Cleopatra’s Daughter: A Novel (33 page)

Horatia fell on her knees. “Please!” she begged. “Take her to the Columna Lactaria. Give her a chance!” But Pollio was gone. She looked up into the face of the midwife. “Don’t take her away,” she pleaded, but the midwife had already gathered the child in her arms. “You can’t take her away from me!” Horatia shrieked.

Hot tears burned my cheeks, and I realized that my hands were trembling. “Don’t do this,” I said.

The midwife’s look was firm. “It’s Dominus who pays me. They are Dominus Pollio’s orders that I follow.”

“But don’t take her to the dump. She’s a child. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

The woman’s smile was full of vengeance. “Neither did those two hundred slaves.”

“So what?” Julia cried. “Because slaves die, patrician children must die as well?”

The woman didn’t respond.

“Let me give you denarii,” Horatia said desperately. “Please. Just don’t take her to the dump.”

The midwife hesitated, then turned to the other slaves and
snapped, “Go!” The women swiftly disappeared, some down the stairs, others to separate chambers. When the hall was empty, the midwife said, “Two hundred denarii.”

Horatia went pale. “That’s my entire dowry.”

“And this is your daughter’s chance at life. Maybe someone will take her, maybe they won’t, but at the dump the wolves will eat her.”

“Wait.” Horatia was trembling. “I will give you the money.”

Julia stared at the midwife, who looked back at us without any remorse.

“You are no better than a beast,” Julia said.

“And isn’t that what slaves are supposed to be? Beasts of burden?”

Horatia returned with several heavy purses, and the midwife stuffed them beneath her cloak. “How will you carry her?” Horatia asked worriedly.

“Just fine.”

But even if Gaia survived, she would likely end up in a
lupanar
, abused from the time she was old enough to speak. My mother had told me there were men who liked girls too young to understand what was happening to them. Tears rolled down Horatia’s cheeks, and Julia whispered, “Isn’t there someone who can adopt her?”

“How could I arrange it without Pollio knowing?”

The midwife pulled her cloak over the child, and I turned away from the terrible scene. While Horatia and Julia wept, I made my way slowly down the stairs. In the triclinium, the harpist was still playing, and Pollio was raising a cup of wine in toast.

“What happened?” Alexander asked.

“It’s a girl,” I told him.

Marcellus frowned. “Was she deformed?”

“No. Pollio wanted a son, so he ordered that she be put out.”

“As a foundling?” he cried.

I nodded.

Octavia rose from her couch and came over to me. “Where is Horatia?” she asked quietly.

I told her the story, even the part about the two hundred denarii and the Columna Lactaria. When I was finished, her face was hard.

“What do you think will happen to her?” I asked.

“The infant or Horatia?”

“Both,” I said.

Octavia drew a heavy breath. “If they survive, they will live the rest of their lives in terrible sadness.” She walked back to the table where Octavian was reclining between his wife and Terentilla, then whispered something into his ear. He glanced briefly at me, then rose from the couch.

“What is this?” Pollio exclaimed. “The dessert has not even come.”

Octavian’s voice was clipped. “I hear that your wife has given birth,” he said. “It would be rude of me to stay, when you belong with her.”

Pollio’s fat mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.

“Marcellus,” Octavian said sharply, “go and find Julia.”

Pollio looked around him. “But we cannot let Saturnalia be interrupted by women’s matters.”

“The children of Rome matter to everyone,” Octavian said coldly. “Even foolish men like you.”

Several dozen guests remained in the triclinium, but everyone who had come with Octavian prepared to leave.

“Congratulations,” Agrippa said, not knowing what had happened in the upstairs rooms.

Pollio’s face took on the color of unbaked dough. He led us through the atrium to the carriages outside. “Are you certain?” he protested. “It’s cold. Perhaps you would like to stay the night!”

Octavia turned and said quietly, “I’m sure your daughter would have liked to stay the night as well. When you shiver, remember how cold it is in the dump.”

On the ride back to the Palatine, I thought of Horatia’s daughter freezing beneath the Columna Lactaria while the rest of Rome drank wine beside crackling fires and ate roasted meats. And once all of his guests left, Pollio would probably climb under the covers next to his wife, demanding her attention even as her breasts leaked milk through her bindings. The thought made me wince, and while Julia wept softly, Alexander and Marcellus exchanged doleful looks.

When we reached Octavia’s villa, Juba excused himself, but Agrippa and Octavian remained, settling with the rest of us in the warmth of the library, where Vitruvius’s plans were spread across the tables. No one said anything, until Julia broke the silence.

“What about a home for foundlings?” she asked.

Marcellus looked up from his place near the brazier, and Alexander caught my eye.

“A place where mothers can leave their infants and they can be adopted by freedwomen and citizens,” she said. “Selene has drawn sketches of what such a house might look like.”

“And how would that help Rome?” Octavian demanded.

“We would be saving lives. Roman lives,” Julia protested.

