Стивен Сейлор - The Throne of Caesar

The senators began moving across the courtyard and up the steps.

Caesar lowered his voice. “Now lend me your arm,” he said to Decimus, who was standing nearest, “while I step down from the platform. The last thing we need now is a misstep!” He smiled to make light of the moment, but Decimus looked very serious as he helped Caesar descend. With Antony on his right and Decimus on his left, Caesar headed for the steps. He looked over his shoulder .

“Stay close by me, Gordianus. I shall tend to your induction early on, so that you can join in the voting right away.”

There was a fluttering in my chest. My heart lurched into my throat. In a matter of minutes, I would be standing before the Senate, having to speak. My mouth was dry and I felt light-headed. I was also hot, so hot I thought I might faint, despite the thinness of Cinna’s summer toga.

“Papa, are you all right?” said Meto.

“What? Me? Of course I am.”

“Papa! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you like this. You mustn’t worry. Everything will go smoothly, I’m sure. Caesar knows what he’s doing.”

“Yes, I’m sure he does.”

“If only I could be there with you. But only senators are allowed in the chamber during meetings. Well, senators and a handful of secretaries and official scribes, like Cicero’s man Tiro.”

I was to be on my own, then, in a room full of the most powerful men on earth, some of whose darkest secrets were known to me from past investigations. Some of those men liked me, perhaps. Some loathed me, I was certain. Would a single one of them welcome me as an equal, even at Caesar’s behest?

“Where will you go, Meto?”

He shrugged. I knew he was trying to behave as nonchalantly as possible, for my sake. “Perhaps I’ll sneak into the gladiator show. Yes, I just might. Even if you have no taste for it, Papa, I enjoy seeing a bit of bloodshed now and then. Why not today?”

Midway up the steps, Caesar stopped and turned back. “Meto! Here, take these.” He thrust out his left hand, in which he clutched all the petitions that had been given to him on the way to the Senate House. “Read through them for me, will you? See if there’s anything so important that I should attend to it before we leave.”

Meto took the petitions, nodded, and was off.

Caesar continued up the steps, with Antony on his right, Decimus on his left, and me a step behind.

Suddenly, Cinna was beside me. “I just passed your son, who made me promise to stay close and look after you today. And so I shall. Take heart, Gordianus! Really, old fellow, you look like a ghost. Or like a man who’s seen a ghost.”

I tried to smile. Coming rapidly up the steps behind us I saw a figure in a dark green tunic, conspicuous amid so many white togas. By his red beard, I recognized Artemidorus, whom I had seen at the house of Brutus and Porcia, the tutor of their young son. Artemidorus’s father had taught Caesar, I recalled, which perhaps explained the man’s boldness in approaching Caesar at that moment, only a few steps from the entrance of the Senate House.

“Caesar!” he called. “Caesar, please, I have something for you.”

Decimus turned around and stiffened, as if he feared some threat, but all that Artemidorus held in his hand was a small piece of parchment, rolled tightly like a scroll.

Caesar also stopped and turned to face Artemidorus, who now stood a step below me and Cinna, panting as if out of breath.

“Please, Caesar, take this!”

Caesar saw the parchment. “Go find Meto, Artemidorus. There he is, just past the altar. He’ll take that from you and put it with the other petitions.”

“But this is for your eyes only, Caesar!”

“Then tell Meto not to read it. Tell him to leave it rolled up until he can give it to me.”

“No, no, Caesar, you must read it now!”

Decimus scowled. Looking past him, I saw Brutus and Cassius huddled beside a column at the top of the steps, gazing down at the scene. Cassius’s face was a blank, but Brutus looked acutely uncomfortable. Was he embarrassed to see his son’s tutor make a spectacle of himself?

Decimus reached past me, toward Artemidorus, as if to repel him, but Caesar raised his hand to intervene. “No, Decimus, leave him alone. I shall take the thing, if he insists. Gordianus, you take it from him and hand it up to me.”

Artemidorus reluctantly pressed the scrap of parchment into my hand .

“Let Gordianus keep it for you,” said Decimus, sounding strangely insistent.

Antony looked faintly amused. Caesar glowered. “Stop this fussing, Decimus! Hand it to me, Gordianus.”

I looked down at the parchment. I felt a sudden impulse to unroll and read it. I hesitated, and almost did so—but Caesar, sensing my presumption, snatched the scrap from my hand.

“Now be off, Artemidorus!” he snapped.

“Caesar! Please! Read it at once!”

Caesar paused. He studied Artemidorus for a moment. He started to unroll the parchment. Then we were all distracted by the sudden arrival of a man who grabbed Antony’s shoulder and shouted, “Antony! Antony! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Trebonius,” said Antony, a bit tentatively, as if neither sharing nor comprehending the man’s enthusiasm.

“Antony, I haven’t seen you in a Titan’s age! Listen, there’s something we must talk about before the Senate convenes.”

“Yes?”

“Stay behind, just for a moment. No need to make the Dictator more tardy than he is already!” Trebonius smiled at Caesar. Caesar smiled faintly in return, then nodded to Antony, granting permission for him to leave his company.

Cinna, observing my wrinkled brow, whispered in my ear, “Trebonius and Antony are old comrades in arms. They go back to the Battle of Alesia.”

“Seems fonder of Antony than Antony is of him,” I said, as Trebonius led Antony down the steps.

“Probably wants a favor—like this pest!” whispered Cinna, who then grunted as Artemidorus attempted to step past him.

“Artemidorus, enough of this!” said Caesar sharply. He made a gesture with one hand that brooked no argument. In the other hand he clutched the rolled parchment, now somewhat crumpled. “I shall read your message the moment I’m settled in my chair. ”

“Yes, Greek, desist!” Decimus said sharply, placing a hand on Caesar’s shoulder and leading him onward, up the steps. Cinna followed close behind, but I hung back, seized by sudden, acute curiosity. As Artemidorus turned to go, I grabbed his arm.

“What’s in the message?” I said.

His face was impossible to read, but he was clearly experiencing some desperate emotion. Anger? Sorrow? Fear?

“Not your business!” he whispered. “Just tell Caesar to read it now —before he sits on that throne. He must!”

“His golden chair is not a throne,” I said, trying to make light of his insistence. “Only kings have thrones—”

Ignoring me, Artemidorus turned and practically ran down the steps, taking two at a time, never looking back. His dark green tunic vanished amid the toga-clad crowd ascending the steps.

“How very strange,” I said to myself. I turned around and looked upward to see the reactions of Cassius and Brutus, but they had both disappeared, as Caesar was about to do, having taken the final step. Decimus still touched his shoulder, escorting him. Cinna was a step behind them. I hurried to catch up.

Why was Artemidorus so insistent? Why had he disappeared so quickly, with such a look on his face? Was the Greek tutor trying to beg Caesar for a favor—or trying to warn him? And of what? Of whom?

My heart lurched in my chest—because I was an old man walking too quickly up a flight of steps, I told myself. My vague apprehension was nothing more than a distraction I was foisting on myself, to quell the anxiety I felt as the moment of my induction drew ever closer. My dread of that moment was the source of my uneasiness—not Artemidorus and his message, or the mortified look on Brutus’s face, or Antony’s sudden absence, or Decimus’s single-minded determination to shepherd Caesar into the Senate House.