by Jack Lindsay
*
Every pulse a stab. They had waited there forever. Why didn’t they march and stab the tyrant in his house? But the people would cry out and defend him. He must come beneath their daggers before they could stab.
Cassius stood with hands behind his back, looking morosely at the others. Then he moved across and rejoined Brutus. Close to him came a senator, Popilius Laenas, who also stopped at the side of Brutus, gave a quick glance round, and said in a hurried voice, “Maybe you’ll have your way, but everything depends on speed.” Then he walked off.
Brutus and Cassius exchanged glances of questioning panic. Laenas was not in the conspiracy: what did he know? If the facts had leaked out to one stranger, why not to another? Caesar must have heard. That was the only possible explanation for his absence when he was so keen to settle all business holding him up from the Parthian War. In a few moments the soldiers would come.
Brutus and Cassius felt the air rattle hoarsely in their windpipes. The wish to run and hide spoke in their eyes, then the emotion subsided. The sense of fate returned. There was no escape, not even for Caesar. The hour would come, with or without treachery. It wasn’t death they feared. The thought came to both at once. Death was nothing; they did not fear it. By virtue of the infinite triviality of the individual’s death they had joined to slay Caesar. They were taking from Caesar nothing worth having, and they were doing their duty to the State. If they were afraid to die, they would be mean-hearted murderers; but they had no fear, and righteously they slew.
But would they ever have the chance to slay? Time passed, told in the thick pulsations of the blood. Time was hammering like a fugitive at a dark door. Let me in. Let me out. It made no difference. Caesar must die. Lonely were they all, lost wayfarers looking for a window with a light in it. They would be lonelier yet, for death must come. To realise the brotherly compact of action: in that was the only solace and release.
Brutus and Cassius stood calm and resigned. They loved one another as they looked into each other’s eyes, regardless of the heavy pulsations of time, the noisy groups of senators, the dagger that pained against the ribs.
*
Yet time throbbed. Time was a clot of blood in the heart, a clot that could not pass the arteries. It was slowing down the pulse, swelling the heart with unendurable pangs. The heart would break.
Trebonius fingered his dagger. It was either Caesar or himself. At the first suspicion that the plot had been discovered, he would stab himself. He had fought loyally for Caesar while he thought that Caesar’s enemies were taking an unfair constitutional advantage, but from the moment that Caesar had made it clear he clung to the power he had gained, Trebonius had known that murder was necessary. There was no need to think about it.
He knew what his old mother would say: “Are you standing there alive, Gaius, with no country to call your own. A free man has only a free country. You are an exile, Gaius. An exile should die, or fight his way back home. If a slave is obstreperous, I beat him. A despot is the greatest slave of all, and the most obstreperous. Give me a staff and I will go teach this Caesar his place.”
A man could not be shamed before his women-folk, and the destiny of Rome was freedom. But Trebonius felt his face stiff with heat. He had fought in the courts for the legal fact as he saw it; he had fought with swords for the cause of Rome as he saw it; and he hated arguments and blows. He was a man of peace; he wanted quiet, a notebook to scribble in, a villa somewhere in the hills.
*
Three messengers arrived in quick succession from Porcia, asking Brutus if he were well. He couldn’t understand what had happened to her. How could she be so inconsiderate? Then a fourth slave, whom he recognised as of his household, entered, looking flustered. He saw Brutus and hurried up. Porcia had swooned. She had been standing at the door ever since he left, and then suddenly she fainted. They had all been frightened and thought it best to bring the news. Doctors had been called.
Brutus made a stride to go, forgetting all about the conspiracy. But he stopped short; the plot in which he was caught jerked at him as if by a score of fettering ropes. He couldn’t go, not if her life depended on seeing him. He felt her life flowing away, and his life with it — down out of the wounded thigh of life.
“Tell her when she recovers that I am doing what she would prefer,” he said, and turned sharply away. The slave looked after him, wondering at the callousness of masters, and remembering how night and day the dread of being sold apart from his wife tore at him.
*
“Cytheris has a mole on her left buttock,” said Dolabella. “I think it’s most attractive, and I intend to see that it’s made fashionable.”
