by Sam Starbuck
“I’m speaking, and you will heed your Dominus,” he snapped. She fell silent, but looked up at him with the first vestiges of hope. “The horse must be returned. You must not try this seduction game again. It’s dangerous and you’ll get yourself caught. I’ll deal with the girl, but this is the last sacrifice I make for a horse-boy.”
Her jaw dropped. “Dominus!”
“You may be cursed by the gods, but that’s not my fault or yours. Your mother should have known better. Besides, I need a good groom. Stand up, boy.”
Tiresias jumped to her feet.
“You belong to me now. One mistake, and you belong to no one. Do you understand?”
She was staring at him with a kind of wonder. “Why, Dominus?”
He sighed. “We all have our secrets, Tiresias.”
“Senator Cassius?”
He knew it was spoken without thought, but Tiresias looked so much like a sly, knowing servant boy in that moment that he couldn’t help it—when he thought it, he thought, he looked very cunning.
“Speak of that again, and nobleman’s son or not, I’ll cut your tongue out.”
“Oh, Dominus.” Tiresias knelt again, this time at Brutus’s feet. “Yes, of course. You’ll never need another servant, I’ll serve only you. Please, Dominus, let me serve your house, wise, just Brutus—”
“Yes, well . . . get up, stop groveling. It’s not suited to a boy of your rank.”
“Yes, Dominus,” Tiresias murmured, rising to his feet.
“Meet me tomorrow in the atrium after the morning meal, and I’ll give you a letter explaining that we found the horse alone on the road. You’re to send one of Cassius’s servants—not one of mine—back to your father’s villa with the horse and the letter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, get yourself some sleep,” he said, turning to go. Tiresias darted forward, his nimble hand clutching at the sleeve of Brutus’s tunic.
“Thank you, Dominus,” he said urgently. “I’m sure you’re blessed by the gods. I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Brutus replied. “Go, out of my sight.”
Tiresias nodded and let go of his sleeve, shuffling around him and through the stall door, running down the length of the stable to the little room on the end where he slept. Brutus turned and made his way back to the villa, numb and heavy over what he’d done. He was well ready for some more wine.
“There you are,” Cassius said, standing in the doorway of the servants’ entrance, a jug of wine dangling from one hand. “Enjoy your horse-boy?” he asked.
“I have no patience for your jealousy right now, Gaius,” Brutus replied, pushing past him.
“Jealous? Of that little beardless peasant?” Cassius caught Brutus by the sleeve, just as Tiresias had a moment earlier. “Did you fuck him?”
Brutus turned, spine straight. “No,” he said calmly.
Cassius narrowed his eyes. “Shall I come to you tonight?” he asked, voice lower, gentler now.
“Why else am I here?” Brutus asked lightly. That, at least, made a smile steal over Cassius’s face. “Now let me go, I have things to attend to before bed.”
“Attend quickly,” Cassius suggested. “Most of the farmers have gone.”
“Quicker if you let go of my sleeve, Gaius.”
Cassius released him, leaning up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. His hand skimmed down Brutus’s stomach, clutching lightly at his flank. Brutus turned, caught Cassius’s mouth, and kissed him deeply, a reassurance and a promise. Cassius moaned into his mouth, but then he pulled back and seemed to gather himself.
“Not here,” he murmured.
“No?” Brutus asked, teasing. “You wouldn’t, not even for me?”
Cassius closed his eyes. “What I would do for you if you asked. If you ordered. Here, in the villa urbana, the house of the Senate in Rome . . .”
“My bed will do fine,” Brutus said drily. He knew Cassius thought he meant it, but this was dangerous territory. Cassius was drunk, saying more than he meant to. Brutus gently lifted the wine jug out of Cassius’s hands. “Go.”
“I love you,” Cassius said, leaning into him, a hint of surrender in his voice.
“I love you too, Gaius, now go.”
Cassius pulled away reluctantly, walking backward up the passage until he turned toward the corridor that led to Brutus’s room.
Brutus sipped from the jug, shook his head, and laughed before he went to be sure the feast was done and the servants had the stragglers in hand—and to deal with the girl who’d slapped his horse-boy. She was a country girl; she’d be bribed easily enough.
