Dirk
Banned
Ides of Martius, 710 Ab Urbe Condita
Marcus Antonius woke that morning thinking of Gaul. Why is that? He sat up, shaking his head. He was one who thought mostly of the present and otherwise of the future; the past was useless to him, except to dig up the face of some useful friend or hated enemy.
His eyes were bleary...but not from drink. That was it. He hadn't woken sober since those days in Gaul, where Caesar had forbidden any kind of alcohol to any officer under his command. And the events of last night came flooding back.
Marcus Antonius closed his eyes, a knot of worry growing in his stomach, so accustomed to being knotted from hangover. Casca, that rat, begging him to use his influence with Caesar to pull him out of the conspiracy. Sniveling, explaining that he and his brother had practically been forced to it by their birth and ancestry! Antonius, with no tolerance for beggars who didn't amuse him, personally kicked the man out of his home.
But then he'd lain awake all night. Hadn't they told him, after Caesar had been reappointed dictator four years ago, that they meant to kill him? Gaius Trebonius, Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Lucius Cornelius Cinna...Caesar's capable generals and friends, who happened to love libertas, or else their own pockets, more than their general. The General.
Every man serving under Caesar loved him. The competence, the ability, the vigor. Caesar would never ask a man to do something he wouldn't do himself, and he would never promote a friend over a more competent subordinate...which made him friends out of the most competent men who lived. Gaius Trebonius, the son of a simply equestrian who had practically been made by Caesar's insight; Brutus Albinus, the able scion of a noble family not too friendly to Caesar; Cinna, Caesar's own ex-brother-in-law who'd been ignored and marginalized as the son of "that Cinna" before being taken under the Great Man's wing.
Thinking of him, Marcus Antonius shivered, remembering the eyes. Pale grey irises that were almost white, surrounded by thin rings of black. Two shining silver denarii, prescient and omniscient. Blinding sun eclipsing dark moon. They took in all they saw and could be warm and accepting one moment, then cold and exclusive the next. That was Caesar, chameleon that he was.
Edepol, but what was he doing? His bedchamber, resplendent with gilt columns and vividly painted frescoes of scenes from the deeds of Hercules and the wars of Rome, was still grey and faceless in the pre-dawn light, but Marcus Antonius wasn't tired. He'd lain awake until just a few hours ago, surely, wondering what to do.
But now he knew. "ANICETUS!" he roared for his steward, immediately waking the entire house. "ANICETUS, GET YOUR LAZY GREEK FAG-ASS DOWN HERE!" He needed to hurry for dawn was coming. It was time to save Caesar.
Caesar woke that morning clear-eyed and wondering why he was in her bed. He sat up and one of Calpurnia's kittens stood up with a start by his left knee, stretching with a shiver and then standing there, staring at him. Caesar stared back at it a moment before uncoiling lithely, careful not to wake her, and walking through his sleeping house.
The indoors hallways were dim, lit at intervals by low oil lamps. Windows somewhere were open, and the brisk spring draft carried the smoke away down the hallway. Caesar followed it to his own spare bedroom. A bucket idled in one corner and a clean hard mattress faced it from the side opposite.
More extensive by far was his dressing room. The walls were full mirrors from floor to ceiling, and the closet held a wealth of tunics, togas, armors, and footwear. Gaius Julius Caesar held the titles of Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of Jupiter Latiaris in Alba Longa, the caretaker of the College of Augurs, and many more. Each role, and the priestly ones in particular, required its own style of dress and manner. So the mirror, for Caesar was the consummate actor.
He frowned at the light coming in through the room's solitary window. He went to bed late and woke early, taking three or four hours of rest per night in between the endless paperwork, letters, and micromanagement of Rome's political, military, and commercial empire. He could trust nobody to do the best job himself. Now it was just before dawn, which meant that he should have been awake for an hour now, dictating letters to a few of his secretaries or poring over dispatches from the East.
He'd gotten too much sleep, and that unsettled him. He decided on the consul's toga on this day of the year of his fifth consulship. They had started as whispers and mutters among the clients of his vanquished foes, and were ignored by most, for wasn't Caesar the golden hero of Rome, conqueror of Gaul and champion of the people, the populus? Then he'd become dictator, for he couldn't solve Rome's many problems while overcoming the legal hurdles of the Republic, and he, and the people with him, had realized that he couldn't fix things in one year, or three, or even five.
