The Gods of War (35 page)

Cicero rose slowly to his feet, wincing as his knees cracked. The noise of the city seemed to surround the Senate house and he shuddered at the thought of going out through the drunken crowd. Would it have been different if they could have heard Caesar speak? He had promised to remake Rome: a new forum, great temples and roads, coins minted fresh from the gold of Gaul. His supporters would all have places in the Senate, his legions would be given the best lands and made wealthy. He planned four Triumphs over the months to come, more than any general of Rome had ever had. Gods, there was no end to it! In the midst of all the promises, Cicero had been desperate to hear some sign that Julius needed the Senate. Just a word to salve their dignity would have been enough, but it did not come. He told them the future and it never occurred to him that every word he spoke went further to cut himself free of them.

It was not how they had planned it, Cicero remembered. When Mark Antony had read the letters Julius sent from Egypt, they had discussed how they might honor the greatest general under Rome. In private, they had wondered whether he would accept the Senate at all. Cicero had voted with the others to bestow a Dictatorship of ten years, unheard of in history. The balanced scales of the Republic had been thrown down. It was all they could do.

Julius had nodded at the news as if it was no more than he had expected, and Cicero had known despair. He had not missed the significance of Julius holding his son up to the voracious mob. The man had no true peers to lay a hand on his shoulder and force him to caution. Cicero wondered if Caesar's Triumphs would include the boy to ride with him and whisper “Remember, you are mortal” into his ear.

The bronze doors creaked and Cicero jerked around to see who dared to breach the privacy of the Senate. Surely there were guards outside? He would not have been surprised to hear they had succumbed to drink and the hysterical crowd were stumbling in to vomit in the halls of their masters.

“Who is there?” he called, ashamed to hear the quaver in his voice. It was the nervous tone of an old man, he thought bitterly.

“Suetonius,” came a reply. “I tried your home, but Terentia said you had not come back. She is worried about you.”

Cicero sighed aloud in a mixture of relief and irritation. “Can a man not find a little quiet in this city?” he demanded.

“You should not be sitting in the dark,” Suetonius replied, walking out of the gloom. He could not meet Cicero's eyes at first and the air of defeat hung heavily around him. He too had been there to hear Caesar speak.

Outside, someone began an ancient song of lost love and the crowd in the forum joined the single voice. The harmonies were rough, but beautiful nonetheless. Cicero was tempted to go out and add his broken wind to theirs, just to be part of it before the day brought back its hard realities.

Suetonius tilted his head to listen. “They don't know him,” he whispered.

Cicero glanced up, shaken from his thoughts. In the semidarkness, Suetonius's eyes were shadows.

“Are we to be his servants, then?” he asked. “Is that all we have achieved?”

Cicero shook his head, more for himself than for his companion. “You must practice patience in this city, Senator. It will remain long after we are all dead.”

Suetonius snorted in disgust. “What do I care for that? You heard his plans, Cicero. You nodded your head with all the others who would not dare speak up.”

“You did not speak,” Cicero reminded him.

“Alone, I could not,” Suetonius snapped.

“Perhaps we all felt alone, even as you did.”

“He needs us, to rule,” Suetonius said. “Does he think our dominions will run themselves? Did you hear one word of thanks for the work we have done in his absence? I did not.”

Cicero found himself growing angry at the whining tone that reminded him of his children. “He does
not
need us,” he snapped. “Can't you understand? He has armies loyal only to him and he has taken the mantle of power. We are the last embers of the old Rome, fanning ourselves alive with our own breath. The great men are all dead now.”

In the forum, he heard the song reach its final poignant lines before a wave of cheering broke out.

“What do we do then?” Suetonius asked.

His voice was plaintive and Cicero winced to hear it. He did not answer for a long time.

“We find some way to bind him to us,” he said at last. “The people love him today and tomorrow, but after that? They will have spent the money he gives them and they will need more than dreams to fill their stomachs, more than golden promises. Perhaps they will even need us again.”

He rubbed his sandal on the polished floor as he thought. The weakness of the younger man had stung him into anger and his thoughts came faster.

“Who else can pass the laws he wants, or grant him honors? They do not come simply because he shouts it in the forum. It is a weight of centuries that he has pushed aside. It may yet swing back with even greater force.”

