Caesar is Dead

by Jack Lindsay

  Suddenly, putting his cup down with great care, Barcha laid his finger to his lip, tiptoed to the door, threw it open, and disclosed his wife listening with an ear to the latch-hole.

  “Come on right in, my darling,” he said, catching her by the lobe of her ear.

  “I wouldn’t give you away,” she whined, a buxom woman with only one front tooth. “You’re my husband, aren’t you? I only wanted to know what you were up to. I thought it might be women.”

  “So it is,” chuckled Barcha. “Or rather, not women in a kicking heap like you suggest — but one very particular woman. Her and nobody but her. I’m going to tickle her with the nasty end of my knife. Perhaps you object to it.” His chuckle deepened to a guffaw. “Don’t you think a man ought to stick any woman but his own lawful nuisance, eh?”

  Blattius pointed to the cowering wife. “What are you going to do about her? I’m not her husband, and I wouldn’t trust her if I was. Women were born with their tongues hanging loose like a dog’s tail. They say things and think about it afterwards.”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Barcha, condescendingly as to a bachelor unaware of the more recondite arts of woman-control. He pushed his wife down on the low table, and, hauling some rope out of a basket, proceeded to tie her wrists behind her back; then he tied her ankles together.

  “What if she screeches?” remarked Blattius. “Haven’t you ever heard a woman screech?”

  “I thought of that,” said Barcha, grudging his friend any insight on the subject of wives. He tore a strip up the back of his wife’s dress, turned her over, and thrust the strip into her mouth. Then he tore another strip, this time from the front, and bound it round her face to stop her from spitting out the first strip. Then he turned her over again, and stood back to admire his handiwork, dusting his hands.

  “Don’t she look like a good job of work?” he said. “Well, old girl, now you can listen to your heart’s content, and I’ll take the ropes off you when we come back. Don’t roll off the table, because you’ll only hurt the floor. When I tie a person up, they stay tied.”

  Leaning across the table, he rested his cup in the small of his wife’s back and conversed with his friend across the gagged and bound body. The woman lay still, breathing stertorously through her nose.

  *

  The clue to it all lay in Cleopatra’s garden. Fabullus was sure of it. The way Gallus had spoken of Antonius visiting Cleopatra, and the terror that the remark had caused in Amos, was sufficient proof. Everyone was in the conspiracy, whatever it was, to defraud Fabullus — Gallus, Cytheris, Antonius, Ezra, Leonidas, Dolabella, the beggar-boys at the bridgehead, and Cleopatra. The conspiracy was against Fabullus; else why had Cytheris tried to bribe him with that purseful of money? That was the only explanation of her act. She was frightened and trying to divert him from the search; but she’d only made him keener. The person to whom all the trails led was Cleopatra, and he meant to clear up that part of the mystery next. Then he’d be able to lodge a claim with the praetor for the fullery stolen from him by Jewish tricks. The case would astound all Rome. He hadn’t lived in vain.

  Well filled with wine, he had been watching the garden for about eighteen hours, on and off; and he’d seen a number of suspicious exits and entrances, but nothing else. However, he couldn’t see much over the wall, and the Ethiopian had grabbed him when he tried to look through the gate. His wine-stinking breath had helped him out that time; the Ethiopian grinned and gave him a kick; but to Fabullus the release merely meant that they were frightened of him. If he’d been Cleopatra, he’d have given orders for Fabullus to be chased out of sight at the very least. It never occurred to him to question whether Cleopatra had heard of Fabullus. Didn’t he have proof that she was in the plot with everyone else?

  But he took more care after meeting the Ethiopian. There was no point in giving away what he knew. So he lurked among the bushes that covered a part of the river bank opposite the garden-wall. Dusk came on, with a few shivery stars, and a light blurred through the yellow curtain of the half-shuttered window in the Ethiopian’s lodge. A smell of cooking drifted on the breeze. Fabullus blew on his hands and was inclined to make another visit to the nearest tavern; but he had a feeling that developments were to be expected, and resisted the call of his belly. He wasn’t altogether unprovided for, however; and he took out a hunk of bacon that he’d been carrying tied in a knot of his shirt. He gnawed the bone hungrily and wished he’d brought some cheese; he was a rich man now with the purse of Cytheris and could afford food as well as drink. But he didn’t dare leave his post. Something was going to happen. Tonight he’d expose everything.

