All the Vestals were seated around the table, liberally loaded with tasty food and a flagon of sparkling white wine from Alba Fucentia. The two underage Vestals drank water from the well of Juturna, whereas the other three, clad like Appuleia, were at liberty to partake of the wine. Livia Drusilla, the seventh, had not presumed to clothe herself as a Vestal, though she did wear white.
“My husband has spoken a little of your testamentary industry,” Livia Drusilla said when the children had gone, “but only in a vague way. Might it be possible for me to tour sometime?”
Appuleia’s face lit up. “Of course! Anytime.”
“Ah—now?”
“If you wish, certainly.”
So Livia Drusilla undertook the tour Divus Julius had made when he assumed the title of Pontifex Maximus, was shown the many racks of vellum upon which the details of a will were entered, led upstairs to see the staggering number of pigeonholes, downstairs to the basement, and through the storage facilities on the ground floor. It was fascinating, especially to a woman like this one, so meticulous and organized herself.
“Do you have a special area for senators?” she asked after much marveling as she walked around.
“Oh, yes. They’re here, on this floor.”
“And if they’ve been consuls, do you distinguish them from mere senators?”
“Of course.”
Livia Drusilla managed to look both coy and conspiratorial. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to show me my husband’s will,” she said, “but I would dearly love to see one of equal status. Where, for instance, is the will of Marcus Antonius?”
“Oh, he’s in a special place,” Appuleia answered at once, no suspicion crossing her mind. “Consul and Triumvir, but not really a part of Rome. He’s here, all by himself.”
She took Livia Drusilla over to a rack of pigeonholes beyond the screen which fenced off the lodgement office from strictly Vestal territory, and without hesitation withdrew a hefty scroll from a shelf it alone occupied. “There you are,” she said, handing Livia Drusilla the document.
Octavian’s wife balanced it experimentally, turned it over to look at the red seal: Hercules, IMP. M. ANT. TRI. Yes, this was Antony’s will. She gave it back immediately, laughing.
“He must have many bequests,” she said.
“All the great ones do. The shortest one of all was Divus Julius’s—such sagacity, such crispness!”
“Do you get to read them, then?”
Appuleia looked horrified. “No, no! Naturally we see a will after its author is dead, when his or her executor comes to take it. The executor must open it in our presence because we have to put V.V. at the end of each clause. That way, it cannot be added to after it leaves us.”
“Brilliant!” said Livia Drusilla. She pecked Appuleia on the cheek and squeezed her hand. “I must go, but one last, most important question—is any will ever opened before its author dies, my dear?”
Another look of horror. “No, never! That would be to break our vows, and that we’d never do.”
Back to the domus Livia Drusilla, where Livia Drusilla found her husband in his study. One glance at her face, and he sent his scribes and clerks out.
“Well?” he asked.
“I held Antonius’s will in my hand,” she said, “and I can tell you exactly where it’s stored.”
“So we’re that much ahead. Do you think Appuleia would let me open it?”
“Not even if you convicted her of unchastity and buried her under the ground with a jug of water and a loaf of bread. I’m afraid you’ll have to wrest it from her—and the others.”
“Cacat!”
“I suggest that you take your Germans to the Atrium Vestae in the middle of the night, Caesar, and cordon off the whole area outside its lodgement doors. It will have to be soon, because I was told that Lepidus will be taking up residence in the Pontifex Maximus’s side of the Domus Publica very shortly. There’s bound to be a racket, and you don’t want Lepidus rushing over from his side to see what’s amiss. Tomorrow night, no later.”
Octavian had to do a lot of pounding on the doors before a frightened face opened one a crack, and peered around it; the housekeeper. Two Germans thrust the woman away and ushered their master in amid a blaze of torches as other Germans followed him.
“Good!” Octavian said to Arminius. “With any luck, I’ll get it before the Vestals appear. They’ll have to dress.”
He almost made it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Appuleia demanded from the door that led back into the Vestals’ private apartments.
Antony’s will in his hand, Octavian propped. “I’m confiscating a treasonous document,” he said loftily.
“Treasonous, my foot!” the Chief Vestal snapped, striding to impede his exit. “Give that back, Caesar Octavianus!”
