The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
So they sat side by side on the edge of the bed, wordless and afraid. Very much in love with each other, but having no idea how intimacy would affect that love. The light outside was still high and bright, for this was midsummer; finally Brutus turned his head and took in that wealth of brilliant red hair, experienced a desire she would surely not find repugnant.
“May I let down your hair?” he asked.
Her grey eyes, Cato’s except for the fright, widened. “If you like,” she said. “Just don’t lose the pins because I think I forgot to pack any.”
Not to lose the pins was a facet of Brutus’s careful nature anyway; he plucked them out one by one and put them in a heap on the bedside table, going about his task with burgeoning delight. It really did feel alive, such masses of it, and never once cut; his fingers ran through it, then shook it out into a cascade of fire that puddled on the bed.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful!” he whispered.
No one had ever called anything about her beautiful; Porcia shivered with pleasure. Then his hands were plucking at her awful homespun dress, pulled its sash off, unbuttoned the placket up its back and tugged it down over her shoulders, tried to work her arms out of its sleeves. She helped him until she realized her breasts were bared, and clutched its folds across her chest.
“Please let me look,” he begged. “Please!”
This was so new—why would anyone want to look? Still, when his hands covered hers and gently persuaded them downward, she let him, gritted her teeth and stared straight ahead.
Brutus gazed enraptured. Who would ever have guessed that her ghastly tentlike dresses contained these exquisite, small and firm breasts with such deliciously pink little nipples?
“Oh, they’re beautiful!” he breathed, and kissed one.
Her skin leaped, a warmth kindled and spread through her.
“Stand up, let me see all of you,” he commanded in a voice he hadn’t known he possessed—strong, rich, throaty.
Amazed at it, amazed at herself, she obeyed; the dress fell around her feet, leaving her clad only in her coarse linen undergarment. He disposed of that too, but so reverently that she felt no urge to hide that part of herself that Bibulus had never bothered to inspect. Well, both his Domitias had been red-haired.
“You’re fire everywhere!” said Brutus, awed.
Then he reached out his arms and gathered her to him, she still standing, he with his face on her belly, and he began to move it back and forth against her skin, pressing kisses on her, his hands moving over her back, stroking her flanks. She fell forward on to the bed as he struggled with his tunic; now it was her turn to help. Gasping at the shock of it, they felt the wonder of true contact, couldn’t get enough, wrapped their arms about each other and kissed hungrily, passionately. He slipped inside her smoothly, filling Porcia with joy, with strange feeling she had never known, sensations that worked up and up and up until she cried out even as he cried out.
“I love you,” he said, still erect.
“And I have always loved you, always!”
“Again?”
“Yes, yes! Forever again!”
With no Brutus to pick at, Servilia went to visit Cleopatra after her son departed for Tusculum. She found Lucius Caesar there, a real pleasure; he was one of the most cultivated men in Rome. The three of them settled to a lively discussion of the “Cato” and the “Anti-Cato,” all on Caesar’s side, of course, though Servilia and Lucius Caesar were dubious of the wisdom of the “Anti-Cato.”
“Especially,” said Servilia, “because of its literary merit. That has guaranteed it a wide audience.”
“Lucius Piso says he doesn’t care what it says, the prose is superb, Caesar at his best,” said Cleopatra.
“Yes, but that’s Piso, who’d read a book about a beetle if the prose were superb,” Lucius Caesar objected. He raised a brow at Servilia. “Was it you who supplied Caesar with the anecdotes no one knew about?” he asked.
“Naturally,” purred Servilia, “though I don’t have Caesar’s gift for picking the eyes out of, for instance, Cato’s poetry. I just sent him the lot. There were drawers full of it, you know.”
“It tempts the gods to speak ill of the dead,” Lucius remarked.
The two women stared at him in astonishment.
“I fail to see that,” Cleopatra said. “If people are horrible while they’re alive, why should the Gods oblige one to be mealymouthed about them just because they’ve had the consideration to die? I can assure you that when my father died, I offered thanks to the Gods. I certainly didn’t change my opinion of him—or of my elder brother. And after Arsinoë dies, I won’t be saying any nice things about her.”
