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

  Brutus cleared his throat. “Caesar, if I may, I would like to speak for King Deiotarus, whom I know from his visits to Rome. Don’t forget that in him, Mithridates had an implacable enemy, that in him, Rome had a perpetual ally. Does it truly matter whose side King Deiotarus chose in this civil war? I too chose Pompeius Magnus, but I have been forgiven. Gaius Cassius chose Pompeius Magnus, but he has been forgiven. What is the difference? Surely Rome in the person of Caesar Dictator needs every ally possible in this coming struggle against Pharnaces? The King is here to offer his services, he’s brought us two thousand horse troopers we desperately need.”

  “So you’re advocating that I forgive King Deiotarus and let him go unpunished?” Caesar asked Brutus.

  The big sad eyes were on fire: he sees his money vanishing.

  “Yes,” said Brutus.

  A cat with a mouse. No, Cassius, not a cat with a mouse—a cat with three mice!

  Caesar leaned forward in his curule chair and pinned Deiotarus on Sulla’s eyes. “I do sympathize with your plight, King, and it’s admirable for a client to assist his patron to the top of his bent. The only trouble is that Pompeius had all the clients, Caesar none. So Caesar had to fill his war chest from Rome’s Treasury. Which must be paid back at ten percent simple interest—the only rate now legal from one end of the world to the other. Which ought to improve your lot considerably, King. It may be that I will allow you to keep most of your kingdom, but I hereby announce that I will not make any decisions until after Pharnaces is defeated. Caesar will be collecting every sestertius he can to pay the Treasury back, so Galatia’s tribute will certainly increase, by somewhat less than the old rate of interest you were paying those anonymous usurers. Cherish that thought, King, until I call another council in Nicomedia after Pharnaces is defeated.” He rose to his feet. “You are dismissed, King. And thank you for the cavalry.”

  A letter had come from Cleopatra, its advent contributing to the speed with which Caesar conducted his interview with Deiotarus. With the letter had come a camel train containing five thousand talents of gold.

  My darling, wonderful, omnipotent God on earth, my own Caesar, He of Nilus, He of the Inundation, Son of Amun-Ra, Reincarnation of Osiris, beloved of Pharaoh—I miss you!

  But all that is nothing, dearest Caesar, compared to the joyous news that on the fifth day of the last month of peret I gave birth to your son. Ignorance doesn’t permit me to translate that perfectly into your calendar, but it was the twenty-third day of your June. He is under the sign of Khnum the Ram, and the horoscope you insisted I pay a Roman astrologer to draw for him says that he will be Pharaoh. A waste of money to learn that! The fellow was cagey, kept on muttering that there would be a crisis in his eighteenth year, but that the aspects didn’t let him see clearly. Oh, dearest Caesar, he is beautiful! Horus personified. He was born before his due time, but perfectly formed. Just thin and wrinkled—he takes after his tata, you perceive! His hair is gold, and Tach’a says his eyes will be blue.

  I have milk! Isn’t that wonderful? Pharaoh should always feed her babies herself, it is tradition. My little breasts ooze milk. His temper is very sweet, but he has a strong will, and I swear that the first time he opened his eyes to look at me, he smiled. He is very long, more than two Roman feet. His scrotum is large, so is his penis. Cha’em circumcised him according to Egyptian custom. My labor was easy. I felt the pains, squatted down on a thick pad of clean linen, and there he was!

  His name is Ptolemy XV Caesar. Though we are calling him Caesarion.

  Things go well in Egypt, even in Alexandria. Rufrius and the legions are well settled into their camp, and the women you gave them as wives seem to have accepted their lot. The rebuilding continues, and I have started the temple of Hathor at Dendera with the cartouches of Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XV Caesar. We will do work at Philae too.

  Oh, darlingest Caesar, I miss you so much! Were you here, you could do all the ruling with my good wishes—I hate having to be away from Caesarion to deal with litigious ship owners and crotchety landlords! My husband Philadelphus is growing more and more like our dead brother, whom I do not miss in the slightest. As soon as Caesarion is old enough, I will dispense with Philadelphus and elevate our son to the throne. I hope, by the way, that you are making sure that Arsinoë does not escape Roman custody. She’s another would have me off my throne in a moment, could she.

