The October Horse (63 page)

Her head went back, she laughed. “Honestly? A mouse like you? A rabbit? A worm? A spineless nonentity under the thumb of an atrocious monster of a wife? I can credit she'd murder him, but you? It's far easier to believe in flying pigs.”

“Quite so, Mama.”

“Well, don't stand there looking like a moron! Go and see Caesar before he has you charged with plotting his murder.”

Brutus did as he was told—well, didn't he always? In the end, it was the best alternative.

“So that's what happened, Caesar,” he said to the Dictator Perpetuus in his study at the Domus Publica. “I apologize for the worry it must have caused you.”

“It intrigued me, Brutus, but it didn't worry me. Why should the thought of death worry any man? There's little I haven't done or achieved, though I trust I'll live long enough to conquer the Kingdom of the Parthians.” The pale eyes were permanently washed out these days, the pressure of work almost too much even for a Caesar. “If it isn't conquered, our western world will rue it sooner or later. I do confess I won't be sorry to leave Rome.” A smile lit the eyes. “Not the right thing for a man who aspires to be king to say, is it? Oh, Brutus, what man in his right mind would want to king it over a contentious, fractious, prickly lot of Romans? Not I!”

Brutus blinked at sudden tears, lowered his lashes. “A good question, Caesar. I wouldn't want to king it either. The trouble is that the graffiti have started rumors that there's a plot afoot to kill you. Start using your lictors again, please.”

“I don't think so,” Caesar said cheerfully, ushering his visitor out. “If I did, people would say I was afraid, and I can't have that. The worst part of it is that Calpurnia has heard the rumors, and frets. So does Cleopatra.” He laughed. “Women! Let them, and they'd have a man shrinking like a violet.”

“How very true,” said Brutus, and walked back to his house to face his wife.

“Is it right, what Servilia said?” Porcia demanded ferociously.

“I don't know until you tell me what she said.”

“That you've been to see Caesar.”

“After the rash of graffiti in so many public places, Porcia, I could do little else,” Brutus said stiffly. “There's no need to fly into a rage– Fortuna is smiling on your cause. I am able to blame Matinius. If that satisfied Mama, which it did, it couldn't help but satisfy our ruler.” He took Porcia's hands in his own, squeezed them. “My dear girl, you must learn discretion! If you don't, we cannot succeed in this enterprise. Hysterical scenes and self-mutilation have to stop, hear me? If you genuinely love me, then protect me, don't incriminate me. Having seen Caesar, I now have to see Cassius, who must be as worried as I am. Not to mention the others involved. What was a secret is now being talked about everywhere, thanks to you.”

“I had to get you to do it,” she said.

“Granted, but you did. Your mood is too unstable. Have you forgotten that my mother lives here? She was Caesar's mistress for years, and she still loves him desperately.” His face twisted. “Please believe me, my dearest one, when I say that I have no love for Caesar. All my pain is because of him. Were I a Cassius, to kill him would be easier than lifting a feather. But what you will not understand is that I am not a Cassius. To speak of murder and to do murder are two very different things. In all my life I have never killed a creature bigger than a spider. But to kill Caesar?” He shuddered. “That is like deliberately stepping into the Fields of Fire. A right act in one way, I can see that, but in another—oh, Porcia, I cannot convince myself that killing him will benefit Rome or bring back the Republic. My instincts say that to kill him will only make matters worse. Because to kill him is to tamper with the will of the gods. All murder does that.”

She heard part of it, but only what her unruly heart would let her hear. Her light died, she drooped. “Dear Brutus, I see the justice in your criticisms of me. I am too unstable, my moods do get out of control. I will behave, I promise. But to kill him is the rightest act in Rome's history!”

•      •      •

February over, Caesar convened the Senate on the Kalends of March, intending it to be the last meeting before he stepped down as consul on the Ides. Shipment of the legions across the Adriatic continued at a furious pace; on the Macedonian side of that sea they were camped between Dyrrachium and Apollonia, with Caesar's personal staff located in Apollonia. Dyrrachium was the northern and Apollonia the southern terminus of the Via Egnatia, the Roman road east to Thrace and the Hellespont. An eight-hundred-mile march that the legions were expected to complete in a month.

