by Jack Lindsay
There was a clamour at the door, and she looked up with angry surprise. Sara stood there, throwing aside the door-slave. “Your Majesty,” he called. “I must speak.”
Furious, she beckoned him to approach, determined to make him pay dearly if he had made a wanton display of disobedience before the High Priest of Isis from Puteoli. But he advanced into the room, breathing heavily, and sank on his knee before her, twisting a felt cap.
“Caesar is dead.”
Cleopatra shuddered. Her eyes opened wide and she stared dumbly at Sara, noting every detail of his coarse face, fighting to master her confused emotions. Her heart pounded; she felt Caesar’s kiss between her offered breasts; then she spoke clearly and calmly.
“Who killed him?” She knew he had been killed; no sickness could have ended him.
“He was murdered — cut down in the Curia by a crowd of senators.”
“Who has taken charge?”
“No one. The murderers have shut themselves up in the Capitol.”
Cleopatra sprang up. Why wasn’t she a man to do a man’s work at such a moment? What use of words? There was only one thing to do — corner the rats and stamp on them. The priest stood aside, striving to relate the news to his project; but Cleopatra felt an overpowering disdain of herself, of the earth.
“Caesar’s friends — have they not avenged him yet?”
“I hear that most of the murderers were his friends. The consul has fled.”
Cleopatra waved him away wearily. “Go and find more details. The names. Learn the names.”
Her head was burning. She signed to the men to leave her. They bowed and backed out of the room; but they had already passed out of her mind. It was all impossible. Caesar, that great soldier, that gracious and wise man: he wasn’t dead. A word would bring him back to life. Come to me, Caesar. None but Cleopatra had seen the depth and fineness of him; she was now convinced of that; and she had never been able to communicate her knowledge. She had lain in his arms, but said nothing. Come back for one word, Caesar. They had smiled at each other, but words had failed. There lay the greatest loss of all, the word that had never been spoken. If she had but seen him die, she would have called to him that word of royal courage to farewell him into the darkness — the word that would have broken the madness of the ingratitude on which his effort had cruelly spent itself.
Caesar, let me speak to you. I have said nothing, though my body was yours.
Her scheming for the child, her ambitions, her hope to save Egypt: how trivial it all seemed. She bowed her head and walked to the end of the room where stood a little shrine to Isis. The image of the moon-faced goddess looked out of a sandalwood shrine; and in her hands she held the key of immortality, the sign of mated loins. Cleopatra sank on to a cushion placed before the shrine. She tore open her brocaded dress and bared her breasts and prayed, not to the goddess, in whom she had no belief, but to her own body, calling it Isis.
“Holy Mother, I have lost him, my king of men, and never till this moment did I hold him wholly mine. He has died lonely and kept his secret, and lonely I will die, for I have lost my man. Caesar, Caesar, hear me. I don’t care whether you adopt my son. I don’t care if Rome swallows Egypt. I only want you to live. I want you to fight and conquer me. My body has enclosed you, conceiving a son of your seed. I offer you my body again, Caesar. Live in me as the hero lives in his race. I cannot bear to leave you so lonely.”
She laid her head against a globe of crystal that rested on an ebony table. It quieted her. She felt her life, her burning blood, flow into the cool crystal, tainting it with the harried life of humankind. In the crystal her life ebbed away, resolving to a smudge of heat, a phantasmal clot of blood. In the womb of the crystal her life was reforming, building itself up again, putting forth unfamiliar hands and feet, reaching out to the moment of its emergence.
Cleopatra fell forward and lay with her face on the floor, sobbing. Her maids peeped round the pillars, but did not dare disturb her. They had never seen her cry before.
*
The conspirators had preferred to march round and climb by the Capitoline Road rather than venture on the nearer steps outside the wall. For those steps were narrow, and could have been easily barred against them; and it would seem as if they were slinking in. No, they must march round through the city, even if it meant passing under the Tarpeian Cliff, whence traitors were flung. But no one barred the approaches, and soon all the top landings were guarded by their freedmen and gladiators.
