Chapter Text
“There could be no more terrible crime than to kill someone who is not merely a fellow human being but a close friend. Yet surely someone who kills a tyrant, however close friends the two men have been, has not committed a crime. At any rate the people of Rome do not think so, since they regard that deed which was done as the most splendid of all noble actions.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
i.
The slave was plainly caught off-guard, frozen in his transit along the edges of the theatre with a stack of tablets clutched against his chest. He was vaguely familiar to Antony in the way all slaves of a certain middle age were, though marked apart by a head of flaxen curls burnishing to silver and a nose that had been broken at least once. But some sort of clerk type, clearly. Maybe that was why he had not run: a sense of professionalism, or perhaps just morbid curiosity. None of this showed on his face, of course. But he wasn't looking away either.
Around them, there were no great shouts of victory or jubilation. It was all quite quiet, except for the whispering cloth of those senators still fleeing the scene.
As Antony watched, the slave's gaze wandered up from the body on the floor, following the line of the blade to the hand attached to it – Antony's hand – and from there to the chest heaving breath – Antony's chest. He met his eyes but almost as quickly finally seemed to become aware he was staring directly at a consul of Rome and very recent murderer; the slave jerked his gaze away. His body twitched in an echo of violence of the motion, the eyes holding its leash.
“...I thought we were all supposed to do it,” said someone behind Antony, a little sulky. The words were caught and carried upward by architecture intended to amplify grand speeches.
“You want to have a go at his body?” said another, trying for a joke. “Here, I'll hold it still for you, maybe then your aim will—”
“Touch him and you'll be next,” said Antony. He looked back across the room, but the unknown slave had taken the opportunity to disappear.
The silence that resumed had a different quality than the one that came before it. It was charged and wary. He felt rather than saw the slight ripple that went through the conspirators, the way they shifted and clutched their little daggers anew. So Antony might have to fight his way out of here yet. It was a distant concern.
Caesar had tried to cover his face.
Antony was nothing if not efficient; the man had only seconds to register the wound as he fell to the floor. He'd spent them trying to cover his face.
Antony stared down at him. Caesar had worn a look of shock and the beginnings of horror and anger, but none of that remained. The flesh was vacant, the muscles left in a slackened echo of their owner's last command.
Where did Caesar go now, he wondered.
Movement from the right. The muscles in his forearm flexed and stilled again as Marcus Junius Brutus stepped forward.
He wasn't even holding his dagger. He bent over Caesar's body, and for an absurd moment Antony thought he would check for a pulse. But no: he was lifting the toga and drawing it up over his head.
The cloth was barely stained. Antony hadn't wanted him to die by the blades of these mewling soft-handed men, who undoubtedly would've made a mess with their panicked flailing. So he'd taken sole ownership of the deed, and tried in his heart to call it a favor to his general.
When Brutus straightened, his eyes were clear and solemn, his face pale but otherwise composed. He managed somehow to look noble standing there doing nothing at all – a trick Antony, with his own easy rages and grief, had never quite managed.
Gaius Cassius Longinus stepped forward from his left, so the three of them made a neat isosceles triangle over the body. He glanced down at it only for a second – an overseer's nonchalant review – before looking around at the rest of the conspirators. A smile grew, though Antony thought as it passed over him, there was a flash of displeasure in it.
“Thus always to tyrants,” Cassius said firmly.
The others echoed the sentiment, and the acoustics of the room performed their magic and made the uncertain murmurs sound like consensus. They repeated it again, this time stronger. Glee and relief grew in their voices; glee that the deed had been done, and done quickly. Relief they had not been the ones to do it after all.
In the growing clamor of mutual congratulations, Brutus did not speak. And he did not look away from Antony.
Antony's throat ached. He imagined he could already taste the smoke of the funeral pyre.
At the age of twenty-eight, Antony successfully led cavalry through the nigh unpassable bog known as Typhon's breathing-hole and restored the Egyptian king Ptolemy to his realm; at twenty-nine he successfully avoided official sanction for the deed. He had high expectations for his thirties. Such was his attitude when he first joined Caesar at his winter quarters in Gaul.
Winter in Gaul was an endurance game. While waiting for the war season to recommence, one had to put up with all manner of irritations. Shit weather, shit food. Sulky whores and bored-stupid soldiers. Worst were his fellow officers, many of whom had clearly never had occasion to rough it for longer than a fortnight. A few complained bitterly and at length through the long days. Antony was used to being somewhat of a pauper nobilis[1], always surrounded by men who bore equal breeding but better circumstances than he. He could look upon his peers with no small amount of good humor – so long as they paid for the drinks.
He was in the camp a month before he properly met the man.
Antony was taking exercises in the early morning. He was on verge of being hungover, which was when he found it best to train; the loose anomie of the lingering drink and impending misery lent a certain viciousness to his movements that left his sparring partners suitably wary. His unlucky partner of that morning was Pilius, the second son of a wealthy equestrian family[2].
Pilius kept backing up over the frozen dirt, his feet a barely-controlled shuffle. He gritted his teeth, eyes flicking around the sleepy training ground as if to check for observers of this humiliation. He wanted to snap at Antony, that much was clear, but what could he say? Stop hitting so hard?
Antony grinned at him and continued to cheerfully hack away at his defenses. Their harsh breathing formed a fog between them in the cold air. He welcomed the chill on his skin, which was fevered from drink.
He had chased the man to the edge of the manure pit adjoining the stables when a new blade inserted itself in their bout. Antony received a bruising knock to the ribs with the flat of the blade. It was more surprise than pain that caused him to stumble back, breaking the engagement. Pilius straightened, his own sword lowering. Although it was clear he wanted to, he did not make a run for it – one did not flee the presence of one's general, even if the general was looking at someone else.
