The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

  Brutus was so delighted to see him that Cassius found himself fervently hugged and kissed, ushered tenderly into the palace and given a comfortable suite of rooms.

  “I insist that you remain here in Tarsus,” said Brutus over a good dinner, “and wait for Caesar.”

  “He’ll proscribe me,” said Cassius, sunk in gloom.

  “No, no, no! Cassius, you have my word that his policy is clemency! You’re in similar case to me! You haven’t gone to war against him after he’s pardoned you, because he hasn’t seen you to pardon you a first time! Truly, you’ll find yourself forgiven! After which, Caesar will advance your career just as if none of this had ever happened.”

  “Except,” muttered Cassius, “that I’ll owe my future career to his generosity—his say-so—his condescension. What right has Caesar got to pardon me, when all’s said and done? He’s not a king, and I’m not his subject. We’re both equal under the law.”

  Brutus decided to be frank. “Caesar has the right of the victor in a civil war. Come, Cassius, this isn’t Rome’s first civil war—we’ve had at least eight of them since Gaius Gracchus, and those on the winning side have never suffered. Those on the losing side certainly have. Until now. Now, in Caesar, we see a victor who is actually willing to let bygones be bygones. A first, Cassius, a first! What disgrace is there in accepting a pardon? If the word irks you, then call it by some other name—letting bygones be bygones, for example. He won’t make you kneel to him or give you the impression that he considers you an insect! He was terribly kind to me, I didn’t feel at all as if he deemed me in the wrong. What I felt was his genuine pleasure in being able to do such a little thing for me. That’s how he looks at it, Cassius, honestly! As if siding with Pompeius were a little thing, and every man’s right if he so saw his duty. Caesar has beautiful manners, and no—no—no need to aggrandize himself by making others look or feel insignificant.”

  “If you say so,” said Cassius, head lowered.

  “Well, though I was too much a constitutional man to dream of siding with Caesar,” said Brutus, having no idea whatsoever of constitutionality, “the truth is that Pompeius Magnus was far more the barbarian. I saw what went on in Pompeius’s camp, I saw him let Labienus behave—behave—oh, I can’t even speak of it! If it had been Caesar in Italian Gaul when my late father was there with Lepidus, Caesar would never have murdered him out of hand, but Pompeius did. Whatever else you may or may not think about Caesar, he is a Roman to the core.”

  “Well, so am I!” Cassius snapped.

  “And I am not?” asked Brutus.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely, unshakably sure.”

  They passed then to news from home, but the truth was that neither of them had much of that to exchange; just gossip and hearsay. Cicero was reputed to have returned to Italy, Gnaeus Pompey to be making for Sicily, but no letters had come from Servilia, or Porcia, or Philippus, or anyone else in Rome.

  Eventually Cassius calmed down sufficiently to allow Brutus to talk about matters in Tarsus.

  “You can be of real help here, Cassius. I’m under orders to recruit and train more legions, but though I can recruit fairly capably, I’m hopeless at training. You’ve brought Caesar a fleet and transports, which he’ll be grateful to have, but you can enhance your standing in his eyes by helping me train. After all, these troops are not for a civil war, they’re for the war against Pharnaces. Calvinus has retreated to Pergamum, but Pharnaces is too busy laying waste to Pontus to be bothered following. So the more soldiers we can produce, the better. The enemy is foreign.”

  That had been January. By the time Mithridates of Pergamum passed through Tarsus late in February on his way to Caesar in Alexandria, Brutus and Cassius were able to donate him one full legion of reasonably well-trained troops. Neither of them had heard about Caesar’s war in Alexandria, though word had come that Pompey had been foully murdered by King Ptolemy’s palace cabal. Not from Caesar in Egypt, but in a letter from Servilia, who told them that Caesar had sent Pompey’s ashes to Cornelia Metella. So conversant was Servilia with the deed that she even gave the names of the palace cabal—Potheinus, Theodotus and Achillas.

  The two continued their work transforming civilian Cilicians into auxiliaries for Rome’s use, waiting patiently in Tarsus for Caesar’s return. Return he must, to deal with Pharnaces. Nothing was going to happen until the snows melted from the Anatolian passes, but when high spring arrived, so would Caesar.

  Early in April came a ripple, a shiver.

  “Marcus Brutus,” said the captain of the palace guard, “we have detained a fellow at your door. Destitute, in rags. But he insists that he has important information for you from Egypt.”

