Cleopatra’s Daughter

“If I am lucky. Imagine having to pay for a feast for Saturnalia and a birthing feast as well.”

“Then perhaps my daughter can visit her. It’s a comfort to women in labor to have others in their chamber.”

I could see that Pollio wanted to object, but he nodded instead. “Yes…. Yes, of course. Up the stairs, to the right,” he directed.

Julia looked at me.

“You’re going to go with her?” Alexander exclaimed.

“Why not?”

“Because there’ll be blood. And sickness.”

“It’s a birth, not the plague.”

“Women don’t mind it,” Marcellus assured my brother.

I followed Julia up the stairs, and the pitiful sound of a woman’s cries led us to a dimly lit chamber at the very back of the house. When we opened the door, the stench of sweat made my stomach clench, and I wondered if my brother had been right.

Horatia gasped when she saw us. “Julia!” She was already seated on the birthing chair. She was entirely naked except for a palla around her shoulders. Midwives were huddled at the base of the chair where the child would drop through the hole into their arms. Horatia was breathing very heavily, and as Julia rushed forward, I held back. I had never before witnessed a birth.

“Horatia,” Julia said tenderly, and she wiped her friend’s brow with her hand.

“It’s coming,” Horatia groaned. “I can feel it.”

“Keep pushing,” a midwife encouraged.

“What have they given you?” Julia asked.

“A little wine.”

“That’s it?” Julia cried. “No verbena?”

“Nothing!” Horatia groaned, gripping the leather arms of the chair. “Pollio won’t allow it.”

“Those are peasants’ superstitions!” Julia shouted. She looked at me, and although I felt faint, I helped wipe the sweat from Horatia’s brow with a linen square dipped in lavender water.

“I should have used silphium,” Horatia panted. “I may never even live to see the new year.”

“Nonsense,” Julia said firmly. “You’re healthy, and this is only your first child.”

Horatia gritted her teeth, and when she screamed, I was sure her cries could be heard above the harpists in the triclinium. For several hours we remained like this, encouraging and fanning the air into Horatia’s face. Then finally one of the midwives cried, “It’s coming, Domina! Keep pushing!”

Horatia looked up into Julia’s face. “Thank you.” She began to weep. “Thank you for coming.”

“Don’t thank me! Concentrate!”

Horatia gripped the arms of the chair, and her face was a mask of terrible pain. Again and again she strained, screaming, crying, then finally pushing a child into the world in a rush of blood and water. I held my breath, and Julia cried out, “A girl! It’s a girl!”

“No,” Horatia whispered. The midwives swaddled the crying infant in wool, and Horatia sat up on the birthing chair. “It can’t be!”

“It’s a girl, Domina. A healthy child.”

“But he wanted a son.”

“So next time—”

“You don’t understand!” She looked from the midwife to Julia in desperation. “He will never accept it!”

“Of course he will!” Julia took the baby girl into her arms while the midwives packed Horatia’s womb with wool. “Look.” Julia stroked the little nose with her fingertip, then placed the infant gently in her friend’s arms. I had never seen her so tender with anyone.

Tears welled in Horatia’s eyes. She took the crying baby to her breast, but the infant refused to suck. “She’s not hungry.”

The eldest midwife smiled. “Leave it to the nutrice. That is her job.”

“What will you name her?” Julia asked.

Horatia was silent, stroking her daughter’s brow with two fingers. Then she said, “Gaia. Like the Greeks’ Mother Goddess.” She held Gaia for a little while, as the music and feasting went on below us.

“You must wash, Domina. It isn’t healthy to stay here with all this blood.”

Horatia passed her daughter to Julia, and then the midwives helped her into the bathing room.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Julia said.

Gaia had the thick hair of her mother, and her dark eyes were already open.

“Do you think that Pollio will be terribly angry?” I asked.

“Probably,” Julia admitted. “But she’ll have a son next time. Do you want children?”

In fourteen days I would be old enough to marry, and when my monthly blood came, to have children of my own. “Yes, but not for many years.”

“I would like them now,” she confided.

“At twelve?”

“Horatia is only thirteen. And now she has a little girl of her own who will always love her. Who will never abandon her.”

I was reminded of what Gallia had said about judging Julia too harshly, and suddenly I felt sorry for her. She had a father who valued her only for what marriage she could make, and a mother she could visit only in secret. Although my parents were gone, I had always known I was loved. And my parents had only ever left me in death.

When Horatia emerged from the bathing room, she walked gingerly. The midwives were careful in their movements, slowly helping her into an embroidered tunic and heavy new palla trimmed with fur. Only married women wore the palla, and I could see the admiration in Julia’s eyes as the midwife draped her friend in the beautiful mantle. Horatia held out her arms for her new daughter, and I thought that Julia handed the infant back with regret.

“May Juno bless her first day,” the gray-haired midwife intoned, “and may Cunina watch over the cradle.”

“Will you go to him now?” Julia asked.

“Absolutely not!” The midwife clicked her tongue. “Dominus must come to her in their chamber. He must accept his daughter first.”

We followed Horatia down the hall to the chamber where she and Pollio slept. A slave was sent to fetch Pollio from the festivities, and we waited outside while Horatia sat on a chair with her infant daughter in her arms.

“Is he coming to name the child?” I asked.

“No. That happens in eight days with the lustratio. This is the tollere liberos.”

There was no time to ask Julia what that meant. I could hear Pollio’s heavy footsteps on the stairs, and when he reached the landing, he looked expectantly at Julia. “Is it a son?”

The midwife inclined her head. “Your wife is in there, Domine.”

Pollio entered his chamber, and before the door swung shut behind him I could hear him demanding, “Is it a son?”

Julia’s dark eyes flashed at me. “He doesn’t even care if she’s well.”

“What a terrible marriage.”

“They’re all terrible,” she said bitterly.

“But yours won’t be.”

She gave me a long, calculated look. “If my father doesn’t change his mind.”

There was a shriek on the other side of the wall, then the door was flung open, and Pollio emerged. “Take it away!” he ordered the midwives. I looked inside the chamber, where Horatia’s daughter lay alone on the floor.

“Pollio, please!” Horatia ran after him.

“I said a son.” He turned on her. “Not a daughter. A son!”

“But I will give you a son. Pollio, please, she’s ours!”