The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

  “To take up your new duties, of course.”

  “New duties?”

  “That’s right. Caesar favors you highly—well, you know that—and said I was to be sure to tell you that he can think of no one as qualified as you to do this particular work.”

  “Work?” asked Brutus, a little blankly.

  “Lots of it! Though you haven’t been praetor yet, Caesar’s given you a proconsular imperium and appointed you governor of Italian Gaul.”

  Brutus sat with jaw dropped. “Proconsular imperium? Me?” he squeaked, winded.

  “Yes, you,” said Calenus, who seemed undisturbed by this extraordinary business, didn’t appear resentful or annoyed that such a plum post was going to an ex-Republican. “The province is at peace, so there won’t be any military duties—in fact, at the moment there’s no legion, even as a garrison.”

  The senior consul folded his hands on his desk and looked confiding. “You see, next year there’s going to be a massive census in Italy and Italian Gaul, held on an entirely new basis. The census conducted two years ago no longer meets Caesar’s—er—purposes, hence this new one.” Calenus bent to lift a book bucket of scarlet leather, its flap sealed with purple wax, and handed it across the desk to Brutus, who looked at the seal curiously. A sphinx, with the word CAESAR around its margin.

  When he went to take the bucket, he discovered that it was far heavier than most—it must be absolutely stuffed with very tightly wound scrolls. “What’s inside?” he asked.

  “Your orders, dictated by Caesar himself. He intended to give them to you in person, but of course you didn’t show up in time.” Calenus got up, came around his desk and shook Brutus’s hand warmly. “Let me know the date you intend to set out, and I’ll arrange for your lex curiata of imperium. It’s a good job, Marcus Brutus, and I agree with Caesar—it’s perfect for you.”

  Brutus left in a daze, his manservant carrying the book bucket as if it were made of gold. At first he stood in the narrow street outside Calenus’s house and turned around several times, as if he wasn’t sure whereabouts to go. Suddenly he squared his shoulders.

  “Take the bucket home, Phylas, and lock it in my strong room at once,” said Brutus to his manservant. He coughed, shuffled, looked embarrassed. “If the lady Servilia should see it, she may demand that you hand it over. I would prefer that she didn’t see it, is that clear?”

  Face expressionless, Phylas bowed. “Leave it to me, domine. It will go straight into your strong room undetected.”

  So the pair parted, Phylas to return to Brutus’s house, and Brutus to walk the short distance to Bibulus’s house.

  Here he found chaos. Like many of the nicer premises on the Palatine, the back portions opened on to the lane-width street; entry put the newcomer in a small open room sheltering the porter, with the kitchens off to one side and the bathroom and latrine off to the other. Straight ahead was the big peristyle garden, surrounded on its three respectable aspects by a pillared walkway, off which opened the various suites of the inhabitants on right and left. At the far end lay the dining room, the master’s study, and, beyond them, the huge atrium reception room, equipped with a loggia overlooking the Forum Romanum.

  The garden was a muddle of crates and wrapped statues; a jumble of pots and pans tied together with twine littered the stones outside the kitchen, and the covered walkways were impeded by beds, couches, chairs, pedestals, different kinds of tables and cupboards. Linen lay in a heap, clothing in another.

  Brutus stood in shock, understanding at once what was going on: though dead, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus had been declared nefas, and his estates were confiscate. His surviving son, Lucius, was propertyless, and so too his widow. They were vacating the house, which must therefore be up for auction.

  “Ecastor, Ecastor, Ecastor!” said a familiar voice, loud and harsh, deep enough to sound like a man’s.

  There she was, Porcia, clad in her usual awful brown tent of some coarse fabric, her mass of brilliant, waving red hair half falling down, tendrils escaping the pins.

  “Put it all back!” Brutus cried, walking to her swiftly.

  The next moment he was lifted off his feet, squashed in an embrace that drove the breath from his lungs, the smell of her in his nostrils—ink, paper, stale wool, leather of book buckets. Porcia, Porcia, Porcia!

