written large upon his face. ‘Oh, Edepol, Antonius! What’s Nero doing here?’

      ‘Apart from insulting everyone he meets? I suspect that he made himself so unwelcome in Sextus Pompeius’s headquarters that he was told to leave. You can come to dinner this afternoon and share the joys of his company. He’s bringing his wife, who must be a terrible bore to put up with him. Just who is she?’

      ‘His cousin – fairly close, actually. Her father was a Claudius Nero adopted by the famous tribune of the plebs, Livius Drusus, hence her name, Livia Drusilla. Nero is the son of Drusus’s blood brother, Tiberius Nero. Of course she’s an heiress – a lot of money in the Livius Drusus family. Once, Cicero hoped Nero would marry his Tullia, but she preferred Dolabella. A worse husband in most ways, but at least he was a merry fellow. Didn’t you move in those circles when Clodius was alive, Antonius?’

      ‘I did. And you’re right, Dolabella was good company. But it’s not Nero gives your face that look, Plancus. What’s up?’

      ‘A packet from Ephesus. I had one too, but yours is from your cousin Caninius, so it ought to say more.’ Plancus sat in the client’s chair facing Antony across the desk, eyes bright.

      Antony broke the seal, unrolled his cousin’s epistle and mumbled his way through it, a long business accompanied by frowns and curses. ‘I wish,’ he complained, ‘that more men had taken Caesar’s hint and put a dot over the beginning of a new word. I do it now, so do Pollio, Ventidius and – though I hate to say it – Octavianus. Turns a continuous scrawl into something a man can read almost at a glance.’ He went back to his mumbling, finally sighed and put the scroll down.

      ‘How can I be in two places at once?’ he asked Plancus. ‘By rights I should be in Asia Province shoring it up against attack from Labienus, instead I’m forced to sit closer to Italia and keep my legions within call. Pacorus has overrun Syria and all the petty princelings have thrown in their lot with the Parthians, even Amblichus. Caninius says that Saxa’s legions defected to Pacorus – Saxa was forced to flee to Apamaea, then took ship for Cilicia. No one has heard from him since, but rumor has it that his brother was killed in Syria. Labienus is busy overrunning Cilicia Pedia and eastern Cappadocia.’

      ‘And of course there are no legions east of Ephesus.’

      ‘Nor will there be in Ephesus, I’m afraid. Asia Province will have to fend for itself until I can sort out the mess in Italia. I’ve already sent to Caninius to bring the legions to Macedonia,’ said Antony, sounding grim.

      ‘Is that your only course?’ Plancus asked, paling.

      ‘Definitely. I’ve given myself the rest of this year to deal with Rome, Italia and Octavianus, so for the rest of this year the legions will be camped around Apollonia. If they’re known to be on the Adriatic, that will tell Octavianus that I mean to squash him like a bug.’

      ‘Marcus,’ Plancus wailed, ‘everyone is fed up with civil war, and what you’re talking is civil war! The legions won’t fight!’

      ‘My legions will fight for me,’ said Antony.

      Livia Drusilla entered the governor’s residence with all her usual composure, creamy lids lowered over her eyes, which she knew were her best feature. Hide them! As always, she walked a little behind Nero because a good wife did, and Livia Drusilla had vowed to be a good wife. Never, she had sworn, hearing what Antony had done to Fulvia, would she put herself in that position! To don armor and wave a sword about, one would have to be a Hortensia, who had only done it to demonstrate to the leaders of the Roman state that the women of Rome from highest to lowest would never consent to being taxed when they didn’t have the right to vote. Hortensia won the encounter, a bloodless victory, at considerable embarrassment to the Triumvirs Antony, Octavian and Lepidus.

      Not that Livia Drusilla intended to be a mouse; she simply masqueraded as someone small and meek and a trifle timid. Huge ambition burned in her, inchoate because she had no idea how she was going to seize that ambition, turn it into a productive thing. Certainly it was shaped in an absolutely Roman mold, which meant no unfeminine behavior, no putting herself forward, no unsubtle manipulating. Not that she wanted to be another Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, worshipped by some women as a truly Roman goddess because she had suffered, borne children, seen them die, never complained of her lot. No, Livia Drusilla sensed that there had to be another way to reach the heights.

      The trouble was that three years of marriage had shown her beyond all doubt that the way was not through Tiberius Claudius Nero. Like most girls of her exalted station, she hadn’t known Nero very well before they married, for all that he was her close cousin. Nothing in him, on the few occasions when they had met, had inspired anything in her save contempt for his stupidity and an instinctive detestation of his person. Dark herself, she admired men with golden hair and light eyes. Intelligent herself, she admired men with great intelligence. On neither count could Nero qualify. She had been fifteen when her father Drusus had married her to his first cousin Nero, and in the house where she grew up there had been no priapic wall paintings or phallic lamps whereby a girl might learn something about physical love. So union with Nero had revolted her. He too preferred golden-haired, light-eyed lovers; what pleased him in his wife were her noble ancestry and her fortune.

      Only how to be shriven of Tiberius Claudius Nero when she was determined to be a good wife? It didn’t seem possible unless someone offered him a better marriage, and that was highly unlikely. Her cleverness had shown her very early in their marriage that people disliked Nero, tolerated him only because of his patrician status and his consequent right to occupy all the offices that Rome offered her nobility. And oh, he bored her! Many were the tales she had heard about Cato Uticensis, Caesar’s greatest enemy, and his tactless, prating personality, but to Livia Drusilla he seemed an ecstatic god compared to Nero. Nor could she like the son she had borne Nero ten months after their wedding; little Tiberius was dark, skinny, tall, solemn and a trifle sanctimonious, even at two years of age. He had fallen into the habit of criticizing his mother because he heard his father do so and, unlike most small children, he had spent his life thus far in his father’s company. Livia Drusilla suspected that Nero preferred to keep her and little Tiberius close in case some pretty fellow with Caesarean charm tampered with his wife’s virtue. What an irritation that was! Didn’t the fool know that she would never demean herself in that way?

      The housebound existence she had led until Nero embarked upon his disastrous Campanian venture in Lucius Antonius’s cause had not allowed her as much as a glimpse of any of the famous men all Rome talked about; she hadn’t laid eyes on Marcus Antonius, Lepidus, Servilius Vatia, Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, Octavianus, or even Caesar, dead in her fifteenth year. Therefore today was exciting, though nothing in her demeanor showed that: she was going to dine with Marcus Antonius, the most powerful man in the world!

      A pleasure that almost didn’t happen when Nero discovered that Antony was one of those disgracefully fast fellows who let women recline on the men’s couches.

      ‘Unless my wife has a chair, I am leaving!’ Nero said with his customary tact.

      Had Antony not already found the little oval face of Nero’s wife bewitching, the upshot of that remark would have been a roar and expulsion; as it was, Antony grinned and commanded that a chair be brought for Livia Drusilla. When the chair came he had it placed opposite his own position on the couch, but as there were only the three male diners, Nero couldn’t very well object to that. It wasn’t as if she was around a corner from him, though Nero did think it more evidence of Antony’s uncouth nature that he had relegated him to the end of the couch and put a puffed-up nobody like Plancus in the middle.

      Removal