2
PANDORA'S STORY
I was born in Rome, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, in the year that you now reckon to have been 15 B.C., or fifteen years "before Christ."
All the Roman history and Roman names I give here are accurate; I have not falsified them or made up stories or created false political events. Everything bears upon my ultimate fate and the fate of Marius. Nothing is included for love of the past. I have omitted my family name. I did this because my family has a history, and I cannot bring myself to connect their ancient reputations, deeds, epitaphs to this tale. Also Marius, when he confided in Lestat, did not give the full name of his Roman family. And I respect this and that also is not revealed.
Augustus had been Emperor for over ten years, and it was a marvelous time to be an educated woman in Rome, women had immense freedom, and I had a rich Senator for a father, five prosperous brothers, and grew up Motherless but cherished by teams of Greek tutors and nurses who gave me everything I wanted.
Now, if I really wanted to make this difficult for you, David, I'd write it in classical Latin. But I won't. And I must tell you that, unlike you, I came by my education in English haphazardly, and certainly I never learnt it from Shakespeare's plays.
Indeed I have passed through many stages of the English language in my wanderings and in my reading, but the great majority of my true acquaintance with it has been in this century, and I am writing for you in colloquial English.
There's another reason For this, which I'm sure you'll understand if you've read the modern translation of Petronius's Satyricon or Juvenal's satires. Very modern English is a really true equivalent to the Latin of my time. The formal letters of Imperial Rome won't tell you this. But the graffiti scratched on the walls of Pompeii will make it obvious. We had a sophisticated tongue, countless clever verbal shortcuts and common expressions.
I'm going to write, therefore, in the English which feels equivalent and natural to me.
Let me say here quickly - while the action is at a halt - that I was never, as Marius said, a Greek Courtesan. I was living with such a pretense when Marius gave me the Dark Gift, and perhaps out of consideration for old mortal secrets he so described me. Or maybe it was contemptuous of him to style me this way. I don't know.
But Marius knew all about my Roman family, that it was a Senatorial family, as purely aristocratic and privileged as his own mortal family, and that my people dated back to the time of Romulus and Remus, the same as Marius's mortal line. Marius did not succumb to me because I had "beautiful arms," as he indicated to Lestat. This trivialization was perhaps provocative.
I don't hold anything against either of them, Marius or Lestat. I don't know who got what wrong.
My feeling for my Father is so great to this very night, as I sit in the cafe, writing for you, David, that I am astonished at the power of writing - of putting words to paper and bringing back so vividly to myself my Father's loving face.
My Father was to meet a terrible end. He did not deserve what happened to him. But some of our kinsmen survived and re-established our family in later times.
My Father was rich, one of the true millionaires of that age, and his capital was invested widely. He was a soldier more often than required of him, a Senator, a thoughtful and quiet man by disposition. And after the terrors of the Civil War, he was a great supporter of Caesar Augustus and very much in the Emperor's good graces. Of course he dreamed that the Roman Republic would come back; we all did. But Augustus had brought unity and peace to the Empire.
I met Augustus many times in my youth, and it was always at some crowded social function and of no
consequence. He looked like his portraits; a lean man with a long thin nose, short hair, average face; he was rather rational and pragmatic by nature and not invested with any abnormal cruelty. He had no personal vanity.
The poor man was really blessed that he couldn't see into the future - that he had no inkling of all the horrors and madness that would begin with Tiberius, his successor, and go on for so long under other members of his family. Only in later times did I understand the full singularity and accomplishment of Augustus's long reign. Was it forty-four years of peace throughout the cities of the Empire?Alas, to be born during this time was to be born during a time of creativity and prosperity, when Rome was caput mundi, or capital of the world. And when I look back on it, I realize what a powerful combination it was
to have both tradition and vast sums of money; to have old values and new power.
Our family life was conservative, strict, even a little dusty. And yet we had every luxury. My Father grew more quiet and conservative over the years. He enjoyed his grandchildren, who were born while he was still vigorous and active.
Though he had fought principally in the Northern campaigns along the Rhine, he had been stationed in Syria for a while. He had studied in Athens. He had served so much and so well that he was being allowed an early retirement in the years during which I grew up, an early withdrawal from the social life that whirled around the Imperial Palace, though I did not realize this at the time.
My five brothers came before me. So there was no "ritual Roman mourning" when I was born, as you hear tell of in Roman families when a girl comes into the world. Far from it.
Five times my Father had stood in the atrium - the main enclosed courtyard, or peristyle, of our house with its pillars and stairs and grand marble-work - five times he had stood there before the assembled family and held in his hands a newborn son, inspected it and then pronounced it perfect and fit to be reared as his own, as was his prerogative. Now, you know he had the power of life and death over his sons from that moment on.
If my Father hadn't wanted these boys for any reason, he would have "exposed" them to die of starvation. It was against the law to steal such a child and make it a slave.
Having five boys already, my Father was expected by some to get rid of me immediately. Who needs a girl? But my Father never exposed or rejected any of my Mother's children. And by the time I arrived, I'm told, he cried for joy. "Thank the gods! A little darling.", I heard the story ad nauseam from my brothers, who, every time I acted up - did something unseemly, frisky and wild - said sneeringly, "Thank the gods, a little darling!" It became a charming goad.
My Mother died when I was two, and all I recall of her are gentleness and sweetness.
She'd lost as many children as she had birthed, and early death was typical enough. Her Epitaph was beautifully written by my Father, and her memory honored throughout my life. My Father never took another woman into the house. He slept with a few of the female slaves, but this was nothing unusual. My brothers did the same thing. This was common in a Roman household. My Father brought no new woman from another family to rule over me.
There is no grief in me for my Mother because I was simply too young for it, and if I cried when my Mother did not come back, I don't remember it. What I remember is having the run of a big old rectangular palatial Roman house, with many rectangular rooms built onto the main rectangle, one off another, the whole nestled in a huge garden high on the Palatine Hill. It was a house of marble floors and richly painted walls, the garden meandering and surrounding every room of it.