The conspirators felt masters indeed, holding the Citadel of Rome; but they were surrounded by too many evidences of Caesar’s power to feel quite comfortable. There rose his chariot opposite the main temple; among the Seven Kings stood his statue. Some of the bolder conspirators had already considered throwing down the statue; but the others dissuaded them, disliking any further gesture till some more definite basis was established. The clerks in the Public Offices below had joined the general flight; but those in the Mint, the Temple of Iuno Moneta on the northern crest, were caught by the arrival of the conspirators. They bolted the strong doors, and peered through window-slits, wondering if they would be starved out. The sound of mallets and clattering dies had abruptly ceased; and the master-of-the-mint was pacing the floor, ordering the new coins to be shovelled into boxes and stowed in the secret cellars. A damned nuisance! Doubtless the new design that he was so proud of would now be cancelled. The conservatives would be sure to want to stop the issue of all coins with Caesar’s head; for never before had a Roman coin borne a ruler’s head; such a design was blasphemous, usurping a god’s privilege.
But the conspirators felt more relieved as they saw the barricades of furniture, cases, trees, bits of sacred pottery dragged up from the well-pits sunk in the stone — for even the broken jars of the temple-service might not be thrown away. Safety was assured. But that emotion of safety involved a deadening sense of being caged, besieged by the rest of mankind on a barren crag where a god of stone might live happily but a man would wither; and the conspirators were not gods, though they had arrogated to themselves the work of judgment.
They crowded together in the front portion of the main temple, while behind them rose the shrine of the Three, lately repaired after a fire: the Three —Father, Wife, and Daughter, begotten not by fleshy conjunction but in the mind, crawling from the Father’s ear, the pure babe of the Word. A few cornered worshippers and sightseers shrunk into the shadows.
Brutus had lost both rapture and blankness. A ghastly argument was going on in his head. An unknown reasoner had cried, “Murder.” Brutus retorted that he had defended freedom by the force necessary to quell them that lived by force; but the unknown had answered, “Is a slave then justified when he kills his master?” A slave was not a free man. “But that is your very protest. You say that Caesar enslaved you. Unless that is true, you killed without justification. Then any enslaved human being is justified in slaying the master who keeps him enslaved by right of force alone.” But the slave had been bought. “On what does the bargain rest? Ultimately on force alone. Has the slave’s will assented? Is not the slave human?”
White-faced, Brutus tried to compel his brain to stop working, to drive away the gnat-thoughts that stung him intolerably. Cassius, noting this preoccupation, took charge of the meeting and spoke. It was necessary to summon all the senators of good-will for a private council; pressure must be brought to bear on Antonius for a session of the Senate; if the Liberators could rely on a majority at the session, all would yet be well and the counter-revolution consummated as smoothly as had first been intended.
All agreed to this; and the numerous slaves and freedmen who had accompanied their masters were given messages to all senators except those promoted to the rank by Caesar during the last few years. As the conspirators counted out the number of men to be summoned, they were surprised to find how strong their party would be. Each man glanced over the list, finding names that had been omitted, excitedly giving fresh instructions.
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Brutus felt his thoughts swirling in his head. A maelstrom of ideas and images, and himself swept in the midst. O for the arms of Porcia. His head was hollow, a pipe down which the medley hurtled with the croaking swirl of water escaping down a drain. All the formulae, which he had used that morning as praetor in dealing with property matters, had been based on the principle of ownership as the result of war-capture, of force. All service that didn’t proceed from a total assent of the will was enslavement; but what man could know his will in its totality? All were slaves, knuckling under to force. All had the right to kill; no one had it. He reached out his hand towards the roof of the Capitoline Temple, wanting to drag it down upon them all, upon the divine Three in the holy cells, upon tyrant and slave, upon the world where man was both tyrant and slave in the drama of his unrealised life.
