The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
Calpurnia came in as he was finishing his breakfast, eyes heavy and ringed with the blackness of fatigue; he got up at once and went to greet her with a kiss, then put one hand beneath her chin and looked into her face, his own concerned.
“My dear, what is it? Did the storm frighten you?”
“No, Caesar, my dream did that,” she said, and clasped his arm anxiously.
“A nasty dream?”
She shuddered. “A terrible dream! I saw some men surround you and stab you to death.”
“Edepol!” he exclaimed, feeling rather helpless. How did one calm worried wives? “Just a dream, Calpurnia.”
“But it was so real!” she cried. “In the Senate, though not in the Curia Hostilia. Pompeius’s curia, because it happened near his statue. Please, Caesar, don’t go to the meeting today!”
He disengaged her hands, held them and chafed them. “I have to go, my dear. Today I step down as consul, it’s the end of my official business in Rome.”
“Don’t! Please don’t! It was so real!”
“Then I thank you for the warning, and will endeavor not to be stabbed in Pompeius’s curia,” he said, gently but firmly.
Trogus came in with his toga trabea; already clad in his crimson-and-purple-striped tunic, the high red boots upon his feet, Caesar stood while Trogus draped the massive garment about his body, arranged the folds over his left shoulder so that they would not tumble down his left arm as he moved it.
How magnificent he looks, thought Calpurnia; purple and red become him more than white. “What are you doing as the Pontifex Maximus?” she asked. “Can’t you use that as an excuse?”
“No, I can’t,” he said, sounding a little exasperated. “It’s the Ides, a brief sacrifice.”
And off he went to join the procession waiting outside on the Sacra Via; a quick check of the sheep, and he was away down the hill toward the lower Forum and the Arx of the Capitol.
Within an hour he was back to change, discovering with a sigh that the reception room was thronged with clients, some of whom would have to be seen before he could set out on his rounds. He found Decimus Brutus in his study, chatting to Calpurnia.
“I hope,” Caesar said, coming in wearing his purple-bordered toga, “that you’ve managed to convince my wife that I stand in no danger from assassins today?”
“I’ve been trying, though I’m not sure I’ve succeeded,” Decimus said, his rump and palms propped on the edge of Caesar’s malachite desk, his ankles casually crossed.
“I have to see some fifty clients, none for very long, and none privately, if you want to stay. What brings you here so bright and early?”
“I thought you might be visiting Calvinus on your way to the meeting, and I’d like to see him,” Decimus said easily. “If I showed up there on my own, I’d likely be refused, whereas if I show up with you, I can’t be refused.”
“Clever.” Caesar chuckled. He looked at Calpurnia, brows up. “Thank you, my dear, I have work to do.”
“Decimus, take care of him!” she begged from the door.
Decimus smiled broadly—such a comforting smile! “Don’t worry, Calpurnia, I promise I’ll take care of him.”
Two hours later the pair of them left the Domus Publica to walk up the Vestal Steps on to the Palatine, a host of clients in their wake. As they turned the corner of the house to head for Vesta’s aedes, they passed old Spurinna, squatting in his usual spot beside the Door of Wills.
“Caesar! Beware the Ides of March!” he called.
“The Ides of March are here, Spurinna, and as you see, I am perfectly fit and well.” Caesar laughed.
“The Ides of March are here, yes, but they haven’t gone.”
“Silly old fool,” Decimus muttered.
“He’s many things, Decimus, but not that,” Caesar said.
At the foot of the Vestal Steps the crowd pressed in on them; a hand thrust a note at Caesar. Decimus intercepted it, took the note and put it inside the sinus of his toga. “Let’s get a move on,” he said. “I’ll give it to you to read later.”
At Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus’s door they were admitted, taken straight to where Calvinus lay on a couch in his study.
“Your Egyptian physician is a marvel, Caesar,” Calvinus said as they entered. “Decimus, what a pleasure!”
“You look much better than you did last night,” Caesar said.
“I feel much better.”
“We’re not staying, but I needed to see you for myself, old friend. Lucius and Piso say they’re skipping the meeting today to come and keep you company, but if they tire you, throw them out. What was the trouble?”
