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Caesar's Women
Chapter One
"Brutus, I don't like the look of your skin. Come here to the light, please."
The fifteen-year-old made no sign that he had heard, simply remained hunched over a single sheet of Fannian paper with his reed pen, its ink long since dried, poised in midair.
"Come here, Brutus. At once," said his mother placidly.
He knew her, so down went the pen; though he wasn't mortally afraid of her, he wasn't about to court her displeasure. One summons might be safely ignored, but a second summons meant she expected to be obeyed, even by him. Rising, he walked across to where Servilia stood by the window, its shutters wide because Rome was sweltering in an unseasonably early heatwave.
Though she was short and Brutus had recently begun to grow into what she hoped was going to be tallness, his head was not very far above hers; she put up one hand to clutch his chin, and peered closely at several angry red lumps welling under the skin around his mouth. Her hand released him, moved to push the loose dark curls away from his brow: more eruptions!
"How I wish you'd keep your hair cut!" she said, tugging at a lock which threatened to obscure his sightand tugging hard enough to make his eyes water.
"Mama, short hair is unintellectual," he protested.
"Short hair is practical. It stays off your face and doesn't irritate your skin. Oh, Brutus, what a trial you're becoming!"
"If you wanted a crop-skulled warrior son, Mama, you should have had more boys with Silanus instead of a couple of girls."
"One son is affordable. Two sons stretch the money further than it wants to go. Besides, if I'd givenSilanus a son, you wouldn't be his heir as well as your father's." She strode across to the desk where he had been working and stiffed the various scrolls upon it with impatient fingers. "Look at this mess! No wonder your shoulders are vacation, but some of the Mighty were out and about nonetheless, distinguished by the bobbing red-thonged bundles of rods their lictors carried shoulder-high to proclaim their imperium.
It's so hilly, Mama? Can't you slow down?" panted Brutus as his mother marched up the Clivus Orbius on the far side of the Forum; he was sweating profusely.
"If you exercised more, you wouldn't need to complain," said Servilia, unimpressed.
Nauseating smells of foetor and decay assailed Brutus's nostrils as the towering tenements of the Subura pressed in and shut out the light of the sun; peeling walls oozed slime, the gutters guided dark and syrupy trickles into gratings, tiny unlit caverns that were shops passed by unnumbered. At least the dank shade made it cooler, but this was a side of Rome young Brutus could happily have done without, "everyone" notwithstanding.
Eventually they arrived outside a quite presentable door of seasoned oak, well carved into panels and owning a brightly polished orichalcum knocker in the form of a lion's head with gaping jaws. One of Servilia's attendants plied it vigorously, and the door opened at once. There stood an elderly, rather plump Greek freedman, bowing deeply as he let them in.
It was a gathering of women, of course; had Brutus only been old enough to put on his plain white toga virilis, graduate into the ranks of men, he would not have been allowed to accompany his mother. That thought provoked panic-Mama must succeed in her petition, he must be able to continue to see his darling love after December and manhood! But betraying none of this, he abandoned Servilia's skirts the moment the gushing greetings began and slunk off into a quiet corner of the squeal-filled room, there to do his best to blend into the unpretentious decor.
"Brutus, ave," said a light yet husky voice.
He turned his head, looked down, felt his chest cave in. "Ave, Julia."
"Here, sit with me," the daughter of the house commanded, leading him to a pair of small chairs right in the comer. She settled in one while he lowered himself awkwardly into the other, herself as graceful and composed as a nesting swan.
Only eight years old-how could she already be so beautiful? wondered the dazzled Brutus, who knew her well because his mother was a great friend of her grandmother's. Fair like ice and snow, chin pointed, cheekbones arched, faintly pink lips as delicious as a strawberry, a pair of widely opened blue eyes that gazed with gentle liveliness on all that they beheld; if Brutus had dipped into the poetry of love, it was because of her whom he had loved for — oh, years! Not truly understanding that it was love until quite recently, when she bad turned her gaze on him with such a sweet smile that realization had dawned with the shock of a thunderclap.
He had gone to his mother that very evening, and informed her that he wished to marry Julia when she grew up.
Servilia had stared, astonished. "My dear Brutus, she's a mere child! You'd have to wait nine or ten years for her."
"She'll be betrothed long before she's old enough to marry," he, had answered, his anguish plain. "Please, Mama, as soon as her father returns home, petition for her hand in marriage!"
"You may well change your mind."
"Never, never"'
"Her dowry is minute."
"But her birth is everything you could want in my wife."
"True." The black eyes which could grow so hard rested on his face not unsympathetically; Servilia appre ciated the strength of that argument. So she had turned it over in her mind for a moment, then nodded. "Very well, Brutus, when her father is next in Rome, I'll ask. You don't need a rich bride, but it is essential that her birth match your own, and a Julia would be ideal. Especially this Julia. Patrician on both sides."
And so they had left it to wait until Julia's father returned from his post as quaestor in Further Spain. The most junior of the important magistracies, quaestor. But...
Caesar's Women. Copyright © by Colleen McCullough. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
