Ave, Caesarion

by Deborah Davitt

  Caesarion grimaced a little. “And there’s the rub, little brother,” he said, leaning against the trunk of the cypress tree at the heart of the garden. “Reputation is a delicate thing here in Rome. Octavian couldn’t have wanted that noised about, but so long as he was on top, most people would have just muttered that he’d picked up some Hellene proclivities and left it at that.” He shook his head. “All it took was one poem by Catullus, accusing Father of taking it up the ass from his engineer Mamurra, and it cast a shadow on his reputation for decades. Even after Catullus apologized, and Father had him over to dinner in a show of amity . . . the stain lingered.” He sighed. “That’s why I’m concerned about you developing a taste for carousing.”

  Alexander held up his hands again, and, feeling a bit less now as if he were facing a tribunal, took a seat at the marble bench. “It’s not that,” he told his brother earnestly. “It’s that . . . as Tiberius was telling me these things, I realized how little I know about the world. And it seemed to me that the best way to find out about the world, and how people are, is to go out in it. Not incautiously. But this past spring, you talked to me about information gathering. I don’t think I can go to fancy dinners here in the Palatine and ask people there, to their faces, ‘So, are you plotting against my brother? Hush, of course you can confide in me. I’m the one he brought back to life because he valued me a bit more than Octavian.’” Alexander shuffled his sandals against the marble paver underfoot, and caught the look of pure embarrassment on his brother’s face. “The point is, people talk when they’re in their cups. When they’re feeling good. I had the chance to talk a little with a few of the whores—”

  “Talk?” Caesarion repeated dubiously.

  “Yes, talk!” Alexander waved his hands. “You wouldn’t believe what they hear and see—”

  “I think I might—”

  “Not just that. Of course they see every crazy thing that men desire. And apparently, some women, too.” Alexander shook his head vigorously. His education had been rapidly expanded in the past seven days. And in more than one direction. “I’m saying, they told me how much men like to brag just before or just after sex.” He grinned briefly. “I . . . may have been inclined that way until they told me that. I shut up after that moment, you may believe me.” He sobered at Caesarion’s grim-faced expression, however. “They’re an information source. And, as you say, reputation is a delicate thing. If you’d known details about Octavian’s love-life before he tried to have you killed, you might have been able to leash him with that information, brother.”

  “Blackmail?” Caesarion didn’t sound as horrified as Alexander had expected, and he sighed internally with relief. “I suppose we could have, but Octavian wasn’t a man to be cowed by such. I fully expect that he’d have laughed and dared us to expose him—and then would have somehow turned it to his advantage. He was very good at the game, brother.”

  Alexander nodded slowly, and groped for the right words. “Father’s wheat-gatherers . . . they’re out looking for information in the countryside. But there’s information lying in every gutter in Rome, too. I’m not trying to shame the family, Caesarion. I won’t deny I enjoyed my evenings the past week—” The last few in particular, he thought, but suppressed the smile, still seeing the lack of response in his brother’s face, “but it wasn’t all carousing for carousing’s sake. Plus, I was trying to get a measure of Tiberius. He’s a melancholic. But I think he’s going to improve.” He certainly seemed a good deal more cheerful the past three nights. But there are reasons for that. He studied Caesarion’s face. “Do I have your leave to continue? At a less breakneck pace?”

  Caesarion rubbed at his chin, where his beard was already starting to shadow his face. “With a Praetorian escort until you’re older, yes,” he said slowly. “No more than once a week. Do not run through your allowance in your information-gathering.” His eyes remained narrow, and Alexander understood that Caesarion remained somewhat suspicious. I can’t blame him. I haven’t been entirely honest. “Is there anything else?” Caesarion asked. “Before I drag you with me to help Eurydice with her first riding lesson?”

  Alexander’s eyes flicked to the side. How do I put this? “It seems to me,” he offered carefully, “that people who spend their entire lives pretending to be what they’re not? Would make most excellent spies. Or, if they already have information, finding their secrets would make them easy to compel to work for us.”

  “People who spend their lives pretending? You mean like theater mummers?”