“A heart spasm. Hapd’efan’e gave me an extract of digitalis and I settled down almost at once. He said my heart was—well, the word he used was ‘fluttering’—very evocative! Apparently I have some fluid accumulated around the organ.”
“As long as you recover enough to be Master of the Horse. Lepidus leaves for Narbonese Gaul today, so there’s yet another won’t be in the House. Nor Philippus, who overindulged yesterday—him and his ambrosias! So I fear the front benches will be sparsely populated for my last appearance,” said Caesar. Rather surprisingly, he leaned to kiss Calvinus on the cheek. “Look after yourself.”
Then he was gone, Decimus Brutus in his wake.
Calvinus lay frowning; his eyelids drooped, he dozed.
As they passed the Circus Flaminius, picking their way between the puddles, Decimus spoke.
“Caesar, may I send word ahead that we’re coming?”
“Of course.”
One of Decimus’s servants sped off.
When they entered the colonnade they found some four hundred senators dotted around the garden, some reading, some dictating to scribes, some stretched out asleep on the grass, some clustered in chattering, laughing groups.
Mark Antony strode to meet them and shook Caesar’s hand. “Ave, Caesar. We had about given up on you until Decimus’s messenger came running in.”
Caesar dropped Antony’s hand with a cold look that said it was nobody’s business how late the Dictator was, and bounded up the steps to the Curia Pompeia, two servants in his wake, one with his ivory curule chair and a folding table, the other with wax tablets and a sack full of scrolls. They set up his chair and table at the front of the curule dais, received a nod of dismissal and left. Satisfied the furniture was correctly placed, Caesar emptied the sack of its contents a few at a time, setting the scrolls neatly one on top of the other along the back of the table, then seated himself with the wax tablets stacked to his left and a steel stylus beside them in case he wished to take notes.
“He’s working already,” said Decimus, joining the twenty-two others at the foot of the steps. “About forty pedarii are inside, none near the curule end. Trebonius, time to act.”
Trebonius moved immediately to join Antony, who had decided that the best way to keep Dolabella outside was to stay with him and make an effort to be civil. Their lictors, twelve each, were standing some distance away, the fasces (which belonged to the senior, Dolabella, as this was March) grounded. Though the meeting was outside the pomerium, it was within one mile of the city, so the lictors were togate and had no axes in their bundles of rods.
A refinement had occurred to Trebonius during the night, and he put it into effect as soon as Brutus came in with his six lictors. Namely, that out of respect for Caesar, lictorless for some nundinae by now, all the praetors and the two curule aediles should dismiss their lictors forthwith, attend the meeting without them. None objected as Cassius went the rounds of the other curule magistrates; glad of this unexpected holiday, the praetorian and aedilician lictors hurried back to their college, which was located behind the inn on the Clivus Orbius, and therefore handy for a thirsty lictor.
“Stay outside with me a while,” Trebonius said cheerfully to Antony, “there’s something I need to discuss with you.”
Dolabella had spied a crony playing dice with two others, nodded to his lictors
While Antony and Trebonius talked earnestly at the foot of the steps, Decimus led the Liberators inside. Had any of the senators left in the garden thought to look at them, he might have wondered at the gravity of their faces, the slightly furtive manner they had unconsciously adopted; but no one looked.
Lagging behind, Brutus felt a tug at his toga and turned to see one of his house servants standing red-faced and panting.
“Yes, what is it?” he asked, unbearably happy that something delayed his embarkation upon tyrannicide.
“Domine, the lady Porcia!” The man gasped.
“What about her?”
“She’s dead!”
The world didn’t rock, heave, or spin; Brutus stared at the slave in disbelief. “Nonsense,” he said.
“Domine, she’s dead, I swear she’s dead!”
“Tell me what happened,” Brutus said calmly.
“Well, she was in a terrible state—running around like one demented, screaming that Caesar was dead.”
“Hadn’t Atilius Stilo seen her?”
“Yes, domine, but he became angry and left when she refused to drink the potion he mixed for her.”
“And?”
