The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
“I can’t stay,” Lucius said, “but I urge you to leave for Egypt as soon as possible. The men who killed Caesar might thirst for other blood.”
“Oh, I intend to go. What is left here for me?” Her eyes shimmered, but no tears fell. “I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.”
“None of us did. If there’s anything you need, come to me.”
She let him out into the cold night, and sent torchbearers with him armed with spare ones; her torches were dipped in the fine asphalt from the Palus Asphaltites in Judaea, but no torch lasted very long. Just as no life lasted very long. Only the Gods lived forever, and even they could be forgotten.
How calm she is! thought Lucius. Perhaps sovereigns are different from other men and women. Caesar was, and he had been a natural sovereign. It is not the diadem, it is the spirit.
On the Pons Aemilius he met Caesar’s oldest friend, the knight Gaius Matius, whose family had occupied the other ground-floor apartment in Aurelia’s Suburan insula.
They fell on each other’s shoulders and wept.
“Do you know yet who did it, Matius?” Lucius asked, wiping his eyes and putting an arm around Matius’s shoulders as they walked.
“I’ve heard some names, which is why Piso asked me to go to meet you. Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius—and two of his own Gallic marshals, Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius. Pah!” Matius spat. “They owed him everything, and this is how they thank him.”
“Jealousy is the worst vice of all, Matius.”
“The idea was Trebonius’s,” Matius went on, “though he didn’t strike a blow. His job was to keep Antonius out of the House while the rest did the deed. No lictors inside. It was very clever, but it fell down afterward. They panicked and went to earth in Jupiter Optimus Maximus’s.”
Lucius felt a coldness growing in the pit of his belly. “Was Antonius a part of the plot?”
“Some say yes, some say no, but Lucius Piso doesn’t think so, nor does Philippus. There’s no real reason to suppose it, Lucius, if Trebonius was obliged to stay outside and detain him.” A sob, several more, then Matius broke into a fresh spate of tears. “Oh, Lucius, what will we do? If Caesar, with all his genius, couldn’t find a way out, then who is there left to try? We’re lost!”
Servilia had had an irritating day, between Tertulla, who continued to be poorly, and the local Tusculan midwife, who had advised against the jolting journey back to an unhealthy, grimy city—the lady Tertulla was sure to have a miscarriage! So Servilia traveled alone, and arrived in Rome after dark.
Sweeping past the porter, she never noticed that his lips were parted to give her a message; up the women’s side of the colonnade she marched her stumpy legs, her ears offended by the sounds of jubilation emanating from the three suites on the opposite side where those useless, parasitic philosophers lived—on the wine again, no doubt. Were it left to her, they’d be roosting on top of the rubbish dump near the Agger lime pits. Or, better still, hanging from three crosses in the peristyle rose beds.
Her maidservant running to keep up, she entered her own suite of rooms and dumped her voluminous wrap on the floor; conscious that her bladder was full to bursting, she debated whether to return to the latrine to empty it, then shrugged and went onward to the corridor between the dining room and Brutus’s study, looking for him. The lamps were all lit; Epaphroditus came to meet her, wringing his hands.
“Don’t tell me!” she barked, not in a good mood. “What’s the wretched girl done now?”
“This morning we thought her dead, domina, and sent to the master at the Curia Pompeia, but he was right. He said it was a fainting fit, and it was.”
“So he’s been sitting by her bedside all day when he should have been in the House?”
“That’s just it, domina! He sent a message back with the servant that it was only a fainting fit—he didn’t come home!” Epaphroditus burst into noisy tears. “Oh, oh, oh, and now he can’t come home!” he wailed.
“What do you mean, can’t come home?”
“He means,” cried Porcia, running in, “that Caesar is dead, and that my Brutus—my Brutus!—killed him!”
Shock paralyzed Servilia; she stood feeling warm urine gush down her legs, numb to the marrow, breath suspended, mouth agape, eyes goggling.
“Caesar’s dead, my father is avenged! Your lover’s dead because your son killed him! And I made Brutus do it—I made him!”
