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Marcus Antonius stood and waited outside the tent of Gaius Julius Caesar. He was dressed for battle, though it had been some time since he’d fought in one, with his expensive leather and fine red sagum draped over his shoulder, fastened with elegantly wrought bronze. The show was more for the men who saw him riding to the tent than for Caesar himself; he might have shown up in a laurel crown or in absolutely nothing and Caesar wouldn’t have given it a thought. He had been away for many months and the men would need to learn to respect him again, plebeian birth and all.
“Will he be much longer?” he asked one of the slaves, somewhat irritably. He had a temper he’d never learned to control and the autumn chill was starting to set in in this godforsaken land. He momentarily wondered if Caesar would even want to see him again; had it been too long? Soon enough, however, Roman pride set in and he refused to entertain the notion any longer.
Some time later (he had no idea how long it had been, but the sun had finished setting and the slaves refused to answer him anymore) the tent flap was held open and Antony was allowed to enter, and there, sat at a writing desk, sat Caesar.
He took a moment to look up, but he did set down his stylus and stand. He was not a tall man, nor a particularly handsome one, but he had an undeniable presence. There was dignity in the straight length of his nose, eloquence in every line of his mouth, grace and fire all at once in his eyes. His patrician lineage was carved into every feature as though he were marble, noble portrait made flesh. By comparison, Antony was almost twenty years his junior and not nearly so beautifully made. Those who would praise him said he had the visage of a true Roman, while his detractors might have called it coarse and unrefined: olive skin that tanned in the sun, broad hands that fit so neatly around a gladius (and, he tried not to remember, in another life might have fit just as neatly around farming tools), deep brown eyes like the Tuscan hills in summer. If there was anything of Caesar’s elegance in him, it was in the set of his jaw and the lilt in his brow, the strength of his posturing and the angle of his chin. It was in his belief in his position, if not his blood.
The two men looked at each other for a minute in silence. Antony wore his duty the same way he wore his armor: with power and reckless abandon with an underlying vein of insecurity. Caesar wore both with an ease that Antony could never pretend to. “Antonius,” he said with some stiffness.
“Caesar.” He saluted and ducked into a sort of bow, and then their eyes met again and Caesar’s solemn expression crumbled into laughter and Antony cracked a grin to match and there was a palpable relief in the air as they embraced. “Have you missed me terribly?”
“More than you know, Antony. Conversation is horribly dull. Intellectual, to be sure, but indomitably dull. The one bright spot these last months in social matters is that scrap of a thing by Catullus, about napkins–”
“Have you got any wine?” Antony interrupted. Caesar raised a brow but waved to a slave for the pitcher. Antony took a sip and made a face. “Well watered, is it?”
“I do have a war on, if you hadn’t noticed. I’ve no time for drunkenness. I suppose you might have noticed the war if you hadn’t spent so much time with your head up your–”
“Yes, how is the war these days?” The interruptions were common. Caesar had long since learned to tolerate them.
“Dull. It is all so terribly repetitive. Yes, we have won every battle we have fought. Absolutely delightful. I’m not so ambitious as they think, I could use an end to this war and a return to Rome. Magna Mater, give me anything but war!”
Both knew he didn’t truly mean it, but when the battle-fever wore off, the fatigue set in, and Antony was not surprised that temptation of a soft bed, a hot bath, and rich food would touch even Caesar. “Now, don’t let Mars catch you saying that. What you ought to do is pray to Mars for swift victory and pray to the Mother for sweet wine and frisky women.”
“Pray to the Mother for women? Yes, well, I have no plans on becoming a lion these days, Antony.”
He waved his hand then. “The Mother or whomever. I don’t pray, I don’t know. Bacchus and Venus, then.”
That provoked a thoughtful look. “Venus, hm… I have no need of her at the moment.”
“Things going so well with… what’s your wife’s name?”
“Wife?” He looked surprised. “Oh. Calpurnia.”
“And who’s the other one?”
“Servilia.” He said her name with quite a bit more fondness.
“Or have you found some new girls around here? Must be slim pickings once you take the prostitutes out of the mix, but surely some of them have to worth it. You’re Julius Caesar. You could sway Diana herself to sleep with you.”
Caesar for a moment looked as if he intended to rebuke Antony, but then a sly grin settled on his face and he sat across the desk from Antony, who kicked his feet up onto it. “Well, I suppose you’d be interested in this one girl, daughter of the local chieftain. She’s got some gods-unpronounceable name, but the eyes on her…”
Anyone sitting outside the tent that night would have heard many things. Not state secrets, though perhaps some inside knowledge that should not best be shared. Not even Caesar’s plans for the next battle. What they would have heard, mostly, were two men gossiping like fishwives and gales of laughter, deep and rich. More than anything they would have noticed that Caesar was smiling for the first time since Antony left four months again.