Caesar (13 page)

“I don't like Labienus,” she said, shivering.“ Not surprising. Labienus belongs to that group of Roman men who believe that the only trustworthy Gaul is a dead one,” said Caesar. “That goes for Gallic women too.”

“Why didn't you object when I said Orgetorix would be King of the Helvetii?” she demanded. “He is your son, yet you have no son! At the time Orgetorix was born I didn't understand how famous and influential you are in Rome. I do now.” She sat up, put her hand on his shoulder. “Caesar, take him! To be king of a people as powerful as the Helvetii is a formidable fate, but to be the King of Rome is a far greater fate.” He shrugged her hand off, eyes flashing. “Rhiannon, Rome will have no king! Nor would I consent to Rome's having a king! Rome is a republic and has been for five hundred years! I will be the First Man in Rome, but that is not to be Rome's king. Kings are archaic; even you Gauls are realizing that. A people prospers better when it is administered by a group of men who change through the electoral process.” He smiled wryly. “Election gives every qualified man the chance to be the best—or the worst.”

“But you are the best! No one can beat you! Caesar, you were born to be king!” she cried. “Rome would thrive under your rule—you'd end in being King of the World!”

“I don't want to be King of the World,” he said patiently. “Just the First Man in Rome—first among my equals. If I were king, I'd have no rivals, and where's the fun in that? Without a Cato and a Cicero to sharpen my wits, my mind would stultify.” He leaned forward to kiss her breasts. “Leave things be, woman.”

“Don't you want your son to be a Roman?” she asked, snuggling against him.“ It's not a matter of wanting. My son is not a Roman.”

“You could make him one.”

“My son is not a Roman. He's a Gaul.” She was kissing his chest, winding a rope of hair around his growing penis. “But,” she mumbled, “I'm a princess. His blood is better than it could be with a Roman woman for mother.” Caesar rolled on top of her. “His blood is only half Roman—and that the half which cannot be proven. His name is Orgetorix, not Caesar. His name will remain Orgetorix, not Caesar. When the time comes, send him to your people. I rather like the idea that a son of mine will be a king. But not the King of Rome.”

“What if I were a great queen, so great that even Rome saw my every virtue?”

“If you were Queen of the World, my dear, it wouldn't be good enough. You're not Roman. Nor are you Caesar's wife.” Whatever she might have said in answer to that was not said; Caesar stopped her mouth with a kiss. Because he enchanted her sexually, she left the subject to succumb to her body's pleasure, but in one corner of her mind she stored the subject for future contemplation. And future contemplation was all through that winter, while the great Roman legates passed in and out of Caesar's stone door, paid court to her son, lay on the dining couches, talking endlessly of armies, legions, supplies, fortifications ... I do not understand, nor has he made me understand. My blood is far greater than the blood of any Roman woman! I am the daughter of a king! I am the mother of a king! But my son should be the King of Rome, not the King of the Helvetii. Caesar makes no sense with his cryptic answers. How can I hope to understand what he will not teach? Would a Roman woman teach me? Could a Roman woman?So while Caesar busied himself with the preparations for his pan-Gallic conference in Samarobriva, Rhiannon sat down with an Aeduan scribe and dictated a letter in Latin to the great Roman lady Servilia. A choice of correspondent which proved that Roman gossip percolated everywhere.

I write to you, lady Servilia, because I know that you have been an intimate friend of Caesar's for many years, and that when Caesar returns to Rome, he will resume his friendship. Or so they say here in Samarobriva. I have Caesar's son, who is now three years old. My blood is royal. I am the daughter of King Orgetorix of the Helvetii, and Caesar took me off my husband, Dumnorix of the Aedui. But when my son was born, Caesar said that he would be brought up a Gaul in Gallia Comata, and insisted that he have a Gallic name. I called him Orgetorix, but I would far rather have called him Caesar Orgetorix. In our Gallic world, it is absolutely necessary that a man have at least one son. For that reason, men of the nobility have more than one wife, lest one wife prove barren. For what is a man's career, if he has no son to succeed him? Yet Caesar has no son to succeed him, and will not hear of my son's succeeding him in Rome. I asked him why. All he would answer was that I am not Roman. I am not good enough, was what he meant. Even were I the Queen of the World, yet not Roman, I would not be good enough. I do not understand, and I am angry. Lady Servilia, can you teach me to understand?

The Aeduan secretary took his wax tablets away to transcribe Rhiannon's short letter onto paper, and made a copy which he gave to Aulus Hirtius to pass on to Caesar. Hirtius's chance came when he informed Caesar that Labienus had brought the Treveri to battle with complete success.“ He trounced them,” said Hirtius, face expressionless. Caesar glanced at him suspiciously. “And?” he asked.“ And Indutiomarus is dead.” That news provoked a stare. “Unusual! I thought both the Belgae and the Celtae had learned to value their leaders enough to keep them out of the front lines.”