“So you can attack, that much is clear,” said Caesar, stepping forward to study Antony with those sharp, dark eyes. “But your defense is a shambles. How did you fare so well in Pelusium with a guard like that?”
Antony's breath had left his chest at the sight of him, and now he regained it only to expel it again in a slight laugh. “I suppose I relied on the brothers to my left and to my right,” he said, not without some irony. Self-protection was not in his nature. It was but one of many ways he was insufficiently Roman.
Eyebrows gracefully arched, Caesar said, “I can't have one of my officers exposing himself so recklessly – come,” he commanded abruptly, nodding to the blade in Antony's hand. “Attack me, and this time see if you can keep your guard up while you do it.”
Pilius and the manure pits and everything else melted away. The only thing Antony saw was Caesar. Under the general's watchful eyes, he resumed the first position. He hesitated only a moment before swinging his blade. It was met with an effortless deflection. The ringing of the metal was clear and pure and cut over the early morning training grounds like the only sound in an otherwise silent Gaul.
A decade later, Antony had his guard dutifully up when he slew Caesar on the floor of the Senate. But Caesar did not have a block prepared; although Antony had made his attack from the front, the great man somehow hadn't seen him coming.
“You shall be remembered forever, now,” said Brutus, hours later. He'd had three cups of unwatered wine and was holding a fourth. “Marcus Antonius, who slew the tyrant Caesar and saved Rome.”
He paused, eyes narrowly considering the wall like he might see through it to the graffiti outside, which would be worked anew soon enough. Fewer taunts of Brutus not living up to his ancestors.[3] What they would have to say about Marcus Antonius had yet to be decided. The streets of Rome were holding still, waiting to see who would come out on top or whether the Republic would tear itself apart again.
The conspirators had wanted to hide out in (Cassius, aggrieved: “occupy”) Jupiter's temple and await a response. But Antony was loathe to spend a night with that crowd, kipping on a bench without so much as a cup of wine. He told them they were acting like the guilty party and persuaded them to disband – return to their homes as if it had been but an ordinary morning at work.
At the very least, he figured privately, it was safer to present a scattering of targets rather than a large concentrated one. After directing his men to secure the city, he somehow ended up accompanying Brutus back to his house to wait out the night.
Aside from an empty, trashed villa that once belonged to Pompeius, he did not possess a house of his own to retreat to; he had been living at his uncle's, but given the man's delicate finances had relied upon Caesar continuing to kick him favors, never mind the situation with his daughter, Antony figured he would no longer be welcome there. He could, of course, avail himself of Fulvia's home, but he was too fond of her not to wait until she heard what he'd done and decide how to feel about it.
(Caesar had once remarked he'd never known someone so content to be homeless. Antony was living with him at the time.)
Brutus said, “Or there's another way it goes: your name becomes synonymous with betrayal. Years from now, soldiers might dub any turncoat in their midst a Mark Antony.”
“You get so bitchy when you drink,” muttered Antony, and relieved him of his wine. He reclined on the opposite couch, though he did not feel much like resting. He was keyed up and spoiling for a fight – belated reaction to the bloodshed. He was not hurt and his body didn't understand why. It thought it must be coming. Any second now.
“What now?” he asked, looking to distract himself.
Brutus had gone to fetch himself another cup. He paused and turned, the amphora held aloft. “What now,” he said, tone questioning.
“Yes,” said Antony impatiently. He motioned with his own cup, but it wasn't a toast. “Caesar is dead,” he said, and it was miraculous that he could say such an absurd statement without laughing, but there was no laughter because it was true, “and now...”
“And now Rome is saved. The Republic is restored.” Brutus finished pouring his wine and seated himself once more. He lifted his cup to drink and paused, caught by Antony's haunted stare. “What is it?”
“I meant, what is the plan. For restoring the Republic, or whatever.” He spoke calmly, sure that this wasn't as big of a cock-up as part of him suddenly suspected.
Except Brutus was looking at him quizzically. Antony should have gotten to him before he started drinking, but it went against his nature to deny any man his alcohol.
“What did Cassius say,” he asked instead, grasping.
“You heard him.” Brutus affected Cassius's voice, “Thus always to tyrants. As far as victory slogans go, that was – fine, I suppose. I think I could've done better – given the time, I know I could've done better. But I forgot.”
Antony had stopped listening, caught instead in a cold grip of something like nausea. He took a large mouthful of wine to quell it. “You forgot?” he prompted vaguely.
“I forgot to think of something to say. I mean, I'm not a monster. Man was like a father to me,” indifferent; largely absent, translated Antony, “it's not like I was going to sit around penning out rough drafts of quippy lines to say over his cooling corpse—oh gods,” he gasped, curling over suddenly. He set his cup down roughly, the shaking in his hand bad enough to spill some of the wine as he did it. “I can't believe we did it. He's dead. We killed him.”
“I killed him,” said Antony.
“What?” Brutus lifted his head and stared at him with an expression of confused anguish.
“I killed him,” he repeated. He leaned forward, lifting off the couch until their faces were inches apart. “You said it was necessary, it had to be done. I believed you. And now I want to know what your plan is for ensuring the country doesn't fall to bickering, bloody pieces, again. It doesn't sound like you have one. I beg you to tell me I've misunderstood.”
Brutus's soft, pink mouth twisted. “But Rome—”
“If you say Rome is saved one more time,” said Antony, very evenly, “I am going to hit you.”
“I didn't hear you kicking up a fuss about a plan when you agreed to join us,” snapped Brutus. He sat up, grief subsiding for the moment.
