5. Caesar Read online

  Maybe it was the sum of all those years of vitriol armored Caesar now; he put Servilia's letter down and did no more than rise to wash the touch of it off his hands. I think I hate her more than I do her loathsome half brother Cato. The most remorseless, cruel and bitter woman I have ever known. Yet if I saw her tomorrow, our love affair would probably resume. Julia called her a snake; I remember that day well. It was a valid description. That poor, pathetic, spineless boy of hers is now a poor, pathetic, spineless man. Face ruined by festering sores, spirit ruined by one enormous festering sore, Servilia. Brutus didn't decline a quaestorship with me because of principles or Julia or Uncle Cato's opposition; he likes money too much, and my legates make a great deal of it. No, Brutus declined because he didn't want to go to a province wracked by war. To do so might expose him to a battle. Cilicia is at peace. He can potter around it, illegally lending money to provincials, without a flying spear or arrow any closer to him than the Euphrates.

  Two more letters, then he would finish for the day and order his servants to pack up. Time to move to Samarobriva. Get it over and done with, Caesar! Read the one from your wife and the one from your mother. They'll hurt far more with their loving words than Servilia's savagery ever could. So he sat down again in the silence of his private room, no eyes upon him, put the letter from his mother on the table and opened the one from his wife, Calpurnia. Whom he hardly knew. Just a few months in Rome with an immature, rather shy girl who had prized the orange kitten he had given her as much as Servilia prized her six-million-sestertius pearl.

  Caesar, they all say it is my place to write and give you this news. Oh, I wish it were not. I have neither the wisdom nor the years to divine how best to go about it, so please forgive me if, in my ignorance, I make things even harder for you to bear than I know they will be anyway. When Julia died, your mama's heart broke. Aurelia was so much Julia's mother. She brought her up. And Aurelia was so delighted at her marriage, how happy she was, how lovely her life. We here in the Domus Publica live a very sheltered existence, as is fitting in the house of the Vestal Virgins. Though we dwell in the midst of the Forum, excitement and events touch us lightly. We have preferred it that way, Aurelia and I: a sweet and peaceful enclave of women free from scandal, suspicion or reproach. But Julia, who visited us often when she was in Rome, brought a breath of the wide world with her. Gossip, laughter, small jokes. When she died, your mama's heart broke. I was there near Julia's bedside, and I watched your mama being so strong, for Pompeius's sake as well as for Julia's. So kind! So sensible in everything she said. Smiling when she felt it called for. Holding one of Julia's hands while Pompeius held the other. It was she who banished the doctors when she saw that nothing and no one could save Julia. It was she who gave us peace and privacy for the hours that remained. And after Julia was gone, she yielded her place to Pompeius, left him alone with Julia. She bundled me out of the room and took me home, back to the Domus Publica. It isn't a very long walk, as you know. She said not one word. Then when we got inside our own door, she uttered a terrible cry and began to howl. I couldn't say she wept. She howled, down on her knees with the tears pouring out in floods, and beat her breast, and pulled her hair. Howling. Scratching her face and neck to bleeding ribbons. The adult Vestals all came running, and there were all of us weeping, trying to get Aurelia to her feet, trying to calm her down, but not able to stop weeping ourselves. I think in the end we all got down on the floor with her, and put our arms about her and about ourselves, and stayed there for most of the night. While Aurelia howled in the most terrible, awful despair. But it ended. In the morning she was able to dress and go back to Pompeius's house, help him attend to all the things which had to be done. And then the poor little baby died, but Pompeius refused to see him or kiss him, so it was Aurelia who made the arrangements for his tiny funeral. He was buried that same day, and she and I and the adult Vestals were his only mourners. He didn't have a name, and none of us knew what the third praenomen among that branch of the Pompeii is. We knew only Gnaeus and Sextus, both taken. So we decided on Quintus; it sounded right. His tomb will say Quintus Pompeius Magnus. Until then, I have his ashes. My father is attending to the tomb, for Pompeius will not. There is no need to say anything about Julia's funeral, for I know that Pompeius has written it. But your mama's heart was