Caesar (24 page)

Pompey laid the letter down with trembling hands and then used them to cover his face. How dare he! Just who did Caesar think he was, to offer a man who had had three of the highest-born brides in Rome a girl who was a bigger nobody than Antistia? Oh, well, Magnus, I don't have a second daughter, and Philippus—ye Gods, Philippus!—won't divorce my niece for you, but my dog once piddled in your yard, so why don't you marry this nobody Octavia? After all, she shits in the same latrine as a Julian woman!He began to grind his teeth; the fists clenched, unclenched, A moment later his horrified household heard the unmistakable sound of something they hadn't heard during Julia's time. A Pompeian temper tantrum. There would be bent metal from precious to base, smashed vessels, tufts of hair, specks of blood and shredded fabric to clear up. Oh, dear! What had the letter from Caesar said?But after the spasm was over, Pompey felt much better. He sat down at his ink-splattered desk, found a pen and some untorn paper, and scribbled the draft of an answer for Caesar.

Sorry, old chap, I love you too, but afraid none of the marriage business is remotely possible. I have another bride in mind for myself, and Pompeia is perfectly happy with Faustus Sulla. Appreciate your dilemma over Calpurnia, but can't help, really, really can't help. Glad to send Cicero to Ravenna. He has to listen to you, since you're the one he owes all the money to. Won't listen to me, but then I'm a mere Pompeius from that nest of Gauls, Picenum. Happy to oblige with that little law about in absentia. Do it the moment I can, rest assured. Be quite a coup if I can persuade all ten tribunes of the plebs to endorse it, eh?

A runnel of blood trickled down his face from his lacerated scalp, reminding him that he had made rather a mess of his study. He clapped his hands for his steward.“ Clean up, will you?” he asked in the tone of an order, and not according Doriscus his name because he never did. “Send my secretary in. I need a good copy made of a letter.”

