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

  So when the Sixth, the Germans and Caesar arrived in Tarsus, they had twelve mules loaded with crowns.

  Tarsus appeared to be prospering despite the absence of the governor Sestius and his quaestor Quintus Philippus. When Caesar saw the camp dispositions on the Cydnus plain he was astonished at Brutus’s talent for military layout and facilities. A riddle answered when he entered the governor’s palace and found himself face-to-face with Gaius Cassius Longinus.

  “I know you won’t require my intercession, Caesar, but I would like to intercede for Gaius Cassius just the same,” Brutus said with that hangdog look only he could produce. “He’s brought you a good fleet, and he’s been a tremendous help in training the troops. He understands military matters much better than I do.”

  Oh, Brutus, with your philosophies and your pimples, your miseries and your moneylending! thought Caesar, inwardly sighing.

  He couldn’t remember ever meeting Gaius Cassius, whose older brother, Quintus, he knew well from the campaign against Afranius and Petreius in Nearer Spain; he had sent Quintus to govern in Further Spain afterward. This was not to say that he hadn’t met Gaius. Simply that when last he had been in Rome with the time to look around, Gaius Cassius would have been a young man making tentative forays into the law courts to plead someone’s case, therefore hardly worth noticing. Though he remembered how very pleased Servilia had been over his betrothal to Tertulla—ye gods, this man is the husband of my natural daughter! I hope he disciplines her—Julia used to say Servilia spoiled her too much.

  Well, now Gaius Cassius was a man of thirty-six. Tall but not overly so, he was sturdily built and had a martial air to him, regular features that some women might call handsome, a humorous quirk to the corners of his mouth, a very determined chin, and the kind of hair that drove a barber mad—strong, springy, impossible to tame unless cut (as was Cassius’s) close to the scalp. Light brown in color, as were his skin and eyes.

  The eyes looked straight into Caesar’s without flinching, a faint trace of scorn tinging the anger in them. Oho! thought Caesar. Cassius doesn’t like being presented as a suppliant. If I give him the slightest excuse, he’ll throw my pardon in my face, storm out and run his sword up under his rib cage. I see why Servilia is so fond of him. He’s exactly what she wanted poor Brutus to be.

  “I knew someone who’s been around a few camps in his time engineered this one in Tarsus,” Caesar said cheerfully, his smile open and his right hand out. “Gaius Cassius, of course! How can Rome thank you for keeping the Parthians out of Syria after poor Marcus Crassus died? I sincerely hope you’ve been made welcome, that you’re comfortable?”

  And so the moment passed without any mention of pardons on either side; Gaius Cassius had little choice save to take the hand held out so naturally, had little choice save to smile, to deprecate his doings in Syria a few years ago. This too handsome, too charming patrician had managed to pardon him with a handshake and a warmly personal greeting.

  * * *

  “I’ve sent ahead to Calvinus to meet us with whatever troops he can muster in Iconium in ten days,” Caesar said over dinner. “Brutus and Cassius, you’ll be marching with me. I’ll need you as a personal legate, Brutus, but I’ll be very glad to give you a legion of your own to command, Cassius. Calvinus is sending Quintus Philippus back to govern in Tarsus, so the moment he arrives, we head up the Cilician Gates to Iconium. Marcus Antonius has shipped two legions of ex-Republicans from Italy to Calvinus, who says he’s ready to meet Pharnaces again.” He smiled, his eyes looking at something far beyond the room. “Things will go differently this time. Caesar is here.”

  “His confidence is incredible!” snarled Cassius to Brutus later. “Does nothing ever dent it?”

  Brutus blinked, remembering the day when Caesar had come to his mother’s house dressed in the purple and crimson glory of the Pontifex Maximus’s robes, then calmly announced that he was going to marry Julia to Pompeius Magnus. I fainted. Not so much at the shock of it—how much I loved her!—but at the prospect of facing Mama’s rage. Caesar had done the unforgivable, rejected a Servilius Caepio in favor of Pompeius Magnus, the peasant from Picenum. Oh, she was angry! And of course she blamed me, not Caesar. I shiver at the memory of that day.