“But what are you going to do about Antonius?” asked one of the group who objected to levity.
“Squash him,” said Dolabella, with lifted brows and pursed lips.
*
The treadmill of time. There was a treadmill for lifting pillars in the Forum of Julius that was being built. Cassius had noticed it as he passed. The men climbed and swung with the great wheel-cage while the axle slowly wound the rope and drew it through the pulley. Up swung the column slowly. But the treadmill went faster — fast enough to tear the men’s feet and knees and hands; fast enough to leave their faces distorted with the effort.
He beckoned to Decimus Brutus. Decimus approached, unable to crush altogether a sense of observed guilt at being addressed by a man whom everyone knew to be a friend. Yet it would be more suspicious for the conspirators to keep strangely apart from one another than to be normally friendly.
“Will you go and see what Caesar is doing?” said Cassius. He had intended to add, “You are more his friend than Marcus or myself,” but he held his tongue in time. “He will think it less peculiar for you to go.”
Decimus did not question that point. He stared blankly at the door. “Will I go to him?” he repeated, fighting down his repugnance. At least it would be action. He had faced Caesar last night, drinking wine with him; he would face him yet with a dagger; why should he not face him at his house? “Yes,” he said stolidly. “I’ll go.”
Marcus Brutus had listened. “Yes, it’s the best thing to be done.”
“Of course it is,” said Cassius, emphatically, feeling that he ought to have consulted Brutus first. “Go at once, Decimus, or I feel that we will fail.”
Decimus Brutus turned and walked away with quick, soldierly steps. He would have liked to run all the way; but he was hardly in training for such a feat, and what would the people say at the sight? A sour grin crept over his face. Not even a horse to ride; he would have to be jogged along in the litter. He had never felt quite at ease in Caesar’s presence; he had never been able to guess what Caesar was thinking; and sometimes the rapidity of thought and act had bewildered him. Once that bewilderment had earned a reprimand. Well, it was Decimus Brutus who was to do the hurrying now, and Caesar was the laggard.
Quickly he gave his commands, instructing the brawny litter-bearers to choose the unfrequented sidestreets and strike as soon as possible into the Forum, at the side of which lay Caesar’s official residence. As he climbed into the litter, he thought what a pity it was his mother had died.
*
Brutus and Cassius stared after him. Both were thinking that they would not like the task. But was it worse than scouting in enemy country, acting as a spy in an enemy camp? That was how Decimus had taken it. The other conspirators noted the departure and guessed what was being done. Cassius, to remove any suspicious appearance, went round, mentioning to the chief senators that Decimus Brutus had gone to see if Caesar was indisposed, and to learn his wishes for the day. After that the gathering settled down more resignedly. The senators took their seats.
Brutus felt the sense of fate growing stronger. It consoled him, like a firm, quiet hand on a frightened child. The child does not understand the situation any more clearly, but it knows that somewhere in the world is a power unaffected by the fear that is tearing its own fibres. Somewhere dwe
lt peace. Outside all this noise and failing effort there lay a necessity, a universal need uttering itself through broken hearts and bodies, speeches unfinished and gestures snapped-off ineffectively. What was faith but the ability to accept one’s part without seeing how it joined with the other parts to produce a significant whole? He would make his gesture and be glad of it, even though he never saw its end, its expected results.
Then the division of his own life reasserted itself. Porcia was lying wounded, perhaps dying. All life was on the deathbed, and he was the surgeon. The man that hated vice hated mankind. To kill the transgressor was to exterminate all existence; for all transgressed. No matter. The gesture of righteousness remained, a divine revelation in a world without eyes or ears to know it.
Side by side with his hunger to return to Porcia he felt a rage against her for fainting, a resentment because she had ever let him leave her side. He wanted to take her throat in his hands and shake her back to consciousness, to make her tell him something — what, he didn’t know.
*
Casca was praying under his breath: “Iuppiter, Greatest and Best, I am not acting out of ambition. I don’t care what becomes of me. I swear that I won’t stand for the tribuneship if we succeed. I’ll sell that confiscated estate I bought cheap. I’ll give the money to the shrine on the Capitol.”
