Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

3

Caesar was in Placentia, so the message found him in six days. Once Lucius Caesar and Decimus Brutus arrived in Ravenna, inertia began to pall; things in Rome seemed to settle down under the consul without a colleague fairly well; Caesar saw no gain in remaining in Ravenna merely to learn what happened to Milo, bound to be sent for trial, and bound to be convicted. If anything about the business annoyed him, it was the conduct of his new quaestor, Mark Antony, who sent Caesar a brusque note to the effect that he was going to remain in Rome until Milo's trial was over, as he was one of the prosecuting advocates. Insufferable! "Well, Gaius, you would relent and ask for him," said Antony's uncle, Lucius Caesar. "He'd not serve on any staff of mine." "I wouldn't have relented had I not received a letter from Aulus Gabinius, who, as you well know, had Antonius in Syria. He said Antonius was a bet he'd like to take with himself. Drinks and whores too much, doesn't care enough, expends a mountain of energy on cracking a flea yet goes to sleep during a war council. Despite all that, according to Gabinius, he's worth the effort. Once he's in the field, he's a lion but a lion capable of good thinking. So we shall see. If I find him a liability, I'll send him to Labienus. That ought to be interesting! A lion and a cur." Lucius Caesar winced and said no more. His father and Caesar's father had been first cousins, the first generation in that antique family to hold the consulship in a very long time thanks to the alliance by marriage between Caesar's Aunt Julia and the enormously wealthy upstart New Man from Arpinum, Gaius Marius. Who turned out to be the greatest military man in Rome's history. The marriage had seen money flow back into the coffers of the Julii Caesares, and money was all the family had lacked. Four years older than Caesar, Lucius Caesar luckily was not a jealous man; Gaius, of the junior branch, bade fair to becoming an even greater general than Gaius Marius. Indeed, Lucius Caesar had requested a legateship on Caesar's staff out of sheer curiosity to see his cousin in action; so proud was he of Gaius that reading the senatorial dispatches suddenly seemed very tame and secondhand. Distinguished consular, eminent juror, long a member of the College of Augurs, at fifty-two years of age Lucius Caesar decided to go back to war. Under the command of cousin Gaius. The journey from Ravenna to Placentia wasn't too bad, for Caesar kept stopping to hold assizes in the main towns along the Via Aemilia: Bononia, Mutina, Regium Lepidum, Parma, Fidentia. But what an ordinary governor took a nundinum to hear, Caesar heard in one day; then it was on to the next town. Most of the cases were financial, usually civil in nature, and the need to impanel a jury was rare. Caesar listened intently, did the sums in his head, rapped the end of the ivory wand of his imperium on the table in front of him, and gave his judgement. Next case, please move along, move along! No one ever seemed to argue with his decisions. Probably, thought Lucius Caesar in some amusement, more because Caesar's businesslike efficiency discouraged it than because of any justice involved. Justice was what the victor received; the loser never did. At least in Placentia the pause was going to be longer, for here Caesar had put the Fifteenth Legion into training camp for the duration of his stay in Illyricum and Italian Gaul, and he wanted to see for himself how the Fifteenth was faring. His orders had been specific: drill them until they drop, then drill them until they don't drop. He had sent for fifty training centurions from Capua, grizzled veterans who slavered at the prospect of making seventeen-year-old lives a studied combination of agony and misery, and told them that they were to concentrate on the Fifteenth's centurions in their hypothetical spare time. Now the moment had come to see what over three months of training in Placentia had produced; Caesar sent word that he would review the legions on the parade ground at dawn the following morning. "If they pass muster, Decimus, you can march them to Further Gaul along the coast road at once," he said over dinner in the midafternoon. Decimus Brutus, munching a local delicacy of mixed vegetables lightly fried in oil, nodded tranquilly. "I hear they're really terrific troops," he said, dabbling his hands in a bowl of water. "Who gave you that news?" asked Caesar, picking indifferently at a piece of pork roasted in sheep's milk until it was brown and crunchy and the milk was all gone. "A purveyor of foods to the army, as a matter of fact." "A purveyor of army supplies knows?" "Who better? The men of the Fifteenth have worked so hard they've eaten Placentia out of everything that quacks, oinks, bleats or clucks, and the local bakers are working two shifts a day. My dear Caesar, Placentia loves you." "A hit, Decimus!" said Caesar, laughing. "I understood that Mamurra and Ventidius were to meet us here," said Lucius Caesar, a better trencherman than his cousin, and thoroughly enjoying this less-spicy-than-pepper-mad-Rome, northern kind of cuisine. "They arrive the day after tomorrow, from Cremona." Hirtius, too busy to eat with them, came in. "Caesar, an urgent letter from Gaius Trebonius." Caesar sat up at once and swung his legs off the couch he shared with his cousin, one hand out for the scroll. He broke the seal, unrolled it and read it at a glance. "Plans have changed," he said then, voice level. "How did this come, Hirtius? How long has it been on the road?" "Six days only, Caesar, and those by the coast road too. I gather Fabius sent two legionaries who ride like the wind, loaded them with money and official pieces of paper. They did well." "They did indeed." A change had come over Caesar, a change Decimus Brutus and Hirtius knew of old, and Lucius Caesar not at all. The urbane consular was gone, replaced by a man as plain, as crisp and as focused as Gaius Marius. "I'll have to leave letters for Mamurra and Ventidius, so I'm off to write them and others. Decimus, send word to the Fifteenth to be ready to march at dawn. Hirtius, see to the supply train. No ox-wagons, everything in mule-wagons or on mules. We won't find enough to eat in Liguria, so the baggage train will have to keep up. Food for ten days, though we're not going to be ten days between here and Nicaea. Ten days to Aquae Sextiae in the Province, less if the Fifteenth is half as good as the Tenth." Caesar turned to his cousin. "Lucius, I'm marching and I'm in a hurry. You can journey on at your leisure if you prefer. Otherwise it's dawn tomorrow for you too." "Dawn tomorrow," said Lucius Caesar, slipping into his shoes. "I don't intend to be cheated of this spectacle, Gaius." But Gaius had vanished. Lucius raised his brows at Hirtius and Decimus Brutus. "Doesn't he ever tell you what's going on?" "He will," said Decimus Brutus, strolling out. "We're told when we need to know," said Hirtius, linking his arm through Lucius Caesar's and steering him gently out of the dining room. "He never wastes time. Today he'll be flying to wade through everything he has to leave behind in perfect order, because it looks to me and to him as if we won't be back in Italian Gaul. Tomorrow night in camp he'll tell us." "How will his lictors cope with this march? I noticed he wore them out coming up the Via Aemilia, and that at least gave them a chance to rest every second day." "I've often thought we should put our lictors into training camp alongside the soldiers. When Caesar's moving quickly he dispenses with his lictors, constitutional or not. They'll follow at their own pace, and he'll leave word whereabouts headquarters are going to be. That's where they'll stay." "How will you ever find enough mules at such short notice?" Hirtius grinned. "Most of them are Marius's mules," he said, referring to the fact that Gaius Marius had loaded thirty pounds of gear on a legionary's back, and thus turned legionaries into mules. "That's another thing you'll find out about Caesar's army, Lucius. Every mule the Fifteenth should have will be there tomorrow morning, as fit and ready for action as the men. Caesar expects to be able to start a legion moving instantly. Therefore it has to be permanently ready in every aspect."