The October Horse (96 page)

Octavian advanced to meet him with a smile and his right hand extended.

“I see what the gossip means,” said Sextus, shaking it.

“Gossip?” asked Octavian, escorting his guest to the duumvir's house, Agrippa in their wake.

“It says you're very young and very pretty.”

“The years will take care of both.”

“True.”

“You're quite like your father's statues, but darker.”

“Did you never see him, Caesar?”

Acknowledgment! Octavian, prone to like Sextus anyway, liked him even more. “In the distance, when I was a child, but he didn't mix with Philippus and the Epicures.”

“No, he didn't.”

They entered the house, were received by an awed duumvir, and taken to his reception room.

“We're not very different in age, Caesar,” said Sextus, seating himself. “I'm twenty-five. You are—?”

“Twenty-one in September.”

Helenus waited on their needs, but a vigilant Marcus Agrippa stood just inside the door, sword in scabbard and face set.

“Does Agrippa have to be here?” Sextus asked, breaking fresh bread eagerly.

“No, but he thinks he does,” Octavian said tranquilly. “He's no gossip. Whatever we say will go no further.”

“Ah, there's nothing like new bread after four days at sea!” said Sextus, crunching and tearing with gusto. “Don't like the sea, eh?”

“I hate it,” Octavian said frankly, shuddering.

“Well, some men do hate it, I know. I'm the opposite, never happier than when the water's busy.”

“A little mulled wine?”

“Yes, but just a little,” Sextus said warily.

“I made sure the poker was white-hot, so it won't addle your wits, Sextus Pompeius. Myself, I like a warm drink first thing in the morning, and mulled wine is far preferable to my father's vinegar in hot water.”

And so the conversation went while they ate, pleasant and unprovocative. Then Sextus Pompey clasped his hands between his knees and looked up at Octavian from under his brows.

“Just why did you ask to parley, Caesar?”

“Well, I'm here, you see, and it might be years before I get another opportunity to talk to you,” said Octavian, face unclouded. “I'm marching on this route with my army and our fleet in order to keep you in the Tuscan Sea. Not unnaturally, we want to ship our forces across the Adriatic in time to stop the Liberators short of Macedonia proper, and Marcus Antonius is of the opinion that you'd rather a Liberator than a Triumviral Rome. Thus he doesn't want you sniffing up Brundisium's arse as well as the Liberator fleets.”

“You make it sound,” said Sextus, grinning, “as if you yourself are not so sure that I'm a Liberator supporter.”

“I keep my options open, Sextus Pompeius, and it's occurred to me that you probably do the same. Therefore I don't automatically suppose you a Liberator supporter. My feeling is that you're a Sextus Pompeius supporter. So I thought that two such open-minded young men as you and I should parley on our own, without any of those elderly, terrifically experienced warriors of the battlefield and the Forum present to remind us of our tender years and our naïveté.” Octavian smiled broadly. “Our provinces are, you might say, much the same. I am supposed to be in charge of the grain supply, whereas, in actual fact, you are.”

“Well put! Go on, I'm agog.”

“The Liberator faction is huge and august,” said Octavian, holding Sextus's eyes. “So huge and august that even a Sextus Pompeius is liable to be buried beneath a plethora of Junii, Cassii, patrician Claudii and Cornelii, Calpurnii, Aemilii, Domitii—need I go on?”

“No,” said Sextus Pompey between his teeth.

“Admittedly you have a large and competent fleet to offer the Liberators, but little else apart from grain—which, my agents say, is not a commodity in short supply for the Liberators, who stripped inland Thrace and all Anatolia—and have a nice deal in place with King Asander of Cimmeria. Therefore it seems to me that your best course is not to ally yourself with the Liberators. Indeed, to hope that Rome does not end up a Liberator Rome. They don't need you as badly as I do.”

“You, Caesar. What about Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus?”

“They're elderly, terrifically experienced warriors of the battlefield and the Forum. As long as Rome and Italy are fed, and we can buy grain for our forces, they don't really care what I do. Or with whom I dicker, Sextus Pompeius. May I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“What do you want?”

“Sicily,” said Sextus. “I want Sicily. Without a fight.”

The golden head nodded sagely. “A practical ambition for a maritime man positioned on the grain route. An achievable one.”

“I'm halfway there,” said Sextus. “I own the coasts and I've forced Pompeius Bithynicus to—er—hail me as his co-governor.”