*
Down from the Capitol by the less observed paths went the freedmen and slaves, roused by this adventure in which they had abruptly found themselves. The death of Caesar meant no greater freedom for them — indeed, meant less, since it ended Caesar’s patronage of the submerged classes; but they were thrilled. Vicariously they enjoyed the sense of throwing off bonds, of reaching the clear sunlight at the end of effort’s dark, convulsive tunnel. They were ready to die for the Liberators.
The senators, fidgeting in their homes, received the messages and were surprised into optimism. Caesar was dead. The populace had not risen. The sun was still in the sky. The slayers, a strong band, had seized the Capitol. All would yet be well. No longer would a dictator interfere with business profits and cramp the careers of the sons of the upper class. Once more the old prizes would be there for competition, provincial governments and the spoils of petty wars and the manifold perquisites of the Republican official. The wrestle for political control of the law courts would begin again; that meant outlays of money, a good return for favours. Business would be unfettered in the provinces; there would be no more prying into rates charged, no more championing of the feckless debtor class, no more strict supervision of the tax collectors.
The senators rubbed their hands and told their wives that the world was once more safe for freedom. A dangerous period, a gravely dangerous period, in fact a crisis, had been passed. Probably it was an event to be celebrated with presents — a little jewelry. You sweet thing, fancy boring a hole in the lobe of your ear where a pearl may hang and tell the world how rich I am. The senators pinched their wives’ ears and dreamed of easy credit.
*
Voices challenging. A cursing reply.
Marcus Antonius hurried towards the hall and found his small bodyguard of veterans holding someone up.
“Take a good look,” said the newcomer. “Don’t you recognise me, you unwashed pismires?”
It was Marcus Lepidus. Antonius went to the door and grasped Lepidus by both his hands. “I’m glad to see you.”
“Where are the others?”
“I don’t know. Killed, or locked up for safety in their money-chests. But it’s good to see you.”
Lepidus looked round, his horse-face lengthening. “So there’s only you and I left,” he said slowly. Then he raised his right arm aloft. “Farewell, Caesar. I pray that a dead man’s a blind man. I wouldn’t like you to see the world at this moment.” He surveyed the score of veterans. “Have you learned from your betters, you rapscallions? Don’t you see that loyalty’s out of fashion? It died when men took to shaving their faces to look like women’s bottoms.”
The men shifted and grinned. “We’ll shave some of them a little closer than’s comfortable,” said one of them.
“Who? Your betters or your wives?” guffawed Lepidus; then Antonius took him by the arm and led him into the room beyond. “The world’s a stench,” Lepidus went on. “I found my wife being hugged the wrong way round by one of the guests last night, and today Caesar’s been slit. I forgave my wife, but a man’s good-nature won’t last forever. What do you think about it?”
“I think you and I are shouldered out of the world,” said Antonius. “But something may happen.”
Lepidus showed his large teeth. “I’ll wait. I’ve had a start already. I belted my wife before I came out. Since she’s the sister of Marcus Brutus, I felt it was first blow to us. You’d be surprised how that woman loves me.”
Antonius said nothing. He knew that the bluff talk of Lepidus was invented only to fill time in, to deafen the questions of the situation. What could the pair of them do? Drink and talk big. The conspirators had everything favourable; they had destroyed their opponents with a blow; the powerful Caesarian party had dissolved in less than an hour; there was no resistance except among the unorganised proletariat, and Antonius had the soldier’s contempt for a mob. Unless the conspirators bungled things incredibly, they would control the State by the morrow; they would enrol a militia of upper-class youths; and the discontent of the workers and veterans, diffused and spasmodic, would end with a few puerile brawls. There was nothing to stop the conservative reaction.
“Something to drink?”
“Blood of the grape,” grumbled Lepidus. “Can’t you see I’m drunk already, you fool? Get some wine at once.”
