Caesar (15 page)

Rhiannon's face lit up, then fell as she took in Caesar's leather gear. “Caesar! Where are you going?”

“To meet my new legions,” he said, holding out his right hand to Vercingetorix, who had risen to reveal that he was the usual Celtic six feet in height. His eyes were dark blue and regarded the hand warily.

“Oh, come!” said Caesar genially. “You won't die of poison because you touch me!”

Out came one long, frail hand; the two men performed the universal ritual of greeting, neither of them imprudent enough to turn it into a contest of strength. Firm, brief, not excessive.

Caesar raised his brows at Rhiannon. “You know each other?” he asked, not sitting.

“Vercingetorix is my first cousin,” she said breathlessly. “His mother and my mother were sisters. Arverni. Didn't I tell you? I meant to, Caesar. They both married kings—mine, King Orgetorix; his, King Celtillus.”

“Ah, yes,” said Caesar blandly. “Celtillus. I would have said he tried to be king, rather than was one. Didn't the Arverni kill him for it, Vercingetorix?”

“They did. You speak good Arvernian, Caesar.”

“My nurse was Arvernian. Cardixa. My tutor, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, was half Salluvian. And there were Aeduan tenants upstairs in my mother's insula. You might say that I grew up to the sound of Gallic.”

“You tricked us neatly during those first two years, using an interpreter all the time.”

“Be fair! I speak no Germanic languages, and a great deal of my first year was occupied with Ariovistus. Nor did I understand the Sequani very well. It's taken time to pick up the Belgic tongues, though Druidan was easy.”

“You are not what you seem,” said Vercingetorix, sitting down again.

“Is anyone?” asked Caesar, and suddenly decided to seat himself too. A few moments spent talking to Vercingetorix might be moments well spent.

“Probably not, Caesar. What do you think I am?”

“A young hothead with much courage and some intelligence. You lack subtlety. It isn't clever to embarrass your elders in an important assembly.”

“Someone had to speak up! Otherwise they would all have sat there and listened like a lot of students to a famous Druid. I struck a chord in many,” said Vercingetorix, looking satisfied.

Caesar shook his head slowly. “You did indeed,” he said, “but that isn't wise. One of my aims is to avert bloodshed—it gives me no pleasure to spill oceans of it. You ought to think things through, Vercingetorix. The end of it all will be Roman rule, make no mistake about that. Therefore why buck against it? You're a man, not a brute horse! You have the ability to gather adherents, build a great clientele. So lead your people wisely. Don't force me to adopt measures I don't want to take.”

“Lead my people into eternal captivity, that's what you're really saying, Caesar.”

“No, I am not. Lead them into peace and prosperity.”

Vercingetorix leaned forward, eyes glowing with the same lights as the sapphire in his brooch. “I will lead, Caesar! But not into captivity. Into freedom. Into the old ways, a return to the kings and the heroes. And we will spurn Your Sea! Some of what you said yesterday makes sense. We Gauls need to be one people, not many. I can achieve that. I will achieve that! We will outlast you, Caesar. We will throw you out, and all who try to follow you. I spoke truth too. I said that Rome will send a fool to replace you. That is the way of democracies, which offer mindless idiots a choice of candidates and then wonder why fools are elected. A people needs a king, not men who change every time someone blinks his eye. One group benefits, then another, yet never the whole people. A king is the only answer.”

“A king is never the answer.” Vercingetorix laughed, a high and slightly frenzied sound. “But you are a king, Caesar! It's there in the way you move, the way you look, the way you treat others. You are an Alexander the Great accidentally given power by the electors. After you, it will fall to ashes.”

