The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra Read online

  The first words he heard, however, were Latin. Two people stepped forward, a handsome woman in her middle twenties and a stripling youth. Cato gaped, but before he could say anything the woman had fallen on his neck in floods of tears, and the youth was attempting to wring his hand off.

  “My dear Cornelia Metella! And Sextus Pompeius! Does this mean that Pompeius Magnus is here?” he asked.

  A question which caused Cornelia Metella to weep harder, and set Sextus Pompey to crying too. Their grief held a message: Pompey the Great was dead.

  While he stood with Pompey the Great’s fourth wife twined around his neck watering his purple-bordered toga and tried to extricate his hand from Sextus Pompey’s grasp, a rather important-looking man in a tailored Greek tunic walked up to them, a small entourage in his wake.

  “I am Marcus Porcius Cato.”

  “I am Philopoemon” was the answer, given with an expression that said Cato’s name meant absolutely nothing to a Paraetonian.

  Indeed this was the end of the world!

  Over dinner in Philopoemon’s modest house he learned the awful story of Pompey the Great in Pelusium, of the retired centurion Septimius who had lured Pompey into a boat and to his death, which Cornelia Metella and Sextus had witnessed from their ship. Worst news of all, Septimius had chopped off Pompey’s head, put it in a jar, then left the body lying on the mud flats.

  “Our freedman Philip and the boy who was his slave had gone in the dinghy with my father, but they survived by running away,” Sextus said. “We could do nothing to help—Pelusium harbor was full of the Egyptian king’s navy, and several warships were bearing down on us. Either we stayed to be captured and probably killed too, or we put to sea.” He shrugged, his mouth quivering. “I knew which course my father would have wanted, so we fled.”

  Though her fountain of tears had dried up, Cornelia Metella contributed little to the conversation. How much she has changed, Cato thought, he who rarely noticed such things. She had been the haughtiest of patrician aristocrats, daughter of the august Metellus Scipio, first married to the elder son of Pompey’s partner in two of his consulships, Marcus Licinius Crassus. Then Crassus and her husband had set out to invade the Kingdom of the Parthians, and perished at Carrhae. The widowed Cornelia Metella had become a political pawn, for Pompey was widowed too, the death of Caesar’s Julia slipping rapidly into the past. So the boni, including Cato, had plotted to detach Pompey the Great from Caesar; the only way, they felt, to pull Pompey on to the boni side was to give him Cornelia Metella as his new wife. Extremely sensitive about his own obscure origins (Picentine, but with the awful stigma of Gaul added to that), Pompey always married women of the highest nobility. And who was higher than Cornelia Metella? A descendant of Scipio Africanus and Aemilius Paullus, no less. Perfect for boni purposes! The scheme had worked. His gratitude patent, Pompey had espoused her eagerly, and became, if not one of the boni, at least their close ally.

  In Rome she had continued as she began, insufferably proud, cool if not downright cold, clearly regarding herself as her father’s sacrificial animal. Marriage to a Pompeius from Picenum was a shocking comedown, even if this particular Pompeius was the First Man in Rome. He just didn’t have the blood, so Cornelia Metella had gone secretly to the Vestal Virgins and obtained some of their medicine made from diseased rye, aborted a pregnancy.

  But here in Paraetonium she was different, very different. Soft. Sweet. Gentle. When finally she did speak, it was to tell Cato of Pompey’s plans after his defeat at Pharsalus.

  “We were going to Serica,” she said sadly. “Gnaeus had had his fill of Rome, of life anywhere around the margins of Our Sea. So we intended to enter Egypt, then journey to the Red Sea and take ship for Arabia Felix. From there we were going to India, and from India to Serica. My husband thought that the Sericans might be able to use the skills of a great Roman military man.”

  “I am sure they would have found a use for him,” Cato said dubiously. Who knew what the Sericans might have made of a Roman? Certainly they would not have known him from a Gaul, a German or a Greek. Their land was so far away, so mysterious that the only information Herodotus had to offer about them was that they made a fabric from the spinnings of a grub, and that he called it bombyx. Its Latin name was vestis serica. On rare occasions a specimen had come through the Sarmatian trade routes of the King of the Parthians, but it was so precious that the only Roman known to have had a piece was Lucullus.

