John Roberts - The Will

"Good evening, Sallustius," I said pleasantly. The toad-eyes darted about, saw what I had been examining and he wilted. "Now, if I allow you to live will you speak in pleasant, conversational tones and not wake the slaves?" The dagger point scraped his neck and he nodded gingerly. I signalled Hermes to let him go.

"Metellus, this is low even for you," Sallustius said, without much heat. "You've been accused of all sorts of vile behaviour, but I didn't know housebreaking was one of your practices."

"No help for it. I knew what had to be here and just now there's no legal means available to get you to cough these up, so extra-legal measures were called for. I knew where to look when Antonius all but served you up on a platter this afternoon."

He rolled his eyes. "That lunkhead! What tipped you?"

"He said he was writing a biography of Caesar. The very idea was ludicrous, but I knew that something had to have put the idea in his head. He said you'd volunteered to handle his papers and you fancy yourself a historian, therefore, you must have the relevant documents, including both wills. You wrote them at Caesar's dictation, didn't you?"

"Of course. Including the one that wasn't read at Piso's house."

"How did you accomplish that? Piso was executor. Was he in on this?"

"Of course not! He never saw it. I copied it out and Caesar appended his seal. I was to deliver it to Piso and tell him it superseded the other."

"Why didn't you?" I demanded.

"Because Caesar was dead before the ink had a chance to dry. I wrote it down in the early hours of the Ides."

I marvelled at the document, chuckling. "My Julia just has to see this. Sallustius, you are going to be my guest tonight. You will escort us out the front door and we'll have a little drink while I decide what to do with you. Hermes, gather up all these papers."

"Do with me? Metellus, you are going to do whatever will keep you safe, and that means keeping your mouth shut and leaving me strictly alone." It pains me to say it, but the man wasn't entirely without intelligence or courage.

"That's to be seen. Let's go." And so we went out through the darkened streets of Rome to my house in the Subura.

"Brutus!" Julia all but shrieked. "He left everything to Brutus! I can't believe it! He adopted Octavian!"

"Caesar had a way of changing his mind," Sallustius said, holding a silver goblet that held heated wine with a dash of vinegar, just the thing to take the edge off a chilly night in April.

"And," I said, "there are those old stories that he fathered Brutus. Caesar and Servilia were quite close, you know."

"Nonsense!" she said. "He'd have had to father Brutus when he was only fourteen years old! It's not-" she looked at us, but we just looked back with that expression of bland innocence we always give to our women. "I still don't believe it!"

"You don't have to," I assured her. "This was not to be the last will, surely. One day it was Octavian, the next Brutus, probably Antonius soon enough. He was a calculating man and he wanted all his cronies to keep guessing who would receive his favour. It bound them to him."

"But how would they know?" she asked.

I looked at Sallustius. "Oh, I think he had reason to believe that word would get whispered in the right ears." He studied the decoration on my wall. Not as splendid as his own, of course.

Now Julia glared at him. "So you went to Antonius and told him about the second will, and he bribed you to keep it secret."

"Bribed me?" he said, offended. "I am already as rich as he is. I wanted all of Caesar's papers for my biography."

"To which Antonius graciously assented, since he can barely read. Sallustius, you'll have to talk to Octavian if you want to use them for your work. They're going to him, as I agreed."

"Metellus," he said, "Antonius greatly preferred the earlier will, because he knew he could dominate a callow boy like Octavian. And Caesar adopted the boy. But if you let it be known that Caesar favoured Brutus above Antonius, he'll regard you as his mortal enemy."

"Let me worry about that. As for you, Sallustius, I advise you to retire from political life and stick to your scribbling. We're about to have another round of squabbling warlords, and to them such men as you are eminently disposable. One or another of them will denounce you just to lay hands on your wealth. Now be off with you." With a sour look he slunk from my house. He took my advice, too.

"What are we going to do with this?" Julia said, shaking her head at the will. "We can't let the world know that Caesar willed everything to his own murderer."

"Nor shall we," I said, pouring myself another cup with great satisfaction. "Tomorrow, I will go to the house of Antonius again, and this time I will burn that document in front of him. Not to keep your uncle from looking like a gullible fool, but to save my own neck. It's all he wants, anyway. He never had any use for the other papers and this will put him in my debt once again. That could come in handy, soon. Let Octavian have them."

Besides, I knew that the little nobody would never amount to anything.

These things happened in the year 710 of the city of Rome, during the unconstitutional rule of the Magister Equitum Marcus Antonius.