When Brutus returned to Rome from Cilicia at the very beginning of February, he had of course first to face his wife, Claudia, and his mother, Servilia. The truth was that he infinitely preferred the company of Claudia's father to Claudia, but he and Scaptius had done so well in the moneylending business in Cilicia that he had had firmly to decline Appius Claudius's offer to keep him on as quaestor. Because that vile wretch Aulus Gabinius had passed a law which made it very difficult for Romans to lend money to non-citizen provincials, his return to Rome had become mandatory. As he was a senator now, and so superbly connected to at least half the House, he could procure senatorial decrees to exempt the firm of Matinius et Scaptius from the lex Gabinia. Matinius et Scaptius was a fine old company of usurers and financiers, but nowhere on its books did it record the fact that its real name ought to have been Brutus et Brutus. Senators were not permitted to engage in any business ventures unrelated to the ownership of land, a fribble which at least half the Senate had ways of getting around; most of Rome thought the worst senatorial offender in this respect was the late Marcus Licinius Crassus, but had Crassus been alive, he could have disillusioned most of Rome on that score. By far the worst offender was young Marcus Junius Brutus, who was also, thanks to a testamentary adoption, Quintus Servilius Caepio, heir to the Gold of Tolosa. Not that there was any gold; there had not been any gold for fifty and more years. It had all gone to purchase a commercial empire which was the inheritance of Servilia's only full brother. Who had died without a male heir fifteen years ago, and made Brutus his heir. Brutus loved not so much money itself—that had been poor Crassus’s abetting sin—as what money brought with it. Power. Perhaps understandable in one whose illustrious name could not fix its owner in the center of a blaze of brilliance. For Brutus was not tall, not handsome, not inspiring, not intelligent in the ways Rome admired. As to how he looked, that could not be very much improved, for the dreadful acne which had so diminished him as a youth had not gone away with maturity; the poor empustuled face could not endure a razor in a time and place when and where all men were invariably smoothly shaven. He did the best he could by clipping his dense black beard as closely as possible, but his large, heavy-lidded and very sad brown eyes looked out on his world from the midst of a facial shambles. Knowing it, hating it, he had retreated from any circumstances likely to make him the focus of ridicule, sarcasm, pity. Thus he had—or rather, his mother had—procured exemption from compulsory military service, and appeared but briefly in the Forum to learn the legalities and protocols of public life. This last was not something he was prepared to give up; a Junius Brutus could not do that. For he traced his lineage back to Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Republic, and through his mother to Gaius Servilius Ahala, who had killed Maelius when he tried to restore the monarchy. The first thirty years of his life had been spent waiting in the wings to enter upon the only stage he craved: the Senate, and the consulship. Snug within the Senate, he knew that how he looked would not militate against him. The Conscript Fathers of the Senate, his peers, respected familial clout and money far too much. Power would bring him what his face and body could not, nor his pretensions to an intellectualism no deeper than the skin on sheep's milk. But Brutus wasn't stupid, though that was what the name Brutus meant—stupid. The founder of the Republic had survived the tyrannies of Rome's last King by seeming to be stupid. A very big difference. No one appreciated that fact more than did Brutus. He felt nothing for his wife, not even repugnance; Claudia was a nice little thing, very quiet and undemanding. Somehow she had managed to carve herself a tiny niche in the house her mother-in-law ran in much the same way as Lucullus had run his army—coldly, unswervingly, inhumanly. Luckily it was large enough to afford Brutus's wife her own sitting room, and there she had set herself up with her loom and her distaff, her paints and her treasured collection of dolls. Since she spun beautifully and wove at least as well as professional weavers, she was able to draw favorable comment from her mother-in-law, and even allowed to make Servilia lengths of fine and filmy fabrics for her gowns. Claudia painted flowers on bowls, birds and butterflies on plates, then sent them to the Velabrum to be glazed. They made such nice presents, a serious concern for a Claudia Pulchra, who had so many aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces that a small purse did not extend far enough. Unfortunately she was quite as shy as Brutus, so that when he returned from Cilicia—almost a stranger, in fact, as he had married her scant weeks before leaving—she found herself in no position to deflect his attention from his mother. So far he had not visited her sleeping cubicle, which had created a pillow damp from tears each morning, and during dinner (when Brutus attended) Servilia gave her no chance to say a word—had Claudia thought of a word to say. Therefore it was Servilia who occupied Brutus's time and Brutus's mind whenever he entered the house which was actually his, though he never thought of it as his. She was now fifty-two years old, Servilia. Little had changed about her in many years. Her figure was voluptuous but well proportioned, hardly an inch thicker in the waist than it had been before she produced her four children, and her long, thick black hair was still long, thick and black. Two lines had etched themselves one on either side of her nose and ran down past the corners of her small, secretive mouth, but her forehead was uncreased and the skin beneath her chin enviably taut. Caesar, in fact, would have found her no different. Nor did she intend that he would when he returned to Rome. He still dictated the terms of her life, though she did not admit that even to herself. Sometimes she ached for him with a dry, awful longing she could not assuage; and sometimes she loathed him, usually when she wrote him an infrequent letter, or heard his name spoken at a dinner party. Ever more and more, these days. Caesar was famous. Caesar was a hero. Caesar was a man, free to do as he pleased, not trammeled by the conventions of a society which Servilia found quite as repressive as Clodia and Clodilla did, but which she would not transgress as they did every day of their lives. So whereas Clodia sat demurely on the bank of the Tiber opposite the Trigarium wherein the young men swam, and sent her rowboat across with a proposition for some lovely naked fellow, Servilia sat among the arid mustiness of her account books and her specially procured verbatim records of meetings of the Senate and plotted, and schemed, and chafed, and yearned for action. But why had she associated action with the return of her only son? Oh, he was impossible! No handsomer. No taller. No less enamored of her hateful half brother, Cato. If anything, Brutus was worse. At thirty, he was developing a slight fussiness of manner which reminded Servilia too painfully of that underbred upstart from Arpinum, Marcus Tullius Cicero. He didn't waddle, but he didn't stroll either, and a stroll with shoulders back was mandatory for a man to look his best in a toga. Brutus took quick little steps. He was pedantic. A trifle absent. And if her inner eye filled suddenly with a vision of Gaius Julius Caesar, so tall and golden and brazenly beautiful, oozing power, she would snarl at Brutus over dinner, and drive him away to seek solace with that frightful descendant of a slave, Cato. Not a happy household. In which, after three or four days had gone by, Brutus spent less and less time. It hurt to have to pay good money for a bodyguard, but one glance at the environs of the Forum, followed by a conversation with Bibulus, had decided him to pay that money. Even Uncle Cato, so fearless that he had had the same arm broken several times in the Forum over the years, now employed a bodyguard.“ Times are fine for ex-gladiators,” Cato brayed. “They can pick and choose. A good man charges five hundred sesterces per nundinae, and then insists on plenty of time off. I exist at the beck and call of a dozen cerebrally deficient soldiers of the sawdust who eat me out of house and home and tell me when I can go to the Forum!”