  How it happened he had no idea, for there was nothing novel about this greeting—she had been lifting him off his feet and squashing him for years. But his lips, pressed against her cheek, were suddenly seeking hers, and having found them, locked; a wave of fire and feeling crashed upon his spirit, he struggled to free his arms and slide them across her back. Then he kissed her with the first surge of passion he had ever known. She kissed him back, the taste of her tears mingled with the delicacy of her breath, untainted by wine or fancy foods. It seemed to go on for hours, and she didn’t push him away or hold aloof. Her ecstasy was too great, her longing too old, her love too overwhelming.

  “I love you!” he said when he could, his hands stroking her wonderful hair, his fingertips reveling in its crackling life.

  “Oh, Brutus, I have always loved you! Always, always!”

  They found two chairs abandoned on the colonnade, and sank into them handfast, gazing into each other’s tear-filled eyes, smiling and smiling. Two children discovering enchantment.

  “I have finally come home,” he said, mouth trembling.

  “It can’t be real,” she said, and leaned to kiss him again.

  A dozen people had witnessed this passionate reunion, but they were all servants save for Bibulus’s son, who winked at the steward and slipped away unnoticed.

  “Put it all back,” Brutus said again some time later.

  “I can’t. We’ve been served notice.”

  “I’ll buy the place, so put it all back,” he insisted.

  Her lovely grey eyes grew stern; suddenly Cato looked out of them. “No, my father would not condone it.”

  “Yes, dearest, he would,” Brutus said very seriously. “Come, Porcia, you know Cato! He would see it as a victory for the Republicans. He would deem it a right act. It is the duty of the family to look after the family. Cato, to render his daughter homeless? I condemn Caesar for this. Lucius Bibulus is too young to be a part of the Republican cause.”

  “His father was one of the great Republicans.” She turned her face to present Brutus with her profile, the very image of Cato’s; the huge, beaked nose was noble to his eyes, and the mouth distractingly beautiful. “Yes, I see the rightness,” she said, then turned to look at him fearfully. “But others will be bidding too. What if someone else buys this house?”

  He laughed. “Porcia! Who can outbid Marcus Junius Brutus? Besides, this is a nice house, but it doesn’t compare with places like Pompeius Magnus’s or Metellus Scipio’s. The big money will be bid for the outstanding houses. I won’t bid myself, I’ll use an agent, so Rome won’t gossip. And I shall bid for your father’s estates in Lucania. Nothing else of his, just that. I’d like you to have something of his forever.”

  Tears dropped on her hands. “You speak as if he were dead already, Brutus.”

  “Many may get pardons, Porcia, but you and I know that Caesar will never reach an accommodation with any of the leaders who went to Africa Province. Still, Caesar won’t live forever. He’s older than Cato, who may be able to come home one day.”

  “Why did you beg a pardon from him?” she asked abruptly.

  His face saddened, fell. “Because I am not Cato, my dearest girl. I wish I were! Oh, how I wish it! But if you truly love me, you must know what I am. As my mother says, a coward. I—I can’t explain what happens to me when it comes to battle or defying people like Caesar. I just go to pieces.”

  “My father will say that it isn’t a right act for me to love you because you gave in to Caesar.”

  “Yes, he will,” Brutus agreed, smiling. “Does that mean we have no future together? I won’t believe it.”

  She flung both arms
around him fiercely. “I’m a woman, and women are weak, my father says. He won’t approve, but I can’t live without you, and I won’t live without you!”

  “Then you’ll wait for me?” he asked.

  “Wait?”

  “Caesar has endowed me with a proconsular imperium. I am to go at once to govern Italian Gaul.”

  Her arms dropped, she moved away. “Caesar!” she hissed. “Everything goes back to Caesar, even your awful mother!”

  His shoulders spasmed, hunched. “I have known that since I was a lad and first met him. When he came back from his quaestorship in Further Spain. He stood in the midst of all those women, looking like a god. So striking! So—royal. My mother was shot through the heart—he slew her! Her, with her pride! A patrician Servilia Caepionis. But she beggared her pride for him. After my stepfather Silanus died, she thought Caesar would marry her. He refused on the grounds that she was an unfaithful wife. ‘With you, only with you!’ she cried. It made no difference with whom she was unfaithful, he said. The fact remained that she was an unfaithful wife.”

  “How do you know that?” Porcia asked, fascinated.