“And increasing the number of mouths on the dole,” Livia retorted.

“Not if citizens were to adopt the infants!”

“And who would want to do that?” Livia asked. “When a woman is barren, she takes a child from a slave. Why would she need a dirty foundling?”

Octavia recoiled. “I doubt that there was anything dirty about Horatia’s child.”

“How do you know? Did you see it? The child was probably deformed.”

“It was perfectly healthy!” Julia exclaimed. “I was there and so was Selene.” She turned to her father. “If there was a foundling house—”

“It would be too costly,” Octavian overruled her. “There is a Columna Lactaria for a reason, and the plebs are satisfied. We do enough by paying
nutrices
to suckle infants.”

“But most of them die!” Julia cried.

“Then that is the will of the gods.”

She looked at me, but I knew better than to speak.

“You do enough for these people,” Livia assured Octavian. “Free grain, free baths, even men who fight fires and patrol the Subura watching for crime. How much are you supposed to give?”

“As much as possible,” Octavia said.

“Then why don’t
you
fund this foundling house?” she demanded.

“If my brother thought it was a good idea, I would.”

Everyone in the library looked to Octavian, who was shaking despite the warmth in the room. “My wife is right. We do enough.”

Julia’s eyes shone with tears, and I saw Marcellus pat her knee tenderly.

“And Horatia’s child?” Julia whispered.

“It was a girl,” Octavian said simply. “The incident was an unlucky beginning to Saturnalia. But I plan to end this night with good news.”

I couldn’t imagine what kind of news could dispel the unhappiness that had settled over the library, but when Octavian looked to Agrippa, his general announced, “I am getting married.”

Julia gasped, and I wondered if she feared that she might be the bride. “To whom?” she ventured.

“My daughter Claudia,” Octavia said.

“My sister?” Marcellus exclaimed. He looked at his mother. “How come I didn’t know about this?”

Octavia smiled primly. “Well, now you do.”

For the rest of Saturnalia, Julia kept a vigil for Horatia’s daughter, going every day to the Columna Lactaria to search for her. For seven days we battled the wind and rain, holding each other on the slick cobblestones while Juba and the Praetorian shone the light of their bronze lanterns on the empty streets. But on the eighth day, Gallia demanded to know what Julia would do if she found the infant.

“I would bring her home!”

“What? To your father’s villa?” Marcellus asked. “Be sensible, Julia. Someone has taken her.”

“But who?” she shouted, and her voice echoed across the icy courtyard. The marketplace was closed for the last day of Saturnalia, and anyone with good judgment was at home, hunched in front of a brazier, cooking lamb in the kitchens and drinking hot wine.

“It might have been a well-meaning citizen,” Alexander said.

“But what if it was the owner of a
lupanar?”

“Well, there’s no way of knowing which it is,” Juba said. “No one’s going to return her now.”

Julia stared at the column where thousands of women had left their infants over the years. The courtyard was silent.

“The rain is about to come,” Juba remarked.

We followed him back to the waiting carriage, and inside, Julia fretted over the night we had visited Pollio. “I should have taken Gaia from the midwife.”

“And what would you have done with her, Domina?”

“Found her a home!”

“With whom?” Marcellus asked. “Where?”

Julia looked at Juba. “What do you think has happened to her?” I knew why she was asking him. Of everyone in the carriage, he would give the answer that would come closest to the truth.

“A freedman found her and took her home.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because no patricians live near the markets or would ever want to be caught there at night.”

“But what if it was a freedman with a
lupanar?”

“Don’t you think it’s more likely that men of that sort were indoors, celebrating the first night of Saturnalia?” he asked. “Not standing in an abandoned marketplace waiting for foundlings, when those can be had any other day of the week.”

This settled Julia’s mind a little. But even when Alexander and I turned twelve on the first day of the New Year, she was quiet during Octavia’s celebration of our
dies natalis
.

“Tomorrow,” Octavia offered her kindly, “why don’t you come and help me prepare for Claudia’s wedding?”

Julia looked up from the crackling brazier, where cinnamon sticks burned among the charcoal to scent the triclinium. “What about your slaves?”

“Oh, they can do the tedious work. The cleaning, the cooking. But who will help me with the tunic and veil? There are only two weeks before my daughters come home from Pompeii and Claudia marries.”

So through the miserable month of January, while ice still covered the fountains and Octavian wrapped himself in furs, Julia helped Octavia prepare. On the way to and from the ludus, she told us about the jewels Claudia would be wearing, what her sandals would look like, and how her carriage would be decorated for her trip to Rome.
But when I asked her why Octavia’s eldest daughters were living so far away, she looked from me to Alexander and hesitated.

“You can tell them,” Tiberius said on our way back from the ludus. “It’s not as though it’s their fault.”

Julia nodded uncertainly. “Octavia had to give them away in order to marry Antony. Then, when Antony left her, Claudia and Marcella chose to remain with their aunt in Pompeii.”