“She fell over, stone dead. Epaphroditus couldn’t find one single sign of life—nothing! She’s dead! Dead! Come home, please come home, domine!”
“Tell Epaphroditus that I will come when I can,” Brutus said, putting a foot on the bottom step. “She isn’t dead, I promise you. I know her. It’s a fainting spell.” And mounted the next step, leaving the slave to gape at his back.
The chamber, large enough to hold six hundred when crammed, looked very empty despite the few backbencher senators already seated, scholarly men who seized any opportunity to read. None had put his stool at the curule dais end, for the light from a series of clerestory grilles streamed in best near the outer doors, but the readers were fairly evenly distributed between the two sides of the House, right top tier and left top tier. Very good, thought Decimus, shepherding his flock ahead of him, glancing back to see Brutus still outside—lost his courage, had he?
Caesar sat with his head bent over an unfurled scroll, lost to the world. Suddenly he moved, but not to look at the group walking down the center of the floor. His left hand plucked the top tablet off his stack, flipped it open, while his right picked up the stylus, began to inscribe the wax quickly and deftly.
Within ten feet of the dais the group came to a confused halt; it didn’t seem proper that Caesar failed to notice his assassins. Decimus’s eyes went to Pompey’s statue, very tall on its four-foot plinth, nestled into its alcove at the back of the platform, which was expansive, as it had to hold between sixteen and twenty men seated on curule chairs. Fingers suddenly clumsy, Decimus felt for his dagger, withdrew it, held it hidden by his side. He could sense the others doing the same, saw Brutus scuttle up the chamber out of the corner of his eye—he’d found the courage after all.
Lucius Tillius Cimber walked up the lictors’ step seats at the side of the dais, his dagger on naked display.
“Wait, you impatient cretin, wait!” Caesar barked irritably, his head still down, steel stylus still gouging at the wax.
Lips tightening in outrage, Cimber cast his fellow Liberators a fierce glare—see what a boor our Dictator is?—and strode forward to yank the toga away from the left side of Caesar’s neck. But Gaius Servilius Casca, pushing up on Cimber’s left, got in first, driving down from behind at Caesar’s throat. The blow glanced off the collarbone, inflicted a superficial wound at the top of the chest. Caesar was on his feet so quickly that the movement was a blur, striking out instinctively with his steel stylus. It plunged into Gaius Casca’s arm as the rest of the Liberators, emboldened, pressed forward with daggers raised.
Though he fought strenuously, Caesar neither cried out nor spoke. The table went flying, scrolls raining everywhere, the ivory chair followed, and spattering drops of blood. Now some of the senators on the top tiers were looking, exclaiming in horror, but none moved to come to Caesar’s aid. Retreating backward, he encountered Pompey’s plinth just as Cassius pushed to the fore, sank his blade into Caesar’s face, screwed it around, enucleating an eye and rendering that beauty nonexistent. A furore descended as the Liberators crowded in, daggers rising and falling, blood spurting now. Suddenly Caesar ceased to struggle, accepting the inevitable; that unique mind directed its flagging energies to dying with dignity unimpaired. His left hand came up to pull a fold of toga over his face and hide it, his right clenched the toga so that when he fell his legs would be decently covered. No one among this carrion should see what Caesar thought as he died, nor be able to jeer at the memory of Caesar’s legs bared.
Caecilius Buciolanus stabbed him in the back, Caesennius Lento in the shoulder. Bleeding terribly, Caesar still stood as the flurry of blows continued. Second-last and cool warrior that he was, Decimus Brutus put everything he had into the first of his two stabs, deep into the left side of Caesar’s chest. As the dagger went home to his heart, Caesar collapsed in a heap, Decimus following him down to deal his second blow, for Trebonius. And Brutus, the last to strike, blinded by sweat, palsied by fear, knelt to jab his knife at the genitals his mother had so adored, its tip piercing the many folds of toga because, entirely by accident, Brutus had aimed directly downward. He heard the metal grind and crunch on bone, retched, and scrambled to his feet as a searing pain crossed the back of his hand; someone had cut him.