  Now here is the best news of all. With the garrison so settled, I spoke to Uncle Mithridates and secured his promise that when you are settled in Rome, he will rule in my absence while I visit you. Yes, I know you said Pharaoh shouldn’t leave her country, but there is one reason compels her to—I must have more children with you, and sooner than your return to the East to war against the Parthians. Caesarion must have a sister to marry, and until he does, Nilus is in peril. For our next child might be another boy! They have to come often enough to ensure they are of both sexes. So, whether you like it or not, I am coming to see you in Rome the moment you have defeated the Republicans in Africa. A letter has come from Ammonius, my agent in Rome, to say that events there are going to tie you down in Rome for some time once you have established your rule beyond contest. I have authorized him to build me a palace, but I need you to make a grant of land. Ammonius says it’s very difficult to set up a Roman citizen pretend-owner for prime land, so a grant from you would be quicker and easier. On the Capitol, near the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. My choice. I asked Ammonius which location had the best views.

  I am sending you five thousand gold talents with this letter in honor of our son. Please, please write to me! I miss you, I miss you, I miss you! Your hands especially. I pray for you every day to Amun-Ra, and to Montu, God of War. I love you, Caesar.

  A son, apparently healthy. Caesar is absurdly pleased for an old man who ought to be welcoming the birth of grandchildren. But she has given the child a Greek name, Caesarion. Perhaps it’s better. He isn’t a Roman and he never can be a Roman. He will be the richest man in the world, and a powerful king. Oh, but the mother is immature! Such an artless letter, vain and vainglorious. Grant her land to build a palace on the Capitol, near the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest—what a sacrilege, were it possible. She is determined to come to Rome, she will not be denied. Let it be upon her own head, then.

  Caesar, you are too hard on her. No one can be more than the capacity of their mind and talents allow, and her blood is tainted, for all that at heart she is a nice little thing. Her crimes are natural to her background, her mistakes not due to arrogance as much as to ignorance. I fear she’ll never have the gift of foresight, so I must offer that our son does.

  But one thing Caesar has resolved: there will never be any sister for Caesarion to marry. Caesar will not quicken her again. Coitus interruptus, Cleopatra.

  He sat down and wrote to her, half his attention on the sounds drifting into his room—sounds of legions pulling camp, of horses neighing, of men shouting and cursing, Carfulenus bellowing ghastly obscenities at a hapless soldier.

  What good news, my dear Cleopatra. A son, just as was predicted. Would Amun-Ra dare disappoint his daughter on earth? Truly, I am very glad for you and Egypt.

  The gold is welcome. Since emerging into the wide world again, I have come to a better understanding of how deeply Rome is in debt. Civil war brings no booty in its train, and war is profitable only if there is booty. Your contribution in the name of our son will not be wasted.

  Since you insist upon coming to Rome, I will not stand in your way, only warn you that it will not be what you expect. I will arrange that you have land under the Janiculan Hill, adjoining my own pleasure gardens. Tell Ammonius to apply to the broker Gaius Matius.

  I am not a man famous for his love letters. Just accept the love and know that I am indeed very pleased with you and our son. I will write to you again when I reach Bithynia. Take care of yourself and our boy.

  And that was that. Caesar rolled the single sheet, plopped a blob of melted wax on its junction,
and sealed it with his ring, a new one Cleopatra had given him not entirely from love. It was also a sly poke at his reluctance to discuss his past emotional history with her. The amethyst intaglio was of a sphinx in Greek form, having a human head and a lion’s body, and instead of the usual abbreviated full name, it simply said CAESAR in mirrored block letters. He loved it. When he decided which of his nephews or close cousins would be his adopted heir, the ring would go to him along with the name. Ye gods, a sorry lot! Lucius Pinarius? Even Quintus Pedius, the best of his nephews, wasn’t exactly inspiring. Among the cousins, there were the young fellow in Antioch, Sextus Julius Caesar—Decimus Junius Brutus—and the man most of Rome assumed would be his heir, Marcus Antonius. Who, who, who? For it could not be Ptolemy XV Caesar.

  On his way out he gave the letter to Gaius Faberius. “Send this to Queen Cleopatra in Alexandria,” he said curtly.

  Faberius was dying to know if the baby had been born, but one look at Caesar’s face decided him not to ask. The old boy was in the mood to fight, not wax lyrical about babies, even his own.

