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They took up residence in her muddled dreams, her lost husband and her drowned cousin. 

Every night the bleak walls of Julia’s bedroom close over her like a solemn shroud, and another impassive body of some man is only a temporary distraction. She has forgotten the last time she slept and woke with a clear mind; probably it was when Agrippa was alive. Now he sleeps with Marcella again, her sultry eyes glistening at Julia from behind his shoulder, her radiant chubby face aglow with pleasure and triumph. It is no relief that they are fucking in the underworld — Julia’s helpless pangs are equally strong in the land of the living. 

Julia sits up on the unchanged bedsheets with such an effort as if she has to drag a building block with her bare hands, but she can only ruin everything. If Agrippa were with her again, she would remember how to rebuild her life — he was unparalleled at building everything, from temples to his family. She almost made it on her own, then Marcella’s terrifyingly peaceful face emerged from underwater and invaded her dreams. Her cousin must have known Julia would eventually feel bad despite putting on a show of self-composure before Iullus — that’s why she was floating there with a beatific smile, as if merely taking a swim with her dear family. It appears that killing by yourself is harder than watching someone else do the job. Killing Marcella was the second point of Julia’s undoing. That was when she began drinking again, barely a few weeks into forced sobriety. That was when she came looking for her son. 

The dusty tiles scratched Julia’s palms as she was crawling on her hands and knees across the patterned floor of her father’s atrium. The natural light was too meagre to guide her, the wall sconces were far, and she hadn’t found a spare candle in her new house despite rooting around for what seemed to be longer than her mourning periods. Her skirt kept annoyingly getting in the way, encumbering her movements and stretching at the seams. What was the right slab, for fuck’s sake?

“What are you doing?” A sisterly voice reached somewhere from between the twilit columns. 

“Antonina.” Julia tilted her head backward in surprise, her dim eyes sparkling with agitation at the sight of Drusus’ widow. Antonina had moved in with her uncle and Livia and was fiercely fighting off all their attempts to find her a new husband. Antonina had never been one to quail at open warfare. “What luck! You’re awake. I’m just looking for my son here. Would you care to help?” 

Antonina’s nightgown rustled in Julia’s direction. She sat on her haunches in front of the hapless cousin, taking Julia’s hands in hers and turning her palms up. They were dotted with grains of sand and gravel, the skin mottled with tiny roundish dents.

“Your sons are in their rooms, and so are your daughters,” Antonina said with a confused scowl, flicking the grains from Julia’s palms with a tender brush. “You can see them tomorrow. They asked after you. We said you had caught fever again.”

“Not those!” Julia gripped Antonina’s knee tightly, pressing her free hand against the floor for balance. “My other son. He almost finished me trying to get born — I quit counting the hours, seriously — and they took him away so quickly. No lamp was of use, remember? Oh, you don’t remember, do you? Of course, you were not in Rome. Could you please call Antonia? She was with me, she must remember. I need to get the baby out of here. He is the proper son, so it’s good Tiberillus is dead. I just have to deliver another child, and Agrippa will be pissed off if I fuck his legacy up, so please help me get this baby.” 

Antonina looked at her cousin with deep sympathy, trying to understand if the latter was just habitually hungover or already lunatic. Either way, she had to know the truth.

“My beautiful sister, the baby is long dead. And Agrippa is dead. And Drusus. That’s just us now.”

Julia winced and sat stock-still for a moment, listening to the whispery babble of servants between the columns. Were they conspiring to imprison her again? A realisation lit behind her eyes. How could she have hoped to fool her own consciousness? 

“It’s so fucking unfair, you know. Everyone around me dies, gets chased by angry husbands, betrays or beats their wives, or simply hates me. When will I be dead too or at least be like you? You’ve always been the snake charmer for this stupid family.” 

“You don’t need to be like me because you will always have me.” Antonina glowered at the help to shush them and leant forward to hug Julia, shuddering at the feeling of her cousin’s puny body as she gently stroked the sharp spine. “Come on, you’re sleeping in my room tonight.”

Julia gropes for the half-empty jug of wine on the littered floor and hauls it up to swig the beloved poison, each gulp sending pain down her chest. The skein of her hair obstructs her hazy vision and a blood-coloured trickle creeps down her chin, painting the dimple red. How long will it take for wine to actually kill her? Perhaps she will have to try something more effective yet exhilarating enough — she has already seen too many sad deaths for her own to be like that. But for now it is morning, the body of a man (a senator? just a rent boy? Iullus hasn’t been in her bed for weeks now) is gone, and Julia knows that she has to be gone as well. 