“Of course he's a Pompeius,” Octavian said smoothly.

The olive skin flushed. “Not one of my family!” he snapped.

“No. He's the son of Junius Juncus's quaestor when Juncus was governor of Asia Province and my father brought Bithynia into the Roman fold. They made a deal. Juncus took the loot, Pompeius took the name. The first Pompeius Bithynicus wasn't much either.”

“Am I correct in thinking that, were I to assume command of the Sicilian militia and spill Pompeius Bithynicus Filius, you would confirm me as governor of Sicily, Caesar?”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Octavian blandly. “Provided, that is, that you agree to sell Sicily's grain to Rome of the Triumvirs for ten sesterces the modius. After all, you'll completely eliminate the middlemen if you own the latifundia and the transports. I do trust that's what you aim for?”

“Oh, yes. I'll own the harvest and the grain fleet.”

“Well then . . . You'll have so few overheads, Sextus Pompeius, that you'll make more selling to the Treasury for ten sesterces the modius than you currently do selling to all and sundry for fifteen sesterces the modius.”

“That's true.”

“Another, very important question—is there going to be a harvest in Sicily this year?” Octavian asked.

“Yes. Not an enormous harvest, but a harvest nonetheless.”

“Which leaves us with the vexed question of Africa. Should Sextius in the New province manage to overcome Cornificius in the Old province and African grain flows to Italy again, naturally you will intercept it. Would you agree to sell it to me for the same ten sesterces the modius?”

“Provided that I'm left alone in Sicily, and that the veteran colonies around Vibo and Rhegium in Bruttium are abolished, yes,” said Sextus Pompey. “Vibo and Rhegium need their public lands.”

Out went Octavian's hand. “Done!”

Sextus Pompey took it. “Done!”

“I'll write to Marcus Lepidus at once and have the veteran colonies relocated on the Bradanus around Metapontum and the Aciris around Heracleia,” said Octavian, very pleased. “We tend rather to forget these lands in Rome—the instep's so remote. But the locals are of Greek descent, and lack political power.”

The two young men parted on the best of terms, each aware that this amicable verbal treaty had a tenuous time span; when events permitted, the Triumvirs (or the Liberators) would have to strip Sicily from Sextus Pompey and drive him off the seas. But for the moment, it would do. Rome and Italy would eat for the old grain price, and sufficient grain would come to keep them eating. A better bargain than Octavian had envisioned in a time of such terrible drought. For the fate of Aulus Pompeius Bithynicus he cared not a fig; the man's father had offended Divus Julius. As for Africa, Octavian had been busy there too, written off to Publius Sittius and his family in their Numidian fief and begged, for Divus Julius's sake, that Sittius aid Sextius, in return for which, Sittius's brother would come off the proscription list and see his property fully restored. Cales could open its gates.

Having released the four hostages, Sextus Pompey sailed.

“What do you think of him?” Octavian asked Agrippa.

“That he's a worthy son of a great man. His downfall as well as his advantage. He won't share power, even if he considered any of the Triumvirs or the assassins his equal on the sea.”

“A pity I couldn't make a loyal adherent out of him.”

“You'll not do that,” Agrippa said emphatically.

•      •      •

“Ahenobarbus has disappeared, where to or for how long I can't find out,” said Calvinus to Octavian when he arrived in Brundisium. “That leaves Murcus's sixty ships on blockade. They're very good, and so is Murcus, but Salvidienus is in the offing, just out of sight. We have reason to believe that Murcus doesn't know. So I think, Octavianus—and Antonius agrees—that we should load every transport we have to the gunwales and make a run for it.”

“Whatever you wish,” said Octavian. Now, he realized, was not the moment to trumpet his successful negotiations with Sextus; he took himself off to write again to Lepidus in Rome to make sure that slug got the message.

The port of Brundisium had a wonderful harbor containing many branches and almost limitless wharfage, so the groaning, whining soldiers were put aboard the four hundred available transports in the space of two days. Somehow the cursing centurions managed to stuff eighteen of the twenty legions into them; men and mules were packed so tightly that the less seaworthy vessels lay too low in the water to survive a minor gale.