“I'm not a politician, I'm a soldier. I don't do any planning unless I know it's my job.”
“I don't understand the problem,” said Brutus.
“Without Caesar sitting Dictator[4], the Senate can resume its usual functions.”
“The Senate signed away its power to Caesar. It doesn't get it back like a fucking stylus it lent out. We need to maintain authority through the transition to what comes next.” He paused and stared him down. “So what comes next?”
The hardest part of conquering Gaul had been covering the territories they'd already won; Caesar would knock out one chieftain and it seemed two more always appeared at the edges, ready to fill the power void.
“Perhaps this is a good time to revert to a monarchy for a while,” he suggested. “After all, the kings weren't all bad. Servius Tullius?[5] Solid fellow, a friend to the plebeians... possessed a certain noble bearing and sensibility—”
“Oh, don't even joke about that,” said Brutus with distaste. He had begun to look very tired. Any weight that might have lifted from his shoulders the moment Caesar fell in the Senate came thundering back down. It might crush him. Instead, slowly he straightened. He swung his legs off the couch and put his feet on the ground.
Antony watched him and resolved to send a message to Des. He was always thinking five moves ahead. Surely he would have thoughts about the next steps.
“I suppose we need to gather the others and discuss this,” Brutus said, meanwhile. The reluctance was obvious in his voice; he despised meetings of all kinds.
“We need to manage the situation, yes.”
“Well, Cassius would—”
“I don't trust Cassius.”
Surprise wiped his face clean. Brutus looked almost affronted. “Why ever not?”
Antony thought about Cassius and how the man clearly had given plenty of thought about what to say over Caesar's body. He thought about the way he sat close to Brutus on the night they all met to discuss the assassination, how he had laid an encouraging hand on his shoulder and talked of the great destiny of his bloodline. How Brutus had shrank from the words but tried to make it look like acceptance.
Cassius was a competitive, jealous scrapper who thought himself far smarter than his career had proven. Antony was pretty sure he only wanted Caesar dead because he'd passed him over for city praetor.[6] That he could drag along Brutus, the man Caesar eventually chose for the position – so much the better.
“He's a politician. I don't trust politicians.”
“Caesar was a politician.”
Antony shrugged. “Who do you think told me not to trust them?”
Brutus thought about that. “I'm a politician.”
This forced a bark of laughter from him. Brutus flinched at the harsh sound.
“You're not a politician, Brutus,” he said.
“Oh? And what am I then?” said Brutus. It should've been a retort, but it was too wan. The fight was gone from his voice, and he only sounded like he was genuinely asking. Pleading, even.
This is the problem with friends from one's school days, Antony thought. No matter the stupid trouble they got themselves into, you always felt obligated to help.
“Something much worse,” he said. “An idealist.”
ii.
“The way I see it,” said Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus: fellow conspirator, Brutus's cousin, Caesar's favorite and not-so-coincidentally a right cunt most days, “is we only have to tell everyone this was the right thing to do and demand they treat us with all accordant honors. They are practically waiting for it. And if some decide to kick up a fuss after, well, that's them being unreasonable, isn't it. One might even say – treasonous.”
It was dawn of the next morning, the first morning of a world without Caesar, and Antony was too hungover for this.
Albinus was what one got when generations of pitiless optimate greed died off and left a child to be reared by a headstrong popularis siren of a mother. Albinus believed in the power of the people; namely, he believed it could be used for his own ends. The man was a little older than Antony but looked about half his age, and was thus forever underestimated for his potential to connive and manipulate.
They stood in the forum, across from the construction site of the new curia. No workers were around despite the hour, which in Roman terms bode of a deep uncertainty regarding the future of the project – both perhaps the literal building and the senate it represented. Or maybe Antony was just feeling pessimistic. Did workers tend to get days off when the head of government was murdered?
“Us?” echoed Antony, staring up at the pink sky: silently demanding it grow no brighter. “What honor is due the man whose sole contribution was sharing a cab with Caesar on the way to the Senate?”
“The old man had a sour stomach yesterday morning,” replied Albinus, unembarrassed. “He very nearly did not come, but for my urging.”
Antony was as bloodless as the next Roman, but his friend's easy manner still sat poorly in his own stomach. Or maybe that was the hangover. “The true savior of the Republic.”
“I'd like that title whispered everywhere but written nowhere, thank you.” Albinus grew serious. “Regardless, we need to contain the situation somehow. Manage how the basic facts of the conspiracy are perceived.”
“Probably should stop calling it a conspiracy for starters,” said Antony.
Albinus's mouth lifted in a quick smile and he inclined his head in acknowledgment. His eyes ran over Antony, assessing, and then away across the forum. He said lightly, “I suppose my cousin is approaching all this with his customary initiative?”
Antony had already killed a man for Brutus, he wasn't about to defend his waffling as well. He made a face and said nothing. He was relieved when Lepidus finally appeared, flanked by soldiers.
The air rung out with the rattle of leather straps as they all filed onto the pavers. They clung around the edges, like honey being poured into a shallow bowl. Antony's own men stopped their bored fidgeting and straightened. Minutes passed as both forces got situated and sized one another up. Would they fight? Would they die that morning?
Antony stifled a yawn that threatened to pop a jaw bone.
Across the forum, Lepidus dawdled, a familiar spasm of awkward indecision crossing his face – obvious even at a distance. Albinus glanced at Antony and, wordless, they stepped forward into the small space in the center of the forum still unoccupied by soldiers. After a moment, Lepidus muttered something to the man at his side and hastened forward alone to meet them.
