The October Horse (66 page)

“With one's children around one,” said Lucius Caesar, whose only son had been such a disappointment. There was no fate worse than outliving one's children.

“Feeling vindicated,” said Trebonius, casting Antony a look of loathing. Was this boor about to betray them?

“In the act of reading a new poem better than Catullus's,” said Lucius Piso. “I think Helvius Cinna might do it one day.”

Caesar looked up, brows raised. “The way doesn't matter,” he said, “as long as it's sudden.”

Calvinus, who had been shifting and grunting for some time, gave a moan and clutched at his chest. “I fear,” he said, face grey, “that my death is arriving. The pain! The pain!”

Instead of abandoning his work to tell Brutus and Cassius of their provinces next year, Caesar had to summon Hapd'efan'e from the atrium; the matter was forgotten as the guests clustered to view Calvinus with concern, Caesar in their forefront.

“It is a spasm of the heart,” said Hapd'efan'e, “but I do not think he will die. He must be taken home and treated.”

Caesar supervising, Calvinus was put into a litter. “An ill-omened subject!” Caesar snapped at Antony.

More ill-omened than you realize, said Antony silently.

•      •      •

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 the 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.”

Caesar had heard the storm, the first of the equinoctial season, with its high winds and tormented weather, gone out into the main peristyle to watch the fantastic lacework of lightning in the clouds, the huge cracks of thunder as the storm drifted directly over Rome. When the rain began to come down in sheets he retreated to his sleeping cubicle, lay down and had those four precious hours of deep, dreamless sleep. Two hours before dawn, the storm gone, he was awake again and the early shift of secretaries and scribes was reporting for duty. At dawn Trogus brought him freshly baked, crusty bread, some olive oil and his habitual hot drink—lemon juice at this time of year, far nicer than vinegar, especially now that Hapd'efan'e insisted it be sweetened by honey.

He felt well, refreshed, all of him profoundly glad that his time in Rome was finally drawing to an end.

Calpurnia came in as he was finishing his breakfast, eyes heavy and ringed with the blackness of fatigue; he got up at once and went to greet her with a kiss, then put one hand beneath her chin and looked into her face, his own concerned.

“My dear, what is it? Did the storm frighten you?”

“No, Caesar, my dream did that,” she said, and clasped his arm anxiously.

“A nasty dream?”

She shuddered. “A terrible dream! I saw some men surround you and stab you to death.”

“Edepol!” he exclaimed, feeling rather helpless. How did one calm worried wives? “Just a dream, Calpurnia.”

“But it was so real!” she cried. “In the Senate, though not in the Curia Hostilia. Pompeius's curia, because it happened near his statue. Please, Caesar, don't go to the meeting today!”

He disengaged her hands, held them and chafed them. “I have to go, my dear. Today I step down as consul, it's the end of my official business in Rome.”

“Don't! Please don't! It was so real!”

“Then I thank you for the warning, and will endeavor not to be stabbed in Pompeius's curia,” he said, gently but firmly.

Trogus came in with his toga trabea; already clad in his crimson-and-purple-striped tunic, the high red boots upon his feet, Caesar stood while Trogus draped the massive garment about his body arranged the folds over his left shoulder so that they would not tumble down his left arm as he moved it.

How magnificent he looks, thought Calpurnia; purple and red become him more than white. “What are you doing as the Pontifex Maximus?” she asked. “Can't you use that as an excuse?”

“No, I can't,” he said, sounding a little exasperated. “It's the Ides, a brief sacrifice.”

And off he went to join the procession waiting outside on the Sacra Via; a quick check of the sheep, and he was away down the hill toward the lower Forum and the Arx of the Capitol.

Within an hour he was back to change, discovering with a sigh that the reception room was thronged with clients, some of whom would have to be seen before he could set out on his rounds. He found Decimus Brutus in his study, chatting to Calpurnia.

“I hope,” Caesar said, coming in wearing his purple-bordered toga, “that you've managed to convince my wife that I stand in no danger from assassins today?”

“I've been trying, though I'm not sure I've succeeded,” Decimus said, his rump and palms propped on the edge of Caesar's malachite desk, his ankles casually crossed.

“I have to see some fifty clients, none for very long, and none privately, if you want to stay. What brings you here so bright and early?”

“I thought you might be visiting Calvinus on your way to the meeting, and I'd like to see him,” Decimus said easily. “If I showed up there on my own, I'd likely be refused, whereas if I show up with you, I can't be refused.”

“Clever.” Caesar chuckled. He looked at Calpurnia, brows up. “Thank you, my dear, I have work to do.”

“Decimus, take care of him!” she begged from the door.

Decimus smiled broadly—such a comforting smile! “Don't worry, Calpurnia, I promise I'll take care of him.”