“So that is how you respond?” Suetonius asked. Cicero could hear the sneering tone and it infuriated him. “We shall resist him by passing every law? By honoring him further?”

With an effort, Cicero controlled his temper. He had so few allies now. Even a man of this caliber could not be scorned.

“If we balk his will, we will be swept away. This Senate house will fill again in hours with men more willing to bow their heads. Where is the gain in such a course?” He paused to wipe sweat from his face. “We must
never
let him see he can walk alone. He suspects it already, but he does not know it in his stomach, where it matters. If you told him he could disband the Senate on a whim, he would be appalled. It is a dangerous line to walk, but while we stand as a body, there is hope. If we force his hand, there is none.”

“You are frightened of him,” Suetonius said.

“So should you be,” Cicero replied.

                                                      
PART THREE
                                                      

                                                      
CHAPTER
33
                                                      

I
n gardens that had once belonged to Marius, Julius sat by a fountain, rubbing his thumb over a thick gold coin. Brutus munched on a chicken leg, enjoying the peace. The daily Senate meeting would already have resumed, but neither man felt any urgency. Unseasonable heat had come to Rome, long after the summer had ended. With the new spring only a month away, the short days should have been wet and cold, but instead the Tiber had shrunk and the city suffered in thick air and heat. While Rome baked, Julius and Brutus had eaten and slept. The cool of evening would dispel the pleasant lethargy, but for the moment they were content to lounge in the sun, each lost in his own thoughts.

Brutus saw the small movement of Julius's fingers and reached out for the coin, grunting as Julius passed it over.

“It makes you look a little thinner than you really are,” he said, holding the aureus up to the sun. “And I notice you have more hair.”

Julius touched his head self-consciously and Brutus flipped the coin back to him.

“It still amazes me sometimes,” Julius said. “This coin will travel for thousands of miles, through the hands of strangers. Perhaps long after me, someone will hand a copy of my face over in exchange for a saddle or a plow.”

Brutus raised an eyebrow. “The face, of course, will give it value, not the gold,” he said.

Julius smiled. “All right, but it's still strange to think of men and women I will never meet—who will never see Rome even—but who will carry my face in their purses. I hope they do give it a glance before they exchange it.”

“You expect too much of people. You always did,” Brutus said seriously. “They'll take the land and coin you give them and next year they'll be back to clamor for more.”

Julius raised a hand, shutting weary eyes. “Is this the colonies again? I've heard the speeches from Suetonius. He called it corruption to give the poor of Rome their dignity. You tell me how it damages a man to give him a little land and coin to get the first crop in the ground? With my own funds I gave eighty thousand a new chance in life, and the only protests came from the pampered men of my own Senate.” He snorted in indignation. “It's been a year, Brutus; have the exiles come back yet? Have they turned up as beggars in the forum? I haven't seen them.” He frowned fiercely, waiting to be contradicted.

Brutus shrugged, tossing the chicken bone over his shoulder to land in the fountain. “For myself, I have never worried whether some peasant farmer will live or die. Some will starve or gamble away what you gave them. Others will be robbed. Perhaps a thousand will survive the first year working a trade they don't understand. Rome has fewer beggars, though, which is pleasant. I can't argue with you there.”

“Suetonius described it as both ‘courageous and flawed,' as if it were a child's idea.”

“They did not try to stop you,” Brutus said.

“They wouldn't dare to try!” Julius snapped. “I could count the useful minds in the Senate on one hand. The rest are fawning idiots who can't see further than their own vanity.”

Brutus looked sharply at the man he had known for so many years. “Can they be anything else? They are the Senate you wanted. They raise statues to you over Rome and invent new honors just for a nod of approval from you. Were you expecting passionate debate when just a word could have them dragged out by your guards? You've made them what they are, Julius.” He reached over to take the coin again, reading from it. “They have made you ‘Dictator Perpetuus,' and now they are struggling to find more pretty words to gild your name. How it must sicken you.”

Julius sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “I have earned anything they can think of,” he said softly.

When his eyes opened, Brutus could not meet the cold gaze.

