The October Horse (76 page)

“Who?”

“The Liberators! They did the deed with the courage of men, but about as much policy as four-year-olds. Like nursery children stabbing their rag doll to death.”

“The only one who might help is Hirtius.”

Cicero brightened. “Then let's both see Hirtius.”

Octavian entered Rome on the Nones of May, accompanied only by his servants; his mother and his stepfather had declined to take any part in this insane venture. At the fourth hour of day he passed through the Capena Gate and commenced the walk to the Forum Romanum, clad in a spotless white toga with the narrow purple band of a knight on the exposed right shoulder of his tunic. Thanks to many hours of practicing how to walk in his high-soled boots, he made sufficient impression on the people he encountered to cause them to turn and watch his progress admiringly, for he was tall, dignified, and possessed of a straight-backed posture that forbade mincing or undulating; to do either would see him flat on his face. Head up, waving masses of golden hair gleaming, a slight smile on his lips, he proceeded along the Sacra Via with that easy mien of friendliness Caesar had made his own.

“That's Caesar's heir!” one of his servants would whisper to a group of onlookers.

“Caesar's heir has arrived in Rome!” another would murmur.

The day was fine and the sky cloudless, but the humidity was suffocatingly high; so much water vapor saturated the air that the vault was leached of its blueness. Around the sun but some distance from it was a brilliant halo that had people pointing and wondering audibly what this omen meant. Rings around the full moon everybody had seen at some time, but a ring around the sun? Never! An extraordinary omen.

It was easy to find the spot where Caesar had burned, for it was still covered with flowers, dolls, balls. Octavian turned off the Clivus Sacer and went to its margin. There, while the crowd continued to gather, he pulled a fold of toga over his head and prayed silently.

Beneath the nearby temple of Castor and Pollux lay offices used by the College of Tribunes of the Plebs. Lucius Antonius, who was a tribune of the plebs, came out of Castor's basement door just in time to see Octavian tug the toga off his mop of hair.

The youngest of the three Antonii was generally deemed the most intelligent of them, but he owned handicaps that militated against his ever standing as high in public favor as his eldest brother: he had a tendency to run to fat, he was quite bald, and he had a sense of the ridiculous that had gotten him into trouble with Marcus on more than one occasion.

He stopped to watch the praying sprig, suppressing an urge to hoot with laughter. What a sight! So this was the famous Caesar's heir! None of the Antonii mixed in Uncle Lucius's circle and he never remembered setting eyes on Gaius Octavius, but this was he, all right. Couldn't be anyone else. For one thing, he knew that his brother Gaius, acting urban praetor, had received a letter from Gaius Octavius asking for permission to speak publicly from the rostra when he arrived in Rome on the Nones of May.

Yes, this was Caesar's heir. What a figure of fun! Those boots! Who did he think he was fooling? And didn't he have a barber? His hair was longer than Brutus's. A proper little dandy—look at the way he was primping the toga back into place. Is this the best you could do, Caesar? You preferred this perfect pansy to my brother? Then you were touched in the head when you made your will, Cousin Gaius.

“Ave,” he said, strolling up to Octavian with his hand out.

“Is it Lucius Antonius?” Octavian asked with Caesar's smile—unsettling, that—and enduring the bone-crushing handshake with no change of expression.

“Lucius Antonius it is, Octavius,” Lucius said cheerfully. “We're cousins. Has Uncle Lucius seen you yet?”

“Yes, I visited him in Neapolis some nundinae ago. He's not well, but he was glad to see me.” Octavian paused, then asked, “Is your brother Gaius on his tribunal?”

“Not today. He awarded himself a holiday.”

“Oh, too bad,” said the young man, still smiling for the crowd, oohing and aahing. “I wrote to ask him if I might speak to the people from the rostra, but he didn't answer.”

“S'all right, I can give you permission,” Lucius said, his brown eyes sparkling. Something in him was loving this poseur's gall, a typically Antonian reaction. Yet looking into those big, long-lashed eyes revealed nothing whatsoever; Caesar's heir kept his thoughts to himself.

“Can you keep up with me in those brothel pounders?” Lucius asked, pointing to the boots.

“Of course,” said Octavian, striding out beside him. “My right leg is shorter than my left, hence the built up footware.”

Lucius guffawed. “As long as your third leg measures up is the important thing!”

“I really have no idea whether it measures up,” Octavian said coolly. “I'm a virgin.”

