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It was Trebonius’s fault.
Really, it was Brutus’ fault, and Cassius’, and Caesar’s, and probably Antony’s too when he got down to the details of it. But for the sake of simplicity, it was Trebonius’s fault that Antony’s hands were covered with Caesar’s blood.
It had been four hours since Antony had burst into the theater and seen Caesar laid out at the foot of Pompey’s statue, and he still hadn’t washed his hands. Every time he thought about it, nausea rose slippery up his throat and he had to swallow down the desire to vomit. So his hands remained bloodied.
Fulvia took one look at him when he returned home and snapped, “Wash your hands before you eat.”
“I’m not eating,” Antony responded just as acerbically. They were both like that- stressful situations made them lash out and cling to the things they could control.
So Antony sat in the atrium and waited. And waited. And waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, until a boy rushed through the doors, out of breath and carrying a note.
“They’re on the Capitoline and-”
“Give me that.” Antony snatched it from the boy's hands.
“All the doors are locked, and nobody will leave their houses. It’s dead silent in the street, there are gladiators everywhere, and the places where there are people, there are riots, and-”
Antony ignored the boy and scanned the letter. “Bastards,” he said, and the force of his own hatred surprised him.
The messenger boy gulped. Antony hadn’t realized he was still standing there, but there he was, like a statue, looking up at Antony.
“What are you still doing here?” Antony asked.
The boy fled.
Belatedly, Antony realized that he must have been waiting for some coin, but he was well and truly shaken from the events of the day, and could not even fathom such things anymore. He hoped that somebody else in the house had the presence of mind to give the boy what he deserved.
---
Trebonius was trying to pull Antony aside, and Antony was trying to get the senate meeting to start so he could go home and sleep before the hottest hour of the day.
The meeting was already going to start late, so why was whatever Trebonius had to talk about so urgent? They could speak privately after the day’s tasks were done.
“Trebonius, we can-”
“I need to talk to you.”
“ Now? ”
“Yes, now, Antony.” Trebonius grabbed Antony’s arm with a surprising amount of force and led him away from the consul’s chairs, and before Antony could protest, they were already halfway out the doors and into the clamor of the streets.
“Trebonius, do we really need to-”
“ Yes. ”
“Fine,” said Antony. “I give up. What’s so urgent that we can’t talk later?”
“Run,” Trebonius said.
“What?”
“Run. Go away. Get far away from here, Antony.”
“I don’t understand-”
“You will.”
“Is it-” Antony wondered if he’d been implicated in some plot. If the senate was finally going to vote to exile him. Whatever it was, Antony was sure he wouldn’t run from it. He wasn’t the kind to run from battle.
“It’s not what you think it is.”
Antony didn’t even know what he thought it was.
“I’m not going to run away, Trebonius, so-”
“Please. I want you alive, Antony,” Trebonius said, gripping Antony’s arm hard enough to bruise. “If not for yourself, for me. Run. Now , before they change their minds. You’ll understand in time, I promise, but you have to leave now.”
Antony was never the kind of man to follow orders without question, so he shoved Trebonius away violently, and before the other man even had time to react, Antony was back inside the senate house.
And all he saw was blood.
---
“Bring me Iulus!” he called as he strapped his armor on.
“Where are you going?” Fulvia asked. She made no move to hand him the boy.
“I’m going to get those motherfucking bastards off the Capitoline and fix their mess.”
“And my son?”
“He’s mine too, woman,” Antony said. He reached for the boy in Fulvia’s arms, but she was quicker and pulled away from him.
“You’re not sending him out as a sacrifice. We’re not barbarians.”
“Cassius wants a hostage,” Antony said, reaching for Iulus again. The boy was bawling now, shaken up from being passed between hands too many times.
“You’re not giving my son as a hostage to those traitors,” Fulvia said.
“I am, and I will.”
“I’ll slit his throat first,” Fulvia said.
“You won’t.”
“Come and find out if I’m bluffing, then.”
Antony weighed the situation in his mind. On one hand, this was all happening because Fulvia wanted to protect the boy, but on the other hand, he never underestimated her- she was too dangerous for that, and he never forgot that she and Clodia ran her late husband's campaign- and she had never stepped down from the political stage since.