  How far had Pompeius Magnus fallen, to contemplate such a course of action! Truly he was not a Roman of Rome.

  “I wish I could go home!” Cornelia Metella sighed.

  “Then go home!” Cato barked; this was the kind of evening he deemed wasted, when he had men to put into camp.

  Shocked, she stared at him in dismay. “How can I go home when Caesar controls the world? He will proscribe—our names will be at the top of his proscription list, and our heads will bring some disgusting slave his freedom plus a small fortune for informing on us. Even if we live, we will be impoverished.”

  “Gerrae!” Cato said roundly. “My dear woman, Caesar is no Sulla in that respect. His policy is clemency—and very clever it is too. He intends to earn no hatred from businessmen or his fellow nobles, he intends that they kiss his feet in abject thanks for sparing their lives and letting them keep their property. I admit that Magnus’s fortune will be confiscate, but Caesar won’t touch your wealth. As soon as the winds permit it, I recommend that you go home.” He turned sternly to Sextus Pompey. “As for you, young man, the choice is clear. Escort your stepmother as far as Brundisium or Tarentum, then join Caesar’s enemies, who will gather in Africa Province.”

  Cornelia Metella swallowed. “There is no need for Sextus to escort me,” she said. “I take your word for Caesar’s clemency, Marcus Cato, and will sail alone.”

  Declining Philopoemon’s offer of a bed, Cato drew the ethnarch of Paraetonium aside as he prepared to leave.

  “Whatever you can spare us by way of water or food, we will pay for in silver coin,” he said.

  Philopoemon looked as much worried as delighted. “We can give you all the water you want, Marcus Cato, but we haven’t much food to spare. There is famine in Egypt, so we haven’t been able to buy in wheat. But we have sheep we can sell you, and cheese from our goats. While you’re here, we can give your men green salads from several kinds of wild parsley, but it doesn’t keep.”

  “Whatever you can spare will be appreciated.”

  On the morrow he left Lucius Gratidius and Sextus Pompey to deal with the men, himself preferring to have more conversation with Philopoemon. The more he could learn about Africa, the better.

  Paraetonium existed to provide a port for the many pilgrims who journeyed to the oasis of Ammon to consult its oracle, as famous on this shore of Our Sea as Delphi was in Greece. Ammon lay two hundred miles to the south across a rainless desert of long sand dunes and outcrops of bare rocks; there the Marmaridae roamed from well to well with their camels and goats, their big leather tents.

  When Cato asked of Alexander the Great, Philopoemon frowned. “No one knows,” he said, “whether Alexander went to Ammon to ask a question of the oracle, or whether Ra, lord of the Egyptian gods, had summoned him to the oasis to deify him.” He looked pensive. “All the Ptolemies since the first Soter have made the pilgrimage, whether on the throne of Egypt or satrap in Cyrenaica. We are tied to Egypt through its kings and queens, the oasis, but our blood is Phoenician, not Macedonian or Greek.”

  As Philopoemon chattered on, now about the herds of camels the town kept to hire out to pilgrims, Cato’s thoughts strayed. No, we cannot stay here for very long, but if we sail while Corus is blowing, we will wind up in Alexandria. After hearing how the boy king dealt with Pompeius Magnus, I do not think Egypt is safe for Romans opposing Caesar.

  “While Corus blows, impossible,” he muttered.

  Philopoemon looked puzzled. “Corus?”

  “Argestes,” Cato said, giving the win
d its Greek name.

  “Oh, Argestes! It will soon vanish, Marcus Cato. Aparctias is due any day.”

  Aparctias, Aquilo—the Etesian winds! Yes, of course! It is the middle of October by the calendar, the middle of Quinctilis by the seasons. The Dog Star is about to rise!

  “Then,” Cato said with a huge sigh of relief, “we will not need to abuse your hospitality much longer, Philopoemon.”

  Nor did they. The following day, the Ides of October, the Etesian winds arrived with the dawn. Cato busied himself in getting Cornelia Metella aboard her three ships, then waved her off feeling unusually tender emotions; she had donated him Pompey the Great’s nest egg, two hundred talents of silver coins. Five million sesterces!