“Well, have I not?” Julius demanded. “Tell me where I have overreached myself, since my return. Have my promises not been made good? Ask the Tenth, or the Fourth you once commanded. They would not see any harm in my appointments.”

Brutus sensed the rising temper and cooled his own. Julius allowed him a greater freedom than anyone else, more even than Mark Antony, but he was not an equal.

“You have done what you said you would,” he replied neutrally.

Julius narrowed his eyes as he looked for some hidden meaning, then his face cleared and Brutus felt sweat break out on his skin in relief.

“It has been a good year,” Julius said, nodding to himself. “My son grows and in time I think the people will accept Cleopatra.”

Brutus forced his mouth shut, knowing the subject was tender. The citizens had welcomed the new temple to Venus. On the day of its consecration, they had come in great numbers to admire the work and leave offerings. Inside, they found the goddess had the face of the Egyptian queen. To Julius's fury, someone had defaced the statue by painting golden nipples on it. A permanent guard had to be posted and a reward offered for the names of those responsible. As yet, it had gone unclaimed.

Brutus did not dare look at Julius in case his glowering expression made him laugh. He could only be pushed so far and Brutus was adept at finding the limit whenever his bitterness needed some outlet. Pricking at Julius's vanity was a dangerous pleasure, indulged only when he could no longer bear the constant stream of festivals and Triumphs.

Unnoticed, Brutus wound his fingers into a knot. He wondered if the citizens ever hungered for the honest tedium of normal life. The city had no routine when the Dictator could announce another great games or suddenly decide his latest Triumph would last another week. The citizens would always cheer and drink what they were given, but Brutus imagined a strained edge to their voices that matched his own dissatisfaction.

He had enjoyed the Triumph scenes of Gaul, with a lice-ridden Vercingetorix dragged in chains to a public execution. Brutus had been given the best seats to witness the death of wolves and boar. Even the Tiber had been dammed to fill a circus with water stained red by fighting ships on its surface. Wonder had followed wonder and the Senate had responded in a desperate frenzy, calling Julius “Imperator” and “Dictator for Life.” His latest statue had a simple plaque to the “Unconquered God,” and when Brutus had seen it, he had drunk himself unconscious and lost two days.

There were times when he thought he should just take a horse and leave Rome. Julius had showered him with enough wealth to buy a house and live in comfort. When he was sick of it all, he dreamed of taking ship somewhere too far for Julius to reach and finding his own kind of peace there. He did not know if such a place existed any longer. He returned to Julius like a child to a festering scab, plumbing new depths of misery with a horrified fascination.

“Are you going to the Senate house?” Brutus asked just to break the silence.

Julius blew air through his lips. “Back to the talking shop, where I can buy a thousand words for a bronze coin? No, I have letters to write to the kings of Parthia. I have not forgotten those who caused the death of Crassus and his son. It is an old debt, but I will answer it for those who can't speak.”

“I thought you were still drunk on the pleasures of Rome,” Brutus said softly. “Are you sniffing the spring wind again?”

Julius smiled at the image. “Perhaps. I may be an old warhorse, my friend, but an empire does not build itself from a comfortable seat in the Senate. I must be seen.”

“The Tenth are old men now,” Brutus replied. “I would never have believed it, but they went to the farms and houses you gave them without looking back.”

Julius snorted. “There are new men to blood, Brutus. New legions that have never heard the battle horns or marched to exhaustion as we have. What would you have me do when my last Triumph has ended, sit and smile until my son is grown? I am not a man for the quiet times. I never have been.” He smiled. “But there is still the Egyptian Triumph to come. A host of scribes and architects arrive in a just a few hours to plan it.” Julius stared off into space as he contemplated bringing Rome to a standstill once more. “It will be the greatest in the city's history, Brutus, I guarantee it.”

“How can it be, after the last one? They're still talking about the sea battle in the Campus,” Brutus said, remembering to hide his distaste.

The vast stone bowl had been shallow enough to see the dead clustered like dark coral on the bottom. In tiny galleys, captured warriors had struggled against criminals and men condemned to death. The pale waters had become a broth and when it was drained back into the Tiber, the river itself had run red. The scent of rotting flesh crept through Rome for days afterwards.