*
The senators began to arrive on the Capitol, almost as brisk in responding to the call as they had been in running from the Curia. The shock had passed. Caesar was but a man after all, and he had no successor. No more was needed than a strong hand over the mob that would naturally be restive for a day or two; then everything would revert to normal. Caesar was only an episode. A man, dropped in mid-ocean, disturbed the waters, but after a while his muscles failed and the waters closed over his head, and ocean remained. The State remained and Caesar was gone. He already seemed merely a name, like Marius and Sulla, like any of the passing disruptors of the system. The lightning-flash is awful while it lasts, but it doesn’t last long. Caesar had lightened, and vanished, leaving the memory of stark light that revealed queer cavities and distortions, unguessed scurrying forms, a sudden intolerable earth.
Now the authority of the upper families, the power of the landlords, was to reassert itself; the sacredness of property, even if gained by usury or oppression; the supremacy of money and birth; law and order.
The air on the Capitol exhilarated. The Sky-god was at one’s elbow as one gazed down on Rome, on all the roofs, the lazily curling smoke-wreaths. Rome’s destiny was easily read from the height. Cleave to the law, do your duty, and strike down the transgressor, be he father or brother or son. The senators chatted, impressed by the greatness of the fate with which they were honoured. The face of Caesar receded more and more.
Cassius called the gathering to some state of order. A decision must be reached. An official meeting of the Senate must be called. Quickly the routine of Republican government must be restored: all depended on that. But Antonius, now the highest officer of the State, had the prerogative of calling the meeting.
Cicero rose. He had listened with scorn to the vague and dilatory optimism of the speakers. Certainly there should be a meeting of the Senate. Why should not Brutus, the second official of the State, and a fully qualified curule magistrate, formally declare the present gathering a sufficient session? They were on duly consecrated ground. Let the magistrates there present take instant control of the State. Let all others be given twenty-four hours to signify their readiness to swear fealty to the constitution. After that, let them be deposed by an Ultimate Decree. Let messengers be despatched at once to all the more respectable municipalities asking for money and volunteers. Let a corps of citizen-defenders be founded at Rome before nightfall. If this course was followed, there would be a likelihood of success. Every other course was more than doubtful.
Silence spread. The men knew that Cicero had spoken the truth, and yet some vague interdiction prevented them from acclaiming his advice and vigorously following it out. All looked towards Brutus. If he took the responsibility, they would agree, but otherwise they dare not.
Brutus felt the weight of
all their minds pressing upon him. He was tired; he wanted to get back to Porcia. He felt in that distracted condition when one is trying to remember a word that half-presents itself and then flutters away, so that all concentration is lost in a search which the intelligence admits irrelevant. All he could see was that Cicero was asking for unconstitutional action whereas the Liberators had combined to destroy Caesar for infringing the constitution.
“Antonius has not yet been approached,” he said heavily. “I see no reason for extreme measures till we know his attitude.”
Cassius tore at his fingernails. He had realised the force of Cicero’s appeal. But why did the meeting turn to Brutus as if wisdom remained with him? Why not to Cassius? He would then have supported Cicero. But when they asked him after consulting Brutus, he refused to express his belief. They had chosen. Let their vote be for Brutus, since they would finally vote for his staid weakness whatever Cassius urged. They would merely temporise a little longer, become a little more muddled, drift into further doubts.
“What Brutus has said is true,” he remarked, savagely, and turned aside.
Cicero also felt that he could say no more. He had spoken. He had put the issues plainly.
Decimus Brutus was talking. He bade the gathering see how smoothly everything had gone so far. What was there to fear? Antonius, though no pure-hearted constitutionalist, was yet no fool. He would never stand out against the whole governing class, to which he himself belonged. The Empire must be ruled, and the last word was with the Senate. Consider the situation objectively. The men now assembled could simply destroy the State by walking out of Rome. The whole machinery of government would collapse. Their opponents knew that. Caesar had known it when he sought to conciliate the remnants of the old senatorial class and enlist them as workers under his direction; what had been true then was doubly true now, for all Caesar’s original lieutenants were in the dissenting body. Let a deputation be sent to sound Antonius.