I, Claudius - Robert Graves [67]
He said, with an unpleasant smile: 'Well, if I did, I expect I would have more chance of success than you. I usually get what I want. I use my brains. I won Livilla by using my brains. It makes me laugh when I think how easily I persuaded Augustus that you weren't a suitable husband for her. Perhaps I'll get other things I want too, that way.
Who knows?' This made me really hot. I asked him whether he meant that he had been telling lies about me.
He said: 'Why not, I wanted Livilla, and that's how I got her.' Then I turned to Livilla and asked her whether she had known about this. She pretended to be indignant and said that she knew nothing about it at all, but that she believed Castor capable of any crooked dealing. She forced out a tear or two and said that Castor was rotten through and through and that nobody could ever guess how much she had suffered from him, and that she wished she were dead."
"Yes, that's an old trick of hers. She can cry whenever it suits her. It takes everyone in. If I'd told you all that I knew of her, you'd have hated me perhaps for a time, but it would have saved you all this. Then what happened?"
"This evening she sent me a verbal message by her ladyin-waiting that Castor would probably be out all night on one of his usual debauches and that when I saw a light at her window shortly after midnight I was to come to her. A window would be left open immediately underneath the light and I was to climb in quietly. She wanted to tell me something very important. Of course, that could only mean one thing and it set my heart pounding. I waited in the garden for hours until I saw the light appear for a moment at her window. Then I found the window open below and climbed in. Livilla's maid was there and guided me upstairs. She showed me how to get into Livilla's room by climbing across from one balcony to another until I reached her window; this was to avoid the guard posted in the passage near her door. Well, I found Livilla waiting for me in her dressing-gown, with her hair down and looking infernally beautiful. She told me how cruelly Castor had behaved to her. She said that she owed him nothing as a wife, because on his own confession he had married her by fraud, and he had behaved most brutally to her. She flung her arms around me and I picked her up and carried her over to the bed. I was mad with desire for her. Then suddenly she began to scream and pummelled me, I thought for the moment that she had gone mad, and put my hand over her mouth to quiet her.-She struggled free, knocking over a little table with a lamp and a glass jar on it. Then she screamed "Rape! Rape!" and then the door was bat tered down and in came the Palace guard with torches.
Guess who was at their head?"
"Castor?"
"Livia. She brought us just as we were into Augustus' presence. Castor was with him, though Livilla had told me that he was dining at the other side of the City. Augustus dismissed the guard, and Livia, who had hardly said a word until then, began her attack on me. She told him that on his suggestion she had gone to my quarters to acquaint me privately with Emilia's charges and ask me what explanation I had to offer."
"Emilia! Which Emilia?"
"My niece,"
"I didn't know she had anything against you."
"She hasn't. She was in the plot too. So Livia said that, not finding me in my quarters, she had made enquiries and had been told that the patrol had seen me sitting in the garden under a pear tree on the south side. She sent a soldier to find me but he came back and said that I wasn't there but that he had something suspicious to report: a man climbing from one upper balcony to another just above the sundial. She knew whose rooms those were and was greatly alarmed. By good luck she had arrived just in time. She had heard Livilla's screams for help: I had broken into her bedroom by way of the balcony and was on the point of raping her. The guards had burst down the door and pulled me away from 'the terrified and half-naked young woman'. She had brought me here at once, and Livilla as a witness. While Livia was telling her story that whore Livilla was sobbing and hiding her face. Her dressing-gown was ripped across