broken. She wasn't with us anymore, just drifted you know what she was like, so brisk and martial in her step, but now she just drifted. Oh, it was awful! No matter which one of us she saw the laundry maid, Eutychus, Burgundus, Cardixa, a Vestal or me she would stop and look at us and ask, "Why couldn't it have been me? Why did it have to be her? I'm no use to anyone! Why couldn't it have been me?" And what could we say in reply? How could we not weep? Then she would howl, and ask all over again, "Why couldn't it have been me?" That went on for two months, but only in front of us. When people came to pay condolence visits, she pulled herself together and behaved as they expected she would. Though her appearance shocked everyone. Then she shut herself in her room and sat upon the floor, rocking back and forth, and humming. With sometimes a huge cry, and the howling would begin again. We had to wash her and change her clothes, and we tried so hard to persuade her to get into her bed, but she would not. She wouldn't eat. Burgundus pinched her nose while Cardixa poured watered wine down her throat, but that was as far as any of us felt we could go. The very thought of holding her down and forcibly feeding her made all of us sick. We had a conference, Burgundus, Cardixa, Eutychus and the Vestals, and we decided that you would not want her fed by force. If we have erred, please, we beg you, forgive us. What we did was done with the very best of intentions. This morning she died. It was not difficult, nor a great agony for her. Popillia the Chief Vestal says it is a mercy. It had been many days since she had any sensible congress with us, yet just before the end she came to her senses and spoke lucidly. Mostly about Julia. She asked all of us the adult Vestals were there too to offer sacrifices for Julia to Magna Mater, Juno Sospita and the Bona Dea. Bona Dea seemed to worry her dreadfully; she insisted that we promise to remember Bona Dea. I had to swear that I would give Bona Dea's snakes eggs and milk all year round, every year. Otherwise Aurelia seemed to think that some terrible disaster would befall you. She didn't speak your name until just before she died. The last thing she said was "Tell Caesar all of this will go to his greater glory." Then she closed her eyes and ceased to breathe. There is nothing more. My father is dealing with her funeral, and he is writing, of course. But he insisted that I should be the one to tell you. I am so sorry. I will miss Aurelia with every beat of my heart. Please take care of yourself, Caesar. I know what a blow this will be, following so closely upon Julia. I wish I understood why these things happen, but I do not. Though somehow I know what her last message to you meant. The Gods torture those they love the best. It will all go to your greater glory.

  There were no tears at this news either. Perhaps I already knew that this was how it must finish. Mater, to live on without Julia? Not possible. Oh, why do women have to suffer such unbearable pain? They do not run the world, they are not to blame. Therefore why should they suffer? Their lives are so enclosed, so centered upon the hearth. Their children, their home and their men, in that order. Such is their nature. And nothing is crueler for them than to outlive their children. That part of my life is closed forever. I will not open that door again. I have no one left who loves me as a woman loves her son or her father, and my poor little wife is a stranger who loves her cats more than she does me. For why should she not? They have kept her company, they have given her some semblance of love. Whereas I am never there. I know nothing about love, except that it has to be earned. And though I am completely empty, I can feel the strength in me grow. This will not defeat me. It has freed me. Whatever I have to do, I will do. There is no one left to tell me I cannot. He gathered up three scrolls: Servilia's, Calpurnia's, Aurelia's. The detritus of so many men pulling up their roots and moving on meant many fires, for which Caesar was glad. The last live coal he had needed had be
en found by chance; fires were rare in hot weather. There was always the eternal flame, but it belonged to Vesta and to take flame from it to use for ordinary purposes required ritual and prayers. Caesar was the Pontifex Maximus; he would not profane that mystery. But, as with Pompey's letter, he had fire to hand. He fed Servilia to it, and watched her burn sardonically. Then Calpurnia, his face impassive. The last to go was Aurelia, unopened, but he didn't hesitate. Whatever she had said, whenever she had written it, no longer mattered. Surrounded by flakes dancing in the air, Caesar pulled the folds of his purple-bordered toga over his head and said the words of purification.