“I agree,” said Servilia. “Hypocrisy is detestable.”
Lucius Caesar retreated, hands up in surrender. “Ladies, ladies! I’m merely echoing most of Rome!”
“Including my stupid son,” Servilia snarled. “He actually had the temerity to write an ‘Anti-Anti-Cato,’ or whatever one calls a refutation of a refutation.”
“I can understand that,” said Lucius. “He’s very tied to Cato, after all.”
“Not anymore,” said Servilia grimly. “Cato’s dead.”
“You don’t think Brutus’s marriage to Porcia constitutes a continuing tie to Cato?” Lucius asked in all innocence.
How could a large, airy, light-filled room suddenly darken as if the sun outside was totally eclipsed? For the room did darken, its atmosphere fizzing with sparks of invisible lightning that emanated from Servilia, who had gone absolutely rigid.
Cleopatra and Lucius Caesar sat gaping for a moment, then Cleopatra moved to her friend’s side.
“Servilia! Servilia! What is it?” she asked, picking up a hand to chafe it.
The hand was snatched away. “Marriage to Porcia?”
“Surely you know,” Lucius floundered.
The air was now suffused with blackness. “I do not know! How do you know?”
“I married them this morning.”
Servilia got up jerkily and walked out, screaming for her litter, her servants.
“I was sure she knew!” said Lucius to Cleopatra.
Cleopatra drew a breath. “I am not famous for my pity, Lucius, but I pity Brutus and Porcia.”
By the time that Servilia arrived home it was too late to set out for Tusculum. One look at her face had the servants shaking in fear; that cloud of darkness surrounded her impenetrably.
“Bring me an axe, Epaphroditus,” she said to the steward, whom she never addressed by his unabbreviated name unless there was huge trouble. Alone among the staff, Epaphroditus was a veteran of the crucifixion of the nursery maid who had dropped baby Brutus; he raced to find that axe.
Servilia stalked to Brutus’s study and proceeded to destroy it, hacking at the desk, couches and chairs, sending the wine and water flagons flying with one blow, smashing the Alexandrian glass goblets to fragments. She tore every scroll out of the pigeonholes, emptied the book buckets, piled them in a heap on the floor. Then she marched to a multiple lamp, shook the oil out of it on to the pile, and set fire to it. Epaphroditus smelled the smoke and hunted the petrified servants to fetch buckets of sand from the kitchen, buckets of water from the peristyle fountain and the atrium impluvium, praying that the mistress would quit the room before the fire caught hold too strongly to be put out. The moment she erupted from the study he went to work, more afraid of fire than of the Klytemnestra dragging her axe.
Only when Brutus’s sleeping cubicle and all his favorite statues were demolished did Servilia pause, still so consumed by rage that she just wished there was more of his to destroy. Ah! The bronze bust of a boy by Strongylion! His pride and delight! In the atrium! Off she went, seized the piece—it was so heavy that only her fury enabled her to lift it—and lugged it to her own sitting room, where she sat it on a table and stared at it. How did one ruin solid bronze without a furnace?
“Ditus!” she roared.
Epaphroditus was there in an inst
“See this?”
“Yes, domina.”
“Take it down to the river and drop it in at once.”
“But it’s Strongylion!” he bleated.
“I don’t care if it’s Phidias or Praxiteles! Do as I say!” The black eyes, cold as obsidian, wormed into him. “Do as I say, Epaphroditus. Hermione!” she roared.
Her personal maid appeared instantly out of nowhere.
“Accompany Epaphroditus to the river and make sure he throws this—this thing into it. Otherwise, it’s crucifixion.”
It took the two old retainers to pick the bust up and totter away carrying it between them.
“What has happened?” Hermione whispered. “I haven’t seen her like this since Caesar told her he wouldn’t marry her!”
“I don’t know what’s happened, but I do know she’ll crucify us unless we obey her,” said Epaphroditus, giving the bust to a young, strong slave. “Down to the Tiber, Phormion. Quickly!”