Time was a bow bent further and further back, with the arrow aimed straight at the heart. It would crack. The cord screeched faintly, a thin cry of nerves tortured almost beyond the power to record sensation.
*
Cassius felt a wish to quarrel with Brutus, anything to rouse him from the apathy into which he had fallen. But at that moment he heard the sound of some new arrivals. Glancing up, he saw Marcus Antonius enter, followed by his two brothers. At once he knew that everything was all right. Antonius had indolently refused to come earlier than necessary. He had sent a slave to bring the news from Caesar’s house as soon as Caesar set out, and he himself had raced out with his brothers by the Ratumenan Gate round the other side of the Flaminian Circus. Caesar was coming after all. Nothing had gone wrong.
“Caesar will be here shortly,” he said, and Brutus realised what he meant. They both sat up in their praetorian chairs more confidently. The entry of Antonius and his brothers was greeted by loud hails from the minor senators and by whispers among the more independent. “Government by the House of the Antonii!” remarked an elderly man with watery eyes that he wiped with his toga-hem. “Dolabella’s a scamp, but I’d prefer to see Caesar leave him as a balance to this trio.” Gaius was one of the lesser praetors, and Lucius, a tribune.
Gradually a murmur was heard in the distance, swelling nearer. Caesar’s litter on its way was being applauded by the populace. The senators braced themselves one and all, some envious, some afraid, all dimly fascinated. The officials in charge bustled about. A few senators who had been idling in the porch looked round for seats. The magistrates took their special chairs, and an attendant gave a last-minute inspection of Caesar’s gold chair on its dais. The shouts grew louder; and the news spread through the hall that Caesar had been on the point of postponing the session through an indisposition, but Decimus Brutus had persuaded him to come.
The shouts were at the door of the Curia. Caesar had arrived.
After the shouts the hush seemed ominous. Caesar was waiting while the entrails of a victim were examined. The senators stirred, settling for comfortable positions, though they knew they would have to rise as Caesar entered. Then Caesar entered, clad in a purple gown, and shod with the tall red shoes of the Alban kings.
Though weary, he did not look ill. Aging under the stress of his burden, he yet walked with an easy dignity, his quick eyes seeming absorbed in his inner computations, and at the same time taking in every detail of the scene. The lines curving at the side of his mouth had grown deeper; there was a sunken intensity about his face, relieved from the effect of travail and exhaustion by the concentration in the eyes and the sympathetic fullness of the lips. As he entered, the senators rose; and he stood for a moment in silent acceptance of the salutation. Every senator there felt himself singled out by those penetrating eyes, which, however, did not rove at all over the rows. Some of the conspirators paled, and felt their knees unsteady; all, for a pulse, felt that the plot was impossible.
Then Caesar moved on, an ivory tablet and steel stylus in his hand, and the Senate resumed their seats. Before the session commenced it was his custom to hear what recommendations or suggestions any of the members might wish to urge personally. As he came forward, some senators, Popilius Laenas among them, pressed to speak with him; and with an uprush of terror Brutus remembered the equivocal remark that Laenas had made. Was the conspiracy to be betrayed now and the prize snatched from their grasp? Cassius too had noticed Laenas; he turned his head away, unable to bear the sight, and relaxed in his chair. Let the end come as it would; there was a malign pleasure in feeling the whole responsibility of action suddenly taken from one’s hands.
But Brutus stared at Caesar and Laenas, watching their lips, convinced that he could hear their voices though they were out of earshot. Caesar nodded and smiled, and Laenas walked away, having gained for a Greek friend Caesar’s promise of enfranchisement. A busybody, who liked to impress with laconic mystifications, he had referred, in addressing Brutus, to a business deal that he knew Brutus should hear about by letter before evening: a house belonging to a common friend which Brutus was haggling over, and for which the owner meant to declare he had other bidders.