  Lake Tatta was a huge, shallow body of bitterly salty water; perhaps, thought Caesar, studying the conglomerate shores, it was the remnant of some past inland sea, for ancient shells were embedded in the soft rock. Despite its desert nature, it was strikingly beautiful to behold; the scummy surface of the lake glowed with greens, acid yellows, reddish yellows, ribbons of one color coiling through another, and the sere landscape for many miles reflected some of that vivid spectrum.

  Never having been in central Anatolia, Caesar found it both bizarre and splendid; the Halys River, the great red waterway that curled like an augur’s lituus staff for hundreds of miles, lay in a narrow valley between high red cliffs that gave off extrusions and towers he thought reminiscent of a tall city. In other stretches of its course, the attentive Deiotarus told him, it flowed through a broad plain of fertile fields. The mountains began again, high and still smothered in snow, but the Galatian guides knew all the passes; the army weaved its way between them, a traditional Roman snake eight miles long, the cavalry dotting its flanks, the soldiers striding out singing their marching songs to keep the pace.

  Oh, this is more like! A foreign foe, a true campaign in a strange new land whose beauty is haunting.

  At which moment King Pharnaces sent his first gold crown to Caesar. This one resembled the Armenian rather than the Parthian tiara: mitered, not truncated, and encrusted with round, starred rubies all exactly the same small size.

  “Oh, if only I knew someone who could buy it for what it’s worth!” Caesar breathed to Calvinus. “It’s heartbreaking to melt this down.”

  “Needs must,” Calvinus said briskly. “Actually those little carbunculi will fetch an excellent price from any jeweler in the Porticus Margaritaria—I’ve never seen stars in them before. The gold hardly shows, there are so many. Like a cake rolled in nuts.”

  “Do you think our friend Pharnaces is becoming worried?”

  “Oh, yes. The degree of his worry will show in how often he sends you a crown, Caesar.” Calvinus grinned.

  One every three days for the next nundinum, all the same in form and content; by that time Caesar was only five days’ march from the Cimmerian camp.

  The count at three crowns, Pharnaces sent an ambassador to Caesar with a fourth crown.

  “A token of his regard from the King of Kings, great Caesar.”

  “King of Kings? Is that what Pharnaces has taken to calling himself?” Caesar asked, aping astonishment. “Tell your master that it’s a title bodes ill for its holder. The last King of Kings was Tigranes, and look what Rome did to him in the person of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Yet I defeated Pompeius Magnus, so what does that make me, Ambassador?”

  “A mighty conqueror,” said the ambassador, swallowing. Why didn’t Romans look like mighty conquerors? No golden litter, no traveling harem of wives and concubines, no bodyguard of picked troops, no glittering garments. Caesar wore a plain steel cuirass with a red ribbon knotted around its lower chest, and looked, save for that ribbon, no different from a dozen others around him.

  “Go back to your king, Ambassador, and tell him it’s time he went home,” said Caesar in businesslike tones. “But before he goes, I want sufficient gold bullion to pay for the damage he has done in Pontus and Armenia Parva. A thousand talents for Amisus, three thousand for the rest of those two countries. The gold will be used to repair his ravages, make no mistake. It is not for the Treasury of Rome.”

  He paused to turn his head and stare at Deiotarus. “However,” he went on urbanely, “King Pharnaces was a client of Pompeius Magnus’s, and did not honor his cliental obligations. Therefore I fine King Pharnaces two thousand gold talents for not honoring his cliental obligations, and that will go to the Treasury of Rome.”

  Deiotarus went purple, spluttered and choked, but said not a word. Did Caesar have no shame at all? Ready to punish Galatia for obeying its cliental obligations, equally ready to punish Cimmeria for not obeying its cliental obligations!

  “If I do not hear from your king today, Ambassador, I will continue my advance across this beautiful valley.”

  “There isn’t one-tenth that much gold in all of Cimmeria,” said Calvinus, smothering his laughter at Deiotarus’s outrage.

  “You might be surprised, Gnaeus. Don’t forget Cimmeria was an important part of the old king’s realm, and he amassed whole mountains of gold. Not all of it was in those seventy fortresses Pompeius stripped bare in Armenia Parva.”

