Where did the money go? Though Mark Antony’s share of the Gallic booty had amounted to a thousand silver talents, when he set out to pay his creditors he discovered that he owed more than twice that much. His debts amounted to seventy million sesterces, and Fulvia didn’t have the cash reserves to pay them, having already outlaid thirty million before they married. The trouble was that Caesar’s confiscated property auctions had reduced the price of prime land for the time being, and to sell prime land was the only way she could raise cash until more income flowed in. This third husband was an expensive one.
Fulvia’s massive fortune had originally been set up by her great-grandmother, Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, a Roman woman of the old kind. Her granddaughter, who was Fulvia’s mother, had seen no reason to change the arrangements. Thus Fulvia’s many properties and businesses were buried in sleeping partnerships or nominally held by someone else. So selling capital assets wasn’t easy, took a lot of time, and was opposed by her banker, Gaius Oppius, who knew perfectly well where the cash was going.
“The trouble is that I didn’t get to Gaul soon enough,” said Antony gloomily to Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius.
The three of them were sitting in Murcius’s tavern atop the Via Nova, having encountered each other on the Vestal Steps.
“That’s right, you didn’t arrive until after Vercingetorix rose,” said Trebonius, who had been with Caesar for five years, and had received ten thousand talents. “Even then,” he added with a grin, “you were late, as I remember.”
“Oh, the pair of you should talk!” Antony growled. “You were Caesar’s marshals, I was a mere quaestor. I’m always just a bit too young to come into the real money.”
“Age has nothing to do with it,” Decimus Brutus drawled, one fair brow flying upward.
Antony frowned. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“I mean that our age no longer gives us a fighting chance at being elected consul. My election as a praetor this year was as big a farce as Trebonius’s was three years ago. We have to wait on the Dictator’s dictate to see when we’ll be allowed to be consuls. Not the electors’ choice, Caesar’s choice. I’ve been promised the consulship in two years’ time, but look at Trebonius—he should have been consul last year, but he isn’t consul yet. People like Vatia Isauricus and Lepidus have more clout and have to be placated first,” said Decimus Brutus, the drawl lessening as his temper built.
“I didn’t know you felt so strongly,” Antony said slowly.
“All real men do, Antonius. I’ll grant Caesar anything you like when it comes to competence, brilliance, a gigantic appetite for work—yes, yes, the man’s a total genius! But you must know how it feels to be overshadowed when your birth says you ought not to be. You’re half Antonius and half Julius, I’m half Junius Brutus and half Sempronius Tuditanus—we both have the blood, we should both have a fighting chance to get to the top. Out there in our chalk-whitened togas smarming to the voters, promising them the world, lying and smiling. Instead, we wait on Caesar Rex, the King of Rome. What we receive is by his grace and favor, not by our own endeavors. I hate it! I hate it!”
“So I see,” Antony said dryly.
Trebonius sat and listened, wondering if Antonius and Decimus Brutus had any idea what they were actually saying. As far as he, Trebonius, was concerned, it didn’t matter a rush what a man’s ancestors entitled him a fighting chance to do, because he didn’t have any ancestors. He was wholly Caesar’s creature, could never have gotten a tenth so high without Caesar there to push him. It had been Caesar who bought his services as a tribune of the plebs and bribed him into that office; it had been Caesar who spotted his military potential; it had been Caesar who trusted him with independent maneuvers during the Gallic War; it had been Caesar who gave him his praetorship; it had been Caesar who awarded him the governorship of Further Spain. I, Gaius Trebonius, am Caesar’s man, bought and paid for a thousand times over. My riches I owe to him, my pre-eminence I owe to him. Had Caesar not noticed me, I would be an absolute nobody. Which makes my resentment of Caesar all the greater, for every time I put my foot forward on a venture, I am aware that the moment that foot takes a wrong step, it is in Caesar’s power to strike me down to nothing. High aristocrats like this pair can be forgiven an occasional slip, but nobodies like me have no redress. I failed Caesar in Further Spain, he thinks I didn’t try hard enough to eject Labienus and the two Pompeii. So when he and I met in Rome, I had to throw myself on his mercy, beg him for forgiveness. As if I were one of his women. He chose to be gracious, to chide me for begging, to say forgiveness wasn’t an issue, but I know, I could tell. He will have no further use for me, I’ll never be a full consul, just a suffect.
