Kitabı oku: «Fig Tree»

CHAPTER ONE

Augustus Caesar sat in the shade, a precious commodity during a summer on Capri. He was leaning back and comfortable, propped up on fine cushions with his legs stretched out in front of him. For a time, he closed his eyes and just let the heat seep into him, easing old aches.

The grand palace he had built on the hill’s peak had no water of its own, so that it had to be brought up by cart and donkey to fill the cool rock cisterns. The sun beat down on his legs, though his upper body was shielded from it by the patterned shadows of the old fig tree. He looked up at the thought, pleased at how the living thing had thrived in such rocky soil. Like the palace itself, the tree had fought for its place and even borne fruit, surviving only because of will. The green figs were ripening and would soon be sweet, one of the few things Octavian still enjoyed. Rocks and dust and sun had not prevented him building on the highest point of the island, with a view unmatched anywhere in Roman lands. The sea was very blue, sparkling a mile or more below his feet.

When his wife came out to check on him, the old man was briefly surprised at the changes the years had made in her – and in him. Such moments could strike him without warning, betraying his belief that he was essentially unchanged. He would see Livia’s white hair, or catch a glimpse of himself in a polished bronze mirror and be astonished. He was seventy-seven years old; Livia seventy-one. They had been married for almost half a century, but the mind was a strange thing. As often as the sight of age depressed him, he could be reminded in an instant of Livia when she was young and beautiful. In the shade of the tree, as she raised a hand to her eyes to look up at him, she could have been the same woman he’d married fifty years before.

‘What makes you smile so?’ she said, her expression mild.

‘I was remembering how you looked when I saw you first,’ he replied. ‘I tell you I never loved till that moment.’

Livia snorted softly, though her gaze was affectionate.

‘So you have said before. I blush to think of it, still. To approach a married woman in such a way, with such demands and offers! You were shameless then.’

‘I still am,’ he said, delighted with the memory. He had been so very young, so very certain of himself. Yet he had been right and Livia was still the great love of his life. ‘Well, a few years have passed since then, Livia. Have I not proven my devotion to you? Or will you tire of me now and take other lovers?’

She laughed at the idea, reaching back to curl a wisp of perfectly white hair over her ear. She had dyed it dark for years, but let it grow out as she turned seventy. Her old beauty had gone, as such things will, but he saw her youth still in her eyes.

‘Perhaps I will, at that,’ she said. ‘There is a young guard here who watches me with great interest.’ She came over to where he sat, easing herself down with a care that belied her words so that she could lean over him and become part of the shadows casting shade on her husband. He looked up at her and reached out to touch her face. Both of them felt his hand shake as he brushed her cheek.

‘Will you come down with me, to the ship?’ he asked. He saw her bite her lip in an expression he knew as well as his own. ‘What? What is it?’

‘I do not like this, Octavian, all these plans. It’s as bad as the committee you set up, always talking of your death, as if you are already gone.’

He struggled to sit up on the couch, irritated as always that his body had become so weak. It was not that he remembered his youth – it was too far off, like some distant horizon of old memories, another land completely. Yet he remembered being fifty and being sixty. Those days were not too far back and he thought he had been strong then, still vital. Somehow, it had drained from him with every passing year, with sore joints and withering muscles in his arms and legs until they became painfully thin and he could no longer look at them with anything less than revulsion. He was all bones as he lay there and he knew Livia saw it as well.

‘My hands shake, Livia. My heart shudders in my chest and each morning, until the slaves rub me down, my legs and back are so stiff I can hardly move at all. It cannot be long now and I will not let Rome be broken apart by young fools, not again. By the Gods, I should know! I was the young fool, once, so sure I held the destiny of Rome in my hands.’

‘But you did, Octavian.’

He made a hard sound in his throat.

‘Yes, well, fortune smiled on me then. Perhaps fortune needs a nudge from me now, as my last service. I will see Marcus once more, Livia.’

‘You are so certain he could be your heir?’ she asked, her voice hardening subtly. He heard the echo of old anger and old arguments and yet he did not look away.

‘Please. We have talked this to death, Livia. There is no more to be said that has not been said a thousand times already. My grandson is of my blood. Whatever that is worth, it is enough for me to see him once more before I make my final decision.’

Livia closed her eyes for an instant, struggling with the desire to argue with her husband. Ten years before, the issue had been settled, at least to her satisfaction. Her son Tiberius from her first marriage had been formally adopted by Octavian. The emperor had begun to share more and more power with Tiberius, preparing him to take over. Yet there had never been any love for him in her husband. Octavian had approached the task of training Tiberius as mere duty, without affection or liking.

Her eldest son was by then fifty-five years old, a man of dignity and great honour who had bided his time and prepared to be emperor for a decade. There had never been the slightest hint of disloyalty from him. Yet as the years passed, Livia had seen her husband follow his grandson’s progress with an interest he’d never shown in Tiberius. Marcus Postumus may have been the son of Octavian’s only daughter, but he was not half the man Tiberius was.

It was not just a mother’s love, she reminded herself. At twenty-four, Marcus was rarely out of trouble and scandals followed him at every turn. He’d lived a life of great wealth, spoiled and made rotten by the fortunes at his disposal and the imperial connections to save him from every failed business and outraged accusation. Livia pursed her lips tight rather than rake up cold ashes once again.

Octavian was blind to all his grandson’s weaknesses of character, persevering in his praise of the young idiot, while Tiberius laboured in vain to please him. When she did speak at last, Livia chose her words carefully, accepting that Octavian would not be turned from his course.

‘I understand you must see him. I only ask that you see him clearly, my love. When you meet Marcus, he will be a prisoner still, accused in the assault on a woman and the death of one of his drunken friends.’

‘All unproven,’ Octavian snapped. He wanted to bite back his reply, but the words had been spoken. It was as if he and his wife rehearsed lines from a play and could not alter the script as it played out. He could sense his wife’s irritation growing.