  2

  It was eighty miles of easy marching from Portus Itius to Samarobriva: the first day on a rutted track through mighty forests of oak, the second day amid vast clearings wherein the soil had been turned for cropping or rich grasses fed naked Gallic sheep and hairy Gallic cattle. Trebonius had gone with the Twelfth much earlier than Caesar, who was the last to go. Left behind with the Seventh, Fabius had already stripped the defenses of a camp big enough to contain eight legions and re-erected them around a camp which could be comfortably held by one legion. Satisfied that this outpost was in good condition to resist attack, Caesar took the Tenth and headed for Samarobriva. The Tenth was his favorite legion, the one he liked to work with personally, and though its number was not the lowest, it was the original legion of Further Gaul. When he had raced headlong from Rome in that March of nearly five years ago covering the seven hundred miles in eight days and fighting his way along a goat-track pass through the high Alps it was the Tenth he had found with Pomptinus at Genava. By the time the Fifth Alauda and the Seventh had arrived, going the long way under Labienus, Caesar and the Tenth had got to know each other. Typically, not through battle. The army's most quoted joke about Caesar was that for every action you fought, Caesar would have made you shovel ten thousand wagon-loads of earth and rock. As had been the case at Genava, where the Tenth (later joined by the Fifth Alauda and the Seventh) had dug a sixteen-foot-high wall nineteen miles long to keep the emigrating Helvetii out of the Province. Battles, said the army, were Caesar's rewards for all that shoveling, building, logging and slogging. Of which none had done more than the Tenth, nor fought more bravely and intelligently in those fairly infrequent battles. Caesar never fought unless he had to. There was even evidence of the army's work as the long and disciplined column of the Tenth swung their feet in unison and sang their marching songs through the lands of the Morini around Portus Itius. For the rutted road through the oak forests was already fortified; on either side of it a hundred paces back loomed a great wall of fallen oaks, and those hundred paces were spider-moled with their stumps. Two years before, Caesar had led a few cohorts more than three legions against the Morini to pave his way for the expedition he planned to Britannia. He needed a port on the Morini coast, very near the mysterious island. But though he sent out heralds to ask for a treaty, the Morini hadn't sent ambassadors. They caught him in the midst of building a camp, and Caesar almost went down. Had they been better generaled, the war in Gaul of the Long-hairs might have finished there and then with Caesar and his troops dead. But before they administered that final blow (as Caesar certainly would have), the Morini withdrew into their oak forests. And by the time that Caesar had picked up the pieces and burned his slain, he was furiously angry in the cold and passionless way he had made his own. How to teach the Morini that Caesar would win? That every life he had lost would be paid for with terrible suffering? He decided not to retreat. Instead he would go forward, all the way to the salt marshes of the Morini coastline. But not along a narrow track with the ancient oaks overhanging it, perfect shelter for a Belgic horde. No, he would lead his troops upon a broad highway in bright, safe sunlight. "The Morini are Druids, boys!" he shouted to his soldiers in assembly. "They believe that every tree has animus a spirit, a soul! And which tree's spirit is the most sacred? Nemer! The oak! Which tree forms their temple groves, the nemeton? Nemer! The oak! Which tree does the Druid high priest climb clad in white and under the moon to harvest the mistletoe with his golden sickle? Nemer! The oak! From the branches of which tree do the skeletons hang clacking in the breeze as sacrifices to Esus, their god of war? Nemer! The oak! Under which tree does the Druid set up his altar with his human victim lying face down, and cleave his backbone with a sword to interpret the future through his struggles? Nemer! The oak! Which tree is witness when the Druids build their wicker cages, stuff them with men taken prisoner and burn them to honor Taranis, their thunder god? Nemer! The oak!" He paused, seated upon his warhorse with the toes, the vivid scarlet of his general's cloak lying in ordered folds across its haunches, and he smiled brilliantly. His exhausted troops smiled back, feeling the vigor begin to steal through their sinews. "Do we Romans believe that trees have spirits? Do we?" "NO!" roared the soldiers. "Do we