Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

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There were many letters. Some were mainly devoted to business, as was true of those from his most faithful adherent, Balbus the Spanish banker from Gades, and Gaius Oppius the Roman banker. His present wealth had also caught an even shrewder financial magician in his net: Gaius Rabirius Postumus, whose thanks for reorganizing the shambles of the Egyptian public accounting system had been to be stripped naked by King Ptolemy Auletes and his Alexandrian minions, and shoved penniless on a ship bound for Rome. It had been Caesar who lent him the money to get started again. And Caesar who made a vow that one day he would collect the money Egypt owed Rabirius Postumus in person. There were letters from Cicero, squawking and clucking about the welfare of his younger brother, Quintus. Warm with sympathy for Caesar's loss, for Cicero was, despite all that vainglorious posturing and conceit, a genuinely kind and loving sort of man. Ah! A scroll from Brutus! Turning thirty this coming year, and therefore about to enter the Senate as a quaestor. Caesar had written to him just before leaving for Britannia, asking him to join the staff as his personally requested quaestor. Crassus's older son, Publius, had quaestored for him through several years, and this year he had Publius's younger brother, Marcus Crassus, as quaestor. A wonderful pair of fellows, but the main duties of a quaestor were to run the finances; Caesar had assumed that sons of Crassus were bound to have accounting talents, but it hadn't worked out that way. Terrific leading legions, but couldn't add X and X. Whereas Brutus was a plutocrat in senatorial clothing, had a genius for making money and managing money. At the moment fat Trebatius was doing the figure-work, but, strictly speaking, it was not his job. Brutus... Even after so long, Caesar still experienced a twinge of guilt every time he thought of that name. Brutus had loved Julia so much, patiently waited through more than ten years of betrothal for her to grow up to proper marriageable age. But then a veritable gift from the Gods had landed in Caesar's lap: Julia had fallen madly in love with Pompey the Great, and he with her. Which meant that Caesar could bind Pompey to his cause with the most delicate and silken of ropes, his own daughter. He broke her engagement to Brutus (who had been known by his adopted name of Servilius Caepio in those days) and married her to Pompey. Not an easy situation, quite above and beyond Brutus's shattered heart. Brutus's mother, Servilia, had been Caesar's mistress for years. To keep her sweet after that insult had cost him a pearl worth six million sesterces.

I thank you for your offer, Caesar. Very kind of you to think of me and remember that I am due for election as a quaestor this year. Unfortunately I am not yet sure that I have my quaestorship, as the elections are still pending. We hope to know in December, when they say the People in their tribes will elect the quaestors and the tribunes of the soldiers. But I doubt we will see any elections for the senior magistrates. Memmius refuses to step down as a candidate for the consulship, and Uncle Cato has sworn that until Memmius does step down, he will allow no curule elections. Do not, by the way, take any notice of those scurrilous rumors going around about Uncle Cato's divorce from Marcia. Uncle Cato cannot be bought. I am going to Cilicia as the personally requested quaestor of the new governor for next year, Appius Claudius Pulcher. He is now my father-in-law. I married his oldest daughter, Claudia, a month ago. A very nice girl. Once again, thank you for your kind offer. My mother is well. She is, I understand, writing to you herself.

Take that! Caesar put the curled single sheet of paper down, blinking not with tears but with shock. For six long years Brutus never married. Then my daughter dies, and he is married within nundinae of it. He cherished hope, it seems. Waited for her, sure she would grow very tired of being married to an old man without anything to recommend him beyond his military fame and his money. No birth, no ancestors worth naming. How long would Brutus have waited? I wonder. But she had found her true mate in Pompeius Magnus, nor would he have tired of her. I've always disliked myself for hurting Brutus, though I didn't know how much Julia meant to him until after I had done the deed. Yet it had to be done, no matter who was hurt or how badly. Lady Fortuna gifted me with a daughter beautiful and sprightly enough to enchant the one man I needed desperately. But how can I hold Pompeius Magnus now? Like Brutus, Servilia had written only once to, for example, Cicero's fourteen separate epics. Not a long letter, either. Odd, however, the feeling he experienced when he touched the paper she had touched. As if it had been soaked in some poison designed to be drunk through the fingertips. He closed his eyes and tried to remember her, the sight and the taste, that destructive, intelligent, fierce passion. What would he feel when he saw her again? Almost five years. She would be fifty now to his forty-six. But probably still extremely attractive; she took care of herself, kept her hair as darkly moonless as her heart. For it was not Caesar responsible for the disaster who was Brutus; the blame for Brutus had to be laid squarely at his mother's door.