“Lepidus,” greeted Albinus once close enough to be heard without having to shout. “How odd, to find you here at such an early hour!”
“Naked blades within the pomerium,” observed Antony, tone a scandalized shade of itself. “How do you think this will read to the Senate? An unsanctioned army advancing on a consul of Rome?”
“Oh, stuff it,” warned Lepidus, looking between them quickly like they were harpastum players passing the ball. “None of that now. This is serious.”
They exchanged a look and Albinus said, “It is serious.”
“Very serious,” agreed Antony.
“I won't have it,” insisted Lepidus. “As Master of the Horse—”[7]
“That appointment expires with the Dictatorship,” said Albinus. He had always had a preternaturally boyish face, and just then it displayed all the potent scorn of a contemptuous youth. “And as the Dictator himself has now expired, what do you imagine you have to oppose us?”
He and Antony separated but kept their fronts turned towards Lepidus; a flanking maneuver. He could not look at them both at the same time now, not without looking foolish to every soldier in the forum, who might not hear their words but possessed eyes to see their effect.
“Not the upper hand, surely,” said Antony to the side of Lepidus's face, which was already perspiring a little. “I have more men than you, and half of yours probably like me better. Come, Lepidus, you know it's true.”
“Say through Fortuna's blessing you do emerge from this scene unscathed – what will you have won? Chaos for the city? No one will thank you for that.”
“Everyone will look to you for answers.”
“Everyone,” repeated Albinus, staring at Lepidus keenly, “will look to you.”
Lepidus raised his chin and but kept his eyes to the ground between them. He said stiffly, “The city will not let Caesar's murder go unpunished. If I am the only man to stand before this treachery and name it for what it is, then – then I will do so. I uh, I will stand here and—”
“You can stand there as long as you like, it won't make a difference to how this ends,” said Antony, not allowing himself to react otherwise to Caesar's murder.
“It is done, Lepidus,” said Albinus, abruptly serious. “We have a consul and the city. Without Caesar, you really don't have any practicable standard to rally around going forward.”
This was, of course, a load of cack – a lie, a bluff. But it was one a man like Lepidus might be relieved to believe. In Albinus's countenance and tone, Antony could almost see the shade of Caesar at work: speak your desire like it is already a fact of the world, and by the time it reaches the ears of those listening, it will have become one.
Albinus watched Lepidus and waited. Antony rested a hand on the hilt of his blade and tried to look more impatient than tense.
When the silence had stretched to something faintly embarrassing, Albinus said, “The liberators are meeting this morning to decide the specifics of our path forward. We would be honored if you joined us and made your voice heard. There could be a position for you yet in the new Rome.”
He would have sounded almost kind, if not for the look on his face.
Lepidus swallowed, eyes flitting across the edges of the forum one last time. He cleared his throat, and then cleared it again.
“I'll have to check my schedule,” he said.
Naturally, the meeting was held at Brutus's house. Antony was darkly amused by his obvious loathing at having his home turned into a place of continual political plotting. Sometimes he thought if the man held his tongue any tighter, he'd choke on it.
Brutus sat uneasily on a couch, looking clammy with a burgeoning hangover while all around him, some manner of silent politicking occurred between the women of the household.
His mother Servilia was tight-lipped and disapproving, and had yet to speak to Brutus since hearing of the assassination. Despite this, she stationed herself standing behind and a little to the left of him, reluctant to relinquish any influence she might still have. She nodded at all who entered, as if she could fool anyone into thinking she was a harmless dowager playing hostess.
The Junii sisters, Secunda and Tertia, sat together in the corner. Secunda had arrived in proxy of her husband Lepidus with his “hearty greetings, or delicate remonstrances, whichever the situation requires” and now regarded them all through odd, slow blinks. Antony thought she might have sedated herself to deal with this moment of upheaval. Meanwhile, Tertia had nothing but dismissive sneers for Antony; it was likely her husband Cassius had spent the past month complaining about him at length over dinner, and she was consequently predisposed to despise the very sight of him.
In contrast to the others, Brutus's wife Porcia sat close at his right hand and gave him encouraging smiles whenever he glanced over, which was often. It was a well-known fact the woman was a shut-in, so Antony had rarely ever seen her outside her rooms. The loyal, loving wife puts in an appearance? Not an act? Bizarre to witness.
“If you keep pacing like that, some might begin to think you are worried,” murmured Albinus.
Antony paused beside him and under his mocking attention stood perfectly still, as if it was no effort at all to contain his restlessness. “Can you blame me?” he replied in the same low voice. “Despite the near miss this morning with Lepidus, knowing my luck, this day will still end with everyone agreeing that the most expeditious path forward here is labeling me Enemy of the State.”
“I hear Spain is lovely this time of year.”
He glanced at him. “You'd have me go to Sextus Pompeius?[8]
You can't be serious.” He shifted his weight and glanced around the room. “Everything else aside, he'd ask for his father's villa back.”
Albinus shook his head slightly. “You were never very good at thinking long-term.”
Antony ignored this. He watched as Cassius took the seat to Brutus's left. He bent in and whispered something in his ear. Brutus shook his head. Antony soothed himself with idle thoughts of wringing Cassius's scrawny neck. He was thus in an ideal mood when Cicero appeared in the doorway.
“Dear Cicero!” he hailed gladly from across the room.
Many people hated Antony, but none ever did so poor a job at concealing it as Cicero. It was a balm, watching the worm twitch.
He approached him, arms wide, inquiring, “Have you come to offer congratulations and gratitude to your liberator?” He cast a deliberate look of interest down the man's spindly form, which was encased in a military cloak and actual breastplate, wow. “Great costume. I didn't know you dabbled in pantomime.”
