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

  “I grudge you your death, Cato, just as you grudged me your life,” he said harshly.

  Young Cato shuffled out, supported by two servants.

  “Could you not persuade your father to wait, at least to see me, talk to me?”

  “You know Cato a great deal better than I do, Caesar,” the young man said. “He died as he lived—very hard.”

  “What do you plan to do now that your father’s dead? You know that all his property is confiscate.”

  “Ask you for a pardon and make a living somehow. I am not my father.”

  “You’re pardoned, just as he would have been.”

  “May I ask a favor, Caesar?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Statyllus. May he travel to Italy with me? My father left him the money to go to Marcus Brutus, who will take him in.”

  “Marcus Brutus is in Italian Gaul. Statyllus may join him.”

  And that was the end of it. Caesar swung on his heel and walked out, Calvinus behind him—after he’d retrieved the note. A valuable archive.

  Outside, Caesar threw off the mood as if it had never been. “Well, I could expect nothing else from Cato,” he said to Calvinus. “Always the worst of my enemies, always out to foil me.”

  “An absolute fanatic, Caesar. From the day of his birth, I suspect. He never understood the difference between life and philosophy.”

  Caesar laughed. “The difference? No, my dear Calvinus, not the difference. Cato never understood life. Philosophy was his way of dealing with something he didn’t have the ability to grasp. Philosophy was his manual of behavior. That he chose to be a Stoic reflected his nature—purification through self-denial.”

  “Poor Marcia! A cruel blow.”

  “The cruel blow was in loving Cato, who refused to be loved.”

  3

  Among the Republican high command, only Titus Labienus, the two Pompeys and governor Attius Varus reached Spain.

  Publius Sittius was back in action for Kings Bocchus and Bogud of the Mauretanias; the moment he received word of Caesar’s victory at Thapsus, he sent out his trusty fleet to sweep the seas and himself invaded Numidia by land.

  Metellus Scipio and Lucius Manlius Torquatus sailed aboard a group of ships that elected to hug the African coast; Gnaeus and Sextus Pompey, in Gnaeus’s original fleet, decided to strike across open water and revictual in the Balearic Isles. Labienus sailed with them, not trusting Metellus Scipio’s judgement, and loathing the man besides.

  Publius Sittius’s fleet encountered the Africa-hugging ships and attacked with such enthusiasm that capture was inevitable. Like Cato, Metellus Scipio and Torquatus chose suicide over a pardon from Caesar.

  In hopeless disarray, the Numidian army of light armed horse was no match for the invading Sittius, who swept them up before him and advanced inexorably through Juba’s kingdom.

  Marcus Petreius and King Juba had gone to Juba’s capital of Cirta, only to find its gates locked and the populace too afraid of Caesar’s vengeance to let them inside. The two men sought shelter in a villa Juba kept not far from Cirta, and there agreed to fight a duel to the death as the most honorable way left. The outcome was a foregone conclusion: Juba was much younger and stronger than Petreius, who had grown old and grizzled in Pompey the Great’s service. Petreius died in the duel, but when Juba tried to inflict the death stroke upon himself, he found that his arms were too short. A slave held his sword, and Juba ran on it.

  The most distressing tragedy of all was Lucius Caesar’s son, who was captured and released on his own cognizance to stay in a villa on the outskirts of Utica until Caesar had time to deal with him. It was staffed by some of Caesar’s own servants, and in its grounds were a few cages of wild animals found among Metellus Scipio’s abandoned baggage; Caesar took them to use in the games he planned to celebrate in his dead Julia’s honor, for a vindictive Senate had denied her funeral games. Cato and Ahenobarbus.

  Perhaps the aura of suspicion surrounding this only member of the Julii Caesares who had sided with the Republicans had eaten into his core, or perhaps some innate mental instability had always been there; whatever the reason, Lucius Caesar Junior was soon joined by a group of Republican legionaries, took over the villa, and tortured Caesar’s servants to death. Having no more human victims, Lucius Caesar Junior then tortured the animals to death. When the legionaries decamped, Lucius Caesar Junior did not. A horrified tribune sent to check on him found him wandering the villa covered in blood, mumbling and raving alternately. Like Ajax after the fall of Troy, he seemed to think the beasts were his enemies.

