Colleen McCullough - 6. The October Horse - A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

It was late afternoon when Cicero walked into the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, his beloved freedman Tiro in his wake. "Congratulations!" he roared. "Fellow senators, what a feat! What a victory for the Republic!" That huge voice had them jumping, squawking, scrambling into the corners of the cella. Eyes adjusting to the gloom, Cicero told them over in astonishment. Marcus Brutus? Ye gods! How had they managed to talk him into this? But how terrified they were! Killing Caesar had utterly unmanned them, even Cassius, even Decimus Brutus, even that wolfshead Minucius Basilus. So he settled to talk them out of their panic, only to find that nothing he said could persuade them to emerge from the temple, declaim upon the rostra. Finally he sent Tiro to buy wine, and when it came he dished it out in the rude clay beakers the vendor had supplied, watched them drink it so thirstily that it was gone in a trice. When Trebonius walked in he was still trying to jolly them. "The gladiators are outside," Trebonius said briefly, then snorted in disgust. "As I feared, Antonius ran home and has bolted himself in. So has Dolabella and every member of the Senate who knows." He turned on the Liberators in exasperated anger. "Why did you panic?" he demanded. "Why aren't you down there on the rostra? People are gathering like flies on a carcass, but there's no one to tell them what's happened." "He looked so awful!" Brutus moaned, rocking back and forth. "How could anyone so alive be dead? Awful, awful!" "Come," said Cicero suddenly, pulled Brutus to his feet and crossed to where Cassius sat, head between his knees. Cassius too was hauled up. "The three of us are going down to the rostra, and I'll hear no arguments. Someone has to speak to the people, and, since we lack Antonius or Dolabella, yours are the two best-known faces. Move! Come on, move!" One hand in Cassius's, the other in Brutus's, Cicero dragged the pair out of the temple and propelled them down the Clivus Capitolinus, thrust them up on to the rostra. A crowd gathered, not a huge one; its mood was docile, bewildered, aimless. As he looked at it, Brutus regained sufficient composure to understand that Cicero was right, that something had to be said. His cap of liberty on his dark curls, his toga long gone, he stepped to the front of the rostra. "Fellow Romans," he said in a small voice, "it is true that Caesar is dead. That he should continue to live had become intolerable to all men who love freedom. So some of us, including me, decided to free Rome from Caesar's dictatorial tyranny." He held his dagger aloft in his bloody hand, its makeshift bandage emphasizing the redness. A moan went up, but the crowd, growing rapidly as word spread that someone was speaking from the rostra, made no move, evinced no rage. "Caesar couldn't be let strip land off men who have held it for centuries just to settle his veterans in Italy," Brutus said in the same small voice. "We, the Liberators, who killed Caesar Dictator, the King of Rome, understand that Rome's soldiers must have land to retire on, and we love Rome's soldiers just as much as Caesar did, but we love Rome's landowners too, and what were we to do, I ask you? Caesar leaned too much one way, so Caesar had to go. Rome is more than merely veterans, though we, who have liberated Rome from Caesar, love Rome's veterans " He wandered and meandered, all about veteran soldiers and their land, which meant very little to this urban crowd, and told them virtually nothing about why or how Caesar had died. No one who tried to decipher what Brutus was saying was sure who these Liberators were, or who had freed whom from what. Cicero stood listening with a leaden heart. He couldn't speak until Brutus finished anyway, but the longer Brutus dribbled on, the less he wanted to speak at all. Phrases like "committing verbal suicide" danced through his mind; the trouble was that this wasn't his arena, he needed the resonance of a good hall to bounce his voice around and he needed to look at intelligent faces, not masses. Run down, Brutus stopped very suddenly. The crowd remained still and silent. A scream shattered that silence, ripping from the direction of the Velabrum, then was followed by another, closer, from the shadows the Basilica Julia's bulk cast on the Vicus lugarius. Another scream, another. On the rostra, Brutus saw what was coming through a widening gap in the throng a vegetable cart pushed by two very tall, strong young men who looked like Gauls. On it lay something covered in a purple-bordered toga, and off one side of the barrow hung a limply flopping hand and lower arm, white as chalk. Behind the two Gauls pushing this burden walked two more, and in their wake, Lucius Julius Caesar in a tunic. Brutus began to shriek, terrible sounds of horror and pain. Then, before Cicero could restrain him, he was running, Cassius too, off the rostra, back up the hill of the Capitol to the temple. Not knowing what else to do, Cicero followed them. "He's in the Forum! He's dead, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead! I've seen him!" Brutus howled as he reached the cella, fell on the floor and began to weep like one demented. Not in much better case, Cassius crawled to his corner and sobbed. The next thing all of them were crying, moaning. "I give up," said Cicero to Trebonius, who looked exhausted. "I'm going to get them some food and decent wine. You stay here, Trebonius. Sooner or later they have to come to their senses, but not before morning, I think. I'll send blankets too it's cold in here." At the doorway he tilted his head, stared at Trebonius dolefully. "Hear that? Mourning, not jubilation. It seems that those in the Forum would rather have Caesar than liberty."