Cicero ignored him, looking only to Brutus, who tended to have that effect on a room.
“When my country is in peril, I am helpless to ignore its call,” he said.
“You think the country is in peril?” said Brutus. He sounded credibly amused; one would never know he'd been throwing up wine an hour previous. “We have secured the city. Antony has six thousand men at the ready, and we've received word of support from all the important factions. There has been no organized attempt to oppose us.”
Antony smiled at Cicero, who seemed determined to not look over to meet it.
“And yet, there is potential for peril at every crossroads,” said Cicero. He took a cup of wine from a passing tray.
Cassius sat back, seeming somewhat ruffled and said pointedly, “The greater danger is behind us. The tyrant is dead.”
“The deed is done.” Cicero smiled aside at him thinly. “As for liberators – well, that remains to be seen. I come to speak on behalf of the voices in the Senate who were not fortunate enough to be included in your plans.”
The amusement in Brutus's voice grew stronger. “Forgive us, Cicero. We assumed you would be busy on whatever date we decided upon.”
“I am a very busy man, it is true. A pity – if I had been involved, I might have counseled you to make,” and his eyes finally moved up and lingered on Antony, “different choices.”
Antony, bracing his hands on the back of an empty chair, smiled and winked.
Cicero finally took a seat in the couch opposite. He held his wine like a prop in a play. “As you might imagine, the city is enflamed with all sorts of wild talk – some say Gaul will be up in arms within days. Sextus Pompeius will almost certainly want to take advantage of any perceived instability.... Ahem, you will have heard Calpurnia had Caesar's will read?”
At the mention of the will, Antony suffered a creeping cold shock. It made his next words come out harsh. “And which weasel among the pontifices gave permission for that?”
“Careful, Antony, you are verging on sacrilege,” said Cicero, with obvious relish. “Though I suppose having struck down the Pontifex Maximus[9] himself, you can hardly get more profane. In answer to your question, however, I believe the argument was made that he would have wanted it done. Lacking other guidance, the college consented to open the will.”
Antony glanced involuntarily back at Albinus, who had gone quite still. So: incredibly, they had both forgotten the will. Caesar had been a very rich man. If he'd named them in his will, it would be – Antony did not know how he would—
“He named his nephew primary heir, of course,” said Cicero airily, malice sparking. “Named him his son, even. Do you know the boy? Gaius Octavius. A bright lad, they tell me. Very sharp. As he is yet young and also currently abroad in Illyricum, his family have asked me to relay his concerns. I am here strictly as an impartial arbiter, you see.”
“You always speak for so many, Cicero,” said Antony. “I wonder if you ever get confused about whose tongue is in your mouth.”
“I thank you for your concern, Antony, but unlike you with your many suitors, I have never had trouble differentiating.”
“Regardless,” said Cassius with loud, sneering dismissal, “Caesar died a tyrant. His will is not worth the papyrus it was scribbled on.” For once his high-handed attitude was a relief; Antony could almost kiss him, never mind neither of them would enjoy it.
Cicero looked like he had a rebuttal to offer, and so Brutus was finally bidden to speak up again, calling out to forestall further argument, “Friends, please. I do believe we have more pressing matters to discuss. Cassius is correct, of course, that Caesar's will is surely intestate. Please offer my apologies to the boy – bad luck...”
“Yes, of course,” said Cicero, smoothly changing direction. “Well, then, the next order of business, I believe, is consular succession. I don't like it myself, but one obvious name is Publius Cornelius Dolabella—”
“Appoint Dolabella, and I'll stab him too,” said Antony.
Cicero seized upon this refusal with great energy. “Are you so blatant in your desire to rule alone? Did you perhaps kill Caesar so you could become tyrant in his place – King Antony, is it to be?”
“Of course not,” he said impatiently. He could feel Albinus's sharp, knowing stare like a needling blow between his shoulder blades.
“You see, the precedence is unclear here,” continued Cicero, really settling into enjoyment now, “as Caesar's position was itself unprecedented. If we do not hasten to restore the consulship at the very least, it will destabilize the city. And then the Senate will have no other recourse but to put in place tumultuary measures to maintain the peace—”
Several voices spoke up in objection, and the room became briefly ungovernable. There was no quicker route to killing public support for their actions than a lengthy suspension of business within the city, and they all knew it. Including Cicero – especially Cicero.
Beneath the surface of the commotion, Cassius ducked and spoke close to Brutus, who after a moment, called out over everyone to Cicero, “That really will not be necessary.” The room began to quiet, and Brutus continued with a smile more pained than feigned, “We of course want to restore the consulship and the line of imperium. Antony will continue as interrex, as is fitting, until such time that we find—”
“Full elections, then,” interrupted Cicero.
Brutus's mouth remained open, uncertain and stymied, a soft wet 'o'.
Elections? The question was clear on every face. Servilia looked like the word tasted like vomit in her mouth. She leveled a cold glare at Antony, as if he was personally threatening to strip her son of his precious praetorship. He brutally repressed his reaction to this and everything else.
Cicero looked almost unbearably smug. “We cannot recover our liberty without also recovering our constitution, of course. This will be the demand, quite simply: a special election. And a full review of all of Caesar's acts in office,” he added quickly, as if it had just occurred to him.
“...All?” ventured Cinna weakly from a corner, for Caesar had been an industrious man.
“All,” confirmed Cicero, and he sipped his wine with a mouth fighting a pleased smile.
And this is why you don't kill a dictator without a fucking plan, thought Antony.