“Capria!” yells Julia, swallowing some nauseating slime in her throat with disgust as she plunks the jug down. 

The servant girl appears promptly and cautiously, looking at her Lady with almost maternal care. Oh, Lady has fallen so low that the slaves are now her masters. 

“What can I do for you, Domina?” 

“Wash my head,” Julia smiles, summoning her past charm. Her breath smells of affectionless kisses, and she suddenly feels an urge to scrub her tongue with a strigil. “From inside, please. Scrape out every fucking thought and memory you’ll find there and drop them into the sewer.” 

Capria keeps looking with growing sympathy in her doe-like eyes, preparing to coddle her mistress as one would a hopeless lunatic. Tiberius would certainly give a feast if his “wife” were officially confirmed to be mentally infirm (it takes one to know one, right, Tiberius?), so Julia stubbornly refuses to let her sanity loose for real.

“I need a hot bath,” Julia explains, tugging at her stained chemise, eager to wash away the spit and seed. She asked the servants to take the mirrors away from her bedroom and stop polishing those around the house — her decay is ever too ugly in the light. “A fine dress; in fact, the dress I wore the day baby Agrippa was born. And your help. I’ve got an appointment today.” 

She dresses up exactly like that Julia three years ago, who was secretly happy about the long-coveted prospect of enjoying solitude and owning her body. No more pregnancies, flesh-tearing births, money control and weekly dinners for awfully sycophantic senators — the dream turned doom. Now she doesn’t care about her body at all anymore, as if it belongs to whomever but her, and all the other burdens are still in place. 

“Where are you going, Domina?” Capris asks unobtrusively, coaxing Julia’s freshly washed and lavender-scented hair into dainty ringlets. Her Lady has been spending almost all her free time in bed as of late, either supine or drunkenly wanton, except for today. 

“To a love meeting,” says Julia, smiling at the wall for lack of a mirror. “With my husband. Much time has passed since we met, so don’t pluck out my hair. I want to look my best.”

She is a different person now — not someone she herself is proud of — but the remnant of that Julia steadies her and leads her confidently to Iullus’ domus, unfazed by sideways glances of the security guards. Iullus walks out to greet her the very moment she enters his house, which she is dearly grateful for. After all those years of separation and undeserved spite, he is still there at her first beck.

“Hello, my love,” Julia sighs into Iullus’ neck, her pleated dress crumpling in his embrace. At last, they don’t need to hide and can be fond of each other in their respective atriums in broad daylight — everyone knows but her father. “I’m sorry I’m here not for you today, but I desperately need to meet with my husband.” 

Iullus backs away with a pained smirk.

“Then you should return to your house. Turned out I didn’t qualify for the position.” 

“Tiberius is no husband to me, never will be,” Julia spits out the name as if it tastes like pig piss. “If anything, he is my enslaver. I’m talking about Agrippa, Iullus, and asking you to go with me. I don’t trust myself enough to be alone out there, but I think it’s my only chance of revival.”

“Let’s get the horses ready,” Iullus agrees instantaneously, motioning to his servants at the entrance. “We’ll be there in no time.”

“No, please.” Julia holds out her hand to stop him. “Not those stinky walls where Marcellus will overhear. I need to be on the road to Campania where I spoke with my husband for the last time, where our last baby was born… Where my life was still whole. Maybe if I look at my past, I’ll save my future.”

“It’s not how it works, Julia,” Iullus says meekly, uncertainty filling his voice as he is unwilling to upset her further. “The dead don’t stay where they once travelled.”

“I know, but it will work for me. And I know Agrippa will hear me. Just go there with me. That’s all I ask.”

The secluded copse is as sunny as it was on that memorable day. The trees on the other side of the road are a protective awning, its roof painted molten gold. Julia dismounts slowly, leaving Iullus with the two snorting horses by the grassy roadside. Iullus is too well-mannered to chaperone her to this private meeting, but she finally knows she will always come back to him.

When she kneels down before the thick trunk of the branched tree, the ground is warm and welcoming. She dips her hands into the wettish soil, squashing the small black clumps with her fingers. That’s where she has to bury the pitiable Julia today with only merciful wind as her silent witness.

“Hello, my love.” She has always called Agrippa and Iullus in the same way, but each has been differently special to her — Agrippa kept her life from ruin, while Iullus kept her alive with Marcellus and is doing it now without Agrippa. “I’ve missed you. Hope you too, even if you’re fucking Marcella there. I didn’t want it to be like that with Marcella, but you know Livia — if she needs something done, it will be; you would’ve done much bloodier things for her. Sometimes I wished you looked at me the way you always looked at her — Octavia used to sneer at it — but of course it would be too much to expect. Anyway…”

Julia pauses to inhale, reaching out to touch the gnarly roots with her soiled fingers. A death happened right here, but the place is bubbly with life; maybe it will share some with her? The neighing of the horses in the distance soothes her.

