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

Brutus dropped the letter as if it too burned, eyes wide but vision turned inward. Watching inside his mind as Servilia tied his wife to a chair, jacked her mouth wide open, and forced the coals down her throat. Oh, yes, Mama, it was you. You conceived the idea out of your threat to force-feed my poor tormented girl. Its horrific cruelty would have appealed to you you are the cruelest person I know. Do you think me a fool, Mama? No one, no matter how mad, can commit suicide that way. Bodily reflexes alone would prevent it. You tied her down and fed them to her. The agony! Oh, Porcia, my pillar of flame! My dearly beloved, core of my being. Cato's daughter, so full of courage, so alive, so passionate. He didn't weep. He didn't even destroy the letter. Instead he walked out on to the balcony overlooking that mirrored sound of water and stared sightlessly at the forested hill on its far side. I curse you, Mama. May you be visited daily by the Furies. May you never again know a moment's peace. A comfort for me to know that Aquila your lover died at Mutina, but you never cared for him. Leaving aside Caesar, the ruling passion of your entire life has been your hatred of Cato, your own brother. But your killing Porcia is a signal to me. That you do not expect ever to see me again. That you deem my cause hopeless and my chances of success nonexistent. For if I ever did see you again, I would tie you down and feed you hot coals.

* * *

When King Deiotarus sent Brutus a legion of infantry and said that he would do whatever lay in his power to aid the Liberators, Brutus wrote (vainly, as it turned out) to all the cities of Asia Province and demanded that they give him troops, ships and money. From Bithynia he asked two hundred warships and fifty transports, but there was no one to implement his request, nor would the local socii co-operate; Cimber's quaestor, Turullius, he now discovered, had taken everything the province could offer and gone to serve Cassius. News from Rome continued to be alarming: Mark Antony was a second-class public enemy, so was Lepidus. Then Gaius Clodius, the legate Brutus had left in charge of Apollonia, wrote to tell Brutus that he had heard for absolute certain that Mark Antony was in the act of mounting a full-scale invasion of western Macedonia to rescue his brother. Clodius's response had been to lock himself and the Legio Macedonica inside Apollonia and to kill Gaius Antonius. His logic was impeccably Clodian: once Antony learned that his brother was dead, he'd cancel his invasion. Oh, Gaius Clodius, why did you do that? Marcus Antonius is inimicus, he's in no position to mount any rescue invasions! Terrified nonetheless of what Antony might do when he found out that his brother was dead, Brutus put some of his legions into camp along the river Granicus in Bithynia, and ordered the rest to march back into the west as far as Thessalonica while he himself raced ahead to see exactly what was happening on the Adriatic coast of Macedonia. Nothing. When he reached Apollonia late in Julius, he found the Legio Macedonica enthusiastically investigating reported landings of Antonian troops here, there, and everywhere. "But every last report is spurious," said Gaius Clodius. "Clodius, you should not have executed Gaius Antonius!" "Of course I should," said Gaius Clodius, unrepentant. "In my view, the world is well rid of the cunnus. Besides, as I said to you in my letter, I was sure that if Marcus knew his brother was dead, he wouldn't bother trying to rescue a corpse. And I was right." Brutus threw his hands in the air who could reason with a Clodius? They were all mad. So he backtracked east again to Thessalonica, where he found his legions and Gaius Flavius Hemicillus already at work. Cassius was finally in contact, informing the astonished Brutus that Syria was uncontestably his. Dolabella was dead, and he was planning to invade Egypt and punish its queen for not helping him. That would take two months, said Cassius, after which he would start mounting an expedition to invade the Kingdom of the Parthians. Those seven Roman Eagles taken from Crassus at Carrhae had to be wrested from their pedestals in Ecbatana. "Cassius's work is cut out for him for some time to come," said Hemicillus, one of those people noble Rome could produce by the dozens: meticulous, efficient, logical, canny. "While he is so engaged, it would benefit your troops greatly if you were to blood them in a small campaign." "A small campaign?" Brutus asked warily. "Yes, against the Thracian Bessi." It turned out that Hemicillus had befriended a Thracian prince named Rhascupolis, whose tribe was subject to King Sadala of the Bessi, the major people of inland Thrace. "I want," said Rhascupolis, introduced to Brutus, "independent status for my tribe and the title Friend and Ally of the Roman People. In return for that, I will help you conduct a successful war against the Bessi." "But they're fearsome warriors," Brutus objected. "Indeed they are, Marcus Brutus. However, they have their weaknesses, and I know every one of them. Use me as your mentor, and I promise you victory over the Bessi within a single month, as well as plenty of spoils," said Rhascupolis. Like other coastal Thracians, Rhascupolis did not look like a barbarian; he wore proper clothes, was not tattooed, spoke Attic Greek, and conducted himself like any other civilized man. "Are you the chieftain of your tribe, Rhascupolis?" Brutus asked, sensing that something was being withheld. "I am, but I have an older brother, Rhascus, who thinks he should be chieftain," Rhascupolis confessed. "And where is this Rhascus?" "Gone, Marcus Brutus. He is not a danger." Nor was he. Brutus led his legions into the heart of Thrace, a huge area of country between the Danubius and Strymon Rivers and the Aegean Sea, more lowland than highland, and, as he soon learned, capable of producing wheat even in the midst of this drought, which seemed to exist almost everywhere. Feeding his troops had become an expensive exercise, but with the Bessi grain in his enormous cavalcade of ox wagons, Brutus could look forward to winter in better spirits. The campaign had lasted throughout the month of Sextilis, and at the end of it Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar's unmartial paper shuffler, had blooded his army with minimal losses. That army had hailed him imperator on the field, which entitled him to celebrate a triumph; King Sadala had made his submission, and would walk in his parade. Rhascupolis became undisputed ruler of Thrace, was assured that he would receive Friend and Ally status as soon as the Senate answered Brutus's communication. It did not occur either to Rhascupolis or to Brutus to wonder what had become of Rhascus, the older brother ejected from the chieftainship. Nor, for the moment, did Rhascus, safe in hiding, intend to tell them that his mind was applied to the problem of how to become King Rhascus of Thrace.