In the absence of Ahenobarbus, Staius Murcus's technique was to hide behind the island at the harbor's narrow mouth and pounce on any ships venturing out. It gave him the advantage of the wind at this time of year, for the only wind that would have benefited the Triumvirs was a westerly, and it was not the season of the Zephyr, it was the season of the Etesians.

The transports sailed in their literal hundreds on the Kalends of Sextilis, swarming out of the harbor just as far apart as their oars permitted. At the same moment as the mass exodus began, Salvidienus brought his fleet in from the northeast ahead of a good wind and swung it in a semi-circle around the island to pen Murcus up. He could get out, yes, but not without a naval battle, and he wasn't at Brundisium to engage in naval battles—he was there to sink transports. Oh, why had Ahenobarbus rushed off on the hunt for a rumored second Egyptian expedition?

Impotent, Murcus had to watch while four hundred transports streamed out of Brundisium all day and far into the night, their way lit by bonfires atop tall rafted towers Antony had originally built as offensive weapons—a vain business, but they came in handy now. Western Macedonia was eighty miles away; half the ships were destined for Apollonia, half for Dyrrachium, where, with any luck, the cavalry, heavy equipment, artillery and the baggage train, all sent from Ancona earlier in the year, would be waiting.

•      •      •

If Italy was dry, Greece and Macedonia were far worse, even on this notoriously wet Epirote shore. The rains that had so dogged other generals from Paullus to Caesar hadn't fallen, wouldn't fall, and the hooves of Antony's cavalry horses plus the oxen and spare mules had trodden whatever grass there was into superfine chaff that the Etesians picked up and blew in the direction of Italy.

Their transport hadn't shaken free of the harbor before the shrinking Octavian began to wheeze loudly enough to be heard as one more component of the noises aboard a rickety ship on a perilous voyage. The hovering Agrippa decided that seasickness was not contributing to Octavian's malady; the water was board-flat and the vessel so overloaded that it sat like a cork, hardly rolling even after it heeled to bear northeast under oar power. No, all he suffered was the asthma.

Neither young man had wanted to seem unduly exclusive when their ship was stuffed with ranker soldiers, so their accommodation was limited to a tiny section of deck just behind the mast, out of the way of the tillers and the captain, but surrounded by men. Here Agrippa had insisted that Octavian place a peculiar-looking bed that had one end sloping upward at a sharp angle. It bore quite a few blankets to cushion the hard wood, but no mattress. Under the frightened eyes of legionaries he didn't know (Legio Martia had been one of the two units left behind in Brundisium), Agrippa propped Octavian in a sitting position on the bed to help him catch his breath. An hour later, sailing free on the Adriatic, held now within Agrippa's arms, he labored fiercely and stubbornly to draw enough air into his lungs, his hands clenched around Agrippa's so strongly that it was to be two days before all the feeling came back. The spasms of coughing racked him until he retched, which seemed to give him a slight temporary relief, but his face was both livid and grey, his eyes turned inward.

“What is it, Marcus Agrippa?” asked a junior centurion.

They know my name, so they know who he is. “An illness from Mars of the Legions,” said Agrippa, thinking quickly. ”He's the son of the god Julius, and it's a part of his inheritance to take all your illnesses upon himself."

“Is that why we're not seasick?” asked a ranker, awed.

“Of course,” lied Agrippa.

“How about we promise offerings to Mars and Divus Julius for him?” someone else asked.

“It will help,” said Agrippa gravely. He looked about. “So would some kind of shield against the wind, I believe.”

“But there's no wind,” the junior centurion objected.

“The air's laden with dirt,” said Agrippa, improvising again. “Here, take these two blankets”—he wrenched them from under himself and the oblivious Octavian—“and hold them up around us. It will stop the dirt getting in. You know what Divus Julius always used to say—dirt is a soldier's enemy.”

It can't do any harm, Agrippa thought. The important thing is that these fellows don't think any the worse of their commander for being ill—they have to believe in him, not dismiss him as a weakling. If Hapd'efan'e is right about dirty air, then he's not going to get much better as this campaign goes on. So I'm going to harp about his being Divus Julius's son—that he's set himself up as the universal victim in order to bring the army victory, for Divus Julius is not only a god to the People of Rome, he's a god to Rome's armies.

Toward the end of the voyage and after a long night afloat in a vast nothingness, it seemed, Octavian began to recover. He came out of his self-induced trance and gazed at the ring of faces, then, smiling, held out his right hand to the junior centurion.