“I know I haven’t been on my best behaviour, but I also know you can forgive me. Nobody has done it better than you. You must be wondering how I’ve even become this disgusting mess. Well, it’s no big deal when everyone sees me as such, my so-called husband in particular. If you knew what Tiberius does to me, you would’ve liked him less. Tiberius is sick in the head, did you ever know that? Sick and fucked-up without your daughter because he’s married to your wife, who is fucked-up without you — funny, isn’t it? My father didn’t think it was funny — he thought it was politically wise to give me a second hateful husband. And you know what else is funny, Agrippa? You were the only man who didn’t want to fuck me for the sake of fucking me. You and maybe Iullus. It has always been Iullus, but I’ve never loved you less because of him; not less, just differently. It was never Vilbia, but you certainly wouldn’t have felt better if you’d killed Iullus instead. I choose to believe you’ve forgiven us already.” 

Julia stops talking again to catch her breath, knee-walking to the tree to lean against its trunk. She knows she could never be happier about her scraped cheek and mired dress than at this moment. 

“Oh, I’m yet to tell you about what you most want to hear. The children are staying with my father and Livia. I don’t matter much to them without you and they still don’t respect me — nothing has changed. But I also don’t respect myself now, which means I don’t blame them. Baby Agrippa is really big and fat, I don’t worry about his health. Julilla is getting interested in poetry just like me, so I hope her future husband will be something like you. Agrippina is growing fast and strong and prefers Gaius’ sword to her dolls, can you imagine? She’s better friends with Germanicus than with her brothers. I remember you wanted Julilla to marry a son of Drusus, but I’ll be looking to match Agrippina and Germanicus — my daughters shouldn’t suffer in marriage like I did. As for Gaius and Lucius, they are truly the future of Rome. Actually, I think I’ll salvage my own future by helping build theirs; it is the least I can do in your memory. And if I fail miserably, you should know I tried.” 

A stray brown ant trails up her arm. She stares at it dumbly then sends it away with a puff of breath. She feels so light it seems the wind is about to whirl her away to the highlands of Greece, but there’s much to do in Rome.

“Thank you for listening, my love.” Julia stands up, her legs heavy with crouching, her heart almost weightless at last. “I really needed this. See you on formal occasions.”

Iullus sits on the lush grass, chewing on some sappy leaf as Julia walks toward him and nestles by his side. The tethered horses mark her appearance with impatient hoofbeats. 

“Do you feel better?” Iullus asks delicately, resisting the urge to pull her closer before he knows her mood. 

“Yes,” Julia says simply and sincerely. “The country air is so reminiscent. Do you remember I left my children to protect you when we got caught?” 

“Of course.” Iullus spits the leaf out, surprised by her sudden choice of subject. “And I’m very grateful.”

“So, I wouldn’t do it again.” Julia moves closer on her own initiative and rubs her cheek against his shoulder, her affectionate gesture contrasting with her whip-like words. “We were such idiots, Iullus. All we did was to fuck and complain. We can’t go on like this.”

Iullus glances at her appraisingly. “What’s your offer?” 

“To be allies.” Julia leans backward with an ingratiating smile, twining her arms around his neck. “As an ex-consul, you’ll get behind my sons. And if we ruin everything, we do it together.” 

He turns away, weighing the options. She is still part of the family that destroyed his, he should never forget about that. “What will I get out of it?” 

“Me.” Julia shrugs and grimaces, pretending to be deep in thought. “For life. Also restoration of your family honour and Rome as a treat.” 

“Are you going to continue fucking Gracchus?” Iullus frowns despite his heart prickling as sweetly as when they first kissed. 

“Not only him.” She pouts her lips, both provocatively teasing and gravely serious. “And not only this. But I’ll fuck smartly. That’s the way women buy votes. Gracchus is loved by the people, who remember how his ancestors fought for their rights. You will help me make a list of others. I’m nothing like Livia or Antonina; I’m weak and too stupid to plot alone, and I’ll always need help. Your help. Is it a deal?” 

This woman almost got him slain once. He should follow her advice: run away from her, keep on going, and never look back. 

“Allies.” Iullus takes and squeezes her hand in affirmation. “Rise together or fall together.” 

Feeling his loyal lips on hers, Julia somehow thinks about Agrippa again.