believe in oak knowledge and oak magic?" "NO!" roared the soldiers. "Do we believe in human sacrifice?" "NO!" roared the soldiers. "Do we like these people?" "NO!" roared the soldiers. "Then we will kill their minds and their will to live by showing them that Rome is mightier than the mightiest oak! That Rome is eternal but the oak is not! We will liberate the spirits of their oaks and send them to haunt the Morini until time and men have ended!" "YES!" roared the soldiers. "Then to your axes!" Mile after mile through the oak forest Caesar and his men pushed the Morini backward to their fens, felling the oaks as they went in a swath a thousand feet wide, piling the raw lopped trunks and branches into a great wall on either flank, and counting the tally as each majestic old tree groaned to marry the earth. Almost demented with horror and grief, the Morini could not fight back. They retreated keening until they were swallowed up in their fens, where they huddled and mourned desolately. The skies mourned too. On the edge of the salt marshes it began to rain, and it rained until the Roman tents were soaked, the soldiers wet and shivering. Still, what had been done was enough. Satisfied, Caesar had withdrawn to put his men into a comfortable winter camp. But the tale spread; the Belgae and the Celtae rocked in grief, and wondered what sort of men could murder trees yet sleep at night and laugh by day. Only their Roman Gods had substance, nor did the Roman soldiers feel the brush of alien wings inside their minds. So on the march from Portus Itius to Samarobriva they swung their legs and sang their songs through the miles of silent, fallen giants, unperturbed. And Caesar, striding out with them, looked at the wall of murdered oaks and smiled. He was learning new ways to make war, fascinated with the idea of taking war inside the enemy's mind. His faith in himself and his soldiers was limitless, but better by far that conquest came inside the enemy mind. That way, the yoke could never be thrown off. Gaul of the Long-hairs would have to bend; Caesar could not.

  The Greeks had a famous joke: that nothing in the world was uglier than a Gallic oppidum, and it was true of Samarobriva, alas. The stronghold lay on the Samara River in the midst of a lush valley, very burned and dry at the moment, yet still more productive than most places. It was the chief oppidum of a Belgic tribe, the Ambiani, who were closely tied to Commius and the Atrebates, their neighbors and kinsmen to the north. To the south and east they bordered the lands of the Bellovaci, a fierce and warlike people who had submitted but stirred ominously. Beauty, however, was not high on Caesar's list of priorities when he campaigned; Samarobriva suited him extremely well. Though Gaul of the Belgae was not rich in stone and the Gauls were poor quarrymen at the best of times, the walls were made of stone, were high, and had not been difficult to fortify further in the Roman manner. They bristled now with towers from which an enemy force could be seen miles away, the several gates were now behind additional ramparts, and an army camp formidably equipped with defenses lay behind the stronghold. Inside the stone walls was spacious but not inspiring. No people normally lived there; it was a place for the storage of food and tribal treasures. No proper streets, just windowless warehouses and tall granaries dotted randomly about. It did contain a large wooden house two storeys high; in time of war the chief thane and his
nobles lived in it, and at all times it served as a meeting hall for the tribe. Here upstairs Caesar was domiciled in far less comfort than Trebonius enjoyed; during a previous tenancy Trebonius had built himself a stone house above a steamy furnace of coals which heated the floor and the large bath he had installed, together with an Ambiani mistress. Neither dwelling possessed a proper latrine situated above a stream of running water which carried the excrement away into a sewer or a river. In that respect the troops were better off; no winter camp of Caesar's was without such amenities. Latrine pits were acceptable for campaign camps, provided they were dug deep enough and their bottoms covered daily with a thin layer of soil and lime, but even in winter long-term latrine pits bred disease, for they polluted the groundwater. Soldiers had to be fit, not sick. This wasn't a problem the Gauls understood, for they never congregated in towns, preferring to live in small villages or single homesteads across the countryside. They went to war for a few days at a time, and took their women and slaves with them to deal with all the bodily functions. Only the serfs stayed at home and the Druids in their