Free Caesar by Colleen McCullough

Julia. You can't make good babies with inferior men. Two tries, neither successful, and the second one cost her life. You gave her to that oaf from Picenum instead of to a man whose breeding was the equal of her own. So be it on your own head.
    Maybe it was the sum of all those years of vitriol armored Caesar now; he put Servilia's letter down and did no more than rise to wash the touch of it off his hands. I think I hate her more than I do her loathsome half brother Cato. The most remorseless, cruel and bitter woman I have ever known. Yet if I saw her tomorrow, our love affair would probably resume. Julia called her a snake; I remember that day well. It was a valid description. That poor, pathetic, spineless boy of hers is now a poor, pathetic, spineless man. Face ruined by festering sores, spirit ruined by one enormous festering sore, Servilia. Brutus didn't decline a quaestorship with me because of principles or Julia or Uncle Cato's opposition; he likes money too much, and my legates make a great deal of it. No, Brutus declined because he didn't want to go to a province wracked by war. To do so might expose him to a battle. Cilicia is at peace. He can potter around it, illegally lending money to provincials, without a flying spear or arrow any closer to him than the Euphrates.
    Two more letters, then he would finish for the day and order his servants to pack up. Time to move to Samarobriva. Get it over and done with, Caesar! Read the one from your wife and the one from your mother. They'll hurt far more with their loving words than Servilia's savagery ever could. So he sat down again in the silence of his private room, no eyes upon him, put the letter from his mother on the table and opened the one from his wife, Calpurnia. Whom he hardly knew. Just a few months in Rome with an immature, rather shy girl who had prized the orange kitten he had given her as much as Servilia prized her six-million-sestertius pearl.
    Caesar, they all say it is my place to write and give you this news. Oh, I wish it were not. I have neither the wisdom nor the years to divine how best to go about it, so please forgive me if, in my ignorance, I make things even harder for you to bear than I know they will be anyway.
    When Julia died, your mama's heart broke. Aurelia was so much Julia's mother. She brought her up. And Aurelia was so delighted at her marriage, how happy she was, how lovely her life.
    We here in the Domus Publica live a very sheltered existence, as is fitting in the house of the Vestal Virgins. Though we dwell in the midst of the Forum, excitement and events touch us lightly. We have preferred it that way, Aurelia and I: a sweet and peaceful enclave of women free from scandal, suspicion or reproach. But Julia, who visited us often when she was in Rome, brought a breath of the wide world with her. Gossip, laughter, small jokes.
    When she died, your mama's heart broke. I was there near Julia's bedside, and I watched your mama being so strong, for Pompeius's sake as well as for Julia's. So kind! So sensible in everything she said. Smiling when she felt it called for. Holding one of Julia's hands while Pompeius held the other. It was she who banished the doctors when she saw that nothing and no one could save Julia. It was she who gave us peace and privacy for the hours that remained. And after Julia was gone, she yielded her place to Pompeius, left him alone with Julia. She bundled me out of the room and took me home, back to the Domus Publica. It isn't a very long walk, as you know. She said not one word. Then when we got inside our own door, she uttered a terrible cry and began to howl. I couldn't say she wept. She howled, down on her knees with the tears pouring out in floods, and beat her breast, and pulled her hair. Howling. Scratching her face and neck to bleeding ribbons. The adult Vestals all came running, and there were all of us weeping, trying to get Aurelia to her feet, trying to calm her down, but not able to stop weeping