After almost two hours of discussion, the so-called liberators were still in disagreement about everything other than having suddenly seemingly lost their advantage. If it had been a battlefield, it would have been one of the most disgraceful displays of preemptive retreat in Roman history. And Brutus wondered why Antony had declined to attend most of the conspiracy's previous meetings.
Cassius wanted to blink; he wanted to bargain for amnesty and keep his praetorship and the promise of Syria the following year. How quickly if we acknowledge Caesar's memory, we cast doubt on the righteousness of our actions became we must think of the stability of our state when it was his seat threatened with discontinuity.
Brutus was similarly conflicted. Cassius had so convincingly lashed their fates together, he was blind to the regard others held for him. On any given day Antony knew he felt like an impostor. Doubtless some voice in his head told him he'd never be reelected city praetor if he gave it up now; his mother's angry demeanor fed him more of the same doubt.
The rest of the vote split proportionally to each man's rank and standing, although very few of those arguing for elections had much passion to put behind the idea – Albinus wanted a clean slate. Antony privately figured he wanted as few reminders of Caesar as possible.
Trebonius pointed out that nullifying all of Caesar's acts would throw the business of the city into chaos, as it had already adjusted with great disgruntlement to recent changes in the calendar and magistracies. No one wished to discuss this particular headache, however, and it was generally agreed it should be tabled for an unspecified future date, ideally for unspecified future men.
The afternoon wore on, and light charted its passing in blocks cast from the windows on the far walls of the room. The air felt thick with sweat and worry, already heavy with failure.
Antony supposed it was easy to ask for amnesty for an act someone else committed. The very word made him want to cut out Cicero's liver. Caesar was a tyrant; Antony was a murderer. These both were true. But to collectively shrug, to act as if the man had merely tripped and fell upon a misplaced blade?
He just killed the greatest man he'd ever known. He'd be damned if they pardoned him for it.
“Apologies,” he said loudly, stepping past Brutus's chair to lay claim to the space of the debate and everyone's attention. He forced himself towards a jocular tone; he did not quite reach it and could not quite care. “I did not mean to give the impression this was up for discussion. As owner of the deed, I do not intend to stand by and have it abused.”
“Antony, we thank you for your service, of course,” said Cassius dismissively. “But you must accept this matter affects all our positions.”
“I accept nothing of the sort.”
Cicero said, “Try to calm your turbulent emotions and see reason. You perhaps acted rashly with Caesar. It is imperative we all band together now to avoid further bloodshed.”
“Bloodshed?” he asked him. “As ever, you traffic in exaggerations, Cicero. I see no angry mob. I hear no mournful wailing.”
“They are afraid. But Caesar was always careful to cultivate love among the baser classes. Surely it hasn't escaped your notice that they aren't cheering madly for you in the streets.”
“The people will cheer when I damn well tell them to,” snarled Antony.
Silence in the room. Brutus, having twisted around in his seat, stared up at him as if struck. Servilia raised her chin coolly. Antony tried smiling – and then quickly stopped, as Porcia winced and several men noticeably paled.
He looked around at them all, meeting every eye. He tried moderating his tone. “They are merely waiting to be told this was the right thing – they're practically begging for it. Reassurance is all they require.” Albinus bit back a slight laugh. His mouth remained in a sardonic tilt, and when Antony met his eyes, he inclined his head in acknowledgement. “You only have to keep hold of the courage that led you to the Theatre yesterday.”
Cicero looked ill.
But then, support came from a surprising corner.
“What fear have you for an election?” asked Porcia. Her high, fluting voice sounded so different than all that had recently been heard in the room, it made one's very ears give a start. Many stared.
The last person Antony expected as an ally was Brutus's new young wife. But she reached out and lay a hand on Brutus's arm, light as a butterfly. She looked deep into his eyes and continued with an encouraging smile:
“Is this not what you wanted? You have restored the Republic, and the Republic's business is elections. Properly led, I don't believe for an instant the centuries won't see fit to confirm you all in your current positions.”
“Or even advance you to new heights,” said Servilia, recovering herself just in time to strike out for new opportunity. She looked down at her son. “As you so richly deserve.”
Antony wasted no time and pushed to take advantage of the momentum. All he needed was Brutus, he knew. Get Brutus and the other would surely follow, the way they did with the conspiracy in the first place.
“What remains of the Caesarians who did not come over with me are scattered,” he told him directly. “They have no leader – the boy Octavius has barely started growing hair above his cock, and Lepidus has all the resolve of an overripe pear.”
In the corner, Tertia laid a hand on the arm of her sister, who bore up under this truth with barely a drowsy blink to betray she had heard it.
Brutus stared at him, brow knit, thinking hard. Once, Cassius began to speak, but he fell silent with an irate scowl when Brutus lifted a hand to forestall his words.
He said slowly, “I suppose with Caesar's wealth tied up by the courts, we do not have to concern ourselves with bribes from that direction. It will be the first election in quite some time without his hand tipping the scales.”
Antony had been right, of course; with Brutus won, it was done. They agreed to hold an election. The augurs would take the auspices and offer up a date with favorable omens, one with at least three market days' notice.
Despite getting what he had come for, Cicero was somehow still displeased; thus was the man's eternal nature. After visibly fighting with himself, he said at last, “The family requested that I ask after a funeral?”
“What of it?” said Antony, already reaching for wine. “Tyrants don't get public funerals.”
iii.
“Do you blame me?” asked Brutus, looming drunk out of the darkness at his bedside late that night, a candle wavering in hand. “Do you wish you had not done it?”
Antony let out a breath and, at the same time, let go of the blade beneath his pillow. He hung his head and shook it. “Mehercules,” he muttered into his hands.
Brutus paused in his awkward clamber over Antony's body and stared down. “Is that a dagger? Why are you sleeping with a dagger in my house?”