“No,” said Caesar, smiling gently. “I am no Alexander the Great. All I am is a part of Rome's ongoing pageant. A great part, I know that. I hope that in future ages men will say, the greatest part. Yet only a part. When Alexander the Great died, Macedon died. His country perished with him. He abjured his Greekness and relocated the navel of his empire because he thought like a king. He was the reason for his country's greatness. He did what he liked and he went where he liked. He thought like a king, Vercingetorix! He mistook himself for an idea. To make it bear permanent fruit, he would have needed to live forever. Whereas I am the servant of my country. Rome is far greater than any man she produces. When I am dead, Rome will continue to produce other great men. I will leave Rome stronger, richer, more powerful. What I do will be used and improved by those who follow me. Fools and wise men in equal number, and that's a better record than a line of kings can boast. For every great king, there are a dozen utter nonentities.”

Vercingetorix said nothing, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I do not agree,” he said finally.

Caesar got up. “Then let us hope, Vercingetorix, that we never have to decide the issue upon a battlefield. For if we do, you will go down.” His voice grew warmer. “Work with me, not against me!”

“No,” said Vercingetorix, eyes still closed.

Caesar left the room to find Aulus Hirtius.

“Rhiannon grows more and more interesting,” Caesar said to him. “The young hothead Vercingetorix is her first cousin. In that respect, Gallic nobles are just like Roman nobles. All of them are related. Watch her for me, Hirtius.”

“Does that mean she's to come to Lutetia with me?”

“Oh, yes. We must give her every opportunity to have more congress with cousin Vercingetorix.”

Hirtius's small, homely face screwed up, his brown eyes pleading. “Truly, Caesar, I don't think she'd betray you, no matter who her relatives might be. She dotes on you.”

“I know. But she's a woman. She chatters and she does silly things like writing to Servilia—a more stupid action is hard to think of! While I'm away, don't let her know anything I don't want her to know.” Like everyone else in on the secret, Hirtius was dying to learn what Servilia had said, but Caesar had opened her letter himself, then sealed it again with Quintus Cicero's ring before anyone had a chance to read it.

When Caesar appeared leading six legions, the Senones crumbled, capitulating without a fight. They gave hostages and begged forgiveness, then hustled delegates off to Lutetia, where the Gauls under the easygoing supervision of Aulus Hirtius squabbled and brawled, drank and feasted. They also sent frantic warnings to the Carnutes, terrified at the promptness of those four new legions, their businesslike air, their glittering armor, their latest-model artillery. It had been the Aedui who begged Caesar to be kind to the Senones; now the Remi begged him to be kind to the Carnutes.

“All right,” he said to Cotus of the Aedui and Dorix of the Remi, “I'll be merciful. What else can I be, anyway? No one has lifted a sword. Though I'd be happier if I believed they meant what they say. But I don't.”

“Caesar, they need time,” Dorix pleaded. “They're like children who have never been gainsaid in anything, but now they have a stepfather who insists on obedience.”

“They're certainly children,” said Caesar, quizzing Dorix with his brows.

“Mine was a metaphor,” said Dorix with dignity.

“And this is no moment for humor. I take your point. Yet however we look at them, my friends, their future welfare depends upon their honoring the treaties they've signed. That is especially true of the Senones and the Carnutes. The Treveri I consider a hopeless case; they'll have to be subdued by force. But the Celtae of central Gallia Comata are fully sophisticated enough to understand the significance of treaties and the codes they dictate. I wouldn't want to have to execute men like Acco of the Senones or Gutruatus of the Carnutes—but if they betray me, I will. Have no doubt of it, I will!”

“They won't betray you, Caesar,” soothed Cotus. “As you say, they're Celtae, not Belgae.”

Almost Caesar's hand went up to push at his hair in the natural gesture of weary exasperation; it stopped short of his scalp and ran itself around his face instead. Nothing could be permitted to disorder his carefully combed, scant hair. He sighed, sat back and looked at the two Gauls.

“Do you think I don't know that every retaliation I have to make is seen as Rome's heavy foot stamping on their rights? I bend over backward to accommodate them, and in return I'm tricked, betrayed, treated with contempt! The children metaphor is by no means inappropriate, Dorix.” He drew a breath. “I'm warning both of you because both of you came forward to intercede for other tribes: if these new agreements are not honored, I'll come down hard. It's treason to break solemn agreements sworn by oath! And if Roman civilian citizens are murdered, I will execute the guilty men as Rome executes all non-citizen traitors and murderers—I'll flog and behead. Nor am I speaking of minions. I will execute the tribal leaders, be it treason or murder. Clear?”

