The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
Lepidus took this with good humor unruffled. “Whatever you want shall be yours, Caesar,” he said, leading the awkward guest of honor into the dining room. “I’ll bring a fifth couch, then take your pick.”
“How many are we?”
“Twelve, including you and me.”
“Edepol! That will leave you with two men only on one of your couches,” Caesar said.
“Not to worry, Caesar. I’ll put Antonius on my couch in the locus consularis and no one between us,” Lepidus said with a grin. “He’s such a hulk that three on his couch is a tight squeeze.”
“Actually, I’m going to even you up,” Caesar said as servants carried a fifth couch in and put it beyond the lone couch to the left of the host’s lectus medius, which formed the crosspiece of the U. “I’ll take it, it will suit me nicely. Plenty of room to spread my papers out, and, if you would, a chair behind it for my secretary. I’ll use one man at a time, the rest can wait outside.”
“I’ll see to it that they have comfortable chairs and plenty to eat,” Lepidus said, hurrying away to call his steward.
Thus it was that when the others began to arrive, they found Caesar already ensconced on the least enviable couch, a secretary on a chair behind him and the rest of his couch littered with piles of papers and scrolls.
“Poor Lepidus!” said Lucius Caesar, eyes dancing. “You’d do best to put Calvinus, Philippus and me on the couch opposite this impolite reprobate. None of us is timid enough to leave him alone, and who knows? He might actually talk a little.”
When the first course was carried in, Mark Antony and Lepidus reclined alone on the lectus medius; Dolabella, Lucius Piso and Trebonius reclined to the immediate right, with Philippus, Lucius Caesar and Calvinus beyond them; on the immediate left lay Brutus, Cassius and Decimus Brutus, with Caesar beyond them.
Naturally Caesar’s industriousness came as no surprise to any of the diners, so the meal and the conversation proceeded merrily, aided by an excellent Falernian white to accompany the fishier, more nibbly first course, a superb Chian red to accompany the meaty, more substantial main course, and a sweetish, slightly effervescent white wine from Alba Fucentia to accompany the desserts and cheeses which formed the third, final course.
Philippus was ecstatic over a new dessert Lepidus’s cooks had devised, a gelatinous mixture of cream, honey, pulped early strawberries, egg yolks, and egg whites beaten stiffly, the whole turned out of a chilled mold shaped like a peacock and decorated with piped whipped cow’s cream dyed in pinks, greens, blues, lilacs and yellows from leaf and petal juices.
“Tasting this,” he mumbled, “I admit that my Mons Fiscellus ambrosia is too sickly-sweet. This is perfect! Absolute ambrosia! Caesar, do have some!”
Caesar glanced up, grinned, took a spoonful and looked quite astonished. “You’re right, Philippus, it is ambrosia. Clause ten: it shall not be lawful to sell, barter, gift or otherwise dispose of a free grain chit, on penalty of fifty nundinae throwing lime into the paupers’ pits of the necropolis.” He ate another spoonful. “Very good! My physician would approve. Clause eleven: upon the death of a holder of a free grain chit, it shall be returned to the plebeian aedile’s booth together with proof of death…”
“I thought,” said Decimus Brutus, “that the free grain dole legislation was already in place, Caesar.”
“Yes, it is, but upon rereading it, I found it too ambiguous. The best laws, Decimus, contain no loopholes.”
“I like the punishment,” said Dolabella. “Shoveling lime on stinking mass graves will deter anybody from almost anything.”
“Well, I had to think of a deterrent, which is very difficult when people have no money to pay fines and no property to impound. Holders of free grain chits are very poor,” said Caesar.
“Now that your head is up from your papers, answer me one question,” said Dolabella. “I note you want a hundred pieces of artillery per legion for the Parthian campaign. I know you’re an ardent exponent of artillery, Caesar, but isn’t that excessive?”
“Cataphracts,” said Caesar.
“Cataphracts,” asked Dolabella, frowning.
“Parthian cavalry,” said Cassius, who had seen them in their thousands at the Bilechas River. “Clad in chainmail from head to foot. They ride giant horses clad in chainmail too.”
