Domina Victrix

Chapter 54: 27 AD, Capri and Caesarea

Tiberius entered his office to find his desk and the tablinium piled high with tablets and documents. He could guess that most of it dealt with Pilate's scene at the royal banquet, and the rest was taken up with the Antonys, who were always on his last nerve. He saw Agrippina's seal on one tablet. She was likely bitching about her dowry payments, or the fact that Drusus and Nero were still so far away in Antioch. Too bad! He put that tablet in a bin to be recycled and reused.

Word was already spreading in Rome of Princess Victoria's shipwreck and her heroic trek to Caesarea. The thought of it made Tiberius' blood run cold. It was not thieves and muggers he was concerned about. Human traffickers also worked that road, and had they captured her and her daughter the ransom for both would have been ruinous for anyone. Half a dozen royal and noble families across the Empire would have had to pool resources to pay it, including him. He doubted, though, that she realized the danger. He read a copy of her letter to her father. Written as an incident report to a commander, she detailed her preparations and how the march progressed. He chuckled at the makeshift posca and pickles, the cadence songs, and the part that the rhythm of hobnails played in keeping them moving. She also described Selene's very good behavior. There was one thing to be said for Antony's bloodline. He had thrown his brash courage down now five generations of his family.

Tiberius picked up a letter from Flavius Valerius Corvinus Messala, Old Severus' brother and head of the family in Rome, and one from General Marcus, formally requesting the marriage of Young Flavius and Victoria. The bride and groom were already in a camp marriage in Caesarea, and in the same letter to her father, Victoria let him know that the two had made vows to each other and that she would accept a formal concubinage if marriage was not an option. In matters of the heart, Antonys did what they wanted and damn the consequences. The alliance of the two famillies, both with imperial ties, was breathtaking in its scope. The financial arrangements alone would take months to sort out.

He saw other letters from Victoria, one to King Ptolemy, another to her uncle, Artaxis of Armenia, and another to her aged grandmother, Antonia of Pontus, requesting support for her marriage and outlining why she thought Flavius Messala was a worthy successor to Juba. The main reason was that he supported her medical career. Next, he intended to allow Victoria to manage her own practice, handle her own money and property, and oversee Selene's estate and education. Finally, he was an officer who could become a Legatus someday. Being the wife of a general guaranteed her work in the infirmary of any post he commanded. Tiberius snickered. Love and pleasures of the flesh were beside the point to this intelligent, driven woman who was so like another he had known, and had a complex love-hate relationship with all his life. His own mother, Empress Livia Drusilla.

Livia was born into the Drusii, an ancient patrician family. Her father was a powerful Senator and sometime military commander. Her first marriage was to Tiberius Claudius Nero, of another patrician and strong military clan. Her two sons of this marriage, Tiberius himself and Drusus, father of Germanicus, added a key lineage to the future imperial line. It was Livia who, on meeting Octavian, set in motion her own divorce, marriage to Julius Caesar's heir, and the rise of her sons to imperial rank. Popular imagination supposed that she was behind a string of key deaths in the family that left Augustus with no choice but to name Tiberius as his heir. Knowing her, Tiberius believed it. Nothing and no one stood in her way. Faced with a shipwreck, Livia would have done what Victoria did. Row herself ashore and start walking. If widowed, she would have cast about for a husband who stayed out of her business as Flavius seemed willing to do. Tiberius answered Valerius and General Marcus, with a copy to Ptolemy. He would approve the marriage, dower Victoria, and personally guarantee all financial arrangements. He was designating her an Augusta, a female member of his family. She would not need her own court or coinage, but the designation brought this unusual woman and her Ptolemaic daughter more directly under his personal supervision and entitled her to Imperial protection, including a lictor as a bodyguard. To Victoria herself, he sent a suite of jewelry. A strand of lustrous Red Sea pearls, with earrings, a bracelet and diadem. The jewels had belonged to his beloved Vipsania. Unlike her maddening, baffling cousin, Victoria would wear and appreciate them.