  “Because she came home roaring and screeching like Mormolyce. The whole house knew,” said Brutus simply, and shivered. “But that is Caesar. It takes a Cato to resist him, and I am no Cato, my love.” His eyes filled with tears, he took her hands. “Forgive me for my weakness, Porcia! A proconsular imperium, and I haven’t even been a praetor yet! Italian Gaul! How can I say no to him? I don’t have the strength.”

  “Yes, I understand,” she said gruffly. “Go and govern your province, Brutus. I’ll wait for you.”

  “Do you mind if I say nothing about us to my mother?”

  She barked her strange laugh, but not in amusement. “No, dear Brutus, I don’t mind. If she terrifies you, she terrifies me even more. Let’s not wake the monster before we have to. Stay married to Claudia for the time being.”

  “Have you heard from Cato?” he asked.

  “No, not a word. Nor has Marcia, who suffers terribly. She has to go home to her father now, of course. Philippus tried to intervene for Marcia’s sake, but Caesar was adamant. Everything of my father’s is confiscate, and she gave her dowry to him when he rebuilt the Basilica Porcia after Clodius’s fire. Philippus isn’t happy. She cries so, Brutus!”

  “What of your dowry?”

  “It went to rebuild the Basilica Porcia too.”

  “Then I’ll lodge a sum with Bibulus’s bankers for you.”

  “Cato would not approve.”

  “If Cato took your dowry, my love, he has forfeited his right to an opinion. Come,” he said, drawing her to her feet, “I want to kiss you again, somewhere less public.” At the door to her study he looked at her gravely. “We are first cousins, Porcia. Perhaps we shouldn’t have children.”

  “Only half first cousins,” she said reasonably. “Your mother and my father are only half sister and half brother.”

  * * *

  A great deal of money came out of hiding when the property of the unpardoned Republicans came up for auction. Bidding through Scaptius, Brutus had no trouble in acquiring Bibulus’s house, his big villa in Caieta, his Etrurian latifundium and his Campanian farms, vine-yards; the best way to provide Porcia and young Lucius with an income, he had decided, was to buy all that Bibulus had. But he had no luck with Cato’s Lucanian estates.

  Caesar’s agent, Gaius Julius Arvernus, bought every last piece of Cato’s property. For more by far than it was worth; Brutus’s Scaptius didn’t dare keep on bidding once the sums became outrageous. Caesar’s reasons were two: he wanted the satisfaction of seeing Cato’s property fall to him, and he also wanted to use it to dower his three ex-centurions with enough to qualify for membership in the Senate. Decimus Carfulenus and two others had won the corona civica, and Caesar intended to honor Sulla’s legislation that promoted all winners of major crowns of valor to the Senate.

  “The odd thing is that I think my father would approve,” said Porcia to Brutus when he came to bid her farewell.

  “I’m very sure that Caesar wasn’t aiming for Cato’s approval,” said Brutus.

  “Then he misread my father, who esteems valor quite as much as Caesar.”

  “Given the hideous hatred between them, Porcia, neither man can read the other.”

  Pompey’s mansion on the Carinae was knocked down to Mark Antony for thirty million sesterces, but when he casually told the auctioneers that he would defer payment until his finances were more flush, the head of the firm drew him aside.

  “I am afraid, Marcus Antonius, that you must pay the entire amount immediately. Orders from Caesar.”

  “But it would clean me out!” said Antony indignantly.

  “Pay now, or forfeit the property and incur a fine.”

  Antony paid, cursing.

  Whereas Servilia, new owner of Lentulus Crus’s latifundium and several lucrative vineyards in Falernian Campania, fared much better at Caesar’s hands.

  “Our instructions are to give you a third off the price,” the chief auctioneer said when she presented herself at the booth to make arrangements for payment. She hadn’t bothered to use an agent, it was more fun by far to bid in person, especially as she was a women and not supposed to be so publicly forward.

  “Instructions from whom?” she asked.

  “Caesar, domina. He said you would understand.”

  Most of Rome understood, including Cicero, who almost fell off his chair laughing. “Oh, well done, Caesar!” he cried to Atticus (another successful bidder), visiting to give him all the news. “A third off! A third! You have to admit that the man’s witty!” The joke, of course, lay in the fact that Servilia’s third girl, Tertulla, was Caesar’s child.

