The Ides of March
Authors: Valerio Massimo Manfredi,Christine Feddersen-Manfredi
Tags: #Suspense, #FIC014000
V
ALERIO
M
ASSIMO
M
ANFREDI
THE IDES OF MARCH
Translated from the Italian by Christine Feddersen-Manfredi
First published in Canada in 2009 by
McArthur & Company
322 King Street West, Suite 402
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 1J2
www.mcarthur-co.com
First published in English in the United Kingdom by Macmillan
First published in Italian as Le Idi di Marzo by
Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano
Copyright © Valerio Massimo Manfredi 2009
Translation copyright © Macmillan 2009
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the expressed written consent of the publisher, is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Manfredi, Valerio
The ides of March / Valerio Massimo Manfredi ; translated
from the Italian by Christine Feddersen-Manfredi.
Translation of: Idi di marzo.
ISBN 978-1-55278-835-6
1. Caesar, Julius–Fiction. 2. Rome–History–53–44 B.C.–Fiction.
I. Feddersen-Manfredi, Christine II. Title.
PQ4873.A47I3413 2009 853’.914 C2009-904278-9
Typeset by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Waldon, Essex
Cover illustration by Luca Tarlazzi © 3ntini Service
eISBN 978-1-77087-026-0
T
O
J
OHN AND
D
IANA
Those who are about to die are dead, and the dead are nothing.
Euripides,
Alcestis
, 527
CONTENTS
Romae, ante diem VIII Idus Martias, hora prima
Rome, 8 March, six a.m.
T
HE DAY DAWNED GREY
. The winter sky was heavy, leaden, the morning a mere hint of light filtering through the vaporous mass spreading over the horizon. Sounds were muffled as well, as dull and sluggish as the clouds veiling the light. The wind came down the Vicus Jugarius in uncertain puffs, like the laboured breathing of a fugitive.
A magistrate appeared in the square at the south end of the Forum. He walked alone, but the insignia he wore made him recognizable all the same, and he was advancing at a brisk pace towards the Temple of Saturn. He slowed in front of the statue of Lucius Junius Brutus, the hero who had overthrown the monarchy nearly five centuries earlier. At the feet of the frowning bronze effigy, on the pedestal bearing his epitaph, someone had scribbled in red lead: ‘Do you slumber, Brutus?’
The magistrate shook his head and continued on his way, adjusting the toga that slipped from his narrow shoulders at every flurry. He walked quickly up the temple steps, past the still-steaming altar, and disappeared into the shadows of the portico.
A
WINDOW OPENED
on the top floor of the House of the Vestals. The virgins who maintained the sacred fire were busy with their duties, while the others were preparing to rest after their night-long vigil.
The Vestalis Maxima, wrapped all in white, had just left the inner courtyard and turned towards the statue of Vesta, which stood in the centre of the cloister, when the earth began to shake beneath her feet. The goddess’s head swayed to the right and then to the left. The moulding behind the fountain cracked and a chunk broke off, falling sharply to the ground, the sound amplified by the surrounding silence.
As the Vestal raised her eyes to the wind and clouds, dull thunder could be heard in the distance. Her eyes filled with foreboding. Why was the earth trembling?
O
N THE
T
IBER
I
SLAND
, headquarters to the Ninth Legion, which was stationed outside the city walls under the command of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the last shift was going off guard duty. The soldiers and their centurion saluted the Eagle and returned in double file to their quarters. The Tiber flowed turbulently around the island, her dark, swollen waters rising to wash over the bare branches of the alders that bent at her banks.
A
HIGH-PITCHED
, broken scream punctured the livid silence of dawn. A scream from the residence of the Pontifex Maximus. The House of the Vestals was practically adjacent and the virgins were thrown into panic. They’d heard the scream before, but each time it was worse.
Another scream and the Vestalis Maxima went to the door. From the threshold she could see the bodyguards, two enormous Celts, flanking the door of the Domus. They were apparently impassive. Perhaps they were accustomed to the screams and knew where they came from. Could they be coming from him? From the Pontifex himself ? The sound was distorted and mewling now, like the whine of an animal in pain. Hurried footsteps could be heard as a man approached the door carrying a leather bag and made his way past the two Celts, solid and still as telamons. He slipped into the front hall of the ancient building.
The rumble of distant thunder still sounded from the mountains and a stiff wind bowed the tops of the ash trees on the Quirinal. Three trumpet blasts announced the new day. The Vestalis Maxima closed the door to the sanctuary and gathered herself in prayer before the goddess.
T
HE DOCTOR
was met by Calpurnia, the wife of the Pontifex Maximus. She seemed quite frightened.
‘Antistius, at last! Come this way quickly. We haven’t been able to calm him down this time. Silius is with him.’
Searching through his bag as he followed her, Antistius pulled out a wooden stick covered with leather and entered the room.
Lying on an unkempt bed and dripping with sweat, his eyes staring at nothing, his mouth drooling while his teeth were clenched tight and bared in a snarl, was the Pontifex Maximus, Dictator Perpetuo, Caius Julius Caesar, in the throes of a seizure. The brawny arms of his adjutant, Silius Salvidienus, held him down.