I was the true jewel of my Father's eye, and I remember having a marvelous time watching my brothers practice outside with their short broadswords, or listening as their tutors instructed them, and then having fine teachers of my own who taught me how to read the entire Aeneid of Virgil before I was five years old. I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them. I couldn't have told you that nights ago, David. You've brought back something to me and I must make the admission. And I must not write too fast in this mortal cafe, lest human beings notice!
Ah, so we continue.
My Father thought it was hysterical that I could recite verses from Virgil at so young an age and he liked nothing better than to show me off at banquets at which he entertained his conservative and somewhat oldfashioned Senatorial friends, and sometimes Caesar Augustus himself. Caesar Augustus was an agreeable man. I don't think my Father ever really wanted him at our house, however. But now and then, I suppose, the Emperor had to be wined and dined.
I'd rush in with my nurse, give a rousing recital and then be whisked away to where I could not see the proud Senators of Rome glutting themselves on peacock brains and garum - surely you know what garum is. It's the horrible sauce the Romans put on everything, rather like today's ketchup. Definitely it defeated the purpose of having eels and squids on your plate, or ostrich brains or unborn lamb or whatever other absurd delicacies were being brought by the platterful.
The point is, as you know, the Romans seemed to have a special place in their hearts for genuine gluttony, and the banquets inevitably became a disgrace. The guests would go off to the vomitorium of the house to heave up the first five courses of the meal so that they could then swallow the others. And I would lie upstairs, giggling in my bed, listening to all this laughter and vomiting. Then the rape of the entire catering staff of slaves would follow, whether they were boys or girls or a mixture of both. Family meals were an entirely different affair. Then we were old Romans. Everyone sat at the table; my
Father was undisputed Master of his house, and would tolerate no criticism of Caesar Augustus, who, as you know, was Julius Caesar's nephew, and did not really rule as Emperor by law.
"When the time is right, he will step down," said my Father. "He knows he can't do it now. He is more weary and wise than ever he was ambitious. Who wants another Civil War?"
The times were actually too prosperous for men of stature to make a revolt.
Augustus kept the peace. He had profound respect for the Roman Senate. He rebuilt old Temples because he thought people needed the piety they had known under the Republic.
He gave free corn from Egypt to the poor. Nobody starved in Rome. He maintained a dizzying amount of old festivals, games and spectacles - enough to sicken one actually. But often as patriotic Romans we had to be there. Of course there was great cruelty in the arena. There were cruel executions. There was the ever present cruelty of slavery.
But what is not understood by those today is that there coexisted with all this a sense of individual freedom on the part of even the poorest man.
The courts took time over their decisions. They consulted the past laws. They followed logic and code.
People could speak their minds fairly openly. I note this because it is key to this story: that Marius and I both were born in a time when Roman law was, as Marius would say, based on reason, as opposed to divine revelation.
We are totally unlike those blood drinkers brought to Darkness in lands of Magic and Mystery.
Not only did we trust Augustus when we were alive, we also believed in the tangible power of the Roman Senate. We believed in public virtue and character; we held to a way of life which did not involve rituals, prayers, magic, except superficially. Virtue was embedded in character. That was the inheritance of the Roman Republic, which Marius and I shared.
Of course, our house was overcrowded with slaves. There were brilliant Greeks and grunting laborers and a fleet of women to rush about polishing busts and vases, and the city itself was choked with manumitted slaves - freedmen - some of whom were very rich.
They were all our people, our slaves.
My Father and I sat up all night when my old Greek teacher was dying. We held his hands until the body was cold. Nobody was flogged on our estate in Rome unless my Father himself gave the order. Our country slaves loafed under the fruit trees. Our stewards were rich, and showed off their wealth in their clothes. I remember a time when there were so many old Greek slaves in the garden that I could sit day after day and listen to them argue. They had nothing else to do. I learned much from this.
I grew up more than happy. If you think I exaggerate the extent of my education, consult the letters of Pliny or other actual memoirs and correspondence of the times. Highborn young girls were well educated; modern Roman women went about unhampered for the most part by male interference. We partook of life as did men.
For example, I was scarcely eight years old when I was first taken to the arena with several of my brothers' wives, to have the dubious pleasure of seeing exotic creatures, such as giraffes, tear madly around before being shot to death with arrows, this display then followed by a small group of gladiators who would hack other gladiators to death, and then after that came the flock of criminals to be fed to the hungry lions.
David, I can hear the sound of those lions as if it were now. There's nothing between me and the moment that I sat in the wooden benches, perhaps two rows up - the premium seats - and I watched these beasts devour living beings, as I was supposed to do, with a pleasure meant to demonstrate a strength of heart, a fearlessness in the face of death, rather than simple and utter monstrousness.
The audience screamed and laughed as men and women ran from the beasts. Some victims would give the crowd no such satisfaction. They merely stood there as the hungry lion attacked; those who were being devoured alive almost invariably lay in a stupor as though their souls had already taken flight, though the lion had not reached the throat.
I remember the smell of it. But more than anything, I remember the noise of the crowd.
I passed the test of character, I could look at all of it. I could watch the champion gladiator finally meet his end, lying there bloody in the sand, as the sword went through his chest.
But I can certainly remember my Father declaring under his breath that the whole affair was disgusting. In fact, everybody I knew thought it was all disgusting. My Father believed, as did others, that the common man needed all this blood. We, the highborn, had to preside over it for the common man. It had a religious quality to it, all this spectacular viciousness.
The making of these appalling spectacles was considered something of a social responsibility.
Also Roman life was a life of being outdoors, involved in things, attending ceremonies and spectacles, being seen, taking an interest, coming together with others.You came together with all the other highborn and lowborn of the city and you joined in one mass to witness
a triumphant procession, a great offering at the altar of Augustus, an ancient ceremony, a game, a chariot race.
Now in the Twentieth Century, when I watch the endless intrigue and slaughter in motion pictures and on television throughout our Western world, I wonder if people do not need it, do not need to see murder, slaughter, death in all forms. Television at times seems an unbroken series of gladiatorial fights or massacres. And look at the traffic now in video recordings of actual war.
Records of war have become art and entertainment.