Brutus crossed the Hellespont for the second time that year around the middle of September, and picked up the legions he had left camped along the Granicus River. Then he heard that Octavian and Quintus Pedius were the new consuls, and wrote frantically to Cassius, urging him to abandon any campaigns against Egypt or the Parthians. What he had to do was march north and join their forces, said Brutus, for with the monstrous Octavian in control of Rome, everything had changed. A destructive child had been given the world's biggest and most complex toy to play with. In Nicomedia, Brutus learned that the Liberator governor, Lucius Tillius Cimber, had marched from Pontus to join Cassius, but had left Brutus a fleet of sixty warships. So Brutus set out for Pergamum, where he demanded tribute, though he made no attempt to tamper with Caesar's dispositions anent Mithridates of Pergamum, who was allowed to keep his little fiefdom provided that he made a hefty donation to Brutus's hungry war chest. Caught, Mithridates gave the hefty donation. Brutus finally arrived in Smyrna in November, there to sit himself down and wait for Cassius. All the ready money in Asia Province had long gone; there remained only temple wealth in the form of gold or silver statuary, objects of arts, plate. Stifling his qualms, Brutus confiscated everything from everywhere, melted his loot down and minted coins. If Caesar, he thought, could put his profile on coins minted during his lifetime, so too could Marcus Brutus. Thus Brutus's coins displayed his profile, with various laudations of the Ides of March on their reverse sides: a cap of liberty, a dagger, the words EID MAR. More and more men had joined his cause. Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus a son of Messala Niger arrived in Smyrna with Lucius Gellius Poplicola, once Antony's intimate. The Casca brothers appeared; so did Tiberius Claudius Nero, Caesar's least favorite incompetent, accompanied by a close Claudian relative, Marcus Livius Drusus Nero. Importantly, Sextus Pompey, who controlled the seas west of Greece, had indicated that he would not hinder the Liberators. The only staff problem Brutus had was Labienus's son, Quintus, who bade fair to outdo his father when it came to barbaric savagery. What, asked Brutus of himself, am I to do with Quintus Labienus before his conduct ruins me? It was Hemicillus gave an answer: "Send him to the court of the King of the Parthians as your ambassador," said the banker. "He'll feel right at home there." So Brutus did, a decision that was to have far-reaching consequences in the fairly distant future. Of more concern was the news that the consuls in Rome had tried all the Liberators, who were now nefas, stripped of their citizenships and property; the Casca brothers had brought it. There could be no going back now, no hope of reaching an accommodation with Octavian's Senate.