Lucius blinked, faltered. “That's a stupid secret to blurt out,” he said.

“I didn't blurt it out, and why should it be a secret?”

“Hinting that you want to throw your leg over, eh? I'll be happy to take you to the right place.”

“No, thank you. I'm very fastidious and discriminating, is what I was implying.”

“Then you're no Caesar. He'd hump anything.”

“True, I am no Caesar in that respect.”

“Do you want people to laugh at you, coming out with things like that, Octavius?”

“No, but I don't care if they do. Sooner or later they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces. Or crying.”

“Oh, that's neat, very neat!” Lucius exclaimed, laughing at himself. “You've turned the table on me.”

“Only time will prove that, Lucius Antonius.”

“Hop up the steps, young cripple, and stand midway between the two columns of beaks.”

Octavian obeyed, turned to stand confronting his first Forum audience: a considerable one. What a pity, he was thinking, that the way the rostra is oriented prevents a speaker from standing with the sun behind him. I'd dearly love to be standing with that halo around my head.

“I am Gaius Julius Caesar Filius!” he announced to the throng in a surprisingly loud and carrying voice. “Yes, that is my name! I am Caesar's heir, formally adopted by him in his will.” He put his hand up and pointed to the sun, almost overhead. “Caesar has sent an omen for me, his son!”

But then, without pausing to endow the omen with a ponderous significance, he went smoothly to discuss the terms of Caesar's bequest to the people of Rome. This he dwelled upon at length, and promised that as soon as the will was probated, he would distribute Caesar's largesse in Caesar's name, for he was Caesar.

The crowd lapped him up, Lucius Antonius noted uneasily; no one down on the flags of the Forum cared about the high-soled right boot (the left was quite hidden by a toga cut so that it fell just short of the ground), and no one laughed at him. They were too busy marveling at his beauty, his manly bearing, his magnificent head of hair, his startling likeness to Caesar from smile to gestures to facial expressions. Word must have spread very quickly, for a great many of Caesar's old, faithful people had appeared—Jews, foreigners, Head Count.

Not only his appearance helped Gaius Octavius; he spoke very well indeed, indicating that in time to come he would be one of Rome's great orators. When he was done, he was cheered for a long time; then he walked down the steps and into the crowd fearlessly, his right hand out, that smile never varying. Women touched his toga, almost swooned. If he really is a virgin—I am beginning to think he was just taking the piss out of me—he can alter that state with any female in this crowd, thought Lucius Antonius. The cunning little mentula pulled the wool over my eyes beautifully.

“Off to Philippus's now?” Lucius Antonius asked Octavian as he began to move toward the Vestal Steps up on to the Palatine.

“No, to my own house.”

“Your father's?”

The fair brows rose, a perfect imitation of Caesar. “My father lived in the Domus Publica, and had no other house. I've bought a house.”

“Not a palace?”

“My needs are simple, Lucius Antonius. The only art I fancy, I would dower on Rome's public temples, the only food I fancy is plain, I do not drink wine, and I have no vices. Vale,” Octavian said, and began to climb the Vestal Steps lithely. His chest was tightening, the ordeal was over and he had done well. Now the asthma would make him pay.

Lucius Antonius made no move to follow him, just stood frowning.

•      •      •

“The cunning little fox, he pulled the wool over my eyes beautifully,” Lucius said to Fulvia a little later.

She was with child again, and missing Antony acutely, which made her short-tempered. “You shouldn't have let him speak,” she said, her face somber enough to reveal a few unflattering lines. “Sometimes you're an idiot, Lucius. If you've reported his words accurately, then what he said when he pointed to the ring around the sun implied that Caesar is a god and he the son of a god.”

“D' you really think so? I just thought it was crafty,” said Lucius, still chuckling. “You weren't there, Fulvia, I was. He's a born actor, that's all.”

“So was Sulla. And why inform you he's a virgin? Youths don't do that, they'd rather die than admit that.”

“I suspect he was really informing me that he's not a homosexual. I mean, he's so pretty any man would get ideas, but he denied having any vices. His needs are simple, he says. Though he's a good orator. Impressed me, actually.”

“He sounds dangerous to me, Lucius.”

“Dangerous? Fulvia, he's eighteen!”

“Eighteen going on eighty, more like. He's after Caesar's clients and adherents, not after noble colleagues.” She got up. “I shall write to Marcus. I think he ought to know.”

