The first blow caught him in the neck. Gaius Julius Caesar recognised the hand of Casca holding the dagger that had struck him, while Cimber grabbed his toga to reveal a vulnerable spot to the thrusts of the other executioners.
With one last jerk the dictator turned and grabbed the wrist of the first among the killers. “Casca? What do you mean by this villainy?” he said, a thick gush of blood already staining his garment. The other man’s eyes widened, and he tried to free himself from his grip without succeeding.
‘Help me,” Caesar shouted to the others, but the crowd prevented his escape from the trap in which the group of assailants had enclosed him.
The conspirators tightened in a semicircle around him while all the others, standing petrified on the walkways of the Senate, observed the scene in horror, as unable to escape as they were to run to the rescue of the victim. They seemed to have lost even the power of speech, watching in silence as Caesar staggered, dragging with him shreds of a toga now sodden with dark blood. The wet fabric left long trails of crimson on the white marble of the room.
Wherever his terrified gaze fell, the dictator saw eyes looking feverishly for weak points on his body, left uncovered in his confusion and fear. He felt like a beast hemmed in to the corner of the arena while the gladiators advanced on all sides, now certain of their kill. He saw Brutus coming towards him and for a moment thought he was saved. But when even the youth’s dagger penetrated his gut, he had only the strength to open his mouth – not a whisper of breath managed to leave his throat. Then he gathered up his robe and put it over his head as if to isolate himself from the rest of the world. Crying out and begging he moved jerkily in his last, feeble attempts to defend himself, then he gave up and fell exhausted at the foot of the statue of Pompey the Great. As his dying body crumpled at the base of the statue, further stab wounds finished the job. Twenty-three knife blades violated the body of Gaius Julius Caesar, writing the final word on the history of the Republic.
*
The boy ran through the dark Roman streets like a gazelle pursued by a cheetah. His cries were the soundtrack to the spectacle of flames and smoke that rose among the houses of the patrician neighbourhoods. The populace had heard of Caesar’s death – of his murder by a band of traitors, and in a short time punitive patrols had been formed, who were willing to go from house to house to seek out his executioners.
In the hours following the dictator’s death, the most absurd rumours had passed from mouth to mouth among the people as they rushed to close their stalls and shops. There were those who said that the assassins had marched to the Capitol building showing off the weapons they had used to kill him. There were those who claimed that many had joined that procession claiming to have participated in the murderous deed. Anthony and Lepidus, close friends of Caesar, had taken refuge in friends’ houses, while Brutus and his cronies, excited as beasts who sniff the blood of their prey, had given their first speeches in an attempt to incite the people. But the plebs were with Caesar. With the man who had led the Roman legions far beyond the limits of imagination and had long been acclaimed as a god.
The boy thought of all this as he ran away. And he ran away because he had been warned by a dream. He wore only a short white tunic, secured at the sides with a belt of bronze studs. Fear was etched into every feature of his drawn face, which was framed by short curly blond hair. In one hand he held a torch to illuminate the road while in the other he held a dagger with a thin tip like that of a spindle. He had made the decision to leave his home and his loved ones, and he felt sure they would come looking for him. Already he seemed to hear the breath of invisible pursuers on his heels.
As he tried to climb over the carcass of a dead horse lying in the middle of the road, a man with wild eyes pushed past him, seemingly without even noticing him. The boy realised that he was looking for something in the dark, something to kill to ease the pain and satisfy his need for revenge. But that was not the danger from which he had to guard himself. He found himself praying that the conspirators were too busy gathering support in the squares and avoiding the revenge of their detractors to take care of him. At least for tonight. At least for the time necessary to get out of Rome.
The boy stumbled and fell into a puddle of water spilled from a barrel which had smashed against a wall. He remained on his knees for a while and it was then that he saw them, reflected in the water. Shadows that came out of the darkness of an angiportus behind him. He turned and saw three legionaries wrapped in thick cloaks. On their heads they wore strange Corinthian helmets surmounted by a crest of black ostrich feathers. Under the fabric of their cloaks he caught a glimpse of the edge of an equally dark tunic.
