Fidelius grinned. “Well. She sends you her love. And this.” He pulled a lightly wrapped package from the leather bag on his horse. It looked thin enough to be a portrait, and when he opened the linen wrapping, I saw that it was.
The color in Octavian’s cheeks rose slightly. “Very nice,” he said softly, studying the woman’s face inside the faience frame. She was pretty, with long black hair and a straight Roman nose. Octavian passed the image to Juba. “Put it away.”
Fidelius frowned. “My mother has missed you a great deal these months.”
“Has she?” Octavian raised his brows. “Well, send her my regards and let her know that I will be very busy in the coming days.”
“But you will see her, Caesar?”
“If I have the time,” Octavian snapped. “There is the matter of a rebellion and a Senate to placate first!”
Fidelius stepped back. “Yes … yes, I understand. The Senate has been tense while you’ve been gone.”
Octavian’s gaze intensified. “Really?” he said with rising interest. “And why is that?”
Fidelius hesitated, and I wondered if he had said more than he should have. “Well, the matter of the war. Not knowing who would win. You or Antony.”
“And?”
Fidelius glanced uneasily at Agrippa. “And the succession. No one knew what would happen if both you and Antony were killed. A few names were mentioned as possible successors.”
Octavian smiled disarmingly. “Such as?”
“Just … just a few men from patrician families. No one with any real power.” Fidelius laughed nervously.
“Well, if the Senate thought enough of them to mention them, perhaps those men can be useful to me somehow.”
Fidelius was surprised. “Really?”
“Why not? Which men did they think might be good replacements?”
“Oh, all sorts of people were mentioned. Even my name was brought up.”
The smile vanished from Octavian’s face.
“Of course, he’s too young,” Marcellus said swiftly. “And he could never lead an army. Who would follow him?”
Fidelius looked at Marcellus and realized what was happening. “That’s—that’s right. They only mentioned my name because of who my father was and how much wealth he left me. Marcellus can tell you. I—I would never want to be Caesar.”
“Of course. Come.” Octavian put his arm around Fidelius’s shoulders and passed a look to Agrippa. “Let’s take a walk. There are some things I’d like to speak about in private.”
Fidelius looked back at Marcellus, who tried to intervene, asking, “But can’t he stay here and play dice?”
Octavian’s glance rooted Marcellus in his place. “No.”
Agrippa joined Octavian and Fidelius, and the three wandered off back the way we had come.
My brother and I looked to Marcellus. “What will happen to him?” Alexander whispered.
Marcellus looked away, and I thought there might be tears in his eyes. “His mother will be told that her son died fighting the rebels.”
“They’re going to kill him?” I cried. “For what?”
Marcellus put a finger to his lips. “If the Senate thought Fidelius would make a good Caesar two months ago, then what stops them from thinking the same thing three years from now?”
“But he doesn’t want to be Caesar!” I protested.
There was a sharp cry at the rear of the wagons, then silence. Marcellus closed his eyes. “He was my closest friend as a child,” he whispered. “I looked up to him like a brother.”
“And your uncle doesn’t care about that?” I exclaimed.
“No. He cares more about the stability of Rome than about anyone’s life.” He opened his eyes and looked at both of us. “Be careful with him.”
The revolt was crushed before the sun had risen to its highest point in the sky. We were sitting by the side of the road rolling dice when Agrippa brought the news. “It’s time to leave,” he said shortly. “The rebellion is finished.”
“And all of them killed?”
Agrippa nodded in answer to Marcellus’s question. “Every last slave.”
“And Fidelius?”
Agrippa hesitated. “Unfortunately, his life was lost.”
We stepped into our carriage, and as it began to roll, Alexander tried to distract Marcellus from his sadness. “How old is the Servian Wall?”
Marcellus shrugged as we passed through the gates. There was no sign of any rebellion, and if the bodies of wounded slaves had littered the streets, they had since been taken away for Octavian’s arrival. “Extremely old,” he said.
“And the Seven Hills? What are their names?”
Marcellus pointed to the hill directly in front of us. “That’s the Quirinal.” He sighed. “Nothing special there. The one next to it’s the Viminal. It’s the smallest hill. But the Esquiline”—he indicated a hill to the right—“is where wealthy visitors lodge. The problem is getting to the inns at the top.”
“Why? Is the road steep?” I asked.
Marcellus smiled good-naturedly at my question. “No. It’s just filled with escaped slaves, and thieves. Men you don’t want to know,” he assured me. Then he pointed out the Caelian, capped with handsome villas. “To the right of that is the Aventine. Nothing there but pleb houses and merchants.”
“Pleb houses?” Alexander repeated.
“You know, houses for the plebeians. Men who aren’t
“So Caesar is an equestrian?” I asked.
“Oh no.” Marcellus waved his hand. “Our family’s much higher than that. We’re patricians. We live on the Palatine, where Octavian is building the largest temple to Apollo.” He indicated a flat-topped hill where buildings of polished marble and porphyry gleamed. It wasn’t Alexandria, but there was some beauty in the way the buildings climbed the hillside and shone white against the pale blue sky.
The last of the Seven Hills was the Capitoline. “My father used to take me up there to see the Tarpeian Rock,” Marcellus recalled with a shiver. “That’s where criminals are thrown from if they’re not used in the Amphitheater.”
“And is your father still living?” I asked quietly.
“No. He died ten years ago. A few months later, Octavian arranged for my mother to marry Antony.” Even though our mother had already given birth to me and Alexander. I felt my cheeks warm, knowing that only five years after her marriage, Octavia had been abandoned. I wondered who had been a father to Marcellus.
“So your mother has three children,” I said.
“Five. She had two daughters from my father, but they were sent away when she remarried.”
I didn’t understand. “Why?”
“Because that’s what’s expected of a newly married woman.”
I stared at him. “That she give up her previous children?”
“If they are girls. This is why my mother won’t marry again.”
I thought of my father welcoming Octavia into his home but refusing the small girls who huddled fearfully behind her. Was that how it had been? Though he had never spent much time with me, my father had always been affectionate. Suddenly, I became afraid of Rome: afraid of her dirty streets, of her terrible punishments, and, most of all, of what it would be like to live with the woman my father had spurned.
We passed a forum where slaves were being sold by the thousands. Most of them were flaxen-haired and blue-eyed.
“Germans and Gallics.” Marcellus saw my look and shook his head. “It’s a sickening display.” As our procession of carriages rattled along, I could see the shame of the naked girls whose breasts were being squeezed