“Yes, I remembered in your report to the Senate, Cassius, that you said they couldn’t charge at a full gallop, and it occurred to me that they would suffer terribly from heavy bombardment in the early stages of a battle,” said Caesar, looking pensive. “It may also be possible to bombard the trains of camels bringing spare arrows up to the Parthian archer cavalry. If my ideas are wrong, I’ll put however much of the artillery into storage, but somehow I don’t think I’m wrong.”
“Nor do I,” said Cassius, looking impressed.
Antony, who detested all-men dinners populated by the stuffier among his peers, listened to this with his eyes roving thoughtfully over the three men on the lectus imus to his left—Brutus, Cassius and Decimus Brutus—and then onward to Caesar. Tomorrow, my dear cousin, tomorrow! Tomorrow you will be dead at the hands of these three men and that unappreciated genius facing them, Trebonius. He’s stuck to it, and it’s going to happen. Did you ever see a more miserable face than Brutus’s? Why is he in it, if he’s so terrified? I bet he never plunges his dagger in!
“Returning to lime pits, necropolises and death,” Antony said suddenly and loudly, “what’s the best way to die?”
Brutus jumped, went white, put his spoon down quickly.
“In battle,” said Cassius instantly.
“In one’s sleep,” said Lepidus, thinking of his father, forced to divorce the wife he worshiped, pining away for her so slowly.
“Of sheer old age,” said Dolabella, chuckling.
“With the taste of something like this coating one’s tongue,” said Philippus, licking his spoon.
“With one’s children around one,” said Lucius Caesar, whose only son had been such a disappointment. There was no fate worse than outliving one’s children.
“Feeling vindicated,” said Trebonius, casting Antony a look of loathing. Was this boor about to betray them?
“In the act of reading a new poem better than Catullus’s,” said Lucius Piso. “I think Helvius Cinna might do it one day.”
Caesar looked up, brows raised. “The way doesn’t matter,” he said, “as long as it’s sudden.”
Calvinus, who had been shifting and grunting for some time, gave a moan and clutched at his chest. “I fear,” he said, face grey, “that my death is arriving. The pain! The pain!”
Instead of abandoning his work to tell Brutus and Cassius of their provinces next year, Caesar had to summon Hapd’efan’e from the atrium; the matter was forgotten as the guests clustered to view Calvinus with concern, Caesar in their forefront.
“It is a spasm of the heart,” said Hapd’efan’e, “but I do not think he will die. He must be taken home and treated.”
Caesar supervising, Calvinus was put into a litter.
“An ill-omened subject!” Caesar snapped at Antony.
More ill-omened than you realize, said Antony silently.
Brutus and Cassius walked most of the way home together, not speaking until they came to Cassius’s door.
“We’re all meeting tomorrow morning half an hour after dawn at the foot of the Steps of Cacus,” Cassius said. “That leaves plenty of time to get out to the Campus Martius. I’ll see you there and then.”
“No,” said Brutus, “don’t wait for me. I’d prefer to go on my own. My lictors will be company enough.”
Cassius frowned, peered at the pale face. “I hope you’re not thinking of backing out?” he asked sharply.
“Of course not.” Brutus drew a breath. “It’s just that poor Porcia has worked herself into such a state—she knows—”
Came the sound of Cassius grinding his teeth. “That woman is a menace!” He banged on his door. “Just don’t rene
Brutus trudged around the corner to his own house, knocked on its door and was admitted by the porter, praying as he tiptoed through the corridors toward the master’s sleeping cubicle that Porcia would be asleep.
She was not. The moment the wan light of his lamp showed in the doorway she leaped out of their bed, threw herself at him and clasped him convulsively.
“What is it, what is it?” she whispered loudly enough for the whole house to hear. “You’re so early! Is it discovered?”
“Hush, hush!” He closed the door. “No, it is not discovered. Calvinus took seriously ill, so the party broke up.” He shed his toga and tunic, left them lying on the floor, sat on the edge of the bed to un-buckle his shoes. “Porcia, go to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep,” she said, sitting beside him with a thump.
