Caesar is Dead

by Jack Lindsay

  He sweated at the horror of losing the position in which he stood; there was the only safety. What an idiot he’d been. It was all inextricably bound up with Fulvia; he couldn’t disentangle it; he’d stand alone, helpless, the mock to ward off the attack of her eyes.

  Those were the words for which she had waited. It was necessary for him to say them in front of his brothers. She caught and tugged at her dress until it fell in rags at her feet.

  “I’m not beautiful as she is. Look at me. She hasn’t borne the children I’ve borne. Her limbs are softer and her breasts are firmer than mine. I don’t wonder you prefer her to me. Wouldn’t you, Lucius?”

  She turned with a mixture of appeal and accusation to Lucius, and he drew back, clenching his hands so hard that the nails hurt the palms. He muttered something gutturally, which no one could catch.

  Antonius felt sudden courage warming back into his veins. She was only a woman after all. A woman ...

  “It’s you I want.” He lifted his hands blindly, seeking her of everyone, if he lost that grip, if he made a false step in his precarious isolation.

  “She’s so much more beautiful than I am,” said Fulvia, remorselessly. “Why don’t you go?”

  Without looking at his brothers, he took her in his arms, ignoring her struggles. His two brothers went quickly from the room.

  “Go to her,” said Fulvia through her teeth, hissingly. He kissed her, feeling the wet teeth of her bared mouth as she continued to say, “Go to her.” But his mouth clove to hers. He mustn’t let her say it aloud. “Go to her.” Fulvia was still saying it, he knew; and he wanted to go, but couldn’t. Desperately, like a man clinging to a piece of wood in tumbling waters, he clung to Fulvia. He dare not let her go.

  IX — A MARTYR TESTIFIES

  The usual crowd were collected round the pillar with its altar in the Forum. A mother had brought her sick child, and pressed his forehead against the stone and bade him touch it with his hands. A girl had whispered a vow and dropped some scraps of unguent. Two soldiers had exchanged pledges over a sale. A man kicked a dog that came up to it and sniffed. A woman clearly with child embraced the pillar, and a young man strewed before it the first clippings of his beard.

  Down a side-street came a tramp of feet, and the sound of men chanting. The crowd parted, and Marius, tall, gaunt, clad in a long white robe, appeared, followed by a noisy band of disciples. He raised his hand, spreading a silence throughout the square. His fierce eyes roved over the faces, darkened for a moment and turned inwards, and blazed again. He spoke, holding both arms aloft as if they were nailed to an unseen beam.

  “A time there is for worshipping in peace, and a time for worshipping with deeds. Here is the altar of the mighty that has died, the lord that was betrayed. And it is right that you should stand here with love in your hearts. But the world is not a thing of love. The world is evil. It is the world that slew Caesar. Since the Divine One has made himself a victim, do you not think he thirsts for blood? I tell you that without blood there is no sacrifice, and without a sacrifice there is no god. For the god who is our father demands submission to his will, and that submission is a sacrifice. And to complete that sacrifice blood must be spilt. For in blood all things are contained, life and death, the god and the victim. God calls to you for a sacrifice.”

  The crowd did not understand his words, but they felt profoundly with all he said, as if he had uttered their inmost unknowable thoughts. He had been speaking with a tense restraint, in a chant. Now his face grew contorted, and he shouted: “Do you not know the men who must die? Must I read a list of the names? The men who slew Caesar are still free to walk the streets of Rome. They laugh in your face. They have stolen from you your most precious thing, and you know it not. They have slain your father, and you say, ‘Yes, lord.’ They have taken all that is rightfully yours, and you kiss their hands for a modius of corn. But the day of reckoning has come. The murderers shall die, and the earth shall be owned by the disinherited, the poor and the suffering. Offer the sacrifice of blood, I tell you! Caesar will then come again. The Son of Caesar!”

  His lips oozed with foam. He seemed to grow taller, reaching to the heavens’ roof-beam. His eyes were dark flames in his gaunt face. Lowering his hands with a violent wrench, he clasped them together, the knuckles crackling.