  Caesar decided that he would have to stand trial, deeming it absolutely necessary that his cousin’s only son be dealt with publicly, and trusting that the military court would see for itself that Lucius Caesar Junior was hopelessly demented. Pending trial, he was left locked inside the villa under guard.

  Oh, shades of Publius Vettius! When some soldiers came to put Lucius Caesar Junior into chains and bring him to Utica for the court-martial, they discovered him dead—but not by his own hand. Who had sneaked in and murdered him remained a mystery, but not even the most insignificant member of Caesar’s staff thought Caesar implicated. Many were the rumors about Caesar Dictator, yet that particular calumny was never put forward. After conducting the funeral as Pontifex Maximus, Caesar sent Lucius’s son’s ashes home to him with as much explanation as he thought Lucius could bear.

  Utica was pardoned too, but Caesar reminded the Three Hundred that during his first consulship thirteen years ago he had passed a lex Julia which had greatly benefited the city.

  “The fine is levied at two hundred million sesterces, to be paid in six-monthly installments over a period of three years. Not to me, citizens of Utica. Directly to the Treasury of Rome.”

  A huge fine! Eight thousand talents of silver. Since Utica could not deny that it had aided the Republicans and had lauded, adored and gladly harbored Cato, Caesar’s most obdurate enemy, the Three Hundred accepted its fate meekly. What could they do about it, especially when the money had to be paid directly to the Roman Treasury? This was one tyrant not out to enrich himself.

  Republican owners of wheat latifundia in the Bagradas and Catada valleys suffered too; Caesar auctioned their properties at once, thus ensuring that those who continued to farm wheat on a large scale in Africa Province were very definitely his clients. An action he regarded as vital for Rome’s welfare—who knew what the future might hold?

  From Africa Province he proceeded to Numidia, where he put up all Juba’s personal property for auction before dismantling the kingdom of Numidia completely. The eastern portion, which was the most fertile, was incorporated into the African province as Africa Nova; Publius Sittius received a fine strip of territory on Africa Nova’s western boundary as his personal fief—provided that he held it for the Rome of Caesar and Caesar’s heir. Bogud and Bocchus received the western end of Numidia, but Caesar left it up to the two kings to sort out the boundaries between themselves.

  On the last day of May he quit Africa for Sardinia, leaving Gaius Sallustius Crispus behind to govern the Roman provinces.

  That hundred-and-fifty-mile voyage took twenty-seven days; the seas were mountainous, his ship leaked, had to put into every tiny isle on the way, was blown far to the east, then blown far to the west. Exasperating, not because Caesar was prone to seasickness—he was not—but because the ship moved too much for him to read, write, or even think lucidly.

  Harbor made at last, he raised Republican Sardinia’s tithe to one-eighth, and levied a special fine of ten million sesterces on the town of Sulcis for actively abetting the Republicans.

  Two days into Quinctilis and he was ready to sail for Ostia or Puteoli, whichever port the winds and weather made feasible; then the equinoctial gales began to roar as if what had plagued his ship on the way to Sardinia had been but a gentle zephyr. Caesar looked at Carales harbor and condescended to heed his captain’s plea not to sail. The gales blew for three nundinae witho
ut let, but at least sitting on dry land he could read and write, catch up on the mountain of correspondence.

  Time for thought didn’t come until finally he set sail for Ostia; the wind was blowing from the southwest, so Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber it would be.

  The war will go on, unless Gaius Trebonius in Further Spain can capture Labienus and the two Pompeii before they have time to organize fresh resistance. A better man than Trebonius does not exist, but the pity of it is that when he arrived in his province he found it in no mood to co-operate after the predatory governorship of Quintus Cassius. That is the trouble, Caesar. You cannot do everything yourself, and for every Gaius Trebonius, there is a Quintus Cassius. For every Calvinus, there is an Antonius.

  Spain is on the lap of the gods, there’s no point in wasting time fretting about Spain at the moment. Think rather, that so far the war has gone all Caesar’s way, and that Africa confirms Pharsalus in the world’s eyes. So many dead! So much talent and ability wasted on battlefields.

