“Because I already have been - twice. The first nagged me that I always seemed distant. The second because I wasn’t distant enough,” Oppius replied - his tone being funnier for seeming all the more sincere.
Octavius ventured into the triclinium. Oppius had not said a word, nor did he communicate the request with his eyes, but somehow Octavius felt compelled to assent to the centurion’s unspoken order to join them. It appeared that the soldier had been conversing with his mother and step-father, not that the taciturn officer ever uttered a word more than necessary. Even his step-father was intimidated, or confounded, by the manner of Oppius at times.
“Make sure you dry yourself off properly,” Atia immediately remarked to her son. Her tone was cosseting, as if she wished to impress upon Lucius Oppius, and herself, how much she cared for her child - Caesar’s nephew. Atia was the daughter of the First Man of Rome’s sister, Julia. The elegant woman was approaching middle age but her former beauty and spirit could still very much be traced in her figure and bearing. Atia, confident, intelligent, and proud - in short, a Caesar, had first been married to Marcus Atius Balbus, a former praetor and governor of Macedonia. Due to his senatorial commitments and foreign postings, Octavius saw very little of his father as a young child. Balbus passed away before his son’s fifth birthday. Octavius sadly could not claim to have truly known his father, but he was conscious of his achievements and reputation. He was a good man by all accounts, who had gleaned praise from Cicero no less. His mother also never spoke ill of his father, which was a further testament to his character, and for a time it had been a source of frustration and regret to Gaius that he had never got to know him. In his own eyes it did not bother Octavius that his father had not been born into true noble family. But a certain anxiety and irritation had crept into his thoughts of late in that it might prejudice him in other people’s eyes. But a man should be judged on his merit, the idealistic youth believed.
“Leave him be, Atia,” Phillipus announced, partly amused and partly critical of his wife’s mollycoddling. His hair was now grey and his face a little wrinkled but there was still a healthy vigour in the senator’s eyes. His expression was thoughtful, kind and trustworthy. It was an expression, unlike many a politician’s, which mirrored his character. Atia’s marriage to Phillipus had of course been politically motivated. Phillipus, the son of a former consul, was both an amiable and influential senator. As well as being intimate with Caesar and Pompey, Phillipus could also be seen to have had a foot in the opposing political camp - due to the fact that Cato had married Phillipus’ daughter from a previous marriage. Indeed some argued that Caesar had ultimately chosen Phillipus over the rest of Atia’s suitors because he felt, with his influence and relationship to Cato, that Atia and the boy would be safe if ever his own position became endangered. Marcus Phillipus’ suit was not just the one favoured by Caesar however, for Atia too would have chosen the quietly virtuous older man as her husband. And a mutual fondness soon matured into something deeper, stronger. Love.
Octavius was fond of his step-father also. Marcus Phillipus embodied most of what was good about being Roman, Gaius believed. His step-father was brave, intelligent, superior, just.
“Now as you know Octavius, Marcus and I are leaving for Rome tomorrow. What you do not know however is that I received a letter from your great-uncle today,” Atia announced and then paused.
The boy’s heart skipped a beat and yet pounded a moment later. News from Rome. Would Caesar be here soon? Did he have some new honour to confer on him? Were there any words of praise for his great-nephew in the letter? Was he even in Caesar’s thoughts?
“He has asked us that you be left in the care of Lucius Oppius while we are away,” Marcus Phillipus remarked, finishing his wife’s sentence. Caesar had ‘asked’ but the request was tantamount to an order. “I’m sure Caesar knows that you can look after yourself, Octavius. So too your mother and I will sleep easier, knowing that Lucius will be keeping an eye on you. I dare say though that you won’t notice that he is even there.”
“As long as he doesn’t mind,” Octavius replied, shrugging. The adolescent masked his feelings well. He was slightly hurt and resentful thinking that it was considered that he couldn’t be trusted. It naturally nettled the youth to think that Caesar still thought of him as a child who needed looking after. But still his face did not, would not, betray his disappointment, a disappointment which was exacerbated by the fact that he wouldn’t now be able to spend as many nights with Briseis, with Oppius keeping a hawkish eye upon him. He acted indifferently to the news. Yet later that evening, when Octavius reflected upon the situation, he realised that he was, or could be, genuinely indifferent to the minor change in events. There were far worse fates to endure than being in possession of a bodyguard. His existence was not an unhappy one he pondered, philosophically.