  He had watched for hours that afternoon a piece of the wall where some stones had been dislodged. With care the wall could be easily climbed. When he had finished the bacon, he mumbled a charm against Jewish sorcerers and threw the bone into the water. Jews worshipped a swine-god; for the forbidden was sacred, and the sacred was the god. Fabullus began to feel uneasy in the dim quiet murmurous with flowing water. He shouldn’t have thrown the bone into the river. The river-god mightn’t like it; perhaps he was reaching up with cold, clammy hand to drag Fabullus down into the depths.

  Fabullus emerged hurriedly from his bush lair and approached the wall. Yes, it was quite easy to climb. In a few moments he was standing in the garden and had made no sound beyond breaking off one small fragment of stone and mortar. There was a faint glow from the front of the villa. He moved cautiously towards it, feeling his way with his hands and going down on all-fours if he grew doubtful. In the front of the house he could see no means of spying, and he heard two guards walk down to the lodge. He moved on, and his feet drew a crackling noise from a gravel-path; he sank back, trembling, into a bush, regardless of the thorns. But no one came, and he crept round to the other side of the house. Here, through a chink in a shutter, he gazed into a small room where he saw two men wrestling, he thought at first. Muttering to himself a spell against fascination, he turned away; and, drawn by the smells that made his belly heave with delicious longing, he neared the kitchen. But that was asking for discovery. Scullions were hastening about, throwing out basins of water; and once a girl and a lad sliddered through a door, giggled and huddled together, and then sliddered back.

  Fabullus lay down in a flowerbed, dimly comforted by the sweet odours. His feet had bruised some mint, and that more pungent smell mixed with the flower-scents. Time faded past, waving a slow flag of stars. He couldn’t tell if it was a few moments or several hours ago that the huddling pair had giggled; he looked round to make sure they weren’t still there. He lost count of the coins falling across his mind, all the wealth that he had lost, the money that he would claim when at last he produced his completed case before the praetor.

  Then he heard someone coming near, not from the house, but along the garden lawn. He pulled himself up on his hands and knees. At last he was on the track.

  *

  There were two errors in the calculations of Barcha and Blattius as they fumbled at the little shuttered window. First, Fabullus was hovering at their rear; and secondly, in the closet was sleeping Karni on a floorbed improvised on account of the limited accommodation. However, she didn’t hear the shutter opened; for, tired out with work — tramping to the markets and lying with Amos above a world of clattering iron — she carelessly hadn’t fixed the shutter-bolt after letting some air into her stuffy cubicle. Thus the invaders found the window less trouble than they had expected. Blattius, as the thinner man, climbed on Barcha’s shoulders, thrust a leg through, and then lifted the other leg after. He wriggled for a moment with both legs swinging about inside. Then he slid down with a ripping sound that announced the end of his tunic. He dropped to the floor, and to his surprise found something warm and soft stirring beside him and trying to sit up. (As he put it later to his friend, it was like standing on some fresh cow-dung in the dark and discovering it was a live bull.) With practised instinct, he at once found the throat of the stirrer with his fingers, th
ough he was terrified and could see nothing.

  Karni was still half asleep. She tried to cry out, and was astonished to find that she made only a feeble croaking sound. Her hands went up to tear away the hands of the unknown assailant of darkness. For some unexplained reason she thought it was Amos, and wanted to point out that it was unnecessary to throttle her, for she’d give him all her savings, which were far more considerable than she’d confessed.

  It was then that Fabullus made the diversion which rescued Karni. Not that that was his purpose. He was feeling his way along the wall, looking for the door through which he expected the messengers to be admitted; and he grasped hold of Barcha, who was standing on tiptoe and trying to peer through the window-hole. Barcha had a knife in his belt, and in a flash his hand whipped it out and plunged it into the nearest part of Fabullus, which happened to be the stomach. Taking no chances, Barcha pulled out the knife and struck again. Fabullus fell to the ground, letting out a scream of pain, surprise, and terror. In the darkness he could not see the wounds, but pressed at them with searching hands. Something sticky was pouring out, tearing at him.