The narrator speaks softly as the camera passes over the heap of bodies, or the skeletal children sobbing with their starving mothers. But it is gripping. One can wallow, shaking one's head, in all this death. Nights of television are devoted to old footage of men dying with guns in their hands.
I think we look because we are afraid. But in Rome, you had to look so that you would be hard, and that applied to women as well as men. But the overall point is - I was not closeted away as a Greek woman might have been in some old Hellenistic household. I did not suer under the earlier customs of the Roman Republic.
I vividly remember the absolute beauty of that time, and my Father's heartfelt avowal that Augustus was a god, and that Rome had never been more pleasing to her deities. Now I want to give you one very important recollection. Let me set the scene. First, let's take up the question of Virgil, and the poem he wrote, the Aeneid, greatly amplifying and glorifying the adventures of the hero Aeneas, a Trojan fleeing the horrors of defeat by the Greeks who came out of the famous Trojan horse to
massacre Helen's city of Troy.
It's a charming story. I always loved it, Aeneas leaves dying Troy, valiantly journeys all the way to beautiful Italy and there founds our nation.
But the point is that Augustus loved and supported Virgil all of Virgil's life, and Virgil was a respected poet, a poet fine and decent to quote, an approved and patriotic poet. It was perfectly fine to like Virgil. Virgil died before I was born. But by ten I'd read everything he'd written, and had read Horace as well, and Lucretius, much of Cicero, and all the Greek manuscripts we possessed, and there were plenty. My Father didn't erect his library for show. It was a place where members of the family spent hours. It was also where he sat to write his letters - which he seemed endlessly to be doing - letters on behalf of the Senate, the Emperor, the courts, his friends, etc.
Back to Virgil. I had also read another Roman poet, who was alive still, and deeply and dangerously out of favor with Augustus, the god. This was the poet Ovid, the author of the Metamorphoses, and dozens of other earthy, hilarious and bawdy works.
Now, when I was too young to remember, Augustus turned on Ovid, whom Augustus had also loved, and Augustus banished Ovid to some horrible place on the Black Sea. Maybe it wasn't so horrible. But it was the sort of place cultured city Romans expect to be horrible - very far away from the capital and full of barbarians.
Ovid lived there a long time, and his books were banned all over Rome.
You couldn't find them in the bookshops or the public libraries. Or at the book stands all over the marketplace.
You know this was a hot time for popular reading; books were everywhere - both in scroll form and in codex, that is, with bound pages - and many booksellers had teams of Greek slaves spending all day copying books for public consumption.
To continue, Ovid had fallen out of favor with Augustus, and he had been banned, but men like my Father were not about to burn their copies of the Metamorphoses, or any other of Ovid's work, and the only reason they didn't plead for Ovid's pardon was fear.
The whole scandal had something to do with Augustus's daughter, Julia, who was a notorious slut by
anyone's standards. How Ovid became involved in Julia's love affairs I don't know. Perhaps his sensuous
early poetry, the Amores, was considered to be a bad influence. There was also a lot of "reform" in the air during the reign of Augustus, a lot of talk of old values.
I don't think anyone knows what really happened between Caesar Augustus and Ovid, but Ovid was
banished for the rest of his life from Imperial Rome.
But I had read the Amores and the Metamorphoses in well-worn copies by the time of this incident which I want to recount. And many of my Father's friends were always worried about Ovid.
Now to the specific recollection. I was ten years old, I came in from playing, covered with dust from head to foot, my hair loose, my dress torn, and breezed into my Father's large receiving room - and I plopped down at the foot of his couch to listen to what was being said, as he lounged there with all appropriate Roman dignity, chatting with several other lounging men who had come to visit.
I knew all of the men but one, and this one was fair-haired and blue-eyed, and very tall, and he turned, during the conversation - which was all whispers and nods - and winked at me.This was Marius, with skin slightly tanned from his travels and a flashing beauty in his eyes. He had three names like everyone else. But again, I will not disclose the name of his family. But I knew it. I knew he was sort of the "bad boy" in an intellectual way, the "poet" and the "loafer." What nobody had told me was that he was beautiful.
Now, on this day, this was Marius when he was alive, about fifteen years before he was to be made a
vampire. I can calculate that he was only twenty-five. But I'm not certain.
To continue, the men paid no attention to me, and it became plain to my ever curious little mind that they were giving my Father news of Ovid, that the tall blond one with the remarkable blue eyes, the one called Marius, had just returned from the Baltic Coast, and he had given my Father several presents, which were in fact good copies of Ovid's work, both past and current.
The men assured my Father that it was still far too dangerous to go crying to Caesar Augustus over Ovid, and my Father accepted this. But if I'm not mistaken, he entrusted some money for Ovid to Marius, the blond one.
When the gentlemen were all leaving, I saw Marius in the atrium, got a measure of his full height, which was quite unusual for a Roman, and let out a girlish gasp and then a streak of laughter. He winked at me again. Marius had his hair short then, dipped military-Roman-style with a few modest curls on his forehead; his hair was long when he was later made a vampire, and he wears it long now, but then it was the typical boring Roman military cut. But it was blond and full of sunlight in the atrium, and he seemed the brightest and most impressive man I'd ever laid eyes upon. He was full of kindness when he looked at me.
"Why are you so tall?" I asked him.
My Father thought this was amusing, of course, and he did not care what anyone else thought of his dusty little daughter, hanging onto his arms and speaking to his honored company.
"My precious one," Marius said, "I'm tall because I'm a barbarian!" He laughed and was flirtatious when he laughed, with a deference to me as a little lady, which was rather rare.
Suddenly he made his hands into claws and ran at me like a bear. I loved him instantly!
"No, truly." I said. "You can't be a barbarian. I know your Father and all your sisters; they live just down the hill. The family is always talking about you at the table, saying only nice things, of course."
"Of that I'm sure," he said, breaking into laughter.
I knew my Father was getting anxious.
What I didn't know was that a ten-year-old girl could be betrothed.
Marius drew himself up and said in his gentle very fine voice, trained for public rhetoric as well as words of love, "I am descended through my mother from the Keltoi, little beauty, little muse. I come from the tall blond people of the North, the people of Gaul. My mother was a princess there, or so I am told. Do you know who they are?"
