Then Julius drew a whole breath, and rested his hands on his khaki-clad knees as he sat there on the bedside. Not corrupted, then. Innocent. But he distrusted what was so attractive to believe; and hardened his heart against that frightened face that peered at him out of drugs and the dark.
"Who else?" he asked. "I didn't mean to wake you."
"I'm s-s-sorry-"
"Sorry? What for, boy?"
"I d-d-don't know."
"Don't stammer." He reached and patted the side of Brutus' arm, fatherly reproof. "Feeling better, are you?"
"I - "
"Thought it was best to let you sleep."
Brutus heaved himself further upright in bed, swung his feet for the side and caught himself suddenly against his arms. "Uhhh!"
"Dizzy."
"Di 'mortales." Brutus' head hung. He shook it and groped after balance, looking up, shadow-faced ghost, the light falling across taut muscle of shoulder and side. "I'm weak."
"It's the medicines."
"I flew-"
So the memory was intact. Lethe-water had confused it, dimmed all recent recollection, but it had not uprooted the event itself. Rope-bums on his arms.
A fear of falling. Damned American had parachuted the boy out of a plane, during which Brutus, who had never seen a plane dose-up, much less contemplated jumping out of one, had managed to stay sane. And then the damned
American snagged him while he was still shaken and tied him to a tree-when Brutus had thought he had come along to help.
So he had understood then, surely, that his father had turned him over to an enemy.
"I had to do it," Julius said. And then cruelly, because he was old in Hell, far older than Brutus, in the way Hell's time ran-and knew how to manipulate:
"I knew you could do it. I knew you were man enough."
A shudder ran through the waxen body. "I fell. I jumped like he told me to-Welch. Be said I had to find my b-brother. He said th-th-"
"Don't stammer."
"Th-that he was your enemy."
"He. Welch?"
"Caesarion. My-b-b-brother."
Julius drew in his breath. Truth, from Welch to Brutus? That fell out of the stack, untidy, distressing in implications of miscalculation about the American.
"He's K-klea s s-son. I know th-that. Is he m-my enemy? Or y-yours? "
Too much bewilderment. Too many changes. There was no chance that it was an act ... unless one of Hell's friends had made a switch, and bedded down in Brutus' stead.
"Both, maybe," Julius said.
The face that stared back at him-gods, out of a mirror, so many, many years ago. A little of him.
A little of the woman he had loved-in his own callow youth. The boy was terrified. Starkly terrified.
"What are the D-Dissidents?"
Clever lad. Bight to the mechanics of the thing. Not a shallow question: Brutus knew what the Dissidents were; they were the nuisanceful folk who had kidnapped the Supreme Commander, Hadrianus, whom Julius' own agents kept in hiding; they were Hell's recent difficulty, and the stated reason for Julius' treks into the field-which was a lie, but never mind; most of Hell accepted it. Except, perhaps, Brutus, who had seen Scaevola raving about the towers of Ilium.
"Well..."
"Which answer do you want, boy? What they've got to do with Caesarion?"
"That. First."
"You know Augustus is my son too. Great-nephew. Adopted."
Brutus nodded.
"Well, I married Klea. Egyptian law. Never mind that I had a wife in Borne-"
Julius made a face. "It was legal-in Egypt. And null and void in Borne. Smart man, eh? But Klea turned up pregnant. Gave me a son and a tangle ... because he was the only damned in-wedlock son I'd gotten. But he was half Ptolemiades and half Julian; half foreign and half Roman; and illegitimate in Borne but heir to Egypt. Klea's little maneuvering. My soft-headedness. That was Caesarion. I'll tell you something. When you're old, and I was old, yes, and that was my last chance at a son-"
"And I was long gone."
Julius did not let the wincing show. "It was long past that summer in Baiae.
My last chance, I say. I didn't live to see him grown. I knew-" Knew about the conspiracy, son.
that I wouldn't last the week; I knew Rome couldn't survive, and Caesarion couldn't, not a boy made heir to an unwilling Rome. So I kept my Word - adopting my nephew. Gods, how that galled Antonius! "Knew I had so little time. Augustus succeeded me in Rome. But it was Antonius who brought up Caesarion in Alexandria. He married Klea then. And Augustus' sister in Rome.
Damned mess. Eventually Rome went to war-again. Antonius died in it. So did Caesarion. And Klea." He rested his hand on the sheet where it covered Brutus' ankle, gently, ever so gently and matter-of-factly. "Caesarion was a rebel even then. He threatened Rome. I don't say Augustus was right. It was a hard thing to do. But the whole damned East could have peeled away from Rome. Lives lost. Wars upon wars. In fact it was a soldier killed Caesarion, for Augustus' sake, because that soldier understood the way it was; did it in the heat of things and then knew that Augustus might kill him, you understand; but he did it partly for Rome and partly because he was Roman and Rome hated Caesarion.
I'm telling you all the truth now. It was an ugly business. Augustus could have executed that soldier and kept his hands clean: but so many died, it was so quiet, you understand. It was just too easy to say nothing at all. And if the rumor got out, well, that was Augustus' style: no official statement. Just regrets. And Rome, you see, Rome wanted to take it at that, didn't want the blood on its hands; was glad Caesarion was gone. Was guilty to be glad. So they took the regrets and made up rumors. Maybe Caesarion walked off into the desert. Maybe he was still alive. Who knew? So many did and so many died. Do you understand? Do you understand why Caesarion doesn't forgive me?"
Brutus only stared, his mouth slightly open.
"And why he hates you?" Julius asked.
Brutus gave his head a little shake, as if any movement was too much. Julius closed his hand down hard on the ankle.
"Politics, son. It's politics the way it was played in those days. And look now: Klea's here, under Augustus' roof. They understand. They're fond of each other. Share a little wine. Talk about old times." He shook at Brutus' leg.
"Perspective, son. Klea's my wife. She's Antonius' wife too. My wife, my adopted son, my old friend. They don't live the past over and over. I don't.
Only Caesarion is stuck at seventeen. Never gets older. Never any wiser.
Seventeen is all his understanding, just those years he had and who killed him."
"I'm s-s-seventeen."
"Don't stammer. There's a lad. Irony, yes." Marcus Junius Brutus, assassin-thought that he had died falling off a horse, while thinking about a girl in Baiae. Marcus Brutus who had suffered the whispers of bastardy all his young life. It was all he remembered ... and none of the later, more tangled truth, nothing of politics, and civil war and a disillusioned, hurting man who had committed patricide. For hate of Caesarion? I never got to ask you. Never could ask you why. Surprised hell out of me, son, seeing you with the assassins. Hurt like hell, too. Damn, where you hit. Did you aim? Or was it a flinch on your part? "You're shivering, boy."
"C-Cold." Brutus drew his foot up, pulled the sheets up to his chin as he sat there in the shaft of light. "I j-jumped out of that plane. W-Welch said I should j-just fall out and c-count."
"Brave lad. I'm sure I wouldn't have had it in me. Seriously. Airplanes are bad enough. Jumping out of them-I wouldn't like that."
"You s-sent me with him."
There. The accusation. The hurt. "Do you want the truth?" The lure and the bait. Brutus stared at him with glistening eyes and a mouth clamped tight. And nodded then, shortly, defensively.