Julius clapped him on the shoulder, rising to his feet and stretching. “I have something new in mind for my last Triumph.” He seemed on the verge of revealing his plans, then he chuckled. “I will make sure you have a seat in the forum for the climax. You should bring this new wife of yours.”

Brutus nodded, knowing he wouldn't. He wondered if his mother would be interested in seeing Julius parade his queen and swollen ego one more time.

“I'm looking forward to it,” he said.

         

When the Senate meeting ended, Mark Antony made his way up from the forum to Julius's home. He walked with six armed lictors at his back, though he hardly noticed them, nor how the crowds parted before his tread.

In Julius's absence, he had expected a livelier debate than usual in the Senate. He should have known better. The empty seat had more menace than the presence of the man. They all knew the meeting would be reported in full detail. Julius's scribes recorded the most inane of conversations and even those like Cicero were made nervous by their incessant scribbling.

There had been times when the subject under discussion brought back some of the old honesty and fire Mark Antony remembered. Julius had abolished the tax system of Roman dominions, devolving the right to collect coins to local men in a dozen countries. The Greeks knew better than to let revenues fall after their last failed rebellion, but the praetor of Spain had made the trip to Rome to complain of new levels of corruption. It was the sort of thing that had been meat and drink to the Senate before the civil war. Some of the subtle restraint had slipped away as they wrangled and argued over details and proposals.

Mark Antony could still see the moment when Cassius had implied the problem was with the system itself, his glance straying to the scribe who faithfully recorded his words. The senator's thin face had paled slightly and his fingers had begun to tap nervously on the lectern. After that, the debate had foundered and the praetor of Spain had been sent home with no new resolution to his problems.

It was not how Mark Antony had dreamed it would be, when Julius gave him command of Italy years before. While the civil war wound through to a conclusion, Rome had been peaceful. It was true that he had made no great changes, but the city had been stable and she prospered. Men who applied for trading rights knew that they would be considered on their merits. The Senate passed difficult points of law on to the courts and accepted the decisions made, whether they approved or not. Mark Antony had worked harder than at any other time in his life and had taken a quiet satisfaction from the order in the city.

That had changed when Julius returned. The courts still functioned, but no one was foolish enough to bring a charge against a favorite of Caesar. The rule of law had lost its foundation and Mark Antony found himself sickened by the new attitude of caution. He and Cicero had spent many evenings in discussion, though even then they had been forced to send their servants away. Julius had spies all over Rome and it was rare to find a man who cared so little for his life that he was willing to speak out against the Dictator, even in private.

It had been a long year, Mark Antony thought to himself as he walked up the hill. Longer than any other in Roman history. The new calendar had set the city in an uproar of misunderstandings and chaos. Julius had declared that it would last for 445 days, before his new months could begin. The freak summer that had hit so late seemed just a symptom of the confusion, as if the seasons themselves had been upset. With a smile, Mark Antony remembered Cicero's complaint that even the planets and stars had to run to Caesar's order.

In older days, the city would have employed astronomers from all over the world to test the notions Julius had brought back from Egypt. Instead, the Senate had vied with each other to acclaim the new system and have their names reach Caesar's ears.

Mark Antony sighed as he reached the street gate to the old Marius property. The general he had known in Gaul would have scorned the attitude that had infected the august Senate. He would have allowed them their dignity, to honor the traditions if for no other reason.

Mark Antony took a deep breath and gripped the bridge of his nose in hard fingers. The man he had known would resurface, he hoped. Of course Julius had gone a little wild on his return. He had been drunk with the success of a civil war and a new son. He had been plunged from a life of struggle into a great city that hailed him as a god. It had turned his head, but Mark Antony remembered Julius when Gaul was a cauldron of war, and he still looked for a sign that the worst was over.

Julius was waiting for him inside as Mark Antony passed through the gardens. He left his lictors on the street rather than bring armed men into the presence of the Dictator of Rome.

Julius embraced him and ordered iced drinks and food to be brought over his protests. Mark Antony saw that Julius seemed unusually nervous and his hand shook slightly as he held out a cup of wine.

“My last Triumph is almost ready,” Julius said, after both men had made themselves comfortable. “I have a favor to ask of you.”