Servilia gave birth to her third daughter at the beginning of September, a fair-haired mite whose eyes promised to stay blue. Because Junia and Junilla were so much older and therefore used to their names by now, this Junia would be called Tertia, which meant Third and had a nice sound. The pregnancy had dragged terribly after Caesar had elected not to see her halfway through May, not helped because she was heaviest when the weather was hottest, and Silanus did not deem it wise to leave Rome for the seaside because of her condition at her age. He had continued to be kind and considerate. No one watching them could have suspected all was not well between them. Only Servilia recognized a new look in his eyes, part wounded and part sad, but as compassion was not a part of her nature, she dismissed it as a simple fact of life and did not soften toward him.
Knowing that the gossip grapevine would convey the news of his daughter’s arrival to Caesar, Servilia made no attempt to get in touch with him. A hard business anyway, and now compounded by Caesar’s new wife. What a shock that had been! Out of the blue, a fireball roaring down from a clear sky to flatten her, kill her, reduce her to a cinder. Jealousy ate at her night and day, for she knew the young lady, of course. No intelligence, no depth—but so beautiful with her off-red hair and vivid green eyes! A granddaughter of Sulla’s too. Rich. All the proper connections and a foot in each senatorial camp. How clever of Caesar to gratify his senses as well as enhance his political status! For having no way to ascertain her beloved’s frame of mind, Servilia assumed automatically that this was a love match. Well, rot him! How could she live without him? How could she live knowing some other woman meant more to him than she did? How could she live?
Brutus saw Julia regularly, of course. At sixteen and now officially a man, Brutus was revolted by his mother’s pregnancy. He, a man, had a mother who was still—was still… Ye gods, the embarrassment, the humiliation!
But Julia saw things differently, and told him so. “How nice for her and Silanus,” the nine-year-old had said, smiling tenderly. “You mustn’t be angry with her, Brutus, truly. What happens if after we’ve been married for twenty or so years, we should have an extra child? Would you understand your oldest son’s anger?”
His skin was worse than it had been a year ago, always in a state of eruption, yellow sores and red sores, sores which itched or burned, needed to be scratched or squeezed or torn at. Self-hate had fueled his hatred of his mother’s condition, and was hard to put by now at this reasonable and charitable question. He scowled, growled, but then said reluctantly, “I would understand his anger, yes, because I feel it. But I do see what you mean.”
“Then that’s a beginning, it will do,” said the little sage. “Servilia isn’t quite a girl anymore, avia explained that to me, and said that she would need lots of help and sympathy.”
“I’ll try,” said Brutus, “for you, Julia.” And took himself home to try.
All of which paled into insignificance when Servilia’s chance came not two weeks after she had borne Tertia. Her brother Caepio called to see her with interesting news.
One of the urban quaestors, he had been earmarked earlier in the year to assist Pompey in his campaign against the pirates, a task he had not thought would necessitate his leaving Rome.
“But I’ve been sent for, Servilia!” he cried, happiness shining in eyes and smile. “Gnaeus Pompeius wants quite a lot of money and accounts brought to him in Pergamum, and I am to make the journey. Isn’t that wonderful? I can go overland through Macedonia and visit my brother Cato. I miss him dreadfully!”
“How nice for you,” said Servilia listlessly, not in the least interested in Caepio’s passion for Cato, as it had been a part of all their lives for twenty-seven years.
“Pompeius doesn’t expect me before December, so if I get going immediately I can have quite a long time with Cato before I have to move on,” Caepio continued, still in that mood of happy anticipation. “The weather will hold until I leave Macedonia, and I can continue on by road.” He shivered. “I hate the sea!”
“Safe from pirates these days, I hear.”
“Thank you, I prefer terra firma.”
Caepio then proceeded to acquaint himself with baby Tertia, gooing and clucking as much out of genuine affection as out of duty, and comparing his sister’s child to his own, also a girl.
“Lovely little thing,” he said, preparing to depart. “Most distinguished bones. I wonder where she gets those from?”
Oh, thought Servilia. And here was I deluding myself that I am the only one to see a likeness to Caesar! Still, Porcius Cato though his blood was, Caepio had no malice in him, so his remark had been an innocent one.
