Caesar Read online

  "I won't welcome you to your own country, Mandubracius," he said in good Atrebatan, "but I hope you will welcome me."

  "Gladly, Gaius Julius."

  At which the Great Man laughed, displaying good teeth. "No, just Caesar," he said. "Everyone knows me as Caesar."

  And there was Commius suddenly at his side, grinning at Mandubracius, coming forward to whack him between the shoulder blades. But when Commius would have kissed his lips, Mandubracius turned his head just enough to deflect the salutation. Worm! Roman puppet! Caesar's pet dog. King of the Atrebates but traitor to Gaul. Busy rushing round doing Caesar's bidding: it had been Commius who recommended him as a suitable hostage, Commius who worked on all the Britannic kings to sow dissension and give Caesar his precious foothold.

  The prefect of cavalry was there, holding out the little red leather cylinder which the captain of the pinnace had handled as reverently as if it had been a gift from the Roman Gods. "From Gaius Trebatius," he said, saluted and stepped back, never taking his eyes from Caesar's face.

  By Dagda, how they love him! thought Mandubracius. It is true, what they say in Samarobriva. They would die for him. And he knows it, and he uses it. For he smiled at the prefect alone, and answered with the man's name. The prefect would treasure the memory, and tell his grandchildren if he lived to see them. But Commius didn't love Caesar, because no long-haired Gaul could love Caesar. The only man Commius loved was himself. What exactly was Commius after? A high kingship in Gaul the moment Caesar went back to Rome for good?

  "We'll meet later to dine and talk, Mandubracius," said Caesar, lifted the little red cylinder in a farewell gesture, and walked away toward the stout leather tent standing on an artificial knoll within the camp, where the scarlet flag of the General fluttered at full mast.

  The amenities inside the tent were little different from those to be found in a junior military tribune's quarters: some folding stools, several folding tables, a rack of pigeonholes for scrolls which could be disassembled in moments. At one table sat the General's private secretary, Gaius Faberius, head bent over a codex; Caesar had grown tired of having to occupy both his hands or a couple of paperweights to keep a scroll unfurled, and had taken to using single sheets of Fannian paper which he then directed be sewn along the left-hand side so that one flipped through the completed work, turning one sheet at a time. This he called a codex, swearing that more men would read what it contained than if it were unrolled. Then to make each sheet easier still to read, he divided it into three columns instead of writing clear across it. He had conceived it for his dispatches to the Senate, apostrophizing that body as a nest of semi-literate slugs, but slowly the convenient codex was coming to dominate all Caesar's paperwork. However, it had a grave disadvantage which negated its potential to replace the scroll: upon hard use the sheets tore free of the stitching and were easily lost.

  At another table sat his loyalest client, Aulus Hirtius. Of humble birth but considerable ability, Hirtius had pinned himself firmly to Caesar's star. A small spry man, he combined a love for wading through mountains of paper with an equal love for combat and the exigencies of war. He ran Caesar's office of Roman communications, made sure that the General knew everything going on in Rome even when he was forty miles north of the Tamesa River at the far western end of the world.

  Both men looked up when the General entered, though neither essayed a smile. The General was very crusty. Though not, it seemed, at this moment, for he smiled at both of them and brandished the little red leather cylinder.

  "A letter from Pompeius," he said, going to the only truly beautiful piece of furniture in the room, the ivory curule chair of his high estate.

  "You'll know everything in it," said Hirtius, smiling now.

  "True," said Caesar, breaking the seal and prising the lid off, "but Pompeius has his own style, I enjoy his letters. He's not as brash and untutored as he used to be before he married my daughter, yet his style is still his own." He inserted two fingers into the cylinder and brought forth Pompey's scroll. "Ye Gods, it's long!" he exclaimed, then bent to pick up a tube of paper from the wooden floor. "No, there are two letters." He studied the outermost edges of both, grunted. "One written in Sextilis, one in September."

