The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  Brutus inherited in accordance with the mos maiorum; he was Caepio’s closest agnate male relative. Servilia’s son, his nephew. I do not grudge Brutus one sestertius of that staggering fortune, and can console myself with the knowledge that Caepio’s wealth could not have gone to a more careful custodian than he. I simply wish that Brutus was more a man, less a milksop. But with that mother, what else could I expect? Servilia has made him what she wanted—obedient, subservient, and desperately afraid of her. How odd, that Brutus actually got up the gumption to cut his leading strings and join Pompeius Magnus in Macedonia. That cur Labienus says he fought at Pharsalus. Amazing. Perhaps being isolated from his harpy of a mother has wrought great changes in him? Perhaps he’ll even show his pimple-pocked face in Africa Province? Hah! I’ll believe that when I see it!

  Cato swallowed a yawn, and went to lie on his straw pallet between the miserably still forms of Statyllus and Athenodorus Cordylion—shockingly bad sailors, both of them.

  Zephyrus continued to blow from the west, but veered around just sufficiently to the north to keep Cato’s fifty transports heading in the general direction of Africa. However, he noted with sinking heart, far to the east of Africa Province. Instead of sighting first Italy’s heel, then Italy’s toe, and finally Sicily, they were pushed firmly against the west coast of the Greek Peloponnese all the way to Cape Taenarum, from whence they limped to Cythera, the beautiful island that Labienus had intended to visit in search of troops fleeing from Pharsalus. If he was still there, he didn’t signal from the shore. Suppressing his anxiety, Cato sailed on toward Crete, and passed the stubby sere bluffs of Criumetopon on the eleventh day at sea.

  Gnaeus Pompey had not been able to provide a pilot, but had sent Cato to spend a day with his six best men, all experienced mariners who knew the eastern end of Our Sea as well as had the Phoenicians of old. Thus it was Cato who identified the various landfalls, Cato who had an idea of where they were going.

  Though they had sighted no other ships, Cato hadn’t dared to stop and take on water anywhere in Greece, so on the twelfth day he anchored his fleet in unsheltered but placid conditions off Cretan Gaudos Isle, and there made sure that every barrel and amphora he owned was filled to the brim from a spring that gushed out of a cliff into the wavelets. Cretan Gaudos was the last lonely outpost before he committed them to the empty wastes of the Libyan Sea. Libya. They were going to Libya, where men were executed smeared with honey and lashed across an ant heap. Libya. A place of nomad Marmaridae—marble people—and, if the Greek geographers were to be believed, perpetually shifting sands, rainless skies.

  At Gaudos he had himself rowed in a tiny boat from one cluster of transports to the next, standing up to shout his little speech of cheer and explanation in that famously stentorian voice.

  “Fellow voyagers, the coast of Africa is still far away, but here we must say farewell to the friendly breast of Mother Earth, for from now on we sail without sight of land amid the streams of tunnyfish and the whoofs of dolphins. Do not be afraid! I, Marcus Porcius Cato, have you in my hand, and I will hold you safely until we reach Africa. We will keep our ships together, we will row hard but sensibly, we will sing the songs of our beloved Italy, we will trust in ourselves and in our gods. We are Romans of the true Republic, and we will survive to make life hard for Caesar, so I swear it by Sol Indiges, Tellus and Liber Pater!”

  A little speech greeted by frenzied cheers, smiling faces.

  Then, though he was neither priest nor augur, Cato killed a biden-tine ewe and offered it, as the Commander, to the Lares Permarini, the protectors of those who traveled on the sea. A fold of his purple-bordered toga over his head, he prayed:

  “O ye who are called the Lares Permarini, or any other name ye prefer—ye who may be gods, goddesses or of no sex at all—we ask that ye intercede on our behalf with the mighty Father Neptune—whose offspring ye may or may not be—before we set out on our journey to Africa. We pray that ye will testify before all the gods that we are sincere as we ask ye to keep us safe, keep us free from the storms and travails of the deep, keep our ships together, and allow us to land in some civilized place. In accordance with our contractual agreements, which go back to the time of Romulus, we hereby offer ye the proper sacrifice, a fine young female sheep which has been cleansed and purified.”