  The fleet set sail on the third day of the Etesians, the men happier than they had been since Pompey had enlisted them in his grand army of the civil war. Most were in their late twenties and had served Pompey in Spain for years—they were veterans, therefore enormously valuable troops. Like other rankers, they lived in ignorance of the hideous differences between Rome’s political factions; ignorant too of Cato’s reputation as a crazed fanatic. They thought him a splendid fellow—friendly, cheerful, compassionate. Not adjectives even Favonius would have attached to his dearest amicus, Marcus Porcius Cato. They had greeted Sextus Pompey with joy, and cast lots to see whose ship would carry him. For Cato had no intention of accommodating Pompey the Great’s younger son on his own vessel; Lucius Gratidius and the two philosophers were as much company as he could stomach.

  Cato stood on the poop as his ship led the fifty out of Paraetonium’s bay with the wind on the leading edge of his sail and the first shift of oarsmen-soldiers pulling with a will. They had food enough for a twenty-day voyage; two of the local farmers had grown bumper crops of chickpea in good winter rains as well as enough wheat to feed Paraetonium. They had been happy to sell most of the chickpea to Cato. No bacon, alas! It took an Italian oak forest plump with acorns to breed good bacon porkers. Oh, pray that someone in Cyrenaica kept pigs! Salt pork was far better than no pork at all.

  The five-hundred-mile voyage west to Cyrenaica took just eight days, the fleet far enough out to sea not to have to worry about reefs or shoals; Cyrenaica was a huge bump in the north African coast, thrusting it much closer to Crete and Greece than the interminably straight coast between it and the Nilus Delta.

  Their first landfall was Chersonnesus, a cluster of seven houses festooned in fishing nets; Lucius Gratidius rowed ashore and learned that Darnis, immensely bigger, was only a few miles farther on. But “immense” to a village of fishermen turned out to be about the size of Paraetonium; there was water to be had, but no food other than catches of fish. Eastern Cyrenaica. About fifteen hundred miles to go.

  Cyrenaica had been a fief of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt until its last satrap, Ptolemy Apion, had bequeathed it to Rome in his will. A reluctant heir, Rome had done nothing to annex it or so much as put a garrison there, let alone send it a governor. Living proof that lack of government simply allowed people to wax fat on no taxes and do what they always did with greater personal prosperity, Cyrenaica became a legendary backwater of the world, a kind of honeyed dream-land. As it was off the beaten track and had no gold, gems or enemies, it didn’t attract unpleasant people. Then thirty years ago the great Lucullus had visited it, and things happened fast. Romanization began, the taxes were imposed, and a governor of praetorian status was appointed to administer it in conjunction with Crete. But as the governor preferred to live in Crete, Cyrenaica carried on much as it always had, a golden backwater, the only real difference those Roman taxes. Which turned out to be quite bearable, for the droughts which plagued other lands supplying grain to Italy were usually out of step with any droughts in Cyrenaica. A big grain producer, Cyrenaica suddenly had a market on the far side of Our Sea. The empty grain fleets came down from Ostia, Puteoli and Neapolis on the Etesian winds, and by the time the harvest was in and the ships loaded, Auster the south wind blew the fleets back to Italy.

  When Cato arrived, it was thriving on the drought conditions that plagued every land from Greece to Sicily; the winter rains had been excellent, the wheat, almost ready for harvesting now, was coming in a hundredfold, and enterprising Roman grain merchants were beginning to arrive with their fleets.

  A wretched nuisance for Cato, who found Darnis, small as it was, stuffed with ships already. Clutching his long hair, he was forced to sail on to Apollonia, the port serving Cyrene city, the capital of Cyrenaica. There he would find harbor!

  He did, but only because Labienus, Afranius and Petreius had arrived before him with a hundred and fifty transports, and had evicted the grain fleets into the roads on the high seas. As Cato on the poop of his leading ship was an unmistakable figure, Lucius Afranius, in charge of the harbor, let him bring his fleet in.

  “What a business!” Labienus snarled as he walked Cato at a fast clip to the house he had commandeered off Apollonia’s chief citizen. “Here, have some decent wine,” he said once they entered the room he had made his study.

  The irony was lost on Cato. “Thank you, no.”

  Jaw dropped, Labienus stared. “Go on! You’re the biggest soak in Rome, Cato!”

  “Not since I left Corcyra,” Cato answered with dignity. “I vowed to Liber Pater that I wouldn’t touch a drop of wine until I brought my men safely to Africa Province.”