Bored by his mother’s gossip as to who was marrying who in Rome, what spices were in fashion and what she should wear for her entry back into the city, Octavius excused himself. He bathed himself, declining the offer of a pug-faced serving woman to assist him, and then retreated into his room to catch up on his re-reading of Polybius and Catullus.
*
It was now late. Gaius yawned and put his book down. A breeze whistled through the gap beneath the door and wafted over the candle next to his bed. For half a minute or so the contemplative youth just sat transfixed, gazing at the wriggling flame. Buffeted. Straining. He admired how, no matter how much the breeze desired to extinguish the torch, the flame remained alight and always returned to its calm, beautiful form when the attacks subsided. The would-be stoic fancied, promised, that he too would be akin to the candlelight no matter how much fortune attempted to bend or break him. Octavius gently smiled at his own conceit and drifted off to sleep.
Maybe the dream was provoked by the drumming of the rain on the roof outside, but Octavius was plunged back into the sublime scene of the storm from a year ago. The ship was bound for Spain. A large wave arched over the creaking trireme as if it was a claw about to swot a gad-fly from the ocean’s skin. Or as if they were caught in the jaws of an aquatic monster, which was foaming at the mouth. Oars littered the ocean like twigs within a brook. Octavius bumped and cut his head as he tried to negotiate his way onto the deck. Spotting the blood trickling from the youth’s temple, Oppius immediately ceased reining in an untamed sail. Without warning, or a word said, he rushed up to the boy and checked the extent of his injury - and then resumed his task of fastening down the flapping sail. The wind ululated like a wolf, baying for blood. If it wasn’t for the inky night the Spanish coast would have been in sight, but the mortal craft, at the mercy of Neptune, was a world away from safety. Timber bent and then splintered. Twice the land-legged young Gaius slipped upon the slick deck, but fell not. Water slapped Octavius across the face as a wave crashed into the side of the vessel. The sensation both enlivened and disorientated him to his peril. Voices also jabbed into his ears. Half were arguing to abandon ship, half were ordering to ride the storm out. Before Octavius even began to assess his best course of action, his mind was made up for him. Roscius, a hulking legionary - whom Octavius recognised as being part of Oppius’ cohort - bellowed in his ears above the roaring storm to follow him.
The steely centurion but nodded his head to indicate to Octavius that he wished for the adolescent to clamber down the rope ladder into the lifeboat, which bobbed up and down on the churning ocean and continually knocked against the larger vessel. The commanding Oppius wore neither a look of worry on his face, nor did he try to give his young charge a comforting glance, as if to convey that everything would be alright. Octavius descended slowly into the small boat. Half a dozen sailors challenged Oppius and Roscius above him - complaining about commandeering the lifeboat. Either through violence, or the threat of it, the two soldiers soon out-argued the protesting mob.
On board the ship, and on land, Roscius had been a rock. His hard, weathered face was a paradigm of fearlessness and au
thority. Octavius almost gasped one time when the giant of a man made a couple of fists - likening the sight to seeing two boulders on the ends of his brawny arms. An expression of doubt and fright immediately overcame the stout legionary as soon as he placed a foot upon the puny lifeboat. The craft moved beneath his feet and Roscius nearly fell overboard. A serendipitous clap and rumble of thunder drowned out the curses which shot from the seasoned soldier’s mouth. Oppius briefly smiled, witnessing the panic on his loyal friend’s face. It was perhaps the first time Octavius had observed the professional, emotionless centurion do so. At the time of the crossing Oppius had been assigned to the protection of Octavius - upon the personal commission of Caesar himself - for less than a month. At first Gaius had been in awe of the Roman officer, admiring his physique and the air of authority which surrounded him. He was intrigued by the enigmatic officer. “Men want to be him and women want to be with him,” his step-father had remarked. He soon grew even more intimidated and frightened by the centurion, however. After suffering monosyllabic replies, or having the soldier just walk away from him as if he wasn’t there, Octavius stopped trying to engage his bodyguard. Phillipus also revealed to Octavius that Oppius had the ear of his great-uncle, and that he would doubtlessly be reporting his behaviour and progress back to Caesar. As a result the youth was conscious of what he had said and done in the presence of the centurion. In some ways he played the obedient child in front of the soldier, yet at other opportunities Octavius would do or say something to prove how much of a good Roman he was. But, after suffering the demoralising indifference of the soldier towards him on one too many occasion, Octavius eventually experienced fits of resentment where admiration once resided.
