‘I found some of the Liberatores hiding in the town last night,’ Mark Antony said. It was a peace offering between allies and he was pleased to see life come back to Octavian’s expression as he stood there.
‘Have them brought to me.’
Mark Antony hesitated, disliking the tone that sounded so much like an order. Yet Octavian was consul as well as triumvir. More importantly, he was the blood and heir of Caesar. Mark Antony nodded stiffly, conceding his right.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Brutus couldn’t sleep. He had driven himself to the edge of endurance for two days and his mind kept scrabbling away like a rat trapped in a box. High in the hills, he sat on a clump of scrub grass with his hands in his lap and his sword unstrapped and lying at his feet. He watched the moon rise above him and took pleasure in air so clear that he could almost reach out and take the white disc in his hand.
He could smell the sourness of his own sweat and his body ached in every joint and muscle. Some part of him knew he should still be looking for an escape, but the night was stealing through him and he recognised it as the numbness of acceptance, too strong to resist. He was too tired to run, even if there had been a way through the mountains at his back. Perhaps Cassius had felt the same at the end – no anger or bitterness, just peace descending on him like a cloak. He hoped so.
In the moonlight, Brutus watched the dark masses of men moving to surround the tattered remnants of his army. There was no way back to the plain, no way back even to the man he had once been. He could see lights on the ridge of Philippi and he tried to blot out the mental images of Octavian and Mark Antony toasting his failure and their success. He had rejoiced at being alone in command as the sun rose that morning, but it was not a fine thing at the end. He would have taken comfort from the dry wit of Cassius or one of his old friends with him one last time. He would have taken comfort from his wife embracing him.
As he sat there, under the stars, his men sat in groups on the hillside, talking to each other in low voices. He had heard their fear and he understood their hopelessness. He knew they would not stand with him when the sun came up again. Why should they when they could surrender to noble Caesar and be saved? There would be no last great stand on the mountains by Philippi, not for Brutus. All he could do was die. He knew the coldness in his bones was his mind preparing for the end and he did not care. It was over. He had killed the first man in Rome and the dark rush of blood had carried him over the sea to this place, with a breeze tugging at his cloak and his lungs filled with cold, sweet-scented air.
He did not know if the shades of the dead could truly see the living. If they could, he imagined Julius would be there with him. Brutus looked up into the stillness of the night and closed his eyes, trying to feel some presence. The dark pressed in instantly, too close to bear. He opened them again, shivering at the soft blackness that was so much like death. For just a little while, he had held the future of Rome in his hands. He had believed he had the strength to alter the passage of a people and a city as it moved into the centuries ahead. It had been a fool’s dream; he knew that now. One man could only do so much and they would go on without him and never know he had lived. He smiled wryly to himself then. He had been the best of a generation, but it had not been enough.
A memory came back to him in fragments, a conversation from too many years before. He had sat in the shop of a jeweller named Tabbic and talked about making his mark on the world. He had told the old man that he wished only to be remembered, that nothing else mattered. He had been so young! He shook his head. There was no point recalling his failures. He had worked for something more than himself and age had crept up on him while he was blinded by the sun.
Alone on the hill, Brutus laughed aloud at the mistakes he had made, at the dreams and the great men he had known. They were ashes and bones, all of them.
In the town of Philippi, Octavian stared coldly as four men were dragged into the room and thrown to the floor before him. They had been badly beaten, he saw. Suetonius lowered his head and stared wonderingly at the bright blood that dripped from his scalp to the floor. Gaius Trebonius was bone-white with terror, visibly trembling as he sat sprawled and did not try to rise. Octavian did not know the other two as men. Ligarius and Galba were simply names on the list of proscriptions to him. Yet they had been part of the group of assassins, stabbing knives into Caesar just a year and a dozen lifetimes before. They stared around themselves through swollen eyes and, with his hands bound, Galba could only sniff at the blood dribbling from his nose.