“I sleep with it everywhere—get off,” he said sharply, shoving him to move along. The movement nearly knocked the candle from his hands. What a way to go that would be for the tyrant killer: burned alive in a compromising position in bed with a praetor.
Brutus possessed at least five elbows, and he managed to dig each of them into the soft parts of Antony's flesh before he was finally sitting cross-legged like a boy on the other side of the bed. Antony scrubbed a hand over his hair and sighed.
“Well?” Brutus pressed. “Do you blame me?”
“Why are you whispering? Are you worried your mother is at the doorway, listening in?”
“Mara might be,” he said, referring to his mother's personal slave. “Servilia is still very upset.”
“You should ease up on the wine,” Antony advised. “Depressives make such terrible bores when they drink, it brings shame to the whole occupation.”
“Answer the question.”
He studied him. For someone so prone to self-doubt, Brutus possessed a face ill-suited to the emotion. The normally-severe lines of his face crinkled in such a way as to suggest he was having digestive issues. Hardly impressive.
“Yes,” he said. Brutus sucked in a sharp breath. “This is all your fault. And when we lose the election, and Cicero has me arrested and strangled in the tullianum like my stepfather, that will be your fault as well.”
“Don't jest, Antony—”
“Jest, me? I'd never. Not about this.”
He scowled. “You'll be cracking jokes at your execution.”
“I guess we'll find out,” he said. It was the most likely end for him; Romans didn't really do retirement. He looked at the frown lines on either side of Brutus's mouth; they looked deeper than ever. Feeling abruptly very tired, he stretched out on his back, folding his hands behind his head. He put his gaze anywhere but Brutus and fetched about for a good reason to have killed his patron. Eventually he settled on a noble lie, borrowing an old friend's truth:
“He started talking about himself like a living god.”
Brutus picked at the coverlet. “I know.”
He narrowed his eyes at the ceiling. “I used to be able to tell when he was joking – or scheming – but at some point it became harder. It started to feel—” he cut himself off, as if he was wary of talking like this aloud, even with Brutus; embarrassed, perhaps, of being caught out as devout.
“Sacrilegious,” finished Brutus, hushed.
He chewed his cheek. Sure, that. “Yes.”
A sharp laugh across the bed drew his eyes, startled; Brutus was shaking his head. He set the candle down on the bedside table, and the light flickered over a wretched gash of a smile.
“Fuck's wrong with you?” Antony demanded, shaken. He had no idea what to do with a Brutus who actually asked for reassurance. Usually the man just let his private doubts devour his insides, like a proper Roman.
“I can't do anything right,” he said. “Don't you see? Even in this, Antony, even in this I show myself to be unworthy.”
He covered his eyes and tore at his hair. Antony reached up and got a grip on his wrists, forced them down. Tears again. Gods, but he was drunk.
He wrinkled his nose. “What twaddle, now?”
Brutus's eyes could've burned holes in the mattress with the force of his glare. “I plotted and planned, and I drew you into it and then stood back as you killed him for us – and Antony, I didn't even have a good reason. Not for any of it.” A flush slowly suffused his face. Sweat shined on his forehead. “You're lying there thinking about the gods and I – I did it because it seemed like. The thing to do,” he finished helplessly.
“The thing to do,” repeated Antony. Brutus nodded miserably. He thought about this very carefully for a few seconds and then said, calmly, “Brutus, I am going to kill you.”
Brutus scrambled back with an undignified yelp as he lunged up out of the sheets, snarling.
“You come skulking in here like a child after a nightmare, sniveling and whining—”
“You cretin.” Brutus rolled off the other side of the mattress with far more grace than he'd shown getting on it. He stood at the end of the bed with his hands on his hips and looked down his nose at Antony. “You cannot insult and kill me in my own house.”
“I killed Caesar on the floor of his own Senate,” said Antony. It was like a nightmare: he kept saying he killed Caesar, and no one burst into the room to say it wasn't true and call him a filthy lying whore. “I think I can kill you wherever I damn well please.”
“This was a mistake,” said Brutus, heading for the door. He no longer looked torn apart by grief, but was alight with outrage. “I shouldn't have enlisted your help. We've never been able to work together. I don't know why I thought that might change just because we are in our forties now.”
“I'm only thirty-nine,” Antony said to his back, because it was always important to remind him that Brutus was the older one. “And this can be over any time. Bribe the right people, whisper in the right ears.... Brutus, this can all be over.”
Cicero surveyed the city atop a tall hill.
It was the best mount for taking the auspices[10], though a couple of the other augurs expressed a preference for one slightly to the south. Both Antony and Cicero were adamant that the current one be used; it might have been the only thing in their lives they ever agreed on.
Mt Etna in Sicily had erupted a few weeks previous[11], and the gloom of its release was already creeping across Roman skies. They were not to have a sunny spring. If anyone else on the hill thought there was something farcical about forecasting the future against such a hopelessly dire backdrop, they did not let on.
“Ah, look – there,” said Cicero, pointing at a wheeling bird. “Five days is favorable.”
The other augurs murmured gentle words of equivocating agreement.
Antony, reclined back on his elbows beneath the makeshift awning he had fashioned from his toga and lituus[12], lifted his head and squinted. He grunted, unimpressed. “A kestrel? You want to rest the fate of the Republic on the movements of a kestrel? Come, Cicero, you can do better than that.”
The other augurs murmured gentle words of equivocating agreement. Cicero's mouth thinned.
“Do you think you can put the election off forever, Antony? You're not even looking,” he hissed.