A hired carriage was at the door as dawn broke; Servilia entered it without a change of clothes or a servant.
“Gallop the whole way,” she told the carpentarius curtly.
“Domina, I can’t do that! You’d be jolted to death!”
“Listen, you moron,” she said between her teeth, “when I say gallop, I mean gallop. I don’t care how often you have to change mules—when I say gallop, I mean gallop!”
Having risen disgracefully late, Brutus and Porcia were at breakfast when Servilia walked through the door.
“You cunnus! You slimy, slithering snake!” Servilia hissed. Without breaking stride, she marched straight up to Porcia, drew back her arm, and punched her new daughter-in-law over the temple with her clenched fist. Stunned, Porcia fell to the floor, where Servilia began systematically to kick her from head to feet, paying particular attention to groin and breasts.
It took Brutus and two male slaves to pull her away.
“How could you do this, you ingrate?” Servilia screamed at her son, struggling, lashing out with her feet, trying to bite.
Apparently not much injured, Porcia got up unaided, leaped at Servilia, grabbed her hair, held her by it with one hand and used the other to strike her repeatedly across the face.
“Don’t you use gutter language to me, you stuck-up patrician monster!” Porcia shouted. “And don’t you dare touch me! Or Brutus! I am Cato’s daughter, and every bit your equal! Touch me again, and I’ll make you wish you’d never been born! Go suck up to your foreign queen and leave us alone!”
By the end of this speech three other servants had managed to haul Porcia out of striking distance; bruised and disheveled, the two women glared at each other with teeth bared.
“Cunnus!” Servilia snarled.
Brutus put himself between them.
“Mama, Porcia, I am the master here, and I will be obeyed! It is not in your province to choose my wife, Mama, and as you can see, I have chosen one for myself. You will be civil to her, and you will welcome her to my house, or I will evict you. I mean what I say! It is a man’s duty to house his mother, but I will not go on housing you if you won’t be civil to my wife. Porcia, I apologize for my mother’s conduct, and can only beg that you forgive her.” He stepped aside. “Is all that understood? If it is, then these men will release you.”
Servilia shrugged her captors off, put her hands up to her hair. “Grown a backbone, have we, Brutus?” she asked mockingly.
“As you see, yes,” he said stiffly.
“How did you trap him, you harpy?” she asked Porcia.
“You’re the harpy, Servilia. Brutus and I,” said Porcia, moving to him, “were made for each other.”
Handfast, they looked at Servilia defiantly.
“Think you have the situation under control, do you, Brutus? Well, you haven’t,” said Servilia. “If you think for one moment that I’ll be civil to the descendant of a Celtiberian slave and a dirty old Tusculan peasant, you’ve got another think coming! Evict me, and I’ll smear you with so much mud your career will be over—Brutus the coward who avoided the boys’ drills and dropped his sword at Pharsalus! Brutus the moneylender who starves old men to death! Brutus who divorced his blameless wife of nine years and refused to compensate her! I still have Caesar’s ear, and I still have influence in the Senate! As for you, you great hulking lump, you’re not fit to clean my son’s shoes!”
“And you’re not fit to lick Cato’s excrement, you malicious adulterer!” yelled Porcia.
“Ave, ave, ave!” caroled a voice from the open doorway; in walked Cicero blithely, glistening eyes going from one to another of the players in this delicious drama.
Brutus handled it very well, smiled broadly, brushed past his wife and his mother to shake Cicero warmly by the hand. “My dear Cicero, what a pleasure,” he said. “Actually, I’m glad to see you, because I find I need your advice on one or two points. I’ve started an epitome of Fannius’s rather odd history of Rome, and Strato of Epirus says it’s a futile exercise…” His voice ceased when he shut his study door.
“You won’t live to be old, Porcia!” Servilia howled.
“I’m not afraid of you!” Porcia answered at a shout. “You’re all bluff!”