  Down went September on the table next to his curule chair, but he didn't unroll Sextilis and begin to read; instead he lifted his chin and looked blindly through the tent flap, wide apart to admit plenty of light.

  What am I doing here, contesting the possession of a few fields of wheat and some shaggy cattle with a blue-painted relic out of the verses of Homer? Who still rides into battle driven in a chariot with his mastiff dogs baying and his harper singing his praises?

  Well, I know that. Because my dignitas dictated it, because last year this benighted place and its benighted people thought that they had driven Gaius Julius Caesar from their shores forever. Thought that they had beaten Caesar. I came back for no other reason than to show them that no one beats Caesar. And once I have wrung a submission and a treaty out of Cassivellaunus, I will quit this benighted place never to return. But they will remember me. I've given Cassivellaunus's harper something new to carol. The coming of Rome, the vanishing of the chariots into the fabled Druidic west. Just as I will remain in Gaul of the Long-hairs until every man in it acknowledges me—and Rome—as his master. For I am Rome. And that is something my son-in-law, who is six years older than I, will never be. Guard your gates well, good Pompeius Magnus. You won't be the First Man in Rome for much longer. Caesar is coming.

  He sat, spine absolutely straight, right foot forward and left foot rucked beneath the X of the curule chair, and opened Pompey the Great's letter marked Sextilis.

  I hate to say it, Caesar, but there is still no sign of a curule election. Oh, Rome will continue to exist and even have a government of sorts, since we did manage to elect some tribunes of the plebs. What a circus that was! Cato got into the act. First he used his standing as a praetor member of the Plebs to block the plebeian elections, then he issued a stern warning in that braying voice of his that he was going to be scrutinizing every tablet a voter tossed into the baskets—and that if he found one candidate fiddling the results, he'd be prosecuting. Terrified the life out of the candidates!

  Of course all of this stemmed out of the pact my idiotic nevvy Memmius made with Ahenobarbus. Never in the bribery-ridden history of our consular elections have so many bribes been given and taken by so many people! Cicero jokes that the amount of money which has changed hands is so staggering that it's sent the interest rate soaring from four to eight percent. He's not far wrong, joke though it is. I think Ahenobarbus, who is the consul supervising the elections—well, Appius Claudius can't; he's a patrician—thought that he could do as he liked. And what he likes is the idea of my nevvy Memmius and Domitius Calvinus as next year's consuls. All that lot—Ahenobarbus, Cato, Bibulus—are still snuffling round like dogs in a field of turds trying to find a reason why they can prosecute you and take your provinces and command off you. Easier if they own the consuls as well as some militant tribunes of the plebs.

  Best to finish the Cato story off first, I suppose. Well, as time went on and it began to look more and more as if we'll have no consuls or praetors next year, it also became vital that at least we have the tribunes of the plebs. I mean, Rome can suffer through without the senior magistrates. As long as the Senate is there to control the purse strings and there are tribunes of the plebs to push the necessary laws through, who misses the consuls and praetors? Except when the consuls are you or me. That goes without saying.

  In the end the candidates for the tribunate of the plebs went as a body to see Cato and begged that he withdraw his opposition. Honestly, Caesar, how does Cato get away with it? But they went further than mere begging. They made Cato an offer: each candidate would put up half a million sesterces (to be given to Cato to hold) if Cato would not only consent to the election's being held, but personally supervise it! If Cato found a man guilty of tampering with the elect
oral process, then he would fine that man the half-million. Very pleased with himself, Cato agreed. Though he was too clever to take their money. He made them give him legally precise promissory notes so they couldn't accuse him of embezzlement. Cunning, eh?

  Polling day came at last, a mere three nundinae late, and there was Cato watching the activity like a hawk. You have to admit he has the nose to deserve that simile! He found one candidate at fault, ordered him to step down and pay up. Probably thinking that all of Rome would fall over in a swoon at the sight of so much incorruptibility. It didn't happen that way. The leaders of the Plebs are livid. They're saying it's both unconstitutional and intolerable that a praetor should set himself up not as the judge in his own court, but as an undesignated electoral officer.