  And on the thirteenth day the fleet weighed anchor to sail to only the Lares Permarini knew where.

  Having attained his sea legs, Statyllus abandoned his bed and kept Cato company.

  “Though I try valiantly, I can never understand the Roman mode of worship,” he said, now enjoying the slight motion of a big, heavy ship riding a glossy sea.

  “In what way, Statyllus?”

  “The—legality, Marcus Cato. How can any people have legal contracts with their gods?”

  “Romans do, always have done. Though I confess, not being a priest, that I wasn’t exactly sure when the contract with the Lares Permarini was drawn up,” Cato said very seriously. “However, I did remember that Lucius Ahenobarbus said the contracts with numina like the Lares and Penates were drawn up by Romulus. It’s only the late arrivals like Magna Mater and”—he grimaced in disgust—”Isis whose legal agreements with the Senate and People of Rome are preserved. A priest would automatically know, it’s a part of his job. But who would elect Marcus Porcius Cato to one of the pontifical colleges when he can’t even get himself elected consul in a poor year of dismal candidates?”

  “You are still young,” Statyllus said softly, well aware of Cato’s disappointment when he had failed to secure the consulship four years ago. “Once the true government of Rome is restored, you will be senior consul, returned by all the Centuries.”

  “That is as may be. First, let us get ourselves to Africa.”

  The days crept by as the fleet crept southeast, chiefly by oar power, though the huge single sail each ship bore aloft on a mast did swell occasionally, help a little. However, as a slack sail made rowing a harder business, sails were furled unless the day was one of frequent helpful puffs.

  To keep himself fit and alert, Cato took a regular shift on an oar, plying it alone. Like merchant vessels, transports had but one bank of oars, fifteen to a side. All were fully decked, which meant the oarsmen sat within the hull, an ordeal more endurable because they were housed in an outrigger that projected them well over the water, made it easier and airier to row. Warships were entirely different, had several banks of oars plied by two to five men per oar, the bottom bank so close to the surface of the sea that the ports were sealed with leather valves. But war galleys were never meant to carry cargo or stay afloat between battles; they were jealously cared for and spent most of their twenty years of service sitting ashore in ship sheds. When Gnaeus Pompey quit Corcyra, he left its natives hundreds of ship sheds—firewood!

  Because Cato believed that selfless hard work was one of the marks of a good man, he put his back to it, and inspired the other twenty-nine men who rowed with him to do the same. Word of the Commander’s participation somehow spread from ship to ship, and men rowed more willingly, stroking to the beat of the hortator’s drum. Counting every soul aboard those ships carrying soldiers rather than mules, wagons or equipment, there were men enough for two teams only, which meant a constant four hours on, four hours off, day and night.

  The diet was monotonous; bread, the universal staple, had been off the menu except for that day spent at Cretan Gaudos. No ship could risk fire by stoking ovens. A steady fire was lit on a hearth of firebricks to heat a huge iron cauldron, and in that only one food could be cooked—thick pease porridge flavored with a small chunk of bacon or salt pork. Concerned about drinking water, Cato had issued an order that the porridge was to be eaten without additional salt, yet another blow for appetites.

  However, the weather allowed all fifty ships to keep close together, and it seemed, Cato ascertained on his constant trips around them in his tiny boat, that his 1,500 men were as optimistic as he could have hoped for, given their
healthy fear of an entity as secretive and mysterious as the sea. No Roman soldier was happy on the sea. Dolphins were greeted with joy, but there were sharks too, and schools of fish fled at the approach of all those whacking oars, which limited visual entertainment as well as guaranteed the absence of fish stew.

  The mules drank more than Cato had estimated, the sun beat down every day, and the level of water in the barrels was dropping with appalling swiftness. Ten days out from Cretan Gaudos, he began to doubt that they would live to see land. As he took his tiny boat from ship to ship, he promised the men that the mules would go overboard long before the water barrels were empty. A promise his men did not welcome; they were soldiers, and mules to soldiers were quite as precious as gold. Each century had ten mules to carry what a man could not fit into his fifty-pound back load, and one four-mule wagon for the really heavy stuff.

  Then Corus began to blow out of the northwest; whooping with delight, the men swarmed to break out the sails. In Italy, a wet wind, but not in the Libyan Sea. Their pace picked up, the oars were easier to pull, and hope blossomed.