  The scream stopped Blattius at his work of systematically throttling Karni. He let her go and stood up, diving for the window. It was very small, and he stuck there, unable to get the necessary lift.

  “Pull me through,” he called to Barcha, waving the one arm that he’d managed to get through, twisting and squirming vigorously. One of his heels hit Karni in the face, and she fell back. The full outrage of this night-assault awoke in her. She grasped at the ankle swinging before her, and pulled, shrieking her loudest; and then, dissatisfied with a mere tugging match, she caught the man’s calf in her teeth and bit with strenuous appetite. At the same moment, Barcha, realising that he had disposed of his attacker, grasped his friend’s arm and hair, and dragged against Karni.

  The noise had roused the house, but no one could place at first where it was coming from; and this delay preserved Blattius. For, Karni, in her eagerness to bite had relaxed her grip, and with a great wrench Barcha pulled him through. Blattius fell on the prostrate Fabullus, who groaned thinly. Then the two night birds took to their heels and fled across the garden.

  *

  Cleopatra was sitting up in bed, naked to the waist against which the dyed woollen sheets reached, while half a dozen girls cowered at the foot of the bed. She had thrust one hand under the pillow, where she found and held a dagger. Sara entered with a centurion in silver armour.

  “An interrupted burglary, your Majesty,” said Sara, with a frown which conveyed that he took the interruption more seriously than his words.

  “Have the guards caught the man?”

  The soldier stammered, a young officer — princeps prior of the ninth cohort — who had been lent with some legionaries by Caesar to Cleopatra during her stay. “Your Majesty ...” Why didn’t she dress herself? He was used to seeing girls with as little between them and the lamplight in a lupanar; but he was shocked at such negligence in a Queen and couldn’t compose his thoughts. Besides, he knew he’d been lax in his guardwork; all these riots and goings-on were so distracting. “No one thought of that small window ... A girl sleeping there ... My men are examining the garden and the river bank.”

  “As well examine my bed,” said Cleopatra, harshly. “Go. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”

  The centurion went out, scowling zealously and almost sorry the men hadn’t got through to slide a blade between her dainty rib-bones. She looked at Sara.

  He winced. “I should have thought of it. Too simple altogether. Somebody must have inquired about the lay-out of the house — a common burglar or somebody high up. There’s a dying man outside. Would you like to see him?”

  “Bring him in. Also the girl who made the noise.”

  Karni was waiting at the door, and entered at Sara’s call, followed by four men bearing Fabullus on a stretcher.

  Cleopatra looked at Fabullus, at his grimed and bloated face. “Who stabbed him?”

  Sara raised his brows. “I can’t understand. None of our men. He seems to have disturbed the others. I don’t know him.”

  A bearer lifted the head of Fabullus with his hand. Fabullus looked at Cleopatra, and with the flickering pulse of his life made a great effort to solve things. “The Queen ...” He paused. “I saved everyone. I knew she was in it too.” He tried to explain. “The Jews beat me.”

  Then the last drops began to ebb through his heart. He tried to struggle up. “May I kiss ... hand.”

  Cleopatra rose, sliding off the bedclothes, and lifted out her hand to the dying man. He seemed to have saved her somehow; there was no harm in giving him her hand; after all he was striving to rise to the occasion. Standing naked beside the blood-stained Fabullus, she graciously smiled and put her hand to his lips. If a gesture was worth doing, it was worth doing well.

  He pressed a feeble mouth against her frail plump fingers.

  “Died like antique Roman. Father great general.” Would she understand? “Give me public funeral and marble tomb.” He felt at last he had achieved something tremendous; her cool white body dazzled in his eyes, Venus in her cloud of light. He stared at her imploringly. “Huge marble tomb.”

  She nodded, and he sank back. A thousand worms were gnawing at his stomach, but all that was very, very, far away. Closer was the great bliss of Cleopatra’s whiteness. At last the world had recognised him. Eternal marble washed by the rains of heaven. Then both pain and bliss whirled up towards his head, two snakes twining round a caduceus, and to the sound of trumpets in his ears he died.