While the legionaries positioned themselves in the middle of the street, another figure appeared behind them. He was not a military man, and his bald skull gleamed in the night like a full August moon. He passed the soldiers, pulling around himself the long black cloak that emphasised his rangy body. On his feet he wore a pair of short leather boots stuffed with wool, perhaps too heavy for that time of the year.
The man assumed leadership of the squad without saying a word, and the boy caught a mixture of determination and curiosity in his eyes. He realised that those feverish eyes were searching for him.
He summoned up all his strength and got to his feet, ready to resume his escape. He left the torch, which rolled in the dung at the side of the road and went out, and slipped down a narrow passageway that opened out into a piazza with a singular oval shape. The hobnails on the soles of his boots screeched on the stones of the pavement, while he made his escape in a series of leaps to avoid the numerous holes among the uneven cobblestones. His pursuers, however, were evidently experts in the chase, because they were gaining more and more ground. He could smell their sweat carried on the night wind.
The piazza had only one exit, far ahead of the way he had come in. The boy put his head down and ran but then was forced to come to a sudden stop. He now had two other soldiers in front of him, accompanied by what, judging by the helmet, might be a centurion. He wore a white linen cuirass of the sort the boy had sometimes seen among the garrison officers from Africa Superior. He seemed particularly young for his rank but his gaze, though almost lost in the shadows of the evening, communicated a serene confidence.
He stood still watching him for what seemed like an eternity, but then with a shudder he came back to reality. Caesar was dead, Rome burned and a nightmare had warned him that these men were looking for him. The streets of the city, narrow and filled with obstacles of all kinds, were not the ideal place to lose a pursuer, and the few houses nearby had been abandoned by their owners only to be occupied immediately afterwards by the flames.
He had to think. And he had to do it quickly, because that white-armed centurion was advancing purposefully towards him. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the other soldiers were also about to reach him from behind. Thus, with the roads all blocked, he realised that he had only one way to continue his escape. He raised his head and jumped. With his free hand he grabbed a dangling rope. Until a few moments ago its main use had been to close the flap of a kiosk tent, but now it was the only way to escape the trap that those soldiers had set for him.
The young centurion followed him as he climbed upwards, helped by the irregularities of the bricks. The boy caught an expression almost of admiration in his eyes as he climbed higher and higher. When he felt that he was safe, he looked down and saw that the soldier was giving orders to his men with simple hand gestures. He never uttered a word, and seemed to control the situation simply with a few swift, graceful movements of his hands.
The boy turned and discovered he had come upon a large terrace bordered by a low wall. Not far away, a staircase led into the inner courtyard, while a few steps further on he could already see the next building. He had to choose: keep going and try to reach the other terrace with a leap, or go down the staircase and make his way through kiosks and vestibules up to the banks of the Tiber. The second option seemed the most sensible. Once he reached the river he could disguise his tracks by swimming up to the mouth.
But the more time he spent thinking, the more his pursuers gained ground. He looked over the wall and saw that a couple of soldiers were already climbing it using the hanging rope. He rushed to the staircase and descended the steps two by two, jumping down the last few. The soldier appeared in front of him, suddenly. The boy crashed into his armour and it was like colliding with a wall. He stared at him with incredulity. His uniform looked more like a priestly shroud than an armour.
Then he also saw the dagger and his body reacted automatically. He rolled sideways but the man didn’t strike. He seemed surprised by his agility. Or, more simply, they wanted to take him alive.
The soldier tried to grab him by the leg but he struggled fiercely, leaving his pursuer holding only a shoe with broken laces. The boy turned to give him a defiant smile and then threw himself through a doorway through which the dim light of a street filtered.
A powerful grip immobilised him before he could escape and a fist struck him in the pit of his stomach causing him to bend in two. He spat bile and cursed then closed his eyes as he tried to ride out the pain. When he opened them again he saw the centurion watching him with folded arms. Two soldiers dressed in black held his arms and, despite his attempts to wriggle free, their muscles seemed stronger than thick chains.
“You bastards.” the boy swore. “What do you want from me? Was it not enough to kill my uncle?”
The centurion nodded in satisfaction, as if the boy had uttered the very words he wanted to hear. He moved his hands again, while a strange necklace that ended with a small black obsidian sphere bounced on his armour, contrasting with the milky colour of the hammered linen.