  At the middle of the fourteenth night since Cretan Gaudos, Cato woke and sat up in a hurry, the nostrils of his awesome beak flaring. The sea, he had long realized, had a smell all its own—sweetish, weedy, faintly fishy. But now a different perfume was smothering it. Earth! He could smell earth!

  Sniffing ecstatically, he went to the rail and lifted his eyes to that magical indigo sky. It wasn’t dark, had never really been dark. Though the orb of the moon had waned to invisibility, the vault was a richly glowing spangle of light from countless stars, spun in places like thin veils, all save the planets winking.

  The Greeks say that the planets revolve around our globe much closer to it than the shimmering stars, which are an unimaginable distance away. We are blessed, for we are the home of the gods. We are the center of the whole universe, we hold court for all the celestial bodies. And, to worship us and the gods, they shine, lamps of the night reminding us that light is life.

  My letters! My letters are still unread! Tomorrow we will land in Africa, and I will have to sustain the spirits of the men in a place of marble people and shifting sands. Like it or not, I must read my letters as soon as dawn pales the sky, before excitement spreads and I am caught up in it. Until then, I row.

  From Servilia, a distillation of pure poison; mumbling his way through her conjoined words, Cato gave up on the seventh column, screwed her little scroll into a ball and tossed it overboard. So much for you, my detested half sister!

  An oily missive from his father-in-law, Lucius Marcius Philippus, arch-fence-sitter and Epicure supreme. Rome was very quiet under the consul Vatia Isauricus and the urban praetor Gaius Trebonius. In fact, mourned Philippus in elegant prose, absolutely nothing was happening beyond wild reports that Pompeius had won a great victory at Dyrrachium and Caesar was on the run, a defeated man. It followed Servilia into the sea, danced away on the ripples created by the oar blades. So much for you too, Philippus, with your feet safely in both camps—nephew-in-law of Caesar, father-in-law of Cato, Caesar’s greatest enemy. Your news is stale, it sticks in my gullet.

  The real reason why he had never read his letters was the last one he read: the one from Marcia. His wife.

  When Cornelia Metella defied tradition and set out to join Pompeius Magnus, I hungered desperately to follow her example. That I did not is Porcia’s fault—why did you have to own a daughter as fiercely devoted to the mos maiorum as you are yourself? When she caught me packing, she flew at me like a harpy, then went around the corner to see my father and demanded that he forbid me to go. Well, you know my father. Anything for peace. So Porcia had her wretched way and I still sit here in Rome.

  Marcus, meum mel, mea vita, I live alone in a vacuum of the spirit, wondering and worrying. Are you well? Do you ever think of me? Will I ever see you again?

  It is not fair that I should have spent a longer time married to Quintus Hortensius than both my marriages to you put together. We have never spoken of that exile to which you sentenced me, though I understood immediately why you did it. You did it because you loved me too much, and deemed your love for me a betrayal of those Stoic principles you hold dearer than your life. Or your wife. So when sheer senescence prompted Hortensius to ask for me in marriage, you divorced me and gave me to him—with the connivance of my father, of course. I know that you took not one sestertius from the old man, but my father took ten million of them. His tastes are expensive.

  I saw my exile with Hortensius as evidence of the depth of your love for me—four long, dreadful years! Four years! Yes, he was too old and enfeebled to force his attentions on me, but can you imagine how I felt as I sat for hours each day with Hortensius, cooing at his favorite pet fish, Paris? Missing you, longing for you, suffering your renunciation of me over and over again?

  And then, after he died and you took me as your wife a second time, I had but a few short months with you before you left Rome and Italy on one of your remorseless acts of duty. Is that fair, Marcus? I am but twenty-six years old, I have been married to two men, one twice, yet I am barren. Like Porcia and Calpurnia, I have no child.