“Then take some syrup of poppies.”
“It constipates me.”
“Well, you’re rapidly sending me the other way. Please, oh, please, just get into your own side of the bed and pretend you’re asleep! I need peace.”
Sighing and grumbling, she did as she was told; Brutus felt his bowels move, got up, put on his tunic, some slippers.
“What is it, what is it?”
“Nothing except a bellyache,” he said, took the lamp and went to the latrine. There he remained until he was sure that he had nothing left to evacuate, then, shivering in the icy night, he stood on the colonnade until the coldness drove him back in the direction of his cubicle and Porcia. On the way he passed Strato of Epirus’s door: closed, no light beneath it. Volumnius’s door: closed, no light beneath it. Statyllus’s door: slightly open, a light showing. The moment he scratched, Statyllus was there, drawing him inside.
It hadn’t struck him as odd after he married Porcia that she should ask if Statyllus could come to live with them, and she had not told him that her reason was to separate Lucius Bibulus from Statyllus and the tippling. It was a delight to Brutus to have Cato’s philosopher friend in his house. Never more so than now.
“May I lie on your couch?” Brutus asked, teeth chattering.
“Of course you may,” said Statyllus.
“I can’t face Porcia.”
“Dear, dear.”
“She’s hysterical.”
“Dear, dear. Lie down, I’ll get some blankets.”
None of the three philosophers knew of the plot to kill Caesar, though all of them knew something was wrong. Their conclusion was that Porcia was going mad. Well, who could blame Cato’s daughter, so highly strung and sensitive, with Servilia verbally cutting and slashing at her as soon as Brutus went out? Statyllus, however, had watched Porcia grow up, the other two had not. When he realized that she loved Brutus, he had tried to prevent its bearing fruit. Some of his opposition was due to jealousy, but most of it was due to his fear that she would wear Brutus down with her fits and starts. What he hadn’t taken into account was Servilia’s enmity, though he should have—how much she had hated Cato! And now here was poor Brutus, too intimidated to face his wife. So Statyllus clucked and crooned, settled Brutus on his couch, then sat with a lamp to guard him.
Brutus drifted into a light sleep, moaned and tossed, woke suddenly when the dream of stabbing Caesar reached its bloody, awful climax. Still sitting in the chair, Statyllus had nodded off, but snapped to attention the moment Brutus swung his feet on to the floor.
“Rest again,” the little philosopher said.
“No, the Senate is meeting and I can hear cocks crowing, so it can’t be more than an hour from dawn,” Brutus said, stood up. “Thank you, Statyllus, I needed a refuge.” He sighed, took his lamp. “Now I’d better see how Porcia is.” At the door he paused, gave a peculiar laugh. “Thank all the gods that my mother won’t be back from Tusculum until this afternoon.”
Porcia too had found solace in sleep; she was lying on her back, her arms above her head, the signs of copious tears on her face. His bath was ready; Brutus went to it, lay in the warm water and soaked for a little while, his imperturbable manservant standing by to drape him in a soft linen towel as he emerged. Then, feeling better, he dressed in a clean tunic, put on his curule shoes, and went to his study to read Plato.
“Brutus, Brutus!” Porcia yelled, erupting into the room with her hair in tangled skeins around her, eyes starting from her head, a robe falling off her shoulders. “Brutus, it is today!”
“My dear, you’re not well,” he said, not getting up. “Go back to bed and let me send for Atilius Stilo.”
“I don’t need a physician! There’s nothing wrong with me!” Unaware that her every gesture and expression contradicted this statement, she skittled around the perimeter, rummaged in the sadly empty pigeonholes, grabbed a pen from a beaker of them sitting on the desk, began to stab the air with it. “Take that, you monster! And that, you murderer of the Republic!”
“Ditus!” Brutus shouted. “Ditus!”
The steward came immediately.
“Ditus, find the lady Porcia’s women and send them to her. She’s unwell, so send for Atilis Stilo too.”