Her mind clicked from that thought into an habitual sequel, Caepio’s manifest unworthiness to inherit the fruits of the Gold of Tolosa, followed by a burning resentment that her own son, Brutus, could not inherit. Caepio, the cuckoo in her family nest. Cato’s full brother, not her full brother.
It had been months since Servilia had been able to concentrate on anything beyond Caesar’s perfidy in marrying that young and delectable nincompoop, but those reflections on the fate of the Gold of Tolosa now flowed into a completely different channel unclouded by Caesar-induced emotions. For she glanced out of her open window and saw Sinon prancing blithely down the colonnade on the far side of the peristyle garden. Servilia loved this slave, though not in any fleshly sense. He had belonged to her husband, but not long after their marriage she had asked Silanus sweetly if he would transfer Sinon’s ownership to her. The deed accomplished, she had summoned Sinon and informed him of the change in his status, expecting horror, hoping for something else. She had got that something else, and loved Sinon ever since. For he had greeted her news with joy.
“It takes one to know one,” he had remarked impudently.
“If it does, Sinon, bear this in mind: I am your superior, I have the power.”
“I understand,” he answered, smirking. “That’s good, you know. As long as Decimus Junius remained my master, there was always the temptation to take things too far, and that might well have resulted in my downfall. With you as my mistress, I will never forget to watch my step. Very good, very good! But do remember, domina, that I am yours to command.”
And command him she had from time to time. Cato, she knew from childhood, was afraid of absolutely nothing except large and hairy spiders, which reduced him to gibbering panic. So Sinon was often allowed to prowl out of Rome in search of large and hairy spiders, and was paid extremely well to introduce them into Cato’s house, from his bed to his couch to his desk drawers. Not once had he been detected at the business, either. Cato’s full sister, Porcia, who was married to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, had an abiding horror of fat beetles. Sinon caught fat beetles and introduced them into that household. Then sometimes Servilia would instruct him to dump thousands of worms or fleas or flies or crickets or roaches into either residence, and send anonymous notes containing worm curses or flea curses or whatever curse was relevant. Until Caesar had entered her life, such activities had kept her amused. But since Caesar had entered her life, those diversions had not been necessary, and Sinon’s time had become all his own. He toiled not, save in the procurement of insect pests, as the mantle of the lady Servilia wrapped him round.
“Sinon!” she called.
He stopped, turned, came skipping up the colonnade and round the corner to her sitting room. Quite a pretty fellow, he had a certain grace and insouciance which made him likable to those who did not know him well; Silanus, for instance, still thought highly of him, and so did Brutus. Slight in build, he was a brown person—brown skin, light brown eyes, light brown hair. Pointed ears, pointed chin, pointed fingers. No wonder many of the servants made the sign to ward off the Evil Eye when Sinon appeared. There was a satyr quality to him.
“Domina?” he asked, stepping over the sill.
“Close the door, Sinon, then close the shutters.”
“Oh, goody, work!” he said, obeying.
“Sit down.”
He sat, gazing at her with a mixture of cheek and expectation. Spiders? Roaches? Perhaps she would graduate to snakes?
“How would you like your freedom, Sinon, with a fat purse of gold to go with it?’’ she asked.
That he did not expect. For a moment the satyr vanished to reveal another quasi-human less appealing underneath, some creature out of a children’s nightmare. Then it too disappeared, he merely looked alert and interested.
“I would like that very much, domina.”
“Have you any idea what I would ask you to do that could earn such a reward?”
“Murder at the very least,” he answered without hesitation.
“Quite so,” said Servilia. “Are you tempted?”
He shrugged. “Who would not be, in my position?”
“It takes courage to do murder.”
“I am aware of that. But I have courage.”
“You’re a Greek, and Greeks have no sense of honor. By that I mean they do not stay bought.”
“I would stay bought, domina, if all I had to do was murder and then could disappear with my fat purse of gold.”
Servilia was reclining on a couch, and did not alter her position in the slightest through all of this. But having got his answer, she straightened; her eyes grew absolutely cold and still. “I do not trust you because I trust nobody,” she said, “yet this is not a murder to be done in Rome, or even in Italia. It will have to be done somewhere between Thessalonica and the Hellespont, an ideal spot from which to disappear. But there are ways I can keep hold of you, Sinon, do not forget that. One is to pay you some of your reward now, and send the rest to a destination in Asia Province.”
