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

by Colleen McCullough

  Brutus and Cassius walked most of the way home together, not speaking until they came to Cassius's door. "We're all meeting tomorrow morning half an hour after dawn at the foot of the Steps of Cacus," Cassius said. "That leaves plenty of time to get out to the Campus Martius. I'll see you there and then." "No," said Brutus, "don't wait for me. I'd prefer to go on my own. My lictors will be company enough." Cassius frowned, peered at the pale face. "I hope you're not thinking of backing out?" he asked sharply. "Of course not." Brutus drew a breath. "It's just that poor Porcia has worked herself into such a state she knows " Came the sound of Cassius grinding his teeth. "That woman is a menace!" He banged on his door. "Just don't renege, hear me?" Brutus trudged around the corner to his own house, knocked on its door and was admitted by the porter, praying as he tiptoed through the corridors toward the master's sleeping cubicle that Porcia would be asleep. She was not. The moment the wan light of his lamp showed in the doorway she leaped out of their bed, threw herself at him and clasped him convulsively. "What is it, what is it?" she whispered loudly enough for the whole house to hear. "You're so early! Is it discovered?" "Hush, hush!" He closed the door. "No, it is not discovered. Calvinus took seriously ill, so the party broke up." He shed his toga and tunic, left them lying on the floor, sat on the edge of the bed to unbuckle his shoes. "Porcia, go to sleep." "I can't sleep," she said, sitting beside him with a thump. "Then take some syrup of poppies." "It constipates me." "Well, you're rapidly sending me the other way. Please, oh, please, just get into your own side of the bed and pretend you're asleep! I need peace." Sighing and grumbling, she did as she was told; Brutus felt his bowels move, got up, put on his tunic, some slippers. "What is it, what is it?" "Nothing except a bellyache," he said, took the lamp and went to the latrine. There he remained until he was sure that he had nothing left to evacuate, then, shivering in the icy night, he stood on the colonnade until the coldness drove him back in the direction of his cubicle and Porcia. On the way he passed Strato of Epirus's door: closed, no light beneath it. Volumnius's door: closed, no light beneath it. Statyllus's door: slightly open, a light showing. The moment he scratched Statyllus was there, drawing him inside. It hadn't struck him as odd after he married Porcia that she should ask if Statyllus could come to live with them, and she had not told him that her reason was to separate Lucius Bibulus from Statyllus and the tippling. It was a delight to Brutus to have Cato's philosopher friend in his house. Never more so than now. "May I lie on your couch?" Brutus asked, teeth chattering. "Of course you may," said Statyllus. "I can't face Porcia." "Dear, dear." "She's hysterical." "Dear, dear. Lie down, I'll get some blankets." None of the three philosophers knew of the plot to kill Caesar, though all of them knew something was wrong. Their conclusion was that Porcia was going mad. Well, who could blame Cato's daughter, so highly strung and sensitive, with Servilia verbally cutting and slashing at her as soon as Brutus went out? Statyllus, however, had watched Porcia grow up, the other two had not. When he realized that she loved Brutus, he had tried to prevent its bearing fruit. Some of his opposition was due to jealousy, but most of it was due to his fear that she would wear Brutus down with her fits and starts. What he hadn't taken into account was Servilia's enmity, though he should have how much she had hated Cato! And now here was poor Brutus, too intimidated to face his wife. So Statyllus clucked and crooned, settled Brutus on his couch, then sat with a lamp to guard him. Brutus drifted into a light sleep, moaned and tossed, woke suddenly when the dream of stabbing Caesar reached its bloody, awful climax. Still sitting in the chair, Statyllus had nodded off, but snapped to attention the moment Brutus swung his feet on to the floor. "Rest again," the little philosopher said. "No, the Senate is meeting and I can hear cocks crowing, so it can't be more than an hour from dawn," Brutus said, stood up. "Thank you, Statyllus, I needed a refuge." He sighed, took his lamp. "Now I'd better see how Porcia is." At the door he paused, gave a peculiar laugh. "Thank all the gods that my mother won't be back from Tusculum until this afternoon." Porcia too had found solace in sleep; she was lying on her back, her arms above her head, the signs of copious tears on her face. His bath was ready; Brutus went to it, lay in the warm water and soaked for a little while, his imperturbable manservant standing by to drape him in a soft linen towel as he emerged. Then, feeling better, he dressed in a clean tunic, put on his curule