The Gods of War

  In the heart of the procession was its centerpiece, a huge carriage more than twenty feet high, with sphinxes to the fore and rear. Eighty white horses heaved against the traces, tossing their heads. Julius and Cleopatra sat together on a balustraded platform, flushed with the success of the spectacle. She wore cloth of bloodred that showed her stomach had regained its lines from before the birth. Her eyes were painted darkly and her hair was bound in gold. For this formal occasion, she wore rubies that shone on her ears and throat. Rose petals fluttered about them both and Julius was in his element, pointing out the wonders of Rome to her as they inched through the city. His aureus coins had been thrown like rain onto outstretched hands below, and free wine and food would fill every stomach in Rome to bursting.

  Cleopatra herself had sent for the best temple dancers in Egypt, not trusting Julius’s agents to judge their quality. A thousand pretty girls whirled and leapt to the strange music of her home and the sight of their flashing bare legs drew smiles of appreciation from the crowds. They carried sticks of incense in their hands and their movements were followed by thin smoke trails that filled the streets in lingering pungency. It was sensuous and wild and Cleopatra laughed aloud with the pleasure of it. She had made the right choice, in Caesar. His people were noisy in their appreciation, and she found herself exhilarated by the life of the city. There was so much energy in them! These were the ones who built galleys and bridges and laid pipes for hundreds of miles. The waving crowd thought nothing of crossing chasms and oceans and the world to bring trade. From their wombs came soldiers like men of brass to carry on the work.

  Her son would be safe in the care of such a people, she was certain. Egypt would be safe.

  It took hours to make their way through Rome, but the crowds did not grow tired of the sights and sounds of another continent. Teams of hunters had trapped a huge male gorilla that Cleopatra knew had never seen the Nile. The beast bellowed at the citizens as they gazed in awe, pulling back in fear and laughing as it hammered its great arms against solid bars. Julius planned to have the monster fight a team of swordsmen in the circus, and there could have been no better advertisement than its rage. His people loved new things and Julius had brought the strangest animals of Africa for their enjoyment.

  When the forum came into sight once more, Cleopatra had retired behind the screens of the carriage, a room of silk and gold that jolted along in restful motion. Her slaves were there to bring her cool drinks and food, though her son was safely asleep in the old house of Marius. With a few quick movements, she shrugged out of her dress to stand naked, holding her arms out for a costume even richer than the last. The rubies went into a chest and great emeralds on silver clasps were fastened at her wrists and ankles. Tiny bells chimed as her slaves dressed her and touched fresh kohl to her eyes. Let them stare at the queen Julius had found, she thought. Let them envy.

  As the music of her people swelled from below, Cleopatra danced a few steps of a sequence she had learned as a girl, pressing down on the wooden floor with small, firm feet. She heard Julius laugh as he saw her, and she twirled in place to please him.

  “I will toast you in the best wine of Rome when I am finished here,” he said, his eyes tender. “Let them see you now, while I go down to them.”

  Cleopatra bowed her head. “Your will, master.”

  He smiled at her mock humility, stepping back into public view. The horses had been halted and the proud men of the Tenth had made a path for him to a raised platform with a single chair. Julius lingered at the top of the steps, enjoying the sight of the packed forum from such a vantage point.

  Cleopatra came out and the crowd exclaimed at her new apparel, whistling and calling. Julius cast a glance up at her and wondered how many of the matrons of Rome would be sending new orders to seamstresses and tailors the following day.

  As he touched the ground, the Tenth began to sing a mournful legion ballad he had not heard in years. The strings of the Egyptian musicians fell silent and the deep voices soared, recalling old battles and his youth. Julius had not planned this part of the Triumph and he found his eyes were stinging as he walked between the upright spears of men who knew him better than anyone.

  As he strode over the stones the line closed behind him and the crowd moved forward, with those who knew the words joining in. Even the cheering was drowned by the throats of thousands of old soldiers, and Julius was deeply moved.

  Mark Antony was already on the platform and Julius grew tense as he approached the final steps up to where he would speak. With an effort of will, he turned at the top and smiled at the people of Rome who had come to show their appreciation of his life.

  The song died away with the final line repeated three times, and the silence that followed was shattered by a great roar.

  Julius glanced at Mark Antony, knowing it was time. He raised his hands as if to quiet them, while Mark Antony stepped forward. Julius stood very still, his heart racing fast enough to make him light-headed.

  Mark Antony held a crown in his hands, a simple band of gold. Julius looked out over the crowd as it was placed on his head, listening, listening for a change in the voices of Rome.

  The applause began to fail as they saw what had happened. Julius waited as long as he could, painfully sensitive to the drop in volume. With a bitter smile, he forced himself to remove the crown before the cheering failed completely. Pale with tension, he handed it back.

  The change was instant as the crowd responded, waves of sound that were almost a physical force. Julius could barely think at the heart of their bellowing, though a slow fury began to kindle in his breast.

  On the steps of the Senate house, a group of young men exchanged guarded glances as they witnessed the event. Suetonius frowned in suspicion and Cassius gripped the arm of another. They did not applaud and yell with the rest. They were a blot of silence in the noisy forum, with eyes that were cold and hard.