•      •      •

Two hours later the pair of them left the Domus Publica to walk up the Vestal Steps on to the Palatine, a host of clients in their wake. As they turned the corner of the house to head for Vesta's aedes, they passed old Spurinna, squatting in his usual spot beside the Door of Wills.

“Caesar! Beware the Ides of March!” he called.

“The Ides of March are here, Spurinna, and as you see, I am perfectly fit and well.” Caesar laughed.

“The Ides of March are here, yes, but they haven't gone.”

“Silly old fool,” Decimus muttered.

“He's many things, Decimus, but not that,” Caesar said.

At the foot of the Vestal Steps the crowd pressed in on them; a hand thrust a note at Caesar. Decimus intercepted it, took the note and put it inside the sinus of his toga. “Let's get a move on,” he said. “I'll give it to you to read later.”

At Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus's door they were admitted, taken straight to where Calvinus lay on a couch in his study.

“Your Egyptian physician is a marvel, Caesar,” Calvinus said as they entered. “Decimus, what a pleasure!”

“You look much better than you did last night,” Caesar said.

“I feel much better.”

“We're not staying, but I needed to see you for myself, old friend. Lucius and Piso say they're skipping the meeting today to come and keep you company, but if they tire you, throw them out. What was the trouble?”

“A heart spasm. Hapd'efan'e gave me an extract of digitalis and I settled down almost at once. He said my heart was—well, the word he used was 'fluttering'—very evocative! Apparently I have some fluid accumulated around the organ.”

“As long as you recover enough to be Master of the Horse. Lepidus leaves for Narbonese Gaul today, so there's yet another won't be in the House. Nor Philippus, who overindulged yesterday—him and his ambrosias! So I fear the front benches will be sparsely populated for my last appearance,” said Caesar. Rather surprisingly, he leaned to kiss Calvinus on the cheek. “Look after yourself.”

Then he was gone, Decimus Brutus in his wake.

Calvinus lay frowning; his eyelids drooped, he dozed.

•      •      •

As they passed the Circus Flaminius, picking their way between the puddles, Decimus spoke.

“Caesar, may I send word ahead that we're coming?”

“Of course.”

One of Decimus's servants sped off.

When they entered the colonnade they found some four hundred senators dotted around the garden, some reading, some dictating to scribes, some stretched out asleep on the grass, some clustered in chattering, laughing groups.

Mark Antony strode to meet them and shook Caesar's hand. “Ave, Caesar. We had about given up on you until Decimus's messenger came running in.”

Caesar dropped Antony's hand with a cold look that said it was nobody's business how late the Dictator was, and bounded up the steps to the Curia Pompeia, two servants in his wake, one with his ivory curule chair and a folding table, the other with wax tablets and a sack full of scrolls. They set up his chair and table at the front of the curule dais, received a nod of dismissal and left. Satisfied the furniture was correctly placed, Caesar emptied the sack of its contents a few at a time, setting the scrolls neatly one on top of the other along the back of the table, then seated himself with the wax tablets stacked to his left and a steel stylus beside them in case he wished to take notes.

“He's working already,” said Decimus, joining the twenty-two others at the foot of the steps. “About forty pedarii are inside, none near the curule end. Trebonius, time to act.”

Trebonius moved immediately to join Antony, who had decided that the best way to keep Dolabella outside was to stay with him and make an effort to be civil. Their lictors, twelve each, were standing some distance away, the fasces (which belonged to the senior, Dolabella, as this was March) grounded. Though the meeting was outside the pomerium, it was within one mile of the city, so the lictors were togate and had no axes in their bundles of rods.

A refinement had occurred to Trebonius during the night, and he put it into effect as soon as Brutus came in with his six lictors. Namely, that out of respect for Caesar, lictorless for some nundinae by now, all the praetors and the two curule aediles should dismiss their lictors forthwith, attend the meeting without them. None objected as Cassius went the rounds of the other curule magistrates; glad of this unexpected holiday, the praetorian and aedilician lictors hurried back to their college, which was located behind the inn on the Clivus Orbius, and therefore handy for a thirsty lictor.

“Stay outside with me a while,” Trebonius said cheerfully to Antony, “there's something I need to discuss with you.”

Dolabella had spied a crony playing dice with two others, nodded to his lictors that they still had time to waste, and went to join the dice game; he was feeling lucky today.

While Antony and Trebonius talked earnestly at the foot of the steps, Decimus led the Liberators inside. Had any of the senators left in the garden thought to look at them, he might have wondered at the gravity of their faces, the slightly furtive manner they had unconsciously adopted; but no one looked.

Lagging behind, Brutus felt a tug at his toga and turned to see one of his house servants standing red-faced and panting.