  Close enough. “Something like that,” Alexander returned.

  His brother shrugged, not vastly interested in the topic anymore, it seemed. “Incidentally, how would you go about ensuring that none of the Julii secrets get out of the house?” he added.

  Alexander raised his eyebrows. “What? We have secrets?”

  Caesarion shrugged. “Eurydice’s powers.”

  Alexander felt Malleolus stiffen beside him, and the younger brother winced, too. “Ah, Caesarion?” he said softly. “That ship has sailed. Mal and the other men of the Tenth didn’t talk about her fire training, but three full legions saw her controlling the birds that brought them messages. No matter how careful you were, you couldn’t keep people from seeing how her eyes change. I had three separate whores ask me if there’s a spell that would make their eyes turn golden. It’s apparently in demand right now from curious customers—”

  The rage that flickered across his brother’s face, there, then gone, silenced Alexander. And then Caesarion crossed to the marble table and brought his fist down on it with a single word: “Damnation!”

  The heavy marble cracked under the blow, and Caesarion, breathing hard, lowered his head and his shoulders knotted for a moment as he searched for calm. And Alexander kept completely still, eying both him and the table warily. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” Caesarion finally gritted from between his teeth. “This has not been a good day for revelations for me.”

  Alexander stood, nimbly getting out of Caesarion’s way. “There is good news,” he offered, near the door.

  “There is?”

  “Certainly! You don’t have any secrets that need hiding!” Alexander paused, then added, “Well, that I know of, anyway. You might have found a few in the past months that I’m not privy to, after all.”

  “Go get changed for riding,” Caesarion ordered, looking away. “After the lesson, I’ll take everyone in the house to the baths.”

  Alexander grinned. He loved the baths. Hundreds of people to talk to if he were so inclined, half the wares in the Empire on display in the shops around them. “But who will protect the girls on the female side of the baths?” he asked over his shoulder. “If I warrant a Praetorian everywhere I go these days, what about them?”

  “Gods, will you just go?” Caesarion shouted after him. “As if I do not have enough to think about as it is!”

  Upstairs, Alexander wasn’t surprised to find Tiberius in his room, perched on one of the couches there, waiting anxiously. “Did you tell him?” his new friend asked, his face pale.

  Alexander closed the door behind him. “Only what he needed to know,” he assured Tiberius. “Everything else you told me was between us. If it ever becomes relevant, I’ll have to tell him.” He rubbed at his sternum unconsciously. The scar didn’t ache, but it was there. “I somehow don’t think that the fact that you were held down to have your cock sucked once or twice by the same slave that your step-father was fucking is going to shake my brother from office.” But you trust me. And that’s important, because the information you gave me means that I own you now. But you can own people gently. You don’t need to beat them with whips, and the chains they wear can be of their own making. Alexander had taken quite a bit more of their mother’s teachings in politics to heart than Caesarion had, after all.

  Tiberius relaxed visibly. Stood, and moved to Alexander, wrapping his arms around the other young man’s waist for a moment. “Thank you. You’re a
good friend.”

  Alexander kissed his cheek. And after a moment, Tiberius turned and kissed his lips. And Alexander’s own arms wrapped around his friend tightly in response.

  That had been the other thing that Alexander had chosen not to tell Caesarion. Three nights ago, more than a little drunk, the two young men had fumbled their way into bed, this time without a whore in between them. Tipsy jokes about which of them was Achilles and which Patroclus had given way to mutually surprised pleasure. And they’d repeated the escapade the night after, and last night, too.

  After cleaning up the mess last night, they’d solemnly agreed that this was really nothing more than release. A pleasant way to pass the time until Octavia and Vipsania were, respectively, old enough to marry. They’d even exchanged a wrist-clasp on it. Four to six years until Octavia’s likely to be allowed to marry me. Vipsania probably won’t be able to marry Tiberius for over a decade. That’s a long time to be celibate. And why not with each other, quietly, in private, when we don’t feel like going out and finding a whore or two to share?

