The October Horse (41 page)

A courier from Metellus Scipio brought the news of the defeat at Thapsus to Utica, but the man was not more than a few hours ahead of refugees from the battlefield, none of them having higher rank than a junior military tribune.

“Lucius Torquatus, Sextus Pompeius and I are joining Gnaeus Pompeius's fleet in Hadrumetum,” said Metellus Scipio's brief note. “As yet we have no idea of our next destination, but it will not be Utica unless you request that, Marcus Cato. If you can rally enough men to resist Caesar, then we will fight with you.”

“But Caesar's troops were disaffected,” Cato said hollowly to his son. “I was sure we'd beat him!”

Young Cato didn't answer: what was there to say?

After writing to Metellus Scipio to tell him not to bother with Utica, Cato sat drawn up into himself for the rest of that awful day, then at dawn of the next he took Lucius Gratidius and set out to see the Thapsus refugees, who had clustered together in an old camp on Utica's outskirts.

“There are enough of us to give Caesar one more fight,” he said to their senior, a minor legate named Marcus Eppius. “I have five thousand good, trained young men in the city who are willing to join those of you here. And I can rearm you.”

Eppius shook his head. “No, Marcus Cato, we've had enough.” He shivered, lifted his hand in the sign to ward off the Evil Eye. “Caesar is invincible, we know that now. We captured one of the Tenth's centurions, Titius, whom Quintus Metellus Scipio examined himself. Titius admitted that the Ninth, the Tenth and the Fourteenth had mutinied twice since leaving Italy. Even so, when Caesar sent them into battle, they fought like heroes for him.”

“What happened to this centurion Titius?”

“He was executed.”

And that, thought Cato, is really why I ought never have put Metellus Scipio in the command tent. Or Labienus. Caesar would have pardoned a brave captive centurion. As should all men.

“Well, I suggest that all of you make your way to Utica's harbor and board the transports waiting there,” Cato said cheerily. “They belong to Gnaeus Pompeius, who I gather is thinking of going west to the Baleares and Spain. I'm sure he won't insist that you accompany him, so if you prefer to return to Italy, tell him.”

He and Lucius Gratidius returned to Utica.

Yesterday's panic had settled, though the city wasn't going about its wartime business as it had during the months of Cato's prefecture. The three hundred most prominent citizens were already waiting in the marketplace for Cato to tell them what he wanted them to do. They genuinely loved him, as did almost all Uticans, for he had been scrupulously fair, willing to listen to their grievances, unfailingly optimistic.

“No,” he said, quite gently for Cato, “I can no longer make decisions for you. You must decide for yourselves whether to resist Caesar or sue for pardon. If you want to know what I think you should do, I think you should sue for pardon. The alternative would be to withstand siege, and your fate would be no different from the fates of Carthage, Numantia, Avaricum, Alesia. Caesar is an even greater master of siege than Scipio Aemilianus. The result would be the destruction of this beautiful, immensely rich city, and the deaths of many of its citizens. Caesar will levy a huge fine, but you'll have the ongoing prosperity to pay it. Sue for pardon.”

“If we freed our slaves and put them to military service as well, Marcus Cato, we might survive a siege,” said one citizen.

“That would be neither moral nor legal,” Cato said sternly. “No government should have the authority to order any man to free his slaves if he doesn't want to.”

“What if the freeing were voluntary?” another asked.

“Then I would condone it. However, I urge you not to resist. Talk about it among yourselves, then summon me back.”

He and Gratidius walked across to sit on the stone coping of a fountain, where young Cato joined them.

“Will they fight, Father?”

“I hope not.”

“I hope they do,” said Gratidius, a little tearfully. “If they don't, I'm out of a job. I hate the thought of submitting tamely to Caesar!”

Cato did not reply, his eyes on the debating Three Hundred.

The decision was swift: Utica would sue for pardon.

“Believe me,” said Cato, “it is the best way. Though I above all men have no cause to love Caesar, he is a merciful man who has been clement since the beginning of this sad business. None of you will suffer physical harm, or lose your property.”

Some of the Three Hundred had decided to flee; Cato promised them that he would organize transport for them from among the ships belonging to the Republican cause.