“I don’t bluff! I survived the Livius Drusus household without anyone to shield me or hold my hand, but your father couldn’t say the same. He clung to our brother Caepio. My mother was a whore, Porcia, with your grandfather, so don’t come the moralist with me! At least my adultery was with a man who has the blood to be the King of Rome, but no one could say that of a turd named Cato. You’d better not plan a family, my dear. Any brats Brutus might sire on you won’t live long enough to be weaned.”
“Threats, idle threats! You’re hollow as a reed, Servilia!”
“Actually it isn’t Fannius I want to talk about,” Brutus said while the women’s voices ripped through the wood of the door.
“I didn’t think it was,” Cicero said, ears cocked. “Oh, by the way, congratulations on your marriage.”
“News gets around rapidly.”
“News like that gets around faster than lightning, Brutus. I heard it from Dolabella this morning.”
“Dolabella? Isn’t he with Caesar?”
“He was with Caesar, but having obtained what he wanted, he came back to pacify his creditors.”
“What did he want?” Brutus asked.
“The consulship and a good province. Caesar promised that he would be consul next year, and then go to Syria,” said Cicero, and sighed. “Try though I may, I can’t ever manage to dislike Dolabella, even now that he refuses to pay back Tullia’s dowry. He says her death nullifies any agreement. I fear he’s right.”
“No Roman should have the power to promise a consulship,” Brutus said, face puckering.
“I couldn’t agree more. What did you want to discuss?”
“A subject I’ve touched on before. That I think it behooves me to go to meet Caesar on his way home.”
“Oh, Brutus, I wish you wouldn’t!” Cicero cried. “There’s a cloud of dust a mile high from all those hurrying out of Rome to meet the Great Man. Don’t demean yourself by joining the herd.”
“I think I must. Cassius too. But what ought I to say to him, Cicero? How can I discover what he intends?”
Cicero looked blank. “There’s no use asking me, my dear Brutus. Nor will I be a part of the herd. I’m staying here.”
“What I plan,” said Brutus, “is to talk about you as well as about myself—make it plain to Caesar that I’ve discussed things with you, and that you think as I do.”
“No, no, no!” Cicero yelled, appalled. “Absolutely not! My name won’t do your cause any good, especially after the ‘Cato.’ If it angered him enough to write that imprudent reply, then I am definitely persona non grata with Caesar Rex.” He brightened. “I’ve begun to call him ‘Rex.’ Well, he acts like a king, doesn’t he? Gaius Julius Caesar Rex has a marvelous ring to it.”
“I am sor
“Well, you must do as you see fit.” Cicero rose. “Time I strolled back to my own place. Such a parade of visitors these days. I don’t think there’s anyone doesn’t pop in to see me.” He bustled to the door, relieved to hear silence on its far side. “Did I tell you that I had a very strange letter a little while ago? From some fellow who claims to be Gaius Marius’s grandson. Begging assistance from me, if you please. I wrote back and said that I thought, with Caesar for a relative, he didn’t need my poor help.” He was still talking at the front door. “My dear son is in Athens—yes, you know that, of course—and wants to buy a carriage. I ask you, a carriage! What were we provided with feet for, my dear Brutus, if not to get from place to place, especially at that age?” He giggled. “I wrote back and told him to ask his mother for the money. Fat chance!”
No sooner had Cicero disappeared than Servilia appeared.
“I’m going back to Rome,” she said shortly.
“An excellent idea, Mama. I hope that by the time I bring Porcia to her new home, you will be more reconciled.” He handed her into the carpentum.“I am quite serious, you know. If you offend me, I will evict you.”
“I have every intention of offending, but you won’t evict me. Try to, and you’ll find how much control I still have over your fortune. The only man who has ever bested me is Caesar, and you, my son, are not Caesar’s little finger.”
Stomach roiling, he went to find Porcia, profoundly glad that the two least welcome of the day’s potential visitors were already in the past. Mama and my fortune? But how? Through whom? My banker, Flavius Hemicillus? No. My director Matinius? No. It’s my director Scaptius. He was always her creature.