The Druid King Read online

  Keltill tossed the torch through a gap in the loosely built pile of seasoned logs into the kindling at its core, which burst into flame with a whoosh of air and puff of smoke. Logs then caught fire, and the piney aroma mingled with the odors of roasting meat to drive all present into a state of joyous famishment.

  Vercingetorix wobbled behind his father to the host’s table, his knees performing a clumsy dance, his head reeling, his belly growling, his vision glittering from the torchlight and the bonfire.

  The table was an oaken top set on trestles in front of the house, with a bench on one side only, so that those seated behind it faced the festivities. Upon it were laid loaves of bread, knives, and planks laden with roasted fowls, as well as bowls of turnips, carrots, boiled nettles, apples, ribs, and joints of mutton and boar, and, for this special feast, whole roast suckling boar, obtained at great expense and with no little difficulty.

  Vercingetorix had not yet achieved such an exalted state that he could fail to recognize his own mother, Gaela, among those seated behind the table, and was even able to discern his uncle Gobanit and Gobanit’s wife, Ette, seated to her right. To Gaela’s left were the empty spaces reserved for his father and himself, and beyond that was a stern-looking woman in middle age who seemed vaguely familiar, and to her left—

  Once Vercingetorix’s gaze fell upon the girl who sat there, it had no interest in lingering elsewhere.

  She looked to be about his age, with long golden tresses held off her fair, rosy face with a garland of flowers, and slim, graceful neck arising from the bodice of a yellow dress gathered tightly enough to reveal budding breasts. Her eyes were of that elusive hue that seems green one moment and hazel the next, her nose was straight, her chin was strong, and both were elevated to send a haughty challenge that set Vercingetorix’s teeth on edge and his blood aflame.

  Something in his eyes must have betrayed his state, for she met his gaze with a look that was enough to wilt crops in the fields. It was certainly enough to banish any notion of summoning up the courage to speak to her.

  The feasting began with a will. The legs of fowl were ripped off with bare hands, ribs of pork and boar torn into individual morsels, everything else carved up with knives, and all was conveyed straight to devouring mouths as efficiently and quickly as possible, washed down by endless mugs and horns of beer kept full by servants.

  Vercingetorix gobbled up his fair share of food and swilled at least that much beer, but throughout the meal stole long glances at the blonde girl, who displayed an admirable appetite, a sign that her appetite for other pleasures might prove equally hearty.

  But he wished she would sip less daintily at her beer, for, the drunker she got, his fantasies proposed, the more likely they would pass from the realm of dreams into this one. The only thing he could think to do was set her a proper example.

  “Is there enough meat?” Keltill bellowed. “Is there enough beer?”

  The drunken roars and collective table-thumping of approval roused Vercingetorix from his dozing torpor.

  “It is the tradition for the new vergobret, upon beginning his year as leader, to praise the wisdom of the Arverne nobles in electing such a hero as himself,” Keltill declaimed, “but as you all know, my single flaw is that I’m far too modest to do my own proper boasting—”

  Howls of good-natured laughter and amused hoots and jeers erupted from his audience.

  “—so I’ll let a better man do it for me—my noble son, the silver-tongued Vercingetorix!”

  Vercingetorix, who had never made a speech before, whose head was reeling, and whose tongue, far from being silver, felt like a piece of dead wood in his mouth, sat there stunned and quite terrified.

  But Keltill yanked him to his feet, and there he stood, the glow of the torches gauzed by his drunkenness, the bonfire nearly blinding him, staring into a field of faces, eyes sheened red by the firelight, as all sound died away into a dreadful expectant silence.

  He found himself glancing sidelong at the blonde girl, who met his gaze for an instant with eyes as blank and impenetrable as polished jewels and an expression of amused contempt.

  And then it was that the magic happened.

  He looked away, his gaze following the sparks from the bonfire skyward. The roaring firelight washed away the glow of all but the brightest star, which in turn seemed to be gazing down at him, bestowing, so unlike the girl, its favor. And when he looked back earthward into all those eyes which a moment before had terrorized him, the silence had been transformed into an invitation to speak.

