Caesar's Women (57 page)

“You've never liked her.”

“No, indeed!”

“Well, that's understandable. You're so much on Brutus's side you couldn't like her.”

“Do you?”

“For what she is, I like her very well.”

“Yet tata told me he didn't like her, and he doesn't lie.”

“He definitely does not like her. I have no idea— nor, frankly, do I want to have any idea!—what holds him to her, except that it is very strong.”

“I imagine she's excellent in bed.”

“Julia!”

“I'm not a child anymore,” said Julia with a chuckle. “And I do have ears.”

“For what's bruited about the shops of the Porticus Margaritaria?''

“No, for what's said in my stepmother's rooms.”

Aurelia stiffened dangerously. “I'll soon put a stop to that!”

“Don't avia, please!” cried Julia, putting her hand on her grandmother's arm. “You mustn't blame poor Pompeia, and it isn't her, anyway. It's her friends. I know I'm not grown up yet, but I always think of myself as much older and wiser than Pompeia. She's like a pretty puppy, she sits there wagging her tail and grinning all over her face as the conversation wafts far above her head, so terribly anxious to please and belong. They torment her dreadfully, the Clodias and Fulvia, and she never can see how cruel they are.” Julia looked thoughtful. “I love tata to death and I'll hear no word against him, but he's cruel to her too. Oh, I know why! She's far too stupid for him. They ought never to have married, you know.”

“I was responsible for that marriage.”

“And for the best of reasons, I'm sure,” said Julia warmly. Then she sighed. “Oh, but I do wish you'd picked someone a great deal cleverer than Pompeia Sulla!”

“I picked her,” said Aurelia grimly, “because she was offered to me as a bride for Caesar, and because I thought the only way I could make sure Caesar didn't marry Servilia was to get in first.”

After comparing notes in later days, a goodly number of the members of the Senate discovered that they had preferred not to linger in the lower Forum to witness the execution of Lentulus Sura and the others.

One such was the senior consul-elect, Decimus Junius Silanus; another was the tribune of the plebs-elect, Marcus Porcius Cato.

Silanus reached his house some time ahead of Cato, whose progress was retarded by people wishful of congratulating him for his speech and his stand against Caesar's blandishments.

The fact that he was obliged to let himself in the front door prepared Silanus for what he found inside: a deserted atrium with nary a servant in sight or sound. Which meant everyone servile already knew what had happened during the debate. But did Servilia? Did Brutus? Face drawn because the pain in his gut was gnawing and griping, Silanus forced his legs to hold him up and went immediately to his wife's sitting room. '

She was there, poring over some of Brutus's accounts, and looked up with an expression of simple irritation.

“Yes, yes, what is it?” she growled.

“Then you don't know,” he said.

“Don't know what?”

“That your message to Caesar fell into the wrong hands.”

Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“The precious fellow you so love to have run your errands because he sucks up to you so cleverly isn't clever enough,” said Silanus with more iron in his voice than Servilia had ever heard. “He came prancing into Concord and didn't have the sense to wait. So he handed your note to Caesar at the worst possible moment, which was the moment your esteemed half brother Cato had reserved to accuse Caesar of masterminding Catilina's conspiracy. And when in the midst of this drama Cato saw that Caesar was anxious to read the piece of paper he had been handed, Cato demanded that Caesar read it out to the whole House. He assumed it contained evidence of Caesar's treason, you see.”

“And Caesar read it out,” said Servilia tonelessly.

“Come, come, my dear, is that all you know about Caesar after so much intimacy with the man?'' asked Silanus, lip curling. “He's not so unsubtle, nor so little in command of himself. No, if anyone came out of the affair looking the victor, it was Caesar. Of course it was Caesar! He simply smiled at Cato and said that he rather thought Cato would prefer that the contents of the note remain private. He got up and gave Cato the note so courteously, so pleasantly—oh, it was well done!”

“Then how was I exposed?” whispered Servilia.

“Cato just couldn't believe what his eyes saw. It took him ages to decipher those few words, while we all waited with bated breath. Then he crushed your message into a ball and threw it at Caesar like a missile. But of course the distance was too great. Philippus grabbed it from the floor and read it. Then he passed it along the praetors-elect until it reached the curule dais.”