It had started small at first. Graffiti here, a shout at a speech there, but now Caesar knew that there were a good many men of the Third census class and above--prosperous bakers, craftsmen, butchers, contractors, and the like all the way up through the massive importer-exporters of the eques and the corrupt landowners of the Senate--who now doubted his good intentions. They thought he wanted to be King of Rome, the forbidden title, a curse almost as harsh as cunnus or mentula. Idiots. Who would want to lord it over a bunch of contrarian Romans as king when he could try to work behind the scenes?
So he chose the consul's toga, to highlight the legality and innocence of his iron grip on Rome. Gracious numina, hadn't he even dismissed his lictors as a show of goodwill? Caesar needed no protecting because Caesar was universally loved...or so he wanted it to seem.
Calpurnia tiptoed soundlessly just outside the room, hidden in shadow. Of course she'd been awake the whole time after they'd carried him in, reveling in his closeness. He was always away, always had been away. Scarce weeks after their marriage he'd gone off to Gaul...and been away for ten years. She had her cats, and her friends...but cats and friends did not compare in any way to Caesar. He was her God.
She stared at him now, the very image of a God on Earth at the height of his power and virility. A man-god in his prime. The growing light revealed corded back and arm muscles that bunched and contracted. The world famous Roman infantry calves bulged monstrously under hard thighs and above graceful ankles and feet. But still she saw the flaws, the cracks in the plaster. Where his legs had once been smooth and mighty, varicose veins grew angrily like the roots of some great deadly tree. The crown of thick, pale, golden hair which surmounted his head was now very thin at the front. Tendons and hard knobs of bone in the neck, shoulders, arms, and hips stretched the suntanned skin sallow. Caesar was an aging man.
Then his skin was covered by the toga and Calpurnia marveled at such agile movements. She doubted that any man of her own age, 31 to Caesar's own 56, could have put on a toga without assistance, but Caesar did it with only some minimal difficulty. "What brought me to your bed last night?" he said suddenly.
She gasped in surprise, and after a few moments answered. "They found you asleep at your desk, writing. Still writing." Tears came to her eyes, for it was such a telling question. What brought me to your bed last night? She knew that he was a busy man, and a--a drawing man. He drew supporters and friends like a bakery drew the hungry. They needed him, the confidence, the aura of invincibility, the feeling that you were the only person who mattered when Caesar looked at you; but he needed them more. But they didn't know that.
She liked to think that she was different, that he really loved her. She'd thought so more often in her youth, but now that year after year dragged by without a child, and month after month went by without him visiting her bedroom, that hope that she had tamed the wildfire that was Caesar diminished. He was fond of her, she knew that for sure, but as she was fond of her cats. He was her God, and his own God.
"Huh," he grunted in response to her explanation. He wasn't getting enough sleep, but he needed to do the work. So much work to do before the end. He wouldn't throw his hands up and give up, hoping for the best, as Sulla had done; nor would he die of stress, like Gaius Marius; and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus's way, to be eclipsed by somebody greater, was the worst way to go. But there was no man alive greater than Caesar, and he would never give up. But he might well die of stress....
"Please, my love," his thoughts were interrupted by Calpurnia standing there, a deer staring at the hunter. "M-my love," she stuttered, shaking with bravery. "Stay home, stay here just for today. You need your sleep, rest."
Caesar chuckled, shaking his head. "It was a momentary lapse, Calpurnia. Don't stress about it," he said, stressing the word and chuckling again at some private joke.
"Dear husband," she shuffled forward in her slippers, clutching at his toga. "I had a terrible dream--"
He shoved her away with disgust. If anything drove him away it was emotional clinginess, physically disrupting his appearance, and womanly hysteria of dreams and the supernatural. "Go back to bed," he sad coldly, and was gone.
Halfway down the short walk along the Via Sacra Caesar began to grit his teeth in regret. His varicose veins were helped by the knee high boots of the high priest of Jupiter Latiaris in Alba Longa, but that had caused a fright because they were originally the boots of the Kings of Alba Longa, and those cunt tribunes Gaius Epidius and Lucius Caesetius, pretending to be on his side, had made a bigger deal about it than Clodius's crashing the Bona Dea festival all those years ago. The two had been stripped of their positions, but the damage was done. So Caesar gritted his teeth against the pain and stalked down the street in his ordinary red senators' boots.