I imagine you've already seen Brutus's refusal. Everything always in order, that's you, so men first. At least I have a patrician daughter-in-law, though it isn't easy sharing my house with another woman who is not my own blood daughter and therefore unused to my authority, my way of doing things. Luckily for domestic peace, Claudia is a mouse. I do not imagine Julia would have been, for all her air of fragility. A pity she lacked your steel. That's why she died, of course. Brutus picked Claudia for his wife for one reason. That Picentine upstart Pompeius Magnus was dickering with Appius Claudius to get the girl for his own son, Gnaeus. Who might be half Mucius Scaevola, but doesn't show it in either his face or his nature. He's Pompeius Magnus without the mind. Probably pulls the wings off flies. It appealed to Brutus to steal a bride off the man who had stolen his bride from him. He did it too. Appius Claudius not being Caesar. A shoddy consul and no doubt next year a particularly venal governor for poor Cilicia. He weighed the size of my Brutus's fortune and his impeccable ancestry against Pompeius Magnus's clout and the fact that Pompeius's younger boy, Sextus, is the one who's likely to go farthest, and the scales came down in Brutus's favor. Whereupon Pompeius Magnus had one of those famous temper tantrums. How did Julia deal with them? You could hear the bellows and screeches all over Rome. Appius then did a very clever thing. He offered Pompeius Magnus his next girl, Claudilla, for Gnaeus. Not yet seventeen, but the Pompeii have never been averse to cradle-snatching. So everybody wound up happy. Appius got two sons-in-law worth as much as the Treasury, two horribly plain and colorless girls got eminent husbands, and Brutus won his little war against the First Man in Rome. He's off to Cilicia with his father-in-law, this year they hope, though the Senate is being sticky about granting Appius Claudius leave to go to his province early. Appius responded by informing the Conscript Fathers that he'd go without a lex curiata if he had to, but go he would. The final decision has not yet been made, though my revolting half brother Cato is yammering about special privileges being extended to patricians. You did me no good turn there, Caesar, when you took Julia off my son. He's been as thick as syrup with Uncle Cato ever since. I can't bear the way Cato gloats over me because my son listens more to him these days than he does to me. He's such a hypocrite, Cato. Always prating about the Republic and the mos maiorum and the degeneracy of the old ruling class, yet he can always find a reason why what he wants is a Right Act. The most beautiful thing about having a philosophy, it seems to me, is that it enables its owner to find extenuating circumstances for his own conduct in all situations. Look at his divorcing Marcia. They say every man has a price. I believe that. I also believe that senile old Hortensius coughed up Cato's price. As for Philippus well, he's an Epicure, and the price of infinite pleasure comes high. Speaking of Philippus, I had dinner there a few afternoons ago. It's just as well your niece, Atia, is not a loose woman. Her stepson, young Philippus a very handsome and well-set-up fellow! gazed at her all through dinner the way a bull gazes at the cow on the other side of the fence. Oh, she noticed, but she pretended she didn't. The young man will get no encouragement from her. I just hope Philippus doesn't notice. Otherwise the cozy nest Atia has found herself will go up in flames. She produced the only occupant of her affections for my inspection after the meal was over. Her son, Gaius Octavius. Your great-nephew, he must be. Aged exactly nine it was his birthday. An amazing child, I have to admit it. Oh, if my Brutus had looked like that, Julia would never have consented to marry Pompeius Magnus! The boy's beauty quite took my breath away. And so Julian! If you said he was your son, everybody would believe it. Not that he's very like you, feature by feature, just that he has I really don't know how to describe it. There is something of you about him. On his inside rather than his outside. I was pleased to see, however, that little Gaius Octavius is not utterly perfect. His ears stick out. I told Atia to keep his hair a trifle on the long side. And that is all. I do not intend to offer you my condolences for the death of Julia. You can't make good babies with inferior men. Two tries, neither successful, and the second one cost her life. You gave her to that oaf from Picenum instead of to a man whose breeding was the equal of her own. So be it on your own head.