  The sound was his death-rattle. A shudder racked his body, and he lay still, the blood from his wound dripping through the canvas of the stretcher and staining the pale blue carpet.

  “Take him out,” said Cleopatra, “and throw him into the river.”

  Then she turned wearily to Karni. “What do you know about it all, child?”

  Karni, resenting somewhat the address of child from one only a few years her senior, determined not to minimise her own part. “I was sleeping quietly and thinking how happy I was to serve your Majesty, when someone came kicking his legs through the window; and before I knew where he was, he had me by the throat and was rolling all over the floor with me. I’m sure I’ll have an awful sore throat. That was more than I could stand, for I’m a respectable girl. So I hit him back and called out as loud as I could. When he saw the kind of girl I was, the coward got up and tried to climb back through the window. So I pulled him and bit a piece out of his leg, but someone else pulled harder, or else his foot came off in my hand, I forget which. But he escaped through the window, and I don’t mind a bit now I see you safe and sound, though I’ll never sleep in a room with a window again as long as I live unless there’s bars on it.”

  The girl obviously hadn’t the least notion of what had happened, but she had contributed to the rout of the assassins. Cleopatra drew a heavy gold bracelet, studded with pearls and emeralds, from her wrist and handed it to her.

  “Go and sleep better this time,” she said, and turned away before Karni could carry out her intention of seizing the royal hand and covering it with kisses. Then she spoke to Sara, “Take everyone out, except Thatris. Put guards at both doors of the room and along the passage. Come to me at dawn tomorrow morning.”

  She climbed back into the tall bed with carven posts, refusing the help of her girls. “Leave the lamp alight,” she said to Thatris, who stayed behind as the others trooped out in subdued excitement. “Lie here at my side, not at the foot of the bed.”

  She wasn’t afraid; it wasn’t the first time that knives had neared her body; but the experience took something of the brightness from life, at least for a while. What was the use of staying any longer at Rome?

  “Thatris, do you remember the view out over the harbour at Alexandria, and the seagulls above the island in the dawn-light, and the lanterns in the house-boats on the canal of a summer’s night?”

  “O yes, I do,” said Thatris,
wistfully.

  “I think we’ll leave Rome tomorrow,” said Cleopatra, with a sudden easing of her emotions; and Thatris gave a little cooing sound and pressed against her royal mistress, forgetting all her awe, as if they were only two of the girls-in-waiting telling each other about their lovers after the fatigues of the day.

  Cleopatra had made up her mind. Nothing could be done at Rome. Antonius was definitely the slave of Fulvia; and he was the only man at Rome with real power, the power in the hands and the voice and the brightening eyes which Cleopatra recognised. She could not and would not make a truce with Caesar’s murderers; there was nothing to do but depart before Fulvia used some night of riot for a more efficiently-staged assassination. Cleopatra had no doubt about the meaning of the night’s interruption. She knew Fulvia by herself — a part of herself, any way. Antonius wasn’t worth it; no man was worth it, now that Caesar was dead. Yet Antonius had slaked her with a passion greater than she had known before; he was not unlike a coarse version of Alexander; but he wasn’t a world-conqueror, or he wouldn’t have gone back to Fulvia. Let him go.

  “Tell me what you think about love?” she murmured to Thatris; but Thatris hid her head beneath the sheets where a frail, milky light percolated. Then she looked out again shyly.

  “Don’t tell me then,” Cleopatra went on. “Keep your secret. Keep it as long as you can, Thatris. Tell it to your lover, for he won’t hear your words. He’ll be too busy seeing himself reflected in your eyes. But perhaps you haven’t any secret, you wise, silent, little thing. Perhaps none of us have. Perhaps there’s only the lie that the mirror tells of a light behind the eyes and a mask of beauty behind the face.”

  Her voice was sad. So Thatris, who couldn’t understand what she was saying, was sad also, and wished that she could console her; but she knew she wasn’t a clever girl, and held her tongue, thinking of Hilarion and the golden hairs on his chest. It was really hard to see why people were sad when there was so much to be happy about in the world.