  Brutus frowned, his melancholy eyes reflecting the doubts and indecisions which always plagued him. “Does he have a name?”

  “He said, Theodotus.”

  The slight figure stiffened, sat up straight. “Theodotus?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Bring him in—and stay, Amphion.”

  Amphion brought a man in his sixties, indeed festooned in rags, but the rags were still faintly purple. His lined face was petulant, his expression fawning. Brutus found himself physically revolted by his un-Roman effeminacy, the simpering smile that showed blackened, rotting teeth.

  “Theodotus?” Brutus asked.

  “Yes, Marcus Brutus.”

  “The same Theodotus who was tutor to King Ptolemy of Egypt?”

  “Yes, Marcus Brutus.”

  “What brings you here, and in such parlous condition?”

  “The King is defeated and dead, Marcus Brutus.” The lips drew back from those awful teeth in a hiss. “Caesar personally drowned him in the river after the battle.”

  “Caesar drowned him.”

  “Yes, personally.”

  “Why would Caesar do that if he had defeated the King?”

  “To eliminate him from the Egyptian throne. He wants his whore, Cleopatra, to reign supreme.”

  “Why come to me with your news, Theodotus?”

  The rheumy eyes widened in surprise. “Because you have no love for Caesar, Marcus Brutus—everyone knows that. I offer you an instrument to help destroy Caesar.”

  “Did you actually see Caesar drown the King?”

  “With my own eyes.”

  “Then why are you still alive?”

  “I escaped.”

  “A weak creature like you escaped Caesar?”

  “I was hiding in the papyrus.”

  “But you saw Caesar personally drown the King.”

  “Yes, from my hiding place.”

  “Was the drowning a public event?”

  “No, Marcus Brutus. They were alone.”

  “Do you swear that you are indeed Theodotus the tutor?”

  “I swear it on my dead king’s body.”

  Brutus closed his eyes, sighed, opened them, and turned his head to look at the captain of the guard. “Amphion, take this man to the public square outside the agora and crucify him. And don’t break his legs.”

  Theodotus gasped, retched. “Marcus Brutus, I am a free man, not a slave! I came to you in good faith!”

  “You are getting the death of a slave or pirate, Theodotus, because you deserve it. Fool! If you must lie, choose your lies more carefully—and choose the man to whom you tell them more carefully.” Brutus turned his back. “Take him away and carry out the sentence immediately, Amphion.”

  * * *

  “There’s some pathetic old fellow hanging tied to a cross in the main square,” said Cassius when he came in for dinner. “The guards on duty said you’d forbidden them to break his legs.”

  “Yes,” said Brutus placidly, putting down a paper.

  “That’s a bit much, isn’t it? They take days to die unless their legs are broken. I didn’t know you had so much steel. Is an ancient slave a worthy target, Brutus?”

  “He’s not a slave,” said Brutus, and told Cassius the story.


  Cassius wasn’t pleased. “Jupiter, what’s the matter with you? You should have sent him to Rome in a hurry,” he said, breathing hard.

  “The man was an eyewitness to murder!”

  “Gerrae,” said Brutus, mending a reed pen. “You may detest Caesar all you like, Cassius, but many years of knowing Caesar endow me with sufficient detachment to dismiss Theodotus’s tale as a tissue of lies. It isn’t beyond Caesar to do murder, but in the case of Egypt’s king, all he had to do was hand him over to his sister for execution. The Ptolemies love to murder each other, and this one had been at war with his sister. Caesar, to drown the boy in a river? It’s not his style. What baffles me is why Theodotus thought that in mine, he’d find a pair of ears willing to listen. Or why he thought that any Roman would believe one of the three men responsible for Pompeius’s hideous death. So too was the King responsible. I am not a vengeful man, Cassius, but I can tell you that it afforded me great satisfaction to crucify Theodotus one gasp at a time for days.”

  “Take him down, Brutus.”

  “No! Don’t argue with me, Cassius, and don’t bully me! I am governor in Cilicia, not you, and I say Theodotus dies.”

  But when Cassius wrote next to Servilia, he recounted the fate of Theodotus in Tarsus very differently. Caesar had drowned a fourteen-year-old boy in the river to please Queen Cleopatra. Cassius had no fear that Brutus would write his own version, for Brutus and his mother didn’t get along, so Brutus never wrote to her at all. If he wrote to anyone, it would be Cicero. Two timorous mice, Brutus and Cicero.