“And that's that,” he said with a sigh when he, young Cato and Gratidius were ensconced in the dining room. Statyllus came in, looking apprehensive.

“Pour me some wine,” said Cato to Prognanthes, his steward.

The others stilled, turned wondering eyes on the master of the house, who took the clay beaker.

“My task is done, why shouldn't I?” he asked, sipped, and retched. “How extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “I've lost my taste for wine.”

“Marcus Cato, I have news,” Statyllus said.

The food came in on the echo of his words: fresh bread, oil, a roast fowl, salads and cheeses, some late grapes.

“You've been away all morning, Statyllus,” Cato said, biting into a leg of roast fowl. “How good this tastes! What news are you so afraid of?”

“Juba's horsemen are looting the countryside.”

“We could expect nothing else. Now eat, Statyllus.”

•      •      •

Next day came word that Caesar was approaching rapidly, and that Juba had gone in the direction of Numidia. Cato watched from his window as a deputation from the Three Hundred rode out to treat with the conqueror, then turned his eyes to the harbor, a frenzy of activity as refugees and soldiers boarded ships.

“This evening,” he said, “we'll have a nice dinner party. Just the three of us, I think. Gratidius is a good man, but he doesn't appreciate philosophy.”

He said it with such pleasure that young Cato and Statyllus stared at each other in puzzlement; was he indeed so glad that his task was over? And what did he intend to do now that it was over? Surrender to Caesar? No, that was inconceivable. Yet he had issued no orders to pack their few clothes and books, made no attempt to secure passage room on a ship.

The prefect's fine house on the main square contained a proper bathroom; in midafternoon Cato ordered the bath filled, and went to enjoy a leisurely soak. By the time he emerged the dining room was set for the party, and the two other diners were reclining, young Cato on the couch to the right, Statyllus on the couch to the left, with the middle one for Cato. When he walked in, young Cato and Statyllus stared at him openmouthed. The long hair and beard were gone, and Cato wore his senatorial tunic with the broad purple band of the latus clavus down its right shoulder.

He looked magnificent, years younger, though all trace of red was gone from his hair, combed now in its customary style. The many months of abstention from wine had returned his grey eyes to their old luminousness, and the lines of dissipation were gone.

“Oh, I'm so hungry!” he said, taking the lectus medius. “Prognanthes, food!”

It wasn't possible to be gloomy; Cato's mood was too infectious. When Prognanthes produced a superior vintage of a smooth red wine, he tasted it gingerly, pronounced it good, and sipped occasionally from his goblet.

When only the wine, two fine cheeses and some grapes remained on the tables, and all the servants save Prognanthes had gone, Cato settled into his couch with his elbow comfortably disposed on a bolster, and gave a huge sigh of satisfaction.

“I shall miss Athenodorus Cordylion,” he said, “but you'll have to take his place, Marcus. What did Zeno think was real?”

Oh, I am back at school! thought young Cato, and answered automatically. “Material things. Things that are solid.”

“Is my couch solid?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is God solid?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And did Zeno think the Soul was solid?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Which came first of all solid things?”

“Fire.”

“And after fire?”

“Air, then water, then earth.”

“What must happen to air, water and earth?”

“They must return to fire at the end of the cycle.”

“Is the Soul fire?”

“Zeno thought so, but Panaetius didn't agree.”

“Where else can we look for the Soul than Zeno and Panaetius?”

Young Cato floundered, looked for help to Statyllus, who was gazing at Cato in growing consternation.

“We can look at Socrates through Plato,” Statyllus said, his voice trembling. “Though he found great fault with Zeno, Socrates was the perfect Stoic. He cared nothing for his material welfare, nor for heat and cold, nor for passions of the flesh.”

“Do we look for the Soul in the Phaedrus or the Phaedo?”

Statyllus spoke, drawing a gasping breath. “The Phaedo. In it, Plato discusses what Socrates said to his friends just before he drank the cup of hemlock.”

Cato laughed, flung his hands out. “All good men are free, all bad men are slaves—let's look at the Paradoxes!”

The subject of the Soul seemed forgotten as the three embarked upon one of Cato's favorite subjects. Statyllus was deputed to adopt the Epicurean point of view, young Cato the Peripatetic, while Cato, true to himself, remained a Stoic. The arguments flew back and forth amid laughter, a quick give-and-take of premises so well known that each answer was automatic.