  Mark Antony did not seem to have understood the reaction of the crowd, and he stepped forward again, pressing the crown onto Julius’s brow. Julius raised a hand to touch the soft metal and knew they wanted him to refuse it once more. His hopes were dashed, but the play had to continue.

  He pressed it back into Mark Antony’s hands.

  “No more,” he muttered through closed teeth, though his voice was lost in ten thousand others.

  Mark Antony did not hear the warning. He had feared the worst when Julius had asked to be crowned in the forum. Now that he saw it was to be a demonstration of Republican honor, he was almost hysterical with excitement, buoyed up on the spirits of the citizens. Laughing, he raised the crown for a third time, and Julius lost his temper.

  “Touch that thing to my head one more time and you’ll never see Rome again,” he snapped, making Mark Antony fall back in confusion.

  Julius’s face was stained with rage. The gods alone knew what he would say to them now. The speech he had prepared had depended on their acceptance of the crown. He could not see where he had failed, but he knew it was impossible to take the gold band again. They would think it a great game. He glanced up to where Cleopatra stood above the mob and shared a gaze of disappointment with her. She had known his hopes, and to have them crushed before her eyes was more than he could stand.

  Blind and ignorant to the reality before them, the crowd had quieted at last, waiting for him to speak. Julius stood as if dazed while he struggled to find something to say.

  “There will come a day when Rome accepts a king once more,” he said at last, “but it will not be today.”

  They battered him with noise and he hid his anger and disappointment. It was all he could trust himself to say. He stepped down without waiting for his Tenth to form a path, but the people gave way in awe and dignity after what they had seen.

  As he walked stiffly through them, he burned in humiliation. The Triumph had not finished yet. The horses and cages, dancers and carriages would make their way to his new forum and end at the temple of Venus. He vowed silently to
himself that if the crowd failed to show proper appreciation there, blood would be shed before the day ended.

  As the crowd moved on, a figure in silver armor turned toward the Senate house steps, seeing the white togas of wolves he knew. Brutus understood far better than they what Julius had tried to do, and the knowledge helped to firm his resolution and his strength. Rome would be washed clean and he would find his path without the shadow of Caesar to torment him.

  The new spring would take Julius away from the capital. It would have to be soon.

  Servilia lay awake in darkness, unable to sleep. The days had turned cold at last and Julius’s calendar had begun as Februarius ended, bringing rain to a parched city. She could hear it pounding on the tiles overhead and sluicing through the gutters, carrying away the dust.

  Her house was quiet, the final patrons having set out for their own homes hours before. Sleep should have come easily, but instead her aching joints could not rest as her thoughts raced and writhed in the dark.

  She did not want to think of him, but memories stole through her, their brightness the sole consolation of weakening age. Even in the sun, she would find her thoughts drifting back to other times, but at night there was nothing to hold the flood of recollection that slid into troubled dreams.

  She had loved him at the feet of Alexander and he had been hers, in flesh and spirit. She had been his. He had burned for her then, before the cruelty of experience had hardened him.

  She sighed to herself, clutching blankets around her thin legs. There was no hope for rest, not on this night. Perhaps it was only right that she spend it in memory of him.

  She could still see his face as he held up the son he had always wanted. If he had noticed her in the crowd, he had not recognized the white-haired old woman she had become. At the moment of his greatest joy, she had hated him with a passion her bones had almost forgotten. Brutus had known the shallowness of his love. She tasted bitterness in her throat at the thought of how she had once pleaded with her son. His betrayal had frightened her then, when Pompey had ruled Rome with iron. She had not listened to his warning that Julius would never need her as she had needed him.

  She did not care about the pompous arguments of men like Suetonius and Cassius. She saw their jealousy for what it was, despite the honor they claimed. They were too small to love the Republic, or even to understand what it had once meant. Better by far to stand and say that they hated him because he did not notice them. Vanity and pride would be the strength that drove their knives. She knew it, as she had always known the hearts of men. They would play their games of passwords and whispers as they met in the shadows, but the truth did not frighten her as it did them. Her hatred was a clean thing.

  She raised a hand to her face, surprised to find tears on her wrinkled skin. That was the reality of the years that stole, she thought. They took the joys and left only bitter pain and tears that came from emptiness.

  How many wives had he taken to press his seed into life? Not once had he asked the whore he kept. Not once, even when there was life in her womb and her flesh was firm and strong. He had used her knowledge a hundred times against his enemies. She had kept him safe and now she had been forgotten. Her hands were claws in the cloth as she thought of his pride in his son. There was always a price to pay.

  The rain increased in power as it swept across the city, and Servilia wept again. Rome would be clean by the dawn of the ides of March. The past would no longer trouble her sleep.

  CHAPTER 35

  Julius walked alone through a waking city to the Senate house. His son had disturbed his sleep with crying and he was red-eyed, rising as the market stalls and traders were still setting up for the business of the day.

  He preferred Rome at these moments after rain, when the air smelled fresh and clean and the day stretched far ahead with promise. It was true that the wind was cold, but he wore a heavy tunic under his toga and the touch of frozen air was pleasant as he breathed deeply.

