The Ides of March Read online

  He found the ford by following the sound of the water rushing between the rocks and urged his horse into the river. The water deepened at the centre, rising to the horse’s chest, but they were soon treading on a bed of fine gravel and sand, having reached the opposite bank.

  The path on that side ascended steeply, but when Rufus met up with the snow again the low glimmer of the white blanket helped him to get his bearings, enabling him to set forth on the path he had used so many times before. He soon reached the hut of a shepherd he knew well and he stopped there to drink a cup of warm milk and eat a chunk of bread and cheese. The cabin was lit inside by the flames in the hearth. Its walls, plastered with dried mud, were completely blackened by the smoke. The whole place stank of sheep, from his host to the hulking Molossian hound lying on the ash that circled the hearth, a hairy beast that everyone called by a different name. Rufus scratched him behind his flea-ridden ears by way of greeting.

  ‘What are you doing out here at this hour?’ asked the shepherd, in a mix of Latin and his Ligurian dialect that not everyone could decipher.

  ‘I have an urgent message to deliver,’ replied Rufus between one mouthful and the next. ‘What’s it like on the summit?’

  ‘You’ll be able to make it over, but be careful. I’ve seen a pack of wolves up there: an old male, two or three young ones and four or five females. They might get brave in the dark and latch on to your horse’s hocks. You’d best take a brand from the fire and make sure it doesn’t go out until you’ve reached the top.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ said Rufus.

  He left a couple of pennies for what he’d eaten and drunk, then, with firebrand in fist, he went back out into the open. At least here he felt that he could draw breath again, clearing the foul stench that had saturated the hut and filled his nostrils.

  He took his horse by the reins and started to make his way up on foot, lighting his path with the brand he held high in his left hand. He wondered from what distance the light could be seen. Perhaps at that very moment his commander was standing on the upper terrace at Lux fidelis and looking his way. He could almost hear him cry out, ‘There he is! I’ll bet a month’s pay that that bastard has already made it to the crest!’

  He didn’t have far to go, in fact. Up ahead, less than half a mile away, a group of towering firs marked the ridge.

  His horse was the first to sense the wolves and Rufus saw them himself an instant later, the flaming brand reflected in their eyes with a sinister gleam. He didn’t even have a stone to throw at them and they didn’t look likely to retreat. He shouted and waved the brand. The wolves ran, but stopped just a few paces further away.

  Rufus shouted again, but this time the wolves did not retreat. In fact, they began to circle around him, growling. This did not bode well. They were carrying out the pack’s strategy for isolating prey and attacking. And he was their prey, or the horse, or both of them.

  His horse was bucking and becoming difficult to control. If he panicked and fled, it would be all over for Rufus. He tied the reins to a tree branch so he could move more freely, then clutching his knife in one hand, he continued to wield the brand, which had burned right down to a stub, with the other.

  Wolves had never been a problem before. It had always been easy to scare them off. Why were these ones so tenacious and aggressive? He thought of the legend about how his ancestors first arrived in Italy, guided by a wolf. But these were different, ravenous beasts with the worst of intentions. He backed up against a big fir tree and felt the lowest branches crackle, dry and brittle against his cloak. The gods had sent him help. He snapped them off and tossed them on what remained of the brand. The flame sparked up thanks to the resin in the wood and he thrust it forward.

  The sudden flare repelled the wolves, but drove them back only just beyond the circle of light. The horse was kicking and whinnying and tugging wildly at the reins. If he hadn’t been wearing a bit, he would already have run off. Rufus wondered whether his commander could see this fire as well from the terrace of Lux fidelis. Someone was seeing it for sure, but they would never abandon the base without a good reason.

  The duel between hunger and flames was about to end with the fire going out. Rufus then did the last possible thing he could, although it was deeply repugnant to him. He begged the gods of his forefathers to forgive him before he piled all the dry branches which remained around the base of the trunk. The fir tree caught fire and in just minutes had turned into a huge blazing torch. His Celtic soul was horrified by the screams he could hear from the spirit of the great fir racked by the flames, but his Roman soul justified the act because he was following the orders of his superiors.

  The wolves fled. Rufus picked up one of the fallen branches that was still burning, mounted his horse and continued on his way, crossing a wide clearing and finally reaching the grey slate slabs of the Via Flaminia Minor.

  In Monte Appennino, Lux fidelis, a.d. V Id. Mart., tertia vigilia

  The Apennine Mountains, Faithful Light, 11 March, third guard shift, one a.m.

  THE STATION COMMANDER had just fallen into a deep sleep when a servant shook him awake.

  ‘What in Hades is going on?’ he demanded.

  ‘Master, come immediately – you must see this!’

  The commander threw a cloak over his shoulders and, dressed as he was, made his way to the upper terrace. It was snowing and the vision that greeted him was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Directly to the south, at a distance that was difficult to assess, and at an altitude that made the scene look as if it was playing out in mid-air, he could see a globe of intense light surrounded by a reddish halo that trailed off in the direction of the wind in a kind of luminescent tail.

  ‘Ye gods! What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, commander,’ replied the sentry. ‘I have no idea. I sent the boy to wake you as soon as it started.’