I said of course I knew and began to recite verbatim from Julius Caesar's account of conquering Gaul, or the land of the Keltoi: "All Gaul is made up of three parts..."
Marius was quite genuinely impressed. So was everybody So I went on and on, "The Keltoi are separated from the Aquitani by the river Garonne, and the tribe of the Belgae by the rivers Marne and Seine -" My Father, being slightly embarrassed by this time, with his daughter glorying in attention, spoke up to gently assure everyone that I was his precious joy, and I was let to run wild, and please make nothing of it.
And I said, being bold, and a born troublemaker, "Give my love to the great Ovid! Because I too wish he
would come home to Rome."
I then rattled off several steamy lines of the Amores:
She laughed and gave her best, whole hearted kisses, They'd shake the three pronged bolt from Jove's
hand. Torture to think that fellow got such good ones!
I wish they hadn't been of the same brand!
All laughed, except my Father, and Marius went wild with delight, clapping his hands. That was all the
encouragement I needed to rush at him now like a bear, as he had rushed at me, and to continue singing out Ovid's hot words:
What's more these kisses were better than I'd taught her. She seemed possessed of knowledge that was new.
They pleased too well - bad sign! Her tongue was in them, And my tongue was kissing too.
My Father grabbed me by the small of my upper arm, and said, "That's it, Lydia, wrap it up." And the men laughed all the harder, commiserating with him, and embracing him, and then laughing again.
But I had to have one final victory over this team of adults.
"Pray, Father," I said, "let me finish with some wise and patriotic words which Ovid said:
" 'I congratulate myself on not having arrived into the world until the present time. This age suits my taste.' "
This seemed to astonish Marius more than to amuse him. But my Father gathered me close and said very dearly:
"Lydia, Ovid wouldn't say that now, and now you, for being such a... a scholar and philosopher in one,
should assure your Father's dearest friends that you know full well Ovid was banished from Rome by
Augustus for good reason and that he can never return home."
In other words, he was saying "Shut up about Ovid."
But Marius, undeterred, dropped on his knees before me, lean and handsome with mesmeric blue eyes, and he took my hand and kissed it and said, "I will give Ovid your love, little Lydia. But your Father is right. We must all agree with the Emperor's censure. After all, we are Romans." He then did the very strange thing of speaking to me purely as if I were an adult. "Augustus Caesar has given far more to Rome, I think, than anyone ever hoped. And he too is a poet. He wrote a poem called 'Ajax' and burnt it up himself because he said it wasn't good."
I was having the time of my life. I would have run off with Marius then and there!
But all I could do was dance around him as he went out of the vestibule and out the gate.
I waved to him.
He lingered. "Goodbye, little Lydia," he said. He then spoke under his breath to my Father, and I heard my Father say:
"You are out of your mind!"
My Father turned his back on Marius, who gave me a sad smile and disappeared.
"What did he mean? What happened?" I asked my Father. "What's the matter?"
"Listen, Lydia," said my Father. "Have you in all your readings come across the word 'betrothed'?"
"Yes, Father, of course."
"Well, that sort of wanderer and dreamer likes nothing better than to betroth himself to a young girl of ten because it means she is not old enough to marry and he has years of freedom, without the censure of the Emperor. They do it all the time."
"No, no, Father," I said. "I shall never forget him."
I think I forgot him the next day.
I didn't see Marius again for five years.
I remember because I was fifteen, and should have been married and didn't want to be married at all. I had wriggled out of it year after year, feigning illness, madness, total uncontrollable fits. But time was running out on me. In fact I'd been eligible for marriage since I was twelve.
At this time, we were all standing together at the foot of the Palatine Hill, watching a most sacrosanct
ceremony - the Lupercalia - just one of so many festivals that were integral in Roman life.
Now the Lupercalia was very important to us, though there's no way to relate its significance to a Christian's concept of religion. It was pious to enjoy such a festival, to participate as a citizen and as a virtuous Roman. And besides it was a great pleasure.
So I was there, not so far from the cave of the Lupercal, watching with other young women, as the two chosen men of that year were smeared with blood from a sacrifice of goats and then draped in the bleeding skins of the sacrificed animals. I couldn't see all of this very well, but I had seen it many times, and when years before two of my brothers had run in this festival, I had pushed to the front to get a good look at it.
On this occasion, I did have a fairly good view when each of the two young men took his own company and began his run around the base of the Palatine Hill. I moved forward because I was supposed to do it. The young men were hitting lightly on the arm of every young woman with a strip of goatskin, which was supposed to purify us. Render us fertile.
I stepped forward and received the ceremonial blow, and then stepped back again, wishing I was a man and could run around the hill with the other men, not an unusual thought for me at any time in my mortal life.
I had some sarcastic inner thoughts about "being purified," but by this age I behaved in public and would not on any account have humiliated my Father or my brothers.
These strips of goatskin, as you know, David, are called Februa, and February comes from that word. So much for language and all the magic it unwittingly carries with it. Surely the Lupercalia had something to do with Romulus and Remus; perhaps it even echoed some ancient human sacrifice. After all, the young men's heads were smeared with goat blood. It gives me shivers, because in Etruscan times, long before I was born, this might have been a far more cruel ceremony.
Perhaps this was the occasion that Marius saw my arms. Because I was exposing them to this ceremonial lash, and was already, as you can see, much of a show-off in general, laughing with the others as the company of men continued their run.
In the crowd, I saw Marius. He looked at me, then back to his book. So strange. I saw him standing against a tree trunk and writing. No one did this - stand against a tree, hold a book in one hand and write with the other. The slave stood beside him with a bottle of ink.
Marius's hair was long and most beautiful. Quite wild.
I said to my Father, "Look, there's our barbarian friend Marius, the tall one, and he's writing."
My Father smiled and said, "Marius is always writing. Marius is good for writing, if for nothing else. Turn
around, Lydia. Be still."
"But he looked at me, Father. I want to talk to him."
"You will not, Lydia! You will not grace him with one small smile!"
