Steven Saylor - The judgement of Caesar

I drew closer, and at last heard their visitor's voice, even above the sudden pounding of my heart in my chest. "Boys, boys, how I've missed you! Though I don't know how Papa puts up with all your pestering."

I stopped in the hallway, several steps from the door. "Go!" I whispered to the officer escorting me. "You've delivered me to my room, as you were ordered to do. Don't say a word. Take your men and leave!"

The officer raised an eyebrow, but did as I asked.

I stepped through the open doorway.

Meto leaned against one wall. The boys were gamboling about and gazing up at him until I entered the room, whereupon they collided and almost knocked each other down. Rupa, who had not met Meto before, stood off to himself, near the window; his shy, but good-natured, smile vanished when I looked at him. Merianis stood nearby, holding Alexander the cat in her arms. She saw my expression, put down the cat, and stepped toward the boys, grabbing each by a shoulder to stop their constant motion. The cat disappeared beneath my bed.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded.

Meto gazed at me for a long moment, his expression at first beseeching and then, when I showed no response, exasperated. "Papa, this is madness! I'd beg for your forgiveness-if I even knew what I'd done to offend you."

Had he forgotten the things I said to him at Massilia? I hadn't. Far from it! How many nights had I lain awake while Bethesda tossed and turned beside me, remembering the words that had come tumbling out of me on that occasion? "Words once spoken can never be recalled," as the poet warns, but in the heat of the moment, I had lost all inhibition and the words had rushed forth, delivering me to a decision I had not foreseen.

Meto! First you became a soldier, and you thrived on it, killing Gauls for the glory of Caesar. Burning villages, enslaving children, leaving widows to starve-it always sickened me, though I never spoke against it. Now you've found a new calling, spying for Caesar, destroying others by deceit. It sickens me even more…

What matters most to me? Uncovering the truth! I do it even when there's no point to it, even when it brings only pain. I do it because I must. But you, Meto? What does truth mean to you? You can't abide it, any more than I can abide deceit! We're complete opposites. No wonder you've found your place at the side of a man like Caesar…

This is our last conversation, Meto. From this moment, you are not my son. I disown you. I renounce all concern for you. I take back from you my name. If you need a father, let Caesar adopt you!

Until that day, in Alexandria, those had been the very last words I had spoken to him.

"There's nothing to discuss and no question of forgiveness. It's quite simple: This is my room, at least for the moment, and you don't belong here. You shouldn't have come. I suppose you followed me, or had me followed, since that's your way of doing things-"

"No!" Merianis spoke up. "I brought him here."

"You? But how-?"

"Earlier, when I delivered you for your dinner with Caesar, I waited at the checkpoint. A little later, Apollodorus appeared, bearing the gift for Caesar. Meto came. He recognized me from the other day, when the king officially received Caesar on the landing. We spoke, very briefly-"

"But not so briefly that Meto didn't learn all he needed to know about you. He's become quite expert at extracting valuable information. It's one of his duties." And one of yours as well? I thought, but did not say aloud; for it was clear to me now that Merianis was not merely a priest-ess of Isis, but a spy for the incarnation of Isis, Queen Cleopatra.

Merianis persisted. "Later-after I'd brought you back to this room and the king's men whisked you away-Meto sent a courier requesting me to return to the checkpoint. I met him there. He asked me to show him here, to your room. Was it wrong to do so? Meto is your son, is he not?"

Ptolemy and Pothinus had known of my estrangement from Meto. Had Merianis not also known of it? Perhaps she was more innocent than I thought-or perhaps not. I suddenly found myself full of suspicion, and I loathed the feeling. It was into just such a morass of doubt and double-dealing that I had found myself immersed in Massilia, and the result had been my breach with both Meto and Caesar. The two of them had followed me to Alexandria, bringing their poisonous treachery to a city already riven by deceit. I felt like a man struggling in quicksand, unable to find a foothold. I wanted only to be left alone.

"Go, Merianis."

"Gordianus-called-Finder, if by bringing your son here I have offended you-"

"Go!"

She frowned and wrinkled her brow, then turned and exited through the open doorway.

"As for you, Meto-"

"Papa, don't speak rashly! Please, I beg you-"

"Silence!"

He bit his lip and lowered his eyes, but seemed compelled to speak. "Papa, if it means something to you, I've begun to share your doubts about Caesar." He gazed at me for a moment before looking away, as if taken aback at the enormity and the recklessness of the words he had just uttered.

I stared at him until he returned my gaze. "Elaborate."

He looked sidelong at Rupa.

I nodded. "I see. Your training as a spy has taught you to hold your tongue in front of a stranger. But I won't ask Rupa to leave the room. Or the boys, either. Anything you have to say to me can be said to them as well."

"This is difficult enough for me!" Meto glared at Rupa with an emotion that went beyond mere distrust. I had disowned Meto; I had adopted Rupa. Did Meto feel he had been replaced?

I shook my head. "Say what you have to say."

He drew a deep breath. "Ever since Pharsalus… no, even before that. Since the military operations at Dyrrachium… or was it when Caesar was last in Rome, using his powers as dictator to settle the problems that had cropped up in his absence? No, even earlier; I think it must have begun when I was reunited with him at Massilia-when you disowned me there in the town square, even as Caesar was basking in the triumph of the city's surrender. The things you said to me, the things you said about Caesar-I thought you'd gone mad, Papa. Quite literally, I thought the strains of the siege had driven you to distraction. Afterwards, Caesar said as much. 'Don't worry,' he told me, 'your father will come to his senses. Give him time.' But perhaps that was the moment I began to come to my senses."

He paused, gathering strength to go on. "Was I the one who changed? Or was it Caesar? Don't misunderstand me; he's still the greatest man I've ever encountered in this world. His intellect, his courage, his insight-he towers above the rest of us like a colossus. And yet…"

He fell silent for a long moment, then finally shrugged. "It's me. I've simply lost my stomach for it. I've seen too much blood, too much suffering. There's a dream I have over and over, about a little village in Gaul, a tiny place, utterly insignificant compared to Rome or Alexandria, but not so insignificant that it could be ignored when it raised a challenge to Caesar. We circled the village and took them by surprise. There was a battle, quite short and simple as battles go. We slaughtered every man who dared to take up arms against us. Those who surrendered we put in chains. Then we rousted the women and children and the old people from their homes, and we burned the whole village to the ground. To set an example, you see. The survivors were sold as slaves, probably to other Gauls. That was how it worked in Gaul. Surrender and become a Roman subject; oppose us and become a slave. 'One must always give them a clear, simple choice,' Caesar told me. 'You are with Rome or against Rome; there is no middle ground.'

"But when I dream about that village, it's the face of one particular child I see, a little boy too young to fight, almost too young to understand what was happening. His father had been killed in the battle; his mother was mad with grief. The little boy didn't cry at all; he simply watched the house he'd grown up in as it was eaten by flames. To judge from the workshop attached to the house, the boy's father had been a smith. The boy would probably have grown up to be a smith, too, with a wife and children and a life in the village. But instead, he saw his father die and he was taken from his mother, to become a slave for the rest of his life. Whatever money his new master paid for him went to fund more campaigns against more villages in Gaul, so that more boys like him could be enslaved. In my dream, I see his face, blank and staring, with the light of the flames in his eyes.