The man who rose to peer down at them was young and strong, showing no sign that he had fought a battle that day. Suetonius raised his head under that interested gaze, turning aside for a moment to spit blood onto the wooden floor.
‘So will you be emperor now, Caesar?’ Suetonius said. ‘I wonder what Mark Antony will say about that.’ He smiled bitterly, showing bloody teeth. ‘Or will he too fall to your ambition?’
Octavian cocked his head, assuming a puzzled expression.
‘I am the champion of the people of Rome, Senator. You see no emperor here, not in me. You do see Caesar, and the vengeance that you have brought down on your own head.’
Suetonius laughed, a wheezing sound from his battered frame. His lips bled fresh as the scabs cracked, so that he winced even as he chuckled.
‘I have known Caesars to lie before,’ he said. ‘You have never understood the Republic, that fragile thing. You are nothing more than a man with a burning brand, Octavian, looking at the scrolls of greater men. You see only heat and light and you will not understand what you have burned until it is all gone.’
Octavian smiled, his eyes glittering.
‘I will be there to see it, even so,’ he said softly. ‘You will not.’
He gestured to a soldier standing behind Suetonius and the man reached down with a knife in his hand. Suetonius tried to jerk away, but his hands were tied and he could not escape the blade as it cut across his throat. The sound he made was terrible as he looked up at Octavian, in hatred and disbelief. Octavian watched until he fell forward and looked away only when Gaius Trebonius gave a broken cry of grief.
‘Will you ask for mercy?’ Octavian said to him. ‘Will you call on the gods? You did not wield a blade on the Ides of March. Perhaps I could offer a reprieve to one such as you.’
‘Yes, I ask for mercy!’ Trebonius said, his eyes wide with fear. ‘I was not there on the Ides. Grant me my life; it is in your power.’
Octavian shook his head in regret.
‘You were part of it,’ he said. ‘You fought with my enemies and I have discovered I am not a merciful man.’
Once again he nodded to the executioner and Gaius Trebonius gave a great yell of anguish that choked into gurgling as his throat was opened. He fell twitching and scrabbling onto the floor by Suetonius. The smell of urine and opened bowels filled the room, bitter and pungent.
The remaining pair knew better than to plead for their lives. Ligarius and Galba watched Octavian in sick fascination, but they did not speak and prepared themselves to die.
‘Nothing?’ Octavian asked them. ‘You are almost the last of those brave men, those Liberatores who murdered the Father of Rome. You have nothing to say to me?’
Galba looked at Ligarius and shrugged, spitting out a final curse before kneeling straight and waiting for the knife. Octavian gestured in sharp anger and the knife was dragged across two more throats, making the air heavy with the smell of blood and death.
Octavian took a deep breath, weary but satisfied. He knew he would sleep well and be up before the dawn. There was just Brutus left. There was just one more day.
The sky was clear as the sun rose and Brutus was still awake after a night that had seemed to last for ever. He watched the spreading colours of dawn in peace and when he stood at last, he felt somehow refreshed, as if the long hours had been years and he had slept after all. With care, he removed his armoured breastplate, untying the thongs and letting it f
all away so the cold could reach his skin. He shivered, taking pleasure in the small sensations of being alive on that morning. Every breath was sweeter than the last.
When he could see the faces of his men, he knew what they would say before they said it. The legates came to him as soon as it was light enough and they would not meet his eyes, though he smiled at them and told them they had done all they could and that they had not failed him.
‘There is nowhere left to go,’ one of them murmured. ‘The men would like to surrender, before they come for us.’
Brutus nodded. He found he was breathing harder as he drew his sword. They stared at him as he checked the blade for imperfections and when he looked up, he laughed to see their sorrow.
‘I have lived a long time,’ he said. ‘And I have friends I want to see again. This is just another step, for me.’
He placed the tip of the blade against his chest, holding the hilt tight in both hands. He took one last breath and then threw himself forward, so that the blade punched between his ribs and into the heart. The men with him flinched as the metal stood out from his back and life went out of him like a sigh.