“Ah, domina, but how do I know you will keep your side of the bargain?” Sinon asked softly.
Servilia’s nostrils flared, an unconscious hauteur. “I am a patrician Servilius Caepio,” she said.
“I appreciate that.”
“It is the only guarantee you need that I will keep my side of the bargain.”
“What do I have to do?”
“First of all, you have to procure a poison of the best kind. By that I mean a poison which will not fail, and a poison which will not be suspected.”
“I can do that.”
“My brother Quintus Servilius Caepio leaves for the East in a day or so,” said Servilia, level-voiced. “I will ask him if you may accompany him, as I have business for you to do in Asia Province. He will agree to take you, of course. There is no reason why he should not. He will be carrying scrip and accounts for Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in Pergamum, and he will have no ready money to tempt you. For it is imperative, Sinon, that you do what I require you to do and then go without disturbing one single tiny thing. His brother Cato is a tribune of the soldiers in Macedonia, and his brother Cato is a far different fellow. Suspicious and hard, ruthless when offended. No doubt his brother Cato will go east to arrange my brother Caepio’s obsequies, it is in character for him to do so. And when he arrives, Sinon, there must be no suspicion that anything more than illness has put paid to the life of my brother Quintus Servilius Caepio.”
“I understand,” said Sinon, not moving a muscle.
“Do you?”
“Fully, domina.”
“You may have tomorrow to find your tool. Is that possible?”
“That is possible.”
“Good. Then you may run round the corner now to my brother Quintus Servilius Caepio’s house, and ask him to visit me today on a matter of some urgency,” said Servilia.
Sinon left. Servilia lay back on her couch, closed her eyes and smiled.
She was still like that when Caepio returned not long after; their houses were in close proximity.
“What is it, Servilia?” he asked, concerned. “Your servant seemed most anxious.”
“Dear me, I hope he didn’t frighten you!” said Servilia sharply.
“No, no, I assure you.”
“You didn’t take a dislike to him?”
Caepio blinked. “Why should I?”
“I have no idea,” said Servilia, patting the end of her couch. “Sit down, brother. I have a favor to ask you, and something to make sure you have done.”
“The favor?”
“Sinon is my most trusted servant, and I have some business in Pergamum for him to do. I should have thought of it when you were here earlier, but I didn’t, so I do apologize for having to drag you back. Would you mind if Sinon traveled in your party?’’
“Of course not!” cried Caepio sincerely.
“Oh, splendid,” purred Servilia.
“And what was I supposed to do?”
“Make your will,” said Servilia.
He laughed. “Is that all? What sensible Roman doesn’t have a will lodged with the Vestals the moment he becomes a man?”
“But is yours current? You have a wife and a baby daughter, but no heir in your own house.”
Caepio sighed. “Next time, Servilia, next time. Hortensia was disappointed to produce a girl first, but she’s a dear little thing, and Hortensia had no trouble in labor. There’ll be sons.”
“So you’ve left it all to Cato,” said Servilia, making it a statement.
The face so like Cato’s registered horror. “To Cato?” he asked, voice squeaking. “I can’t leave the Servilius Caepio fortune to a Porcius Cato, much and all as I love him! No, no, Servilia! It’s left to Brutus because Brutus won’t mind being adopted as a Servilius Caepio, won’t mind taking the name. But Cato?’’ He laughed. “Can you see our baby brother Cato consenting to bear any other name than his own?”
“No, I can’t,” said Servilia, and laughed a little too. Then her eyes filled, her lips quivered. “What a morbid conversation! Still, it was one I had to have with you. One never knows.”
“Cato is my executor, however,” said Caepio, preparing to leave this same room for the second time within an hour. “He’ll make sure Hortensia and baby Servilia Caepionis inherit as much as the lex Voconia lets me leave them, and he’ll make sure Brutus is properly endowed.”
“What a ridiculous subject this is!” said Servilia, rising to see him to the door, and surprising him with a kiss. “Thank you for letting Sinon go with you, and thank you even more for allaying my fears. Futile fears, I know. You’ll be back!”
She closed the door behind him and stood for a moment so weak that she swayed. Right, she had been right! Brutus was his heir because Cato would never consent to being adopted into a patrician clan like Servilius Caepio! Oh, what a wonderful day this was! Even Caesar’s defection wasn’t hurting the way it had a few hours before.
