“We have both sinned greatly.”
“We have paid dearly, husband, but if, by my acquiescence and your silence your plans are assured, was it not worth the price? I knew what this day meant to you. So yes, I let him take me — I could retch hearing those words fall from my lips. Caesar has grievously used us both. He knew we would submit to his blackmail. Because think, Marcus, if the alliance fell, your dreams would have been tossed aside like so many soiled bed sheets. The coalition would have dissolved and your march to power and glory would not have made it out of that bedroom. You know that this is true.”
“I have had more than my share of each. I would trade it all to regain your virtue.”
“No, I will not accept this. You could be the most powerful man in Rome if you but wished it so. We will avenge ourselves upon Caesar; let us use him as he has used us.”
Crassus looked up to see the fire in his wife’s eyes. He leaned across the compartment, grabbed both her hands in his and said, “Swear to me he forced you. Swear on your ancestors, on the heads of our beloved sons.”
“I so swear,” Tertulla said, tears springing to her eyes. “May Diana strike me down if I lie.”
“Is it love or folly that makes me yearn to believe you?”
“Believe me, Marcus. I beg you.”
Crassus sat back in his seat. “Trust. It is a word whose meaning I shall have to learn anew. The sight of you with him is burned here
…” he struck his forehead with the heel of his hand, “… like Nestor’s brand. But it smolders on the inside of my skull. I will never purge the image from my mind.”
“We have time, Marcus. Time will etch our scars. Juno help me, I love you so much.” Tertulla’s tears fell in drops to her lap.
“Time may indeed ease our pain. But I will take my own shame with me to my grave.”
“It is a shame we share, Marcus. We, both of us, allowed this to happen.”
“Mine is the greater disgrace,” Crassus said, shaking his head. “You let him take you for my sake, so you say, and it may be true. I want to believe you. But I… I let him… and did nothing.”
“I sent you away, Marcus. You had to go, for both our sakes.”
“If only I had come to bed at a decent hour. But that Brutus, he would not stop talking.”
“Marcus Brutus?” she asked. “Isn’t he Caesar’s man?”
“Caesar has a fondness for him. He’s Servilia’s boy; I suspect she is the basis of his affection. Every time I tried to rise, he poured more wine and found some new topic on which he simply had to have my opinion.”
“He was a part of it,” Tertulla said with conviction. “I will place his name next to Caesar’s own when I write my curses.”
“You may be right. Come to think of it, the servant who led me to our room took me in the wrong direction. I became quite lost.”
“He has been planning this since before we left the city. And he knew I could not stop him without great risk to you. He counted on it.”
“My fortune is nothing without you,” Crassus said. “I would dump it all into the Tiber to undo this monstrousness. You should have screamed, and loudly. And I should have plunged my blade into his neck. Nothing is worth a sacrifice so great. Now look at what he has done to us. Look at what I have done.”
“I will go to the temple and apply for purification. Then we must seek revenge.”
“I have thought of nothing else.”
“You must be very careful. Greed has blinded everyone who attended the conference. I’m sure that brave words were spoken about consensus and the good of the Republic, just as long as every senator's strongbox was sufficiently stuffed full of silver. But nothing was decided at Luca that does not further Caesar’s aims.”
“That is precisely what I said to him.”
“Then he was your enemy long before he left the triclinium. He will use you and discard you when he has what he wants.”
“As he did you.”
“Yes, Marcus, just as he did me."
I had served the familia of Marcus Crassus for almost three decades, indeed had counted myself a part of it for almost as long, but it wasn't until after Luca that I came to realize that those of us who made our home under that roof were like denizens of the deepest seas, living our lives unmindful of the medium that sustained us: the amity in which we lived and worked. The affection between dominus and domina, their rigorous devotion to their children — this contentment was, in great part, what gave me license to accept my own truncated existence.
Other patricians took and discarded wives the way children trade coins. They married to form alliances, mend fences, latch onto fortunes and gain influence. But then, should a more propitious match become available, the bond would be summarily broken.
This vile game was never played by Marcus Crassus. Though the custom had fallen out of favor, my lord followed the ancient ways, taking Tertulla into his own home when she was widowed by the death of his older brother. They married, and within a year realized to their delight that they had fallen in love. For three decades thereafter, almost without exception, theirs was a congenial home, a marriage unblemished by strife or division.
I weep to think of what might have been had we never gone to Luca. Caesar's crime was heinous; I cannot imagine the agony my lord and lady suffered to feed that villain's ambition. He would go unpunished if my lord were not his judge. But at what cost? Crassus was sixty when he led his army to Parthia; he had no material wants and a steadfast love standing right before him. How could they endure a separation of years and the dark nights of worry? They broke asunder a life as perfect as any dream, all for the sake of vengeance. Could I have refrained from retaliation had I been in their place?
But I am not in their place, am I. A vision of Livia darts before my eyes and quickly flits to weigh upon my heart. How I miss the grating sound of her whistling upon my ears. I remember how I cast her mother into the abyss, shattering the only love I ever had, all because I did not stop to think that I might have had a choice.
How sad that only a moment before I had just been thinking, I shall never understand these Romans.
Epilog
19 BCE — Spring, Siphnos, Greece Year of the consulship of Quintus Lucretius Vespillo and Gaius Sentius Saturninus
Reflecting day after day upon the minutiae of one's life is a taxing business. Should you embark upon such an exhaustive audit, I suggest living a shorter life. If that cannot be arranged, be more circumspect in the selection of your memories. For myself, I have become a meticulous chronicler, examining the lives of those close by, and yes, I suppose, my own stumbling journey. The honest witness must be ruthless: every artifact of remembrance must be unearthed, brushed free of dirt and debris to be scrutinized anew, even those recollections pressed deep into the ground, long buried, thankfully, by the balm of years.
I had not realized the task would be this hard.
I sit staring at a fresh scroll of parchment, unbloodied as yet by the stabs of my pen. The path lies clear before me, yet I fear to take another step. Contemplation of all that is to come pulls me up short, an old horse come upon a pit of vipers. Loiter no longer, Alexandros; the time has come to tear down the bulwarks that have stood against memory for over thirty years, to pry open these eyes and see again what man was never meant to witness. By the gods, it gives me pause; my rebellious heart shakes in its bony cage. The slope of my narrative rises ever more steeply, and the memories — chaotic, heroic, tragic — grow as difficult to relive as they are to set down. But this is my purpose, and I will see it through.
I am eighty-six years old and a free man. Though I have lived two lives, I cannot say whether I was damned in one or blessed in the other. But this I know: choices are the dominion of free men. For almost half my adult life I had been liberated from the necessity of having to make them. Let me tell you, there is nothing so poisonous and seductive about life as a slave as the freedom from having to choose one's own path.