He put thoughts of Tiresias out of his mind. He’d consider that some other day.
The morning after the feast, Brutus found Tiresias waiting for him in the atrium, ready to receive his letter. Aristus was there too, settled back with whatever reading had him so enthralled. Brutus, yawning, sent Tiresias off to carry out his duties and then failed to tempt Aristus along to the river. Still, he didn’t end up going alone; Cassius caught up with him as he was slipping out the side entrance of the villa.
“Early for you,” Brutus said.
“You woke me when you left. I thought the least I could do was pester you during your bath,” Cassius answered.
“Never a bother.” Brutus tossed him a cloth for a towel. “Keep up, if you can.”
“I’ll do my best. I’m still sore from last night,” Cassius said as they picked their way down to the river. “Next time, more oil.”
“Then you’d just complain you were sticky this morning.”
Cassius laughed and glanced behind them to be sure they were out of view of the villa before he leaned into Brutus, a tacit demand. Brutus slung an arm around his shoulders, and Cassius stole an arm around his waist. It lasted until they reached the statue of Lympha, when Cassius released him with a gentle shove.
“The feast was good fun,” Cassius said as he stripped off his tunic and stretched. There was a handprint bruise, blurred but visible, just above his hip. Cassius didn’t often allow Brutus to take him that way, cock in his ass—Brutus didn’t often want it, in all honesty—but when they did couple, Cassius on his knees and Brutus slicking him with oil, it invariably made them both a little wild. Brutus had a bite mark on his wrist where he’d muffled Cassius’s cries, and he’d be hard-put to hide it without wearing gauntlets.
“Did you see that one man with the haystack hair leering at his neighbor’s wife?” Cassius asked, hissing as he eased his legs into the river. “The scandals these people must get up to.”
“Don’t tell me you’re shocked,” Brutus said, folding his tunic.
“No, it’s endearing. Pastoral, I suppose.”
Brutus crouched by the bank, tossing a few smooth stones into the water and watching the ripples from them bounce off Cassius’s thighs. He wasn’t quite ready to leap in yet, but he wasn’t about to torture himself by inching in the way Cassius was. Instead, he admired the smooth curve of Cassius’s ass and the bruise, his own handiwork, on his lover’s body.
For years, Brutus had not known why he must have Cassius, only that he must; when they had been young men on campaign, officers in an army that seemed incapable of defeat, Cassius was the most beautiful, the cleverest if not the smartest, certainly the wildest. When Brutus saw him, he’d felt covetousness, envy mixed with desire: he’d thought he could never be like Cassius enough to draw his attention. He was an officer over Cassius when they trained; he should have been objective about his men, and yet he couldn’t stand to see Cassius give another soldier favor over him, even if it was just congratulations after a battle well-fought. He had yearned for Cassius, had put up with the other man’s taunts about his dour adherence to duty because he’d heard the underlying affection, and he’d been pleased when his superior officers had pointed out that he was tempering Cassius by his mere presence. He’d thought that made him a good officer, and later, when they were officers together, a
good comrade.
Cassius, perhaps sensing Brutus’s reflection, glanced over at him and smiled.
“If I could get it up, I’d perform for you, but this water’s freezing,” he said, and then made a show of lifting his organ above it as he gave the river another inch of skin. “My balls are already protesting.”
“Your balls have been through worse,” Brutus remarked, folding his arms on his knees and resting his chin on them.
“Are you going to sit there on the bank and watch me suffer all day, or come in with me?”
They had not been friends, so long ago. Colleagues, perhaps, men who knew they were destined to tie up their lives with Rome’s fate and thus with each other’s. That younger Brutus had been sure the longing would fade when he was home and married, a longing for muscled thighs and smooth chests and the clasp of brotherhood. Surely when he had a wife, he would be more enticed by the smell of her perfume than the leather and sweat of Cassius’s body. When he married, he would not touch himself in his tent at night and try to think of his tutor Aristus only to find himself imagining Cassius’s broad, sinewy back, the way his shoulders shifted and bent when he washed himself.
