Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough

scant interest in the machinations and permutations of Senate, Assemblies, courts. For that reason Aurelia had sent her to Marcus Antonius Gnipho's school when she turned six; Gnipho had been Caesar's private tutor, but when Caesar donned the laena and apex of the flamen Dialis on arrival of his official manhood, Gnipho had returned to conducting a school with a noble clientele. Julia had proven a very bright and willing pupil, with the same love of literature her father owned, though in mathematics and geography her ability was less marked. Nor did she have Caesar's astonishing memory. A good thing, all who loved her had concluded wisely; quick and clever girls were excellent, but intellectual and brilliant girls were a handicap, not least to themselves.
    “Why are we in here, tata?” she asked, a little puzzled.
    “I have some news for you that I'd like to tell you in a quiet place,” said Caesar, not lost for how to do it now that he had made up his mind to do it.
    “Good news?”
    “I don't quite know, Julia. I hope so, but I don't live inside your skin, only you do that. Perhaps it won't be such good news, but I think after you get used to it you won't find it intolerable.”
    Because she was quick and clever, even if she wasn't a born scholar, she understood immediately. “You've arranged a husband for me,” she said.
    “I have. Does that please you?”
    “Very much, tata. Junia is betrothed, and lords it over all of us who aren't. Who is it?”
    “Junia's brother, Marcus Junius Brutus.”
    He was looking into her eyes, so he caught the swift flash of a creature stricken before she turned her head away and gazed straight ahead. Her throat worked, she swallowed.
    “Doesn't that please you?” he asked, heart sinking.
    “It's a surprise, that's all,” said Aurelia's granddaughter, who had been reared from her cradle to accept every lot Fate cast her way, from husbands to the very real hazards of childbearing. Her head came round, the wide blue eyes were smiling now. “I'm very pleased. Brutus is nice.”
    “You're sure?”
    “Oh, tata, of course I'm sure!” she said, so sincerely that her voice shook. “Truly, tata, it's good news. Brutus will love me and take care of me, I know that.”
    The weight of his heart eased, he sighed, smiled, took her little hand and kissed it lightly before enfolding her in a hug. It never occurred to him to ask her if she could learn to love Brutus, for love was not an emotion Caesar enjoyed, even the love he had known for Cinnilla and for this exquisite sprite. To feel it left him vulnerable, and he hated that.
    Then she skipped off the couch and was gone; he could hear her calling in the distance as she sped to Aurelia's office.
    “Avia, avia, I am to marry my friend Brutus! Isn't that splendid? Isn't that good news?”
    Then came the long-drawn-out moan that heralded a bout of tears. Caesar listened to his daughter weep as if her heart was broken, and knew not whether joy or sorrow provoked it. He came out into the reception room as Aurelia ushered the child toward her sleeping cubicle, face buried in Aurelia's side.
    His mother's face was unperturbed. “I do wish,” she said in his direction, “that female creatures laughed when they're happy! Instead, a good half of them cry. Including Julia.”

Caesar's Women
    — 2 —
    Fortune certainly continued to favor Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, reflected Caesar early in December, smiling to himself. The Great Man had indicated a wish to eradicate the pirate menace, and Fortune obediently connived to gratify him when the Sicilian grain harvest arrived in Ostia, Rome's port facility at the mouth of the Tiber River. Here the deep-drafted freighters unloaded their precious cargo into barges for the final leg of the grain journey up the Tiber to the silo facilities of the Port of Rome itself. Here was absolute security, home at last.
    Several hundred ships converged on Ostia to discover no barges waiting; the quaestor for Ostia had