The deed was done. All twenty-two men had wounded Caesar somewhere, Decimus Brutus twice. Face and legs covered, Caesar lay beneath Pompey’s statue, the creamish-white toga sliced to ribbons around his chest and back, soaking up the brilliantly red blood spreading over the white marble of the platform until it seemed there couldn’t possibly be more blood to come, there was so much of it pouring everywhere. Everywhere. Some skipped to avoid it, but Decimus didn’t notice it until it flowed around his shoes and percolated inside; he whimpered, sure it burned him.
Sobbing for breath, the Liberators stared at one another, eyes wild, Brutus absorbed in trying to staunch his bleeding hand. As if by instantaneous yet unvoiced consent, they turned and ran for the doors, Decimus as panicked as the rest. The pedarii who had witnessed the deed were already outside, screaming that he was dead, Caesar was dead! The panic became universal as the Liberators emerged into the garden, togas bloody, knives still in their sticky fists.
Men fled in all directions save into the Curia Pompeia; senators, lictors and slaves took to their heels, howling that Caesar was dead, Caesar was dead, Caesar was dead!
All their grand plans for speeches and thundering oratory forgotten, the Liberators fled too. Who among them could ever have believed that the reality would be so different from the dream, that staring at Caesar dead was such a terrible end to ideas, to philosophies, to aspirations? Only after the deed was done did any of them, even Decimus Brutus, truly understand its meaning. The titan had fallen, the world was so changed that no Republic could ever spring fully armed from its brow. The death of Caesar was a liberation, but what it had liberated was chaos.
By sheer instinct the Liberators ran for asylum to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, legs driving like mill shafts across the grass of the Campus Martius, up the back steps of the Capitol on to Romulus’s original Asylum, then up the final slope and all those steps to the temple. There, inside, groaning for breath, knees given way, the twenty-two men fell to the floor. Above them reared fifty feet of the Great God in gold and ivory splendor, his bright red terra-cotta face smiling that asinine, shut-mouthed, ear-to-ear smile.
* * *
As soon as the first pedarius bolted out of the Curia Pompeia shrieking that Caesar was assassinated, Mark Antony let out a yelp and began to run as well—out of the peristyle in the direction of the city! Staggered by Antony’s utterly unexpected reaction, Trebonius ran in his wake, shouting at him to stop, return and conv
Inside was absolute silence. Unable to look down at what lay at its feet, the statue of Pompey gazed up the chamber at the open doors, its pupils already pinpoints against the blinding glare because the artist had wanted an overwhelming blueness. Caesar huddled partly on his right side, his face veiled by a fold of toga, the flow of blood finally come to a halt forming a tiny cascade over one side of the dais. Sometimes a small bird flew in, fluttered vainly around the honeycombed roses of the ceiling until the light drew it out again into freedom. The hours dripped on, but no man or woman ventured inside. Caesar and Pompey did not move.
It was well into the afternoon when Calvinus’s steward came into his master’s study, where the invalid, very much better, was talking to Lucius Caesar and Lucius Piso. On the steward’s heels came the Egyptian physician, Hapd’efan’e.
“Not another examination!” Calvinus exclaimed, feeling so much like himself that he could resent medical interruptions.
“No, domine. I asked Hapd’efan’e to be here just in case.”
“Just in case of what, Hector?”
“The whole city is buzzing with a horrible rumor.” Hector hesitated, then blurted it out. “Everyone is saying that Caesar has been murdered.”
“Jupiter!” Piso cried as Calvinus leaped off the couch.
“Where? How? Speak, man, speak!” Lucius Caesar snapped.
“Lie down, lord Calvinus, please lie down,” Hapd’efan’e was beseeching Calvinus while Hector answered Lucius Caesar.
“No one seems to know, domine. Just that Caesar’s dead.”
“Back on the couch, Calvinus, and no arguments. Piso and I will investigate,” said Lucius Caesar, halfway out the door.
“Keep me informed!” Calvinus yelled.
“It can’t be, it can’t be,” Lucius Caesar was muttering as he went down the Vestal Steps five at a time, Piso keeping up.