The Ides of March

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  The centurion opened the window and looked outside. The two lanterns out in the courtyard lit up the big white flakes whirling about on the north wind. The tree trunks and branches were fast being blanketed by a layer of pure white which was getting thicker and thicker by the moment. The room was warm, thanks to the braziers and to the fire blazing in the fireplace downstairs, which warmed the walls and ceiling as well. Publius Sextius sighed at the idea of going out in the cold to travel down a road covered with snow in the middle of the night.

  The innkeeper arrived to wake him and to tell him that dinner was ready. Having found the centurion already on his feet, he couldn’t resist warning the man against his plan.

  ‘You can’t really mean to resume your journey now. You can’t be so mad, my friend! Setting off at night, in such foul weather . . . Who could blame you for staying? Listen to me. Forget about leaving now. Eat, drink a glass of good wine and go back to bed while it’s still warm. Tomorrow I’ll call you early, as soon as it’s light enough to see, and you’ll go wherever it is you need to go. Consider that you’re likely to get lost in the dark, in this snowstorm, and then any time you’d gained would go wasted.’

  ‘You’re right,’ replied Publius Sextius. ‘I need a guide.’

  ‘A guide? But . . . I don’t know, I don’t have any—’

  ‘Listen, friend, I don’t enjoy travelling under these conditions and I have no time to lose. Is that clear? Find me a guide or you’ll be sorry. I have written orders of absolute priority. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I understand. I’ll try to find someone who can take you to the next rest stop. But if you end up down in a gully, you’ll have only yourself to blame.’

  ‘That I already know. I’ll eat whatever you’ve got prepared. You worry about arranging the rest.’

  The innkeeper accompanied him downstairs, grumbling and holding his lantern high. He sat his guest down in front of a plate of lamb with lentils and went off, still muttering.

  Publius Sextius began to eat. The meat was good, the lentils tasty and, as for the wine, he’d drunk worse. A hot meal was just what he needed to get himself moving again. As he ate, he calculated and recalculated how he might make his route any quicker. He began to wonder whether the innkeeper wasn’t right after all about waiting until morning, but when he’d swallowed the last mouthful of food and downed the last of his wine, he was more convinced than ever that he’d made the right decision. He threw his cloak over his shoulders and went outside.

  The courtyard was completely white. A stable hand brought out a horse with his baggage strapped on to its back. Nearby stood another horse and, beside him, the man Publius Sextius assumed would be his guide: a fellow of about fifty wearing a waxcloth over his shoulders and a hood pulled up over his head. His face was stony, completely impassive, and he held a lit torch in his left hand to light their way. Another three or four spare torches were tied to the horse’s side.

  There were only two legionaries on guard now. Neither one of them was Baebius Carbo.

  ‘I’m sorry to put you to this trouble, friend,’ said Publius Sextius to the guide, ‘but I’m in a hurry and I can’t afford to waste any time. Do your duty well and you’ll be amply rewarded. Just take me to the next rest station and after that you can turn back.’

  The man nodded his head and then, without saying a word, got on his horse. Publius Sextius mounted as well, touched his heels to the horse’s flanks and rode him out the gate. The two legionaries saluted him and the other rider gave them a quick salute back. They let the two horsemen pass before closing the gate behind them.

  As soon as they were outside, they were struck by a blast of cold wind and blowing snow, which was beginning to fall faster and faster.

  Publius Sextius drew closer to his companion, who still hadn’t opened his mouth. ‘What’s your name, friend?’ he asked.

  ‘Sura.’

  ‘I’m Publius. We can go.’

  Sura started down the road, setting a slow, steady pace and lighting the way with his torch. Publius Sextius rode behind him, staying to the centre of the path. He couldn’t shake the impression that they were being followed, and kept turning to scan the forest around them. The road was winding and sloped steeply upwards through the oak and chestnut trees green with moss and white with snow. There were no signs of human presence, but the light cast by Sura’s smoky torch was weak, so he couldn’t be sure.

  Publius Sextius had realized immediately that his guide was not a man of many words and he didn’t try to make conversation. He asked questions only when necessary, obtaining grunts of assent or refusal in response. He tried to keep his mind occupied with thoughts, reflections, plans. His intention was to reach Caesar in time to depart with him on his expedition to the east, about which he’d heard great things. Caesar’s objectives were, as always, formidable.

  He had been with Caesar in Gaul and in Spain, and would gladly follow him to Mesopotamia, to Hyrcania, to Sarmatia if necessary. He would follow him to the ends of the earth.

  Publius Sextius believed that Caesar was the only man who could save the world.

  Caesar had ended the civil wars and had achieved reconciliation with all his adversaries. He was firmly convinced that the only civilization capable of governing humankind was the one that had its fulcrum and force in Rome. He believed that Rome was the world and the world was Rome. He understood his enemies, the peoples who had fought against him to save their independence, he even admired their bravery, but he knew that his victory over them was already destined, written in stone.

  Whenever Publius Sextius had had the opportunity to speak with him, he’d been impressed by the expression in Caesar’s eyes and by the sense of determination and command that emanated from him. A predator, yes, but not bloodthirsty. He was quite sure that Caesar felt repugnance at the sight of blood.