  I know how much you detest reading my reproaches, so I will cease my complaining. If you were a different kind of man, I would not love you the way I do. There are three of us who mourn our missing men—Porcia, Calpurnia, and I. Porcia? I hear you ask. Porcia, missing dead Bibulus? No, not Bibulus. Porcia misses her cousin Brutus. She loves him, I believe, quite as much as you love me, for she has your nature—on fire with passions, all of them frozen by her absurd devotion to the teachings of Zeno. Who was Zeno, after all? A silly old Cypriot who denied himself all the glorious things that the gods gave us to enjoy, from laughter to good food. There speaks the Epicurean’s child! As for Calpurnia, she misses Caesar. Eleven years his wife, yet only a few months actually with Caesar, who was philandering with your frightful sister until he left for Gaul. Since then—nothing. We widows and wives are poorly served.

  Someone told me that you have neither shaved nor cut your hair since you left Italy, but I cannot imagine your wonderful, nobly Roman face as bewhiskered as a Jew’s.

  Tell me why, Marcus, we women are taught to read and write, yet are always doomed to sit at home, waiting? I must go, I cannot see for tears. Please, I beg of you, write to me! Give me hope.

  The sun was up; Cato was a painfully slow reader. Marcia’s scroll was crumpled up, then skimmed across the sparkling water. So much for wives.

  His hands were shaking. Such a stupid, stupid letter! To love a woman with the consuming intensity of a funeral pyre is not a right act, cannot be a right act. Doesn’t she understand that every one of her many letters says the same thing? Doesn’t she realize that I will never write to her? What would I say? What is there to say?

  No nose save his seemed to snuff that earthy tang in the air; everybody went about their business as if today were just another day. The morning wore on. Cato took a turn at the oars, then went back to stand at the rail straining his eyes. Nothing showed until the sun was directly overhead, when a thin, faint blue line appeared on the horizon. Just as Cato saw it, the sailor aloft at the masthead shrieked.

  “Land! Land!”

  His ship led the fleet, which swelled into a teardrop behind it. No time to step into his tiny boat himself, so he sent an eager pilus prior centurion, Lucius Gratidius, in his stead to instruct the captains not to get ahead of him, and to watch carefully for shoals, reefs, hidden rocks. The water had suddenly become very shallow and clear as the best Puteoli glass, with the same faintly blue sheen now that the sun was not glancing off it.

  The land came up extremely fast because it was so flat, not a phenomenon Romans were used to, accustomed to sailing regions where high mountains reared in close proximity to the sea and thus made land visible many miles from shore. To Cato’s relief, the westering sun revealed country more green than ocher; if grasses grew, then there was some hope of civilization. From Gnaeus
Pompey’s pilots he knew that there was only one settlement on the eight-hundred-mile coast between Alexandria and Cyrenaica: Paraetonium, whence Alexander the Great had set off south to the fabled oasis of Ammon, there to converse with the Egyptian Zeus.

  Paraetonium, we must find Paraetonium! But is it west of here, or is it east?

  Cato scraped in the bottom of a sack and managed to gather a small handful of chickpea—they had very little left—then threw the legumes into the water as he prayed:

  “O all ye gods, by whichever name ye wish to be known, of whatever sex or no sex ye are, let me guess correctly!”

  A brisk gust from Corus came on the echo of his plea; he went to the captain, stationed on a tiny poop between the rope-bound tillers of the massive rudder oars.

  “Captain, we turn east before the wind.”

  Not four miles down the coast Cato’s farsighted eyes took in the sight of two slight bluffs with the entrance to a bay between them, and one or two mud-brick houses. If this were Paraetonium, then the town had to be inside the harbor. The entrance was mined with rocks, but a clear passage lay almost in its middle; two sailors shoved at the tillers and Cato’s ship turned, oars inboard for the maneuver, to sail into a beautiful haven.

  He gasped, goggled. Three Roman ships already lay at anchor! Who, who? Too few for it to be Labienus, so who?

  On the back reaches of the bay was a mud-brick, tiny town. Size didn’t matter, though. Wherever people lived collectively, there was bound to be potable water and some provisions for sale. And he would soon find out which Romans owned the ships, all flying the SPQR pennant from their mastheads. Important Romans.

  He went ashore in his tiny boat accompanied by the pilus prior centurion, Lucius Gratidius; the entire population of Paraetonium, some six hundred souls, was lined up along a beach, marveling at the sight of fifty big ships making port one at a time. That he might not be able to communicate with the Paraetonians did not occur to him; everyone everywhere spoke Greek, the lingua mundi.