The Horse Changer (47 page)

I was glad I had made the long journey when I saw Horace. He had gone for years always looking the same: sleek, short, fat, and happy. Quite suddenly he had turned grey and old and looked somehow sunken in. Horace was my age, of course, which is to say aging but not yet ancient, but something had hooked into him. A worm or the black rot that gets so many of us. Bribe any god you like, throw a living wild boar on the altar of Artemis if you can; it is all for nothing. Once a hard illness takes hold, Death is coming and there is no escape.

When I asked about his health, as old friends do, Horace sighed. ‘Tired lately. Always tired it seems.’

I had my secretary unpack some of my Spanish wine and promised Horace his weariness would soon vanish. And it did for the course of an hour or two.

‘Maecenas is dead. I suppose you heard?’ Horace announced this not long after our first cup. I had only learned of his death when I arrived in Rome and admitted as much. ‘Caesar had a great celebration for him, full honours at public expense,’ Horace told me. ‘I thought that by now everyone in the world would have heard about it.’

‘I know that Livia’s second son perished in the north last year,’ I answered, ‘but I had heard nothing about Maecenas until a few days ago.’

‘Poor Drusus. There is a tragedy for one to contemplate. A prince of the empire cut down in the prime of life. You know, they say Livia has not left her house since his funeral. That is almost a year. Most believe the loss will kill her.’

‘She loved the boy dearly. I know that.’ Then, rather desperate to change the subject of my son’s demise, I added, ‘I came to visit you because of that awful poem you dedicated to me.’

‘You didn’t like it?’ Horace smiled, but I could see he was hurt or at least disappointed.

‘We are too old to be melancholy about death, Horace. I hoped you would write about my two gladii flashing in the bright sunlight of my youth. Or a paean to our race through the marsh at Philippi that we might burn a few of Antony’s tents.’

‘As I have grown older, Dellius, I have tried to write about what matters.’

‘You think death is what matters?’

‘The prospect of our death ought to teach us the difference between what is true and what is only vanity.’

‘Death is a wolf slinking about in the shadows, my friend. There is nothing to learn from such a beast.’

‘The prospect of death is what gives life its urgency.’

‘You should write a poem about our Caesar Augustus, who used to die a little before every battle.’

‘I enjoy life too much to risk what remains of it so foolishly.’

‘An ode to Caesar’s battle terrors and how his fear gave his life a sense of urgency. That would work for me!’

‘I could write a more dangerous poem than that if I wanted.’

‘
You
know some secret the rest of us don’t?’

‘Let us say what I know I ought never to mention.’

‘Horace, Caesar murdered his friends that he might have their money. As a boy, he ran from every battle he ever faced. The man is a thief and a coward of the first order.
You
are not going to tell me he was Maecenas’s girl, as well, are
you
? I’m afraid that secret is already out and fairly well confirmed.’

‘It is nothing like that, but it involves Maecenas.’

‘
You
have me curious.’

‘I don’t dare say it, Dellius. It is the sort of secret to get a man killed if he speaks it.’

‘Tell it to me, or I will never forgive
you
.’

‘
You
mustn’t repeat it to anyone.’

‘Not even to my dogs.’

‘I am serious, Dellius. It is too dangerous even to joke about.’

‘I will keep silent for as long as you live.’

‘Better be silent for as long as
you
live.’

‘I will not make that promise. I’m thinking about writing my autobiography one of these days. I only lack the ambition at the moment. But I will say nothing about this matter until
you
are safely beyond the reach of all that is mortal.’

‘That will have to do, I suppose. It is your skin after all.
You
know, I expect, that Maecenas always had a great talent for forgery?’

‘Maecenas had many talents,’ I answered. ‘I wasn’t aware forgery was among them.’

‘Oh, he was a prodigy. I saw him do it several times with different friends. He would show them some letter in their own handwriting that they had sent to a friend. In it would be some terrible remark about Maecenas, insulting his dinner parties, his poetry, his lack of manliness. And showing it to them, Maecenas would ask them why they hated him. Of course they were terrified and denied writing it and claimed some terrible conspiracy to ruin a perfectly wonderful friendship. At that point Maecenas would laugh and take credit for the forgery himself. It always seemed to be a parlour trick and nothing more, but I often wondered if he had ever used his talent for some more sinister purpose.’

‘Letters of credit?’

‘I was thinking more along the lines of promoting a friend’s career.’

‘You’re talking about his friend Caesar?’

‘To tell you the truth, I had frankly always wondered if Maecenas had forged Julius Caesar’s will.’

I laughed at this. ‘That’s mad! Had he even the opportunity?’

‘He did. And with Octavian’s help he could have done it.’