He hadn't lost his temper, but the room felt very cold. Cotus and Dorix exchanged glances, shuffled. “Yes, Caesar.”

“Then make sure you disseminate my sentiments. Especially to the leaders of the Senones and Carnutes.” He got up. “And now,” he said, smiling, “I can turn my entire mind and all my energies to war with the Treveri and Ambiorix.”

Even before Caesar left headquarters he was aware that Acco, leader of the Senones, was already in violation of the treaty he had signed only days earlier. What could one do with ignoble noblemen? Men who let other men intercede for them, beg Caesar for mercy, then proceeded to break this fresh treaty as if it meant absolutely nothing? What exactly was a Gaul's concept of honor? How did Gallic honor work? Why would the Aedui guarantee Acco's good behavior when Cotus must have known Acco was not an honorable man? And what of Gutruatus of the Carnutes? Him too?But first the Belgae. Caesar marched with seven legions and a baggage train to Nemetocenna in the lands of Commius's Atrebates. Here he sent the baggage train and two legions to Labienus on the Mosa. Commius and the other five accompanied him north along the Scaldis into the lands of the Menapii, who fled without fighting into their salt fens along the shores of the German Ocean. Reprisals were indirect but horrifying. Down came a swath of Menapian oaks, up went every Menapian house in flames. The freshly sown crops were raked out of the ground; the cattle, sheep and pigs slaughtered; the chickens, geese and ducks strangled. The legions ate well, the Menapii were left with nothing. They sued for peace and gave hostages. In return Caesar left King Commius and his Atrebatan cavalry behind to garrison the place—a significant message that Commius had just been gifted with the lands of the Menapii to add to his own.

Labienus had his own problems, but by the time Caesar and his five legions arrived, he had fought the Treveri and won a great victory.

“I couldn't have done it without the two legions you sent me,” he admitted cheerfully to Caesar, well aware that this gift could not detract from his own brilliance. “Ambiorix is leading the Treveri these days, and he was all set to attack when the two extra legions appeared. So he drew off and waited for his German reinforcements to come across the Rhenus.”

“And did they?”

“If they did, they turned tail and went home again. I didn't want to wait for them myself, naturally.”

“Naturally,” said Caesar with the ghost of a smile.

“I tricked them. It never ceases to amaze me, Caesar, that they fall for the same ploy all over again. I let the Treveri spies among my cavalry think I was frightened and withdrawing”—he shook his head in wonder—“though this time I really did march. They descended on my column in their usual undisciplined hordes—my men wheeled, launched pila, then charged. We killed thousands of them. So many, in fact, that I doubt they'll ever give us more trouble. What Treveri are left will be too busy in the north, fending off the Germani.”

“And Ambiorix?”

“Bolted across the Rhenus with some of Indutiomarus's close relatives. Cingetorix is back in Treveri power.”

“Hmmmm,” said Caesar thoughtfully. “Well, Labienus, while the Treveri are licking their wounds, it might be an idea to build another bridge across the Rhenus. Do you fancy a trip to Germania?”

“After months and months and months in this same stinking camp, Caesar, I'd welcome a trip to Hades!”

“It is on the nose, Titus, but there's so much shit on the site that it ought to grow four-hundredfold wheat for the next ten years,” said Caesar. “I'll tell Dorix to grab it before the Treveri do.”

Never happier than when he had a massive engineering task to tackle, Caesar bridged the Rhenus a little upstream of the place where he had bridged it two years before. The timbers were still stacked on the Gallic bank of the great river; being oak, they had seasoned rather than rotted. If the first bridge had been a hefty structure, the second bridge was even heftier, for this time Caesar didn't intend to demolish it entirely when he left. For eight days the legions labored, driving piles into the riverbed, setting up the pylons to take the roadway, cushioning them from the swift and pounding current with huge, angled buttresses on the upstream side to divide the waters and take their force off the bridge itself.