  “As…as Keltill is my father, so now is he yours, Arverni, for the vergobret is the father of his people. And to have such a man as Keltill as your father makes you the most fortunate tribe in all Gaul. But I am more fortunate still. I am the most fortunate boy in Gaul. For you will have him as a father for but one short year. I will have him always.”

  He paused, lifted a horn of beer in a toasting gesture, a horn of beer that seemed to have been magically placed in his hand by the same gods who had given him this moment.

  “To Keltill! To the vergobret of the Arverni! To honor that is to be trusted, and fortune that is to be shared, and a life that is to be spent on the pleasure of living!”

  The roars and cheers were gloriously deafening. They seemed to grow even louder as Vercingetorix gulped down his entire horn of beer in five continuous swallows.

  This, however, finally proved too much for him, and the last things he heard, before collapsing unconscious into the arms of Keltill, were good-natured laughter and the amused voices of his mother and father:

  “Like father, like son!”

  “My sentiments exactly!”

  II

  ALL ROME IS WAITING to watch you fall,” said Decimus Junius Brutus as they made their way toward the baths, past eyes that looked away and backs that always seemed conveniently turned to them.

  “Jackals are good at smelling blood, Brutus, but they lack the courage to attack even a wounded lion,” Gaius Julius Caesar told him contemptuously. “And this fox still has a few tricks left, to mix a predatory metaphor.”

  Brutus gave him a quizzical look.

  Caesar laughed. “I mean you would do well not to wager on my defeat, my young friend.”

  So young, so naïve, so innocent, Caesar thought. Was I ever thus? Perhaps suckling at my mother’s teat? More likely, I was simply unaware of the political intrigue already swirling all around me, as a fish fails to notice that it is swimming in water.

  Caesar’s clan, the Julii, were old patricians, but by the time he was born rather threadbare ones, and the only road to riches in Rome for a scion thereof was politics. Unfortunately, the reverse was also true: any office in Rome worth having was won by election, and winning the favor of voters cost money—to finance feasts, games, bribes, favorable attention in the Forum. Thus, unless a politician was born to riches, he was constrained to replenish his depleted coffers from whatever office he had achieved in order to finance his election to the next rung up the political and economic ladder. Since this was the only means by which a man such as Caesar could pursue a career of public service, as far as he was concerned it was the height of cynicism to call it corruption.

  Not that cynicism was ever in danger of going out of fashion in Rome, Caesar thought as they entered the thermae.

  The baths were divided into three large main chambers: the cool frigidarium for those who sought the illusion that they were rugged Spartans; the tepidarium, where the temperature was kept at the civilized level of a fine spring day; and the caldarium, too hot for Caesar’s taste but, fogged with steam from the central hot pool, an appropriate venue for a political assignation with Marcus Licinius Crassus.

  Crassus was not the sort of figure displayed to best advantage without his toga. Blubbery and out of shape, he lay on his belly on a pool-side couch with only a towel over his behind as a gesture to aesthetics, sipping wine from a golden goblet.

  “Hail, Crassus!”

  “H
ail, Caesar…”

  “You know my young friend Decimus Junius Brutus?”

  “Hail, Brutus. I believe we may have met somewhere,” Crassus said, looking the poor boy up and down as if it might have been in a brothel where Brutus had served as a catamite.

  He raised a bushy eyebrow at Caesar and gave him a look that seemed to assume that Brutus was presently serving him in the same capacity. “I thought this was to be a private conversation, Caesar.”

  “It would not be wise for it to seem so, now, would it, Crassus?” Caesar said smoothly, masking his displeasure. “And Brutus enjoys my full confidence.”

  “Does he, now?” said Crassus in a lubricious tone of voice.

  Caesar knew that his propensity for mentoring promising youths was often taken for boy love in the Greek manner. But he had found nothing a boy could do to please him that a woman could not do better, and by his lights sex with a protégé like Brutus would be all too akin to doing it with one’s own son. Indeed, he suspected that the Greeks who extolled the intellectual communion of such love above all others did so out of pining for male progeny.