“Octavius? You are Octavius, the nephew of Gaius Julius Caesar, correct?” asked a rasping voice with a northern accent that came from behind the centurion. Then the voice became the silhouette of a wiry, slender body and came into focus as he moved closer. On his head he had only a few sparse blond hairs and at his side hung a beautiful Hispanic sword in a leather sheath covered with studs. The boy recognised him immediately. He was the man he had seen at the head of his pursuers just before.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Do you want to kill me like you killed my uncle? Do it, then, and let’s get it over with.” The centurion moved his hands again as the sharp-eyed man watched him intently.
“We have no intention of killing you, Octavius,” the latter replied, “We just need to give you a message.”
“A message?” the boy laughed sarcastically.
“From your uncle.” The soldier continued to move his fingers, and the other spoke as his gestures subsided. The words seemed to be the verbal translation of those movements.
“My uncle was killed today in the Senate room in Rome by a pack of murderers and traitors, the scum of Rome.”“
“So we believe too.”
The boy had not been expecting such an answer. He frowned, “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“I repeat. We have a message for you from Caesar. We were told to give it to you if something ….irreparable happened to him.”
“Let me go.”
The centurion glanced at his men, who loosened their grip.
“I said let me go,” the boy said, raising his voice.
The centurion pursed his lips but finally nodded. The two soldiers took a step back and the boy found himself free. He looked around. The white-armoured soldier made an eloquent gesture with his hand to indicate an escape route.
“No, I won’t run away.”
Octavius took a few steps as he rubbed his wrists to reactivate the circulation, “What message?”
He met the soldier’s eyes. Those bright eyes that had struck him from the first moment he had seen them. That emerald green gaze that pierced the night and spread a strange energy all around. From a distance he had thought him a centurion because of the crested helmet, but when he got closer he noticed the leather fringes of the armour. A prefect? A tribune? He seemed no older than Octavius himself …
The officer held out a hand to the man beside him and a wooden casket appeared from the darkness.
“Open it.”
He held it out toward the boy.
Octavius took the casket and weighed it in his hands. It was of simple workmanship, carved from wood and with no symbols or writings to indicate its origin. A simple geometric pattern ran around the edges, and no visible mechanism closed it.
“No key is required. Caesar gave it to me knowing that I would keep it safe until the day you opened it.”
The officer seemed very familiar with the language of the hands and the man next to him equally trained to follow him.
“Evidently he trusted you very much,” Octavius commented, a hint of suspicion still detectable in his voice.
“He had learned to do so.”
“What’s your name?”
“Victor Julius Felix.”
“An important name.”
The young soldier nodded.
“Three important names.”
Octavius examined the casket and decided to lift the lid.
He stopped mid-gesture.
“Did you know my uncle well?”
“As well as a devoted soldier can know his commander.”
Octavius lifted the lid completely and could not hide an expression of surprise. The casket contained only a small rolled parchment. He took it and turned it between his fingers, then handed the empty casket to one of the soldiers and unrolled it. A few words only had been scratched in vegetable ink. But their value was preceded and strengthened by the seal of Caesar and his unmistakable calligraphy.
The document contained only one sentence. Octavius looked up
“Listen to the man in front of you, because he speaks with my voice,” he recited. Then he burst out laughing. “My uncle always did have a strange sense of humour. So I am to follow the words of a mute?”
The officer nodded without blinking, and Octavius became serious again. He squeezed the parchment between his fingers. Their eyes met.
“Why that name?”
“Victor was the name of the man who first saved my life and then adopted me. He died in my arms when I was not yet ten.” The voice of the man who translated his gestures hesitated. “Julius is the name of the man who had the wisdom to listen to me and give me a new life. Today the gods have welcomed one of their own back into the Elysian fields”
Octavius folded his arms, a quizzical expression appearing on his face. “And your nickname?”
