Rubicon

by Steven Saylor

  ‘But . . .’ prompted Antony.

  ‘A bad sign: our advance intelligence indicated that Pompey had assembled a considerable fleet, yet there were only a few ships in the harbour. Where had the fleet gone? Alas, before we arrived, Pompey had already sent the consuls, senators, and a substantial part of his army across the Adriatic to Dyrrachium, out of harm’s way. Always seeking peace, our commander endeavoured to negotiate directly with Pompey. The Great One sent back word that no lawful settlement could possibly be concluded in the absence of the consuls. Hence, no negotiations.

  ‘Our intelligence from within Brundisium – Pompey has treated the locals with contempt and they’re eager to help Caesar – informed us that Pompey kept twenty cohorts with him. Not to hold the city indefinitely – how could he, with only twelve thousand men against three times that number? – but long enough for his fleet to reach Dyrrachium, unload the first round of passengers, then return to Brundisium to pick up Pompey and his men.

  ‘Our commander, having pursued Pompey this far, had no intention of allowing him to slip away. He came to me. “They must be stopped, Engineer Vitruvius! We must prevent Pompey’s ships from reentering the harbour when they return, or if they manage to do so, we must prevent them from leaving. But I have no ships of my own, and my men cannot march on water. This strikes me as an engineering problem, Marcus Vitruvius. Can you blockade the harbour?” I said I could. “Then make it thus, Engineer Vitruvius!” ’

  The little man waved his arm in the direction of the harbour. ‘You can see the result from here. We began by building great breakwaters of earth and stone on either side of the harbour entrance, where the water is shallow. Unfortunately, as the work progressed and we reached deeper water, it became impossible to keep the earthworks together. At that point we built a raft, thirty feet square, at the end of each breakwater and moored each raft with anchors at all four corners to keep them still in the waves. Once these platforms were in position, we added more rafts, joined them firmly together and covered them with a causeway of earth, so that they were as steady as an actual breakwater, even though they float atop the waves. If you squint, you can see that screens and mantlets have been put up all along both sides of the causeways to protect the soldiers coming and going. On every fourth raft we constructed a tower two storeys high, to defend against attacks by sea. The goal, of course, was close off the harbour completely.’

  Antony grunted. ‘All this was your idea?’

  Vitruvius beamed. ‘Actually, if you believe the Greek historians, Xerxes the king of Persia did something like this when he bridged the Hellespont and led his army from Asia into Europe. I’ve always wondered how such a feat was accomplished. I suspect he must have used a similar technique, anchoring rafts and linking them together.’

  Meto had often told me of great feats of engineering conjured by Caesar in his battles against the Gauls. Under Caesar’s command, men bridged rivers and chasms, dug vast trenches and canals and tunnels, and constructed great towers and siege engines. But an attempt to close off a harbour was something new.

  Antony nodded, clearly impressed. ‘What was Pompey’s response to all this construction? Don’t tell me he watched idly from the city walls once he realized what was happening.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Vitruvius. ‘After he stopped gaping in wonder, the Great One commandeered the largest merchant vessels remaining in the harbour and outfitted them with siege towers, three storeys tall. The ships have been making sorties out to the harbor entrance every day, trying to break up our rafts. They’ve managed to slow the work, but not destroy it. It’s been a daily spectacle, watching our towers on the rafts and their towers on the ships fire missiles and fireballs and arrows back and forth. Blood on the water . . . trails of reeking smoke . . . explosions of steam!’

  Antony frowned. ‘But the blockade remains unfinished. The channel is still open.’

  Vitruvius crossed his arms and assumed the impregnable expression of every builder whose project has fallen behind deadlines. ‘Alas, we simply didn’t have time to finish, especially with Pompey’s ships hectoring us. But the idea was sound! Given another five days, or even three –’ Vitruvius shook his head. ‘And now the fleet has returned. Those are Pompey’s ships you see, lining up to enter the harbour. And there! See the commandeered merchant vessels with their towers, sailing out from the city to harass our men on the rafts and run interference for the incoming ships!’