On the way home, I asked my Father, "If you're going to marry me to someone - if there's no way short of suicide that I can avoid this disgusting development - why don't you marry me to Marius? I don't understand it. I'm rich. He's rich. I know his Mother was a wild Keltoi princess, but his Father has adopted him."
My Father said witheringly, "Where have you learned all this?" He stopped in his tracks, always an ominous sign. The crowd broke and streamed around.
"I don't know; it's common knowledge." I turned. There was Marius hovering about, glancing at me. "Father," I said, "please let me speak to him."
My Father knelt down. Most of the crowd had gone on. "Lydia, I know this is dreadful for you. I have caved to every objection you have raised to your suitors. But believe you me, the Emperor himself would not approve of you marrying such a mad wandering historian as Marius! He has never served in the military, he cannot enter the Senate, it is quite impossible. When you marry, you will marry well."
As we walked away, I turned again, thinking only to pick Marius out from the others, but to my surprise he was stark still, looking at me. With his flowing hair, he much resembled the Vampire Lestat. He is taller than Lestat, but he has the same lithe build, the same very blue eyes and a muscular strength to him, and a squareness of face which is almost pretty.
I pulled away from my Father and ran up to him.
"Well, I wanted to marry you," I said, "but my Father has said no."
I'll never forget the expression on his face. But before he could speak, my Father had gathered me up and gone into obliterating respectable conversation:
"How now, Marius, how goes it with your brother in the Army. And how is it with your history. I hear you have written thirteen volumes."
My Father backed up, virtually carrying me away.
Marius did not move or answer. Soon we were with others hurrying up the hill.
All the course of our lives was changed at that moment. But there was no conceivable way Marius or I could have known it.
Twenty years would pass before we would meet again.
I was thirty-five, then. I can say that we met in a realm of darkness in more respects than one.
For now, let me fill up the gap.
I was married twice, due to pressure from the Imperial House. Augustus wanted us all to have children. I had none. My husbands seeded plenty, however, with slave girls. So I was legally divorced and freed twice over, and determined then to retire from social life, just so the Emperor Tiberius, who had come to the Imperial throne at the age of fifty, would not meddle with me, for he was more a public puritan and domestic dictator than Augustus. If I kept to the house, if I didn't go abroad to banquets and parties and hang around with the Empress Livia, Augustus's wife and mother of Tiberius, perhaps I wouldn't be pushed into becoming a stepmother! I'd stay home. I had to care for my Father. He deserved it. Even though he was perfectly healthy, he was still old!
With all due respect for the husbands I have mentioned, whose names are more than footnotes in common Roman histories, I was a wretched wife.
I had plenty of my own money from my Father, I listened to nothing, and yielded to the act of love only on my own terms, which I always obtained; being gifted with enough beauty to make men really suffer. I became a member of the Cult of Isis just to spite these husbands and get away from them, so that I could hang around at the Temple of Isis, where I spent an enormous amount of time with other interesting women, some far more adventurous and unconventional than I dared to be. I was attracted to whores. I saw the brilliant, loose women as having conquered a barrier which I, the loving daughter of my Father, would never conquer.
I became a regular at the Temple. I was initiated at last in a secret ceremony, and I walked in every
procession of Isis in Rome.
My husbands loathed this. Maybe that's why after I came home to my Father I gave up the worship.
Whatever, it was a good thing perhaps that I had. But fortune could not be so easily shaped by any decision of mine.Now Isis was an imported goddess, from Egypt, of course, and the old Romans were as suspicious of her as they were of the terrible Cybele, the Great other from the Far East, who led her male devotees to castrate themselves. The whole city was filled with these "Eastern cults," and the conservative population thought them dreadful.
These cults weren't rational; they were ecstatic or euphoric. They offered a complete rebirth through
understanding. The typical conservative Roman was far too practical for that. If you didn't know by age five that the gods were made-up creatures and the myths invented stories, then you were a fool.
But Isis had a curious distinction - something that set her far apart from the cruel Cybele. Isis was a loving mother and goddess. Isis forgave her worshipers anything. Isis had come before all Creation. Isis was patient and wise.
That's why the most degraded woman could pray at the Temple. That's why none were ever turned away. Like the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is so well known today throughout the East and West, the Queen Isis had conceived her divine child by divine means. From the dead and castrated Osiris, she had drawn the living seed by her own power. And many a time she was pictured or sculpted holding her divine son, Horus, on her knee. Her breast was bare in all innocence to feed the young god.
And Osiris ruled in the land of the dead, his phallus lost forever in the waters of the Nile, where an endless semen flowed from it, fertilizing the remarkable fields of Egypt every year when the River overflowed its banks.
The music of our Temple was divine. We used the sistrum, a small rigid metal lyre of sorts, and flutes and timbrels. We danced, and we sang together. The poetry of Isis's litanies was fine and rapturous.
Isis was the Queen of Navigation, much like the Blessed Virgin Mary would be called later, "Our Lady Star of the Sea."
When her statue was carried to the shore each year, the procession was so splendid that all Rome turned out to see the Egyptian gods with their animal heads, the huge abundance of flowers and the statue of the Queen Mother herself. The air rang with hymns. Her Priests and Priestesses walked in white linen robes.
She herself, made of marble, and carried high, holding her sacred sistrum, dressed regally in a Grecian
gown with Grecian hair.
That was my Isis. I fell away from her after my last divorce. My Father didn't like the worship, and I myself had enjoyed it long enough. As a free woman, I wasn't infatuated with prostitutes. I had it infinitely better. I kept my Father's house and he was just old enough, in spite of his black hair and his remarkably sharp vision, that the Emperor left me alone.
I can't say I remembered or thought of Marius. No one had mentioned Marius for years. He had disappeared out of my mind after the Lupercalia. There was no force on Earth that could come between me and my Father.
My brothers all had good luck. They married well, had children and came home from the hard wars in which they fought, keeping the boundaries of the Empire.
My youngest brother, Lucius, I did not like much, but he was always a little anxious and given to drinking and apparently also to gambling, which very much annoyed his wife.
She I loved, as I did all my sisters-in-law and my nieces and nephews. I loved it when they descended upon the house, these flocks of children, squealing and running rampant with "Aunt Lydia's blessing," as they were never allowed to do at home.
