Free I Am Livia by Phyllis T. Smith

approached the city. We had a family dinner, my mother, my father, Tiberius Nero, and me. Secunda was at the table too. Her lower lip trembled. I wondered how much she understood of what was happening. Perhaps only enough to be afraid.
    “Cicero urges negotiation,” Father said. “But the boy has already said there’s nothing to negotiate.”
    Mother gestured for a slave to serve the second course and fill our wine cups. “Not the ordinary wine,” she said. “Bring in the Judean vintage.” She gave my husband a tense smile. “Our son-in-law is here, after all.”
    “Thank you, Alfidia,” Tiberius Nero said. “But really, the ordinary stuff is good enough for me.”
    “Don’t be silly.”
    “Negotiation would be pointless,” Tiberius Nero said to my father. “The wonder is Cicero is not ashamed to show his face.”
    “He was misled by a scoundrel,” Father said. The scoundrel he meant was Caesar.
    “I hope the chicken is well done enough,” Mother said.
    The slave came back with the Judean wine and poured some into each of our cups. The second course was served. Even in these circumstances, Mother had ordered the cook to prepare roast tuna in a mint-and-vinegar sauce, as well as baked chicken. There was also a dish of lentils with coriander. But none of us were hungry.
    “It’s very good chicken, Mother,” Secunda said. She looked as if she might cry.
    “I don’t suppose there is still time for us to leave the city,” Mother said to Father. “It’s too late for that, I suppose?”
    “Much too late,” Father said. “All the roads are clogged. Decent people are being set upon by thugs as they try to escape from Rome with their goods. And Caesar’s army is rapidly advancing toward the city. It’s more dangerous to go than to stay.”
    “I see,” Mother said.
    We were quiet for a while, doing our best to down our dinner.
    I had known for two months that I was with child, and my husband fervently hoped I would give birth to a son. Every morning I rose to vomit my insides out. A hostile army approached Rome; and the child in my belly made me feel even more vulnerable than I might have otherwise.
    “I don’t see how it’s possible to make a stand,” Tiberius Nero said. “With what troops?”
    “Are you suggesting capitulation?” Father said. “Has it really come to tha t ?”
    “What’s the alternative?”
    Father ran his hand over his face.
    Would the Senate put up a fight when Caesar tried to enter the city? Everyone knew who would win such a fight. And then what—when the battle was over? Would Caesar order the execution of all men allied with the killers of his adoptive father? Might he wreak revenge on their families?
    What if it came to the wors t ?
    If it did, then I would go as a supplicant to Caesar, clasp his knees, and hope he remembered that I had once done him a kindness. I would beg for the lives of my father and my mother and my sister—and yes, even my husband. I would plead for my own life and that of my unborn child.
    My father had an empty, wounded expression on his face. Perhaps he wished he could go back in time and relive the last year. Despite his keen intellect, he had followed Brutus’s lead and then Cicero’s, even when they acted foolishly. He was a loyal man who had put too much faith in the judgment of others. I could have wept for him.
    I decided that if I survived I would never do what Father had done, never defer to anyone’s judgment or refuse to look clear-eyed at the world. I would never be so blind, never.
    If I survived.

Y ou were quiet at dinner,” Tiberius Nero said when we arrived home. “It’s unlike you.”
    “There are no words,” I said. “For a Roman to march on Rome, demanding to be consul! What kind of man could do such a thing?”
    “Try not to distress yourself,” Tiberius Nero said. “Think of the child.”
    Think of the child.
    I imagined afterward, that the baby, having received a hint of what the world was like, thought