The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough

At the doors of Ceres they all shook hands solemnly, looked into each other’s eyes, then melted into the darkness.

  “Gaius, I wish that you’d recall your lictors,” Lucius Caesar said to his cousin, encountering him leaving the Treasury. “And don’t you dare ignore me to dictate a letter! This mania for work is becoming ridiculous.”

  “I would love to be able to take an hour off, Lucius, but it is quite impossible,” Caesar said, banishing the secretary to walk in his rear. “There are a hundred and fifty-three separate pieces of agrarian legislation, thanks to our lack of public land and the cantankerousness of every latifundium owner my commission’s buying from—there are almost as many colonies on foreign land as that, all of which have to be individually legislated—in my function as censor, I have innumerable state contracts to let—every day thirty or forty petitions come in from citizens of this town or that, all with serious grievances—and that is but the surface of my work mountain. My senators and magistrates are either too lazy, too haughty or too disinterested in the machinery of government to act as deputies, and so far I haven’t had the time to create the bureaucratic departments which will have to come in before I can step down as dictator.”

  “I’m here and willing to help, but you don’t ask me,” Lucius said a little stiffly.

  Caesar smiled, squeezed his arm. “You’re a venerable, not so young consular, and your services to me in Gaul alone must excuse you from the plod of paperwork. No, it’s high time that the backbenchers were given something more to do than merely sit mum during infrequent meetings of the House and spend the rest of their days touting for juicy criminal lawsuits that benefit them but not Rome.”

  Lucius looked mollified, consented to walk with Caesar as they passed between the Well of Juturna and the little round aedes of Vesta, heading a huge crowd of Caesar’s clients, who were a part of a great man’s burden. One that Lucius Caesar was glad to see now that his cousin refused to be escorted by lictors.

  Though stalls and booths had largely been banished from the Forum Romanum save for the impermanent barrows vending snacks to Forum frequenters, there were no laws on the tablets to prevent people from usurping a tiny spot of Forum ground, thereon to pursue an activity usually to do with the occult. Romans were a superstitious lot, loved astrologers, fortune-tellers and eastern magi, a number of whom dotted the margins of the area. Cross any of a dozen palms with a silver coin and you could find out what the morrow held, or why your business venture had failed, or what kind of future your newborn son could hope for.

  Old Spurinna enjoyed an unparalleled reputation among these soothsayers. His place was adjacent to the public entrance to the Vestal Virgin side of the Domus Publica, the door through which any Roman citizen desirous of depositing his or her will with the Vestals might enter and lodge it. An excellent site for one in the soothsaying business, for men and women with death on their minds and wills in their hands were always tempted to pause, give old Spurinna a denarius, and learn how much longer they had to live. His appearance inspired confidence in his mystical gift, for he was skinny, dirty, unkempt, seamed of face.

  As the two Caesars passed by him without noticing him—he had been a fixture there for decades—Spurinna got to his feet.

  “Caesar!” he cried.

  Both Caesars stopped, both looked at him.

  “Which Caesar?” Lucius asked, grinning.

  “There is only one Caesar, Chief Augur! His name will come to mean the man who rules Rome,” Spurinna shrilled, dark irises ringed with the white halo that heralded the approach of death. “‘Caesar’ means ‘king’!”

  “Oh, no, not again.” Caesar sighed. “Who’s paying you to say that, Spurinna? Marcus Antonius?”

  “It isn’t what I want to say, Caesar, and no one paid me.”

  “Then what do you want to say?”

  “Beware the Ides of March!”

  Caesar fumbled in the purse attached to his belt, flipped a gold coin that Spurinna caught deftly. “What’s going to happen on the Ides of March, old man?”

  “Your life will be imperiled!”

  “I thank you for the warning,” Caesar said, and walked on.

  “He’s usually uncannily right,” Lucius said with a shiver. “Caesar, please recall your lictors!”

  “And let all of Rome know that I pay attention to rumors and ancient visionaries? Admit I am afraid? Never,” said Caesar.