  And what about the Phaedo, eh? It took time to get the story out of Statyllus, but a hint that perhaps Caesar would renege on his promise to let Statyllus go to Brutus soon had the whole of that unspeakable suicide laid bare for Caesar’s inspection. Oh, immensely cheering to learn that the tempered, indestructible steel of Cato’s persona was so totally fractured underneath. When the time came to die, he feared to die. Had first to convince himself that he would live forever by reading the Phaedo. How fascinating. It is some of the most beautiful, poetic Greek ever written, but the man who wrote it was speaking at second hand, and neither he nor Socrates, the supreme philosopher, was valid in logic, in reason, in common sense. Phaedo, Phaedrus and the rest are full of sophistry, sometimes downright dishonest, and commit the same old philosophical crime: they arrive at conclusions that suit them and please them, rather than at the truth. As for Stoicism, what philosophy is narrower, what other code of spiritual conduct can breed the ultimate fanatic so successfully?

  What it boils down to is that Cato couldn’t do the deed without first knowing that he would enjoy a life thereafter. And sought confirmation in the Phaedo. This comforts Caesar, who craves no life hereafter. What can death be, except an eternal sleep? The only immortality a man can ever have is to live on in the memories and stories of the gens humana for time immemorial. A fate sure to happen for Caesar, but a fate that Caesar will exert every effort to make sure does not happen for Cato. Without Cato, there would have been no civil war. It is for that I cannot ever forgive him. It is for that Caesar cannot forgive him.

  Ah, but Caesar’s life grows lonelier, even with the death of Cato. Bibulus, Ahenobarbus, Lentulus Crus, Lentulus Spinther, Afranius, Petreius, Pompeius Magnus, Curio. Rome has become a city of widows, and Caesar has no real competition. How can Caesar excel without opposition to drive him? Though not, though never, opposition from his legions.

  Caesar’s legions. Ninth, Tenth, Twelfth, Fourteenth, their standards loaded down with honors, their share of booty sufficient to give the rankers Third Class status in the Centuries, their centurions Second Class status. Yet they mutinied. Why? Because they were idle, poorly supervised and prey to the mischief men like Avienus cannot resist making. Because some men within them have given them the notion that they can dictate terms of service to their generals. Their mutiny is not forgiven—but, more important, it is not forgotten. No man from a mutinous legion will ever get land in Italy, or a full share of the booty after Caesar triumphs.

  After Caesar triumphs. Caesar has waited fourteen years to triumph, cheated out of his Spanish one when he came back from Further Spain as praetor. The Senate forced him to cross the pomerium into the city to declare his candidacy for the consulship, so he lost his imperium and his triumph. But this year he will triumph, so splendidly that Sulla’s and Pompeius Magnus’s triumphs will seem mean, small. This year. Yes, this year. There will be time, for this year Caesar will put the calendar to rights at last, tie the seasons to the months in a proper 365-day year, with an extra day every four years to keep both in perfect step. If Caesar does no more for Rome than that, his name will live on long after he himself is dead.

  That is all that immortality can ever be. Oh, Cato, with your longing for an immortal soul, your fear of dying! What is there to be afraid of, in dying?

  The ship heeled, quivered; the wind was changing, getting up, swinging around to the southeast. He could almost smell Egypt of Nilus on its breath—the sweet, slightly fetid stench of inundation-soaked black soil, the alien blossoms in alien gardens, the fragrance of Cleopatra’s skin.

  Cleopatra. Caesar does miss her, though he thought he would not. What will the little fellow look like? She says in her letters, like Caesar, but Caesar will see him more dispassionately. A son for Caesar, but not a Roman son. Who will be Caesar’s Roman son, the son he adopts in his will? Wherever Caesar’s life is going, it is time and more than time that he made his will. Yet how can a man poise the balance between an untried, unknown sixteen-year-old and a man of thirty-seven?

  Pray there is time to poise the balance.

  The Senate has voted Caesar the dictatorship for ten years, with the powers of a censor for three years and the right to let his preferences be known when the candidates apply for election as magistrates. A good letter to receive before leaving Africa.