  Alexander’s political mind did nag at him, reminding him that now he was as compromised as Tiberius. But then again, Tiberius was as compromised as he was. And it feels incredible, so who cares, so long as I don’t get so distracted that, like my conquering namesake, I’m accused of paying more attention to my friend’s thighs than the battles at hand?

  Reminded thus of duty, Alexander pulled away reluctantly. “Later,” he promised, exhaling. “Have to go help with Eurydice’s riding lessons. Then we’re all going to the baths.” He glanced down at the front of his tunic, and grinned. “Hopefully by then, neither of us is going to look quite so much like Priapus.”

  Tiberius flushed. “Once, I’d have said all sorts of things about how it’s improper for a woman to learn how to ride.”

  Alexander arched his eyebrows. “And then how inappropriate we’re being came to mind?”

  A glitter in his friend’s cool gray eyes. “My hypocrisy only goes so far.”

  Alexander’s heart warmed, even as his colder, more rational self noted silently, Good. He’s learned from Octavian’s example, and therefore has a different path ahead of him. And that was something he could say to his friend, and mean it. “You’re an honorable man, Tiberius. You’re going to be an amazing general someday.”

  “If we’re ever allowed on the front lines.” That, in a singularly frustrated tone.

  “Next year. Either Hispania or Dyrrachium. My brother can’t keep me as his scribe forever, and I’ll insist on you coming with me, wherever I get sent.”

  Tiberius grinned unabashedly, the expression changing his solemn, melancholy face, and giving him a flash of charm. “That sounds a very fair bargain indeed.” He stepped away, and then glanced down, himself. “You had really better do something about that before going riding.”

  “I’ll think cold thoughts. Cold, ugly thoughts. And by the time I get back downstairs, I’ll be the very model of a Roman Stoic, and not at all a decadent Egyptian.” Alexander found a longer tunic in one of his clothes chests, and changed. “You could come riding with us,” he offered abruptly as Tiberius lay across one of the couches, this time looking more relaxed and less anxious.

  Tiberius shook his head. “If we go everywhere together, someone will notice something,” he said, flushing again. “Besides. Your sister has the pressure of enough eyes on her. I was tossed on my first horse before I could walk. Hate to think what learning to ride only just now would be like.” He chuckled. “Also, if her stola hikes up too far, and your brother catches me staring at her legs, he’ll kill me. And that will only add to the complications in my life right now.”

  Alexander threw his discarded tunic at him, catching him in the face. “If my brother catches you staring at my sister’s legs? Tiberius, I had better not catch you staring at them. You are, after all, a betrothed man.” That, in a tone of utter virtue, before he leaned over and muttered in his friend’s ear, “Am I supposed to be jealous at that sort of comment? I can’t figure it out. Can you?”

  “Not even remotely!” Tiberius returned, laughing almost convulsively.

  And then Alexander left the room, feeling calm and right in both mind and body. As far as he was concerned, he and his friend weren’t doing anything wrong, and he knew, instinctively, that his total lack of shame was the best armor he could wear in the political and social battles that he’d be fighting for his brother. For while Caesarion was suited to fighting on the open field, with sword and shield, he wasn’t the brother whom the gods had given their father’s political acumen or their mother’s wiles.

  ____________________

  Downstairs, Caesarion had given Malleolus a direct look. “Don’t keep things from me in the future.”

  “Seemed like youthful high spirits. Didn’t want the young lord in trouble for something minor.” Malleolus stared into the mid-distance.

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “Perhaps, but I suspect it’s the sort of thing that you’d rather not know about, my lord,” Malleolus returned evenly. “Because if you know about it, you’d feel obliged to do or say something about it. And if you don’t know about it, it doesn’t do anyone any harm.”

  Caesarion’s eyes narrowed. Then a flash of understanding passed through his eyes as he looked up the side of the peristylium’s walls, as if he could see through the plaster-clad brick. “So everyone will just be better off if I maintain a state of blissful ignorance?” he assessed slowly. “And therefore don’t have to acknowledge anything.”

  “I think so, dominus. I’ll inform you if I think matters are getting out of hand.” Malleolus continued to stare past Caesarion’s left ear. The young lords are surprisingly discreet, but I’ll give them the odd cough or two to ensure that they stay discreet.