At the meeting on the Kalends Caesar outlined the intended campaign of Publius Vatinius and Marcus Antonius against King Burebistas of the Dacians, necessary because, said Caesar, he was going to plant colonies of Roman Head Count all around the margins of the Euxine Sea. As soon as the year was over, he went on, Publius Dolabella would go to Syria as governor and keep Caesar supplied during his campaigns. The House, quite sparsely attended, was polite enough to listen to this old news.

“When the Senate convenes on the Ides, it will do so outside the pomerium, as the subject will be my war. In the Curia Pompeia, rather than in Bellona. Bellona is too small. At that meeting I will also allocate provinces to this year's praetors.”

•      •      •

That night the Kill Caesar Club gathered at the temple of Ceres. When Cassius walked in with Marcus Brutus, the rest of the members stared in disbelief, including Gaius Trebonius.

“Knock me over with a pine needle!” Publius Casca exclaimed. Like everybody else, he was extremely apprehensive, for the rumors of a conspiracy to kill Caesar were increasing. “Did you give us away to Caesar when you saw him, Brutus?”

“Well, did you?” his brother, Gaius Casca, demanded.

“We discussed the peculations of a colleague of mine,” Brutus said coolly as he moved with Cassius to a bench beneath Pluto. He had gone beyond fear, was reconciled to what was going to happen, though setting eyes on some of these faces was no joy. Lucius Minucius Basilus! Did any noble purpose need such dross to fuel it? An upstart who claimed descent from Cincinnatus's Minucius and tortured his slaves! And Petronius, an insect whose father had been a dealer in mine and quarry slaves! Caesennius Lento, already a murderer of the great! And Aquila, his mother's lover, who was younger than her son! Oh, what a wonderful little group!

“Order, order!” Trebonius said sharply; he too was feeling the strain. “Marcus Brutus, welcome.” He walked to the center of the floor beneath the plinth of Ceres and looked at the twenty-two faces, ruddied by the lamplight, grotesquely shadowed, ominous and unfamiliar. “Tonight we have to make some decisions. There are but fourteen days left until the Ides of March. Though Caesar says he'll remain three further days in Rome after that, we can't count on it. If word should come from Brundisium that he's needed, he'll go at once. Whereas until the Ides, he has to be in Rome.”

He took a turn about the cella, an ordinary man of the most undistinguished kind, slight in build, average in height, drab of coloring and mien. Yet, as all the men present knew, remarkably able. If his brief consulship had been humdrum, it was only because Caesar had left him nothing of note to do. He was governor-designate of Asia Province, not a military command, admittedly, but a difficult job thanks to the province's financial distress. His greatest asset was his peculiarly Roman intelligence—a mixture of pragmatism, an instinct for the right moment to act, a nose sensitive to brewing trouble, and superlative logistical skills. Therefore they settled down to listen to him feeling less queasy, less unsure.

“For Marcus Brutus's benefit, I had better outline what has already been decided, namely, the location of the deed. The fact that Caesar has no lictors is of immeasurable importance, but he is still surrounded by hundreds of clients whenever he goes about the city. That narrowed our opportunity to one location—the long lane between Cleopatra's palace and the Via Aurelia, because he takes no one with him when he goes to visit her except two or three secretaries. Now that the Transtiberini have been thinned out by his migrant pursuits, the area is deserted. So that is where we will ambush him. The date has not yet been decided.”

“Ambush?” asked Brutus, sounding amazed. “Surely you're not going to ambush Caesar? How will people know who did it?”

“Ambush is the only way,” said Trebonius blankly. “To prove we did it, we take his head and we go to the Forum, where we soften everybody up with a couple of magnificent speeches, call the Senate into session and demand that it commend us for ridding Rome of a tyrant. If we have to, we kidnap Cicero into attending—he'll back us up, nothing surer.”

“That is absolutely appalling!” Brutus cried. “Disgusting! Sickening! Caesar's head? And why isn't Cicero a part of this?”

“Because Cicero's chickenhearted and incapable of keeping his mouth shut!” Decimus Brutus snapped, hackles up. “We'll use him afterward, not before or during. How do you envision killing Caesar, Brutus? In public?”

“Yes, in public,” Brutus said without hesitation.

A collective gasp went up.

“We'd be lynched on the spot,” said Galba, swallowing.