*
Having Marcus Porcius Cato on one’s staff, even if his duties were technically confined to the consuls’ legions, was an ordeal the governor of Macedonia could never have imagined until it happened. If the young man had been a personal appointment, home he would have gone no matter if his sponsor had been Jupiter Optimus Maximus; but as the People had appointed him through the medium of the Popular Assembly, there was nothing Governor Marcus Rubrius could do save suffer the continuing presence of Cato.
But how could one deal with a young man who poked and pried, questioned incessantly, wanted to know why this was going there, why that was worth more on the books than in the marketplace, why so-and-so was claiming tax exemptions? Cato never stopped asking why. If he was reminded tactfully that his inquisitions were not relevant to the consuls’ legions, Cato would simply answer that everything in Macedonia belonged to Rome, and Roma as personified by Romulus had elected him one of her magistrates. Ergo, everything in Macedonia was legally and morally and ethically his business.
Governor Marcus Rubrius was not alone. His legates and his military tribunes (elected or unelected), his scribes, wardens, bailiffs, publicani, mistresses and slaves all detested Marcus Porcius Cato. Who was a fiend for work, couldn’t even be gotten rid of by being sent to some outpost of the province, because he’d come back in two or three days at most, his task well done.
A great deal of his conversation—if a loud harangue could be called a conversation—revolved around his great-grandfather, Cato the Censor, whose frugality and old-fashioned ways Cato esteemed immensely. And since Cato was Cato, he actually emulated the Censor in every way save one: he walked everywhere instead of riding, he ate abstemiously and drank nothing but water, his habit of living was no better than that of a ranker soldier, and he kept only one slave to attend to his needs.
So what was that one transgression of his great-grandfather’s tenets? Cato the Censor had abhorred Greece, Greeks and things Greek, whereas young Cato admired them, and made no secret of his admiration. This let him in for considerable chaffing from those who had to bear his presence in Grecian Macedonia, all of them dying to pierce his incredibly thick skin. But none of the chaffing so much as made a dent in Cato’s integument; when someone twitted him about betraying his great-grandfather’s precepts by espousing Greek modes of thought, that person found himself ignored as unimportant. Alas, what Cato did consider important was what drove his superiors, peers and inferiors maddest: living soft, he called it, and was as likely to criticize evidence of living soft in the governor as in a centurion. Since he dwelled in a two-roomed mud brick house on the outskirts of Thessalonica and shared it with his dear friend Titus Munatius Rufus, a fellow tribune of the soldiers, no one could say Cato himself lived soft.
He had arrived in Thessalonica during March, and by the end of May the governor came to the conclusion that if he didn’t get rid of Cato somehow, murder would be done. The complaints kept piling up on the gubernatorial desk from tax-farming publicani, grain merchants, accountants, centurions, legionaries, legates, and various women Cato had accused of unchastity.
“He even had the gall to tell me that he had kept himself chaste until he married!” gasped one lady to Rubrius; she was an intimate friend. “Marcus, he stood me up in the agora in front of a thousand smirking Greeks and lambasted me about the behavior appropriate to a Roman woman living in a province! Get rid of him, or I swear I’ll pay someone to assassinate him!”
Luckily for Cato, it was somewhat later on the same day that he happened to pass a remark to Marcus Rubrius about the presence in Pergamum of one Athenodorus Cordylion.
“How I would love to hear him!” barked Cato. “Normally he’s located in Antioch and Alexandria; this present tour is unusual.”
“Well,” said Rubrius, tongue tripping rapidly in the wake of a brilliant idea, “why don’t you take a couple of months off and go to Pergamum to hear him?”
“I couldn’t do that!” said Cato, shocked. “My duty is here.”
“Every tribune of the soldiers is entitled to leave, my dear Marcus Cato, and none is more deserving of leave than you. Go, do! I insist upon it. And take Munatius Rufus with you.”
