6. The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  "Just what are you up to, Gaius?" Lucius whispered after Caesar put the lad between them. A question his host ignored, too busy making sure that Atia was comfortable on the chair opposite him, and that Calpurnia was not going to make the mistake of seating herself and Marcia too close to Lucius Piso, whose enormously thick black brows were meeting across his nose in displeasure because he had to share this excellent dinner with Cato's wife, of all people! One or two deft juggles with chairs, and Marcia sat next to Atia with Calpurnia on her other side, while Piso's brows beetled at no more vulnerable targets than Matius's Priscilla, that beautiful idiot Pompeia Sulla, and his own Rutilia. This Rutilia, Caesar noted, was a sour-looking girl of no more than eighteen, possessed of her family's sandy hair and freckled skin. Buck teeth. A belly beginning to show a pregnancy. Piso might have a son at last. "When do you plan to leave for Africa?" Vatinius asked. "As soon as I can assemble enough ships." "Am I a legate for this campaign?" "No, Vatinius," Caesar said, turning up his nose at the fish and settling for a heel of bread, "you're staying in Rome as one of the consuls." Conversation ceased; all eyes turned to Caesar, then to Publius Vatinius, who was sitting bolt upright, lost for words. He was Caesar's client, a diminutive man with wasted lower legs and a large wen on his forehead that had once caused him to be rejected as an augur. His wit, cheerful disposition and high intelligence had made him much loved by those who came into contact with him in Forum, Senate or the courts, and despite his physical handicaps, Vatinius proved to be as able a soldier as he was a politician. Sent to relieve Gabinius in the siege at Salona in Illyricum, he and his legate Quintus Cornificius had not only taken the city, but then moved to crush the tribes of Illyricum before they could ally themselves with Burebistas and the tribes of the Danubius basin and become a bigger nuisance to Rome and Caesar than Pharnaces. "It isn't much of a consulship, Vatinius," Caesar went on, "as it's just for the rump of this year. Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn't have bothered with consuls until the New Year, but there are reasons why I need two consuls in office immediately." "Caesar, I would be happy to be consul for two nundinae, let alone two months," Vatinius managed to say. "Will you hold proper elections, or simply appoint me and ?" "Quintus Fufius Calenus," said Caesar obligingly. "Oh, yes, I'll hold proper elections. Far be it from me to upset some of the senators I'm still hoping to win over." "Will they be Sulla-style elections, or will you permit other men to run as well as Vatinius and Calenus?" Piso asked, scowling. "I don't care if half of Rome wants to stand, Piso. I shall ah indicate my personal preferences, and leave the decision to the Centuries." No one commented on that. In Rome's present condition, and after the marvelous speech about debt, the knight-businessmen of the Eighteen senior Centuries would be happy to elect a Tingitanian ape if Caesar nominated it. "Why," Vatia Isauricus enquired, "is it so necessary to have consuls in office for the rump of this year when you're here in Rome yourself, Caesar?" Caesar blandly changed the subject. "Gaius Matius, I have a favor to ask," he said. "Anything, Gaius, you know that," said Matius, a quiet man with no political aspirations; his businesses had prospered thanks to his old friendship with Caesar, more than enough for him. "I know that Queen Cleopatra's agent, Ammonius, approached you and secured a grant of land for her palace next to my gardens under the Janiculum. Would you give its gardens your personal touch? I'm sure the Queen will donate the palace to Rome later." Matius knew perfectly well that she would; the property was in Caesar's name, as ordered. "I am delighted to help, Caesar." "Is the Queen as beautiful as Fulvia?" Pompeia Sulla asked, well aware that she herself was more beautiful than Fulvia. "No," Caesar said, his tone forbidding further discussion. He turned to Philippus. "Your younger son is a very capable man." "I'm pleased that he has pleased, Caesar." "I intend to have Cilicia governed as a part of Asia Province for the next year or two. If you don't mind his remaining in the East a while longer, Philippus, I'd like to leave him in Tarsus as deputy governor propraetore." "Excellent!" Philippus beamed. Caesar's eyes had gone to the elder son, now well into his thirties. Very handsome, reputedly quite as talented as Quintus, yet always stuck in Rome letting his opportunities go by without his father's excuse of Epicureanism. At that moment the reason broke on Caesar as a shock; Lucius's gaze was fixed hungrily on Atia, a look of hopeless love. But the look went unnoticed because the emotion clearly was not returned. Atia sat tranquilly, smiling at her husband from time to time in the way women do when they are perfectly satisfied with their marital lot. Hmmm. Undercurrents in the Philippus household. From Atia, Caesar transferred his attention to young Octavius, who thus far had not vouchsafed a single remark. Not from shyness, rather from a consciousness of his junior status. The lad was staring