“My true name is Madron, a Celtic name. But since I was a child I had always wanted a Roman name. A name that in the end I obtained only thanks to the death of the one I loved like a father. He was a centurion, a crude man made for the battlefields and not for the hearth of a family. But he was also a good-humoured man. His best friend was an aquilifer named Marcus Lucretius, and it was he, shortly before leaving the army, who gave me this nickname, remembering the words of his officer. Victor Iorus, my father, said that I had been a lucky boy because I had met someone who had saved me. Today I recognise that he was right.” His arms fell to his sides, and he seemed exhausted from the effort to control the flow of memories. He raised them again, but only to end the conversation. “But it is not over yet.”
Octavius sighed. He felt many eyes waiting for his answer.
“Speak, soldier. Why did you tell me all this?”
The officer released the folds of the grey cloak that covered his shoulders and advanced. He exchanged a look with his translator, who nodded and turned to the boy with a peremptory tone.
“My men will accompany you this very night to Brindisi. You cannot stay in Rome because for the next few hours, your life too is in danger.”
“I know, I had an omen. But I don’t understand…”
“In Brindisi,” continued the voice that accompanied the tribune’s gestures, “you will be informed of the testamentary wishes of Caesar, who has ordered your entry into the Gens Iulia for adoption.” Felix’s fingers slashed as if he had knife blades for fingers. “Of course,” the voice added, “you will be very surprised by this news.”
“Adoption? But then…”
“Yes. Gaius Octavius, you are Caesar’s heir. From today the fate of Rome is in your hands. And that is why your uncle wants you to know some things.” Felix intensified his hand movements. “By the third vigil you must be outside the walls of this city, so we don’t have much time. What I’m about to tell you has changed my life and it could change yours too. I will therefore continue only with your consent.”
Octavius took a deep breath and looked at the ground. In the distance he could still hear the crackling of fires. He remembered the images of the nightmare that had woken him in the middle of the night, driving him to leave his home. Wolves bursting into the house, dragging in their jaws tortured bodies of dying children. Pigs defecating human bowels in his garden. And then the spectre of his uncle, his tunic drenched with blood, reaching out to implore his help.
“I will listen to you, lucky boy,” he said finally.
The young officer drew his story in the air, moving his fingers like agile paint brushes. Thus Octavius came to know the story of a Celtic child named Madron, torn from death by a Roman centurion. And the journey into the world of ghosts that had taken away his power of speech. Caesar had been intrigued by the child, but above all, by the light he had seen in his eyes while the centurion was dying in his arms. A particular light. A light that revealed a gift. He had questioned him several times without ever being able to make him utter a word. However, some time later they had brought before him some prisoners of war caught talking to each other through a language of gestures. Under torture they had revealed that this form of communication was in common use in battle, especially during night sorties. Caesar had promised to spare their lives on the condition that they teach the alphabet of signs to a child.
Naturally, the prisoners had accepted and, with the help of the aquilifer Marcus Lucretius, the little Celt had soon learned to make himself understood.
Thus Caesar had learned all the details of that terrible night in the woods of Gergovia. From the story, he was able to form two conclusions: the first was that the enemies of Rome were experimenting with new systems of warfare which included closer collaboration with local deities. The second was that there was someone who could understand when this was happening. A mute child, who Caesar decided to set on a military career, after making him in all effects a Roman citizen.
Finding a prenomen and a nomen was not difficult, and the lucky boy had thus become the youngest officer in the Roman army. But being unable to command a legion using gestures, Caesar had entrusted to him a special department with an unusual task: that of finding others like him, by searching through all the provinces of the Republic.
Victor Julius Felix had taken his work very seriously and the results had been quite incredible. So incredible that they had prompted Caesar to find a gathering place for recruits in order to study their skills better and, if necessary, to refine them using a careful educational process with the help of certain priestly colleges.
“Caesar did not yet know what results his initiative would bring,” explained the translator, “But he was convinced that one day Rome would benefit.”
“Are you telling me that my uncle spent part of his time seeking out mages in swaddling clothes?”
“He preferred to call them thaumaturges.”
“And what does all this have to do with me?”
“You are the new Caesar. You must continue his work.”
“You mean that … And where would these … thaumaturges be found?”
“In a safe place.”
“But you can’t tell me where it is, of course.”
“On the contrary,” he concluded, pointing to the distant fires, “When all of this is over, I will have the task of taking you there myself.”