It had never faded. He still felt desire stir in his chest as he watched Cassius bend to sluice water down his arms, likely in the hopes of accustoming his skin to the cold. Not since the night Cassius had drawn him aside while the other men were seeking out some rumored whorehouse in the countryside—since the night they’d found enough private darkness to kiss and rut without being discovered.
He could never go back. Neither his first passionless marriage nor his genuine affection for Porcia could drown his love for Cassius.
Brutus stepped out onto a rock set above the bank, spread his arms, and tipped forward. He heard Cassius yell in alarm just before he hit the water and the shock of the cold was all he knew. When he came up, muscles clenching and chest heaving against the cold, Cassius was sputtering and wiping water from his eyes, slicking down his hair.
“You ass!” Cassius cried, pulling him around by the shoulder, dunking him under the water again. Brutus laughed and reached out, wrestling him down. For a heartbeat he wasn’t a statesman, a senator, a patrician; he was just the boyish soldier who’d been so in love with Gaius Cassius Longinus that he had no idea what to do with himself.
They thrashed in the water for a while, warming themselves up, splashing and shoving until Brutus cried, “Enough!” and eased himself toward the depths, treading against the current. Cassius edged back until he could sit near the bank, chest and head above the water, watching it play over his half-submerged fingers.
“I have to admit something to you,” Cassius said, still staring down at his hands.
“If you say you’ve fucked the horse-boy . . .” Brutus joked.
Cassius smiled, but he still wouldn’t look up. “My motives for following you down here this morning aren’t entirely honest,” he admitted. “I needed to speak to you away from the ears in the villa’s walls. Away from Aristus, too.”
“What is it?” Brutus asked, drawing closer to settle in the shallower water.
“Kiss me,” Cassius said. Usually he ordered it, but this time it was a plea. Brutus leaned in and teasingly kissed him on the forehead, but Cassius closed his eyes and inhaled as if it had been a much more intimate caress. It struck Brutus how different things were now from when they were young. Now it was Cassius’s turn to be the jealous, envious lover, while Brutus was the idol. Perhaps Cassius had always been this way, and just hidden it better under a soldier’s swagger when he was younger. Hard to know.
“You love Rome,” Cassius said, lifting himself onto the bank, basking in the rising sun and the warmer air. Brutus followed, crawling up to lean over him on an elbow, looking down.
“You know I do.”
“And you care for me. Trust me.”
“Cassius, where are you going with this? You sound like you’re about to plead a case.”
“Would you kill for me?”
Brutus ran a hand over Cassius’s cheek, finger tracing his lips. “Are you asking me to?” He would—well, with some exceptions. He trusted Cassius to know those, though, and not to ask.
“No. Not yet. But if you’d kill for me, you’d kill for Rome, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course. I have, many times.”
“Not in war. In a city street, for the good of the country, would you kill a man who threatened it?”
“What do you know?” Brutus asked.
Cassius closed his eyes, and Brutus traced the lashes delicately with a thumb. “I would see you greater than Rome,” Cassius breathed.
“I wouldn’t. No man should be.”
“I know you believe that. It’s why I needed to speak to you.” Cassius opened his eyes again, turning his head to meet Brutus’s gaze. “Caesar.”
Brutus drew his hand back slowly. “Gaius, no—”
“Hear me out,” Cassius said, pushing himself up on his elbows.
Brutus sat back warily. “I’m not a murderer you can hire when it pleases you.”
“Marcus! I know that. It’s not what I’m asking. I would never ask that of you! But he marched on Rome, Marcus. We fought him, you and I. Since then, you know what you’ve seen with your own eyes. He might love his country, but he’s not interested in his Republic.”
“Yes, we fought him, and we lost,” Brutus said gently. “All that saved me from a traitor’s death was his respect.”
“And all that saved me was you,” Cassius answered. “I know you pled my case with him. Did you make him promises?”
“I didn’t need to. He granted what I asked freely.”
“And if he hadn’t, would you have gone to death with me?”
Brutus kissed him. “Never doubt it. It would have been my honor.”