The city was just waking up, and only the forms of beggars huddled against the early morning chill or vendors slowly putting up their confectionery stands could be seen dotted here or there all along the Forum. Everywhere he nodded, or shook a man's hand, or inquired after a family member or a job or a situation. It seemed that he knew everybody in the city, and to everybody he spoke to it seemed that he cared. He liked to think he did.
He had reached the Well of the Comitia and was about to skirt its edge when a voice called to him from behind. He whipped around, staring. The form of Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, a man who existed only in varying shades of white, stood out against the gaudily painted shops that stood here. Caesar stood, waiting for the younger man to reach him, and clapped him on the back when he reached him, smiling kindly into the light grey eyes.
"A late start, Decimus? Not falling back into old habits, are you?"
For a moment Decimus Albinus fought to stop his breath from hitching in, and he won. How could they kill him? He was the General again, God of the battlefield. He was like a father to him, diverting the boundless energy of healthy youth from whoring and drinking into soldiering and politicking. Then Decimus Albinus's mind cleared, painted ruthless by a brush as white as his hair. For the Republic.
"Heh, not at all, Caesar. We just realized that you probably hadn't heard that the omens for meeting in your curia were inauspicious." He rolled his eyes theatrically, white eyebrows jumping in derision. "A bit of an inconvenience but...the gods are the gods, aren't they?"
Caesar nodded, frowning. "If it sets all those little minds at ease." He turned on his heel and began past the Well of the Comitia, and thus past his own curia, with Decimus Albinus following. "I swear, if we spent more time administering and less time taking omens and making sacrifices, we'd get a lot more done. Theatre of Pompey, right?"
"Of course," Decimus Albinus head dipped up and down in assent. "Of course," he continued as if stuttering, "before you came along sitting around and scratching their own backsides was a staple of the Senate, wasn't it?"
Caesar grunted agreement, but felt ill at ease with Decimus's sudden flattery. That was not like the man at all. The two military men, trim and fit, clipped easily up the Clivus Argentarius and toward the Campus Martius. It was more of a roundabout route, but this way they avoided having to climb the steep Capitoline Hill and descend the steep Scalae Asyli--Asylum Steps.
They didn't talk along the way, both men normally comfortable with silence. Decimus Albinus was glad for that fact, for surely he'd have given himself away with senseless babbling. His palms sweated and he wiped the right one, hidden by the folds of his toga, on his tunic, brushing the dagger as he did so. His stomach jumped into his throat and there was a tingling in his balls, but he continued to move normally.
As they approached the Theatre Decimus Albinus saw the others standing on the portico, idling, pretending to socialize, but doing the job badly. They kept staring down toward him and Caesar, and stopped talking altogether once they drew close. It didn't occur to him that this was Caesar's default vantage point. At this stage in his life, as the Dictator and the First Man in Rome, men stopped talking and strained to hear what he had to say when they saw him.
A few of them turned and headed inside once he drew close, and most greeted Caesar solemnly, coldly. He saw that most of the faces turned toward him were typically unfriendly ones, and scowled in return. Even round-faced Casca, always happy to see Caesar, looked a bit grim and glum on this fine spring morning. The sun's rays peeked between the Arx and the Capitol, washing the Theatre's white facade in blinding light as Caesar walked in, followed by most of the men. A few of the bigger men stayed on the portico, tense and waiting to repel anybody wanting to join now.
Marcus Antonius, fearing for Caesar's life but wanting to keep appearances, half-jogged and half-walked from his house on the Palatine to the Curia Julia, where almost five hundred senators stood in the brisk morning air, scratching their heads and wondering aloud where Caesar was.
Antonius's heart skipped a beat and he feared the worst, that Caesar had been killed in his home, and that it was too late. He pushed that thought out of his head and looked around, thinking quickly. At this point he would have to reveal his suspicions to Caesar, even if nothing was wrong. The plot against Caesar's life, and Antonius's knowledge of it, had gone too far. To kill the man would be to bring down the only selfless power holding the Republic back from anarchy. Marcus Antonius thought that he could probably come out on top in the end...but at what cost?
