Emperor: The Blood of Gods

‘Consul, my post is here …’ the man began.

Mark Antony dropped to one knee, his voice low and angry.

‘As you say, I am a consul of Rome. Is the Republic now such a broken thing that even a Roman officer will not follow orders?’

The centurion dipped his plumed head in shame as he flushed. Without another word, he clambered up onto the platform and the silent rank of his companions shuffled to close the gap he left behind.

Mark Antony rose to his full height, so that his eyes were at the level of the man’s plume. He looked down sternly.

‘There is an effigy in wax below the body, Centurion. Take hold of it for me. Raise it up so that they can see.’

The man’s jaw dropped in shock and he was shaking his head even before he replied.

‘What? What game is this? Consul, please. Finish the oration and let me get you safely away.’

‘What is your name?’ Mark Antony asked.

The centurion hesitated. He had been anonymous before, hidden in a line of similar men. In an instant, he had been singled out for no good reason. He swallowed bitterly, thanking his personal gods for giving him such a run of bad luck.

‘Centurion Oppius, Consul.’

‘I see. I am going to speak slowly and clearly to you, Oppius. Obey my lawful orders. Uphold your oath to the Republic, or remove that plume and report to your legion tribune with my request that you be shown the Roman discipline you seem to have forgotten.’

The centurion’s mouth tightened into a pale line. His eyes glittered in anger, but he nodded sharply. Such a ‘request’ would see him flogged to ribbons under a weighted lash, perhaps even executed as an example. He turned stiffly, looking down at the body of Caesar for a moment.

‘He would not mind, Oppius,’ Mark Antony went on, his voice suddenly gentle. ‘He was my friend.’

‘I don’t know what you are doing, Consul, but if they rush us, I will see you again in hell,’ Oppius growled.

Mark Antony clenched his fist, perhaps to strike a blow, but the centurion bent low and jerked back the gold cloth. Below the body of Caesar lay a full-sized model of a man in white wax, dressed in a purple toga with gold trim. Oppius hesitated, repelled. Its features had been modelled after Caesar’s own. To his disgust, he saw that it too wore a band of fresh laurel leaves.

‘What is this … thing?’ he muttered.

Mark Antony only gestured and Oppius lifted it out. It was surprisingly heavy and he staggered slightly as he came upright.

The crowd had been murmuring, unable to understand the furious conversation on the platform. They gasped and cried out as they saw the effigy with its blind, white eyes.

‘Consul!’ another centurion shouted back over the noise. ‘You must stop whatever you are doing. Step down, Oppius. They won’t stand for this.’

‘Be silent!’ Mark Antony bellowed, losing his patience with the fools around him.

The crowd grew still in horror, their gazes riveted on the mockery of a man which stood before them, supported by Oppius.

‘Let me show you, citizens of Rome. Let me show you what your word is worth!’

Mark Antony stepped forward and drew a grey iron blade from his sash. He wrenched the purple robe that clothed the mannequin, baring the chest and the line of the throat. The crowd gasped, unable to look away. Many of them made the horn sign of protection with their shaking hands.

‘Tillius Cimber held Caesar, while Suetonius Prandus struck the first blow … here!’ Mark Antony said.

He pressed his left hand against the shoulder of the effigy and shoved his knife into the wax under the moulded collarbone, so that even old soldiers in the crowd winced. The senators on the steps stood rooted and Suetonius himself was there, his mouth sagging open.

‘Publius Servilius Casca sliced this wound across the first,’ Mark Antony went on. With a savage movement, he sawed at cloth and wax with his blade. He was already panting, his voice a bass roar that echoed from the buildings all around. ‘His brother, Gaius Casca, stepped in then as Caesar fought! He thrust his dagger … here.’

Over by the senate house, the Casca brothers looked at each other in horror. Without a word, both men turned away, hurrying to get out of the forum.