“And if I were to murder Caesar—”
“You’re speaking treason.”
Cassius waved a hand. “That’s why we’re here, and not in the villa or in the city. If I were to murder Caesar for the good of the Republic, what would my great friend, the Senator Marcus Junius Brutus, do for me?”
Brutus bowed his head.
“If I committed a crime to save a country, where would you fall, Marcus?”
“On my sword, I imagine.”
“And I don’t even ask that much,” Cassius said. “Only that you stand with me. Listen—no, listen,” he insisted when Brutus tried to turn away. “Caesar has too much power. You know I don’t serve Rome the same way you do—nobody serves Rome the way you do,” he added with a twist of his lips, and Brutus gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “But I care for Rome. I need you, but I also need your reputation. Before he’s beyond our grasp, before he declares himself emperor and names an heir and the Senate is disbanded.”
“The Senate would never be disbanded.”
“Oh? Does he listen the way a Princeps should? Does he even listen the way he used to when he was fresh from the war?”
Brutus dug his fingers into the mud of the riverbank, rebellious.
“I have a plan in mind. I’m good at those, you know I am,” Cassius said. “If we have enough support from the Senate, we could strike. But in the eyes of the people it would still be a political coup, a grab for power.”
“Unless?”
“Unless you were there,” Cassius said, eyes alight. “You’re the man of Rome, Brutus. The people adore you, the plebs trusts you, the patrician families would listen to you. If you sanctioned this death—”
“This is insane, Cassius. It’s not a death, it’s an execution. A murder.”
“If Brutus approves, it isn’t murder; it’s politics. You’ve spent your life becoming the kind of man who could do this, and for what? A villa in the country, a wife in the city, and a seat in the Senate? All your fighting, your work, your self-denial . . . what was it for, if not so that you could act with impunity for Rome?”
“Isn’t that what Caesar thinks he does?”
“Caesar hasn’t
earned it. He stole it,” Cassius spat. “You’d have killed him in battle if you could have. How is this so different?”
Brutus sighed. “You know it is, Cassius.”
Cassius rested his head on Brutus’s shoulder. “I’m not you, Brutus, but I won’t stand by and watch this man destroy what you and I and our fathers and their fathers worked to build. I couldn’t then and I can’t now.” He kissed the cap of Brutus’s shoulder. “I would put you in the Senate as Princeps, a just man for a decent Republic.”
“You couldn’t have both,” Brutus said, the politician in him studying this angle even as the rest of him struggled with revulsion at the idea of slaying Caesar in the street like an animal. “If I sanctioned his murder, I could never take his place. If I took his place, my hands would have to be clean. And I don’t want to lead the Senate.”
“But you’re considering the act, aren’t you? You know in your heart what Caesar’s doing is wrong. You’re no slave to let the house fall to ruin while your master gambles and drinks.”
“And you?”
Cassius smiled, almost wolfish. “I’m a slave only to you.”
“I wish you weren’t. I can’t afford to keep you,” Brutus said, stroking his hair. “Gaius. You can’t kill Caesar. Even if I approved, even if I struck him myself. It just isn’t done. We can reason with him—”
“Do you think I haven’t tried? The last time I spoke to him about it, he gave you the praetorship I wanted.”
“I recall a sulk,” Brutus said drily.
“Yes, well.” Cassius frowned. “Not that you didn’t deserve it, but he was trying to push us apart, you know that. Do you want that kind of man making treaties with our enemies or declaring war as he likes? What happens when the Senate disagrees with him? Will he send soldiers to our homes? Accuse us and banish or imprison us on whatever charge suits his whim?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“How can you know?”
“If this is true, what you say,” Brutus said slowly, “why did you have to say it here? We should be able to speak openly.”
“Don’t pretend ignorance.”
“I was making a point.”
“It’s not that simple, and we both know it. There are plenty of men who fear Caesar more than they love Rome. Cowards who don’t want to risk their comfortable lives. Sycophants who only want to grow old and fat and curry favor to ensure it. And,” he added, “there are men who would betray me only to gain your favor.”
