Emperor: The Blood of Gods

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‘I can’t decide if you don’t understand … or you just don’t care to preserve your life,’ he said. ‘I have met a few like you in my time, young officers mostly, with no sense of their own mortality. Some rose, but most of them are long dead, victims of their own overconfidence. Do you understand what I am saying to you?’

‘I do. Gamble on me, Tribune. I will not be brought down easily.’

Liburnius blew air from his lips in a wet sound.

‘To be brought down, you have first to rise.’ He made a decision. ‘Very well. Gracchus? Fetch me a parchment, reed and ink. I will have this poor bargain sealed in front of witnesses.’

Octavian knew better than to speak again. He worked hard to hide the triumph that seared through him.

‘When that is done, I will secure your passage to Rome. The will is to be read in eight days, which gives you time to spare to get there, on good horses. I trust you will not object to Gracchus travelling with you to keep you safe? There are bandits on the road and I would like to be among the first to hear what Caesar left to his city and his clients.’

Octavian nodded. He watched Liburnius dip the hollow reed with a sharpened tip and write with a sure hand. The tavern-keeper brought a lit candle and the tribune melted wax, dripping a fat glob of it onto the dry parchment, so that oil spread beneath. Octavian pressed his ring into the soft surface and the two guards added a scrawled ‘X’ where Liburnius had written their names. It was done.

Liburnius sat back, relaxing.

‘More wine, I think, Gracchus. You know, lad, when you are my age, if you should be lucky enough to live that long, when colour and taste and even ambition have lost the brightness you think is so natural, I hope you will meet a young cockerel just like you are now – so you can see what I see. I hope you will remember me then. It is a bitter-sweet thing, believe me, but you will not understand until that day.’

A new jug arrived and Liburnius poured the cups full to brimming.

‘Drink with me, lad. Drink to Rome and glorious foolishness.’

Without looking away, Octavian raised his cup, draining it in quick swallows.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_f31ebba9-50d7-5d4c-855e-f62b118fbbd7)

The first light of the sun showed over the Esquiline and Viminal hills, gilding the roofs around the forum and reaching across to the Palatine on the far side. The round temple of Vesta there gleamed with the rest, coming alive after the darkness. Neither that ancient building nor the much larger House of Virgins behind had been touched by the fires raging through the city. Their own sacred flame still burned in the hearth of the temple and the bands of rioters had steered clear of the wrath of the goddess, making the fig hand or the horned hand to ward off her curse and moving on.

Mark Antony knew he cut a fine figure as he walked across the forum. As well as six lictors, carrying the traditional axes and bound rods for scourging, two centurions accompanied him, their armour shining and long dark cloaks sweeping against their ankles. The consul of Rome had come to hear the will of Caesar and if the senate house was blackened rubble, at least in his own person Mark Antony still represented the authority of the state. He could feel eyes on him as the crowd gathered, but there was no sense of danger, not that day. He was certain many of those crowding in had been involved in the riots, perhaps just hours before, but the dawn sun was cool and there was almost a sense of truce. The whole city wanted to hear the last words of Caesar to his people.

Mark Antony reached a spot in front of the circular temple, so that he could see the eternal flame flickering along the walls inside. His men took up positions around him, feeling no threat in the quiet crowd. Mark Antony looked for the remaining Liberatores and could not see them. He had spies reporting to him each day and he knew many of them had already left, to save their skins.

He kept his expression stern, though their absence was yet another sign that he had gained most from the slaughters and riots. If powerful men like Brutus and Cassius no longer dared to show their faces, how could they ever hope to regain their authority in Rome? It was a subtle victory. No doubt they had men in the crowd to report back every word, but their absence spoke volumes and he would not be the only one to remark on it. A month before, he could not have dreamed of anything like this day. Caesar had been alive then and the world had been set in ruts of stone, unable to do more than go forward on the path. The Liberatores had changed all that with their knives, but it was Mark Antony whose fortunes were on the rise. He triumphed, step by step, as they failed.

Taller than most, Mark Antony was able to look over the heads of the crowd. The forum was not full, by any means. Heat-scorched stones lay empty behind him, but at least three thousand men and women were there and still they walked out of every side road and down every hill, dark streams of citizens and slaves coming to the heart of Rome. There was order of a sort in most of the city; he had seen to that. The gates were open again and fresh produce flowed in, commanding ridiculous prices. There was a queue outside every baker and butcher as they worked through the night to make loaves and slice meat. There was not enough for all and he had been forced to set patrols at key points to stop fights breaking out. Starvation and disease were the enemies now, the violent energy of the rioters fading almost as quickly as it had sprung up. No one knew how many bodies had been dumped in the Tiber to tumble away to the sea.