  “No, nothing can dent Caesar’s confidence,” he said now to Cassius. “It is inborn.”

  “Then if nothing can, maybe the answer is to dent Caesar’s chest with a knife,” Cassius said between his teeth.

  The pimples meant that Brutus couldn’t shave, had to content himself with clipping his black beard as short as possible; as he heard this, he felt every one of those hairs stiffen. “Cassius! Don’t even think of it!” he said in a terrified whisper.

  “Why not? It’s every free man’s duty to kill a tyrant.”

  “He’s not a tyrant! Sulla was a tyrant!”

  “Then give me another name for him,” Cassius sneered. His eyes roamed over Brutus’s pinched face—the Furies take Servilia for making such a jelly out of her son! He shrugged. “Don’t pass out, Brutus. Forget I ever said it.”

  “Promise me you won’t! Promise me!”

  For answer, Cassius went to his own quarters, there to pace up and down until his anger died.

  By the time Caesar left Tarsus, he had collected a small group of penitent Republicans, all of whom received their pardons without the humiliation of hearing the word “pardon” spoken. In Antioch, young Quintus Cicero; in Tarsus, his father. They were the two who mattered most to Caesar. Neither was interested in joining the campaign against Pharnaces.

  “I should get home to Italy,” said Quintus Senior, sighing. “My foolish brother is still in Brundisium, not sure enough of his safety to venture farther, yet afraid to return to Greece.” His brown eyes looked into Caesar’s ruefully. “The trouble is, Caesar, that you were such a wonderful commander to campaign with. When the time came, I couldn’t take up arms against you, no matter what Marcus said.” He squared his shoulders. “We quarrelled dreadfully in Patrae before he sailed to Brundisium. Did you know that Cato tried to make him commander-in-chief of the Republican forces?”

  Caesar laughed. “That’s no surprise. Cato is an enigma to me. He has incredible strength of conviction, yet he’s never formed any convictions for himself. And he refuses to take any responsibility for his own actions. It was he who forced Magnus into this war, but when Magnus reproached him with it, he had the gall to say that those who started the business should be the ones to finish it—he meant us military men! To Cato, politicians don’t create wars. And that means he doesn’t understand power.”

  “We’re all what our upbringing makes of us, Caesar. How did you escape the taint?”

  “I had a mother strong enough to resist me without crushing me. One in many millions, I suspect.”

  So the Quintus Cicerones waved them goodbye as they set out, a reasonable force of two Cilician legions, the Sixth, and the faithful Germans, who had been away from their misty forests for so long that they hardly ever thought of that old life.

  The mountains of Anatolia were mostly over ten thousand feet in height, and impossible to negotiate save through infrequent passes. The Cilician Gates were one such corridor, a narrow, steep track through mighty pine forests, every cleft filled with roaring cascades from melting snow, and still very cold at night. Caesar’s recipe for minor complaints like freezing temperatures and high altitudes was to push his army on at full marching pace, so that when evening camp was made, everyone was too exhausted to feel the cold, and too dizzy from the height to stay awake. He insisted on proper camps, unsure until he met Calvinus exactly whereabouts Pharnaces was; all Calvinus had told him in his one letter was that the King of Cimmeria had definitely returned.

  Once through the pass the army descended to the high plateau which sat like a bowl in the center of Anatolia’s vastness; hilly and grassy, at this time of year it was green and lush, ideal grazing for horses. Of which animals, Caesar noted, there were far too many. This was Lycaonia, not
Galatia.

  Iconium was a big town on a major trade route crossroads. It sat beneath the peaks of the Taurus on its south and looked north across the plateau in the direction of Galatia and western Pontus. One road led to Cappadocia and thence to the Euphrates; one to the Cilician Gates, thence to Tarsus, Syria, the eastern end of Our Sea; one to Asia Province and thence to the Aegean Sea at Smyrna; one to Ancyra in Galatia and thence to the Euxine Sea; and one to Bithynia, the Hellespont, and thence to Rome on the Via Egnatia. Traffic was caravan style, great strings of camels, horses and mules herded by heavily armed businessmen on the lookout for marauding bands of backwoods tribesmen. A caravan might be Roman, Asian Greek, Cilician, Arab, Armenian, Median, Persian or Syrian. Iconium saw expensive dyed wools, furniture, cabinet timber, wine, olive oil, paints and pigments and dyes, iron-bound Gallic wheels, iron sows, marble statues and Puteoli glass heading east; west came rugs, tapestries, tin for bronze, brass sows, dried apricots, lapis lazuli, malachite, camel-hair paintbrushes, furs, astrakhan and fine leathers.