Swallowing his distaste he approached Publius Cornelius Dolabella, his enemy of about three years. He wasn't absolutely sure, but he thought that Dolabella had fucked Antonius's cousin and wife Antonia Hybrida. After that there'd been only violence and bad blood between them, and Caesar had greatly regretted putting Antonius as Master of the Horse and Dolabella as Tribune into office together. Still, he was needed now. Dolabella had influence, a following, and was almost as big and strong a man as Antonius himself. "Publius Cornelius," he barked loudly, not caring who heard him. "Something's wrong. We need to find Caesar now."
Dolabella, brown eyes narrowing, looked on the verge of protesting this silliness, when he simply nodded. "Come on Trebellius, Calenus," he called upon another two large, fit men to follow him.
"Hirtius, Pansa, let's go," Antonius nodded, and the six men set off at a quick run toward the Domus Publica, the domicile of the Pontifex Maximus, and so Caesar's home. The streets were beginning to fill, and people stopped in their tracks, moving aside or letting the train of built men weave its way past. They stared in curiosity and mounting dread, that six of the most important men in the Republic should be running around looking deadly at a time like this.
At the Domus Publica Calpurnia told them in a frenzy that she'd watch Caesar go and that she'd seen him and Decimus Albinus pass the curia in the distance, up past the Capitol. "It's the Theatre, then," Dolabella groaned at the time they'd wasted, for the Theatre lay back the way they'd come. As they started back he nudged Antonius and, breathing easily, said, "What's going on, then? They gonna kill the old boy?"
Antonius glanced at him sharply, but realized that they wouldn't be running together if he was in on it. "Not if I have anything to fucking do with it." When they passed the curia the other senators called out questions, but the men sprinted on, now knowing the nearness of their destination. Half the other senators began to run after them, with the other half being too old or too lazy to do any running. Today had been slated to be Caesar's last convention of the Senate before leaving for Parthia, and would have been very well attended.
"Fuck that," Antonius hissed to himself as he eyed the Clivus Argentarius where Caesar and Decimus Albinus had passed minutes before. His powerful legs pistoned up and down as they sprinted up to the Capitol, then sprang as they took the shock of falling down the Scalae Asyli ten steps at a time. Antonius saw the Theatre up ahead...and the dozen beefy men standing in front with their arms crossed. He knew them all, of course. Fellow senators, who didn't appreciate Caesar's aims. Well, he'd knock some sense into them.
Antonius and Dolabella, both feeling the tingling limbs and clear minds that preceded a thousand thousand barroom brawls, roared and charged up the steps. The four men following them, generally older and more experienced soldiers, plodded gently into the violence as if into the arms of an old lover.
Caesar stepped across the glazed terrazzo floor, footsteps drowned by feet of dozens of others. He walked between the long benches of Gnaeus Pompeius's impromptu curia and stopped to look up at the statue of the man himself as he'd been in his prime. Hair a beaten gold darker than Caesar's, nose stubbornly Gallic in its shortness and straightness, eyes a vivid lapis blue. Here you stand, above me again. The Theatre and statue had been erected back when they'd been friends, when there'd been Julia to hold them together. The statue of a man in Rome had to be his own size or smaller, but Pompeius and Caesar had gotten one over the ultraconservatives of those days by planting Pompeius's lifesized statue on a plinth ten feet tall. It served to make the statue impressive without dwarfing it. Not that Pompeius hadn't been impressive back then.
Caesar knelt at the altar to Venus Vitrix, Venus the Victorious, Pompeius's favorite deity and--in his eyes, back then--the goddess that his beloved Julia personified, and prayed for victory over his own love of Rome.
When he stood and turned, he saw the paltry crowd in front of him and frowned, then scowled. This was his last day in Rome before departing for a decade or more to the East, to fight the mounting threat of the Parthians, and only a mere fifty or so senators had arrived by now to send him off? Dawn had passed, and the place should have been packed.
That scowl, simple in its reason, looked like one of contempt for the men arrayed before him, to the men arrayed before him. They were mostly enemies of Caesar, and most of them knew that he knew that. That scowl was a sneer that said, Here I am. I am Rome, and you are nothing. You will have nothing, and your children will scrape to the sons of the loyal barbarians I'm putting in my Senate.