forest retreats. The wooden plank stairs to the meeting hall's upper storey were on the outside of the building, protected a little from the elements by an overhanging eave. Beneath the stairs Caesar had constructed a latrine so deep it was more a well, digging down until he found an underground stream which he had mined through a tunnel so long it entered the Samara River. Not entirely satisfactory, but the best he could do. This facility Trebonius used as well. A fair trade, said Caesar, for the use of Trebonius's bath. The roof had been thatched, this being the usual Gallic roof on a building of any size, but Caesar had all a Roman's horror of fire as well as his private horror of rats and bird lice, both of which thought thatch had been invented for their enjoyment. So the thatch had come off, replaced with slate tiles he had brought from the foothills of the Pyrenees. His house was therefore cold, damp and airless, as its small windows were protected by shutters of solid wood instead of fretted Italian shutters permitting an exchange of air. He made do because it was not his custom to remain in Gaul of the Long-hairs for the duration of the six-month furlough the seasons gave his troops. Under, normal circumstances he stayed in whatever oppidum he had chosen for winter headquarters for a few days only before setting out for Italian Gaul and Illyricum, where he ministered to those absolutely Roman provinces in the exquisite degree of comfort provided by the richest man in whatever town he was visiting. This winter would be different. He would not be going to Italian Gaul and Illyricum; Samarobriva was home for the next six months. No condolences, especially now that he knew his mother was also dead. Who would be the third? Though, come to think of it, in his life the deaths happened in twos, not threes. Gaius Marius and his father. Cinnilla and Aunt Julia. Now Julia and Mater. Yes, twos. And who besides was left? His freedman Gaius Julius Thrasyllus was waiting in the doorway at the top of the stairs, smiling and bowing. "I'm here for the whole winter, Thrasyllus. What can we do to make this place more habitable?" he asked, handing over his scarlet cloak. There were two servants waiting to unbuckle his leather cuirass and the outer skirt of straps, but first he had to divest himself of the scarlet sash of his high imperium; he and he alone could touch it, and when it was unknotted he folded it carefully and placed it in the jeweled box Thrasyllus held out. His under-dress was scarlet linen cushioned with a stuffing of wool between diamond-shaped stitching, thick enough to soak up the sweat of marching (there were many generals who preferred to wear a tunic on the march, even if they traveled in a gig, but the soldiers had to march in twenty pounds of chain mail, so Caesar wore his cuirass) and thick enough now to be warm. The servants removed his boots and put slippers of Ligurian felt upon his feet, then whisked the military impedimenta away for storage. "I suggest you build a proper house like Gaius Trebonius's, Caesar," said Thrasyllus. "You're right, I will. I'll look for a site tomorrow." A smile, then he was gone into the big room wherein couches and other Roman furnishings were scattered. She wasn't there, but he could hear her talking to Orgetorix next door. Best find her when she was occupied, couldn't overwhelm him with affection. There were times when he liked that, but not this evening. He was bruised in spirit. There. Over by the cot, her fabulous mane of fiery hair falling forward so that he couldn't see much more of his son than a pair of woolly purple socks. Why did she persist in clothing the child in purple? He had voiced his displeasure many times, but she failed to understand, as she was the daughter of a king. To her, the child was the future King of the Helvetii; therefore, purple was his color. She sensed him rather than saw him and straightened at once, face all eyes and teeth, so great was her pleasure. Then she frowned at the beard. "Tata!" crowed the little boy, holding out his arms. He had a look more of Aunt Julia than of Caesar himself, and that alone was enough to melt Caesar's heart. The same big grey eyes, the same shape to his face, and luckily the same creamy skin instead of a pinkly pallid, freckled Gallic integument. But his hair was entirely his own, much the same color as Sulla's had been, neither red nor gold. And it promised to deserve the cognomen Caesar, which meant a fine thick head of hair. How Caesar's enemies had used his thinning hair to ridicule him! A pity then that this little boy would never bear the name Caesar. She had named him after her father, who had been King of the Helvetii: Orgetorix.