His gaze snagged on a group of four men on his right, all armed and obviously together as they talked in low voices. Two of them looked vaguely familiar to the consul, slim figures against the massive shoulders of the man next to them, yet Mark Antony could not bring the names to mind. Hundreds in the crowd would have been clients to Caesar, men who owed their estates and rise to him and had accepted a small stipend each month for their support. The number of them was said to have been in the thousands. Rich and poor, they would all want to know if their patron had remembered them in his will.

Mark Antony continued to crane his neck around, peering particularly at anyone with their head covered. He recognised senators among those, many of them travelling with guards provided from the legions or mercenaries hired for the day. Still, the crowd grew with the sunlight, until the coolness of dawn faded and he could smell sweat and spiced food in the warming air. The spring sky was clear and the city would become unpleasantly hot by noon. He eased his weight from one foot to the other, waiting impatiently for the priestess to show herself.

The crowd stilled as they heard singing coming from the House of Virgins, straining to catch the first glimpse of the Vestal virgins. Mark Antony suppressed a smile as he saw them, more aware than most of the power of pageantry in the city. They bore small cymbals on their fingers and wrists and clashed them together with every step so that the discordant sound rose above their voices. He watched as the procession formed in front of the temple and the song built to a climax followed by total silence. Disappointingly, the young women revealed almost nothing in their stola dresses and long palla robes that concealed their legs. The priestess had shown more flesh when he visited her before and he had to smile at the adolescent part of him. Each one had been chosen for physical perfection, but they had vowed thirty years of celibacy before they could leave the temple. Looking at some of the faces, Mark Antony could not help thinking it was a shocking waste.

He waited through a ritual of thanks to Minerva and Vesta, only sighing as the sun rose and the heat built. After what seemed an age, they brought a wooden platform from the temple, draping it with dark red cloth. Quintina Fabia stepped up to it and her eyes met those of Mark Antony, perhaps recalling that he too had stood and spoken to Rome not long before. The effects could still be seen around them. He saw cold amusement in her eyes, but he was interested only in the carved cedar box brought out from the temple. It was both locked and sealed, so that two of the women had to strike the binding with hammers before they could open the lid. From inside, they raised a square block of wax tablets, wrapped around in strips of lead and then marked in a great disc of wax sealed by Caesar himself. Mark Antony shuddered at the thought of his friend’s hand being the last to touch it before that day.

They handed the block up to the priestess and she used a knife to cut away the wax, showing everyone there that it remained untouched. With care, she bent back the lead strips and passed them down. What remained were five wooden tablets with a thin sheen of wax on their surfaces. Mark Antony could not see the words inscribed there, but he inched forward with everyone else, suddenly desperate to know what Caesar had written.

Untouched by the impatience of the crowd, Quintina Fabia handed four of the tablets back to her companions and read the first to herself, nodding slightly at the end. When she had finished, she looked up at the massed crowd.

‘“For the honour of Rome, hear the will of Gaius Julius Caesar,”’ she began. She paused and Mark Antony groaned quietly at the theatrical impulse.

‘Come on,’ he muttered.

She glanced over to him as if she had heard before continuing to read.

‘“Gaius Octavian is my heir. I acknowledge him as blood of my blood and, by these words, I claim and adopt him as my son.”’

The crowd murmured and Mark Antony saw the small group of four stiffen almost as one, looking at each other in shock and wonderment. The simple words were typical of the man who had written them, without ornament or fanciful rhetoric. Yet Caesar had written and lodged the will before his return from Egypt, perhaps even before he had left Rome to fight Pompey in Greece. He had not known then that the Egyptian queen would bear him an heir. Mark Antony breathed slowly as he thought it through. It would have been better to have some foreign whelp as the main inheritor, one who could never come to Rome and contest for what was legally his. The consul had met Octavian a few years before, but he had been little more than a boy and Mark Antony could not even recall his face. He looked up as the priestess continued.

‘“All that I have is his, beyond the sums and properties I allocate here. Of those, the first is the garden estate by the river Tiber. That is my first gift to the people of Rome, in perpetuity, that they may take their ease there as public land.”’