“Is there anything he doesn't know how to do?” asked Quintus Cicero of Gaius Trebonius.

“If there is, I don't know of it. He can even take your wife off you if he fancies her. But he loves engineering best, I think. One of his greatest disappointments is that the Gauls have not yet offered him the chance to make the siege of Numantia look like an easy night in a brothel. Or if you want to get him started, ask him about Scipio Aemilianus's approach to the siege of Carthage—he'll tell you exactly what Aemilianus did wrong.”

“It's all grist to his mill, you see,” said Fabius, grinning.

“Do you think he'd take Pomponia off me if I dressed her up and thrust her under his nose?” asked Quintus Cicero wistfully. Trebonius and Fabius howled with laughter. Marcus Junius Silanus eyed them sourly. “If you ask me, all this is a complete waste of time. We should boat across,” he said. ”The bridge accomplishes nothing beyond his personal glory." The old hands turned to stare at him contemptuously; Silanus was one of those who wouldn't be asked to stay on.

“Ye-es, we could boat across,” said Trebonius slowly. “But then we'd have to boat back again. What happens if the Suebi—or the Ubii, for that matter—come charging in their millions out of the forest? Caesar never takes stupid risks, Silanus. See how he's ranged his artillery on the Gallic side? If we have to retreat in a hurry, he'll shell the bridge into splinters before a single German gets across. One of Caesar's secrets is speed. Another is to be prepared for every conceivable eventuality.”

Labienus was snuffing the air, his eagle's beak flaring. “I can smell the cunni!” he said exultantly. “Oh, there's nothing like making a German wish he was burning inside a wicker cage!”

Before anyone could find an appropriate answer for this, up came Caesar, grinning delightedly. “Marshal the troops, boys!” he said. “Time to chase the Suebi into their woods.”

“What do you mean, chase?” demanded Labienus.

Caesar laughed. “Unless I miss my guess, Titus, it will come to nothing else.”

The legions marched in their normal eight-man-wide columns across the great bridge, the rhythmic thump of their feet amplified to a roaring drum roll as the planks vibrated and the echoes bounced off the water below. That their coming could be heard for miles was evident as the legions peeled off to either side on German soil. The Ubii chieftains were waiting in a group, but no German warriors stood behind them.

“It wasn't us!” cried their leader, whose name, inevitably, was Herman. “Caesar, we swear it! The Suebi sent men to aid the Treveri, we didn't! Not one Ubian warrior has crossed the river to help the Treveri, we swear it!”

“Calm down, Arminius,” said Caesar through his interpreter, and giving the agitated spokesman the Latin version of his name. “If that's so, you have nothing to fear.” With the Ubii leaders stood another aristocrat whose black clothing proclaimed that he belonged to the Cherusci, a powerful tribe living between the Sugambri and the river Albis. Caesar's eyes kept going to him, fascinated. White skin, red-gold curls and a distinct look of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Who had, he remembered being told, spied for Gaius Marius among the Germans. He and Quintus Sertorius. How old was this man? Hard to tell with Germans, whose air was soft and skins consequently young. But he could be sixty. Yes, very possible.

“What's your name?” he asked through the interpreter.

“Cornel,” said the Cheruscian.

“Are you a twin?”

The pale eyes, so like Caesar's own, widened and filled with respect. “I was. My brother was killed in a war with the Suebi.”

“And your father?”

“A great chieftain, so my mother said. He was of the Celtae.”

“His name?”

“Cornel.”

“And now you lead the Cherusci.”

“I do.”

“Do you plan war with Rome?”

“Never.”

Whereupon Caesar smiled and turned away to talk to Herman. “Calm down, Arminius!” he repeated. “I accept your word. In which case, retire into your strongholds, make your supplies safe, and do nothing. I want Ambiorix, not war.”