  The witticism hadn’t amused Servilia in the least, but her umbrage was not sufficient to spurn the discount. Ten million was ten million, after all.

  Gaius Cassius, who bid for nothing, was not amused either. “How dared he draw attention to my wife!” he snarled. “Everyone I meet puns on Tertulla’s name!”

  More than his wife’s relationship to Caesar was annoying Cassius; while Brutus, the same age and at exactly the same level on the cursus honorum, was going to govern Italian Gaul as proconsul, he, Gaius Cassius, had been palmed off with an ordinary propraetorian legate-ship in Asia Province. Though Vatia the governor was his own brother-in-law, he wasn’t one of Cassius’s favorite people.

  V

  The Sting in Winning

  From JANUARY until QUINCTILIS (JULY) of 46 B.C.

  1

  Publius Sittius was a Roman knight from Campanian Nuceria, of considerable wealth and education; among his friends he had numbered Sulla and Cicero. Several unfortunate investments during the years after Pompey the Great and Marcus Crassus had been consuls for the first time had caused him to join Catilina’s conspiracy to overthrow Rome’s legitimate government; what had attracted him was Catilina’s promise that he would bring in a general cancellation of debts. Though Sittius didn’t think so at the time, it turned out to be for the best that his financial embarrassments grew too pressing to linger in Italy waiting for Catilina’s bid at power. He was forced to flee to Further Spain at the beginning of the Cicero/Hybrida consulship, and when that didn’t prove far enough away from Rome, he then migrated to Tingis, the capital of western Mauretania.

  This most distressing series of events brought out qualities in Publius Sittius that he never knew he owned; the businessman with a tendency to speculate transformed himself into a sweet-talking, immensely capable freebooter who undertook to reorganize King Bocchus’s army, and even to provide the ruler of western Mauretania with a nice little navy. Though Bocchus’s kingdom was farther from Numidia than his brother, Bogud’s, kingdom of eastern Mauretania, Bocchus was terrified of the expansionist ideas churning around in King Juba of Numidia’s head. Juba was determined to be another Masinissa, and since the Roman African province lay on Numidia’s eastern borders, the only direction to expan
d was west.

  Once he had Bocchus’s forces up to strength, Sittius did the same for Bogud’s forces. His rewards were gratifying; money, his own palace in Tingis, a whole harem of delectable women, and no business worries. Definitely the life of a talented freebooter was preferable to flirting with conspiracies in Italy!

  When King Juba of Numidia declared for the Republicans after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it was inevitable that Bocchus and Bogud of Mauretania would declare for Caesar. Publius Sittius stepped up Mauretanian military preparedness and sat back to see what would happen. A great relief when Caesar won at Pharsalus, then a huge shock when the Republican survivors of Pharsalus decided to make Africa Province their next focus of resistance. Too close to home!

  So Sittius hired a few spies in Utica and Hadrumetum to keep himself informed on Republican doings, and waited for Caesar to invade, as Caesar must.

  * * *

  But Caesar’s invasion began unhappily in several ways. He and his first fleet were forced to land at Leptis Minor because every seaport to the north of it was too strongly fortified by the Republicans to think of trying to get ashore. As there were no port facilities at Leptis Minor, the ships had to be brought in very close to a long beach and the troops ordered to jump into shallow water, wade ashore. Caesar went first, of course. But his fabled luck deserted him; he jumped, tripped and fell full length in the knee-deep water. A terrible omen! Every single pair of watching eyes widened, a thousand throats gasped, rumbled.

  Up he came with the agility of a cat, both hands clenched into fists above his head, sand trickling from them down his arms.

  “Africa, I have you in my hold!” he shouted, turning the omen into a propitious one.

  Nor had he neglected the old legend that Rome couldn’t win in Africa without a Scipio present. The Republicans had Metellus Scipio in the command tent, but Caesar’s purely titular second-in-command was Scipio Salvitto, a disreputable scion of the family Cornelius Scipio whom he had plucked out of a Roman brothel. A complete nonsense, Caesar knew; Gaius Marius had conquered in Africa without a Scipio in sight, though Sulla was a Cornelian.