A growl of distant thunder came; Statyllus got up and went to look out the south window at the mountains.

“A terrible storm is coming,” he said; then, more softly, “A terrible storm.” He reclined again to take up the cudgels about freedom and slavery on behalf of the Epicureans.

The wine was working insidiously on Cato, who hadn't noticed its creeping effects. Suddenly, violently, he pitched his goblet out the south window. “No, no, no!” he roared. “A free man who consents to slavery of any kind is a bad man, and that's that! I don't care what form the slavery takes—lascivious pleasure—food—wine—punctuality— making money—the man who enslaves himself to it is a bad man! Wicked! Evil! His Soul will leave his body so fouled, so encrusted with filth that she sinks down, down, down to Tartarus, and there she stays forever! Only the good man's Soul can soar into the aether, into the realms of God! Not the gods, but God! And the good man never succumbs to any kind of slavery! Any kind! Any kind!”

Statyllus had scrambled up during this impassioned speech, gone to huddle next to young Cato. “If you get a chance,” he whispered, “go to his sleeping room and steal his sword.”

Young Cato jumped, turned terrified eyes on Statyllus. “Is that what all this is about?”

“Of course it is! He's going to kill himself.”

Cato ran down, sat shuddering and glaring at his audience. Without warning he lurched to his feet and reeled to his study, where the two sitting on the couch could hear him rummaging among his pigeonholes of books, throwing scrolls around.

“Phaedo, Phaedo, Phaedo!” he was calling, giggling too.

Eyes rolling in his head, young Cato gaped at Statyllus, who gave him a push.

“Go, Marcus! Steal his sword now!”

Young Cato dashed to his father's roomy sleeping quarters and snatched the sword, hanging by its baldric from a hook on the wall. Back to the dining room, where he saw Prognanthes standing with the wine flagon in his hand. “Here, take this and hide it!” he said, giving the steward Cato's sword. “Hurry! Hurry!”

Prognanthes left just in time; Cato reappeared with a scroll in his hand. He threw it down on the lectus medius and turned in the direction of the atrium. “It's coming on dusk, I have to give the password to the gate sentries,” he said curtly, and vanished, shouting for a waterproof sagum; it was going to rain.

The storm was drifting closer; flashes of lightning began to bathe the dining room in glowing blue-white flickers, for no one had yet lit the lamps. Prognanthes came in with a taper.

“Is the sword hidden?” young Cato asked him.

“Yes, domine. The master won't find it, rest assured.”

“Oh, Statyllus, he can't! We mustn't let him!”

“We won't let him. Hide your sword too.”

Some time later Cato returned, threw his wet cape into a corner, and picked up the Phaedo from the couch. Then he went to Statyllus, embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks.

After that it was young Cato's turn. How utterly alien, the feeling of his father's arms around him, those dry lips on his face, his mouth. Inside his mind were only memories of the day he had howled into Porcia's rough dress when his father had called them to his study to inform them that he had divorced their mother for adultery with Caesar, and that they would never, never see her again. Even for a moment. Even to say goodbye. Little Cato had wept desolately for his mama, and his father had told him not to unman himself. That to unman himself for such a paltry reason was not a right act. So many memories of a hard father, one who inflicted his own pitiless ethic upon all those around him. And yet—and yet—how proud he was to be the great Cato's son! So now he unmanned himself and wept.

“Please, Father, don't!”

“What?” Cato asked, eyes widening in surprise. “Not retire to read my Phaedo?”

“It doesn't matter.” Young Cato mourned. “It doesn't matter.”

•      •      •

The Soul, the Soul, whom the Greeks thought female. How right it seemed, listening to the storm outside, that the natural world should echo the tempest within his—heart? mind? body? We do not even know that, so how can we know anything about the Soul, her purity or lack of purity? Her immortality? I need to have her proved to me, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt!

Several multiple lamps burning, he sat down in a chair and opened the scroll between his hands, reading the Greek slowly; it was always easier for Cato to separate the words in a Greek text than a Latin one, why he didn't know. Reading the words of Socrates as he asked Simmias one of his famous questions: Socrates taught by asking questions.

“Do we believe in death?”