  How often he had marched at his side, watching as the commander rode by, as he spoke with his officers and with his soldiers. When Caesar recognized someone who had distinguished himself on a day of pitched battle, he would always get off his horse to talk with him, make a joke or two. But his most vivid memory of Caesar went back to the night after the battle against the Nervii, after he, Publius Sextius, commander of the Twelfth, had returned to camp on a stretcher, a bloody mess, more dead than alive, but victorious. He had seized the standard that day and carried it forward towards the enemy himself. He had regrouped the fighting units, instilling courage into his men, and had been the first to set an example.

  Caesar had come to visit him, alone, in the tent where the surgeons were trying to stitch him up by the dim light of a few tallow lamps. Leaning close, Caesar had said:

  ‘Publius Sextius.’

  The centurion could barely form a word but he recognized his commander.

  ‘You saved your comrades today. Thousands of them would have been massacred and years of work would have been lost in a single moment. You saved me, too, along with the honour of the republic, the people and the Senate. There’s no reward that equals such an act, but if it means anything to you, you should know that you will always be the man I rely on, even if everyone else abandons me.’

  Then he’d lowered his gaze to look at the centurion’s body, covered with cuts and gashes.

  ‘So many wounds,’ he whispered with dismay in his voice, ‘so many wounds . . .’

  Publius Sextius wondered why, in this moment of total solitude, in the middle of a night-long journey through the deserted forests of the Apennines, with a snowstorm raging all around, he should remember those words.

  In front of him, the inscrutable Sura plodded on at a steady pace, holding the torch high, staining the immaculate snow with its ruddy reflection, leaving behind him the prints of a good, strong, patient horse who continued, one step after another, further and further up the twisting path, under the skeletal branches of the beeches and oaks.

  It occurred to Publius Sextius that someone might have gone ahead and be settin
g a trap. Maybe Sura was leading him into an ambush from which he wouldn’t escape. Maybe the message would never arrive at its destination in time. But then he remembered how the innkeeper had insisted that he spend the night in the mansio, safe inside under the watchful eye of four legionaries, including Baebius Carbo of the Thirteenth. No one knew where dawn would find him tomorrow.

  Sura lit the second torch and threw the first stub into the snow. It glowed for an instant, then died in the darkness of the night. A bird surprised by the sudden light of the torch took to the sky with a shriek that sounded like despair before disappearing far away in the valley.

  The wind died down. There wasn’t a sound now, or traces of life of any sort. Even the rare milestones along the road were buried in the snowdrifts. All Publius Sextius could hear were Caesar’s words, repeated endlessly in his lonely, empty mind: ‘So many wounds . . . so many wounds.’

  9

  In Monte Appennino, per flumen secretum, a.d. VI Id. Mart., secunda vigilia

  The Apennine Mountains, the secret river, 10 March, second guard shift, ten p.m.

  MUSTELA FLOUNDERED helplessly in the swirling waters of the underground torrent, dragged along by the current. The whirlpools would suck him under the surface, where he tried to hold his breath for as long as he could in a struggle to survive until he was tossed up further along, where he would spit out the water he’d swallowed, gulp at the air and then disappear under the waves again.

  He stifled his cries when the current smashed him against the rocks and he could feel blood oozing from his cuts. More than once he thought he would lose his senses as he hit his head hard or took such a pounding from the waves that he didn t think he would survive.

  Suddenly he felt something grazing his belly. Gravel and sand. He grabbed at an outcrop of rock and managed to stop and to catch his breath as he lay in a small bend of the river where the water was shallow.

  Panting uncontrollably, he tried to work out whether he had any broken bones and to ascertain what was pouring from his side. He touched his hand to his mouth and could tell from the sweetish metallic taste that it was blood. He stuck his fingertips into the wound and discovered that the skin was torn from his hip to his ribcage on the left side. However, the gash had not penetrated too deep and so he hoped that no serious damage had been done.

  He could hear the sounds of the waterfall he’d already gone through coming from upstream. Further downstream there was a different noise, deeper and gurgling, but the utter darkness filled him with an anxious uncertainty verging on panic. He had no idea where he was, how far he had come and how much further he had to go. He’d lost all sense of time since the moment when he’d lowered himself into the icy river and let go of the last handhold along the water’s edge.

  His teeth were chattering and his limbs were completely numb. His feet hung like dead weights and jolts of pain shot up from his side and one of his shoulders. He backed into a craggy area that turned out to be a small, dry cave. It was warmer there and big enough for him to crouch in. He even managed to stop the bleeding by tying a strip of fabric ripped from his clothing around the wound as a bandage. He let himself fall back and drowsed, more out of exhaustion than any desire to sleep. When he came to, he couldn’t have said how long he’d been there, but he knew that he had to continue his journey through the bowels of the mountain. He invoked the gods of Hades, promising to make a generous sacrifice if he managed to get out of their underground realm alive. Then he dragged himself back towards the water, lowered himself into the freezing river and let the current carry him away.

  For a long time he was tossed around, battered, knocked under and thrown back up, as if he were in the throat of a monster, a sensation that felt more real to his terrified mind than being in the river.