The power to move returned. Servilia leaped at Porcia and punched her with fist closed. Down Porcia went in a sprawl while Servilia got both hands in that mass of hair and dragged her to the pool of urine, scrubbed her face in it until she came to, choking. “Meretrix mascula! Femina mentula! Filthy, crazy, lowborn verpa!”
Porcia heaved herself to her feet and went for Servilia with teeth and nails; the two women swayed, locked in furious, silent combat as Epaphroditus shrieked for assistance. It took six men to separate them.
“Shut her in her room!” Servilia panted, very pleased because she had gotten by far the best of the tussle. It was Porcia all bleeding and scratched, Porcia all bitten and torn. “Go on, do it!” she roared. “Do it, or I’ll have the lot of you crucified!”
The three tame philosophers had tumbled out of their doors to gape, but none ventured close, and none protested as the howling, screaming Porcia was dragged to her room and locked in.
“What are you looking at?” the lady of the house demanded of the three philosophers. “Anxious to hang on crosses, are you, you wine-soaked leeches?”
They bolted back into their suites, but Epaphroditus stood his ground; when Servilia was like this, best to see it out.
“Is what she said true, Ditus?”
“I fear so, domina. Master Brutus and the others have sought sanctuary in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.”
“The others?”
“A number, it seems. Gaius Cassius is an assassin too.”
She tottered, grabbed at the steward. “Help me to my room, and have someone clean this mess up. Keep me informed, Ditus.”
“Yes, domina. The lady Porcia?”
“Stays right where she is. No food, no drink. Let her rot!”
The maidservant banished, Servilia slammed her door, dropped on to a couch, rocked with grief. Caesar, dead? No, it couldn’t be! But it was. Cato, Cato, Cato, may you roll boulders for all eternity in Tartarus for this! It’s your doing, no one else’s. It’s you brought that piss-puss up, it’s you put the idea in Brutus’s head to marry her, it’s you and the mentula who fathered you have ruined my life! Caesar, Caesar! How much I have loved you. I will always love you, I cannot scour it out of my mind.
She leaned back, lashes fanning down over her pallid cheeks, dreaming first of how she was going to kill Porcia—oh, what a day that would be! Then, eyes opening dull and black and fierce, she started to work on a far more important problem—how to retrieve Brutus from this insane catastrophe, how to make sure that the family Servilius Caepio and the family Junius Brutus would emerge from it with fortunes and reputations intact. Caesar dead, but family ruin wouldn’t bring him back.
“It’s been dark for two hours,” Antony said to Fulvia. “I should be safe by now.”
“Safe for what?” Fulvia asked, purplish-blue eyes gone murky in the dimness. “Marcus, what are you going to do?”
“Go to the Domus Publica.”
“Why?”
“To see for myself that he’s really dead.”
“Of course he’s dead! If he weren’t, someone would have come to tell you. Stay here, please! Don’t leave me alone!”
“You’ll be all right.”
And he was gone, a winter cloak thrown around his shoulders.
An exclusive district of large houses, the Carinae was a fork of the Esquiline Mount that traveled toward the Forum, divided from the festering stews behind it by several temple sanctuaries and a grove of oaks. Therefore Antony hadn’t far to walk. Lamps flickered down the Sacra Via toward the Forum; there were many peop
Seeing the face, Trogus opened the door just enough to let Antony squeeze inside, then closed it quickly. Lucius Piso stood behind him, swarthy face bleak.
“Is he here?” Antony asked, tossing the cloak at Trogus.
“Yes, in the temple. Come,” said Piso.
“Calpurnia?”
“My daughter’s in bed. That odd Egyptian fellow mixed her a sleeping draft.”
The temple lay between the two sides of the Domus Publica, a huge room without an idol, for it belonged to Rome’s numina, the shadowy gods without faces or human forms that preceded Greek ideas by centuries and still formed the true nucleus of Roman worship; they were the forces that governed functions, actions, entities like larders, granaries, wells, crossroads. It was lit to brilliance with chandeliers, its great double bronze doors open at either end, one set on to the colonnade around the main peristyle, the other on to the mysterious vestibule of the Kings, with its two amygdalae and its three downward sloping mosaic pathways to yet another set of doors. Along either side of the chamber stood the imagines of the Chief Vestals since the time of the first Aemilia, lifelike wax masks encased in miniature temples, each perched on a costly pedestal.