“Did you really try to murder Caesar, Antonius?” he asked now.
Antony blinked, turned his head Trebonius’s way. “Um—yes, as a matter of fact,” he said, and shrugged.
“What inspired you?” Trebonius asked, intrigued.
Antony grinned. “Money, what else? I was with Poplicola, Cotyla and Cimber. One of them—I don’t remember which—reminded me that I’m Caesar’s heir, so it seemed like a good idea to come into Caesar’s money then and there. Didn’t come to anything—the old boy had guards posted everywhere around the Domus Publica, so I couldn’t get in.” He snarled. “What I want to know is who gave me away, because someone did. Caesar said in the House that I was seen, but I know I wasn’t. My guess is Poplicola.”
“Caesar’s your close kinsman, Antonius,” said Decimus Brutus.
“I know that! At the time I didn’t care, but Fulvia wormed the story out of me after Caesar mentioned it in the House, and made me promise that I’d never lift a hand against him again.” He grimaced. “She made me swear on my ancestor Hercules.”
“Caesar’s my kinsman too,” Decimus Brutus mused, “but I’ve not sworn any oaths.”
Gaius Trebonius had a naturally mournful countenance, rather ordinary to look at, and a pair of sad grey eyes. They lifted to Antony’s face. “The thing is,” he said, “would you do a Poplicola and tattle to Caesar if you heard of a plot to murder him?”
A silence fell. Arrested, Antony stared at Trebonius; so too did Decimus Brutus.
“I don’t tattle, Trebonius, even about murder plots.”
“I didn’t think you would. Just making sure,” said Trebonius.
Decimus slapped his hand loudly on the table. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, so I suggest we change the subject,” he said.
“To what?” asked Trebonius.
“We’re none of us enjoying Caesar’s esteem at the moment, for one reason or another. He made me praetor this year, but not for anything decent, so why didn’t he ask me to go to Further Spain with him? I’d have commanded better than logs like Quintus Pedius! But I can’t please Caesar. Instead of patting my back for putting down the Bellovaci uprising, he said I was too hard on them.” His face, so blond that it was curiously featureless, twisted. “Whether we like it or not, we utterly depend on the Great Man’s favor, and I have ground to make up. I want that consulship, even if it is by his grace and favor. You, Trebonius, deserve a consulship. And you, Antonius, have a lot of crawling and smarming to do if you’re ever going to get ahead.”
“Where is this going?” Antony demanded impatiently.
“To the fact that we daren’t remain in Rome like three cringing bitches,” Decimus said, returning to his habitual drawl. “We have to go to meet him on his way home—the sooner, the better. Once he reaches Rome, he’ll be buried under such a landslide of sycophancy that we’ll never get his ear. We’re all men he’s worked with for years, men he knows can general troops. It’s common knowledge that he intends to invade the Kingdom of the Parthians—well, we have to get to him quickly enough to secure senior legateships in that campaign. After Asia, Africa and Spain, he has dozens of men he knows can general troops, from Calvinus to Fabius Maximus. To some extent we’re has-beens, amici—Gaul is years in the past. So we have to reach him and remind him that we’re better than Calvinus or Fabius Maximus.”
The other two were listening avidly.
“I did very well out of Gaul,” Decimus Brutus continued, “but Parthian plunder would make me as rich as Pompeius Magnus used to be. Like you, Antonius, I have very expensive tastes. And since it’s the height of bad manners to murder a kinsman, we’ll have to find another source of money than Caesar’s will. I don’t know what you plan to do, but tomorrow I’m leaving to meet Caesar.”
“I’ll come with you,” Antony said instantly.
“And I,” said Trebonius, leaning back contentedly.
The subject had been broached, and the reaction of Caesar’s two kinsmen not unsatisfactory by any means. Just when Trebonius had decided that Caesar must die he wasn’t sure, for it had stolen up out of some layer of his mind where things went on beneath the level of thought, and it had nothing to do with noble intentions. It was founded in pure, unadulterated hatred: the hatred of the man with nothing for the man with everything.