For answer, he passed it over his head to Arminius, so tall that, when he held it high, Appuleia couldn’t reach it.
“You are sacer!” she gasped as three more Vestals entered.
“Nonsense! I’m a consular doing my duty.”
Appuleia produced a chilling scream. “Help, help, help!”
“Shut her up, Cornel,” Octavian said to another German.
When the three other Vestals commenced screaming, they too were held and silenced by Germans.
Octavian gazed at the four in that flickering glare of light, his eyes as coldly luminous as a black leopard’s. “I am removing this will from your custody,” he said, “and there’s nothing you can do to prevent me. For your own safety, I suggest that you say no word of what’s happened here to anybody. If you do, I cannot answer for my Germans, who have no reverence for Vestals, and love to deflower virgins of any sort. Tacete, ladies. I mean it.”
And he was gone, leaving Rome’s luck weeping and wailing.
He convened the Senate on the first permissible day, looking smugly triumphant. Lucius Gellius Poplicola, who had elected to remain in Rome to be a nuisance to Octavian, felt the hairs on his arms and neck rise as a frisson of icy fear streaked down his spine. What was the little worm up to now? And why did Plancus and Titius seem to be bursting with glee?
“For two years I have spoken to the members of this House about Marcus Antonius and his dependence upon the Queen of Beasts,” Octavian began, standing in front of his curule chair with a fat scroll in his right hand. “Nothing I have said has been able to convince many of you here today that I have spoken the truth. ‘Give us proof!’ you yammer, over and over again. Very well, I have proof!” He held up the scroll. “I have in my hand the last will and testament of Marcus Antonius, and it contains all the proof even the most ardent of Antonius’s followers could demand.”
“Last will and testament?” Poplicola asked, bolt upright.
“Yes, last will and testament.”
“A man’s will is sacrosanct, Octavianus! No one can broach it while its author lives!”
“Unless it contains treasonous statements.”
“Even should it! Is a man to be deemed a traitor for what he says after his death?”
“Oh, yes, Lucius Gellius. Definitely.”
“This is illegal! I refuse to let you proceed!”
“How can you stop me? If you continue to interject, I’ll have my lictors throw you out. Now sit down and listen!”
Poplicola looked around to see every face alight with curiosity, and acknowledged himself beaten. For the moment. Let the young monster do his worst, then—He sat, scowling.
Octavian unrolled the will, but didn’t read from it; he had no need to, for he knew it by heart.
“I have heard some of you call Marcus Antonius the most Roman of all Romans. Dedicated to the advancement of Rome, brave, bold, eminently capable of extending Roman rule to blanket the entire East. Which is why he asked for—and received!—the East as his purlieu after Philippi. That was just ten years ago. During those ten years, Rome has hardly seen him, so thoroughly and zealously has he pursued his command. Or so those of you l
ike Lucius Gellius Poplicola would have it. But while he may have gone east with the best of intentions, his frame of mind didn’t last. Why? What happened? I can sum up the answer in one word: Cleopatra. Cleopatra, the Queen of Beasts. A mighty sorceress, steeped in occult worship and the arts of love and poison. Do you not remember King Mithridates the Great, who poisoned himself with a hundred potions every day, and took a hundred antidotes? When he tried to kill himself with poison, it wouldn’t work. One of his bodyguards had to run him through with a sword. I would also remind you that King Mithridates was the grandfather of Cleopatra. The blood in her veins is naturally inimical to Rome.
“They met first in Tarsus, where she cast her spell—but not effectively enough. Though she bore him twins, Antonius stayed free of her until the winter of the year that saw him preparing to invade the Kingdom of the Parthians. He summoned her to Antioch, and she came. And she stayed to become a camp follower quite as tawdry as any other eastern harlot. Yes, she set out with Antonius and his gigantic army as they marched for the upper Euphrates! Then Antonius came to his senses and ordered her to go home—his very last gesture of independence! Oh, why could not our brave Antonius continue to stand up to her?” Octavian shrugged.” A question for which I have no answer.”
Poplicola had subsided into a slump, his arms folded across his chest; Plancus on the front benches and Titius on the middle tier couldn’t stop wriggling in anticipation, Octavian noted. He resumed declaiming to a silent House.
