Brutus appeared emboldened by the words. He gritted his teeth, pulled back his dagger, and plunged it into the exposed place where Caesar’s thigh met his groin. Caesar thrashed and convulsed. Blood bubbled from his lips. He stiffened, uttered a final grunt, and did not move again.
Lucius, watching from a distance, saw everything. He was transfixed with horror, oblivious to the stampede of senators rushing to the exit. He felt a hand on his shoulder and gave a start. It was Antonius. The man’s face was ashen. His voice trembled.
“Come with me, Lucius. You’re not safe here.”
Lucius shook his head. He was rooted to the spot, unable to move. He had come to warn Caesar. He had failed.
Brutus walked slowly and calmly toward them. The feverish glimmer had left his eyes. His held his shoulders back, his chin up. He had the look of a man who had done a difficult thing and done it well.
“No one will harm you, Lucius Pinarius. You have nothing to fear. Neither do you, Antonius, as long as you don’t raise your sword against us.”
The chamber was almost empty. The only senators who remained were those too old to run.
Brutus shook his head in disgust. “This wasn’t the reaction we anticipated. I meant to give a speech after it was done, to explain ourselves to the others. But they’ve all run off, like frightened geese.”
“A speech?” said Antonius, incredulous.
Brutus reached into his toga and produced a scrap of parchment. His fingers smudged the document with blood. He frowned, displeased that he had marred it. “I was up all night working on it. Well, if not today, then I’ll deliver it tomorrow, when the Senate resumes normal business.”
“Normal business?” Antonius shook his head in disbelief.
“Yes. The normal business of the Senate of Roma, freed from the rule of a tyrant. The Republic has been restored. The people will rejoice. Five hundred years ago, my ancestor Brutus freed Roma from a wicked king. Today we followed his example-”
“Give your speech to somebody else!” shouted Lucius. He shoved Brutus aside and ran toward the exit, weeping.
Antonius caught up with him. “Come with me, Lucius. No matter what Brutus says, we’re not safe. My house has strong doors, high walls…”
They were on the steps, descending to the public square. There was not a person in sight.
“But…his body,” said Lucius. “What if they throw him in the Tiber, as they did the Gracchi?”
“That will not happen,” said Antonius grimly. “I won’t let such a thing happen. Caesar will have a proper funeral. On my honor as a Roman, I promise you that!”
When he was annoyed, Gaius Octavius’s voice could become quite shrill. He needed oratorical training to overcome the defect, thought Lucius. In the days since Caesar’s assassination and Gaius Octavius’s return to Roma, Lucius had grown very tired of hearing that shrill note in his cousin’s voice.
“From this day forward, Antonius, you will address me as Caesar,” said Octavius, sounding even more shrill and annoyed than usual. “I don’t ask it of you. I demand it!”
“Demand it? You make a demand of me?” Antonius leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. He wrinkled his nose. “In the first place, young man, this is my house; here, I give the orders. I used to take orders from Caesar, because he was my commander, but Caesar is dead. He was the last man I’ll ever take orders from. I certainly won’t take orders from his niece’s brat-and I won’t call you by his name! As long as we’re discussing titles, perhaps you should address me as Consul, as I’m the only one of the three of us here in this room who actually holds a magistracy.”
“Only because Caesar saw fit to appoint you-as he saw fit to name me his son and heir!” snapped Octavius.
Antonius bristled. “This is my house, Octavius. You are my guest-”
Lucius rose to his feet. “Marcus! Cousin Gaius! Does this meeting have to be so contentious? The whole city is a viper’s nest. If I want to be subjected to vicious arguments and hateful words, I have only to step outside the door. Can the three of us not speak to one another with some degree of decorum?”
“A good idea, cousin,” said Octavius. “Decorum begins with addressing a man by his rightful name. Caesar’s will made me his son by adoption, and I have taken his name. I am now Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus.”
“I understand,” said Lucius. “But if Antonius happens to address you by your old name, why not allow it? Octavius an honorable name, a patrician name, and he honors you and your ancestors when he speaks it. Antonius is our friend, cousin. We need him. He is the shield between us and the men who murdered our uncle. Are we not allies? Do we not share a common purpose? Are the three of us not close enough to call each other by first name, or family name, or whatever name we wish? Can you not simply drop the point for now, cousin Gaius? The question at hand isn’t what we call each other, or yet another discussion of Caesar’s will, but how to keep our heads!”
For the moment, Octavius was silenced, and so was Antonius. It still surprised Lucius that he could command their attention and argue with such self-confidence. Almost overnight, after the initial shock of Caesar’s assassination had passed, Lucius had felt himself transformed. He was no longer a callow youth who hesitated to assert himself in conversation with his elders. He was one of Caesar’s heirs, engaged in a desperate struggle for the future.
When it came down to it, Octavius was only a couple of years older and only slightly more experienced than himself. True, Octavius had seen a bit of battle, but not enough to prove himself a gifted strategist, much less a hero. His overbearing pride sprang from vanity, not accomplishments. In some ways, at least in Lucius’s opinion, his cousin was quite deficient. To begin with, Octavius’s oratorical skills were not at all impressive, no matter what Caesar had thought.
Antonius was a far more polished and persuasive speaker, as he had shown when he delivered Caesar’s funeral oration before a huge crowd. The speech had been intensely dramatic yet remarkably subtle. Antonius never said a word against the killers, but by praising Caesar he moved his listeners to tears of grief and cries of outrage. Without directly saying so, he made the case that Roma had been defiled by the murder of a great leader, not liberated by the assassination of a tyrant. Antonius had also revealed one of the terms of Caesar’s wilclass="underline" From his vast personal fortune, Caesar had decreed a generous disbursement of seventy-five Attic drachmas to every citizen living in Roma. This had done much to sway the crowd against Caesar’s assassins.
But Antonius, too, had his faults, as Lucius had become all too aware in recent days. For one thing, he drank too much. In happier times, the man’s appetite for debauchery had impressed and even awed Lucius. Now it struck him as foolhardy; the jeopardy in which they found themselves demanded clear thinking. Antonius also had a streak of pettiness. His refusal to address Octavius as Caesar was perhaps understandable, because it raised a sore point: Octavius was the chief benefactor of Caesar’s will, while Antonius, to everyone’s surprise, had been left out of the will entirely. Nonetheless, Antonius’s repeated and deliberate baiting of Octavius served no one’s purpose.
The will was the crux of the matter. In it, Caesar posthumously adopted Octavius as his son, and bequeathed to him half his estate. The other half he divided equally between his nephew Quintus Pedius, who was still away from the city, and his great-nephew, Lucius Pinarius. So much for the special debt that Caesar had owed to Lucius on account of his grandfather’s sacrifice; Octavius had merited adoption, but not Lucius! Lucius had his own reasons to be resentful of Octavius, but he was determined to move past them.
The will had made no mention of Caesarion, Cleopatra’s son. Immediately after the assassination, the Egyptian queen vacated Caesar’s villa and sailed back to Alexandria.