  A roar came from the crowd. “Death to the murderers!”

  The populace swayed and clamoured, and Marius stood with bent head and closed eyes, waiting for the voice that would tell him what next to do. The hubbub increased; and then it became clear that the disorder was not caused entirely by the response to Marius. A space opened at one side, the crowd huddling back, and a detachment of soldiers was seen marching in regular lines towards the altar. At their head strode Antonius, a sombrely set expression on his face. He looked neither to right nor to left, but straight at Marius.

  The crowd fell farther away, and the soldiers formed in a square round the altar. As their ranks grew, they pushed the people back, leaving more space in the centre where Antonius and Marius stood silently facing one another.

  “Herophilus, also named Amatius, and self-styled Gaius Marius,” said Antonius at length, when all the soldiers had debouched into the open space and the crowd had ceased its uproar, “I arrest you on a charge of fomenting violence and conspiracy against the State.”

  “Marcus Antonius, also known as the Wine-bibber,” replied Marius, unmoved. “I come in the name of one greater than you.”

  “So be it,” said Antonius. “But you are here now, and my word is the last word.”

  There was a growl of indignation from the crowd, and Antonius turned, standing with his back against the altar, a handsome and imposing figure in his bright silver corselet. Beside him, a little to the rear, stood the equally tall Marius, his lean face swarthy above the white of his robe, his eyes once more closed. Why did the voice fail to speak?

  “Romans,” said Antonius, in clear tones without emotion. “You know I have your interests at heart and that I alone have been faithful to Caesar. This man here has deceived you. He is an imposter, in the pay of traitors. Trust to me, I bid you. I alone can see that all Caesar’s Acts are carried out and your freedom maintained; and by the Head of Caesar I swear that you will find me your best friend.”

  He turned away. Uproar again broke out, some calling for further explanations from Antonius, others demanding that Marius should be allowed to speak, some agreeing with Antonius, others abusing him. But Antonius took no further notice. Still with the set expression which emphasised the thinness of his underlip, he was superintending the guard who had grasped Marius and begun binding his arms behind his back. At the order of Antonius the men pushed the prisoner forward, and the other soldiers closed round, preparing to march out again.

  The people were hostile but undecided. They trusted both Antonius and Marius, and couldn’t understand what was going on. The soldiers drew their swords, and a space was once more cleared. The columns started to march out, Marius in their midst.

  He made no resistance; for the voice had withheld its guidance. “It is written,” he said, as they bound him. He did not even look at the populace; and this submissive bearing of his, as much as the show of force, served to disconcert his supporters.

  *

  Marius stood on the cliff’s edge. Below him on the left ran the long stretch of steps up which he had climbed the Capitol. Beside him rose a line of weather-beaten statues. At his back towered the entrance to the Temple of Iuppiter Best and Greatest. Antonius signed to the guards, and they undid the leather thongs that bound the man’s arms. Across the Capitol heights there stood the lines of soldiers whom Antonius had enrolled, veterans who had no interest in politics and knew Antonius as an old campaigner. They were a trifle puzzled, but otherwise unconcerned. Antonius would see that they got their pay, their donatives, their farms, their medals. What was one mob-orator more or less in the scheme of things?

  Marius stood with his arms hanging limply at his si
de, feeling the blood tingle back into them, burning against the places where the thongs had bitten. Still the voice was silent — as if the presence of Antonius had quenched it, sucked out its power into some greater vortex of being.

  “Now,” said Antonius, “are you man enough to leap, or must I have you flung over? I give you the chance, unlike the rats I caught a week or so back.”

  Something in the submissive dignity of Marius appealed to him, frightened a little, made him want to get the execution over quickly.

  Suddenly Marius came to life. His face grew livid. He stretched his open hands aloft. The voice was speaking, swelling him up like a bubble about to burst.

  “God,” he shrieked, “I testify to your death. Break this man like a grain of corn between the upper and the lower millstones. Look into his heart and see the worms of impure motive that gnaw it into pain and frenzy. God omnipotent, make even of this man an instrument of your purpose and your power.”