“And they roared with laughter,” said Servilia between her teeth. “Oh, they would!”

“Pipinna,'' he mocked.

Another woman would have flinched, but not Servilia, who snarled. “Fools!”

“The hilarity made it hard for Cicero to make himself heard when he demanded a division.”

Even in the midst of her travail her avidity for politics showed. “A division? For what?”

“To decide the fate of our captive conspirators, poor souls. Execution or exile. I voted to execute, that's what your note forced me to do. Caesar had advocated exile, and had the House on his side until Cato spoke up for execution. Cato swung everyone around. The division went for execution. Thanks to you, Servilia. If your note hadn't silenced Cato he would have filibustered until sunset, and the vote wouldn't have been taken until tomorrow. My feeling is that by tomorrow the House would have seen the sense of Caesar's argument. If I were Caesar, my dear, I'd cut you up and feed you to the wolves.”

That disconcerted her, but her contempt for Silanus eventually made her dismiss this opinion. “When are the executions to take place?”

“They're taking place right at this moment. I deemed it best to come home and warn you before Cato could arrive.”

She leaped to her feet. “Brutus!”

But Silanus, not without satisfaction, had cocked his ear in the direction of the atrium, and now smiled sourly. “Too late, my dear, far too late. Cato is upon us.”

Still Servilia made a move toward the door, only to stop short of it when Cato erupted through it, the first finger and thumb of his right hand pincered agonizingly into Brutus's earlobe.

“Get in here and look at her, your strumpet of a mother!” bellowed Cato, releasing Brutus's ear and pushing him so hard in the small of the back that he staggered and would have fallen were it not for Silanus, who steadied him. The lad looked so appalled and bewildered that he probably had not even begun to understand what was happening, thought Silanus as he moved away.

Why do I feel so strange? then asked Silanus of himself. Why am I in some secret corner so delighted by this, so vindicated? Today my world has learned that I am a cuckold, and yet I find that of much less moment than I find this delicious retribution, my wife's hugely deserved comeuppance. I hardly find it in me to blame Caesar. It was her, I know it was her. He doesn't bother with the wives of men who haven't irritated him politically, and until today I have never irritated him politically. It was her, I know it was her. She wanted him, she went after him. That's why she gave Brutus to his daughter! To keep Caesar in the family. He wouldn't marry her, so she beggared her pride. Quite a feat for Servilia, that! And now Cato, the man she loathes most in all the world, is privy to both her passions—Brutus and Caesar. Her days of peace and self-satisfaction are over. From now on there will be a hideous war, just as in her childhood. Oh, she'll win! But how many of them will live to see her triumph? I for one will not, for which I am profoundly glad. I pray I am the first to go.

“Look at her, your strumpet of a mother!” Cato bellowed again, slapping Brutus viciously about the head.

“Mama, Mama, what is it?” Brutus whimpered, ears ringing and eyes watering.

“ 'Mama, Mama!' ” Cato mimicked, sneering. ” 'Mama, Mama!' What a dimwit you are, Brutus, what a lapdog, what an apology for a man! Brutus the baby, Brutus the booby! 'Mama, Mama!' ” Slapping Brutus's head viciously.

Servilia moved with the speed and style of a striking snake, straight for Cato, and so suddenly that she was upon him before he could swing his attention away from Brutus. Between them she went with both hands up, fingers crooked into claws, took Cato's face in their embrace and dug her nails into his flesh until they sank like grapples. Had he not instinctively screwed his eyes shut she would have blinded him, but her talons raked him from brow to jawline on right side and on left side, gouged down to muscle and then kept on going along his neck and into his shoulders.

Even a warrior like Cato retreated, thin howls of terrible pain dying away as his opening eyes took in the sight of a Servilia more frightful than anything except dead Caepio's face, a Servilia whose lips were peeled back from her teeth and whose eyes blazed murder. Then under the distended gaze of her son, her husband and her half brother she lifted her dripping fingers to her mouth and luxuriously sucked Cato's flesh from them. Silanus gagged and fled. Brutus fainted. Which left Cato glaring at her between rivers of blood.

“Get out and don't ever come back,” she said softly.

“I will end in owning your son, never doubt it!”

“If you so much as try, Cato, what I've done to you today will look like the kiss of a butterfly.”