  As the sun dropped behind the hills to the west, we watched the sea battle unfold. One by one Pompey’s transport ships slipped through the gap in the breakwater and ran the gauntlet. Boulders flew through the air, hurled by catapults on the rafts. Most missed the mark and landed in the water, creating prodigious splashes. Some struck masts or prows, shredded sails and sent splinters flying. One catapulted stone landed squarely on the deck of a ship and appeared to break through, at least to the rowers’ deck below, but the ship failed to sink.

  At the same time, atop the towers on the rafts, men loaded giant missiles into ballistics engines and sent them flying towards the ships. The missiles looked to me like arrows carved from entire tree trunks, and the machines to hurl them were like enormous bows with winches on either side to set the tension. Some of the missiles were set afire before they were shot, and went hurling through the air streaming flames and smoke. The aim of the ballistics engines seemed more accurate than that of the catapults. They caused more damage to the incoming ships, yet still failed to sink any.

  Meanwhile, the fighting vessels from the city returned the fire, hurling missiles and stones at the rafts and even attempting to board them, as they might an enemy ship at sea. Caesar’s men on the rafts managed to repel these attacks, but in so doing were distracted from their own assaults on the transport ships. Unceasingly, soldiers ran back and forth on the causeway atop the rafts, toting fresh missiles to the ballistics engines and rolling boulders to the catapults. Archers on both sides choked the air with arrows, and the waves grew congested with a flotsam of spent missiles and bodies.

  From a distance, all this commotion seemed utterly chaotic, a great stirring together of earth, sea, fire and smoke. Yet at the same time, it appeared to be an orderly if hectic operation earned out by purposeful men using every ingenious device and method they could conceive and construct for the purpose of mutual destruction. It was thrilling to watch, as a lightning storm is thrilling. The battle proceeded with compelling inevitability. We seemed to be watching a single vast machine of many parts which, once set into motion, no power on heaven or earth could prevent from completing its manifold operations.

  As the sun went down and the reek of smoke and steam thickened, the battle became increasingly obscure. It appeared that every one of Pompey’s transport ships would win through to the harbour. At the same time, Caesar’s rafts had withstood the assault against them and remained in place.

  At last, only one transport ship remained outside the harbour entrance. The wind had risen, and the vessel was having difficulty manoeuvring. There was a lull in the battle. I sensed the energy of both sides flagging. The operation of the catapults and ballistic machines grew more sporadic. The constant hail of arrows ceased. Perhaps both sides had run low on ammunition, or perhaps the increasing darkness made it difficult to take aim.

  Then there occurred one of those incidents which prove the madness of battle, which give the lie to any vision of warfare as an orderly operation. One of Pompey’s assault vessels shot an incendiary missile from its catapult. To carry flammable material on board a ship must have been terribly dangerous, and none of the ships had hurled such a fireball before. Why did the captain hurl it then? As a flippant parting gesture? To use up the last of his ammunition before the close of battle? Or was it a calculated, last-ditch attempt to destroy the rafts?

  Whatever the intention, the result could not have been what the captain intended. The fireball greatly overshot the rafts. Like a comet it flew over the heads of Caesar’s men, descended in a precipi
tous arc, and crashed onto the deck of the last of Pompey’s transport ships waiting to enter the strait.

  Why did the ship catch fire so quickly and so completely, when its sisters had not, despite similar fireballs hurled by Caesar’s catapults? Perhaps the flaming ball of pitch landed on a cache of something flammable. Perhaps it was the action of the rising wind. Whatever the cause, with stunning rapidity the whole ship was engulfed in flames, from the waterline to the top of the sail. Flaming bodies leaped off the deck. Even on the hillside, we heard the screams of the rowers trapped below the deck. Their cries were drowned out by the triumphant cheering of Caesar’s men along the breakwater, who jumped up and down in their excitement.

  Then their cheering abruptly ceased. Out of control, buffeted by the wind, the flaming ship suddenly listed towards the nearest stretch of Caesar’s rafts, heading for the very tower which had been the intended target of the fireball. The men in the tower poured out like ants from a hill. Moments later, the ship crashed into the line of rafts. The mast shattered from the impact and fell onto the breakwater. The fleeing soldiers were trapped beneath the sail, which descended on them like a fluttering sheet of flame.