  “Did you hear him?” Deiotarus was squeaking to Brutus. “Did you hear him? A client-king can’t do right, whichever course he elects! Oh, I don’t believe his gall!”

  “There, there,” Brutus soothed. “It’s his way of getting the money to pay for this war. He’s right, he did have to burgle Rome’s Treasury, which has to be paid back.” The mournful eyes grew hard and minatory; Brutus stared at the King of Galatia like a father at a naughty son. “And you, Deiotarus, have to pay me back. I hope that’s understood.”

  “And I hope you understand, Marcus Brutus, that when Caesar says ten percent simple interest, that’s what he means!” Deiotarus said savagely. “That I’m willing to pay—if I keep my kingdom—but not one sestertius more. Do you want Matinius’s books open to Caesar’s auditors? And how do you think you can collect debts now that you can’t commandeer legions for that purpose? The world has changed, Marcus Brutus, and the man who dictates how the new world will be run is not enamored of usurers, even among his own class. Ten percent simple interest—if I keep my kingdom. And keeping my kingdom may well depend upon how lyrically you and Gaius Cassius plead my cause at Nicomedia after we meet Pharnaces!”

  * * *

  Zela had taken Caesar’s breath away. A high, rocky outcrop, it stood in the middle of a fifty-mile basin of springtime wheat as green as the emeralds in that crown, surrounded on all sides by soaring lilac mountains still covered in snow halfway down their sides, with the Scylax River, a broad, steely blue stream, winding from one side of the plain to the other.

  The Cimmerian camp lay at the base of the outcrop, on top of which Pharnaces had put his command tents and harem; he had had a perfect view of the Roman snake as it had emerged from the northern pass, and sent his third crown. The ambassador returned after giving Caesar the fourth crown and delivered Caesar’s message, but Pharnaces ignored it, convinced he was unbeatable. He watched Caesar put his legions and cavalry into a heavily fortified camp for the night, only a mile from his own lines.

  At dawn Pharnaces attacked en masse; like his father and Tigranes before him, he couldn’t believe that a smallish force, no matter how well organized, could withstand a hundred thousand warriors charging at it. He did better than Pompey at Pharsalus; his troops lasted four hours before they disintegrated. Just as in the early days in Belgic Gaul, the Skythians stayed to fight to the death, deeming it an unendurable disgrace to abandon a field of defeat alive.

  “If Magnus’s Anatolian foes were of
this caliber,” Caesar said to Calvinus, Pansa, Vinicianus and Cassius, “he doesn’t deserve the epithet ‘great.’ It’s no great task to beat them.”

  “I suppose the Gauls were infinitely greater adversaries,” said Cassius between his teeth.

  “Read my commentaries,” Caesar said, smiling. “Bravery is not the issue. The Gauls owned two qualities today’s adversaries don’t have. First of all, they learned from their early mistakes. And secondly, they had an unquenchable patriotism that I had to work very hard to channel into avenues as useful to themselves as to Rome. But you did well, Cassius, led your legion like a true vir militaris. I’ll have plenty of work for you in a few years, when I set out to deal with the Kingdom of the Parthians and bring our Eagles home. By then you’ll have been consul, so you’ll be one of my chief legates. I understand that you like waging war in dry places as well as on the sea.”

  This should have thrilled Cassius, but it angered him. He speaks as if it is all in his personal gift. What glory can there be in that for me, his minion?

  The Great Man had wandered off to inspect the field, issue orders that mass graves be dug to bury the Skythians; there were too many to burn, even if Zela had owned any forests.

  Pharnaces himself had fled, gathered his war chest and his treasures to gallop off northward, leaving the women of his harem dead. When Caesar was told, his only concern was for the women.

  He donated the spoils to his legates, tribunes, centurions, legions and cavalry, declining to take the general’s percentage; he had his crowns, they were enough. By the time the ceremony of dividing the spoils was over, the rankers found themselves ten thousand sesterces richer, and legates like Brutus and Cassius had amassed a hundred talents each. That was how much had lain around the Cimmerian camp, so who knew what Pharnaces had taken with him? Not that anybody received the money in his hand; it was an accounting exercise attended by elected representatives, for spoils were kept intact until they had been displayed in the general’s triumph, after which the actual money was distributed.