  What Iconium disliked were armies descending upon it, but such was its fate midway through Quinctilis: Caesar up from Tarsus with three legions and his German cavalry, Calvinus down from Pergamum with four good Roman legions. The abnormal number of horses was due to King Deiotarus, who had ridden from his own lands with two thousand Galatian horse troopers. It fell to Calvinus to provide the amalgamated army’s food except for the Galatians, who brought their own.

  Calvinus was full of news.

  “When Pharnaces got home to Cimmeria, Asander proved clever enough to adopt Fabian tactics,” he said, speaking to Caesar in private. “No matter where his father hounded him, Asander was one pace ahead. In the end Pharnaces decided that Asander would keep, loaded his troops back on board his transports, and sailed the Euxine to poor Amisus, which he sacked a second time. He’s gone to earth in Zela, a part of Pontus I don’t know, except that it’s a fair way from the Euxine coast near Amaseia, where all the ancient Pontic kings are entombed in the cliffs. From what I hear, far kinder country than we encountered in Armenia Parva last December and January.”

  Head bent over a map inked and painted on Pergamum parchment, Caesar traced a route with one finger. “Zela, Zela, Zela…Yes, I have it.” He frowned. “Oh, for some good Roman roads! They’ll have to be the next governor of Pontus’s first priority. I fear, Calvinus, that we’ll have to loop around the eastern end of Lake Tatta and cross the Halys into more mountains. We’ll need good guides, which I suppose means I’ll have to forgive Deiotarus for pouring Galatian money and men into the Republican campaign.”

  Calvinus grinned. “Oh, he’s here with Phrygian cap in hand, shitting himself in terror. Once Mithridates was defeated and Pompeius Magnus was all over Anatolia doling out land, Deiotarus expanded his kingdom in every direction, including at the expense of the old Ariobarzanes. After that Ariobarzanes died and the new one came to Cappadocia’s throne—this one’s a Philoromaios—there was hardly any decent territory left in Cappadocia.”

  “That may account for the money Cappadocia owes Brutus—oh, oops, did I say Brutus? I meant Matinius, of course.”

  “Fear not, Deiotarus is waist deep in debt to Matinius as well, Caesar. Magnus kept asking for money, money, money, and where was Deiotarus going to get it from?”

  “Answer, a Roman usurer,” said Caesar, and huffed in exasperation. “Why won’t they ever learn? They gamble everything on the reward of additional lands, or the discovery of a ten-mile reef of pure gold.”

  “I hear that you’re rather swimming in gold yourself—or at least, in gold crowns,” said Calvinus.

  “Indeed I am. So far I estimate that they’ll melt down into about a hundred talents of gold, besides the value of the jewels in some of them. Emeralds, Calvinus! Emeralds the size of a baby’s fist. I do wish they’d simply give me bullion. The workmanship in the crowns is exquisite, but who outside of the people who gave them to me are going to be interested in buying gold crowns? I have no choice other than to melt them down. Such a pity. Though I hope to sell the emeralds to Bogud, Bocchus and whoever inherits the throne of Numidia after Juba’s defeated,” said Caesar, ever practical. “The pearls aren’t such a problem, I can sell them in Rome easily.”

  “I hope the ship doesn’t sink,” said Calvinus.

  “Ship? What ship?”

  “The one carrying the crowns to the Treasury.”

  Both fair brows flew up; Caesar’s eyes twinkled. “My dear Calvinus, that foolish I am not. From all I hear of the situation in Rome, even if the ship didn’t sink, the crowns would never see the inside of the Treasury. No, I’ll keep them with me.”