  No guards were there to disturb the peace of the morning. He needed no lictors to frown at his people as they passed with their eyes downcast. They may not have accepted the crown Mark Antony had offered, but the man himself was untouchable. He did not fear them as men like Sulla and Pompey had feared. They had treated the citizens as violent children, terrified of the same force that had brought them to power. He needed no such protection. Julius sighed to himself as he strolled along the stone walkway, lost in thought.

  Without Cleopatra, he might well have left Rome months before. When he was far away, he could love his city as an abstract. He could talk of his home in the same breath as Alexandria, Carthage, and Athens, the centers of empires gone and still rising. The distance somehow lent a romance to the heaving ant-heap of reality. When Rome was thousands of miles to the west, he could see the glory of her scholarship, her inventions and trade. It was difficult to remember those things existed when he was suffocated amongst the petty rivalries and vanity of the Senate. There was such a chasm between the two. When he despaired, he saw only the worst face of the city of his birth. Life teemed there in filthy alleys and a few coins would have bought a woman, a man, or a child. When it was hot, the city stank like an open drain, and when there was frost, thousands starved and froze on a knife edge of survival. Those were the times when he could barely catch his breath. His inner vision crumbled against the hard truths and he ached to ride clear and leave it all behind.

  To have the power to make changes had been intoxicating at first. Whatever he had the wit to imagine could be made, created new. It was a temporary joy, like so much else. He hungered for something he could never quite name, and when fresh-faced generals had come with news of unrest in Parthia, he had not sent them away. Mark Antony would rule Rome again, or Octavian perhaps. He had earned the right to leave his mark on the city, and until Julius’s son became a man, the boy would need strong protectors. It would be Octavian, Julius decided, already imagining the expression on his face when he heard the news.

  Outside the city, there were legions of young men gathering to march against the Parthians. His unease vanished in the presence of so much youthful hope. They had not been made cynical. They carried more than a sword and shield for Rome, he thought, groping for the idea. When they left, they carried a distilled form of the city with them, the purest part. It took them through pain and exhaustion. It kept their discipline when they saw death coming and suddenly knew it would not pass them by. By pledging their strength, each one of them gave a value to what they left behind. They were saying, “This is worth my life.” And they made it so. There could be no value in a city without those young men to stand in the Campus.

  Julius remembered what Brutus had said about the spring air raising his head, and he smiled as he walked. It was true that the thought of another campaign had stirred his blood. His time in Rome had been everything he had wanted it to be. His Triumphs would be remembered for generations and the Senate had honored him as no one else in history. Scipio would have given his right arm for the titles they had bestowed. Marius would have loved every moment.

  Before Julius reached the bottom of the hill, he saw a lone figure in a toga so white it looked like winter frost. He frowned as the man began to walk in his direction. Could they do nothing until he had arrived? What new problem was so vexing and difficult that they must interrupt his thoughts before the day had even begun? He recognized Cassius as the man drew closer and bowed his head.

  “Caesar, the Senate is meeting in Pompey’s theater this morning. I have stayed to let you know.”

  “Why, what has happened?” Julius said, his calm evaporating.

  “The ides of March fall on the anniversary of Pompey being made consul, sir,” Cassius replied. “It was decided to honor his family in this way. The resolution was passed in your absence. I was worried it might not have reached you, and—”

  “All right, enough,” Julius snapped. “I do not have time to read every line of the speeches.”

  Cassius bowe
d his head again and Julius repressed his irritation at the intrusion. They fell into step together as they crossed the road on stepping-stones and took a right turn that would take them over the Capitoline hill.

  Without warning, Julius stopped suddenly.

  “Sir?” Cassius asked.

  “No, it’s nothing. I was just thinking of an old man I knew, a long time ago.”

  “I see, sir,” Cassius replied automatically.

  “You are sweating, Cassius,” Julius observed. “You should walk more often, for fitness.”

  “It is a chill, sir, nothing more,” Cassius replied, staring ahead.

  Pompey’s theater had been used as a second Senate house many times since its completion. It could accommodate even the swollen numbers of new senators Julius had introduced since his return to the city. There was a certain pleasure in debating with the senators of Rome at the foot of Pompey’s statue. It loomed over them all, a matchless casting that captured the stern features of the man in his prime.

  As the sun rose, Julius was surprised to find only a few senators clustered around the main doors. They saw his arrival and two broke away to walk inside. Julius frowned at the thought of the work ahead. When he had been young, he had watched their discussions in something approaching awe. He had seen great men stand and dominate their fellows, changing Rome with the force of their thoughts and words. Julius had responded to the power of their oratory, been inspired by it.

  It was the tragedy of experience that heroes lost the shine they had once had. Perhaps the new men he had brought into the ranks of the nobilitas still walked with soft steps as the laws were passed. He did not know if they did, or whether it was just that the great issues of the age had been decided. Perhaps he had seen the last of the grand figures to stride through Rome. He had known the men with strength enough to challenge the restrictions of the Republic. He had learned from them, but those battles were over, whether he wore a crown or not.