‘But if you’re right…’

I stopped as I realised quite suddenly the full implications of such a crime. With Julius Caesar’s will written by Maecenas and Octavian, those two boys had stolen more than Caesar’s name and fortune. They had taken fire from heaven! Without that document Octavian would have enjoyed no following, no claim for justice and no reason to be elected a consul while he was yet a boy. This was more than a purloined fortune and a pretty name; this was the theft of an empire.

I cast a glance back across the room. My secretary was reading one of the books from Horace’s library. I did not think he could hear us, we were actually whispering, but I did not care to trust him to listen to such treasonous talk and sent him from the house on some errand. When we were alone I asked Horace in a softer whisper still, ‘Had they really the opportunity to do such a thing?’

‘Did you know that the summer before Caesar’s assassination, after his campaign in Andalusia, Caesar entertained Octavian and Maecenas at his house outside of Rome?’

‘No. I was recuperating in Spain.’

‘It’s well documented. There were others at the house, coming and going, but Octavian and Maecenas were there for several weeks. Enough time to get comfortable with the routines of the servants and to learn Caesar’s habits. And it was just at that time Caesar rewrote his will for the last time.’

‘But you have no proof!’

‘As I say, I had always known it was possible – even likely, knowing those two. But that’s all it was until one evening, when we were drunk – this must have been two or three years ago. I asked Maecenas outright if he had forged Caesar’s will.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He seemed startled at first. Then he smiled and said it would have been a neat trick if he had.’

‘He didn’t deny it?’

‘I think he wanted me to know he was the one who changed our world, Dellius.’

‘But what if they had been caught?’

‘That was the beauty of it. They had handwriting samples of the secretary available to study; they may even have listened to Caesar dictating his will. They knew his style of composition, and they could create the document in secret, then exchange theirs for the real one when the opportunity presented itself.’

‘But the seal?’

‘A simple matter of distracting Caesar’s secretary. You know how clever boys can be when it comes to that kind of thing.’

‘But when the will was read, the secretary would know the truth.’

‘Of course he knew the truth. He knew as well to keep quiet.’

‘They would have been mad to attempt such a thing!’

‘They were boys. It probably seemed nothing more than a clever prank when they did it.’

‘A prank on all of us. What if Caesar had lived and discovered their crime some years afterwards?’

‘That’s the beauty of it. Once Caesar put his seal in the wax, his will would not be opened until after his death. When he finally entered Rome later that summer, he intended to deposit it in the house of the Vestal Virgins. Should he ever want to revise his will, he would submit a new will and the caretakers would destroy the old one, unopened and unread. By law the crime simply could not be discovered.’

‘And Maecenas didn’t even attempt to deny it?’

‘Maecenas forged Caesar’s will, Dellius. I could see it in his eyes.’

‘So we add to the long list of our Caesar’s iniquities the charge of imposter and fraud. Why am I not more surprised?’

‘Not a word, Dellius. If he hears of it, Caesar will know where the rumour began.’

‘Not a word, I promise.’ And to myself I added,
Until you are gone, my friend.

A day or two after that first drunken afternoon, Horace called me to his room and admitted that he could not leave his bed. I made some joke about a hangover, but he would not pretend any longer. ‘I am dying,’ he whispered. ‘Why don’t you leave while I am still conscious and can give you a proper farewell? These things are never pretty.’

Bachelor that he was, Horace had friends by the thousand in the city and of course several faithful servants in his house. But that is not family, and so I told him I had come prepared for this. Hoping otherwise but ready for the worst if my premonitions proved true. ‘I mean to fight all the gods in heaven to keep you in the light, Horace! Summon the heartless bastards, and I will take them on in turn or all at once! Whatever way they like it!’

Horace shook his head. ‘I see an old man before me, Dellius, but I still hear the young tribune who thought we ought to burn Antony’s camp just because he had burned ours.’

‘It seemed a good idea at the time.’

He shook his head in mock sadness. ‘Youth is a beautiful country.’

‘Youth is a country, is it?’

‘A land without shadows, where everything is clear and unambiguous, and we will live forever. And what we want to be the truth is the only truth we know.’

‘If youth is a country, Horace, you and I are exiles.’

‘I think not. You with your swords, I with my poetry – we have not changed. Not really. We are slower in our movements and never miss the chance to complain, but when I write I am still the young god who never grows old, and I expect it is no different with you. Touch a sword and you are immortal, or at least imagine it. We may travel away from it, but I tell you this: we always return to the country of endless sunlight. It is why, in the end, we are all such fools.’

My friend did not die in his next breath, not for many days more. I stayed to the end, and we talked about the old days, mostly about Antony as it happened, for we both had long and complex relationships with him, and because, despite all the complaints against him in recent years, Antony really defined the age far better than the boy who stole Caesar’s name.

When Horace had faded and there was no more talk, he lasted another few days in perfect silence, and then he was gone. I travelled with his corpse to Rome and stood with a great many old friends. In fact, I stood not far from Caesar and his adopted son, Tiberius, that same Tiberius who owed his life to me, though he could not remember it.