“You've always confused augury with bird watching. It's not about looking,” he said, smothering a yawn behind his palm. “It's about waiting. Taking the auspices requires patience and a receptive spirit.”
“We all know you excel at that. Have you ever denied a single invitation?”
“Denied more than you've received.” he said, because he couldn't seem to help himself.
“I don't know how you keep managing to turn the heads of better men,” said Cicero, turning from the vista he was supposed to be inspecting for omens. “How many fine, dutiful citizens will I have to watch you manipulate and drag down to your depths? Curio, and now Brutus? That he saw fit to include you in his plans, I will never understand—”
Affecting boredom to disguise his anger at the mention of his late friend, he said, “It must really burn you up, all these promising younger men you keep trying to mentor who end up liking me better.”
Antony greatly disliked living in a world where Caesar had to die but Cicero was allowed to live. He didn't hide this thought from his face as he looked at his fellow augur, who returned the look with great vehemence.
“Ahem.” Another spoke up – one of the stooped, gray men who'd been an augur when Antony was born, and would likely still be one when he died. He pointed a gnarled, liver-spotted finger out to the west. Antony and Cicero followed the direction of his gaze.
A large flock of starlings banked and rose, the murmuration sketching stark spirals against the grey sky.
“Ah!” Cicero actually clapped, such was his delight. “Five days, it is.”
Antony withdrew back under the shade of the awning and smiled out at the college of augurs. With teeth. “Splendid.”
All his life he'd been labeled a fool, so Antony thought nothing of bowing to his public image and attempting to pay his respects to the deceased.
He didn't even get close enough for Calpurnia to spit on; guards in front of the house tightened and locked rank at the first gate. The funereal chanting within was audible on the street. He was but one of hundreds gathered informally outside the house. The mood of the crowd was muted and somber. Some of these people, he knew, would worship Caesar for the rest of their lives.
Overhead, the sky seemed to grow ever darker by the day. It was as if the sun itself had turned away in horror at his deed.
The problem, of course, was not that he had no loyalty – a minor enough flaw for a Roman. It was only that he'd given his to Brutus before he ever met Caesar.
It wasn't something he chose. If it were a matter of calculation, something to be weighed before deciding, it wouldn't even have been a contest. After all, Caesar was a great man: a genius at war and governing. As far as Antony could tell, he was the only miserable bastard in all of Italy who could make Rome work.
And Brutus? What was Brutus? An awkward man who had never quite grown into his gawky frame, who was by turns too serious with his philosophy and art and too light with everything else. He might've been an Epicurean and washed his hands of politics altogether, but he had been raised to revere Rome. And anyway, it would never be allowed; Servilia would never permit a son of her family to play poet while the city was ripe for the taking. Antony, who no one had ever expected anything of, was almost fascinated with the care she took tending Brutus's career.
They'd met in Greece when they were young men and became friends almost by accident. Both of them were free there in a way they could never be back in Rome; Antony of his reputation and debts and Brutus of the burden of expectations. They studied rhetoric on the same stoa. They attended the same plays and symposiums. They used the same gymnasium – Antony delighting in the honest exertion of Grecian sport and Brutus in their simple, austere baths.
It was the first time in his life Antony had experienced uncomplicated happiness. It turned out such a memory held a powerful sway over one's decisions: one stronger than instinct or better judgment.
I would've given him a funeral oration befitting a king, he wanted to shout at Caesar's door. It would've torn the heart of all who heard it, like my own heart is torn. This city would have burned with the grief and rage his death should have inspired.
But thrice had Antony offered a Caesar a crown, and thrice had he denied it. Whatever Caesar was, or would've become, a king was not his destiny.
The gate remained closed, and the guards stone-faced and immovable. After a while, Antony drew his dark hood lower over his face and slipped away like a thief through the crowd.
On the tenth day before the Kalends of March, the Centuriate Assembly[13] gathered in the Temple of Tellus and elected Antony and Brutus consuls of Rome.
“But,” said Brutus at his side, “I thought I was running for my previous seat?”
People kept coming up to Brutus to shake his hand and pound him on the back. His smile twitched out automatically at the appearance of every new well-wisher. With the glut and pace of the crowd, he was beginning to look mentally disturbed. His eyes searched frantically for an escape that would not be forthcoming.
Antony thought of Porcia and Servilia's rare mutual satisfaction over breakfast that morning and said nothing. Of the many ways Brutus made a poor politician, his reluctance to debase himself by shaking hands or canvassing for votes had often protected him. But there was nothing he could do if others did it for him, or engineered it over wine and date snacks on evening couches across the city.
He looked at the crowd of senators with a sort of deathly calm, picturing the days that lay ahead. In every robe a dagger; in every session a new chance that it might be used against him.
He was consul before, but it felt different this time. This time there was no Caesar, no one with Caesar's vision or Caesar's energy. There was just him. And Brutus.
Over the throng of Brutus's admirers, Antony noticed Albinus sliding up to Cicero's side. Along the far wall, Cassius and Dolabella spoke together, their two heads bent close, twin expressions of discontent.
“So,” he said. “We have a year.”
Consular years going forward were to begin on the Ides of March, like the magistracies in their great-grandfathers' day. In honor of their great deed, it was said. The rationale felt sadistic in more ways than one.
“A year,” said Brutus, and the stupid fucker looked at him, stricken.
Antony foresaw another late night tear-filled apology in his near future. He suppressed a sigh.
They had a killed a man neither of them really wanted dead, and as a result they were elected to seats neither really wanted to hold. Antony had a lifetime of fuck ups under his belt, but this one was perhaps the most glorious yet.
“Well, you asked for it,” he said to Brutus with a bitter smile, “Rome is saved.”