They took Caesar to the Pontifex Maximus's bathroom first; Hapd'efan'e, who had returned from Calvinus's, hung on to his physician's composure and peeled the tattered toga off, the tunic beneath it; no togate man wore a loincloth. While Trogus took off the high red boots of the Alban kings, Hapd'efan'e began to wash away the blood, Lucius Caesar watching. He was a beautifully made man, Caesar, even at fifty-five, his skin always white where the sun hadn't weathered it, but utterly white now, for all his blood had poured away. "Twenty-three wounds," said Hapd'efan'e, "but if he had had immediate attention, none would have killed him except that one, there." He pointed to the most professionally administered blow, not very large, but right over the heart. "He died the moment it fell, I don't have to open his chest to know that the blade went right inside the heart. Two of his assailants had something very personal to say there" pointing to the face "and there." He pointed to the genitals. "They knew him much better than the others. His beauty and his virility offended them." "Can you mend him well enough to display his body?" Lucius asked, wondering which two had hated Caesar so personally, for as yet he had no idea who the assassins were. "I am trained in mummification, lord Lucius. I know that is not necessary for a people who cremate, but even his face will be whole again when I have finished," said Hapd'efan'e. He hesitated, his very dark, slightly sloed eyes staring at Lucius painfully. "Pharaoh does she know?" he asked. "Oh, Jupiter! Probably not," said Lucius, and sighed. "Yes, Hapd'efan'e, I'll go and see her now. Caesar would want that." "His poor women," said Hapd'efan'e, and went on working.

So Lucius Caesar, wrapped in one of his cousin's togas, set out with two of Trogus's mourning sons to see Cleopatra. He didn't bother boating across the river, he took the Pons Aemilia and the Via Aurelia, not sorry for the solitude of the long walk. Gaius, Gaius, Gaius . . . You were tired, so tired. I've seen it descending upon you like a dense fog a little at a time, ever since they forced you to cross the Rubicon. That was never what you wanted. All you wanted was your due. The men who denied you that were small, petty, mean-spirited, devoid of a particle of common sense. Their emotions drove them, not their intellects. That's why they could never understand you. A man with your kind of detachment is an indictment of irrational stupidity. Oh, but I will miss you! Somehow Cleopatra knew; she met him clad in black. "Caesar is dead," she said very steadily, her chin up, those remarkable eyes tearless. "Did you hear the rumor, even out here?" "No. Pu'em-re saw it when he spilled the sands and sifted them. He did that after we found Amun-Ra turned on his pedestal to the west, and Osiris broken into pieces on the ground." "An earth tremor on this side of the river. There was none in the city that I know of," Lucius said. "Gods move the earth when they die, Lucius. I mourn him in my body, but not in my soul, for he is not dead. He has gone into the west, from whence he came. Caesar will be a God, even in Rome. Pu'em-re saw it in the sands, saw his temple in the Forum. Divus Julius. He was murdered, wasn't he?" she asked. "Yes, by little men who couldn't bear to be eclipsed." "Because they thought he wanted to be a king. But they did not know him, did they? A terrible deed, Lucius. Because they murdered him, the whole world will take a different course onward. It is one thing to murder a man, quite another to murder a God on earth. They will pay for their crime, but all the peoples of the world will pay far more. They tampered with the Will of Amun-Ra, who is Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Zeus. They played the God game." "How will you tell his son?" "Honestly. He is Pharaoh. Once we return to Egypt, I will put my brother down like the jackal he is, and raise Caesarion to the throne beside me. One day he will inherit Caesar's world." "But he can't be Caesar's heir," Lucius said gently. The yellow eyes widened, looked scornful. "Oh, Caesar's heir must be a Roman, I know that. But it is Caesarion who is Caesar's blood son, who will inherit all that Caesar was." "I can't stay," Lucius said, "but I urge you to leave for Egypt as soon as possible. The men who killed Caesar might thirst for other blood." "Oh, I intend to go. What is left here for me?" Her eyes shimmered, but no tears fell. "I didn't have a chance to say goodbye." "None of us did. If there's anything you need, come to me." She let him out into the cold night, and sent torchbearers with him armed with spare ones; her torches were dipped in the fine asphalt from the Palus Asphaltites in Judaea, but no torch lasted very long. Just as no life lasted very long. Only the Gods lived forever, and even they could be forgotten. How calm she is! thought Lucius. Perhaps sovereigns are different from other men and women. Caesar was, and he had been a natural sovereign. It is not the diadem, it is the spirit. On the Pons Aemilius he met Caesar's oldest friend, the knight Gaius Matius, whose family had occupied the other ground-floor apartment in Aurelia's Suburan insula. They fell on each other's shoulders and wept. "Do you know yet who did it, Matius?" Lucius asked, wiping his eyes and putting an arm around Matius's shoulders as they walked. "I've heard some names, which is why Piso asked me to go to meet you. Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius and two of his own Gallic marshals, Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius. Pah!" Matius spat. "They owed him everything, and this is how they thank him." "Jealousy is the worst vice of all, Matius." "The idea was Trebonius's," Matius went on, "though he didn't strike a blow. His job was to keep Antonius out of the House while the rest did the deed. No lictors inside. It was very clever, but it fell down afterward. They panicked and went to earth in Jupiter Optimus Maximus's." Lucius felt a coldness growing in the pit of his belly. "Was Antonius a part of the plot?" "Some say yes, some say no, but Lucius Piso doesn't think so, nor does Philippus. There's no real reason to suppose it, Lucius, if Trebonius was obliged to stay outside and detain him." A sob, several more, then Matius broke into a fresh spate of tears. "Oh, Lucius, what will we do? If Caesar, with all his genius, couldn't find a way out, then who is there left to try? We're lost!"