Page 40 of Agrippa

Over the years, Atticus had been more than a father-in-law to me. In the absence of my own father, he had become a close friend and a source of wise advice. Now, at last, in his seventy-eighth year, after decades of good health, Nature had finally caught up with him. He had been seized with frightful stomach pains. The doctors diagnosed an inoperable ulcer. After three months of increasing agony, he announced his intention to starve himself to death.

In vain did Caecilia and I plead with him to change his mind and stay with us a little longer. He said the pain was too excruciating, that life had nothing more to offer him, that he could not bear to endure the prospect of another civil war, and that he preferred to die on his own terms.

He refused to discuss the matter further, despite Caecilia’s tears, and asked us to inform his few remaining friends so that they could come and say goodbye.

I moved into his house for the death vigil. Over the next few days, I admitted a procession of elderly visitors, including Balbus the Spaniard, Postumus the moneylender, the banker Matius, and various senators’ widows – a stooping, shuffling parade of ghosts from the days of Cicero and Julius Caesar.

Most memorable of these to me, for reasons I shall describe, was Pompeia, the granddaughter of the dictator Sulla, and at one time Julius Caesar’s second wife.

She had been a great beauty in her youth, notorious for her lovers. Beneath her dark wig and white face powder she retained the vestiges of her old allure. Caesar had divorced her for political reasons some thirty years before, at the time of the Bona Dea scandal, famously saying his wife had to be above suspicion. She had remarried to his ally Publius Vatinius, later governor of Illyricum, and had stayed on good terms with Caesar until his assassination.

I took her in to Atticus and left them alone together. It was the fifth day of his famine and he was very weak, sleeping for much of the time.

When she came out, she said she was glad to have seen him, even though he had barely said a word. She took my arm and asked me to walk her to the door.

I can feel the touch of her hand even now, as light as gossamer, and the smell of her exquisite perfume. In the atrium, she suddenly halted. Beneath the square of open sky, she announced she wanted to study me in the daylight – a tiny figure, craning her head to peer up at me with rheumy blue eyes.

– So, you are the famous Agrippa! Yes, I can see him in you – the prominent brow, the wide forehead. You have more hair, of course – he hated how thin he was on top. You must have inherited your fine head of hair from your mother.

I was entirely caught off guard. I stammered out that I never knew her.

– I know you didn’t, you poor child, but I did. She was pretty and vivacious – not like that dried-up old stick she was married to. Caesar was very fond of her. He wept when she died. I have to say I rather minded that. Odd, as I didn’t care about the others. Besides, I had lovers of my own, and plenty of them – not that you’d think it to look at me these days!

She took my arm again and we continued walking. My mind was now in tumult.

When we reached the street where her slaves were waiting with her litter, she pointed to her cheek and asked me to kiss her.

– Don’t worry, dear boy. It’s all long in the past. I don’t think anyone else knew, not even poor Atticus, and he knew everything. I shan’t tell a soul, and if you want my advice, nor should you. Now that Antony has recognised Caesarion, it’s not exactly the safest time to be an illegitimate son of my ex-husband!

She climbed stiffly into her litter and was borne away along the busy street, leaving me alone with a faint taste of powder on my lips.

So there it was – a vague suspicion that I had harboured for many years, scarcely daring to articulate it even to myself, was suddenly hardened into fact.

Or was it a fact? There was no actual evidence. All those directly concerned were long since dead, and Pompeia was very old. Indeed, it was possible she might be mistaken. I was aware that people often speculated behind my back about where I had come from, and how a man of such lowly origins could possibly have risen so high and achieved so much. Was it possible, in the confused way of the elderly, that she had heard this talk, invented a story and convinced herself it was true?

But I did not think so. It made too much sense.

It explained who had paid for my education, and why my father detested Caesar and could barely stand to look at me, why the dictator had taken such an interest in me when I was young – had he not made me swear to look after his nephew as if he were my brother? – and why military command came so naturally to me.

I went back into the house and paced around the atrium, trying to decide what I should do.

Knowing the temperament of my mighty friend, I was sure it would be dangerous for me – indeed potentially fatal – if he ever heard so much as a whisper of the story. I therefore swore to myself that I would tell nobody, even though it would be a fearsome burden to carry alone. But then it occurred to me that there was in fact one man who could always be relied upon to keep a secret, and who in any case would not be around for long enough to share it.

I went and sat at Atticus’s bedside. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. I poured out my heart to him, told him what I had just learned, and of the nagging emptiness I had carried around with me for as long as I could remember and which I could only fill by constant action.

He made no reply, and when I passed my hand above his eyes, I realised he was dead.

XIV

By nature I had always been wary of confiding much in other people. Now I became even more guarded.

Caecilia noticed the change in me. I assured her my silent mood was caused by grief at the loss of her father. But she did not entirely believe me, and for the first time a slight distance opened up between us. Looking back, I suppose I should have told her. Yet the truth was, I trusted no one, not even my wife. Thus does power warp us. The higher I climbed, the more I became like Octavius.

Now there was a man to whom the concealment of his true feelings came as naturally as breathing! He went around that spring and summer telling everyone who would listen that he had no personal quarrel with Antony. He blamed their breach solely on Cleopatra. He said she had cast a spell upon his former colleague, and that her intention was to transfer the capital of the empire from Rome to Alexandria and rule it from there with Antony by her side, besotted and compliant like a potent eunuch.

The coming war would therefore not be a civil war, he declared, but a war against the Queen of Egypt. And even at this late stage, he claimed he still hoped Antony might renounce her and avoid the shedding of blood.

Like all the best lies, it contained a kernel of truth. And people wanted to believe it, so they did.