“Er—they have,” said Hirtius. “Labienus issued orders. No matter who or how many got away, he wanted Indutiomarus. Er—not all of him. Just his head.”

“Jupiter, the man is a barbarian himself!” cried Caesar, very angry. “War has few rules, but one of them is that you don't deprive a people of its leaders through murder! Oh, one more thing I'll have to wrap up in Tyrian purple for the Senate! I wish I could split myself into as many legates as I need and do all their jobs myself! Isn't it bad enough that Rome should have displayed Roman heads on the Roman rostra? Are we now to display the heads of our barbarian enemies? He did display it, didn't he?”

“Yes, on the camp battlements.”

“Did his men acclaim him imperator?”

“Yes, on the field.”

“So he could have had Indutiomarus captured and kept for his triumphal parade. Indutiomarus would have died, but after he had been held in honor as Rome's guest, and understood the full extent of his glory. There's some distinction in dying during a triumph, but this was mean— shabby! How do I make it look good in my senatorial dispatches, Hirtius?”

“My advice is, don't. Tell it as it happened.”

“He's my legate. My second-in-command.”

“True.”

“What's the matter with the man, Hirtius?” Hirtius shrugged. “He's a barbarian who wants to be consul, in the same way Pompeius Magnus wanted to be consul. At any kind of price. Not at peace with the mos maiorum.”

“Another Picentine!”

“Labienus is useful, Caesar.”

“As you say, useful,” he said, staring at the wall. “He expects that I'll choose him as my colleague when I'm consul again five years from now.”

“Yes.”

“Rome will want me, but it won't want Labienus.”

“Yes.” Caesar began to pace. “Then I have some thinking to do.” Hirtius cleared his throat. “There is another matter.”

“Oh?”

“Rhiannon.”

“Rhiannon?”

“She's written to Servilia.”

“Using a scribe, since she can't write herself.”

“Who gave me a copy of the letter. Though I haven't let the courier take the original until you approve it.”

“Where is it?” Hirtius handed it over. Yet another letter was reduced to ashes, this one in the brazier. “Fool of a woman!”

“Shall I have the courier take the original to Rome?”

“Oh, yes. Make sure I see the answer before Rhiannon gets it, however.”

“That goes without saying.” Down came the scarlet general's cloak from its T-shaped rack. “I need a walk,” said Caesar, throwing it round his shoulders and tying its cords himself. Then he looked at Hirtius, eyes detached. “Have Rhiannon watched.”

“Some better news to take out into the cold, Caesar.” The smile was rueful. “I need it! What?”

“Ambiorix has had no luck yet with the Germani. Ever since you bridged the Rhenus they've been wary. Not all his pleading and cajoling has seen one German company cross into Gaul.”

Winter was nearing its end and the pan-Gallic conference was looming when Caesar led four legions into the lands of the Nervii to finish that tribe as a power. His luck was with him; the whole tribe had gathered at its biggest oppidum to debate the question as to whether it ought to send delegates to Samarobriva. Caesar caught the Nervii armed but unprepared, and accorded them no mercy. Those who survived the battle were handed over to his men, together with enormous amounts of booty. This was one engagement from which Caesar and his legates would see no personal profit; it all went to the legionaries, including the sale of slaves. And afterward he laid waste to the Nervian lands, burning everything save the fief belonging to Vertico. The captured tribal leaders were shipped off to Rome to wait for his triumph, kept, as he had said to Aulus Hirtius, in comfort and honor. When came the day of his triumph their necks would be snapped in the Tullianum, but by then they would have learned the measure both of their glory and of Rome's.

Caesar had been holding a pan-Gallic conference every year since his coming to Gaul of the Long-hairs. The early ones had been held at Bibracte in the lands of the Aedui. This year's was the first to be held so far west, and a summons had gone out to every tribe commanding it to send delegates. The purpose was to have an opportunity to speak to the tribal leaders, be they kings, councillors or properly elected vergobrets—an opportunity to persuade them that war with Rome could have only one outcome: defeat. This year he hoped for better results. All those who had made war over the past five years had gone down, no matter how great their numbers and their consequent sense of invincibility. Even the loss of the Thirteenth had been turned to advantage. Surely now they would all begin to see the shape of their fate!Yet by the time that the opening day of the conference dawned, Caesar's expectations were already dying. Three of the greatest peoples had not sent delegates: the Treveri, the Senones and the Carnutes. The Nemetes and the Triboci had never come, but their absence was understandable—they bordered the Rhenus River on the opposite shore to the Suebi, the fiercest and far the hungriest of the Germani. So dedicated were they to defending their own lands that they had almost no impact upon thought within Gaul of the Long-hairs. The huge wooden hall hung with bear and wolf pelts was full when Caesar, his purple-bordered toga glaringly white amid so much color, mounted the dais to speak. The gathering possessed an alien splendor, each tribe in its traditional regalia: the basically scarlet checks of the Atrebates in the person of King Commius, the orange and emerald speckles of the Cardurci, the crimson and blue of the Remi, the scarlet and blue stripes of the Aedui. But no yellow and scarlet Carnutes, no indigo and yellow Senones, no dark green and light green Treveri.