“I don't understand,” said Brutus, wrinkling his brow. “If we're under martial law and Pompeius is in charge, why hasn't the violence settled down? What's being done?”

“Nothing whatsoever, nephew.”

“Why?”

“Because Pompeius wants to be made Dictator.”

“That doesn't surprise me. He's been after absolute power since he executed my father out of hand in Italian Gaul. And poor Carbo, whom he wouldn't even accord privacy to relieve his bowels before he beheaded him. Pompeius is a barbarian.” Cato's ruined appearance devastated Brutus, a mere eleven years younger than Cato. Thus Cato had never seemed avuncular; more an older brother, wise and brave and so unbelievably strong in himself. Of course Brutus had not known Cato very well during his childhood and young manhood. Servilia would not permit uncle and nephew to fraternize. All that had changed from the day when Caesar had come round in the full regalia of the Pontifex Maximus and calmly announced that he was breaking the engagement between Julia and Brutus in order to marry Julia to the man who had murdered Brutus's father. Because Caesar had needed Pompey. Brutus's heart had broken that day, never knit itself together again. Oh, he had loved Julia! Waited for her to grow up. Then had to see her go to a man who wasn't fit for her to wipe her shoes on. But she would see that in time; Brutus had settled back to wait, still loving her. Until she died. He hadn't seen her in months, and then she died. All he really wanted to believe was that somewhere, in some other time, he would meet her again, and she would love him as much as he loved her. So after her death he soaked himself in Plato, that most spiritual and tender of all philosophers, never having understood until she died what Plato was actually saying. And now, gazing at Cato, Brutus understood what he was living through in a way no one else who was close to Cato could ever comprehend; for he gazed at a man whose love had gone to someone else, a man who couldn't learn to unlove. Sorrow washed over Brutus, made him bend his head. Oh, Uncle Cato, he wanted to cry out, I understand! You and I are twins in a wilderness of the soul, and we cannot find our way into the garden of peace. I wonder, Uncle Cato, if at the moments of our deaths we will think of them, you of Marcia and I of Julia. Does the pain ever go away, do the memories, does the enormity of our loss?But he said none of this, just looked at the folds of toga in his lap until the tears went away. He swallowed, said rather inaudibly, “What will happen?”

“One thing will not happen, Brutus. Pompeius will never be made Dictator. I will use my sword to stop my heart in the middle of the Forum before I would see it. There is no place in the Republic for a Pompeius— or a Caesar. They want to be better than all other men, they want to reduce us to pigmies in their shadow, they want to be like—like—like Jupiter. And we free Romans would end in worshiping them as gods. But not this free Roman! I will die first. I mean it,” said Cato. Brutus swallowed again. “I believe you, Uncle. But if we cannot cure these ills, can we at least understand how they began? Such trouble! It seems to have been there all my life, and it gets worse.”

“It started with the Brothers Gracchi, particularly with Gaius Gracchus. It went then to Marius, to Cinna and Carbo, to Sulla, and now to Pompeius. But it isn't Pompeius I fear, Brutus. It never has been. I fear Caesar.”

“I never knew Sulla, but people say Caesar is like him,” said Brutus slowly.“ Precisely,” said Cato. “Sulla. It always comes back to the man with the birthright, which is why no one feared Marius in his day, nor fears Pompeius now. To be a patrician is better. We cannot eradicate that except as my great-grandfather the Censor dealt with Scipio Africanus and Scipio Asiagenus. Pull them down!”

“Yet I hear from Bibulus that the boni are wooing Pompeius.”

“Oh, yes. And I approve of it. If you want to catch the king of thieves, Brutus, bait your trap with a prince of thieves. We'll use Pompeius to bring Caesar down.”