  2

  There was only one road north from Pelusium. It followed the coast of Our Sea and ran through inhospitable, barren country until it entered Syria Palestina at the town of Gaza. After that the land grew a little kinder, and a series of hamlets began to appear fairly regularly. Too early in the year for grain, but Cleopatra had loaded them down with pack camels imported from Arabia, odd creatures which groaned terribly but didn’t need to drink every day like the Germans’ horses.

  Caesar wasted no time until he reached Ptolemais, a bigger town just beyond the northern headland of a wide bay. Here he stopped for two days to interview the Jewish contingent, whom he had summoned from Jerusalem by a letter that explained gracefully how pressed he was for time. Antipater, his wife, Cypros, and his two elder sons, Phasael and Herod, were waiting for him.

  “No Hyrcanus?” Caesar asked, brows raised.

  “The high priest cannot leave Jerusalem,” Antipater said, “even for the Dictator of Rome. It is a religious prohibition that he feels sure the Pontifex Maximus of Rome can forgive.”

  The pale eyes twinkled. “Of course. How remiss of me!”

  An interesting family, Caesar was thinking. Cleopatra had told him of them, explained that wherever Antipater went, there also went Cypros—a very devoted couple. Antipater and Phasael were handsome men, had the same clear dark skin as Cleopatra, but did not rejoice in her nose. Dark of eye, dark of hair, fairly tall. Phasael carried himself like a warrior prince, whereas his father had more the look of an energetic civil servant. Herod came from a different graft on the family tree; he was short, inclined to run to fat, and could have passed as a close cousin of Caesar’s favorite banker, Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major from Spanish Gades. Phoenician stock—full mouth, hooked nose, wide yet heavy-lidded eyes. All three men were clean-shaven and had cropped hair, which Caesar took to mean that they were not Jewish in every way. Racially he knew they were Idumaeans who had fully espoused the Judaic faith, but he wondered how tenderly they were regarded by the Jews of Jerusalem. Cypros, a Nabataean Arab, was the one who looked most like Herod, though she had a peculiar charm her son quite lacked; her roundness was desirable, and her eyes liquid pools of sensuous delights. Though he speculated that perhaps Cypros went everywhere with Antipater to make sure that he remained hers and hers alone.

  “You may tell Hyrcanus that Rome fully recognizes his high priesthood, and that he may call himself King of Judaea,” Caesar announced.

  “Judaea? Which Judaea is that? The kingdom of Alexander Jannaeus? Are we to have a port again at Joppa?” asked Antipater with more caginess than eagerness in his voice.

  “I am afraid not,” Caesar said gently. “Its boundaries are those laid down by Aulus Gabinius—Jerusalem, Amathus, Gazara, Jericho and Galilaean Sepphora.”

  “Five districts rather than continuous territory.”

  “True, but each district is rich, particularly Jericho.”

  “We need access to Your Sea.”

  “You have it, since Syria is governed as a Roman province. No one will prevent your using any number of ports.” The eyes were growing colder. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, my dear Antipater. I will guarantee that no troops are billeted in any Judaean territory, and I exempt all Judaean territory from taxes. Considering the income from Jericho’s balsam, it’s a good bargain for Hyrcanus, even if he will have to pay port dues.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Antipater, assuming a grateful look.

  “You may also tell Hyrcanus that he is at liberty to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and fortify them.”

  “Caesar!” Antipater gasped. “That is very welcome news!”

  “As for you, Antipater,” Caesar went on, eyes warming a little, “I confer the Roman citizenship upon you and your descendants, remit you from all personal taxes, and appoint you Hyrcanus’s chief minister in government. I understand that the duties of high priest are onerous, that he needs civil help.”

  “Too generous, too generous!” Antipater cried.

  “Oh, there are conditions. You and Hyrcanus are to keep the peace in southern Syria, is that clear? I want no rebellions and no pretenders to the kingship. Whosoever of Aristobulus’s line is left makes no difference to me. They’ve all been a bother to Rome and a constant source of local trouble. So let there be no need for any governor of Syria to march in Jerusalem’s direction, is that understood?”

  “It is, Caesar.”

  Neither son, Caesar noted, allowed any expression to show on his face. Whatever Phasael and Herod thought would not be forthcoming until the family was out of Roman earshot.