The centurion’s smirk was fleeting however, and Oppius soon handed an oar to Roscius.
“Are you a strong swimmer, boy?” the officer then shouted at Octavius over the snarling wind. Such was the threatening tone of his voice that the pallid youth would have nodded in assertion even if the answer was no. Oppius ordered Roscius to abandon his greaves and breastplate, as he too dropped half of his uniform overboard. Sooner or later they would have to make a swim for it. It would be sooner rather than later as, not twenty yards from the ship, the lifeboat began to fill with water. Oppius instructed Octavius to try and bail out the pool of sea water forming at their feet using Roscius’ large helmet.
The two powerful soldiers began to find some rhythm and Gaius even began to win the war against the incoming water.
“She’s lying low in the water,” Roscius huskily remarked to his officer, referring to their storm battered ship - his brow wrinkled in concern.
“It’ll be lying even lower within the hour,” Oppius replied matter-of-factly, seemingly unperturbed and resigned to the situation of losing both the craft and his men. Over the next few evenings though, a self-consciously sensitive and noble Octavius would recall the loss of life and try to honour the dead with generous and solemn thoughts. Caesar’s great-nephew felt guilty because he reasoned that, if not for him, the men would not have even been out in the storm.
Before Octavius had a chance, however, to glance around to see how low the trireme was in the water, a hurtling wave, spurred on by a gust of wind, shunted into the side of the lifeboat. The three figures within the craft were tossed into the water like coins into a well. Disorientated. Frightened. At first Octavius was dragged deeper below as the water soaked and weighed down his tunic. His eyes and mind were a blur. It was as if someone had tied an anchor around his waist. But the adrenaline rush from his panic soon aided the strength Gaius needed to pull himself back up to the surface.
As his face broke through the skin of the sea and he gasped for air, Octavius woke up from his realistic nightmare, feeling now the same mixture of fear and exhilaration as he felt then, or rather just after the ordeal. Where the dream left off, his memory took over. Oppius had to perhaps worry more about Roscius than Octavius in terms of getting them to shore. He constantly swam back and forth between the two - with and against the tide - to encourage and watch over them as they made their way onto the secluded beach.
Heavy-limbed, shivering with cold and his muscles quivering with exhaustion, Octavius gulped in the air as he lay across the powdery sand. He had been delivered. Rain coughed upon his face. Darkness was legion. He sought but found not the silhouette of the doomed ship within the oily night. The lap of the incoming waves, which sometimes kissed his feet, made a shushing noise as if to demand silence. But all Gaius could hear was Roscius, short of breath too, lying beside him. Either he slept, or passed out, but the next thing Octavius recalled was Oppius - as if by magic - starting a fire. Not only did the small fire serve to dry them all off, but more importantly it acted as a beacon for those soldiers and slaves who had also bested the squall to make it to shore. The storm eventually abated. But they were still in danger. Having memorised the map during the crossing Gaius overheard Oppius confide in Roscius that they had landed upon a beach in enemy territory.
Octavius here decided however to switch off his memory, as if he were blowing out a candle. Not only did he want to be fresh for when his mother and Phillipus left the next morning, but he also wanted to be rested for his afternoon lesson with Cleanthes.
5.