Sweating, Mark Antony pulled back the sleeves of the toga, so that the mannequin’s right arm was revealed. ‘Lucius Pella made a cut here, a long gash.’ With a jerk of his blade, Mark Antony sliced the wax and the crowd moaned. ‘Caesar still fought! He was left-handed, and he raised his bloody right arm to hold them off. Decimus Junius slashed at him then, cutting the muscle so that the arm fell limp. Caesar called for help on the stone benches of Pompey’s theatre. He called for vengeance, but he was alone with these men … and they would not stop.’

The crowd surged forward, driven almost to madness by what they were seeing. There was no logic in it, simply a growing, seething mass of rage. Just a few senators still stood by the senate house and Mark Antony saw Cassius turn to go.

‘Gaius Cassius Longinus stabbed the Father of Rome then, shoving his thin arms into a gap between the others.’ With a grunt, Mark Antony punched the blade into the wax side through the toga, leaving the cloth torn as the knife came out. ‘The blood poured, drenching Caesar’s toga, but still he fought! He was a soldier of Rome and his spirit was strong as they struck and struck at him!’ He punctuated his words with blows, tearing ribbons from the ruined toga.

He broke off, gasping and shaking his head.

‘Then he saw a chance to live.’

His voice had dropped and the crowd pushed even closer, driven and wild, but hanging on every word. Mark Antony looked across them all, but his eyes were seeing another day, another scene. He had listened to every detail of it from a dozen sources and it was as real to him as if he had witnessed it himself.

‘He saw Marcus Brutus step onto the floor of the theatre. The man who had fought at his side for half their lives. The man who had betrayed him once and joined an enemy of Rome. The man Julius Caesar had forgiven when anyone else would have had him butchered and his limbs scattered. Caesar saw his greatest friend and for a moment, for a heartbeat, in the midst of those stabbing, shouting men, he must have thought he was saved. He must have thought he would live.’

Tears came to his eyes then. Mark Antony brushed them away with his sleeve, feeling his exhaustion like a great weight. It was almost over.

‘He saw that Brutus carried a blade like all the rest. His heart broke and the fight went out of him at last.’

Centurion Oppius was standing stunned, barely holding the figure of wax. He flinched as Mark Antony reached over and yanked a fold of the purple toga over the figure’s head, so that the face was covered.

‘Caesar would not look at them after that. He sat as Brutus approached and they continued to stab and tear at his flesh.’

He held his dark blade poised over the heart and many in the crowd were weeping, men and women together as they waited in agony for the last blow. The moaning sound had grown so that it was almost a wail of pain.

‘Perhaps he did not feel the final blade; we cannot know.’

Mark Antony was a powerful man and he punched the blade up where the ribs would have been, sinking it to the hilt and cutting a new hole in the ragged cloth. He left the blade there, for all to see.

‘Set it down, Oppius,’ he said, panting. ‘They have seen all I wanted them to see.’

Every pair of eyes in the crowd moved to follow the torn figure as it was laid down on the platform. The common people of Rome visited no theatres with the noble classes. What they had witnessed had been one of the most powerful scenes of their lives. A sigh went around the forum, a long breath of pain and release.

Mark Antony gathered slow-moving thoughts. He had pushed the crowd and ridden them, but he had judged it well. They would go from this place in sombre mood, talking amongst themselves. They would not forget his friend, and the Liberatores would be followed by scorn all their lives.

‘To think,’ he said, his voice gentle, ‘Caesar saved the lives of many of the men who were there, in Pompey’s theatre, on the Ides of March. Many of them owed their fortunes and their positions to him. Yet they brought him down. He made himself first in Rome, first in the world, and it did not save him.’

His head came up when a voice yelled out in the crowd.

‘Why should they live?’

Mark Antony opened his mouth to reply, but a dozen other voices answered, shouting angry curses at the murderers of Caesar. He held up his hands for calm, but the lone voice had been a spark on dry wood and the noise spread and grew until there were hundreds and hundreds pointing to the senate house and roaring out their rage.

‘Friends, Romans, countrymen!’ Mark Antony bellowed, but even his great voice was swallowed. Those further back pushed forward mindlessly and the centurions were battered by fists and heaving bodies.