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

From Fulvia's he went to Pompey's palace and his second wife, Antonia Hybrida. Oh, she wasn't too bad, though she had the Antonian face, poor thing. What looked good on a man definitely didn't on a woman. A strapping girl he had tired of very quickly, though not as quickly as he spent her considerable fortune. She had borne him a daughter, Antonia, now five years old, but the matching of first cousins had not been felicitous when it came to offspring. Little Antonia was mentally dull as well as dismally ugly and grossly fat. From somewhere he'd have to find a gigantic dowry, or else marry the girl off to some foreign plutocrat who'd give half his fortune for the chance to acquire an Antonian bride. "You're in the boiling soup," said Antonia Hybrida when he found her in her sitting room. "I'll emerge unscalded, Hibby." "Not this time, Marcus. Caesar's livid." "Cacat!" he said violently, scowling, fist up. She flinched, shrank away. "No, please!" she cried. "I've done nothing nothing!" "Oh, stop whining, you're safe enough!" he snapped. "Caesar sent a message," she said, recovering. "What?" "To report to him at the Domus Publica immediately. In a toga, not in armor." "The Master of the Horse is armored all the time." "I'm just relaying the message." Antonia Hybrida studied her husband, in a quandary; it might be months and months before she saw him again, even if he lived in this selfsame house. He had beaten her regularly when they were first married, but he had not broken her spirit, just broken her of her habit of torturing her slaves. "Marcus," she said, "I would like another child." "You can like all you want, Hibby, but you're not getting another child. One mental defective is one too many." "She was damaged in the birth process, not in the womb." He walked to the big silver mirror Pompey the Great had once gazed into hoping to see the ghost of his dead Julia vanish into its depths, eyed himself with head to one side. Yes, impressive! A toga! No one knew better than Mark Antony that men of his physique didn't look impressive in a toga. Togas were for the Caesars of Rome's world it took height and grace to wear one well. Not, mind you, he had to admit, that the old boy didn't wear armor with panache too. He simply looks what he is, royal. The family dictator. That's what we used to call him among ourselves when we were boys, Gaius, Lucius and I. Ran the lot of us, even Uncle Lucius. And now he's running Rome. As dictator. "Don't expect me for dinner," he said, and clanked out.

"You look like Plautus's miles gloriosus in that ridiculous getup" was Caesar's opening remark. Seated behind his desk, he didn't rise, didn't attempt any kind of physical contact. "The soldiers drink me up. They love to see their betters look their betters." "Like you, their taste is in their arse, Antonius. I asked you to wear a toga. Armor's not appropriate inside the pomerium." "As Master of the Horse, I can wear armor inside the city." "As Master of the Horse, you do as the Dictator says." "Well, do I sit down or keep standing?" Antony demanded. "Sit." "I'm sitting. What now?" "An explanation of events in the Forum, I think." "Which events?" "Don't be obtuse, Antonius." "I just want the jawing over and done with." "So you know why I summoned you to give you, as you so succinctly put it, a jawing." "Isn't it?" "Perhaps I object to your choice of words, Antonius. I was thinking along the lines of castration." "That's not fair! What have I done, when it's all boiled down?" Antony asked angrily. "Your bum-boy Vatia passed the Ultimate Decree and instructed me to deal with the violence. Well, I did just that! As I see it, I did the job properly. There hasn't been a peep out of anyone since." "You brought professional soldiers into the Forum Romanum, then you ordered them to use their swords to cut down men armed with wood. You slaughtered wholesale! Slaughtered Roman citizens in their own meeting place! Not even Sulla had the temerity to do that! Is it because you've been called upon to take your sword to fellow Romans on a battlefield that you turn the Forum Romanum into a battlefield? The Forum Romanum, Antonius! You slimed the stones where Romulus stood with citizen blood! The Forum of Romulus of Curtius of Horatius Cocles of Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator of Appius Claudius Caecus of Scipio Africanus of Scipio Aemilianus of a thousand Romans more noble than you, more capable, more revered! You committed sacrilege!" Caesar said, biting off his words slowly and distinctly, his tones freezing, cutting. Antony