“The news was shouted down the river while your bridge was still building, Caesar. Ambiorix is gone to his own people, the Eburones. The Suebi have been shouting it constantly.”

“That's considerate of them, but I think I'll look for myself,” said Caesar, smiling. “However, Arminius, while I've got you here, I have a proposition for you. The Ubii are horse soldiers, they say the best in Germania, and far better than any Belgic tribe. Have I been misled?” Herman swelled proudly. “No, you have not.”

“But you find it difficult to get good horses, is that right?”

“Very, Caesar. Some we get from the Cimbric Chersonnese, where the old Cimbri bred huge beasts. And our raids into Belgica are rarely for land. We go for Italian and Spanish horses.”

“Then,” said Caesar in the most friendly way, “I might be in a position to help you, Arminius.”

“Help me?”

“Yes. When next winter comes, send me four hundred of your very best horse soldiers to a place called Vienne, in the Roman Province. Don't bother mounting them well. They'll find eight hundred of the very best Remi horses waiting for them, and if they get to Vienne early enough, they'll have time to train the animals. I will also send you a gift of another thousand Remi horses, with good breeding stallions among them. I'll pay the Remi out of my own purse. Interested?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Excellent! We'll talk about it further when I leave.”

Caesar strolled then to Cornel, who had waited out of earshot with the rest of the chieftains and Caesar's superintendent of interpreters, Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus.

“One further thing, Cornel,” he said. “Do you have sons?”

“Twenty-three, by eleven wives.”

“And do they have sons?”

“Those who are old enough do.”

“Oh, how Sulla would love that!” said Caesar, laughing. “And do you have any daughters?”

“Six whom I let live. The prettiest ones. That's why I'm here. One of them is to marry Herman's eldest son.”

“You're right,” Caesar said, nodding wisely. “Six are more than enough to make useful marriages. What a provident fellow you are!” He straightened, sobered. “Stay here, Cornel. On my way back to Gallia Comata I will require treaties of peace and friendship with the Ubii. And it would enormously gratify a very great Roman, long dead, if I also concluded a treaty of peace and friendship with the Cherusci.”

“But we already have one, Caesar,” said Cornel.“ Really? When was it made?”

“About the time I was born. I have it still.”

“And I haven't done my homework. No doubt it's nailed to the wall in Jupiter Feretrius, right where Sulla put it. Unless it perished in the fire.” Sulla's German son was standing lost, but Caesar had no intention of enlightening him. Instead, he gazed about in mock bewilderment. “But I don't see the Sugambri! Where are they?” Herman swallowed. “They'll be here when you return, Caesar.”

The Suebi had retreated to the eaves of the Bacenis Forest, a limitless expanse of beech, oak and birch which eventually fused with an even mightier forest, the Hercynian, and spread untrammeled a thousand miles to far Dacia and the sources of the fabulous rivers flowing down to the Euxine Sea. It was said that a man could walk for sixty days and not reach the middle of it. Wherever oaks and acorns were, there also were pigs; in this impenetrable fastness the boars were massive, tusked, and mindlessly savage. Wolves slunk everywhere, hunting in packs, afraid of nothing. The forests of Gaul, particularly the Arduenna, still held many boars and wolves, but the forests of Germania contained myths and fables because men had not yet forced them to retreat eastward. Horrifying creatures lived there! Huge elk which had to lean on trees to sleep, so heavy were their horns; aurochs the size of small elephants; and gigantic bears, dowered with claws as long as a man's fingers, teeth bigger than a lion's, bears which towered over a man when they stood upright. Deer, wild cattle and wild sheep were their food, but they were not averse to men. The Germani hunted them for their pelts, highly prized for sleeping warmth and highly valued as items of trade. No surprise then that the troops regarded the fringes of the Bacenis Forest with trepidation, and promised innumerable rich offerings to Sol Indiges and Tellus if those Gods would only pop the thought into Caesar's head that he didn't want to go inside. For they would follow him, but do so in great dread.