So Cato went, accompanied by Munatius Rufus. Thessalonica’s Roman contingent went almost mad with joy, for Munatius Rufus so hero-worshiped Cato that he imitated him assiduously. But exactly two months after departing he was back in Thessalonica, the only Roman whom Rubrius had ever known to take a casual suggestion of how long to be away so literally. And with him in his train came none other than Athenodorus Cordylion, Stoic philosopher of some renown, ready to play Panaetius to Cato’s Scipio Aemilianus. Being a Stoic, he didn’t expect or want the kind of luxuries Scipio Aemilianus had poured upon Panaetius—which was just as well. The only change he made in Cato’s way of living was that he, Munatius Rufus and Cato rented a three-roomed mud brick house instead of a two-roomed one, and that there were three slaves in it instead of two. What had prompted this eminent philosopher to join Cato? Simply that in Cato he had seen someone who would one day matter enormously, and to join the Cato household would ensure his own name was remembered. If it hadn’t been for Scipio Aemilianus, who would ever remember the name of Panaetius?
The Roman element in Thessalonica had groaned mightily when Cato returned from Pergamum; Rubrius demonstrated that he was not prepared to suffer Cato by declaring that he had urgent business in Athens, and departing in a hurry. No consolation for those he left behind! But then Quintus Servilius Caepio arrived en route to Pergamum in Pompey’s service, and Cato forgot about tax-farmers and living soft, so happy was he to see this beloved brother.
The bond between them had been created shortly after Cato’s birth, at which time Caepio was only three years old. Ailing, their mother (she was to die within two months) gave baby Cato into toddler Caepio’s willing hands. Nothing save duty had parted them since, though even in duty they had usually managed to stay together. Perhaps the bond would naturally have weakened as they grew, had it not been that their Uncle Drusus was stabbed to death in the house they had all shared; when it happened Caepio was six and Cato barely three. That ghastly ordeal forged the bond in fires of horror and tragedy so intense it endured afterward even stronger. Their childhood had been lonely, war torn, unloving, humorless. No close relatives were left, their guardians aloof, and the two oldest of the six children involved, Servilia and Servililla, loathed the two youngest, Cato and his sister Porcia. Not that the battle between oldest and youngest was weighted in favor of the two Servilias! Cato might have been the littlest, but he was also the loudest and the most fearless of all six.
Whenever the child Cato was asked, “Whom do you love?,” his answer was the same: “I love my brother.” And if he was pressed to qualify this statement by declaring whom else he loved, his answer was always the same: “I love my brother.”
In truth he never had loved anybody else except for that awful experience with Uncle Mamercus’s daughter, Aemilia Lepida; and if loving Aemilia Lepida had taught Cato nothing else, it taught him to detest and mistrust women—an attitude helped along by a childhood spent with Servilia.
Whereas what he felt for Caepio was totally ineradicable, completely reciprocated, heartfelt, a matter of sinew and blood. Though he never would admit, even to himself, that Caepio was more than half a brother. There are none so blind as those who will not see, and none blinder than Cato when he wanted to be blind.
They journeyed everywhere, saw everything, Cato for once the expert. And if the humble little freedman Sinon who traveled in Caepio’s train on Servilia’s business had ever been tempted to treat her warning about Cato lightly, one look at Cato made him understand entirely why she had thought Cato worth mentioning as a danger to Sinon’s real business. Not that Sinon was drawn to Cato’s attention; a member of the Roman nobility did not bother with introductions to inferiors. Sinon looked from behind a crowd of servants and underlings, and made sure he did absolutely nothing to provoke Cato into noticing him.
But all good things must come to an end, so at the beginning of December the brothers parted and Caepio rode on down the Via Egnatia, followed by his retinue. Cato wept unashamedly. So did Caepio, all the harder because Cato walked down the road in their wake for many miles, waving, weeping, calling out to Caepio to take care, take care, take care….
Perhaps he had had a feeling of imminent danger to Caepio; certainly when Caepio’s note came a month later, its contents did not surprise him as they ought to have done.
My dearest brother, I have fallen ill in Aenus, and I fear for my life. Whatever is the matter, and none of the local physicians seem to know, I worsen every day.
Please, dear Cato, I beg you to come to Aenus and be with me at my end. It is so lonely, and no one here can comfort me as your presence would. I can ask to hold no hand dearer than yours while I give up my last breath. Come, I beg of you, and come soon. I will try to hang on.
My will is all in order with the Vestals, and as we had discussed, young Brutus will be my heir. You are the executor, and I have left you, as you stipulated, no more than the sum of ten talents. Come soon.