The eldest of my brothers, Antony, was in potential a great man. Fate robbed him of greatness. But he had been most ready for it, well schooled, trained and most wise.
The only foolish thing I ever knew Antony to do was say to me very distinctly once that Livia, Augustus's wife, had poisoned him so that her son, Tiberius, would rise. My Father, the only other occupant of the room, told him sternly:
"Antony, never speak of that again! Not here, not anywhere!" My Father stood up, and without planning it, put in perspective the style of life which he and I lived, "Stay away from the Imperial Palace, stay away from the Imperial families, be in the front ranks of the games and always in the Senate, but don't get into their quarrels and their intrigues!"
Antony was very angry, but the anger had nothing to do with my Father. "I said it only to those two to whom I can say it, you and Lydia. I detest eating dinner with a woman who poisoned her husband! Augustus should have re-established the Republic. He knew when death was coming."
"Yes, and he knew that he could not restore the Republic. It was simply impossible. The Empire had grown to Britannia in the North, beyond Parthia in the East; it covers Northern Africa. If you want to be a good Roman, Antony, then stand up and speak your conscience in the Senate. Tiberius invites this."
"Oh, Father, you are much deceived," said Antony.
My Father put an end to this argument.
But he and I did live exactly the life he had described.Tiberius was immediately unpopular with the noisy Roman crowds. He was too old, too dry, too humorless, too puritanical and tyrannical at the same time. But he had one saving grace. Other than his extensive love and knowledge of philosophy, he had been a very good soldier. And that was the most important characteristic the Emperor had to possess.
The troops honored him.
He strengthened the Praetorian Guard around the Palace, hired a man named Sejanus to run things for him. But he didn't bring legions into Rome, and he spoke a damned good line about personal rights and freedom, that is, if you could stay awake to listen. I thought him a brooder.
The Senate went mad with impatience when he refused to make decisions. They didn't want to make the decisions! But all this seemed relatively safe.
Then a horrible incident occurred which made me positively detest the Emperor wholeheartedly and lose all my faith in the man and his ability to govern.
This incident involved the Temple of Isis. Some clever evil man, claiming to be the Egyptian god Anubis, had enticed a highborn devotee of Isis to the Temple and gone to bed with her, fooling her completely, though how on Earth he did it I can't imagine.
I remember her to this day as the stupidest woman in Rome. But there's probably more to it.
Anyway, it had all happened at the Temple.
And then this man, this fake Anubis, went before the highborn virtuous woman and told her in the plainest terms that he had had her! She went screaming to her husband. It was a scandal of extraordinary flair.
It had been years since I had been at the Temple, and I was glad of it.
But what followed from the Emperor was more dreadful than I ever dreamed.
The entire Temple was razed to the very ground. All the worshipers were banished from Rome, and some of them executed. And our Priests and Priestesses were crucified, their bodies hung on the tree, as the old Roman expression goes, to die slowly, and to rot, for all to see.
My Father came into my bedroom. He went to the small shrine of Isis. He took the statue and smashed it on the marble floor. Then he picked up the larger pieces and smashed each of them. He made dust of her.
I nodded.
I expected him to condemn me for my old habits. I was overcome with sadness and shock at what had
happened. Other Eastern cults were being persecuted. The Emperor was moving to take away the right of Sanctuary from various Temples throughout the Empire.
"The man doesn't want to be Emperor of Rome," said my Father. "He's been bent by cruelty and losses.
He's stiff, boring and completely in terror for his life! A man who would not be Emperor cannot be Emperor. Not now."
"Maybe he'll step down," I said sadly. "He has adopted the young General Germanicus Julius Caesar. This means Germanicus is to be his heir, does it not'?"
"What good did it do to the earlier heirs of Augustus when they were adopted?" my Father asked.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Use your head," said my Father. "We cannot continue pretending we are a Republic. We must define the office of this Emperor and the limits of his power! We must outline a form of succession other than murder!" I tried to calm him.
"Father, let's leave Rome. Let's go to our house in Tuscany. It's always beautiful there, Father."
"That's just it, we can't, Lydia," he said. "I have to remain here. I have to be loyal to my Emperor. I must do so for all my family. I must stand in the Senate."
Within months, Tiberius sent off his young and handsome nephew Germanicus Julius Caesar to the East,
just to get him away from the adulation of the Roman public. As I said, people spoke their minds.
Germanicus was supposed to be Tiberius's heir! But Tiberius was too jealous to listen to the crowds
screaming praise of Germanicus for his victories in battle. He wanted the man far from Rome.
And so this rather charming and seductive young general went to the East, to Syria; he vanished from the loving eyes of the Roman people, from the core of the Empire where a city crowd could determine the fate of the world.
Sooner or later there would be another campaign in the North, we all figured. Germanicus had hit hard at the German tribes in his last campaign.
My brothers vividly described it to me over the dinner table. They told how they had gone back to avenge the hideous massacre of General Varus and his troops in the Teutoburg Forest. They could finish the job, if called up again, and my brothers would go. They were exactly the kind of old-fashioned patricians who would go!
Meantime there were rumors that the Delatores, the notorious spies of the Praetorian Guard, pocketed one third of the estate of those against whom they informed. I found it horrible. My Father shook his head, and said, "That started under Augustus."
"Yes, Father," I said, "but then treason was considered a matter of what one did, not what one said.""Which is all the more reason to say nothing." He sat back wearily. "Lydia, sing to me. Get your lyre. Make up one of your comic epics. It's been a long time."
"I'm too old for that," I said, thinking of the silly, bawdy satires on Homer which I used to make up so quickly and freely that everyone marveled. But I jumped at that idea. I remember that night so palpably that I cannot tear myself loose now from the writing of this story, even though I know what pain I must confess and explore.
What does it mean to write? David, you'll see this question repeated, because with each page I understand more and more - I see the patterns that have before eluded me, and driven me to dream rather than live.
That night I did make a very funny epic. My Father laughed. He fell asleep on his couch. And then, as if from a trance state, he spoke, "Lydia, don't live out your life alone on account of me. Marry for love! You must not give up!"