  A joyous sense of lightness and might filled him. He was one with his god, with the secret motion of things, and would never die. With a ringing shout — “He will come again!” — he threw himself over the rocky ledge.

  Antonius watched the body falling, doubled over, the clothes puffing out with the wind of the descent. Then it abruptly flattened out, struck awry. It lay still on the rocks below, amid a few straggly bushes.

  With an effort Antonius drew away from the edge, from the fascination of that clutching emptiness of air. He wiped his mouth. That was something done; a crack-brained fool, good riddance to him. Antonius hated rabble, and the leaders of rabble. Fulvia couldn’t say he’d failed to act this time; and the Senate would be vastly pleased; surely the State would settle down now. He wanted things to settle; but he also wanted more action. In action, only in action, did he escape Fulvia.

  “Come on, lads,” he said, cheerily, to the soldiers, and they reformed, joking with one another.

  *

  Down below, a girl had pushed her way through the crowd that gathered in the Vicus Iugarius to watch the execution. She climbed the railings at the foot of the Capitoline steps and entered the strip of ground at the foot of the hill. Two slaves of the police-department were already on the spot, armed with hooks. As she came breathlessly up, they were jabbing the hooks into the dying body of Marius, tearing at the flesh as they sought for a good grip. At the blunt end of the hooks were attached ropes for dragging the body along the ground to be exposed on the Wailing Steps.

  “Leave him!” cried the girl. She fell on her knees before the bleeding body and clasped it in her arms. The broken limbs sagged away, and the eyes opened sightlessly for a moment. “Leave him to me,” she sobbed.

  “You could have him for all I care,” said one of the slaves, “but the choice isn’t ours. He’s jail-meat.”

  The other slave, however, retreated towards the steps, down which Antonius was coming at the head of the soldiers. After a brief consultation with Antonius, he returned.

  “He says you can have the body, but we have to make sure he’s dead first.”

  “That’s easy,” remarked the first slave. He picked up a heavy stone, bade the girl stand back, and dropped the stone on the head of Marius before the girl realised what he meant to do. She screamed, held by the second slave. The stone-thrower kicked at the corpse, and then walked off with his companion.

  “Don’t die, don’t die,” moaned the girl, rocking the body. “Please come back to Jiar, if you don’t care for me. What did I do wrong that you left me? Why were you so angry? I’d have died for you.”

  *

  After Antonius had left to arrest Marius, Fulvia dressed herself, calling for other clothes in place of those she had torn off. She went to her room, sat quietly for a while, and then sent for Lucius. He came, fingering his scarred cheek, a look of dread in his eyes.

  “You can have me if you want me,” she said, baldly, as if speaking of the weather.

  He started forwards, reached out his hand, and touched her face. He shuddered all over.

  “You don’t want me,” he muttered. “It’s anger against Marcus.”

  She gave no answer. Then she spoke, still in a slow frigid voice. “I didn’t call you in here to argue with me. I said you can have me if you want me.”

  He drew back, scowled, and answered her in low pleading tones touched with anger. “You know I’ve always wanted you. You know that if you’d been anyone else’s I’d have stabbed him in the dark. But I love Marcus. I can’t do it. Why did you call me in here when you know I can’t do it?” His voice rose sharply. “If I could do it now, I could have done it before. Would I have needed to hear you say what you’ve said?”

  She sat with hands dropped weakly in her lap. “I don’t know or care about all that. You can have me now if you want me.”

  He gave her a lingering look of intense hatred and rushed from the room.

  Along the street went Lucius, uncertain what he meant to do. The blood had hurtled to his head, and he couldn’t ease that maddening pressure. He touched the wound on his cheek and recalled the day at Mylasa in Caria when he had fought a gladiatorial duel with a friend as the result of a drunken wager. He had worn the fish-crest of the Myrmilo, and his friend the light armour of a Thracian. Lucius had had his cheek laid open, and the friend had died. Now a wild lust to attack, to break through, was ravaging Lucius.