When informed that Cato needed emergency leave immediately, Governor Marcus Rubrius put no obstacles in his path. The only advice he offered was to go by road, as late-autumn storms were lashing the Thracian coast, and there had already been several shipwrecks reported. But Cato refused to listen; by road his journey could not take less than ten days no matter how hard he galloped, whereas the screaming winds from the northwest would fill the sails of a ship and speed it along so swiftly he could hope to reach Aenus in three to five days. And, having found a ship’s captain rash enough to agree to take him (for a very good fee) from Thessalonica to Aenus, the feverish and frantic Cato embarked. Athenodorus Cordylion and Munatius Rufus came too, each man accompanied by only one slave.
The voyage was a nightmare of huge waves, breaking masts, tattered sails. However, the captain had carried extra masts and sails with him; the little ship ploughed and wallowed on, afloat and, it seemed to Athenodorus Cordylion and Munatius Rufus, powered in some inscrutable way out of the mind and will of Cato. Who, when harbor was reached at Aenus on the fourth day, didn’t even wait for the ship to tie up. He leaped the few feet from ship to dock and began running madly through the driving rain. Only once did he pause, to discover from an astonished and shelterless peddler whereabouts lay the house of the ethnarch, for there he knew Caepio would be.
He burst into the house and into the room where his brother lay, an hour too late to hold that hand while Caepio knew he was holding it. Quintus Servilius Caepio was dead.
Water pooling around him on the floor, Cato stood by the bed looking down at the core and solace of his entire life, a still and dreadful figure bleached of color, vigor, force. The eyes had been closed and weighted down with coins, a curved silver edge protruded between the slightly parted lips; someone else had given Caepio the price of his ferry ride across the river Styx, thinking Cato would not come.
Cato opened his mouth and produced a sound which terrified everyone who heard it, neither wail nor howl nor screech, but an eldritch fusion of all three, animal, feral, hideous. All those present in the room recoiled instinctively, shook as Cato threw himself onto the bed, onto dead Caepio, covered the dreaming face with kisses, the lifeless body with caresses, while the tears poured until nose and mouth ran rivers as well, and those dreadful noises erupted out of him time and time again. And the paroxysm of grief went on without let, Cato mourning the passing of the one person in his world who meant everything, had been comfort in an awful childhood, anchor and rock to boy and man. Caepio it had been who drew his three-year-old eyes away from Uncle Drusus bleeding and screaming on the floor, turned those eyes into the warmth of his body and took the burden of all those ghastly hours upon his six-year-old shoulders; Caepio it had been who listened patiently while his dunce of a baby brother learned every fact the hardest way, by repeating it endlessly; Caepio it had been who reasoned and coaxed and cajoled during the unbearable aftermath of Aemilia Lepida’s desertion, persuaded him to live again; Caepio it had been who took him on his first campaign, taught him to be a brave and fearless soldier, beamed when he had received armillae and phalerae for valor on a field more usually famous for cowardice, for they had belonged to the army of Clodianus and Poplicola defeated thrice by Spartacus; Caepio it had always, always been.
Now Caepio was no more. Caepio had died alone and friendless, with no one to hold his hand. The guilt and remorse sent Cato quite mad in that room where Caepio lay dead. When people tried to take him away, he fought. When people tried to talk him away, he just howled out. For almost two days he refused to move from where he lay covering Caepio, and the worst of it was that no one—no one!—even began to understand the terror of this loss, the loneliness his life would now forever be. Caepio was gone, and with Caepio went love, sanity, security.
But finally Athenodorus Cordylion managed to pierce the madness with words concerning a Stoic’s attitudes, the behavior fitting to one who, like Cato, professed Stoicism. Cato got up and went to arrange his brother’s funeral, still clad in rough tunic and smelly sagum, unshaven, face smeared and crusted with the dried remains of so many rivers of grief. The ten talents Caepio had left him in his will would be spent on this funeral, and when no matter how he tried to spend all of it with the local undertakers and spice merchants, all he could procure amounted to one talent, he spent another talent on a golden box studded with jewels to receive Caepio’s ashes, and the other eight on a statue of Caepio to be erected in the agora of Aenus.