When Fulvia's letter about Caesar's heir was followed two nundinae later by one from the plebeian aedile Critonius telling Antony that Caesar's heir had tried to display Caesar's golden curule chair and gem-studded gold wreath at the games in honor of Ceres, Mark Antony decided it was time to return to Rome. The little mongrel hadn't gotten his way—Critonius, in charge of the ludi Ceriales, had forbidden any such displays. So young Octavius had then demanded that the parade show the diadem Caesar had refused! Another no from Critonius saw him defeated, but not penitent. Nor cowed. What's more, said Critonius, he insisted on being addressed as “Caesar”! Was going all over Rome talking to the ordinary people and calling himself “Caesar”! Wouldn't be addressed as “Octavius,” and even declined “Octavianus”!

Accompanied by a bodyguard of veterans several hundred strong, Antony clattered into Rome upon a blown horse twenty-one days into May. His rump was sore and his temper the worse for a grueling ride, not to mention that he had had to interrupt vitally important work—if he didn't keep the veterans on his side, what might the Liberators do?

One other item dumped a colossal amount of fuel on his rage. He had sent to Brundisium for the tributes from the provinces and Caesar's war chest. The tributes had duly arrived in Teanum, his base of operations—a great relief, as he could go on buying land and paying something off his debts. Antony wasn't fussy about using Rome's moneys for his private purposes. As consul, he simply sent Marcus Cuspius of the Treasury a statement saying he owed that establishment twenty million sesterces. But the war chest didn't come to Teanum because it wasn't in Brundisium. It had been commandeered by Caesar's heir in Caesar's name, the bewildered bank manager informed Antony's legate, the ex-centurion Cafo. Aware that he couldn't go back to Campania armed with no more than this, Cafo made extensive enquiries all over Brundisium and its suburbs, even the surrounding countryside. What he learned amounted to nothing. The day the money disappeared had been one of torrential rain, no one had been out and about, two cohorts of veterans in a camp said no one in his right mind would have been out in that kind of weather, and no one had seen a train of sixty wagons anywhere. Aulus Plautius when applied to looked utterly blank and was prepared to swear on his family's heads that Gaius Octavius had had nothing to do with any thefts from the bank next door. He had only arrived from Macedonia the day before, and was terribly ill in the bargain—blue in the face. So Cafo rode back to Teanum after deputing several of his men to start asking after a train of wagons north to Barium or west to Tarentum or south to Hydruntum, while others enquired if any laden ships had put out to sea as soon as the gale eased.

By the time Antony rode for Rome, all these investigations had yielded nothing. No train of wagons had been seen anywhere, no ships had put out. The war chest had disappeared off the face of the earth, or so it seemed.

Since it was too late in the day to summon Gaius Octavius, Antony soaked his sore rump in a mineral bath, then had a lusty all-over bath with Fulvia, saw the sleeping Antyllus, ate a huge meal washed down by plenty of wine, then went to bed and slept.

Dolabella, he was informed at dawn, had gone out of town for a few days, but Aulus Hirtius arrived as he was breaking his fast and didn't look in a good mood either.

“What do you mean, Antonius, bringing fully armed soldiers into Rome?” he demanded. “There are no civil disturbances, and you don't have Master of the Horse privileges. The city is alive with rumors that you intend to arrest the Liberators still here—I've had seven of them visit me already! They're writing to Brutus and Cassius—you're provoking war!”

“I don't feel safe without a bodyguard,” Antony snarled.

“Safe from whom?” Hirtius asked blankly

“That snake in the grass Gaius Octavius!”

Hirtius flopped on to a chair. “Gaius Octavius?” Unable to stifle it, he laughed. “Oh, come, Antonius, really!”

“The little cunnus stole Caesar's war chest in Brundisium.”

“Gerrae!” said Hirtius, laughing harder.

A servant appeared. “Gaius Octavius is here, domine.”

“Let's ask him, then,” said the scowling Antony, temper not improved at Hirtius's patent disbelief. The trouble was that he didn't dare antagonize Hirtius, the loyalest and most influential of Caesar's adherents in Rome. Carried huge weight in the Senate, and would be consul next year too.

The high-soled boots came as a surprise to Hirtius and Antony both, and didn't contribute to metaphors like snakes in the grass. This demure, togate youth with his odd pretensions, a danger? Worthy of an escort of several hundred armed troops? Hirtius threw Antony a speaking, mirthful glance, leaned back in his chair and prepared to observe the clash of the titans.