The soldiers of Mark Antony began to march up the hill towards them and the legates readied themselves to offer formal surrender. Two of their number went out to those climbing and word spread quickly that they would not resist, that Brutus was already dead by his own hand.
While the sun still rose, Mark Antony came striding through the scrub bushes with a century of men. The legates laid down their swords and knelt, but he looked past them to where Brutus lay dead. He approached the body, then undid the clasp that held his cloak, draping the cloth over the still form.
‘Carry him gently, gentlemen,’ he said to the kneeling legates. ‘He was a son of Rome, for all his faults.’
They bore the body down the hill to where Octavian waited. The news that they would not have to fight had spread to his men like fire on a dry hill and the mood was sombre as they watched the red-draped figure brought back to the plain of Philippi.
Octavian walked to the legates as they laid the body down. They had taken the sword out of the still flesh and Octavian looked at a face that was strong, even in death.
‘You were his friend,’ Octavian murmured. ‘He loved you more than all the rest.’
When he looked up, his eyes were red with weeping. Agrippa and Maecenas had come to stand by him.
‘There’s an end to it,’ Agrippa said, almost in wonder.
‘It’s not an ending,’ Octavian said, wiping his eyes. ‘It is a beginning.’ Before his friends could reply, he gestured to one of Mark Antony’s men. ‘Remove the head for me,’ he said, his voice hardening as he spoke. ‘Put it with the heads of Cassius and the other Liberatores who fell here. I will have them sent to Rome to be thrown at the feet of the statue of Julius Caesar. I want the people to know I kept my promises.’
He watched as the legates hacked Brutus’ head from his body and bound it in a cloth bag to be taken home. Octavian had hoped for joy when the last of them fell – and it was there, a brightness in him that swelled as he breathed in the warm air.
Mark Antony felt old and tired as he watched the hacking blades fall. There would be triumphal processions to come and he knew he should feel satisfaction. Yet he had seen the bodies of the last Liberatores, left to rot in a room in Philippi. The odour of death was in his hair and clothes and he could not escape it. The crows were gathering already, he saw, settling on the faces of men who had walked and laughed only days before.
He was unable to explain the sadness that gripped him. He looked into the rising sun and thought of the east and the Egyptian queen who was raising the son of Caesar. Mark Antony wondered if the boy would look like his old friend or show some sign of the greatness he had inherited with his blood. He nodded to himself. Perhaps in the spring he would leave Lepidus to handle his affairs in Rome for a time. When Rome was settled, he would visit Cleopatra and see the Nile and the son who would one day own the world. It was a fine promise to make to himself and he felt his weariness lift at the prospect. Philippi would be a place of the dead for years, but Mark Antony was alive and he knew good red wine and redder meat would help him recover his strength. He was the last general of his generation, he realised. He had surely earned the peace to come.
EPILOGUE
Mark Antony checked himself one last time as he stood waiting on the docks at Tarsus. There was a breeze coming off the water and he was cool, his uniform polished. He could almost laugh at his nervous sense of anticipation as he looked down the river with a hundred officials from the Roman town. None of them had predicted that the Egyptian queen would come herself, but her barge had been sighted off the coast of Damascus days before.
Mark Antony leaned forward yet again, staring down the river at the huge barge coming slowly up to the port. He saw the description had been no exaggeration. The oars shone blindingly in the sun, each blade covered in polished silver. Purple sails fluttered above the craft, catching the breeze and easing the strain on the slaves working below. Mark Antony grinned. Or perhaps it was just for the effect, the glorious splash of colour that already made the Roman port look drab in comparison.
He watched in pleasure at the spectacle as the enormous vessel came up to the piers and the crew snapped orders in a tongue he did not know, easing their charge in as the oars were shipped and ropes flung to waiting dockmen to tie them off fore and aft. Mark Antony could see a figure on the deck, reclining under an awning amidst a sea of coloured cushions. His breath caught as she rose like a dancer to her feet, her gaze passing lightly over the men waiting and then settling on him. It was surely no accident that she was wearing the formal dress of Aphrodite, with her shoulders bare. The pale pink cloth looked well against her tanned skin and Mark Antony recalled the woman’s Greek ancestry, visible in the curling black hair bound in tiny golden seashells. For a moment, he envied Julius.