“But you won’t get the color of his skin or his hair or his eyes right,” said Cato in that same hard harsh voice, even harsher from the noises his throat had produced, “and I do not want this statue to look like a living man. I want everyone who sees it to know that he is dead. You will craft it in Thasian marble of solid grey and you will polish it until my brother glitters under the light of the moon. He is a shade, and I want his statue to look like a shade.”
The funeral was the most impressive this small Greek colony just to the east of the mouth of the Hebrus had ever seen, with every woman drawn into service as a professional mourner, and every stick of aromatic spice Aenus contained burned upon Caepio’s pyre. When the obsequies were over, Cato gathered up the ashes himself and placed them in the exquisite little box, which never left his person from that day until he arrived in Rome a year later and, as was his duty, gave the box to Caepio’s widow.
He wrote to Uncle Mamercus in Rome with instructions to act on as much of Caepio’s will as was necessary before he himself returned, and was quite surprised to find he didn’t need to write to Rubrius in Thessalonica. The ethnarch had most correctly notified Rubrius of Caepio’s death the day it happened, and Rubrius had seen his chance. So with his letter of condolences to Cato there arrived all Cato’s and Munatius Rufus’s possessions. It’s nearly the end of your year of service, chaps, said the governor’s scribe’s perfect handwriting, and I wouldn’t ask either of you to come back here when the weather’s closed in and the Bessi have gone home to the Danubius for the winter! Take a long vacation in the East, get over it the right way, the best way.
“I will do that,” said Cato, the box between his hands. “We will journey east, not west.”
But he had changed, as both Athenodorus Cordylion and Titus Munatius Rufus saw, both with sadness. Cato had always been a working lighthouse, a strong and steady beam turning, turning. Now the light had gone out. The face was the same, the trim and muscular body no more bowed or cramped than of yore. But now the hectoring voice had a tonelessness absolutely new, nor did Cato become excited, or enthused, or indignant, or angry. Worst of all, the passion had vanished.
Only Cato knew how strong he had needed to be to go on living. Only Cato knew what Cato had resolved: that never again would he lay himself open to this torture, this devastation. To love was to lose forever. Therefore to love was anathema. Cato would never love again. Never.
And while his shabby little band of three free men and three attendant slaves plodded on foot down the Via Egnatia toward the Hellespont, a freedman named Sinon leaned upon the rail of a neat little ship bearing him down the Aegaean before a brisk but steady winter wind, his destination Athens. There he would take passage for Pergamum, where he would find the rest of his bag of gold. Of that last fact he had no doubt. She was too crafty not to pay up, the great patrician lady Servilia. For a moment Sinon toyed with the idea of blackmail, then he laughed, shrugged, tossed an expiatory drachma into the briskly foaming wake as an offering to Poseidon. Carry me safely, Father of the Deep! I am not only free, I am rich. The lioness in Rome is quiet. I will not wake her to seek more money. Instead, I will increase what is legally mine already.
*
The lioness in Rome learned of her brother’s death from Uncle Mamercus, who came round to see her the moment he received Cato’s letter. She shed tears, but not too many; Uncle Mamercus knew how she felt, no one better. The instructions to the branch of her bankers in Pergamum had gone not long after Caepio, a risk she had decided to take before the deed happened. Wise Servilia. No curious accountant or banker would wonder why after the death of Caepio his sister sent a large sum of money to a freedman named Sinon who would pick it up in Pergamum.
And, said Brutus to Julia later that day, “I am to change my name, isn’t that amazing?”
“Have you been adopted in someone’s will?” she asked, quite aware of the usual manner in which a man’s name would change.
“My Uncle Caepio died in Aenus, and I am his heir.” The sad brown eyes blinked away a few tears. “He was a nice man, I liked him. Mostly I suppose because Uncle Cato adored him. Poor Uncle Cato was there an hour too late. Now Uncle Cato says he’s not coming home for a long time. I shall miss him.”
“You already do,” said Julia, smiling and squeezing his hand.
He smiled at her and squeezed back. No need to worry about Brutus’s conduct toward his betrothed; it was as circumspect as any watchful grandmother could want. Aurelia had given up any kind of chaperonage very soon after the engagement contract was signed. Brutus was a credit to his mother and stepfather.