As the crowd muttered in wonderment, she handed down the tablet and took up two more. Her eyebrows rose as she read silently before speaking the words.

‘“As well as a place to walk in the sun, I give each citizen of Rome three hundred sesterces from my estate, to be spent as they see fit. They were my champions in life. I cannot do less for them in death.”’

This time, the reaction from the crowd was a roar of excitement. Three hundred silver coins was a huge sum, enough to feed a family for months. Mark Antony rubbed his forehead as he tried to work out the total. The last census had recorded almost a million inhabitants of the city, though only half of those would be citizens. Wryly, he acknowledged that the riots would have reduced the number, yet still they swarmed like ants and they would all demand their money from the treasure houses controlled by the Senate. Caesar could not have known, but that simple bequest was a blow against the Liberatores. They would not be able to walk the streets without the shout of ‘Murderers!’ going up, not after this. He closed his eyes briefly in memory of his friend. Even in death, Julius had struck back at his enemies.

Quintina Fabia continued, listing the individual sums left to clients. Many shouted for quiet so they could hear, but the chattering went on even so, all around them. They would have to apply to the temple to read the tablets in private if they wanted to hear those details, Mark Antony thought. Remembering his own meeting with the priestess, he wished them luck.

She worked her way through to the last of the five tablets, allocating gold and land to members of his family and all those who had supported Caesar. Mark Antony heard his name and bellowed for those around him to be silent. His voice succeeded in crushing the noise of the crowd where others had failed.

‘“… to whom I give fifty thousand aurei. I give an equal sum to Marcus Brutus. They were, and are, my friends.”’

Mark Antony felt the gaze of the crowd on him. He could not hide his shock at hearing Brutus given the same amount. Mark Antony had lavished gold on the lifestyle of a consul and his own clients. Although the legacy was generous, it would barely cover his debts. He shook his head, aware of the awe in those who looked on him and yet bitter. Fifty thousand was not so much for the man who had roused the crowd on Caesar’s behalf. It was certainly far more than Brutus deserved.

‘“The rest is the property of Gaius Octavian, adopted as my son, into the house of Julii. I leave Rome in your hands.”’

Quintina Fabia stopped speaking and handed the last tablet down to her waiting followers. Mark Antony was astonished to see the gleam of tears in her eyes. There had been no grand words, just the business of recording Caesar’s legacies and responsibilities. It was, in fact, the will of a man who did not truly believe he was going to die. He felt his own eyes prickle at the thought. If Julius had lodged the will with the temple before leaving Rome, it was the year he had made Mark Antony governor of the city, trusting him completely. It was a window to the past, to a different Rome.

As the priestess stepped down, Mark Antony turned away, his men moving smoothly with him so that the crowd was forced to part. They did not understand why he looked so angry. Behind him, a clear voice rang out. As Mark Antony heard, he stopped and turned to listen, his men facing outwards to counter any threat.

Octavian remembered Mark Antony very well. The consul had changed little over the intervening years, whereas Octavian had gone from a boy to a young man. As the consul arrived at first light, Maecenas had marked his presence first. Agrippa used the breadth of his shoulders to come between them, relying on the crowd to hide Octavian. It was their second day in the city, after a ride of three hundred miles from Brundisium. They had been forced to change horses many times, almost always losing quality in the mounts. Maecenas had arranged for their own horses to be stabled at the first stopping place, but at that point none of them knew if they would be going back to the coast.

The legionary, Gracchus, had not been a pleasant companion on that journey. Knowing he was at best tolerated, he barely spoke, but he remained doggedly in their company as they rode and planned, dropping exhausted into rough beds at the closest inn they could find as the sun set. He had his own funds from the tribune and more than once had slept in the stables to eke out his coins while Maecenas ordered the best rooms.

Octavian was not sure the fast run had been worth it. He’d come into Rome two days before the will was to be read, but the world of peace and order he had known had been torn apart. According to a friend of Maecenas who’d offered them his home, it had been even worse before and was beginning to settle down, but great sections of the city had been reduced to blackened beams and grubby citizens picking through the rubble for anything valuable. Tens of thousands were starving, roving the streets in gangs in search of food. More than once he and his friends had to draw swords just to cross neighbourhoods that had become feral even in daylight. The city looked as if it had been in a war and Octavian could hardly reconcile the reality with his memories. In a way, it suited the grief he felt for Julius, a fitting landscape for such a loss.