Calpurnia lowered her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to see her husband this way and turned to the wall. Meanwhile, Antistius got on to the bed and worked the wooden stick between his patient’s teeth until he could force them apart.
'Keep him still!' he ordered Silius. 'Still!'
He extracted a glass phial from his bag and placed a few drops of dark liquid on Caesar’s tongue. In a short while, the seizures began to let up, but Silius didn’t release his hold until the doctor signalled that he could ease Caesar back down on to his back. The adjutant then gently covered him with a woollen blanket.
Calpurnia drew closer. She wiped the sweat from Caesar’s brow and the drool from his mouth, then wet his lips with a piece of linen soaked in cool water. She turned to Antistius.
‘What is this terrible thing?’ she asked him. ‘Why does it happen?’
Caesar now lay in a state of complete prostration. His eyes were closed and his breathing was laboured and heavy.
‘The Greeks call it the “sacred disease”, because the ancients believed it was the doing of spirits – demons or the gods. Alexander himself suffered from it, so they say, but in reality no one knows what it is. We recognize the symptoms and can only try to limit the damage. The greatest danger is that the person suffering an attack will bite off his tongue with his own teeth. Some have even been suffocated by their tongues. But I’ve given him his usual sedative, which fortunately seems quite effective. What worries me is the frequency of the attacks. The last one was only two weeks ago.’
‘What can we do?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Antistius, shaking his head. ‘We can’t do any more than we’ve already done.’
Caesar opened his eyes and slowly looked around. He then turned to Silius and Calpurnia.
‘Leave me alone with him,’ he said, gesturing towards the doctor.
Silius shot a puzzled glance at Antistius.
‘You can go,’ said Antistius. ‘There’s no immediate danger. But don’t go too far. You never know.’
Silius nodded and left the room with Calpurnia. He had always helped and supported her and was her husband’s – his commander’s – shadow. Centurion of the legendary Tenth Legion, a veteran with twenty years’ service, he had salt and pepper hair, dark, damp eyes, as quick as a child’s, and the neck of a bull. He followed Calpurnia out like a puppy.
The doctor put his ear to his patient’s chest and listened. Caesar’s heartbeat was returning to normal.
‘Your condition is improving,’ he said.
‘That doesn’t interest me,’ replied Caesar. ‘Tell me this instead: what would happen if I had such a fit in public? If I fell to the floor foaming at the mouth in the Senate or at the Rostra?’
Antistius bowed his head.
‘You don’t have an answer for me, do you?’
‘No, Caesar, but I understand you. The fact is that these attacks don’t give any warning. Or not that I know of.’
‘So they depend on the whims of the gods?’
‘You believe in the gods?’
‘I am the Pontifex Maximus. What should I tell you?’
‘The truth. I’m your doctor and if you want me to help you, I have to understand your mind as well as your body.’
‘I believe that we are surrounded by mystery. There’s room for anything in mystery, even the gods.’
‘Hippocrates said that this illness would only be called the “sacred disease” until its causes were discovered.’
‘Hippocrates was right but, unfortunately, the disease continues to be “sacred” today and will remain so, I fear, for some time to come. And yet I cannot afford to give any public display of my weaknesses. You can understand that, can’t you?’
‘I can. But the only one who can tell when an attack is coming on is you. They say that the sacred disease gives no warning, but that each man reacts differently to it. Have you ever had a sign, something that made you think an attack was about to take place?’
Caesar drew a long breath and remained silent, forcing himself to remember. At length, he replied, ‘Perhaps. Not any clear sign, nothing that is identical from one time to the next. But occasionally it happens that I see images from other times, suddenly . . . like flashes.’
‘What kind of images?’
‘Massacres, fields strewn with dead bodies, clouds galloping, shrieking like Furies from hell.’
‘They might be actual memories, or simply nightmares. We all have them. You more than anyone, I imagine. No one else has lived a life like yours.’
‘No, they’re not nightmares. When I say “images”, I’m talking about something I actually see in front of me, like I am seeing you now.’
‘And are these . . . visions always followed by attacks of this sort?’
‘Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. I can’t say for certain that they are connected to my disease. It’s a sly enemy I’ve made for myself, Antistius, an enemy with no face, who pounces, strikes and slips away like a ghost. I am the most powerful man in the world and yet I’m as helpless in the face of this as the lowest of wretches.’
Antistius sighed. ‘If you were anyone else, I would recommend . . .’
‘What?’
‘That you withdraw into private life. Leave the city, public office, political strife. Others have done so before you: Scipio Africanus, Sulla. Perhaps the disease would let go of you if you let go of your daily battles. But I don’t suppose you’d ever follow my advice, would you?’
Caesar raised himself into a sitting position on the side of the bed, then swung his feet to the floor and stood up.
‘No. I can’t afford to. There are still too many things I must do. I’ll live with the risk.’