  Those stalwarts of the business world, the knights, hate the very mention of Cato's name, while Rome's seething hordes deem him crazy, between his semi-nudity and his perpetual hangover. After all, he's praetor in the extortion court! He's trying people senior enough to have governed a province—people like Scaurus, the present husband of my ex-wife! A patrician of the oldest stock! But what does Cato do? Drags Scaurus's trial out and out and out, too drunk to preside if the truth is known, and when he does turn up he has no shoes on, no tunic under his toga, and his eyeballs down on his cheeks. I understand that at the dawn of the Republic men didn't wear shoes or tunics, but it's news to me that those paragons of virtue pursued their Forum careers hung over.

  I asked Publius Clodius to make Cato's life a misery, and Clodius did try. But in the end he gave up, came and told me that if I really wanted to get under Cato's skin, I'd have to bring Caesar back from Gaul.

  Last April, shortly after Publius Clodius came home from his debt-collecting trip to Galatia, he bought Scaurus's house for fourteen and a half million!. Real estate prices are as fanciful as a Vestal wondering what it would be like to do it. You can get half a million for a cupboard with a chamber pot. But Scaurus needed the money desperately. He's been poor ever since the games he threw when he was aedile—and when he tried to pop a bit in his purse from his province last year, he wound up in Cato's court. Where he is likely to be until Cato goes out of office, things go so slow in Cato's court.

  On the other hand, Publius Clodius is oozing money. Of course he had to find another house, I do see that. When Cicero rebuilt, he built so tall that Publius Clodius lost his view. Some sort of revenge, eh? Mind you, Cicero's palace is a monument to bad taste. And to think he had the gall to liken the nice little villa I tacked onto the back of my theater complex to a dinghy behind a yacht!

  What it does show is that Publius Clodius got his money out of Prince Brogitarus. Nothing beats collecting in person. It is such a relief these days not to be Clodius's target. I never thought I'd survive those years just after you left for Gaul, when Clodius and his street gangs ran me ragged. I hardly dared go out of my house. Though it was a mistake to employ Milo to run street gangs in opposition to Clodius. It gave Milo big ideas. Oh, I know he's an Annius—by adoption, anyway—but he's like his name, a burly oaf fit to lift anvils and not much else.

  Do you know what he did? Came and asked me to back him when he runs for consul! "My dear Milo," I said, "I can't do that! It would be admitting that you and your street gangs worked for me!" He said he and his street gangs had worked for me, and what was the matter with that? I had to get quite gruff with him before he'd go away.

  I'm glad Cicero got your man Varinius off—how Cato as court president must have hated that! I do believe that Cato would go to Hades and lop off one of Cerberus's heads if he thought that would put you in the boiling soup. The odd thing about Vatinius's trial is that Cicero used to loathe him—oh, you should have heard the Great Advocate complain about owing you millions and having to defend your creatures! But as they huddled together during the trial, something happened. They ended up like two little girls who've just met at school and can't live without each other. A strange couple, but it's really rather nice to see them giggling together. They're both brilliantly witty, so they hone each other.

  We're having the hottest summer here that anyone can remember, and no rain either. The farmers are in a bad way. And those selfish bastards at Interamna decided they'd dig a channel to drain the Veline lake into the river Nar and have the water to irrigate their fields. The trouble is that the Rosea Rura dried out the moment the Veline lake emptied—can you imagine it? Italia's richest grazing land utterly devastated! Old Axius of Reate came to see me and demanded that the Senate order the Interamnans to fill the channel up, so I'm going to take it to the House, and if necessary I'll have one of my tribunes of the plebs push it into law. I mean, you and I are both military men, so we understand the importance of the Rosea Rura to Rome's armies. What other place can breed such perfect mules—or so many of them? Drought's one thing, but the Rosea Rura is quite another. Rome needs mules. But Interamna is full of asses.

  Now I come to a very peculiar thing. Catullus has just died.