  “Wise man” was Calvinus’s response; they had spent some time discussing the reports about Rome that had come to Pergamum.

  Deiotarus did indeed have a Phrygian cap—a fabric affair with a rounded point that flopped to one side. His, however, was made of Tyrian purple interwoven with gold thread, and he did hold it in his hand when Caesar received him. A twinge of mischief had prompted Caesar to make the audience a rather public one; not only Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, but several legates, including Brutus and Cassius. Now let’s see how you behave, Brutus! Here before Caesar stands one of your principal debtors.

  Deiotarus was an old man now, but still vigorous. Like his people, he was a Gaul, a descendant of a Gallic migration eastward into Greece two hundred and fifty years earlier; deflected, most of the Gauls had gone home, but Deiotarus’s people had continued east and finally occupied a part of central Anatolia where the country looked a dream to a horse people, rich in grass, and promising work for competent mounted warriors, of whom Anatolia had none. When Mithridates the Great had risen to power, he saw at once that the Galatians would have to go, invited all their chieftains to a feast, and massacred them. That had been in the time of Gaius Marius, sixty years ago. Deiotarus had escaped the massacre because he wasn’t old enough to go to the feast with his father, but from the time he grew to manhood, Mithridates had a fierce enemy. He allied himself with Sulla, Lucullus and then Pompey, always against Mithridates and Tigranes, and finally saw his dreams come true when Pompey gave him huge territories and persuaded the Senate (with Caesar’s connivance) to allow him to be called a king, his lands of Galatia a client-kingdom.

  Not for one moment had it occurred to him that anyone could defeat Pompey the Great; no one had moved more strenuously to assist Pompey than Deiotarus. Now here he was in front of this stranger, Gaius Julius Caesar Dictator, his cap in his hand, his heart knocking frantically at his ribs. The man he saw was very tall for a Roman, and fair enough of hair and eye to be a Gaul, but the features were Roman of mouth, nose, shape of eyes, shape of face, those knife-edged high cheekbones. A more different man from Pompey the Great would be hard to imagine, yet Pompey had been Gallic fair too; maybe he had taken to Pompey from the time of first meeting because Pompey truly did look a Gaul, including his facial features.

  If I had only seen this man first, I might have thought twice about giving Pompeius Magnus so much aid. Caesar is everything I have heard—royal enough to be a king, and those cold, piercing eyes look straight through a man to his marrow. O Dann! O Dagda! Caesar has Sulla’s eyes!

  “Caesar, I beg your merciful consideration,” he began. “You must surely understand that I was in Pompeius Magnus’s clientele—his loyalest and most obedient client at all times! If I assisted him, it was my cliental obligation to assist him—there was nothing personal in it! Indeed, finding money for his war chest has beggared me, I am in debt to”—his eyes went to Brutus, he hesitated—“certain firms of moneylenders. Deeply in debt!”

  “Which firms?” Caesar asked.

  Deiotarus blinked, shifted his trousered legs. “I am not at liberty to divulge their names,” he said, swallowing.

  Caesar’s eyes slid sideways to where Brutus was sitting in a chair deliberately placed within the scope of Caesar’s gaze. Ah! My Brutus is very concerned! So is brother-in-law Cassius. Does Cassius h
ave shares in Matinius et Scaptius too? How amusing.

  “Why not?” he asked coolly.

  “It is a part of the contract, Caesar.”

  “I’d like to see that contract.”

  “I left it in Ancyra.”

  “Dear, dear. Would the name Matinius be in it? Scaptius?”

  “I don’t remember,” Deiotarus whispered wretchedly.

  “Oh, come, Caesar!” Cassius said sharply. “Leave the poor man alone! You’re like a cat with a mouse. He’s right, it’s his business to whom he owes money. Just because you’re the dictator doesn’t mean you have the right to poke and pry into affairs that don’t concern Rome’s government! He’s in debt, that’s surely the only factor of relevance to Rome.”

  Had it been Tiberius Claudius Nero who said that, Caesar’s answer would have been a barked order to get out, go back to Rome, go anywhere Caesar was not. But this was Gaius Cassius, who bore watching. Not afraid to speak his mind, and hot tempered.