The silence, during which Caesar surveyed his sheep and they Caesar, was broken by Lucius Tillius Cimber, who stumbled forward and bowed his head. "Honored Caesar, before the meeting begins I'd like to speak with you about my beloved brother Publius's exile--" he began quickly, as if shooting off lines remembered by rote.
Caesar's eyes snapped to his face and the scowl became a neutral line on his face as he interrupted, "You've asked before, and I said no. Your brother was beloved to me, until h--"
"Honored Caesar, please, my brother loves his country an--"
"I said no!" Caesar roared, hands on his hips. The pale eyes blazed with fury. "Your brother is a traitor to the country you say he loves. Though I don't doubt he loved me when I exiled him, I must put Rome and her well being above my own. He didn't raise a hand against me, but plundering a pro--"
And now Caesar was cut off by a deeper voice. "No! Enough of this!" Decimus Albinus had stared at their faces and realized that no man had the courage to strike the first blow, to silence the tyrant. So long as he was allowed to rage at and regale them, they would be held in thrall.
"Enough of what?" Caesar shot back, aghast. "What do you mean, Decimus?"
Decimus Albinus's eyes widened and twitched. His heart beat as if a horse was galloping on his chest. "Now, brothers. Enough, it's the time!"
With a high shriek Publius Servilius Casca plunged at Caesar from behind, knifepoint glancing off of Caesar's skull. One of Caesar's hands flew to his brow, but the other shot out and, making a strangely large fist for one whose arms were so wiry, knocked Casca out cold.
"You...fucking...barbarian!" Caesar bellowed, for once out of control of his temper. He bent quickly with that agility and came up bearing Casca's dagger and taking ten small cuts from other daggers along the way. He slid sideways and rolled, unwrapping himself from his toga in one fluid motion and flinging it to entangle two or three men.
Now unburdened, he stood at the base of Pompeius's statue in a battle stance, breathing lightly. Physically he was mostly fine and ready for anything. Mentally he was shocked.
Decimus Albinus saw the world vividly around him as man after man came at Caesar and ducked away before striking true. Stabbing an unarmed man in the back was one thing, but hitting Caesar and coming away alive was something else entirely. The cool, impassive gaze of Pompeius above him was mocking. Decimus Albinus had helped Caesar get rid of one group of tyrants and vipers, and had ended up introducing a worse poisoner than Pompeius and Cato and Bibulus and the rest had ever been.
Decimus Albinus was in the front of the crowd, getting ready to dive at Caesar and have at it, and didn't hear the loud roars until it was too late. Turning at the last second his face met the joined hamlike fists of Marcus Antonius coming up to hit him like a hammer.
Slaves and citizens living nearby were rushing to and fro with wine and rags for the wounded while Hirtius, something of an amateur field physician himself, tended to Caesar. The Great Man stood still in his tunic, eyes calmly regarding the clear blue spring sky. He didn't seem at all affected by the fact that fifty men had just tried to kill him, though Marcus Antonius suspected strongly that acting was a great talent of his.
The conspirators all lay prostrated on the floor where Antonius and the others had shoved them, and the hundreds of other senators had streamed in and were milling about talking excitedly or holding their hands to their mouths or sitting and getting a few extra minutes of sleep before the meeting began in earnest.
The only casualty of this attempt on Caesar's life was Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus. Antonius, despite laying about left and right with those enormous fists and with his hobnailed military sandals, had saved that double knocker for Decimus Albinus, who'd been one of Caesar's most trusted friends. Though Antonius himself had known of a plot years before and hadn't told Caesar...surely this outweighed his guilt? If Caesar ever found out about him knowing. Antonius would have to ensure the deaths of Trebonius, Cinna, and Casca, too, somehow, to make sure they didn't tell.
Hirtius was all done simply patching the shallow wounds on Caesar's arms, though the one on his head required a tight bandage. Caesar felt the area gingerly, hair askew but otherwise looking as normal as if he'd gone for a stroll in the Forum. I, thought Antonius, would be more bothered if I stepped in a puddle.
He had no idea at the depth of Caesar's pain. But Caesar had never been one to show weakness. "I guess," he said in a strong, amused voice, "I'm not going to Parthia tomorrow, am I?"
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