  Caesar emitted a muffled exclamation; Hirtius and Faberius both glanced at him, but when they saw the expression on his face their heads went back to their work immediately. When the mist cleared from before his eyes, he went back to the letter.

  There's probably word of it from his father waiting for you back in Portus Itius, but I thought you'd like to know. I don't think Catullus was the same after Clodia threw him over—what did Cicero call her at Caelius's trial? "The Medea of the Palatine." Not bad. Yet I like "the Bargain-Priced Clytemnestra" better. I wonder did she kill Celer in his bath? That's what they all say.

  I know you were furious when Catullus began writing those wickedly apt lampoons about you after you appointed Mamurra as your new praefectus fabrum—even Julia allowed herself a giggle or two when she read them, and you have no loyaler adherent than Julia. She said that what Catullus couldn't forgive you was that you had elevated a very bad poet above his station. And that Catullus's term as a sort of a legate with my nevvy Memmius when he went out to govern Bithynia left his purse emptier than it had been before he set out dreaming of vast riches. Catullus ought to have asked me. I would have told him Memmius is tighter than a fish's anus. Whereas your most junior military tribunes are rewarded lavishly.

  I know you dealt with the situation—when do you not? Lucky that his tata is such a good friend of yours, eh? He sent for Catullus, Catullus came to Verona, tata said be nice to my friend Caesar, Catullus apologized, and then you charmed the toga off the poor young fellow. I don't know how you do that. Julia says it's inborn. Anyway, Catullus came back to Rome, and there were no more lampoons about Caesar. But Catullus had changed. I saw it for myself because Julia surrounds herself with all these poet and playwright people, and I must say they're good company. Had no fire left, seemed so tired and sad. He didn't commit suicide. He just went out like a lamp that's drunk all its oil.

  Like a lamp that's drunk all its oil... The words on the paper were blurred again; Caesar had to wait until his unshed tears went away.

  I ought not to have done it. He was so vulnerable, and I traded on that fact. He loved his father, and he was a good son. He obeyed. I thought I'd smoothed balm on the wound by having him to dinner and demonstrating not only the breadth of my knowledge of his work, but the depth of my literary appreciation for it. We had such a pleasant dinner. He was so formidably intelligent, and I love that. Yet I ought not to have done it. I killed his animus, his reason for being. Only how could I not? He left me no choice. Caesar can't be held up to ridicule, even by the finest poet in the history of Rome. He diminished my dignitas, my personal share of Roman glory. Because his work will last. Better he should never have mentioned me at all than to hold me up to public ridicule. And all for the sake of carrion like Mamurra. A shocking poet and a bad man. But he will make an excellent purveyor of supplies for my army, and Ventidius the muleteer will keep an eye on him.

  The tears had gone; reason had asserted itself. He could resume his reading.

  I wish I could s
ay that Julia is well, but the truth is that she's poorly. I told her there was no need to have children—I have two fine sons by Mucia, and my girl by her is thriving married to Faustus Sulla. He's just entered the Senate—good young fellow. Doesn't remind me in the least of Sulla, though. That's probably a good thing.

  But women do get these gnats in their minds about babies. So Julia's well on the way, about six months. Never been right since that awful miscarriage she had when I was running for consul. The dearest girl, my Julia! What a treasure you gave me, Caesar. I'll never cease to be grateful. And of course her health was really why I switched provinces with Crassus. I'd have had to go to Syria myself, whereas I can govern the Spains from Rome and Julia's side through legates. Afranius and Petreius are absolutely reliable, don't fart unless I tell them they can.

  Speaking of my estimable consular colleague (though I do admit I got on a lot better with him during our second than our first consulship together), I wonder how Crassus is doing out there in Syria. I have heard that he pinched two thousand talents of gold from the great temple of the Jews in Hierosolyma. Oh, what can you do with a man whose nose can actually smell gold? I was in that great temple once. It terrified me. Not if it had held all the gold in the world would I have pinched as much as one sow of it.