“Yes, what is it?” he asked, unbearably happy that something delayed his embarkation upon tyrannicide.

“Domine, the lady Porcia!” The man gasped.

“What about her?”

“She's dead!”

The world didn't rock, heave, or spin; Brutus stared at the slave in disbelief. “Nonsense,” he said.

“Domine, she's dead, I swear she's dead!”

“Tell me what happened,” Brutus said calmly.

“Well, she was in a terrible state—running around like one demented, screaming that Caesar was dead.”

“Hadn't Atilius Stilo seen her?”

“Yes, domine, but he became angry and left when she refused to drink the potion he mixed for her.”

“And?”

“She fell over, stone dead. Epaphroditus couldn't find one single sign of life—nothing! She's dead! Dead! Come home, please come home, domine!”

“Tell Epaphroditus that I will come when I can,” Brutus said, putting a foot on the bottom step. “She isn't dead, I promise you. I know her. It's a fainting spell.” And mounted the next step, leaving the slave to gape at his back.

The chamber, large enough to hold six hundred when crammed, looked very empty despite the few backbencher senators already seated, scholarly men who seized any opportunity to read. None had put his stool at the curule dais end, for the light from a series of clerestory grilles streamed in best near the outer doors, but the readers were fairly evenly distributed between the two sides of the House, right top tier and left top tier. Very good, thought Decimus, shepherding his flock ahead of him, glancing back to see Brutus still outside— lost his courage, had he?

Caesar sat with his head bent over an unfurled scroll, lost to the world. Suddenly he moved, but not to look at the group walking down the center of the floor. His left hand plucked the top tablet off his stack, flipped it open, while his right picked up the stylus, began to inscribe the wax quickly and deftly.

Within ten feet of the dais the group came to a confused halt; it didn't seem proper that Caesar failed to notice his assassins. Decimus's eyes went to Pompey's statue, very tall on its four-foot plinth, nestled into its alcove at the back of the platform, which was expansive, as it had to hold between sixteen and twenty men seated on curule chairs. Fingers suddenly clumsy Decimus felt for his dagger, withdrew it, held it hidden by his side. He could sense the others doing the same, saw Brutus scuttle up the chamber out of the corner of his eye—he'd found the courage after all.

Lucius Tillius Cimber walked up the lictors' step seats at the side of the dais, his dagger on naked display.

“Wait, you impatient cretin, wait!” Caesar barked irritably, his head still down, steel stylus still gouging at the wax.

Lips tightening in outrage, Cimber cast his fellow Liberators a fierce glare—see what a boor our Dictator is?—and strode forward to yank the toga away from the left side of Caesar's neck. But Gaius Servilius Casca, pushing up on Cimber's left, got in first, driving down from behind at Caesar's throat. The blow glanced off the collarbone, inflicted a superficial wound at the top of the chest. Caesar was on his feet so quickly that the movement was a blur, striking out instinctively with his steel stylus. It plunged into Gaius Casca's arm as the rest of the Liberators, emboldened, pressed forward with daggers raised.

Though he fought strenuously, Caesar neither cried out nor spoke. The table went flying, scrolls raining everywhere, the ivory chair followed, and spattering drops of blood. Now some of the senators on the top tiers were looking, exclaiming in horror, but none moved to come to Caesar's aid. Retreating backward, he encountered Pompey's plinth just as Cassius pushed to the fore, sank his blade into Caesar's face, screwed it around, enucleating an eye and rendering that beauty nonexistent. A furore descended as the Liberators crowded in, daggers rising and falling, blood spurting now. Suddenly Caesar ceased to struggle, accepting the inevitable; that unique mind directed its flagging energies to dying with dignity unimpaired. His left hand came up to pull a fold of toga over his face and hide it, his right clenched the toga so that when he fell his legs would be decently covered. No one among this carrion should see what Caesar thought as he died, nor be able to jeer at the memory of Caesar's legs bared.

Caecilius Buciolanus stabbed him in the back, Caesennius Lento in the shoulder. Bleeding terribly, Caesar still stood as the flurry of blows continued. Second-last and cool warrior that he was, Decimus Brutus put everything he had into the first of his two stabs, deep into the left side of Caesar's chest. As the dagger went home to his heart, Caesar collapsed in a heap, Decimus following him down to deal his second blow, for Trebonius. And Brutus, the last to strike, blinded by sweat, palsied by fear, knelt to jab his knife at the genitals his mother had so adored, its tip piercing the many folds of toga because, entirely by accident, Brutus had aimed directly downward. He heard the metal grind and crunch on bone, retched, and scrambled to his feet as a searing pain crossed the back of his hand; someone had cut him.