  Caught in the web of his own making, Cicero had no choice but to sit in the spectators’ bleachers while legislation, policy making and senatorial decrees went on without him. All he had to do was walk into the curia, have his slave unfold his stool, and put his bottom on it among the most senior consulars of the front benches. But pride, stubbornness and his detestation of Caesar Rex forbade it. Worse still, he was feeling the full force of Caesar’s enmity since the publication of his “Cato,” and Atticus too was unpopular with Caesar. No matter how they tried, or through whom, the migrant poor of Rome’s seediest areas kept on flooding into the colony outside Buthrotum.

  It was Dolabella who first told him that there was a rumor going about that Caesar was to be assassinated.

  “Who? When?” he asked eagerly.

  “That’s just it, no one really knows. It’s a typical rumor—‘they say’ and ‘I heard that’ and ‘there’s a feeling in the air’—no substance that I’ve managed to find. I know you can’t stand him, but I’m Caesar’s man through and through,” Dolabella declared, “so I’m looking hard and listening harder. If anything happened to him, I’d be all to pieces. Antonius would run rampant.”

  “No whisper of names, even a name?” Cicero asked.

  “None.”

  “I’ll pop around to see Brutus,” Cicero said, and shooed his ex-son-in-law out.

  “Have you heard any stories that someone is plotting to assassinate Caesar?” Cicero demanded as soon as a goblet of wine-and-water was put into his hand.

  “Oh, that business!” Brutus said, sounding slightly angry.

  “So there is something to it?” Cicero asked eagerly.

  “No, there’s absolutely nothing to it, that’s what irritates me. As far as I know, it started because that madman Matinius daubed graffiti all over Rome instructing me to kill Caesar.”

  “Oh, the graffiti! I didn’t see them myself, but I heard. Is that all? How disappointing.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” asked Brutus.

  “Dictator Perpetuus. You’d think there were some men in Rome with enough gumption to rid us of this Caesar.”

  The dark eyes, sterner than of yore, held Cicero’s with some irony in their depths. “Why don’t you rid us of this Caesar?”

  “I?” Cicero gasped, clutching dramatically at his chest. “My dear Brutus, it’s not my style. My assassinations are done with a pen and a voice. To each his own.”

  “Staying out of the Senate has silenced your pen and voice, Cicero, that’s the trouble. There’s no one left in that body to aim a verbal dagger at Caesar. You were our only hope.”

  “Enter the House with that man in a dictator’s chair? I’d rather die!” Cicero declared in ringing tones.

  A small, uncomfortable silence fell, broken by Brutus.

  “Are you in Rome until the Ides?” he asked.

  “Definitely.” Cicero coughed delicately. “Is Porcia well?”

  “Not very, no.”

  “Then I trust your mother is?”

  “Oh, she’s indestructible, but she isn’t here at the moment. Tertulla is with child, and Mama thought some country air might benefit her, so they’ve gone to Tusculum,” said Brutus.

  Cicero departed, convinced he was being palmed off, though why or because of what escaped him.

  In the Forum he encountered Mark Antony deep in conversation with Gaius Trebonius. For a moment he thought they were going to ignore him, then Trebonius started, smiled.

  “Cicero, how good to see you! In Rome for a while, I hope?”

  Antony being Antony simply grunted something,
gave Trebonius a casual flip of his hand, and walked off toward the Carinae.

  “I detest that man!” Cicero exclaimed.

  “Oh, he’s more bark than bite,” Trebonius said comfortably. “His whole trouble is his size. It must be very hard to think of oneself as an ordinary man when one is so—well endowed.”

  A notorious prude, Cicero flushed. “Disgraceful!” he cried. “Absolutely disgraceful!”

  “The Lupercalia, you mean?”

  “Of course the Lupercalia! Exposing himself!”

  Trebonius shrugged. “That’s Antonius.”

  “And offering Caesar a diadem?”

  “I think that was a put up job between the pair of them. It enabled Caesar to engrave his public repudiation of the diadem on a bronze tablet which, I am reliably informed, will be attached to his new rostra. In Latin and in Greek.”

  Cicero spotted Atticus emerging from the Argiletum, farewelled Trebonius and hurried off.

  It’s done, thought Trebonius, glad to be rid of a nosy gossip like Cicero. Antonius knows when and where.