By the time I turned around, he was breathing deeply again,
Two weeks later, or maybe it was a month, our life came abruptly to an end.
I came home one day, found the house completely empty except for two terrified old slave men - men who actually belonged to the household of my brother Antony - who let me in and bolted the door ferociously. I walked through the huge vestibule and then into the peristyle and into the dining room. I beheld an amazing sight.
My Father was in full battle dress, armed with sword and dagger, lacking only his shield. He even wore his red cloak. His breastplate was polished and gleaming.
He stared at the floor and with reason. It had been dug up. The old Hearth from generations ago had been dug up. This had been the first room of this house in the very ancient days of Rome, and it was around this Hearth that the family gathered, worshiped, dined.
I had never even seen it, We had our household Shrines, but this, this giant circle of burnt stones! There were actually ashes there, uncovered. How ominous and sacred it appeared.
"What in the name of the gods is going on?" I asked. "Where is everybody?"
"They are gone," he said. "I have freed the slaves, sent them packing. I've been waiting for you. You have to leave here now!"
"Not without you!"
"You will not disobey me, Lydia!" I had never seen such an imploring yet dignified expression in his face.
"There's a wagon out back, ready to take you to the coast, and a Jewish merchant who is my most trusted friend who will take you by ship out of Italy! I want you to go! Your money's been loaded on board the ship.
Your clothing. Everything. These are men I trust. Nevertheless take this dagger."
He picked up a dagger from the nearby table and gave it to me. "You've watched your brothers enough to know how to use it," he said, "and this." He reached for a sack. "This is gold, the currency that all the world accepts. Take it and go."
I always carried a dagger, and it was in the sling on my forearm but I could not shock him with this just now, so I put the dagger in my girdle and took the purse.
"Father, I'm not afraid to stand by you! Who's turned on us? Father, you are Senator of Rome. Accused of any crime, you are entitled to a trial before the Senate."
"Oh, my precious quick-witted daughter! You think that evil Sejanus and his Delatores bring charges out in the open? His Speculatores have already surprised your brothers and their wives and children. These are Antony's slaves. He sent them to warn me as he fought, as he died. He saw his son dashed against the wall. Lydia, go."
Of course I knew this was a Roman custom - to murder the entire family, to wipe out the spouse and
offspring of the condemned. It was even the law. And in matters such as this, when word got out that the Emperor had turned his back on a man, any of his enemies could precede the assassins.
"You come with me," I said. "Why do you stay here?"
"I will die a Roman in my house," he said. "Now go if you love me, my poet, my singer, my thinker. My Lydia. Go! I will not be disobeyed. I have spent the last hour of my life arranging for your salvation! Kiss me and obey me."
I ran to him, kissed him on the lips and at once the slaves led me through the garden.
I knew my Father. I could not revolt against him in this final wish. I knew that, in old-fashioned Roman style, he would probably take his life before the Speculatores broke down the front door.
When I reached the gate, when I saw the Hebrew merchants and their wagon, I couldn't go.
This is what I saw.
My Father had cut both his wrists and was walking around the household hearth in a circle, letting the blood flow right down onto the floor. He had really given his wrists the slash. He was turning white as he walked. In his eyes there was an expression I would only come to understand later.There came a loud crash. The front door was being bashed in. My Father stopped quite still. And two of the
Praetorian Guard came at him, one making sneering remarks, "Why don't you finish yourself off, Maximus, and save us the trouble. Go on."
"Are you proud of yourselves!" my Father said. "Cowards. You like killing whole families? How much money do you get? Did you ever fight in a true battle. Come on, die with me!" Turning his back on them, he whipped around with sword and dagger, and brought down both of them, as
they came at him, with unanticipated thrusts. He stabbed them repeatedly.
My Father wobbled as if he would faint. He was white. The blood flowed and flowed from his wrists. His eyes rolled up into his head.
Mad schemes came to me. We must get him into the wagon. But a Roman like my Father would never have cooperated.
Suddenly the Hebrews, one young and one elderly, had me by the arms and were carrying me out of the house.
"I vowed I would save you," said the old man. "And you will not make a liar of me to my old friend."
"Let go of me!" I whispered. "I will see him through it!"
Throwing them off in their polite timidity I turned and saw from a great distance my Father's body by the hearth. He had finished himself with his own dagger.
I was thrown into the wagon, my eyes dosed, my hands over my mouth. I fell among soft pillows, bolts of fabric, tumbling as the wagon began to roll very slowly down the winding road of the Palatine Hill.
Soldiers shouted at us to get the hell out of the way.
The elderly Hebrew said, "I am nearly deaf, sir, what did you say?"
It worked perfectly. They rode past us.
The Hebrew knew exactly what he was doing. As crowds rushed past us he kept to his slow pace.
The one young one came into the back of the wagon. "My name is Jacob," he said. "Here, put on all these white mantles. You look now like an Eastern woman. If questioned at the gate, hold up your veil and pretend you do not understand."
We went through the Gates of Rome with amazing ease. It was "Hail David and Jacob, has it been a good trip?"
I was helped aboard a large merchant vessel, with galley slaves and sails, nothing unusual at all, and then into a small barren wooden room.
"This is all we have for you," said Jacob. "But we are sailing now." He had long wavy brown hair and a
beard. He wore striped robes to the ground.
"In the dark?" I asked. "Sailing in the dark?"
This was not usual.
But as we moved out, as the oars began to dip, and the ship found its proper distance and began to move South, I saw what we were doing.
All the beautiful Southwestern coast of Italy was well lighted by her hundreds and hundreds of palatial villas.
Lighthouses stood on the rocks.
"We will never see the Republic again," said Jacob wearily, as though he were a Roman citizen, which I
think in fact he was. "But your Father's last wish is fulfilled. We are safe now."
The old man stepped up to me. He told me that his name was David.
The old man apologized profusely that there were no female attendants for me. I was the only woman on board.
"Oh, please, banish any such thoughts from your mind! Why have you taken these risks?"
"For years we have done business with your Father," said David. "Years ago, when pirates sank our ships, your Father carried the debt. He trusted us again, and we repaid him fivefold. He has laid up riches for you. They are all stowed, among cargo we carried, as if they were nothing."