“I do not intend to dwell upon the fate of the Nervii,” Caesar said in the high-pitched voice he used for orating, “because all of you know what happened.” He looked toward Vertico, nodded. “That one Nervian is here today is evidence of his good sense. Why fight the inevitable? Ask yourselves who is the real enemy! Is it Rome? Or is it the Germani? The presence of Rome in Gallia Comata must go to your ultimate good. The presence of Rome will ensure that you retain your Gallic customs and traditions. The presence of Rome will keep the Germani on their own bank of the Rhenus. I, Gaius Julius Caesar, have guaranteed to contend with the Germani on your behalf in every treaty I have made with you! For you cannot keep the Germani at bay without Rome's aid. If you doubt this, ask the delegates from the Sequani.” He pointed to where they sat in their crimson and pink. “King Ariovistus of the Suebi persuaded them to let him settle on one-third of their lands. Wanting peace, they decided that consent was a gesture of friendliness. But give the Germani the tip of your finger and they will end in taking not only your whole arm, but your whole country! Do the Cardurci think this fate will not be theirs because they border the Aquitani in the far southwest? It will be! Mark my words, it will be! Unless all of you accept and welcome the presence of Rome, it will be!”

The Arvernian delegates occupied a whole row, for the Arverni were an extremely powerful people. The traditional enemies of the Aedui, they occupied the mountainous lands of the Cebenna around the sources of the Elaver, the Caris and the Vigemna; perhaps because of this, their shirts and trousers were palest buff, their shawls checkered in palest blue, buff and dark green. Not easy to see against snow or a rock face. One of them, young and clean-shaven, rose to his feet.

“Tell me the difference between Rome and the Germani,” he said in the Carnute dialect which Caesar was speaking, as it was the universal tongue of the Druids, therefore understood everywhere.

“No,” said Caesar, smiling. “You tell me.”

“I see absolutely no difference, Caesar. Foreign domination is foreign domination.”

“But there are vast differences! The fact that I stand here today speaking your language is one of them. When I came to Gallia Comata I spoke Aeduan, Arvernian and Vocontian. Since then I have gone to the trouble of learning Druidan, Atrebatan and several other dialects. Yes, I have the ear for languages, that is true. But I am a Roman, and I understand that when men can communicate with each other directly, there is no opportunity for an interpreter to distort what is said. Yet I have not asked any of you to learn to speak Latin. Whereas the Germani would force you to speak their tongues, and eventually you would lose your own.”

“Soft words, Caesar!” said the young Arvernian. “But they point out the greatest danger of Roman domination! It is subtle. The Germani are not subtle. Therefore they are easier to resist.”

“This is your first pan-Gallic conference, obviously, so I do not know your name,” said Caesar, unruffled. “What is it?”

“Vercingetorix!”

Caesar stepped to the very front of the dais. “First of all, Vercingetorix, you Gauls must reconcile yourselves to some foreign presence. The world is shrinking. It has been shrinking since the Greeks and the Punic peoples scattered themselves around the whole rim of the sea Rome now calls Our Sea. Then Rome came upon the scene. The Greeks were never united as one nation. Greece was many little nations, and, like you, they fought among each other until they exhausted the country. Rome was a city-state too, but Rome gradually brought all of Italia under her as one nation. Rome is Italia. Yet the domination of Rome within Italia does not depend upon the solitary figure of a king. All Italia votes to elect Rome's magistrates. All Italia participates in Rome. All Italia provides Rome's soldiers. For Rome is Italia. And Rome grows. All Italian Gaul south of the Padus River is now a part of Italia, elects Rome's magistrates. And soon all Italian Gaul north of the Padus River will be Roman too, for I have vowed it. I believe in unity. I believe that unity is strength. And I would give Gallia Comata the unity of true nationhood. That would be Rome's gift. The Germani bring no gifts worth having. Did Gallia Comata belong to the Germani, it would go backward. They have no systems of government, no systems of commerce, no systems which permit a people to lean on one single central government.” Vercingetorix laughed scornfully. “You rape, you do not govern! There is no difference between Rome and the Germani!”