at his stepbrother with complete comprehension but rigid dislike and disapproval. "Who's to govern Asia Province combined with Cilicia?" asked Piso, a question loaded with meaning. He wants the job desperately, and in many ways he's a good man, but... "Vatia, will you go?" Caesar asked. Vatia Isauricus looked startled, then very exalted. "It would be an honor, Caesar." "Good, then you have the job." He stared at the mortified Piso. "Piso, I have work for you too, but inside Rome. I'm still trying to get the debt relief legislation into order, but I won't have it anything like completed before I leave for Africa Province. As you're a brilliant legal draftsman, I'd like to collaborate with you on the subject and then leave it in your hands when I go." He paused, spoke very seriously. "One of the most inequitable aspects of Roman government concerns payment for services rendered. Why should a man be forced to make his fortune governing a province? That has led to shocking abuses, and I'll see an end to them. Why shouldn't a man be able to receive a governor's stipend for work he does at home, work of equal importance? What I propose is to pay you a proconsular governor's stipend for finishing the laws I draft roughly." That shut him up! "That shut him up, young Octavius said under his breath. When the third course was removed from the tables and only the wine flagons and water pitchers remained, the women departed to Calpurnia's spacious quarters upstairs for a good gossip. Now Caesar could focus on the most silent of his guests. "Have you changed your mind about how you intend to pursue your public career, Octavius?" he asked. "Keeping my counsel, you mean, Caesar?" "Yes." "No, I still think it suits my character." "I remember you said that Cicero's tongue runs away with him too much. You're quite right. I encountered him on the Via Appia outside Tarentum the day I arrived back in Italy, and was rudely reminded of that fact." Octavius answered obliquely. "It's said in the family, Uncle Gaius, that when you were about ten years old you acted as a kind of nurse-companion to Gaius Marius while he was recovering from a stroke. And that he talked, you listened. That you learned much about waging war from listening." "I did indeed. However, Octavius, I still betrayed my talent for waging war, I am not sure how. Perhaps I listened too hard, and he sensed qualities in me I didn't know I had." "He was jealous," Octavius said flatly. "Very perceptive! Yes, he was jealous. His day was clearly over, mine hadn't begun. Old men struck down can be nasty." "Yet though his day was clearly over, he returned to public life. His jealousy of Sulla was greater." "Sulla was old enough to have demonstrated his ability. And Marius took care of my pretensions with remarkable cunning." "By appointing you the flamen Dialis and marrying you to Cinna's tiny daughter. A lifelong priesthood that forbade you to touch a weapon of war or witness death." "That is so." Caesar grinned at his great-nephew. "But I wriggled out of the priesthood with Sulla's connivance. Sulla didn't like me at all, but though Marius was long dead by then, he still loathed Marius oh, almost to mania. So he freed me to spite a dead man." "You didn't try to wriggle out of the marriage. You refused to divorce Cinnilla when Sulla commanded it." "She was a good wife, and good wives are rare." "I shall remember that." "Have you many friends, Octavius?" "No. I'm tutored at home, I don't meet many other boys." "You must meet them on the Campus Martius when you go there for the boys' military drills and exercises, surely." The brown skin flushed crimson; Octavius bit his lip. "I hardly ever go to the Campus Martius." "Do
es your stepfather forbid it?" Caesar asked, astonished. "No, no! He's very good to me, very kind. I just I just don't get to the Campus Martius often enough to make friends." Another Brutus? Caesar was asking himself, dismayed. Does this fascinating boy avoid his military duties? During our conversation at Misenum he said he didn't have any military talent. Can that be it, a reluctance to betray his ineptitude? Yet he doesn't have the smell of a Brutus about him, I'd swear he isn't craven or uninterested. "Are you a good student?" he asked, leaving sensitive subjects alone. There was time to investigate further. "At mathematics, history and geography, very good, I think," Octavius said, regaining his composure. "It's Greek I can't seem to master. No matter how much Greek I read, write, or speak, I can never manage to think in it. So I have to think in Latin and then translate." "That's interesting. Perhaps later, after six months living in Athens, you'll learn to think in Greek," Caesar said, hardly able to credit that anyone suffered this inability. He thought automatically in whichever language he was speaking. "Yes, perhaps," Octavius said rather neutrally. Caesar settled deeper into the couch, aware that Lucius was eavesdropping shamelessly. "Tell me, Octavius, how far do you want to rise?" "To the consulship, returned by every Century." "Dictator, even?" "No, definitely, definitely not." This didn't sound critical. "Why so emphatic?" "Ever since they forced you to cross the Rubicon, Uncle Gaius, I've watched and listened. Though I don't know you well, I think that to be the dictator