Morning. Spring again augured summer. It had been an unnaturally hot early March. Octavius sat out in the garden, eating a pomegranate, waiting for the moment when his mother and step-father would finally depart and he would say his farewells. He sat in the cooling shade close to the house, but the rising sun began to bathe more and more of the garden in its pristine light. The buxom flower beds, which bordered a large square carpet of grass, were erupting with colour - crisp red roses, glassy lilies, trumpeting bluebells. The fish pond, in which Marcus Phillipus vainly attempted to breed his beloved koi carp, seemed to sparkle with petals of golden light - appearing and vanishing on the surface of the turquoise water with hypnotic charm. The sound of a babbling fountain, in the shape of a curvaceous nereid with the water dribbling from out of her mouth, could irritate or placate the listener depending on their mood. Octavius smiled, remembering how when he first arrived at the house, he had practised his kissing technique in secret on the fountain, employing the excuse for himself and any potential watcher that he was merely quenching his thirst. Fortunately he had Briseis now for such things, Octavius reflected - grinning now to himself in a different way.
The pomegranate sweetened and freshened up his mouth, displacing the furry taste of sleep which had hung at the back of his tongue. The moreish smell of fresh bread also made its way around from the kitchen and enlivened the air. Perhaps because Cleanthes too baked his own bread, Octavius suddenly thought of his tutor and, as if now in the philosopher’s company, a pensive expression shaped his features. Octavius suddenly appeared ten years older and troubled by things. It was at this ill-timed moment that Atia came out to speak to her son.
“What’s wrong?” Atia remarked, crouching down beside her seated son and laying her fingers on his shoulder. Octavius loved his mother, and appreciated her consideration, but at this particular moment he would’ve preferred not to have been disturbed by her.
“I am fine, mother,” Octavius replied and pursed his lips - preventing himself from uttering anything more.
“I never know these days whether you are looking sad, or just serious. But you never seem as happy as you once were,” Atia posed. She knew by the tone of his voice and body language that he didn’t want to be disturbed or confronted. Atia’s maternal concern, and curiosity, made her want to force the issue. She was worried that her child was becoming too withdrawn. Perhaps it was this Cleanthes’ influence. When he did speak to anyone nowadays he would often be glib or sarcastic, or quote philosophy to her to win an argument. She had increasingly grown frustrated and sad over the past year, feeling that Octavius was becoming too self-reliant and melancholy. Sometimes Atia melodramatically thought to herself that she didn’t know her son anymore. She was becoming redundant
in his life. He no longer got sick. She missed taking care of him. Intellectually and emotionally he had grown independent, superior even. As much as Phillipus had argued that it was a good thing that the youth had matured and changed, a doting Atia was not quite ready to say goodbye to her special boy yet.
“I am content, mother. Truly, you have no need to worry about me.”
“You can always come to me, you know that? A problem shared is a problem halved,” Atia remarked and smiled, as if Octavius were twelve years old again.
Still my sorrows would be double the next man’s Octavius fancied, but he kept the conceit to himself. He also bit his tongue in response to the scorn he felt for his mother’s sententiousness and unconsidered way of looking at life.
“No man is an island,” Atia then added, briefly stroking her child’s fair hair, gazing at him fondly, conveying that she understood whatever he was going through and that he could confide in her.
Octavius didn’t say a word in reply, although he was tempted to argue the contrary. He thought how Cleanthes was independent, craving no man’s flattery or counsel; he served no master, nor wanted for a servant. He inwardly smiled, recollecting the story Cleanthes told him about Diogenes. When Alexander the Great asked if he could do anything for the philosopher, Diogenes merely requested for the king to get out of his light.
“I know, mother,” Octavius finally replied, sighing a little as he said so.
As only a woman can, Atia here changed the subject and mood as if nothing had come before.
“Now, how does your mother look?” she gaily announced, beaming and twirling before her son. Her dress was crisp and white, patterned and bordered in a shade of purple which had become associated with Caesar. The cut highlighted rather than revealed Atia’s envied figure. Her hair was blonde, which had grown even fairer of late in the Greek sun, and was stylishly pinned on her head. Her slender, bronzed forearms were decorated by a couple of elegant gold bangles. Rouge reddened her cheeks and Egyptian kohl lined her fine blue eyes, but the make-up was in no way garishly employed by the naturally attractive woman.
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