“I am not unwell! Take that! Die, Caesar! Die!”
Epaphroditus cast her a frightened look and fled, returned suspiciously quickly with four womenservants.
“Come, domina,” said Sylvia, who had been with Porcia since childhood. “Lie down until Atilius comes.”
Porcia went, but against her will, struggling so strongly that two male slaves had to help.
“Lock her in her rooms, Ditus,” Brutus said, “but make sure that her scissors and paper knife are removed. I fear for her sanity, I really do.”
“It is very sad,” said Epaphroditus, more worried on Brutus’s behalf; he looked frightful. “Let me get you something to eat.”
“Has dawn broken yet?”
“Yes, domine, but only just. The sun hasn’t risen.”
“Then I’ll have some bread and honey, and a drink of that herb tea the cook makes. I have a sore belly,” said Brutus.
Atilius Stilo, one of Rome’s fashionable medics, was at the door when Brutus departed, draped in his purple-bordered toga, his post-assassination speech clutched in his right hand.
“Whatever else you do, Stilo, give the lady Porcia a potion to calm her down,” said Brutus, and stepped into the lane, where his six lictors were waiting, fasces shouldered.
The sun’s rays were just touching the gilded statues atop Magna Mater’s temple as he hurried down the Steps of Cacus into the Forum Boarium and turned toward the Porta Flumentana, the gate in the Servian Walls which led into the Forum Holitorium, already bustling with vegetable and fruit vendors putting their wares on display for early shoppers. This was the shortest route to Pompey the Great’s vast theater complex upon the Campus Martius if one lived upon the Palatine—no more than a quarter-hour walk.
Mind a teeming jumble of thoughts, Brutus was conscious with every step he took of that dagger residing upon his belt, for it was long enough to thrust its sheathed tip into the top of his thigh, and in all his life he had never worn a dagger under his toga. He knew it was going to happen, yet it seemed to have no reality save for that dagger. Dodging between the carts loaded with cabbages and kale, parsnips and turnips, celery and onions, whatever could be grown in the market gardens of the outer Campus Martius and the Campus Vaticanus at this turning season of the year, Brutus was surprised to find the ground muddy and pooled with water—had it rained during the night? How stolid lictors were! Just walked.
“Terrible storm!” said a gardener, standing in the back of his cart pitching bunches of radishes to a woman.
“I thought the world would end,” she answered, deftly catching.
A storm? Had there been a storm? He hadn’t heard it, not a mutter of thunder nor a reflection of lightning. Was the storm in his heart so cataclysmic that it had blotted out a real storm?
Once past the Circus Flaminius, Pompey the Great’s gigantic marble theater dominated the greensward of the Field of Mars, the semi-circ
Brutus entered the hundred-pillared colonnade through its south doors and paused, blinking in the sudden shade, to see where the Liberators were gathered. Hanging on to that word was all that had steeled him to come—they were not murderers, they were liberators. The Liberators. There! Out in the garden itself, in a sunny spot sheltered from the wind, close by the ornate fountain that played winter and summer through heated water pipes. Cassius waved, left the group to meet him.
“How’s Porcia?” he asked.
“Not well at all. I sent for Atilius Stilo.”
“Good. Come and listen to Gaius Trebonius. He’s been waiting for you to arrive.”
3
Caesar had heard the storm, the first of the equinoctial season, with its high winds and tormented weather, gone out into the main peristyle to watch the fantastic lacework of lightning in the clouds, the huge cracks of thunder as the storm drifted directly over Rome. When the rain began to come down in sheets he retreated to his sleeping cubicle, lay down and had those four precious hours of deep, dreamless sleep. Two hours before dawn, the storm gone, he was awake again and the early shift of secretaries and scribes was reporting for duty. At dawn Trogus brought him freshly baked, crusty bread, some olive oil and his habitual hot drink—lemon juice at this time of year, far nicer than vinegar, especially now that Hapd’efan’e insisted it be sweetened by honey.
He felt well, refreshed, all of him profoundly glad that his time in Rome was finally drawing to an end.