was the last thing you wanted." "Rather any office than that," said Caesar grimly, "but rather that office than undeserved exile and ignominy." "I shall offer regularly to Jupiter Optimus Maximus that I am never faced with that alternative." "Would you dare it if you had to?" "Oh, yes. In my heart I am a Caesar." "A Gaius Julius Caesar?" "No, merely a Julian of the Caesares." "Who are your heroes?" "You," Octavius said simply. "Just you." He slid off the back of the couch. "Please excuse me, Uncle Gaius, Cousin Lucius. My mother made me promise that I'd go home early." The two men left on the lectus medius watched the slight figure leave the room without drawing attention to himself. "Well, well, well," drawled Lucius. "What do you think of him, Lucius?" "He's a thousand years old." "Give or take a century or two, yes. Do you like him?" "It's plain you do, but do I? Yes with reservations." "Expatiate." "He's not a Julian of the Caesares, much though he may think he is. Oh, there are echoes of the old Patriciate, but also echoes of a mind never shaped in the patrician mold. I can't catalogue his style, yet I know he has one. It may well be that Rome hasn't seen his style before." "You're saying he's going to go far." The vivid blue eyes twinkled. "A fool I am not, Gaius! If I were you, I'd take him as my personal contubernalis the moment he turns seventeen." "So I thought when I met him at Misenum a few years ago." "One thing I'd watch." "What?" "That he doesn't grow too fond of arses." The paler blue eyes twinkled. "A fool I am not, Lucius!"

  3

  The storm brewing in the legionary camps around Capua tossed its first thunderbolt the day after Caesar's dinner party, at the very end of October. A letter came from Mark Antony.

  Caesar, there's trouble. Big, big trouble. The really veteran veterans are wild with rage, and I can't reason with them or rather, with their elected representatives. It's the Tenth and Twelfth are the worst. Surprised? Well, I was surprised, at any rate. The pot boiled over when I issued orders that the Seventh, the Eighth, the Ninth, the Tenth, the Eleventh, the Twelfth, the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth were to pull stakes and march for Neapolis and Puteoli. I had all their elected representatives on my doorstep in Herculaneum (I'm living in Pompeius's villa there), telling me that no one was going anywhere until after they'd been formally notified about things like their date of discharge, their plots of land, their bounties and bonuses for this extra campaign that's what they call it, an "extra campaign." Not usual duty. And they want to be paid. They were set on seeing you, so they weren't too happy when I had to tell them that you're too busy in Rome to come to Campania. The next thing I knew, the Tenth and Twelfth went crazy, started looting and wrecking all the villages around Abella, where they're camped. Caesar, I can't handle them anymore. I suggest you come yourself. Or, if you really can't come, send someone important to see them. Someone they know and trust.

  Here it is, and it's too soon. Oh, Antonius, will you never learn patience? You've so much riding on this, yet you've just made a clumsy move, you've betrayed your insincerity. The only clever part, which is acting now rather than later, is simply due to your impatience. No, I can't leave Rome, as you well know! Though not for the reasons you think. I daren't leave Rome until I've held my elections, is the true reason. Have you divined why? I don't think so, despite your acting now. You're too unsubtle. Use the tactics of delay, Caesar. Postpone the reckoning until after the elections, no matter whom you have to sacrifice. He sent for one of his loyalest and most competent military men, Publius Cornelius Sulla. Sulla's nephew. "Why not send Lepidus?" Publius Sulla asked. "He hasn't enough clout with old warhorses like the Tenth and Twelfth," Caesar said curtly. "Better to send a man they know from Pharsalus. Explain that their land is on my agenda, Publius, but that the debt legislation has to come first." "Do you want me to take the pay wagons, Caesar?" "I think not. I have my reasons. The boil is coming to a head, balm like pay might cause it to subside untimely. Just do your best with the paltry ammunition I've given you," said Caesar. Publius Sulla returned four days later, cut and bruised on face and arms. "They stoned me!" he snarled, stiff with fury. "Oh, Caesar, grind their faces into the dust!" "The faces I want to grind into the dust are those belonging to whoever is working on them, Caesar said grimly. "The men are idle and more or less permanently drunk, I suspect discipline hasn't been kept up either. That means they've been extended a lot of credit with the tavern keepers, and their centurions and tribunes are even drunker than the rankers. For all his continuous presence in Campania for months on end, Antonius has let this happen. Who else is going guarantor for so much wine on credit?" Publius Sulla shot Caesar a look of sudden comprehension, but said not a word. Next Caesar summoned Gaius Sallustius Crispus, a brilliant orator. "Choose two of your fellow senators, Sallustius, and try to make the cunni see sense. As soon as the elections are over, I'll see them in person. Just hold the fort for me."