“This is tyrannicide, not murder,” said Brutus in the tone that told Cassius that Brutus's mind was irrevocably made up. “It must be a public deed, out in the open. Anything furtive brands us as assassins. I was led to believe that we're acting in the spirit of the first Brutus and Ahala, who were liberators, and hailed as such. Our motives are pure, our intentions noble. We're ridding Rome of a tyrant king, and that calls for the courage of our convictions. Don't you see?” he asked, hands out in appeal. “We cannot be applauded for this deed if it has been done secretly, by stealth!”

“Oh, I do see,” Basilus sneered. “We meet Caesar on the, say, Sacra Via, in the midst of a thousand of his clients, we part the sea of people, stroll up to him casually and say, 'Ave, Caesar, we are honorable men who are about to kill you. Now just stand there, drop the toga off your left shoulder, and present your heart for our daggers.' What utter rot! Whereabouts do you live, Brutus? Among the clouds of Olympus? Plato's ideal republic?”

“No, but I don't busy myself with hot irons and pincers for my own amusement either, Basilus!” Brutus snarled, astonished at his own fierce anger. Pushed into this by Porcia he might have been, but he was not about to pander to the likes of a Minucius Basilus for a thousand Catos! Irrevocably committed, he found now that he cared.

Listening to an obdurate Brutus had an unexpected effect on Cassius; from self-preservation he went to a sudden enormous desire to offer his very life on the altar of Brutus's making. Brutus was right! What better way to kill Caesar than out in the open? They would all die for it on the spot, but Rome would put their statues among the gods forever. There were worse fates.

“Tacete, the lot of you!” he yelled, entering the fray. “He is right, you fools! We do the deed in public! It's my experience that things clandestine are more likely to go wrong—straight ahead is the way to go, not down some crooked lane. Naturally we don't just walk up to Caesar and announce our intentions, Basilus, but a knife can kill as surely in public as anywhere else. What's more, it gives us the chance to kill all three of them in one swoop. Caesar has a habit of standing with his junior consul on one side and his suffect consul on the other.” He hit the palm of one hand with the other's fist—smack! “We get rid of Antonius and Dolabella as well as Caesar.”

“No!” Brutus shouted. “No, no! We're tyrannicides, not mass murderers! I won't hear of killing Antonius and Dolabella! If they happen to be flanking him, let them. We kill the king—only the king! Crying out even as we do it that we are freeing Rome of a tyrant! Then we drop our daggers and we go to the rostra, where we speak to everyone proudly, unashamedly, jubilantly! Our best orators will have to make mountains move and gorgons weep, but we have orators in our ranks able to do that. We will call ourselves Rome's liberators, and stand there wearing caps of liberty to reinforce our action.”

Oh, why did I ever think that Marcus Brutus would prove an asset? Trebonius asked himself, listening to this nonsense with a leaden heart. His eyes met Decimus Brutus's, who rolled his upward in despair. No matter if Brutus was howled down, the plan was in tatters, its integrity undermined. To do the deed in secret and confess to it at a prearranged moment, with Antonius already apprised, was one thing. What Brutus suggested was sheer suicide. Antonius would have to retaliate by killing them! Mind racing, Trebonius tried to pluck something out of the debris that would retrieve the plan.

“Wait! Wait! I have it!” he hollered, so loudly that the developing argument ceased. Every face turned to him. “It can be done publicly, yet safely,” he said. “On the Ides of March, in the Curia Pompeia—is that public enough for you, Brutus?”

“A curia of the Senate is exactly the right kind of public place,” Brutus gasped, eyes distended, sweat rolling off his brow. “I didn't mean to imply that it should necessarily be done in the midst of a huge Forum crowd, only that there must be witnesses of the highest repute present—men able to swear on sacred oath to our sincerity, our honorable intentions. A meeting of the House would fulfill all my criteria, Trebonius.”

“Then that solves where we do it and when we do it,” Trebonius said thankfully. “Caesar always goes straight inside, he never pauses to chat. Usually he spends the time between his entry and the House's seating itself in his eternal paperwork. But he never infringes the House rules by bringing any secretaries in, and he has no lictors. Once he enters the curia, he's totally unprotected. I agree with you entirely, Brutus, that we kill Caesar and Caesar alone. That means we have to keep the other curule magistrates outside until the deed is done, because they all have lictors. Lictors don't think, they act. Let any men raise a hand against Caesar in the presence of anyone's lictors, and they'll leap to his defense. We won't succeed. So it is vital that we keep the other curule magistrates outside.”