‘Here she is at last,’ Agrippa said under his breath.

Octavian snapped back from his reverie as the priestess of Vesta came out. He had been searching the crowd for the faces of men he knew. If Brutus had been there, he did not know what he would have done, but there was no sign of the man he wanted to see dead above all others. Two days in Rome had been enough to hear the details of the assassination and he burned with new energy at the thought of those Liberatores who sought to profit from murdering a good man. In the silence of his own thoughts, in the shadow of the temple of Vesta, he swore oaths of vengeance. The state of the city was the crop they had sown, the result of their greed and jealousy. He had not known what strength could come from hate, not before seeing Rome again.

As the priestess unbound the will of Caesar from its box and lead straps, Octavian continued to glance back at the crowd. He recognised some faces he thought might be senators, but in cloaks and mantles against the morning cold, he could not be certain. He had been away too long.

Agrippa nudged him to pay attention as the priestess scanned the first tablet, a line appearing on her forehead. When she looked up, she seemed to stare straight at Octavian. He waited, his heart thumping painfully in his chest and his mouth drying, so that he ran his tongue around the inside to free his lips.

‘“For the honour of Rome, hear the will of Gaius Julius Caesar,”’ she began.

Octavian clenched his fists, hardly able to stand the tension. He felt Gracchus look over at him, the man’s expression unreadable.

‘“Gaius Octavian is my heir. I acknowledge him as blood of my blood and, by these words, I claim and adopt him as my son.”’

Octavian felt a great shudder run through him and he would have staggered if Agrippa hadn’t put out an arm. His hearing vanished in the pounding of his pulse and when he felt an itch on his face, he scrubbed at it, leaving a red welt on his skin. It was too much to take in and he hardly heard the lines that followed, watching the priestess of Vesta hand down the tablets as she read them out. At one point, the men and women in the crowd cheered raucously and Octavian could not understand why. He was numb with emotion, overwhelmed at the hand of Caesar reaching out from death to touch him.

The face of Gracchus was the picture of sourness as he considered the fortune his patron could have had, with a tenth of Caesar’s wealth. It was almost a legend, how much gold the leader of Rome had brought back from his conquests, at one point flooding so much of it into the city that it devalued the currency by almost a third. Octavian was the heir to all of it and Gracchus decided on the instant to be a more amenable companion. He would never again stand in the presence of such wealth, he was certain. Reaching out, he was about to clap Octavian on the back, but Maecenas caught the wrist and just smiled at him.

‘Let’s not make a show, not here,’ Maecenas said in a low voice. ‘We are unknown to the crowd and that is the way it should stay until we have had a little time to think about all this.’

Gracchus forced a sickly grin and nodded, jerking back his arm from a grip of surprising strength. He had not seen Maecenas spar or train in their rush from the coast and he never noticed the short blade in the noble’s other hand as he let go, or the fact that Agrippa was behind him, ready to hammer him into the ground at the first sign of aggression.

The list of clients and individual bequests seemed to take an age. Octavian glowered in disgust when he heard the name of Brutus and the huge sum of gold left to him. There was no mention of Cleopatra and the son that she had borne. All Maecenas’ friends knew was that she had left Rome after the assassination, presumably to go home to Egypt.

‘“The rest is the property of Gaius Octavian, adopted as my son, into the house of Julii. I leave Rome in your hands.”’

Octavian felt his eyes sting. It was too easy to imagine Julius sitting in some quiet room, writing the words in wax, with the future laid out before him. Octavian began to wish he was alive for the thousandth time since hearing the news, then wrestled himself free of the thought as it formed. There was no going back, no wishing away of the new Rome.

The priestess handed down the last tablet and saw it placed with reverence back into the chest. One of her acolytes put out a hand and she stepped down, her part finished. Octavian looked around him as the crowd exhaled held breaths and began to talk. He saw Mark Antony nod to his men and begin to move.

‘Time to go, I think,’ Maecenas said softly by his ear. ‘We can use the house of Brucellus this evening. It is untouched by the riots and he promises to provide a fine meal for us. There is a lot to discuss.’

Octavian felt his friend’s hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him away from the temple of Vesta. He resisted, suddenly sick of being made to walk in secrecy in his own city.

‘Priestess!’ he shouted, without warning.

Maecenas stiffened at his side.