Caesar sat upright on a black bier in the exact middle, and looked as if he slept. Only Hapd’efan’e knew that the upper left side of his face was carefully tinted wax smeared on a bed of gauze; the eyes were closed, so too the mouth. More shocked and afraid than he had thought to be, Antony inched up to the bier and looked into the dreaming countenance. His toga and tunic were the crimson and purple of the Pontifex Maximus, his head adorned with the oak-leaf crown. The only ring he had ever worn was his seal, but it was gone; the long, tapering fingers were folded on each other in his lap, nails trimmed and polished.
Suddenly the sight was too much; Antony turned away, left the cella to go to Caesar’s study, Piso following.
“Is there any money here?” Antony asked abruptly.
Piso looked blank. “How would I know?” he asked.
“Calpurnia will. Wake her.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Wake Calpurnia! She’ll know where he keeps his money.” As he spoke Antony opened a desk drawer, began to rummage inside it.
“Antonius, stop that!”
“I’m Caesar’s heir, it will all be mine anyway. What’s the difference between taking a bit now or later? I’m being dunned, I have to find enough to satisfy the moneylenders tomorrow.”
Piso angry was a terrifying sight; his unfortunate face had a naturally villainous cast, and when he bared his rotten, broken teeth in a snarl, they looked like fangs. Angry now, he wrested Antony’s hand out of the drawer, slammed it shut. “I said, stop that! Nor am I waking my poor daughter!”
“I’m Caesar’s heir, I tell you!”
“And I am Caesar’s executor! You do nothing, you take nothing until I’ve seen Caesar’s will!” Piso declared.
“All right, that can be arranged.”
Antony strode to the temple, where Quinctilia, the Chief Vestal, had taken up residence on a chair to keep vigil over Caesar.
“You!” Antony barked, yanking her roughly off the chair. “Fetch me Caesar’s will!”
“But—”
“I said, fetch me Caesar’s will—now!”
“Don’t you dare molest Rome’s luck!” Piso growled.
“It will take a few moments,” Quinctilia babbled, frightened.
“Then don’t waste them here! Find it and bring it to Caesar’s study! Move, you fat, stupid sow!”
“Antonius!” Piso roared.
“He’s dead, what does he care?” Antony asked, flapping a hand at Caesar’s body. “Where’s his seal ring?”
“In my possession,” Piso whispered, too angry to yell.
“Give it to me! I’m his heir!”
“Not until I see that for myself.”
“He must have scrip, deeds, all sorts of things,” said Antony, ransacking the study pigeonholes.
“Yes, he does, but not here, you impious, avaricious fool! Everything is kept with his bankers—he’s no Brutus, to have his own strong room!” Piso usurped the desk before Antony could. “I pray,” he said coldly, “that you die very slowly and horribly.”
Quinctilia appeared with a scroll in her hand, bound with wax and heavily sealed. When Antony went to grab it, she skipped past him with surprising agility and handed it to Piso, who took it and held it to a lamp, examined the seal.
“Thank you, Quinctilia,” Piso said. “Please ask Cornelia and Junia to come and act as witnesses. This ingrate insists that I open Caesar’s testament now.”
The three Vestals, clad in white from head to foot, hair crowned with seven circlets of wool beneath their veils, clustered at one side of the desk while Piso broke the seal and unfurled the short, small document.
A good reader, and assisted by the dot that Caesar always put over the top letter of a new word, Piso scanned it quickly, his arm deliberately obscuring it from Antony’s gaze. Without any warning, he threw his head back and roared with laughter.
“What? What?”
“You’re not Caesar’s heir, Antonius! In fact, you don’t get a mention!” Piso managed to say, fumbling for his handkerchief to wipe away his tears, half grief, half mirth. “Well done, Caesar! Oh, well done!”