Caesar went on towards his chair. Brutus and Cassius could not forbear to exchange a single glance of congratulation. A grateful joy spoke in their eyes, a deep upwelling once more of love for one another. Cassius reached out his hand and pressed the hand of Brutus, and a warm current of emotion passed from palm to palm, a blissful wedding of wills, a hymeneal contact of friendship. For a moment each knew what a woman feels at the first bridal throe of sweetness.
One of the attendants at the side nudged his fellow, and whispered, grinning.
Neither Brutus nor Cassius liked to look at the corner where Cimber was sitting; they felt that to stare might be to intimidate him, and everything depended on him keeping his nerve. But, without looking, they grew aware that someone was approaching Caesar’s chair from Cimber’s direction. Yes, it was Cimber. Caesar and Cimber began talking. Others of the conspirators drifted down and gathered round. Cimber appealed to them, his hands waving excitedly.
He is getting too excited, thought Brutus, himself still under the spell of mated contentment, feeling no haste. But Cimber would spoil things with his excitement, and that fear reawoke uneasiness.
Signing to Cassius, Brutus rose; and the two praetors stepped down to join their friends. Trebonius, seeing that the time for action had come, walked up to Marcus Antonius, who was striving not to show nervousness at the prospect of a formal speech. It was an easy job to speechify before a tavern full of boozers or an army of soldiers; but set debates, arguments on legality, pretty turnings of phrase and neat antitheses, without which the best arguments would fail before these connoisseurs of verbiage: that was different. Trebonius saw that Antonius was half drunk, and felt an impatient anger at having to save him. Not that Trebonius wanted anyone, even Caesar, to die; but he was sick of a debauched generation.
“Will you step aside and have a few words with me. It’s about Dolabella.”
“Certainly.” Antonius was pleased to escape for a while from the despairing effort to memorise the speech he had laboriously fabricated. He had a slight headache. Curse Gaius and his parties.
Antonius came down from his curule chair and accompanied Trebonius towards the vestibule. Over a dozen of the conspirators had joined Cimber and were clustered about Caesar. More were coming into the open space. Cimber was holding forth, gesticulating, his voice rapidly becoming uncontrolled, as he pleaded that Caesar should repeal his brother’s banishment. The fool, thought Brutus, he’s losing his head, he’ll scream in a mo
ment.
Caesar, who had glanced round at the group, noticed the rising violent intonation of Cimber. At first he put it down to the man’s emotions as he spoke on his brother’s behalf, then he felt that the voice had an overstress not so easily explained. He turned a sharp scrutiny upon Cimber, who faltered and stopped in mid-sentence. Decimus Brutus had the readiness to take up the plea, but even in his voice Caesar detected a nagging note of hardness. The men pushed closer. Caesar sensed to the full the inexplicable excitement in their air and manner, their voices.
“Stand back,” he said, rising.
They drew back, quietened, and then began all speaking at once. They felt the hush like a lightning-stroke exposing their inmost selves. They were terrified. Casca edged round towards the side. Caesar stared again at Cimber and then at Decimus Brutus. He felt the presence of a tremendous danger, and his brain worked quickly. The conspirators were momentarily appalled by his glance. Never had they seen such vulturine fierceness in his eyes; they felt like crucified men at whom birds and the pitiless beaks of light are tearing. They shrank still further back, and it was all Cimber could do to stop himself from falling on the ground, grovelling, crying for mercy. But the firm hand of Decimus Brutus was laid on his back. He pressed forwards again, almost foaming; his tongue slavered. There was a swaying movement among the group, as each man strove to push the other in front of himself. One and all they fought against the impulse to run, to abandon the enterprise, to cry out in confession. If one of them had broken away and gone back to his seat, they would all have gone. But the personality of Caesar that broke them also held them there. Brutus felt the fiery compulsion of Caesar’s presence, his fearless eyes. He forced himself to raise his own eyes and stare back. He looked Caesar in the face and knew that he would never lose the image of those searching eyes until his death, and that he would die beneath their scornful gaze. But something beyond either shame or fear was driving him also on. His body set rigidly and he saw the statue of Pompeius, his father’s murderer, overhead. He too was stone. He would strike, and the blow would be that of the man of stone.