I went into the cabin and collapsed on the small bed. The old man, averting his eyes, brought a cover for me. Slowly I realized something. I had fully expected them to betray me.
I had no words. I had no gestures or sentiments inside me. I turned my head to the wall. "Sleep, lady," he said.
A nightmare came to me, a dream such as I have never had in my life. I was near a river. I wanted to drink blood. I waited in high grass to catch one of the villagers, and when I had this poor man, I took him by his shoulders, and I sank two fang teeth into his neck. My mouth filled with delicious blood. It was too sweet and too potent to be described, and even in the dream I knew it. But I had to move on. The man was nearly dead. I let him fall. Others who were more dangerous were after me. And there was another terrible threat to my life.
I came to the ruins of a Temple, far from the marsh. Here it was desert - just with the snap of the fingers, from wetland to sand. I was afraid. Morning was coming. I had to hide. Besides, I was also being hunted. Idigested this delicious blood, and I entered the Temple. No place to hide! I lay my whole body on the cold walls! They were graven with pictures. But there was no small room, no hiding place for me. I had to make it to the hills before sunrise, but that wasn't possible. I was moving right towards the sun! Suddenly, there came above the hills a great fatal light. My eyes hurt unbearably. They were on fire. "My eyes," I cried and reached to cover them. Fire covered me. I screamed. "Amon Ra, I curse you!" I cried another name. I knew it meant Isis, but it was not that name, it was another title for her that flew from my lips.
I woke up. I sat bolt upright, shivering.
The dream had been as sharply defined as a vision. It had a deep resonance in me of memory. Had I lived before?
I went out on the deck of the ship. All was well enough. We could see the coastline dearly still, and the lighthouses, and the ship moved on. I stared at the sea, and I wanted blood.
"This is not possible. This is some evil omen, some twisted grief," I said. I felt the fire. I could not shut out the taste of the blood, how natural it had seemed, how good, how perfect for my thirst. I saw the twisted body of the villager again in the marshes.
This was a horror; it was no escape from what I had just witnessed. I was incensed, and feverish.
Jacob, the tall young one, came to me. He had with him a young Roman. The young man had shaved his first beard, but otherwise he seemed a flushed and glistening child.
I wondered wearily if I were so old at thirty-five that everyone young looked beautiful to me.
He cried, "My family, too, has been betrayed. My Mother made me leave!"
"To whom do we owe this shared catastrophe'?" I asked. I put my hands on his wet cheeks. He had a baby's mouth, but the shaven beard was rough. He had broad strong shoulders, and wore only a light, simple tunic.
Why wasn't he cold out here on the water? Perhaps he was.
He shook his head. He was pretty still and would be handsome later. He had a nice curl to his dark hair. He didn't fear his tears, or apologize for them.
"My Mother stayed alive to tell me. She lay gasping until I came. When the Delatores had told my Father that he plotted against the Emperor, my Father had laughed. He had actually laughed. They had accused him ofplotting with Germanicus! My Mother wouldn't die until she'd told me. She said that all my Father was accused of doing was talking with other men about how he would serve under Germanicus again if they were sent North."
I nodded wearily. "I see. My brothers probably said the same thing. And Germanicus is the Emperor's heir and Imperium Maius of the East. Yet this is treason, to speak of serving Rome under a pretty general." I turned to go. To understand gave no consolation.
"We are taking you to different cities," said Jacob, "to different friends. Better that we not say."
"Don't leave me," said the boy. "Not tonight."
"All right," I said. I took him into the cabin and closed the door, with a polite nod to Jacob, who was watching all with a guardian's conscience.
"What do you want?" I asked.
The boy stared at me. He shook his head. He flung his hands out. He turned and drew dose to me and
kissed me. We went into a rampage of kisses.
I took off my shift and sank into the bed with him. He was a man all right, tender face or no.
And when I came to the moment of ecstasy, which was quite easy, given his phenomenal stamina, I tasted blood. I was the blood drinker in the dream. I went limp, but it didn't matter. He had all he needed to finish the rites to his satisfaction.
He rose up. "You're a goddess," he said.
"No," I whispered. The dream was rising. I heard the wind on the sand. I smelled the river. "I am a god... a god who drinks blood."
We did the rites of love until we could do them no more.
"Be circumspect and very proper with our Hebrew hosts," I said. "They will never understand this sort of thing."
He nodded. "I adore you."
"Not necessary. What is your name'?"
"Marcellus."
"Fine, Marcellus, go to sleep."
Marcellus and I made a night of every night after that until we finally saw the famous lighthouse of Pharos and knew we had come to Egypt.
It was perfectly obvious that Marcellus was being left in Alexandria. He explained to me that his maternal grandmother was still alive, a Greek, and indeed her whole dan.
"Don't tell me so much, just go," I said. "And be wise and safe."He begged me to come with him. He said he had fallen in love with me. He would marry me. He didn't care if
I bore no children. He didn't care that I was thirty-five. I laughed softly, mercifully.
Jacob noted all this with lowered eyes. And David looked away.
Quite a few trunks followed Marcellus into Alexandria.
"Now," I said to Jacob, "will you tell me where I'm being taken? I might have some thoughts on the matter, though I doubt I could improve on my Father's plan."
I still wondered. Would they deal honestly with me? What about now that they had seen me play the whore with the boy? They were such religious men.
"You're headed to a great city," Jacob said. "It couldn't be a better place. Your Father has Greek friends there!"
"How could it be better than Alexandria?" I said.
"Oh, it is far and away better," Jacob said. "Let me talk to my Father before I talk to you further."
We had put out to sea. The land was going away. Egypt. It was growing dark.
"Don't be afraid," Jacob said. "You look as though you are terrified."
"I'm not afraid," I said. "It's only that I have to lie in my bed and think and remember and dream." I looked at him, as he shyly looked away. "I held the boy like a Mother, against me, night after night."
This was about the biggest lie I've told in my life.
"He was a child in my arms." Some child! "
And now I fear nightmares. You must tell me - what is our destination? What is our fate?"
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