  Tyre, Sidon, Byblos and the rest of the cities of Phoenicia did not fare nearly as well as Judaea; nor did Antioch when Caesar reached it. They had all sided enthusiastically with Pompey, had given him money and ships. Therefore, said Caesar, each would be fined the value of whatever it had given Pompey—as well as give Caesar the same as it had given Pompey. To make sure his orders were obeyed, he left his young cousin Sextus Julius Caesar in Antioch as the temporary governor of Syria. A post the highly flattered young man, grandson of Caesar’s uncle, vowed to acquit himself in splendidly.

  Cyprus, however, was not to be governed from Syria as part of it any longer. Caesar sent it a quaestor in the person of young Sextilius Rufus, but not exactly to govern.

  “For the moment Cyprus won’t be paying any Roman taxes or tributes, and its produce is to go to Egypt. Queen Cleopatra has sent a governor, Serapion. Your job, Rufus, is to make sure that Serapion behaves himself,” said Caesar. “According to the lights of Rome, that is, not Egypt.”

  The removal of Cyprus from, as he saw it, Rome’s empire, did not amuse Tiberius Claudius Nero, whom Caesar found skulking in Antioch still convinced that he had done no wrong in Alexandria.

  “Does this mean,” he asked Caesar incredulously, “that you have actually taken it upon yourself to give Cyprus back to the Crown of Egypt?”

  “Had I, Nero, what business is that of yours?” Caesar asked very coldly. “Hold your tongue.”

  “You fool!” Sextilius Rufus said to Nero later. “He’s giving nothing of Rome’s away! All he’s doing is allowing the Queen of Egypt to take timber and copper out of Cyprus to rebuild her city and fleets, and grain to ease the famine. If she believes Cyprus is Egyptian once more, then let her. Caesar knows better.”

  And so to Tarsus by the beginning of Quinctilis, having been a month on the march; disciplinin
g Syria had taken time.

  Thanks to the presence of Hapd’efan’e, Caesar himself was well. His weight had returned to normal and he suffered no prodromal dizziness or nausea. He had learned to drink whatever juice or syrup Hapd’efan’e tendered at regular intervals during the day, and suffered the flagon of the same that sat beside his bed.

  Hapd’efan’e was thriving. He rode a donkey named Paser and carried his gear on three more named Pennut, H’eyna and Sut, their panniers loaded neatly with mysterious bundles and packets. Though Caesar had expected him to continue shaving his head and wearing his crisp white linen dresses, the priest-physician did not. Too noticeable, he said when asked. Cha’em had given him permission to dress like a Greek and wear his hair cropped like a Roman’s. If they stopped in any kind of town for the night, he would be off to explore the herb stalls in the markets, or squat down to have an earnest conversation with some repulsive crone in a mouse-skull necklace and a girdle of dogs’ tails.

  Caesar had several freedmen servants to attend to his personal wants; he was most particular about the cleanliness of his garb, down to requiring fresh inner soles daily in his marching boots, and had a man to pluck his body hair, done now for so long that it had almost given up growing. Since they liked Hapd’efan’e and approved of his addition to the fold, they would rush around finding fruit for him, peel it or crush it or strain it at his bidding. What didn’t occur to Caesar was that they loved Caesar greatly, and Hapd’efan’e now represented Caesar’s well-being. So they taught the inscrutable priest Latin, improved his Greek out of sight, and even enjoyed those ridiculous donkeys.

  At Antioch the camels were dispatched to Damascus, there to find buyers. Caesar was painfully aware that it was going to take a huge amount of money to set Rome on her feet again; every little helped, including the sale of prime camels to desert people.

  A far richer source of income first manifested itself at Tyre, the world capital of the purple-dye industry, and hardest hit of all Syrian cities when it came to war reparations. There a party of horsemen caught up with the Romans and presented Caesar with a box from Hyrcanus, one from Antipater, and another from Cypros. Each contained a gold crown—not flimsy things of tissue-thin leaf, but extremely weighty objects no one could have worn without developing a bad headache. They were fashioned as olive wreaths, but the crowns that then began to arrive from the King of the Parthians were replicas of an eastern tiara, a towering edifice shaped like a truncated cone; even an elephant might have found it hard work to wear one, Caesar joked. After that, the crowns came thick and fast from every ruler of every minor satrapy along the Euphrates River. Sampsiceramus sent one in the form of a riband of braided gold studded with magnificent ocean pearls, the Pahlavi of Seleuceia-on-Tigris sent one of huge faceted and polished emeralds encased in gold. If this keeps on going, thought Caesar gleefully, I’ll be able to pay for this war!