“I also hear that Porcia is to marry Bibulus.”

“She is.”

“May I see her?” Cato nodded, fast losing interest; his hand strayed to the wine flagon on his desk. “She's in her room.” Brutus rose and left the study by the door opening onto the small, austere peristyle garden; its columns were severest Doric, of pool or fountain it had none, and its walls were unadorned by frescoes or hung paintings. Down one side of it were ranged the rooms belonging to Cato, Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus; down the other side were the rooms belonging to Porcia and her adolescent brother, Marcus Junior. Beyond them were a bathroom and latrine, with the kitchen and a servants' area at the far end. The last time he had seen his cousin Porcia was before he left to go to Cyprus with her father, and that had been six years ago; Cato didn't encourage her to mix with those who called to see him. A thin, lanky girl, he remembered. Still, why try to remember? He was about to see her. Her room was minute, and stunningly untidy. Scrolls, book buckets and papers literally everywhere, and in no sort of order. She was sitting at her table with her head bent over an unfurled book, mumbling her way through it.“ Porcia?” She looked up, gasped, lumbered to her feet; a dozen pieces of paper fluttered to the terrazzo floor, the inkpot went flying, four scrolls disappeared down the gap at the back of the table. It was the den of a Stoic— dismally plain, freezingly cold, utterly unfeminine. No loom or furbelows in Porcia's quarters!But then Porcia was dismally plain and not very feminine, though no one could accuse her of coldness. She was so tall! Somewhere up around Caesar's height, Brutus fancied, craning his neck. A mop of luridly red, almost kinkily waving hair, a pale yet unfreckled skin, a pair of luminous grey eyes, and a nose which bade fair to outrank her father's.“ Brutus! Dear, dear Brutus!” she cried, folding him in a hug that squeezed all the breath out of him and made it difficult for him to touch his toes to the floor. “Oh, tata says it is a right act to love those who are good and a part of the family, so I can love you! Brutus, how good to see you! Come in, come in!”

Dumped back on the ground again, Brutus watched his cousin flounder about sweeping a stack of scrolls and buckets off an old chair, then hunt for a duster to render its surface less likely to leave grey smears all over his toga. And gradually a smile began to tug at the corners of his doleful mouth; she was such an elephant! Though she wasn't fat, or even rounded. Flat chest, wide shoulders, narrow hips. Abominably dressed in what Servilia would have called a baby-cack-brown canvas tent. And yet, he had decided by the time she had maneuvered both of them onto chairs, Porcia wasn't dismally plain at all, nor did she, despite that masculine physique, give an impression of mannishness. She crackled with life, and it endowed her with a certain bizarre attractiveness that he fancied most men, once over the initial shock, would appreciate. The hair was fantastic; so were the eyes. And her mouth was lovely, deliciously kissable. She heaved a huge sigh, slapped her hands on her knees (far apart, but unselfconsciously so), beamed at him in simple pleasure. “Oh, Brutus! You haven't changed a bit.” His look was wry, but it didn't put her off-stride in the least; to Porcia, he was what he was, and that was not in any way a handicap. Very strangely brought up, deprived of her mother when she was six years old, unexposed since to the influence of women save for two years of Marcia (who hadn't noticed her), she had no inbuilt ideas of what beauty was, or ugliness was, or any—to her—abstract state of being. Brutus was her dearly loved first cousin, therefore he was beautiful. Ask any Greek philosopher.“ You've grown,” he said, then realized how that would sound to her—oh, Brutus, think! She too is a freak!But clearly she took him literally. She emitted the same neigh of laughter Cato did, and showed the same big, slightly protruding top teeth; her voice too was like his, harsh, loud and unmelodic. “Grown through the ceiling, tata says! I'm taller than he is by quite a bit, though he's a tall man. I must say,” she whinnied, “that I'm very pleased to be so tall. I find that it gives me a great deal of authority. Odd, that people are awed by accidents of birth and nature, isn't it? Still, I have found it to be so.” The most extraordinary picture was forming in Brutus's mind, and not the sort of picture that he was prone to conjure up; but it was quite irresistible to envision tiny, frosty Bibulus trying to cover this flaming pillar of fire. Had the incongruity of the match occurred to him?“ Your father tells me you are to marry Bibulus.”