  ‘A comet . . . with a tail of blood . . . powerful gods! Something terrible is about to happen. Comets bring misfortune. This is a cursed night, lads,’ he added. ‘Keep your eyes wide open.’

  He pulled the cloak tight, as if warding off any evil influence, then hurried back down the stairs and locked himself in his room.

  Outside, on the terrace, the servant could not take his eyes off the strange phenomenon, and it surprised him when the light became much brighter for a few instants and then faded until it was swallowed up by the darkness.

  The servant turned towards the sentry. ‘It’s gone,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ replied the sentry.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing. It means nothing. The commander said it was a comet. Didn’t you hear him?’

  ‘What’s a comet?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know? Go and ask him. And while you’re downstairs get me some hot wine. I’m freezing out here.’

  The servant ducked down through the hatch, leaving the sentry alone to keep watch over the night.

  Ad flumen secretum, a.d. V Id. Mart., tertia vigilia

  The secret river, 11 March, third guard shift, one a.m.

  MUSTELA AWOKE feeling groggy and numb. He had no idea how long he’d been lying there, curled up in the damp grass. He was completely soaked through. There was no part of his body that didn t hurt and his chest shook with a dry, hacking cough. It was dark and all he could see was the water of the torrent flowing at a short distance. Where was the boat the old man had promised him? He looked around and immediately noticed a clump of trees a little further along the bank. He staggered in that direction. Could those be willows?

  A break in the clouds revealed a sliver of moon and for a few seconds Mustela could see that they were indeed, and, sure enough, there was a boat tied to a stake in the river. The dark outline stood out clearly against the silvery moonlit water.

  He was close now to the end of his mission. The worst was over, as long as he didn’t pass out first. He touched the bandage on his side and his hand came back sticky. So he hadn’t mana
ged to stop the bleeding. He fastened the bandage tighter, then walked over to the boat and got in. He pushed off from the bank using one of the oars, then rowed his way into the middle of the current.

  All he had to do was let the water carry him, so that’s what he did, and little by little, as the river made its way to the plain, the temperature became milder. A light, warm breeze from the south dried him off. The sky behind him was dark and streaked with lightning bolts, but it was slowly growing lighter in front of him. Every now and then, Mustela sunk down to the bottom of the boat and drifted into a light sleep, just for long enough to clear his head.

  At the slightest bump his eyes would jerk open and he would take to watching the scenery, the villages and isolated farms gliding past, dark objects standing out against the pale light of dawn. He could hear sounds, but they were largely unintelligible. Once there was someone calling, another time he thought he heard a wail of despair, but for the most part it was just the mournful hiccuping of the screech owls and the insistent, syncopated hooting of other night birds.

  It was full daylight and the countryside had begun to come to life when he finally saw it: the Arno!

  The torrent he was travelling on flowed into the great Etruscan river that wound lazily down the hillside in great loops, heading towards the plain. The current was becoming much slower, but Mustela was sure that he had been carried many miles downstream.

  Although it was hidden by the clouds, he calculated that the sun was high by the time he reached the landing pier at a little river harbour where goods from the mountains were stocked before being sent on to Arezzo, still a considerable distance away. With what little strength he had left, Mustela used the oars to bring him towards the pier and managed to draw up alongside it. The owner of one of the storehouses rented him a mule and gave him a piece of clean fabric so he could change the bandage on his wound, then Mustela continued his journey to the house of the cypresses, hidden inland.

  Of all the messengers who had left the Mutatio ad Medias, he had to be the one who had arrived furthest south. Who else could have got as far as he had by travelling downstream on a rushing underground torrent?

  Every jolt, at just about every step the mule took on the cobblestoned street, produced a stabbing pain in his side. His muscles, stiff from exertion, numb with cold and cramping with hunger, had long ceased to respond, and tough old Mustela – who’d been through thick and thin in his long life as an informer – could think of nothing other than crawling into a clean bed, in a warm, sheltered place.

  The villa appeared on his left after a crossroads and a shrine dedicated to Trivia Hecate, which he took in with a fleeting glance. He turned away from the main road here and set off down the path which led up the hill to the spot where the villa stood, surrounded by black cypress trees.

  He was greeted by the furious barking of dogs and by the sound of footsteps on the gravel courtyard. He tried to dismount from his mule so he could announce himself and ask to be received, but as soon as his feet touched the ground he felt his head begin to spin. He realized that he was deathly tired and at the same instant lost consciousness, collapsing like a rag. The last thing he heard was excited shouting and a voice saying, ‘Call the boss, fast. This bloke’s dying!’

  Everything was muddled. He thought he felt the snout of a dog or maybe two poking at him, felt their breath. One was growling, while the other licked at his side where the blood was.

  More agitated footsteps. A booming voice: ‘Throw him into the cesspool. Who knows who the hell he is!’

  He was being lifted by his arms and feet, and suddenly he knew that he had to find enough energy to speak up, at any cost.

  ‘Tell the master that Mustela has to talk to him, now,’ he managed, turning to the man who was holding his arm.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked the overseer, who was walking alongside them with the dogs.

  ‘He says he has to talk to the master and that his name is Mustela.’