Not long turned ten (her birthday was in January), Julia was profoundly glad that Brutus was a credit to his mother and stepfather. When Caesar had told her of her marital fate she had been appalled, for though she pitied Brutus, she knew that no amount of time or exposure to him would turn pity into affection of the kind that held marriages together. The best she could say of him was that he was nice. The worst she could say of him was that he was boring. Though her age precluded any romantic dreams, like most little girls of her background she was very much attuned to what her adult life would be, and therefore very much aware of marriage. It had proven hard to go to Gnipho’s school and tell her classmates of her betrothal, for all that she had used to think it would give her great satisfaction to put herself on a par with Junia and Junilla, as yet the only betrothed girls there. But Junia’s Vatia Isauricus was a delightful fellow, and Junilla’s Lepidus dashingly handsome. Whereas what could one say about Brutus? Neither of his half sisters could abide him—at least not to hear them talk at school. Like Julia, they deemed him a pompous bore. Now here she was to marry him! Oh, her friends would tease her unmercifully! And pity her.
“Poor Julia!” said Junia, laughing merrily.
However, there was no point in resenting her fate. She had to marry Brutus, and that was that.
“Did you hear the news, tata?” she asked her father when he came home briefly after the dinner hour had ended.
It was awful now that Pompeia lived here. He never came home to sleep, rarely ate with them, passed through. Therefore to have news which might detain him long enough for a word or two was wonderful; Julia seized her chance.
“News?” he asked absently.
“Guess who came to see me today?” she asked gleefully.
Her father’s eyes twinkled. “Brutus?”
“Guess again!”
“Jupiter Optimus Maximus?”
“Silly! He doesn’t come as a person, only as an idea.”
“Who, then?” he asked, beginning to shift about restlessly. Pompeia was home; he could hear her in the tablinum, which she had made her own because Caesar never worked there anymore.
“Oh, tata, please please stay a little while longer!”
The big blue eyes were strained with anxiety; Caesar’s heart and conscience smote him. Poor little girl, she suffered from Pompeia more than anyone else because she didn’t see much of tata.
Sighing, he picked her up and carried her to a chair, sat himself down and put her on his knee. “You’re growing quite tall!” he said, surprised.
“I hope so.” She began to kiss his white fans.
“Who came to see you today?” he asked, keeping very still.
“Quintus Servilius Caepio.”
His head jerked, turned. “Who?”
“Quintus Servilius Caepio.”
“But he’s quaestoring Gnaeus Pompeius!”
“No, he isn’t.”
“Julia, the only member of that family left alive is not here in Rome!” said Caesar.
“I am afraid,” said Julia softly, “that the man you mean is no longer alive. He died in Aenus in January. But there is a new Quintus Servilius Caepio, because the will names him and he must soon be formally adopted.”
Caesar gasped. “Brutus?”
“Yes, Brutus. He says he’ll now be known as Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus rather than Caepio Junianus. The Brutus is more important than the Junius.”
“Jupiter!”
“Tata, you’re quite shocked. Why?”
His hand went to his head, he gave his cheek a mock slap. “Well, you wouldn’t know.” Then he laughed. “Julia, you will marry the richest man in Rome! If Brutus is Caepio’s heir, then the third fortune he adds to his inheritance pales the other two into insignificance. You’ll be wealthier than a queen.”
“Brutus didn’t say anything like that.”
“He probably doesn’t really know. Not a curious young man, your betrothed,” said Caesar.
“I think he likes money.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” asked Caesar rather bitterly. He got to his feet and put Julia in the chair. “I’ll be back shortly,” he said, dashed through the door into the dining room, and then, so Julia presumed, into his study.
The next thing Pompeia came flying out looking indignant, and stared at Julia in outrage.
“What is it?” asked Julia of her stepmother, with whom she actually got on quite well. Pompeia was good practice for dealing with Brutus, though she acquitted Brutus of Pompeia’s stupidity.
“He just threw me out!” said Pompeia.
“Only for a moment, I’m sure.”
It was indeed only for a moment. Caesar sat down and wrote a note to Servilia, whom he hadn’t seen since May of the preceding year. Of course he had meant to get around to seeing her again before now (it was March), but time got away, he was frying several other fish. How amazing. Young Brutus had fallen heir to the Gold of Tolosa!
Definitely it was time to be nice to his mother. This was one betrothal could not be broken for any reason.