CHAPTER L

L

I stayed like that, cuddled up inside myself until late noon. Sheltered within that piercing lacerating cold, in spite of that heap of furs on top of me, alien to hunger and other needs. I obviously refused Cornelia’s visit. I did not even want to know anything about Marcia. How lonely my existence would be from then on….apart from the fact that, like a piece of furniture, I was bound to be moved out, into that domus, whose lecti must still keep traces of your body juices. Nevertheless, today was Anna Perenna’s feast, on which all the years which span from my birth to the moment that I had to become a loyal matron, the whole family –Lucius Calpurnius, Rutilia …. Oh Gods..Rutilia… my brother and friends would go to the temple for the celebration. It always used to be a day of hope, freshness and serene joy, according to the promise of life renewal that day really meant. That intense mixture of freshly-cut flowers and incense perfume… the same scents that seemed to get through my skin pores and nostrils, blocking my breath and finally letting out that tide of wild tearing which dragged me away, depriving me of that intangible thing within myself that might have defended me from fateful prostration for so long… It had to be Lucius Calpurnius Piso himself who found me like that, reddened-faced and heavy-breathed. ..Why, for the first time in his life, should he have entered my cubiculum with no previous warning, while, in scared puzzlement, I hastily covered my naked body, still dirty with your seed and my own secretions? I grew as pale as his wax-like face, noticing him somehow crooked, leaning on the entrance of the room in dismay… My eyes began questioning him…. I understood that, like me, he was too weak to cry or moan as he would have wanted to.

–My child…

He rushed towards me, sinking his head on the furs. I felt him convulsing slightly. Maybe you had already told him about what had happened between us that morning.

–…Twenty and three….

–….Twenty-three stabs… one by each of those senators, including that Decimus Brutus, who he had even included in his will!

His voice, which had become unrecognizable, made a pause to take a breath and go on.

–….Servilia’s son himself….

Gods…no…my Portia….

–… Brutus’ brother-in-law…Even Cornelius Cinna …His former brother-in-law, the brother of that whose love made him defy Sulla himself!

He could not go on speaking. Like myself a while before, he noisily collapsed on my furs while the serfs crowded at the entrance of the cubiculum, more alarmed by all his shriek invading the peristylium than by what had just been known in Rome. The man  whose seed could have rooted in my womb today was lying in a puddle of blood inside Curia Pompeiana…. I cautiously took my naked arms out of the fur cover and held him, sharing his thundering sobs, letting my tears damp his almost white hair, away from my own being, flowing into abandonment….

–Calpurnia, my little girl, Calpurnia…

Cornelia’s broken dismaying voice was hanging over my sightless eyes. I let myself be sheltered by her motherly embrace whereas another female hand, Marcia’s, took mine in silence with that complicity which would suit to a woman who has also suffered her man’s untimely loss, at the same time as she caressed my sweat-damped hair, keeping her head next to mine and suddenly ageing Cornelia’s.

The sun was about to set when the cart arrived at Domus Publica. It was my father, helped by Cornelia, Marcia and Marcius Philippus, who managed to arrange it all and give orders to your personal physician so that he would wash and tidy…the body. I was not allowed to see it .Neither would I be given any further detailed explanation about how the wounds had been made until days after. It turned out to be quite a wise decision. Otherwise, I would not have survived the fact of watching you like that, all stabbed through, with those torn-out genitals and face…. Nobody apart from our families came to see us that night, which I spent embracing my father, Cornelia and Marcia… To say the truth, why should I wish to see anyone?

–He worries me…Antonius.

Cornelia, absent-looking like a sibyl, broke the silence. Everyone’s amazed eyes gave her a questioning look. Everyone’s….except mine.

–Why wasn’t he inside the Curia?

My father watched her, assenting. A serf came in the middle of the night and whispered something to him. Yes, there really seemed to be some Sibyl-like stuff about her….

–Marcus Antonius has come to give his respects. – Lucius Calpurnius announced.

And there he was. Massive, conveniently sorrowful-looking, wearing a toga under which a bulging cuirass could be seen. I cannot remember the words he told me. I was not even able to pay enough attention….

–My child… Marcus wants to access to your husband’s documents and money…

He spoke slowly, looking straight into my eyes… Yes, my father was aware that my faculties were fatefully diminished that day…But…. Why didn’t he do anything? Why on earth could he consent that scoundrel to take it all? I think that I was sure that there must have been a misunderstanding about what had happened that morning and that the day after you would return home to clear things up….

Not only did Antonius take that chest in which you kept your small treasure, so to call it, with your letters and bundles but also your will, which my father had to fetch from the Vestals’ house I think that my friends and I shared the same shivering while seeing him take charge

 of everything that you had controlled by yourself only a few hours before with my own father’s condescension. However, I would not be aware of all of this until a few days after. I still had the whole night in front of me. The next dawning, under the influence of those brewings which Cornelia was a master at, I would make an effort to recover all that life that, like yours, had been taken away from me in the morning of Anna Perenna ‘s Day in the year 709 a.u.c.