shoes, and went to his study to read Plato. "Brutus, Brutus!" Porcia yelled, erupting into the room with her hair in tangled skeins around her, eyes starting from her head, a robe falling off her shoulders. "Brutus, it is today!" "My dear, you're not well," he said, not getting up. "Go back to bed and let me send for Atilius Stilo." "I don't need a physician! There's nothing wrong with me!" Unaware that her every gesture and expression contradicted this statement, she skittled around the perimeter, rummaged in the sadly empty pigeonholes, grabbed a pen from a beaker of them sitting on the desk, began to stab the air with it. "Take that, you monster! And that, you murderer of the Republic!" "Ditus!" Brutus shouted. "Ditus!" The steward came immediately. "Ditus, find the lady Porcia's women and send them to her. She's unwell, so send for Atilis Stilo too." "I am not unwell! Take that! Die, Caesar! Die!" Epaphroditus cast her a frightened look and fled, returned suspiciously quickly with four womenservants. "Come, domina," said Sylvia, who had been with Porcia since childhood. "Lie down until Atilius comes." Porcia went, but against her will, struggling so strongly that two male slaves had to help. "Lock her in her rooms, Ditus," Brutus said, "but make sure that her scissors and paper knife are removed. I fear for her sanity, I really do." "It is very sad," said Epaphroditus, more worried on Brutus's behalf; he looked frightful. "Let me get you something to eat." "Has dawn broken yet?" "Yes, domine, but only just. The sun hasn't risen." "Then I'll have some bread and honey, and a drink of that herb tea the cook makes. I have a sore belly," said Brutus. Atilius Stilo, one of Rome's fashionable medics, was at the door when Brutus departed, draped in his purple-bordered toga, his post-assassination speech clutched in his right hand. "Whatever else you do, Stilo, give the lady Porcia a potion to calm her down," said Brutus, and stepped into the lane, where his six lictors were waiting, fasces shouldered. The sun's rays were just touching the gilded statues atop Magna Mater's temple as he hurried down the Steps of Cacus into the Forum Boarium and turned toward the Porta Flumentana, the gate in the Servian Walls which led into the Forum Holitorium, already bustling with vegetable and fruit vendors putting their wares on display for early shoppers. This was the shortest route to Pompey the Great's vast theater complex upon the Campus Martius if one lived upon the Palatine no more than a quarter-hour walk. Mind a teeming jumble of thoughts, Brutus was conscious with every step he took of that dagger residing upon his belt, for it was long enough to thrust its sheathed tip into the top of his thigh, and in all his life he had never worn a dagger under his toga. He knew it was going to happen, yet it seemed to have no reality save for that dagger. Dodging between the carts loaded with cabbages and kale, parsnips and turnips, celery and onions, whatever could be grown in the market gardens of the outer Campus Martius and the Campus Vaticanus at this turning season of the year, Brutus was surprised to find the ground muddy and pooled with water had it rained during the night? How stolid lictors were! Just walked. "Terrible storm!" said a gardener, standing in the back of his cart pitching bunches of radishes to a woman. "I thought the world would end," she answered, deftly catching. A storm? Had there been a storm? He hadn't heard it, not a mutter of thunder nor a reflection of lightning. Was the storm in his heart so cataclysmic that it had blotted out a real storm? Once past the Circus Flaminius, Pompey the Great's gigantic marble theater dominated the greensward of the Field of Mars, the semicircle of the theater itself towering farthest west. Behind it going east was a magnificent rectangular peristyle garden hemmed in on all four sides by a colonnade that contained exactly one hundred fluted pillars with Corinthian capitals, lavishly gilded, painted in shades of blue; the walls behind were painted scarlet between a series of murals. One short end of th
e garden abutted on to the straight stage wall of the theater; the other was equipped with shallow steps that led upward into the Curia Pompeia, Pompey's consecrated senatorial meeting house. Brutus entered the hundred-pillared colonnade through its south doors and paused, blinking in the sudden shade, to see where the Liberators were gathered. Hanging on to that word was all that had steeled him to come they were not murderers, they were liberators. The Liberators. There! Out in the garden itself, in a sunny spot sheltered from the wind, close by the ornate fountain that played winter and summer through heated water pipes. Cassius waved, left the group to meet him. "How's Porcia?" he asked. "Not well at all. I sent for Atilius Stilo." "Good. Come and listen to Gaius Trebonius. He's been waiting for you to arrive."