  “Brutus is like the son I unfortunately do not have,” he said pointedly, without letting his true feelings show, an art at which he was adept, and particularly around Crassus.

  “And what is the subject of this conversation, which you have so urgently requested?” Crassus asked fatuously.

  “We have reason to discuss these ridiculous charges of embezzling public funds,” Caesar replied.

  “Do we?”

  “Really, Crassus,” said Caesar, “any Roman over the age of ten knows that anyone elected to anything requires money to oil the machineries of the Republic.”

  Crassus took a slow sip of wine and regarded Caesar ingenuously. “I see,” he said, “you’ve simply appropriated public money to do the public business. None of it, of course, managed to find its way into your private coffers.”

  “Whatever may find its way into my private coffers exits soon enough in the service of election to my next public office,” Caesar replied. “And since I am acknowledged to be among Rome’s most able political leaders, it may justly be said to serve the interest of the Republic.”

  “You always were a diligent student of the Sophists, Caesar.”

  “Better a skilled practitioner of Sophist rhetoric than a devotee of the philosophy of the Cynics, Crassus.”

  “Even as we have a god for every taste, the Greeks had a philosophy for every purpose,” said Crassus.

  “Spoken like a Pragmatist!” said Caesar. “And, one Pragmatist to another, Crassus, you do not really want the Senate delving too deeply into my finances—now, do you? Do you really imagine our mutually advantageous dealings would remain hidden?”

  Crassus put down his goblet, rose into an upright position, and regarded Caesar with a colder eye.

  “Is that a threat, Caesar?”

  “Not at all, my friend, I merely seek to protect you,” said Caesar. “After all, we both know that what may have stuck to my fingers since you and I and Pompey were elected consuls has also stuck to yours.”

  “What do you want?” Crassus said sharply.

  “The proconsulship of Cisalpine Gaul,” said Caesar.

  “Governing a sleepy province in northern Italy where nothing much has happened since we threw out the barbarians seems quite a come-down after a consulship in Rome,” said Crassus, eyeing Caesar narrowly.

  “The only reason the Senate hasn’t charged me yet is that a consul is immune from prosecution during his term of office—”

  “And yours is shortly to run out—”

  “But the proconsul of a Roman province is also immune from prosecution by the Senate.”

  “I had forgotten you were a lawyer,” Crassus said dryly. “But why a backwater like Cisalpine Gaul?”

  “Because it’s available,” Caesar said. “Because it’s a backwater. Meaning that enough of my enemies would vote with my friends to grant it to me just to get me out of Rome.”

  “Very clever.” Crassus smiled at Caesar smarmily. “But…how can I put this delicately…? It seems I can’t.” He shrugged “What’s in it for me?”

  “Aside from avoiding an unpleasant investigation into our previously profitable dealings?” replied Caesar. “More of the same profitable dealings, of course. Much more.”

  “Cisalpine Gaul is hardly a cornucopia of riches,” Crassus said skeptically.

  “But the rest of Gaul is,” Caesar told him, baiting the hook.

  “Gallia Narbonensis? Wine, olives, fruit, good ports. A little better, but not by much, and besides, you said—”

  “No, no, not our old Mediterranean province! The whole thing, Crassus! Transalpine Gaul! What lies to the north of Gallia Narbonensis! The great heartland of true Gaul! A vast territory rich in gold, silver, iron, jewels, rare dyes, cattle, grain, and prime slave material!”

  “Inconveniently inhabited by tribes of warlike Gauls and savage Teutons.”

  “The Teuton tribes may be savages,” said Caesar, not bothering to add that they were going to provide the perfect casus belli, “but the Gauls are rich, and sophisticated enough to be eager for the benefits of commerce with us. Why, they’ve got a trade delegation in Rome even now.”

  “Rich naïfs ripe for the picking,” said Crassus, rolling the baited hook around in his mouth thoughtfully.