  Under the stress of his memories he turned down the next cross-street, passed along some lanes, and came out before a hall, over the heavy wooden door of which hung a notice — G. ALCIMUS, LUDUS OF GLADIATORS. On the doorposts were fixed wooden squares painted with rough impressionistic skill to depict popular champions at cut and thrust, throwing the net, or giving the death-stab. Lucius looked in at the door a moment, his nostrils twitching. Two girls who had been peeping retreated with little squeals of laughter down the roadway, wondering if he was some new recruit; no, he was too well dressed, he must be a lanista on his day out.

  There was no sound of drill or exhibition bouts within. It was a rest-hour. Lucius turned and went across to a tavern from which the noise of rowdy talkers could be heard. He had no motive except a wish to be among men whose mode of living would suit his present temper, whose dress would revivify the memory of that day at Mylasa, when he had killed a man who was dear to him, and when he had enjoyed the killing. Sometimes he awoke at night out of a dream when the dead man kneeled on his chest and held the blade to his heart, and dreadfully the dead man’s face was his own. Never had he so regretted an action.

  Entering the tavern, he saw among the drinkers half a dozen gladiators dressed in oddments of armour. Two of them had kept their swords. The hands of Lucius stirred anxiously. Why had he come? The dream would come closer now, the dead man’s knee would break through his breastbone some night. But at least these fellows were hearty livers, untroubled by the glare of death that beat on their pitiful days; beasts that tore at the raw flesh of life; his brothers. And he needed something to drink. The hot pressure around his head had grown worse.

  He approached the table where the men sat on a bench. They looked up inquiringly, and he flung some coins on the board.

  “Wine all round,” he said. “That’s a good enough introduction, I hope. Wine asks no questions.”

  The men moved up to give him a place.

  “Unless it’s over-watered,” said one. “In which case it talks loud enough and asks for the landlord to have his back scratched with a thorn-whip.”

  “No need to ill-treat the landlord here,” squawked a little man, bustling forward. “My wine’s the best in Rome — for the price, that is. You can’t expect to drink gold at a copper a time. But I’m not like the fellow down the road who makes water in the wine, and says it helps the maturing.”

  “I knew a man,” said a gladiator with the end of his nose cut off, “who sold the best wine I ever drank, and he made his stuff good by keeping a frog in the cask.”

  “There’s a certain amount of truth in that,” said the l
andlord, nodding his head wisely. “But a frog isn’t necessary; and if it dies on you, it means bad luck.”

  Lucius drank deep. The gladiators accepted him without concern, though noting his rich-looking tunic; but they were used to the company of young bloods. They started arguing about the merits of the latest trainer and joking about his strict ways. How long would it take him to find out they’d slipped across the road for a drink? Lucius went on drinking. Why had he come? But, worse than that question was the other: Could he ever go back to the house in the Carinae? Now that Fulvia had offered herself, he couldn’t keep his emotions muffled up any longer. Damn the woman. But he couldn’t face Marcus if he took her. Something would have to snap inside him. The tension was getting worse; his head burned fearfully, as if his scalp was lifting off.

  One of the men talked about a girl who admired him to distraction, a mime-actress named Aeaea, with cheeks as red as paint and breasts like pears.

  “I know her,” said Lucius, jerkily. He had never heard of the girl before. “I slept with her last night.”

  “You’re a liar,” said the gladiator. “You’re so crooked you couldn’t spit straight.”

  “Tell her to have her toenails cut,” scoffed Lucius. “Or you’ll have to take your sword to bed to keep things even.”

  “Shut up,” said the man, angrily, a little uneasy at quarrelling with a social superior; he might only earn a flogging if complaints were laid. “I won’t have her talked about and laughed at. She’s a good girl, and I don’t care who knows it.”

  Lucius stared into the man’s face insolently. “O you’re the fellow she spoke of.” The man was a tough easterner with flattish face and nostrils. “She said she sat on your face in the dark, and that’s why your nose stopped growing.”

  With a howl of rage the man sprang up, forgetting all about social status and tugging out the sword from a comrade’s belt. Lucius dodged back, slipped round the side of the table, and drew the sword from the belt of the other armed man.