  “A few days here, and you’ll be back guzzling.” Labienus went to pour himself a generous measure, and downed it without pausing to breathe.

  “Why?” Cato asked, sitting down.

  “Because we’re not welcome. The news of Magnus’s defeat and death has flown around Our Sea as if a bird carried it, and all Cyrenaica can think about is Caesar. They’re convinced he’s hard on our heels, and they’re terrified of offending him by seeming to aid his enemies. So Cyrene has locked its gates, and Apollonia is intent on doing whatever harm it can to us—a situation made worse after we sent the grain fleets packing.”

  When Afranius and Petreius entered with Sextus Pompey in tow, all that had to be explained again; Cato sat, wooden-faced, his mind churning. Oh, ye gods, I am back among the barbarians! My little holiday is over.

  A part of him had looked forward to visiting Cyrene and its Ptolemaic palace, rumored to be fabulous. Having seen Ptolemy the Cyprian’s palace in Paphos, he was keen to compare how the Ptolemies had lived in Cyrenaica against how they had lived in Cyprus. A great empire two hundred years ago, Egypt, which had even owned some of the Aegean islands as well as all Palestina and half of Syria. But the Aegean islands and the lands in Syria-Palestina had gone a century ago; all the Ptolemies had managed to hang on to were Cyprus and Cyrenaica. From which Rome had forced them out quite recently. Well do I remember, reflected Cato, who had been Rome’s agent of annexation in Cyprus, that Cyprus had not welcomed Roman rule. From Orient to Occident is never easy.

  Labienus had found 1,000 Gallic cavalry and 2,000 infantrymen lurking in Crete, rounded them up with his customary ruthlessness and appropriated every vessel Crete owned. With 1,000 horses, 2,000 mules and 4,000 men—he had noncombatants and slaves as well—crammed into two hundred ships, he sailed from Cretan Apollonia to Cyrenaican Apollonia (there were towns named after Apollo all over the world) in just three days, having had no other choice than to wait for the Etesian winds.

  “Our situation goes from bad to worse,” Cato told Statyllus and Athenodorus Cordylion as the three settled into a tiny house Statyllus had found abandoned; Cato refused to dispossess anyone, and cared not a rush for comfort.

  “I understand,” Statyllus said, fussing around the much older Athenodorus Cordylion, who was losing weight and developing a cough. “We should have realized that Cyrenaica would side with the winner.”

  “Very true,” Cato said bitterly. He clutched at his beard, pulled it. “There are perhaps four nundinae of the Etesian winds left,” he said, “so somehow I have to push Labienus into moving on. Once the south wind begins to blow, we w
ill never reach Africa Province, and Labienus is more determined to sack Cyrene than he is to do anything constructive about continuing to wage war.”

  “You will prevail,” said Statyllus comfortably.

  That Cato did prevail was thanks to the goddess Fortuna, who seemed to be on his side. The following day word came from the port of Arsinoë, some hundred miles to the west; Gnaeus Pompey had kept his word and shipped another 6,500 of Cato’s wounded to Africa. They had landed in Arsinoë and found the local inhabitants very glad to see them.

  “Therefore we leave Apollonia and sail to Arsinoë,” Cato said to Labienus in his harshest voice.

  “A nundinum from now,” said Labienus.

  “Eight more days? Are you mad? Do what you like, you utter fool, but tomorrow I take my own fleet and leave for Arsinoë!”

  The snarl became a roar, but Cato was no Cicero. He had cowed Pompey the Great, and he wasn’t a bit afraid of barbarians like Titus Labienus. Who stood, fists clenched, teeth bared, his black eyes glaring into that cool grey steel. Then he sagged, shrugged.

  “Very well, we leave for Arsinoë tomorrow,” he said.

  Where the goddess Fortuna deserted Cato, who found a letter from Gnaeus Pompey waiting for him.

  Things in Africa Province look very good, Marcus Cato. If I keep on going at the rate I am, I will have my fleets settled into good bases along the southern coast of Sicily, with one or two of the Vulcaniae Isles to deal with grain from Sardinia. In fact, things look so good that I have decided to leave my father-in-law Libo in charge, and take myself off to Africa Province with a great number of soldiers who have turned up in western Macedonia and asked me to let them fight on against Caesar.