“I don’t believe you! Here, give it to me!”
“There are three Vestal witnesses, Antonius,” Piso warned as he handed it over. “Don’t attempt to destroy it.”
Fingers trembling, Antony read only enough to see a ghastly name, didn’t get to the adoption clause. “Gaius Octavius? That simpering, mincing little pansy? It’s a joke! Either that, or Caesar was mad when he wrote it. I’ll contest!”
“By all means try,” Piso said, snatching the will back. He smiled at the three Vestals, as delighted as he at this wonderful retribution. “It’s watertight, Antonius, and you know it. Seven-eighths to Gaius Octavius, one-eighth to be divided between—um, Quintus Pedius, Lucius Pinarius, Decimus Brutus—that won’t hold up, he’s one of the assassins—and my daughter, Calpurnia.”
Piso leaned back and closed his eyes as Antony stormed out. He has to be worth at least fifty thousand talents, he thought to himself, still smiling. One-eighth of that is six thousand, two hundred and fifty talents…Ignoring Decimus Brutus, who can’t inherit as the result of a crime, that gives my Calpurnia something over two thousand talents. Well, well, well! He’s tied it up for her as a decent husband should, too. I can’t touch it—without her consent, at any rate.
He opened his eyes to find he was alone; the Vestals had gone back to their vigil, no doubt. Popping the will into the sinus of his toga, he rose to his feet. Two thousand talents! That made Calpurnia a major heiress. As soon as her official mourning period of ten months was over, he could marry her to someone powerful enough to be a big help for his infant son. Wouldn’t Rutilia be thrilled?
Interesting, however, that Caesar had made no provision for a child of Calpurnia’s body. That means he knows there won’t be one—or that if there is, it doesn’t belong to him. Too busy across the river with Cleopatra. Gaius Octavius was going to be the richest man in Rome.
Having heard the news of Caesar’s assassination as he passed through Veii, not far north of Rome, Lepidus arrived at Antony’s house at dawn. Grey with shock and fatigue, he accepted a goblet of wine and stared at Antony.
“You look worse than I feel,” Lepidus said.
“I feel worse than I look.”
“Odd, I didn’t think Caesar’s de
Whereupon Antony began to laugh insanely, walking back and forth, slapping his thighs, stomping his huge feet on the floor. “I am not Caesar’s heir!” he hollered.
Jaw dropped, Lepidus gaped. “You’re joking!”
“I am not joking!”
“But who else is there to leave it to?”
“Think of the least likely candidate.”
Lepidus gulped. “Gaius Octavius?” he whispered.
“Gaius Cunnus Octavius,” said Antony. “It all goes to a girl in a man’s toga.”
“Jupiter!”
Antony collapsed on to a chair. “I was so sure,” he said.
“But Gaius Octavius? It makes no sense, Antonius! What is he, about eighteen or nineteen?”
“Eighteen. Sitting across the Adriatic in Apollonia. I wonder did Caesar tell him? They were mighty thick in Spain. I didn’t read that far, but no doubt he’s been adopted.”
“More important,” said Lepidus, leaning forward, “what’s going to happen now? Shouldn’t you be talking to Dolabella? He’s the senior consul.”
“We’ll see about that,” Antony said grimly. “Did you bring any troops with you?”
“Yes, two thousand. They’re on the Campus Martius.”
“Then the first thing is to garrison the Forum.”
“I agree,” Lepidus was saying when Dolabella walked in.
“Pax, pax!” Dolabella cried, holding up his hands, palms out. “I’ve come to say that I think you should be senior consul now Caesar’s dead, Antonius. This shock changes everything. If we don’t present a united front, the gods know what might brew up.”
“That’s the first piece of good news I’ve heard!”
“Go on, you’re Caesar’s heir!”
“Quin taces!” Antony snarled, swelling.
“He’s not Caesar’s heir,” Lepidus explained. “Gaius Octavius is. You know, his great-nephew? The pretty pansy?”
“Jup-i-ter!” said Dolabella. “What are you going to do?”