  Then, little by little, the speed of the current began to lessen and the channel became wider and less precipitous. Even the crashing noise of the waves died away. Perhaps the worst was past, but he couldn’t be sure. He had no way of knowing what new dangers the river might have in store for him.

  But he was so exhausted from the cold, his endless struggle and his constant gagging as he coughed up the water he had swallowed that he merely let himself go, abandoning himself like a man would to death. A long time passed, how long he couldn’t tell.

  The darkness had been so enveloping and so dense until then that he couldn’t believe it when the faintest glimmer of light came into view in the distance. Could he have reached the end? Would he see the world of the living again? Hope instilled a surge of energy and he dived into the middle of the river and began swimming. The vault of the tunnel within which the water flowed seemed to lighten imperceptibly, so that he was no longer in pitch blackness. This was the promise of light more than light itself, but with the passage of time it grew stronger until he became aware of the pale glow of the moon brightening the night sky.

  Utterly exhausted by the enormous strain on his body and frozen half to death, Mustela fell to the ground, finally outside, finally under the vault of the sky, on a low, sandy bank. He laboriously dragged himself towards dry land and collapsed, without a single drop of strength left in his body.

  In Monte Appennino, ad fontes Arni, a.d. VI Id. Mart., ad finem secundae vigiliae

  The Apennine Mountains, at the source of the Arno, 10 March, end of the second guard shift, midnight

  THEY CONTINUED on the ever narrowing road, one closely following the other, black figures in the reddish glow of the torch, moving over the snowy stretches. Publius Sextius forced himself to count the milestones, when they weren’t completely covered, and to keep a lookout for signs of animals that might attack them.

  Oppressed by his solitude and worries, he turned to his companion.

  ‘Don’t you ever talk?’ he asked.

  ‘Only when I have something to say,’ replied Sura without turning, adding nothing further.

  Publius Sextius went back to his thoughts, brooding over the revelation that had upset him most: that Mark Antony had been asked to participate in a plot against Caesar and, even though he hadn’t accepted, hadn’t told Caesar either. That could only mean one thing: he was on no one’s side but his own. Quite a dangerous quality in a man. Antony must have reasoned that, if the plot was successful, the conspirators would be grateful to him for his silence, and if it failed, he would have lost nothing. But how, then, to explain that gesture of his at the Lupercalia festival? If he was really so smart and so cynical, how could he have committed such a huge error? He had chosen to stand out by making such a blatant move at such a sensitive moment. Perhaps he’d always deliberately acted the part of the simple soldier, who knows nothing of politics, in order to hide his bigger ambitions. But even if that were so, what sense did it make to attempt to crown Caesar king in public? Evidently Antony had known, or had thought he knew, how the crowd would react, so why didn’t he worry about Caesar’s reaction? Even if he thought he could continue to hide behind his pretended ingenuousness, Antony couldn’t ignore the fact that – if a conspiracy was being planned – his gesture would contribute to making Caesar more vulnerable and more alone.

  So why had Antony chosen to do such a thing? What could the reason possibly be?

  Publius Sextius continued turning it over in his mind, again and again, but it was like beating his head against a wall. Finally, he gave up and instead watched the snow descending silently in huge flakes in the light of Sura’s torchlight as they proceeded slowly, ever more slowly, while he would have preferred to race like the wind, to devour the road, to reach his destination before it was too late. Maybe it was already too late. Perhaps all his efforts would prove to be in vain.

  There had to be a reason. Fleetingly, when the vice loosened and the cold air let him breathe, he felt he was close to finding a solution. The answer must lie with several key people, not many, perhaps three or four. With the balance of power or interests among them. He forced himself to consider every possibility, the likely motives of each individual and how
they might overlap or conflict. He would have liked to jump to the ground and use the tip of his knife to sketch out the complicated connections on the immaculate snow, in the way that he would use the hard ground of an army camp to plan the action for his unit during a battle. But then he would lose track and his thoughts would dissolve into thousands of small, confused fragments, at which point he would realize he was no closer to a solution than he had been at the start and his gaze would drift again to the spinning white flakes.

  Now and then he even suspected that the map Nebula had given him in Modena, before disappearing into the morning fog, was leading him straight into a trap. But even if that were so, he convinced himself, he had no choice and had to run this risk. The alternative was arriving too late to pass on his message.

  Sura now broke one of his interminable silences to announce that they were close to the source of the Arno river and were on an ancient Etruscan road. He said nothing more.

  Publius Sextius rode on, torturing himself with his thoughts all night long.

  In Monte Appennino, a.d. V Id. Mart., tertia vigilia

  The Apennine Mountains, 11 March, third guard shift, after midnight

  ONLY RUFUS was suffering as much pain as he struggled to reach the Via Flaminia Minor in as little time as possible, which meant cutting straight across the mountainside. At first he followed the barely visible path that wound down the slope forming the western embankment of the Reno valley to get to the river. He managed this with considerable difficulty, often having to dismount and lead his horse by the reins, until he arrived at the riverbank. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. The falling snow was now mixed with a fine, relentless drizzle that trickled down his cloak and dripped on to the ground from the hem.