“There is no need to dwell upon the disastrous campaign he waged against Parthian Media, for it is the period after his awful retreat that should interest us more than the loss of one-third of a Roman army. Antonius did what Antonius does best—swilled wine until it broke his mind. Demented and helpless, he appealed for succor to—Cleopatra. Not to Rome, but Cleopatra. Who came to Leuke Kome bearing gifts beyond imagination—money, food, arms, medicines, servants in thousands, and physicians in scores. From Leuke Kome the pair moved to Antioch, where Antonius finally got around to making a will. One copy was lodged here in Rome, the other in Alexandria, where Antonius wound up last winter. But by then he was utterly under Cleopatra’s sway, drugged and dominated. He didn’t need to drink wine anymore, he had better things to swallow, from Cleopatra’s potions to her blandishments. With the result that, in spring of this year coming to an end, he moved his entire army and navy to—Ephesus. Ephesus! A thousand miles west of where it is really needed on a line from Armenia Parva to southern Syria, there to guard against Parthian incursions. Why then did he move his army and navy to Ephesus? And why then has he since moved both to Greece? Is Rome a threat to him? Or Italia? Have any armies and navies west of the Drina River made warlike gestures in his direction? No, they have not! And you do not need to take my word for that—it is manifest to the least among you!”
His eyes swept the back tiers, where the pedarii sat under a ban of silence. Then, slowly and carefully, he descended from the curule dais and took up a place in the middle of the floor.
“I do not believe for one moment that Marcus Antonius has committed these acts of aggression against his homeland voluntarily. No Roman would, save those who were outlawed unjustly and sought to return—Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Divus Julius. But has Marcus Antonius been declared hostis? No, he has not! To this very day, his status remains what it has always been—a Roman of Rome, the last of many generations of Antonii who have served their country. Not always wisely, but always with patriotic zeal.
“So what has happened to Marcus Antonius?” Octavian asked in ringing tones, though this was one speech that didn’t need to rouse the senators from a gentle doze. They were wide awake, listening avidly. “Again, the answer lies in one word—Cleopatra. He is her plaything, her puppet—yes, all of you could chant the list along with me, I know that! But most of you have never believed me, I know that too. Today I am able to offer you proof that what I say is actually a diminished version of Antonius’s perfidies done at Cleopatra’s dictate. A foreigner, a woman, a worshipper of beasts! And a mighty sorceress, capable of bewitching one of the strongest, most Roman Romans.
“You know that the woman, the foreigner, has an eldest son whose paternity she attributes to Divus Julius. A youth now aged fifteen, who sits beside her on the Egyptian throne as Ptolemy XV Caesar, if you please! To a Roman, he is a bastard and not a Roman citizen. For those of you who believe he is the son of Divus Julius, I can offer proof that he is not—that he is the son of a slave Cleopatra took for her amusement. She is of an amorous disposition, has many lovers, and always has had many lovers. Whom she uses first as sexual partners, then as victims of her poisons—yes, she experiments on them until they die! As died the slave who fathered her eldest son.
“How is this relevant, you ask? Because she inveigled poor Antonius into declaring this bastard boy King of Kings, and now she goes to war against Rome to seat him on the Capitol! There are men sitting here, conscript fathers, who can attest on oath that her favorite threat is that they will suffer when she takes her throne on the Capitol and passes judgment in her son’s name! Yes, she expects to use Antonius’s army to conquer Rome and turn it into Ptolemy XV Caesar’s kingdom!”
He cleared his throat. “But is Rome to continue to be the world’s greatest city, the center of law, justice, commerce, and society? No, Rome is not! The capital of the world is to be removed to Alexandria! Rome is to be let dwindle into nothing.”
The scroll flapped open, dangled from Octavian’s hand held high all the way to the black-and-white tiles of the floor. A few of the senators jumped at the noise, so sudden was it, but Octavian ignored them, sweeping on.