  Soldiers who had previously carried ammunition along the causeway now relayed buckets of seawater as they desperately tried to douse the fire and keep it from spreading. Pompey’s assault ships might have taken advantage of the confusion, but they had already turned away from the enemy and retreated towards the city, escorting the transport vessels safe within the harbour.

  Night fell. The battle was over.

  XVII

  We made camp and dined that night with the man stationed at the overlook. I had thought Antony would be as eager to report to Caesar as I was to find Meto now that we had at last reached Brundisium. But Antony was not a man to be stinted of his supper, even if it consisted of nothing more than a soldier’s ration of gruel, or of his wine at the end of three hard days of riding.

  We ate on the hillside beneath the open sky, seated on little canvas folding chairs. The wind died. The sea and the harbour grew as still as a black mirror, reflecting the mantle of stars overhead. The flames of the ship wrecked against the breakwater gradually died down. Within its high walls, the compact little city of Brundisium seemed to glow from the bottom up, as if the ground itself were illuminated. One by one, runners lit torches atop the towers and along the parapets, until the whole course of the wall was outlined like a coiled serpent. Outside the landward wall, Caesar’s army was dotted with hundreds of twinkling campfires. Beyond the besieging army, farther west, the foothills of the Apennines brooded in darkness, the ridgeline faintly aglow with the last intimations of light from the setting sun.

  ‘Today we saw a battle!’ said Antony, who seemed greatly cheered, despite the fact that Pompey’s fleet had won through.

  ‘And tomorrow, we’ll likely see a siege,’ noted Vitruvius. Antony had invited him to dine with us to continue explaining the feats of engineering involved in construction of the breakwater. Now Vitruvius fell to cataloguing, for my benefit, the various engines and strategies that might be deployed when Caesar threw his forces against the defenders of Brundisium – scaling ladders, wheeled siege towers, battering rams, sappers who would dig under the foundations to weaken the walls, soldiers who would advance in tortoise formations surrounded by shields and bristling with spears.

  I fell to wondering about Davus. Where was he, at that very moment? Did Pompey still keep him among his personal bodyguards? That was my hope, but who knew where he might have ended up, thanks to Pompey’s whim or simple expediency. Perhaps Davus was guarding the city walls, striding even now among the tiny figures illuminated by the torches along the parapets, heavily cloaked for the night watch and anxiously counting the hours to dawn. Or perhaps he had taken part in the sea battle that day, manning one of Pompey’s assault ships. Davus couldn’t swim, Diana had said. Nor could I, for that matter. What terror could be greater than being trapped aboard a ship deliberately sailing towards danger? The sight of wounded men struggling in the waves that day had horrified me more than anything else, more even than the flaming transport ship. Had Davus been among those tiny figures, flailing and screaming amid the flotsam of the battle?

  And what of Meto? I saw again the flaming sail descending on the fleeing soldiers. Could my son have been among them? It seemed unlikely. Caesar kept him close at hand. Probably, at that moment, he was encamped with the main part of the army outside the city walls, dining in the commander’s private mess, taking careful notes as Caesar discussed with his lieutenants the next day’s strategy.

  Who was in greater danger, Davus or Meto? To judge from the surface of things, anyone would have said Davus, I suppose. I was not so sure.

  Long after his bowl of gruel was empty, Antony kept holding up his cup for more wine. Once he was properly drunk, he insisted that Vitruvius and the centurion of the night watch join him in a round of bawdy songs. Most were simply vulgar, but one was actually rather funny, about a mincingly effeminate officer who’d rather be at home trying on his wife’s dresses, but who turns out to be the bravest fighter of all. So much for military humour, I thought. Men need a bit of nonsense to divert them, and wine to wash it down, after witnessing carnage such as we had seen that day.

