The Ides of March by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Christine Feddersen-Manfredi Read Free Book Online

say that there’s an advantage to being on the battlefield. You know exactly where the enemy stands.’
    Silius nodded and watched as Caesar turned his attention back to Pollio’s letter, making notes on his tablet as he read. It seemed that months had passed since his early-morning crisis. Caesar was in perfect control of the situation, but he was tense, worried, and Silius couldn’t help him because he did not know what was upsetting him.
    Caesar raised his head again and looked straight into Silius’s eyes. ‘Did you know that last year, when I was in Spain, there were strange rumours circulating in the rear lines?’
    ‘What rumours, commander?’ asked Silius. ‘What are you referring to?’
    ‘Just rumours,’ replied Caesar. ‘Pass me those papers to be signed. I’ll read the letters later.’

4
    Romae, a.d. VIII Id. Mart., hora sexta
    Rome, 8 March, eleven a.m.
    S TRANGE RUMOURS .
    The expression nagged at him and Caesar’s words kept ringing in his ears. Silius tried to remember what had happened in those rear lines . . . because he had been there, in Marseilles, in Narbonne, organizing logistics, communications.
    It had been a bloody campaign, perhaps the worst ever. Titus Labienus had been there then, at Munda. Labienus, who had been Caesar’s right-hand man, the hero of the Gallic War, his second in command. Willing to take on any responsibility, to face any danger, never tired, never dispirited, never doubting. An old-fashioned Roman, a principled man, an officer with a formidable temperament.
    He had been at the head of the enemy formation at Munda, where the fight had been to the death.
    Labienus had deserted his commander when Caesar had decided to cross the Rubicon and enter the territory of the republic – a land considered sacred and inviolable – with weapons in his hand. He had gone over to the side of Pompey and his sons, to the side of those who had proclaimed themselves defenders of the republic, the Senate and the people.
    At Munda the clash had been of inconceivable savagery. The combatants on both sides fought with unrelenting fury and, at a certain point, it had seemed to Silius that their adversaries (despite everything that had happened, he still couldn’t force himself to think of those men as enemies) would prevail. It was then that Caesar had been prepared to take his own life. He knew that, if he lost, there could be no mercy for him, and he was convinced that, as an aristocrat, suicide was the only honourable way of ending one’s life in the event of defeat.
    But then the unimaginable happened. Labienus withdrew one of his units from the right wing of the formation with a view of reinforcing the left wing, which was under constant pressure, but his men had all instantly feared a retreat and panicked, abandoning their combat positions in a disorderly fashion. The battle ended in a massacre. Thirty thousand adversaries dead.
    Were those the visions that ravaged Caesar’s mind? Was the memory of such horror the trigger behind the seizures that were crippling him?
    But Caesar’s words seemed to be referring to something different: rumours circulating in the rear lines, strange rumours, obviously upsetting. What could he mean?
    Who should he ask? Publius Sextius, perhaps, the man Caesar trusted most. But the centurion was far away, part of some highly sensitive mission. No one knew when he’d be back. Silius thought of another man who might be able to help, a person who had always been close to Caesar but who also maintained relations with many people in the city. Someone he could arrange to meet without difficulty. Silius walked towards the vegetable market, and from there to the Temple of Aesculapius on the Tiber Island. He knew Antistius would be there.
    He found him examining a patient with a dry, irritable cough.
    ‘Has something happened?’ the doctor asked immediately.
    ‘No,’ replied Silius. ‘The situation is stable. I’ve come to speak to you about something,