“The proof lies in this document, Antonius’s last will and testament! It leaves everything he has, including his Roman and Italian property, investments, and money, to Queen Cleopatra. Whom he swears he loves, loves, loves, loves! His one and only wife, the center of his being. He attests that Ptolemy XV Caesar is the legitimate son of Divus Julius, and heir to everything Divus Julius left to me, his Roman son! He insists that his famed Donations be honored, which makes Ptolemy XV Caesar the King of Rome! Rome, who has no king!”
The murmurs were beginning; the will was open, it could be examined by anyone who wanted to verify what Octavian was saying.
“What, conscript fathers, are you outraged? So you should be! But these are not the worst thing Antonius’s will has to say! That is contained in the burial clause, which instructs that, no matter where his death might occur, his body is to be given over to the Egyptian embalmers who travel with him everywhere, and be embalmed according to the Egyptian technique. Then he instructs that he be entombed in his beloved Alexandria! Alongside his beloved wife, Cleopatra!”
Tumult ensued as senators leaped from their stools, their ivory chairs, shaking their fists and howling.
Poplicola waited until they quietened. “I don’t believe one word of it!” he shouted. “The will is a forgery! How else could you have laid your hands on it, Octavianus?”
“I wrested it from the Vestal Virgins, who defended it well,” Octavian said calmly. He tossed it to Poplicola, who scooped it up and tried to re-roll it. “Don’t bother with the beginning or the middle, Lucius Gellius. Go to the end. Examine the seal.”
Hands shaking, Poplicola looked at the seal, intact because Octavian had carefully cut around it, then went to the clause dealing with treatment and disposition of Antony’s body. Gulping, shuddering, he flung the screed away, clattering. “I must go to him and try to make him see sense,” he said, rising clumsily to unsteady feet. Then, weeping openly, he turned to the tiers and held out his trembling hands. “Who will come with me?”
Not many. Those who left with Poplicola were hissed at and reviled; the House was convinced at last that Marcus Antonius was no longer a Roman, that he was bewitched, under Cleopatra’s spell—and preparing to march on his homeland for her sake.
“Oh, what a triumph!” Octavian said to Livia Drusilla when he returned home, riding on the
shoulders of Agrippa and Cornelius Gallus, who made a well-matched pair of ponies. But at his door he dismissed them together with Maecenas and Statilius Taurus, asking them to dinner on the morrow. Something as juicy as this victory must first be shared with his wife, whose devious scheme had made his task so much easier. For he knew that Appuleia and her companions could not have been forced into showing him where the will was stored, and he wouldn’t have dared ransack the place. He had had to know exactly where the will was.
“Caesar, I never doubted the outcome,” she said, snuggling against him. “You will always control Rome.”
He grunted, hunched his shoulders unhappily. “That’s still debatable, meum mel. The news of Antonius’s treachery will make it easier to collect my taxes, but they’ll remain unpopular until I can convince the whole country that the alternative is to be reduced to an Egyptian possession under Egyptian law. That the free grain dole will go, the circuses will go, commercial activity will go, Roman autonomy will go for every class of citizen. They haven’t understood that yet, and I fear I won’t be able to explain it to them before the Egyptian axe falls, wielded by Antonius’s capable hands. They must be made to see that this is not a civil war! It’s a foreign war in Roman guise.”
“Have your agents repeat it ad nauseam, Caesar. Hold up Antonius’s conduct to them in the simplest terms—people need simplicity if they are to understand,” Livia Drusilla said. “But it is more than that, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. I am not a triumvir anymore, and if the early days of the war should go against me, some aspiring wolf on the front benches will spill me—Livia Drusilla, my hold on power is so tenuous! What if Pollio should come out of retirement with Publius Ventidius at his shoulder?”
“Caesar, Caesar, don’t be so glum! You have to demonstrate publicly that this war is a foreign one. Is there no way?”
“One, though it isn’t enough,” he said. “When the Republic was very young, the Fetiales were sent to the foreign aggressor to negotiate a settlement. Their chief was the pater patratus, who had with him the verbenarius. This man carried herbs and soil gathered on the Capitol; the herbs and soil gave the Fetiales a magical protection. But then that became too awkward, and a big ceremony was conducted at the temple of Bellona instead. I mean to revive the ceremony and have as many people as possible witness it. A start, yet by no means a finish.”