  ‘Move it, you son of a bitch,’ Mustela snarled, ‘if you don’t want to end up in the grinder. Your master will skin you alive if he finds out you didn’t give him my message.’

  The overseer stopped the little convoy and took a good look at the man they were about to toss in with the excrement. He saw the wound, noticed the hilt of an expensive dagger sticking out from under the ragged tunic and had a moment of doubt.

  ‘Stop,’ he said.

  10

  Romae, in insula Tiberis, a.d. V Id. Mart., hora tertia

  Rome, the Tiber Island, 11 March, eight a.m.

  ANTISTIUS HAD arrived early, by boat, from Ostia, and was already at the Temple of Aesculapius preparing for the day’s work. He belonged to the Hippocratic school and set great store by symptomatology. He kept a register for each and every patient, with a detailed description of his illness, the diet he’d recommended, the remedies applied and the results obtained. He also believed strongly in cleanliness, beating his servants with a rod if he found dust anywhere, or any other sort of filth in the more remote and less visible corners of his office.

  This morning he was even more scrupulous than usual, since he was expecting a client for whom he had the highest regard: Artemidorus. He wanted to check on the state of the Greek teacher’s vitiligo.

  One of Antistius’s secrets, and one of the reasons for his success, was his reliance on empirical medicine. But this was something he could ill afford to confess and would never do so, not even under torture.

  In the course of his long practice as a physician, he had become convinced that women were the true repositories of medical wisdom, their knowledge being far superior to that of men. He based this conviction on a simple observation: women had cared for their own children since the beginning of time, and since their children’s survival was more important to them than their own lives, they had built up a store of remedies whose effectiveness had actually been tested. In other words, they weren’t interested in what had caused the illness, what balance or imbalance of humours and elements was at the root of it. They were interested only in stopping the illness from killing their children, and finding reliable strategies to fight it off.

  Men were much more adept in the field of surgery: cutting, sawing, cauterizing, amputating, stitching. These were all arts in which men excelled, both because they were more brutal by nature and because they had had ample practice in the rear lines of the field of battle, where – since the beginning of time – thousands upon thousands of men had been sent out to massacre each other, for reasons that had never been adequately studied, much less explained.

  This was how Antistius had become the personal physician of Caius Julius Caesar: by demonstrating his imperturbable skill in recomposing the mangled limbs of battlefield survivors. Later, he had also proved that he could take on the elusive symptoms of stealthy diseases by applying remedies known only to him, whose composition he would reveal to no one.

  When his assistant announced that Artemidorus had arrived for his check-up, Antistius said that he would see him immediately. He peeked outside and saw no litters. So, Artemidorus had arrived on foot.

  ‘How’s it going, then?’ asked Antistius as soon as his patient stepped in.

  ‘What can I say? These Romans try hard, you can’t deny them that, but what a travesty! Their accent is horrible when applied to the masters of our poetry. But if you were referring to my condition, it’s here, look, on the nape of my neck, that I think something is coming out again.’

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ said Antistius solicitously.

  He moved aside the Greek’s hair and found the area he was complaining about. It was just slightly reddened. With a worried clucking, he diligently examined the spot, then went to his locked medicine cabinet. From there he extracted an ointment which he applied with a gentle touch to his patient’s neck, which was soon showing signs of improvement.

  ‘This remedy is so effective!’ Artemidorus exclaimed gratefully. ‘I don’t know how to thank you. How much do I owe
you?’

  ‘No, nothing at all. Not this time. It’s just a little relapse; it’s only right that I treat it without asking for a further fee.’

  ‘No, I absolutely won’t accept that,’ replied Artemidorus, insisting that he must pay, but Antistius was adamant.

  ‘To think,’ said the Greek, ‘on top of everything, that I’m being treated by the personal physician of Julius Caesar!’

  ‘Our perpetual dictator does honour me with his trust, that’s true,’ replied Antistius, ‘and I’m quite proud of that. In all frankness, I do believe I’m the person best suited to curing his ailments, at least those I have a hand in. The rest . . . is in the laps of the gods,’ he concluded with an eloquent sigh.

  Artemidorus was puzzled. It was clear that the doctor’s words, in particular their tone and the sigh at the end, concealed some kind of message. He might have ignored this and pretended not to understand, but his curiosity and the sensation that something big was in the offing led him to take the bait.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked.

  ‘There are rumours circulating to the effect that Caesar’s . . . health may be at risk,’ replied Antistius. ‘If not much worse.’

  ‘Much worse . . . than his health?’ prompted Artemidorus.

  Antistius gave a slow nod, accompanying the movement of his head with a long sigh.

  Artemidorus leaned in closer until he was practically whispering into the doctor’s ear. ‘Is it something to do with Brutus?’

  Antistius’s answering expression needed no words.

  ‘I see,’ said Artemidorus.

  ‘You’ve heard the rumours?’ asked Antistius, adding, ‘You know, I do realize that I’m asking a lot of you, perhaps too much, but I swear to you that whatever you tell me will remain within these walls. I will never reveal the source of any information you give me. I must say that I’m honoured to have one of the most eminent proponents of Hellenic culture in the entire city in my care.’