“You are monstrous!”

“Just get out, Cato.”

Cato got out, holding folds of toga against his face and neck.

“Now why didn't I think to tell him that it was I sent Caepio to his death?'' she wondered as she squatted down beside the inanimate form of her son. “Never mind,” she went on, wiping Cato from her fingers before she began to minister to Brutus, “I have that little item saved for another time.”

He came to full consciousness slowly, perhaps because inside his mind there now dwelled an absolute terror of his mother, who could eat Cato's flesh with relish. But eventually he had no other choice than to open his eyes and stare up at her.

“Get up and sit on the couch.”

Brutus got up and sat on the couch.

“Do you know what all that was about?”

“No, Mama,” he whispered.

“Not even when Cato called me a strumpet?”

“No, Mama,” he whispered.

“I am not a strumpet, Brutus.”

“No, Mama.”

“However,” said Servilia, disposing herself in a chair from which she could move quickly to Brutus's side if she needed, “you are definitely old enough to understand the ways of the world, so it is time I enlightened you about certain matters anyway. What all that was about,” she went on in conversational tones, “is the fact that for some years Julia's father has been my lover.”

He leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands, quite unable to put two thoughts together, a hapless mass of misery and bewildered pain. First, all that in Concord while he stood at its doors listening—then, reporting to his mother—then, a blissful interval of wrestling with the writings of Fabius Pictor—then, Uncle Cato charging in and seizing his ear—then, Uncle Cato shouting at his mother—then, Mama attacking Uncle Cato, and—and— The full horror of what his mother had done after that struck Brutus afresh; he shivered and shuddered, wept desolately behind his hands.

Now this. Mama and Caesar were lovers, had been lovers for years. How did he feel about this? How was he supposed to feel about this? Brutus liked guidance; he hated the rudderless sensation of having to make a decision—especially a decision about emotions—without having first learned how people like Plato and Aristotle regarded these unruly, illogical and mystifying entities. Somehow he didn't seem able to feel anything about this. All that between Mama and Uncle Cato over this! But why? Mama was a law unto herself; surely Uncle Cato realized that. If Mama had a lover, there would be good reason. And if Caesar was Mama's lover, there would be good reason. Mama did nothing without good reason. Nothing!

Further than that he hadn't managed to get when Servilia, tired of his silent weeping, spoke. “Cato,” she said, “is not all there, Brutus. He never was, even as a baby. Mormolyce got at him. He hasn't improved with the passage of time. He's thick, narrow, bigoted and unbelievably complacent. It is none of his business what I do with my life, any more than you are his business.”

“I never realized how much you hate him,” said Brutus, lifting his hands from his face to look at her. “Mama, you've scarred him for life! For life!”

“Good!” she said, looking genuinely pleased. Then her eyes fully assimilated the picture her son presented, and she winced. Because of the pimples he couldn't shave, had to content himself with a close clipping of his dense black beard; between the huge pimples and the snot smeared everywhere, he was more than merely ugly. He was ghastly. Her hand scrabbled behind her until it located a small soft cloth near the wine and water flagons; she tossed it to him. “Wipe your face and blow your nose, Brutus, please! I do not acknowledge Cato's criticisms of you, but there are certainly times when you disappoint me dreadfully.”

“I know,” he whispered, “I know.”

“Oh well, never mind!” she said bracingly, got up and went to stand behind him, her arm about his bent shoulders. “You have birth, wealth, education and clout. And you are not yet twenty-one years old. Time is bound to improve you, my son, but time will not do the same for Cato. Nothing can improve Cato.”

Her arm felt like a cylinder of hot lead, but he didn't dare shrug it off. He straightened a little. “May I go, Mama?”

“Yes, provided that you understand my position.”

“I understand it, Mama.”

“What I do is my affair, Brutus, nor am I about to offer you one single excuse for the relationship between Caesar and me. Silanus knows. He has known for a very long time. That Caesar, Silanus and I have preferred to keep our secret is logical.”

Light broke on Brutus. “Tertia!” he gasped. “Tertia is Caesar's daughter, not Silanus's! She looks like Julia.”

Servilia regarded her son with some admiration. “How very perspicacious of you, Brutus. Yes, Tertia belongs to Caesar.”