  “First come our merchants,” Caesar told him, “then our engineers to build roads for the commerce, and artisans to build the rich Gauls proper Roman villas and dress them in style, and slave dealers, and of course they will need skilled Roman bankers to manage their new economy.”

  “I see,” said Crassus, taking the hook. “A proconsul of Gallia Narbonensis who understood this could reward his friends with handsome concessions.”

  “Indeed!” said Caesar. “Those whom I favor will become richer than Crassus—I mean Croesus.”

  “But wait!” said Crassus. “It’s the proconsulship of Cisalpine Gaul that’s vacant, not Gallia Narbonensis.”

  “True,” said Caesar, “but if the proconsulship of Gallia Narbonensis should become vacant later, it would be easy enough to persuade the Senate to combine the posts, would it not?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Caesar cast a sidelong glance at Brutus, considering how far he cared to go in corrupting youth in the service of political education.

  “And it will become vacant,” he said. “Soon after my appointment, the present proconsul of Gallia Narbonensis will develop a fatal illness.”

  “How do you know this, Caesar?” asked Crassus.

  “You forget I was not only once a pontifex, but elected pontifex maximus,” said Caesar. “I read the omens in the entrails of last night’s roast chicken.”

  “Food poisoning?”

  “It’s a hot climate. Hang a pheasant a day too long, or eat a bad oyster in the wrong season…”

  Caesar glanced once more at the shocked Brutus. But the boy’s face quickly became an unreadable mask. And that showed promise. Everyone had to rid himself of his virginity sooner or later.

  His appointment as proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul had left Caesar with little need of strong drink to buoy his spirit, and he, Brutus, and Junius Marius Gisstus reclined on couches around the banquet table, awaiting the arrival of the Eduen envoy, sipping at well-watered wine.

  “Well, my friends, farewell to the pit of vipers that is Rome,” he fairly burbled. “We’re off to win fame and fortune in glorious Gaul!”

  “I can believe the fortune part,” Gisstus said sardonically.

  His lips seemed carved in a permanent ironic grimace; there was something about his eyes that said he had seen twice as much as any other man of his middle years and had not been particularly impressed by any of it. Caesar’s spymaster’s face was one only his mother would trust. And even she not very far.

  Nevertheless, he was utterly loyal to Caesar out of pragmatic self-interest, for Caesar had raised him from centurion to h
is present position, and there was no way a man of his modest and shady background could rise any higher.

  “But fame, Caesar?” said Brutus. “By holding down Cisalpine Gaul, a province in Italy that’s been pacified for a hundred years?”

  “You’re forgetting Gallia Narbonensis.”

  Brutus frowned. “I wish I could,” he muttered glumly.

  “What’s troubling you, my young friend?”

  Brutus shrugged. “Perhaps my conscience.”

  “Have it removed at once,” suggested Gisstus. “I know a good surgeon.”

  “Perhaps it can be eased without the knife,” suggested Caesar.

  “Don’t you intend to…remove the proconsul of Gallia Narbonensis in order that you might replace him?” Brutus said queasily. “Which is to say, murder him.”

  “The proper term is ‘assassination,’” corrected Gisstus.

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Indeed there is,” said Caesar. “A murder is personal act. An assassination is the killing of a man for reasons of state. An act of political necessity.”

  Brutus seemed less than convinced. Perhaps a bit of Socratic dialogue…

  “You are eager to attain the rank of general and win glory by defeating the enemy?”

  “Of course, Caesar.”

  “And how is the enemy to be defeated?”

  Brutus’ silence was eloquent.

  “Yes, my young friend, by killing as many of them as possible.”

  “But that’s war!”

  “Thousands of killings for reasons of state. Thousands of assassinations performed out of political necessity.”

  “It’s not the same thing!” Brutus insisted. Then, a good deal less certainly, “Is it?”

  “Perhaps you’d care to elucidate the moral difference?”

  There was a long moment of awkward silence.

  “I still don’t see how holding down even two thoroughly conquered provinces will do much to enhance your reputation,” said Brutus in an equally awkward attempt to break it.

  “Explain it to him, Gisstus,” Caesar said.