  On the thirteenth day of March, Caesar finally managed to find the time to visit Cleopatra, who welcomed him with open arms, kisses, feverish endearments. As tired as he was, that wretched traitor in his groin insisted upon immediate gratification, so they retired to Cleopatra’s bed and made love until well into the afternoon. Then Caesarion had to have his play with tata, who enjoyed the little fellow more each time he saw him. His Gallic son by Rhiannon, vanished without a trace, had also looked very like his father, but Caesar remembered him as a rather limited child who had not been able to name the fifty men inside his toy Trojan horse. Caesar had commissioned another for this boy, discovering in delight that he could identify every one of them after a single lesson. It boded well for his future, it meant he wasn’t stupid.

  “Only one thing worries me,” said Cleopatra over a late meal.

  “What’s that, my love?”

  “I am still not with child.”

  “Well, I haven’t been able to get across the Tiber nearly as often as I had hoped,” he said calmly, “and it seems I am not a man who impregnates his women the moment he doffs his toga.”

  “I fell with Caesarion immediately.”

  “Accidents do happen.”

  “It must be because I don’t have Tach’a with me. She could read the petal bowl, she knew the days to make love.”

  “Offer to Juno Sospita. Her temple is outside the sacred boundary,” he said easily.

  “I have offered to Isis and Hathor, but I suspect they don’t like being so far from Nilus.”

  “Never mind, they’ll be home again soon.”

  She rolled over on the couch, her big golden eyes raised to his face. Yes, he was terribly tired, and sometimes forgetful of his sweet drink. There had been one public episode when he fell and twitched, but luckily Hapd’efan’e had been there and got the syrup down before he needed to intubate. Caesar, recovered, had blamed it on muscle cramps, which seemed to satisfy his audience. The one good thing about it was that it had given him a fright, so he had been more mindful since, Hapd’efan’e more alert.

  “You’ve grown so beautiful in my eyes,” he said, rubbing one palm on her belly. Poor little girl, deprived of her issue because a Roman man, Pontifex Maximus, could not condone incest. Purring and stretching, she lowered her long black lashes, reached out a hand to touch him.

  “Me, with my great beaky nose and my scrawny body?” she asked. “Even at sixty, Servilia is more beautiful.”

  “Servilia is an evil woman, make no mistake about that. Once I did think her beautiful, but what kept me in her toils was never beauty. She’s intelligent, interesting, and devious.”

  “I’ve found her a very good friend.”

  “For her own purposes, believe me.”

  Cleopatra shrugged. “What do her purposes matter? I’m not a Roman woman she can ruin, and you’re right, she’s intelligent and interesting. She saved me from dying of boredom while you were in Spain. Through her, I actually met a few more Roman women. That Clodia!” She giggled. “A female rake, very good company. And she brought me Hortensia, surely the most intelligent woman here.”

  “I wouldn’t know. After Caepio died—and that’s over twenty years ago—she donned widow’s weeds and refused every suitor who dangled after her. I’m surprised she mixes with Clodia.”

  “Perhaps,” said Cleopatra demurely, “Hortensia prefers to have lovers. Perhaps she and Clodia sit together and choose them from among the naked young swimmers in the Trigarium.”

  “One thing about that family of Claudians, they never have cared about their reputations. Do they still visit, Clodia and Hortensia?”

  “Often. In fact, I see more of them than I do of you.”

  “A reproach?”

  “No, I understand, but that doesn’t make your absences any easier to bear. Though since you’ve been back, I see more Roman men. Lucius Piso and Philippus, for instance.”

  “And Cicero?”

  “Cicero and I don’t get along,” said Cleopatra, pulling a face. “What I want to know is, when will you bring some of the more famous Roman men to visit me? Like Marcus Antonius. I’m dying to meet him, but he ignores my invitations.”

  “With Fulvia for wife, he wouldn’t dare accept them.” Caesar grinned. “She’s very possessive.”

  “Well, don’t tell her he’s coming.” After a small pause she said, wistfully, “Won’t I see you again until the Ides are gone? I’d hoped for tomorrow too.”

  “I can sleep in your bed tonight, my love, but at dawn I must get back to the city. Too much work.”

  “Then tomorrow night?” she pressed.