  Antony was still singing lustily when I took my leave and went to the officers’ tent, where I had been allotted a space. I fell on my pallet but couldn’t sleep, fretting over Meto and Davus and wondering what the next few days would bring. When I set out from Rome, I thought I had a plan. Now, worn down by the journey and faced with the realities of the situation, it seemed to me that whatever vague notion I had in mind had vanished like morning mist. I was out of my element. I felt tiny and insignificant, overwhelmed by the forces around me. Now that the critical moment was fast approaching, I did not feel as brave as I had hoped.

  The flap rustled. Someone stole into the tent and moved uncertainly among the cots. I heard a whisper: ‘Gordianus?’

  It was Tiro. I rose from my bed, wrapped my blanket around me, and ushered him outside.

  ‘Can’t you sleep, either? Isn’t the baggage wagon comfortable enough?’

  ‘Lumpy,’ growled Tiro. ‘Fortex and I take turns dozing. I’m still not convinced that Antony hasn’t recognized me.’

  ‘Antony hasn’t even looked at you. Nobody notices slaves, unless they’re young and beautiful.’

  ‘Still, each night, I expect to be strangled in my sleep.’

  I thought of the wagon driver, strangled in his delirium, but said nothing.

  ‘What happens tomorrow, Gordianus?’

  ‘I don’t know. If I’m lucky, I’ll see Meto.’

  ‘And Caesar as well?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Take me with you.’

  I frowned. ‘I thought you came all this way to see Pompey, not Caesar.’

  ‘So I did. This is my exit from Italy, Gordianus. I intend to be on Pompey’s ship when he sets sail for Dyrrhachium.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘You didn’t need to know. But before I go, as long as the opportunity presents itself, I should like to have a peek inside Caesar’s tent.’

  ‘So that you can assassinate him?’

  ‘Don’t joke, Gordianus. I only want to have a look. One never knows what might be useful later.’

  ‘You want me to help you spy on Caesar?’

  ‘You owe me a favour, Gordianus. Could you have travelled all the way from Rome this quickly, without me?’

  ‘Could you have survived the last four days without me lying for you, Tiro? I think we’re even.’

  ‘Then do this for me as a favour, and I’ll do a favour for you. Isn’t it your intention to get into Brundisium, to retrieve your son-in-law from Pompey?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘How do you plan to get inside the city walls, with Caesar’s army on one side and Pompey’s on the other?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I admitted.


  ‘I can get you inside, alive and in one piece. You’ll come with me and Fortex. But in return for that favour, I want you to take me along when you see Meto – and Caesar.’

  I shook my head. ‘Impossible. Caesar is even more likely than Antony to recognize you. Caesar has dined in Cicero’s house! He must have seen you many times, and not just taking shorthand in the Senate.’

  ‘Seen me, yes, but never really looked at me. You said it yourself, Gordianus: nobody notices slaves.’

  ‘Caesar notices everything. You’re risking your head, Tiro.’

  ‘Perhaps not. What if he does recognize me? Caesar is eager to be known for his clemency.’

  ‘Clemency for senators and generals, Tiro, not for freedmen and spies.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances. If anyone asks who I am, you’ll say I’m Soscarides, Meto’s old tutor.’

  ‘And what about Meto? Is he supposed to go along with the lie as well?’

  ‘Do this for me, Gordianus! If you want to get into Brundisium before your son-in-law is dead on the ramparts or sailing off to Dyrrhachium, do me this favour.’

  ‘I’ll sleep on it,’ I said, suddenly very weary. I yawned. When I opened my eyes, Tiro had disappeared. I returned to the tent.

  Despite my worries, despite the horrors I had witnessed that day, sleep came swiftly, but not without dreams. It was not flames or drowning water, or mountain passes and forced marches I dreamed about. It was the girl Aemilia, Numerius’s lover. I saw her with a baby in her arms, smiling and content. I felt a great sense of relief and stepped closer to have a look, but stumbled against something at my feet. I looked down to see the body of Numerius, which somehow was also the body of the wagon driver, a garrote twisted tight around his throat. Aemilia’s baby had vanished. She shuddered and wept. The front of her gown was soaked with blood between her legs.