‘What are you doing?’ he hissed. ‘Half the Senate have spies here! Let me get you away first and then we can decide what to do.’

Octavian shook his head.

‘Priestess!’ he called again.

Quintina Fabia paused in the act of accepting a mantle of rich cloth from one of her followers. She looked around, finding him from the reaction of the crowd as they stared.

‘I am Gaius Octavian, named as heir in the will you have just read,’ he said clearly.

Maecenas groaned, keeping his dagger ready in case one of the crowd attacked them. None of them knew their enemies in the city, not yet.

‘What do you want of me?’ she said. It was rumoured that she had been an actress in her youth. Whether that was true or not, she had a performer’s instinct, ignoring the offered cloak and stepping back onto the low platform.

‘I wish to record a change of name with you, as the keeper of records.’

The priestess cocked her head slightly as she thought. The young man she faced in the crowd had just been given incredible wealth, if he could live long enough to lay hands on it. She glanced over to where Mark Antony watched the scene playing out between them. Her first instinct had been to tell Octavian to wait for an audience, but under that sulphurous gaze, the corner of her mouth quirked.

‘What name would suit the heir to Rome?’ she said.

‘Only one,’ Octavian replied. ‘Gaius Julius Caesar, that I may honour the man whose name I will bear.’

Quintina Fabia smiled wider at that, delighted at the bravado of the young Roman. His friends stood in shock around him, while she wanted to applaud.

‘You will need two witnesses of good standing to swear to your identity,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Come and see me at noon, in the House of Virgins.’ She paused again, watching Mark Antony from under her lashes. The consul was standing like a stunned ox.

‘Welcome home, Octavian,’ she said.

He nodded, mute. Away on his right, the consul began to stride off and Octavian turned to follow him.

‘Consul!’ he shouted.

Maecenas put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t do anything rash, Octavian,’ he murmured. ‘Let him go.’

Octavian brushed off the hand and kept going.

‘He was Caesar’s friend,’ he said. ‘He will hear me.’

‘Agrippa!’ Maecenas called.

‘Here.’

The big man was already moving, pushing through the packed crowd after Octavian. With a curse, the legionary Gracchus followed in their wake.

As Mark Antony watched the priestess talk with the young man, he shook his head, feeling sweat break out on his skin. It was too much to take in. The Senate had summoned him for a meeting at noon and he wanted to bathe first, so that he could face them fresh and clean. He turned away, his lictors and centurions all around him. He heard his title called across the forum but ignored it. He had barely gone twenty paces before the bristling awareness of his men made his temper rise. The group of four were pushing closer as he reached the edge of the crowd.

‘Consul!’ Octavian called again.

Mark Antony hunched his shoulders. His lictors were tense at being approached from behind and the two centurions had drifted back to put themselves between the groups. With a raised hand, Mark Antony halted them all. He could not be seen to scurry away, as if he had something to hide.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped.

Before him he saw a young man with grey eyes and dark blond hair bound at his neck. He supposed Octavian was in his early twenties, but he looked younger, with a smooth face and no sign of a beard. Somehow the sight of the young man served only to irritate Mark Antony further. He wanted nothing to do with some distant relative of Caesar intruding on him with his demands.

Octavian drew to a sudden stop at the harsh tone, the smile dying on his lips. As the consul watched, Octavian straightened subtly, his eyes hardening.

‘Octavian …’ Agrippa muttered warningly at his side. The lictors with the consul were not just an affectation of power. With a word from Mark Antony, they would unstrap their axes and rods, driving anyone guilty of insult from the forum or killing them on the spot.

‘I thought I would greet an old friend,’ Octavian said. ‘Perhaps I was mistaken.’

The reply seemed to rock Mark Antony. He closed his eyes for a moment, summoning his dignity.

‘I am in error, Octavian. I have not congratulated you on your adoption.’

‘Thank you,’ Octavian said. ‘I am pleased to see you thriving in such sad times. That is why I came to you. The will must be formally affirmed in Senate. I need a Lex Curiata. Will you propose it for me today?’

Mark Antony smiled tightly, shaking his head.

‘You may have noticed the city is only now recovering from riots. There is more than enough business to occupy the Senate until the end of the month. Perhaps then I will ask for time for your request.’

Octavian stood very still, aware of the lictors watching him.

‘It is just a formality. I thought that, for Caesar’s memory, you might move a little faster.’