  “I can’t. Lepidus is having a men’s dinner I daren’t miss. I’ll have to work through it, but at least I’ll have a chance to shake a few hands I mightn’t otherwise. It would be churlish to tell Brutus and Cassius about their provinces for the first time in the full glare of the Senate.”

  “Two more famous men I’ve never met.”

  “Pharaoh, you’re twenty-five years old now, therefore quite old enough to realize why a great many of Rome’s most prominent men and women are reluctant to make your acquaintance,” Caesar said levelly. “They call you the Queen of Beasts, and blame you for my reputed desire to become the King of Rome. You’re deemed a corrupting influence.”

  “How idiotic!” she cried, sitting up indignantly. “There’s no one in the world could influence your thinking.”

  Marcus Aemilius Lepidus had done very well for himself since Caesar had been declared Dictator. The youngest of the three sons of that Lepidus who, with Brutus’s father, had rebelled against Sulla, he had been born with a caul over his face; this was considered a mark of lifelong good fortune. Certainly he had been lucky to be too young to become embroiled in his father’s revolt; the oldest boy had died in it, and the second boy, Paullus, had spent many years in exile. The family was patrician and immensely august, but after Lepidus Senior died of a broken heart, there didn’t seem to be any chance that it would retrieve its position among the greatest of the Famous Families of Rome. Then Caesar had bribed the recalled Paullus into a consulship he had hoped to see enable him to be elected consul himself without crossing the pomerium to declare his candidacy. Unfortunately Paullus was a slug, not worth the enormous sum Caesar had paid him; Curio, bought more cheaply, had proven of better value.

  But none of Caesar’s ploys to avoid unmerited prosecution had worked; crossing the Rubicon into rebellion, always his last resort, became the only alternative. And Marcus Lepidus, the youngest of those three sons, had immediately seen his opportunity, allied himself with Caesar, and never looked back. In personality he was easygoing and unobservant, was prone to seek the least taxing way to do things, and was generally regarded as a political lightweight. To Caesar, however, he had two great virtues: he was Caesar’s man through and through, and a high enough aristocrat to give Caesar’s faction some much needed respectability.

>   His first wife had been a Cornelia Dolabellae who had owned no dowry, but died shortly thereafter in childbirth. His next bride came with five hundred talents; she was the middle daughter of Servilia and her second husband, Silanus. Junilla had married him some years before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, years during which her money kept Lepidus afloat. When civil war came, his mother-in-law, Servilia, was quite happy to have him and Vatia Isauricus in Caesar’s camp, since Brutus and Tertulla were in Pompey’s camp. No matter to Servilia which side won the war—she couldn’t lose.

  Lepidus was the son-in-law she liked the least, principally because his birth was so lofty that he never bothered to flatter her. But Lepidus, a tall, handsome man whose blood links to the Julii Caesares showed in his face, cared nothing for Servilia’s good opinion. Nor did Junilla, who happened to love Lepidus very much. They had two sons and a daughter, all still children.

  Enriched through allegiance to Caesar, Lepidus had bought an imposingly large residence on the Germalus of the Palatine, overlooking the Forum, and owned a dining room large enough to hold six couches. His cooks were quite as good as Cleopatra’s, his wine cellar commended by those privileged to sample its contents.

  Well aware that Caesar was likely to quit Rome the moment the meeting of the Senate on the Ides was over, Lepidus had gotten in early and secured Caesar for his dinner party on the evening before the Ides. He also invited Antony, Dolabella, Brutus, Cassius, Decimus Brutus, Trebonius, Lucius Piso, Lucius Caesar, Calvinus and Philippus; he had badly wanted Cicero, who declined “due to my grievous state of health.”

  Much to his surprise, Caesar arrived first.

  “My dear Caesar, I thought you’d be the last to come and the first to go,” Lepidus said, greeting him in the awesome atrium.

  “There’s method in my madness, Master of the Horse,” Caesar said, one hand indicating the retinue behind him, which included his Egyptian physician. “I’m afraid I’m going to be unpardonably rude by working all the way through dinner, so I came early enough to ask that you allocate me your meanest couch all to myself. Put whomsoever you like in the locus consularis, just give me an end couch where I can read, write and dictate without driving the rest of your guests to distraction.”