Mark Antony told himself not to forget that she was the joint ruler of Egypt with her son. It had been Cleopatra who led the negotiations with her estranged court when Caesar had come to her lands. It was because of her that Cyprus was Egyptian once more and no longer an island of Rome. Her barge would have passed it on the journey around the coast and he wondered if she had thought of Julius then, or pointed out her possession to his son.
A wooden ramp was laid to the docks and, to Mark Antony’s surprise, a troupe of beautiful women came up from the hold, singing as they went. A dozen black soldiers took their position as an honour guard on the docks, perhaps aware of how splendid they looked with their dark skin set against armour of polished bronze.
Through them all, the queen of Egypt walked, guiding a young boy with her hand resting on his shoulder. Mark Antony stared, entranced as they came towards him. The women walked with her, so that she moved in song.
He cleared his throat, deliberately bluff and composed. He was a triumvir of Rome! He told himself to get a grip on his awe as she came to stand before him, looking up into his face.
‘I have heard about you, Mark Antony,’ she said, smiling. ‘I have been told you are a good man.’
Mark Antony found himself flushing and he nodded, collecting wits which seemed to have deserted him.
‘You are … welcome in Tarsus, your majesty. It is a pleasure I did not expect.’
She did not seem to blink as she listened, though her smile widened. By the gods, she was still beautiful, Mark Antony thought to himself. His eyes drank her in and he did not want to look away.
‘Let me introduce my son, Ptolemy Caesar.’
The boy stepped forward with her hand still on his shoulder. He was dark-haired and serious, a boy of only six years. He glowered at Mark Antony, looking up at the man with no sign of being impressed.
‘We call him Caesarion – little Caesar,’ Cleopatra said. He could hear the affection in her voice. ‘I believe you knew his father.’
‘Yes, I knew him,’ Mark Antony replied, searching the boy’
s features in fascination. ‘He was the greatest man I have ever known.’
Cleopatra cocked her head slightly as she listened to him, all her attention focused on the big Roman welcoming her to his lands. She smiled a little wider at that, seeing honesty in his response.
‘I know Caesarion would like to hear about his father, Mark Antony, if you are willing to talk about him.’
She held out her hand and he took it formally, leading her away from the docks and breaking the trance that had settled on him since she set foot on land.
‘It would be my pleasure,’ he said. ‘It is a fine tale.’
HISTORICAL NOTE
No other writer can equal Mark Antony’s funeral oration as written by William Shakespeare, though the playwright didn’t use the detail of a wax effigy, a matter of historical record. It is true that the rioting crowds burned the senate house down for the second time, along with an impromptu cremation of Caesar’s body. Nicolaus of Damascus gave the number of assassins as eighty, whereas the first-century historian Suetonius mentions sixty. Plutarch mentions twenty-three wounds, which suggests a core group, with many more who did not actually strike. Of those core conspirators, the names of nineteen are known: Gaius Cassius Longinus, Marcus Brutus, Publius Casca (who actually struck the first blow), Gaius Casca, Tillius Cimber, Gaius Trebonius (who distracted Mark Antony during the assassination), Lucius Minucius Basilus, Rubrius Ruga, Marcus Favonius, Marcus Spurius, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Servius Sulpicius Galba, Quintus Ligarius, Lucius Pella, Sextius Naso, Pontius Aquila, Turullius, Hortensius, Bucolianus.
For those who are interested in details, Publius Casca had his estate and possessions sold in a proscription auction, which included a table bought by a wealthy Roman and then transported to a provincial town in the south: Pompeii. Preserved in the ash of the Vesuvius eruption, the lionhead legs of that table can be viewed there today, still marked with his name.
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