leaped to his feet, fists clenched. "Oh, I hate it when you're sarcastic! Don't come the orator with me, Caesar! Just say what you want to say, and have done with it! Then I can get back to my job, which is trying to keep your legions calm! Because they're not calm! They're very, very unhappy!" he shouted, a little red light of cunning at the back of his eyes. That should sidetrack the old boy very sensitive about his legions. It did not. "Sit down, you ignorant lump! Shut your insubordinate mouth, or I'll cut your balls off here and now and don't think that I can't! Fancy yourself a warrior, Antonius? Compared to me, you're a tyro! Riding a pretty horse in the stage armor of the vainglorious soldier! You don't stand and lay about in the front line, you never have! I could take your sword off you right now and chop you into cutlets!" The temper was loose; Antony drew in a huge breath, shaken to the marrow. Oh, why had he forgotten Caesar's temper? "How dare you be insolent to me? How dare you forget who exactly you are? You, Antonius, are my creature I made you, and I can unmake you! If it were not for our blood ties, I'd have passed you over in favor of a dozen more efficient and intelligent men! Was it too much to ask that you comport yourself with a meed of discretion, of simple common sense? Obviously I asked too much! You're a butcher as well as a fool, and your conduct has made my task in Rome infinitely harder I have inherited the mantle of your butchery! From the moment I crossed the Rubicon, my policy toward all Romans has been clemency, but what do you call this massacre? No, Caesar can't trust his Master of the Horse to behave like a civilized, educated, genuine Roman! What do you think Cato will make of this massacre when he hears of it? Or Cicero? You're an incubus suffocating my clemency, and I do not thank you for it!" The Master of the Horse held up his hands in abject surrender. "Pax, pax, pax! I was in error! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" "Remorse is after the event, Antonius. There were at least half a hundred ways to deal with violence in the Forum without doing more than breaking one or two heads. Why didn't you arm the Tenth with shields and staves, as Gaius Marius did when he took on Saturninus's far vaster crowds? Hasn't it occurred to you that in ordering the Tenth to kill, you transferred a share of your guilt to their spirits? How am I to explain matters to them, let alone to the civilian populace?" The eyes were glacial, but they also bore revulsion. "I will never forget or forgive your action. What's more, it tells me that you enjoy wielding power in ways that might prove dangerous not only to the state, but to me." "Am I fired?" Antony asked, beginning to ease his bottom out of the chair. "Are you done?" "No, you are not fired, and no, I am not done. Put your arse back on the seat," Caesar said, still with that dislike. "What happened to the silver in the Treasury?" "Oh, that!" "Yes, that." "I took it to pay the legions, but I haven't gotten around to coining it yet," Antony said, shrugging. "Then is it at Juno Moneta's?" "Um no." "Where is it?" "At my house. I thought it was safer." "Your house. You mean Pompeius Magnus's house?" "Well, yes, I suppose so." "What gave you to understand that you could move there?" "I needed a bigger house, and Magnus's was vacant." "I can see why you'd pick it your taste is as vulgar as Magnus's was. But kindly move back to your own house, Antonius. As soon as I have the leisure, Magnus's house will be put up for auction to the highest bidder, as will the rest of his property," said Caesar. "The property of those who remain unpardoned after I deal with the resistance in Africa Province will be garnished by the state, though some can be dealt with sooner. But it will not be sold to benefit my own men, or my hirelings. I'll have no Chrysogonus in my service. If I find one, it won't take Cicero and a court case to bring about his or her downfall. Be very careful that you do not try to steal from Rome. Put the silver back in the Treasury, where it belongs. You may go." He let Antony get to the door, then spoke again. "By the way, how much back pay are my legions owed?" Antony looked quite blank. "I don't know, Caesar." "You don't know, but you took the silver. All the silver. As Master of the Horse, I suggest that you tell the legion paymasters to present their books directly to me here in Rome. My instructions to you when you took them back to Italy were to pay them once they were in camp. Have they not been paid at all since they returned?" "I don't know," said Antony again, and escaped.