  A voice whispers: where are you going, Gaius Julius Caesar? And why does it seem to matter so little? Is it that you have done all that you wanted to do, though not in the way and with the constitutional sanction you yearned for? No sense in ruing what has been done and cannot be undone. No, it cannot be undone, even for a million gold crowns studded with rubies or emeralds or ocean pearls the size of pebbles.

  But without rivals, victory is hollow. Without rivals, how can Caesar shine?

  The sting in winning is to be left the only one alive on the field.

  VI

  Trying Times, Thankless Tasks

  From SEXTILIS (AUGUST) until the end of DECEMBER of 46 B.C.

  1

  The Domus Publica had changed for the better on its exterior. Its ground floor was built of tufa blocks and had the old, rectangular windows, then Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus had added an opus incertum upper story faced with bricks and having arched windows. Caesar Pontifex Maximus added a temple pediment over the main entrance and gave the entire outside of the ugly building a more uniform look by facing it in polished marble. Inside it maintained its venerable beauty, for Caesar, Pontifex Maximus now for seventeen years, permitted no neglect.

  Time, he thought, having finally returned from Sardinia, to start giving receptions, to suggest to Calpurnia that she host the Bona Dea celebrations in November; if Caesar Dictator was to be stranded in Rome for many months, he may as well create a splash.

  His own quarters were on the ground floor; a bedroom and study, and, where his mother used to live, two offices for his chief secretary, Gaius Faberius. Who greeted him with slightly overdone pleasure, and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Are you so offended that I didn’t take you to Africa? I’d thought to give you a rest from travel, Faberius,” Caesar said.

  Faberius jumped, shook his head. “No, Caesar, of course I wasn’t offended! I was able to get a great deal of work done in your absence, and see something of my family.”

  “How are they?”

  “Very happy to move to the Aventine. The Clivus Orbius has gone sadly downhill.”

  “Orbian hill—downhill. Good pun,” said Caesar, and left it at that. But with a mental note to find out what was worrying this oldest among his secretaries.

  When he entered his wife’s quarters upstairs he wished he had not, for Calpurnia had guests: Cato’s widow, Marcia, and Cato’s daughter, Porcia. Why did women choose peculiar friends? Still, it was too late to retreat now. Best to brazen it out. Calpurnia, he noticed, was growing into her beauty. At eighteen she had been a pleasant-looking girl, shy and quiet, and he knew perfectly well that her conduct during the years of his abse
nce had been irreproachable. Now in her late twenties, she had a better figure, a great deal more composure, and was arranging her hair in a new, highly flattering style. His advent didn’t fluster her in the least, despite the vexation that being caught with these two women must have caused her.

  “Caesar,” she said, rising and coming to kiss him lightly.

  “Is that the same cat I gave you?” he asked, pointing to a rotund ball of reddish fur on a couch.

  “Yes, that’s Felix. He’s getting old, but his health is good.”

  Caesar had advanced to take Marcia’s hand and smile at Porcia in a friendly way.

  “Ladies, a sad meeting. I would have given much to ensure a happier one.”

  “I know,” said Marcia, blinking away tears. “Was he—was he well before—?”

  “Very well, and much loved by all of Utica. So much so that the people of that city have given him a new cognomen—Uticensis. He was very brave,” said Caesar, making no attempt to sit.

  “Naturally he was brave! He was Cato!” said Porcia in that same loud, harsh voice her father had owned.

  How like him she was! A pity that she was the girl, young Marcus the boy. Though she would never have begged a pardon—would be fleeing to Spain, or dead.

  “Are you living with Philippus?” he asked Marcia.

  “For the time being,” she said, and sighed. “He wants me to marry again, but I don’t wish to.”

  “If you don’t wish to, you shouldn’t. I’ll speak to him.”

  “Oh yes, by all means do that!” Porcia snarled. “You’re the King of Rome, whatever you say must be obeyed!”

  “No, I am not the King of Rome, nor do I want to be,” Caesar said quietly. “It was meant kindly, Porcia. How are you faring?”