  The young Emperor nodded briskly. “Mal, that is the single kindest thing anyone has said to me all day. Thank you.” Caesarion looked at the centurion, his face grim. “He’s just turned fifteen, and he thinks he’s going to protect me.”

  “A brother that loyal is no bad thing, my lord,” Malleolus noted. “Loyalty’s a rare commodity in Rome.”

  “That’s because true loyalty’s not a commodity, Mal. It can’t be bought and sold. Though people do try.”

  A tap at the door, and Mal opened it, saluting hastily as Lepidus loomed there in a full formal toga. “You sent for me?” the aging legate said, looking past the centurion towards Caesarion.

  “Yes. I want to know how many men we can spare to send to Syria. And which legate I have who will have the great good sense to listen to the locals and not get drawn out into the deep desert to be picked off by guerrilla tactics.”

  Lepidus shrugged, smiling faintly. “There’s Antony.”

  “He’s marrying my mother next month. Difficult, though not impossible to do by proxy, but I think she’d flay me alive if I sent him off before they could be properly wed.” Caesarion looked up at the heavens. “Anyone else—and please don’t volunteer. I need you in Rome to help me wade through dispatches, same as last winter.”

  “Agrippa,” Lepidus replied immediately.

  “No good. He’s running for aedile. If he wins—and he always wins his aedile campaigns—he’ll decline any offers of a legate position.”

  Lepidus’ eyebrows contracted for a moment. “There’s Lucius Antonius. I’ve never gotten along with him, but so long as his brother Marcus keeps him in line, he’s decent enough.”

  “Running for Tribune of the Plebs now that Marcus’ term is almost up.” Caesarion grimaced. “And since Antony’s spent half his term away from Rome as a legate, I have clear evidence that it’s not good when I strip the capital of all its elected officials and have to appoint others to hold those offices while they’re away.”

  Lepidus shrugged. “A more cunning man would see in that statement an opportunity, my young friend. Sending people who don’t agree with you off to the glory of war, and sliding your supporters into their off
ices in their absence is a time-worn tactic.”

  “And a very obvious one that everyone in the Senate loudly condemns as soon as it’s used.” Caesarion tapped his fingers on the fractured marble of the table. “I need names.”

  “Aulus Gabinius Sisenna,” Malleolus muttered under his breath. Not softly enough, it turned out, and the centurion felt himself blanch as both patricians turned towards him, Lepidus’ expression incredulous at the interruption.

  “Sisenna?” Caesarion repeated, frowning. “Wasn’t his father prosecuted for profiteering during the campaign to restore my grandfather to Egypt’s throne?”

  Lepidus’ brows remained beetled. “He was. Not even Cicero could get him off on the bribery charges. It’s said that Cicero only took the case as a personal favor to Pompey.” He paused. “But Sisenna’s father was a loyal supporter of your father during the Civil War. And both of them fought in Syria. He does know the land and the people.” He eyed Malleolus with mild displeasure. “So it’s not an entirely foolish notion.”

  “Why him?” Caesarion asked Malleolus directly. “What brings him to mind?”

  “Served with him in Syria, my lord. Before being transferred to the Tenth to make up losses after your father’s third invasion of Britannia nine years ago.” Malleolus grimaced. He didn’t have fond memories of the region. Palmyra was a lovely city, but the climate was far too hot and dry. And there had been constant patrols to protect the trade routes from bandits and worse. “He’s a good legate, dominus. Works the men hard, but he’s fair. And he knows Parthian tactics very well.”

  “Done,” Caesarion said, scrabbling for an unused piece of parchment. “Once Alexander gets his arse back down here, I’ll have him draw up a letter for Sisenna.”

  Lepidus cleared his throat. “Ah, there was one other matter.”

  Caesarion gave him a wary glance. “If you’re about to hand me a tablet filled with names of prospective brides, I would beg you not to do so.”

  The aging general snorted and handed him the tablet anyway. “You need to start thinking about this. Most of them aren’t in the capital right now anyway. The summer months are hot, and people flee to the countryside. But you should meet some of them when they’re in town.”