“Who else should I send?” Antony tried for.
“Yourself.”
“They won’t take me.”
“Oh? But your son?”
Antony ground his teeth in frustration. “They need someone helpless to send.”
“You’re pretty helpless most of the time. Like when Caesar died, for example, and you did nothing to stop it. You don’t have a single scar from today, and-”
Antony stalked towards Fulvia. “You think I wouldn’t have protected him with my life? You think I don’t want to burn this entire place to the ground because Rome is the only pyre that’s worthy of that man? You think he wasn’t my second soul, my second self, the only person I would follow unquestioningly anywhere? You think-” He stopped, realizing he had given away more than he had planned to.
“I don’t give a fuck what you had going on with Caesar, you don’t get to send my son to his death for an already dead man.”
“He’ll live.”
“You don’t know that. Start a war, Antony, burn Rome to the ground, become a king. But I am a mother before I am a wife or an advisor.”
“Do all women go soft when they bear children? I would have thought more of you, Fulvia.”
“Does this look soft to you?” Fulvia’s lips curved into a sneer. Antony had never seen someone look so menacing while bouncing an infant on their hip. “You’ll destroy the world for Caesar, and I’ll let Rome fall to pieces for Iulus. Which one of us is playing the woman here?”
The underlying meaning hit Antony harder than the insinuation that he was sleeping with Caesar. I kept Iulus alive. Where is Caesar now?
“Keep his name out of your mouth.”
“Make me.”
“Don’t doubt me woman, I-”
“I married Clodius and stayed with him for ten years. You’ve never once even hit me.” Fulvia scoffed. “Go ahead, prove you’re not a tamed horse, the way you’ve always acted. Make me a woman, and I might treat you like a man.”
Before Antony even registered what he was doing his hand had connected with Fulvia’s cheek. Hot shame flooded Antony the moment he saw Fulvia fall to her knees, a bruise blooming high on her cheekbones. “Shit, I-”
“Try again,” Fulvia said, getting to her feet. Her expression was level, and her eyes didn’t even water. She held Iulus at her bosom, protected from any blows she might suffer, and looked satisfied- almost proud of Antony.
Antony tamped down the disgust at himself, all the questions he had about her previous marriage, in order to think about the matter at hand. “It’s the only way to keep Rome intact.”
“ Fuck Rome.”
“We’re losing time talking, Fulvia, I need to go. ”
“Go without your son, then. He hasn’t signed up to fight for the army yet.”
“No, he’s only the most important person in Rome right now.”
“Funny, I thought that was Caesar up until this morning. Are you going to let another lynchpin of the state die? You didn’t do so well protecting the last one.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, your husbands don’t have a wonderful track record for surviving either. Are you going to cause a third death, or are you going to give me my son?”
“I didn’t particularly care for either Curio or Clodius, and I don’t care for you either. Go ahead, die. It’ll make things easier for me.”
“He’ll be safe,” said Antony. “He has to be, for the conspirators to get off the Capitoline untouched.”
“I don’t want my son to pass between men who still have blood on their hands from the murder they just committed,” Fulvia said. She stared levelly at Antony, waiting for his response.
“Him or you,” he finally said.
“Send Antonia.”
“She’s too old for a nanny and too young to go alone.”
Antony and Fulvia stared at each other, neither breaking the stalemate for a moment. Then Fulvia shoved Iulus into Antony’s arms. “If he dies, I’ll cut out your tongue.”
“If he dies, I’ll be dead too.”
“Even better.”
---
Antony was kneeling over Caesar as quickly as possible, heedless of the blood that stained his toga as he knelt. Caesar had tried to cover his face, but he hadn’t had the time. His eyes were wide open and vacant, and for a moment Antony was uncomfortably reminded of Gaul, of all the people he had made look just like the corpse of Gaius Julius Caesar when he was in a battle.
He reminded himself that this wasn’t a battlefield, and Caesar wasn’t a soldier when he was killed. He was a civilian, unarmed, and unable to defend himself from all the senators that had brought knives into the senate with them, flaunting the most ancient laws- the ones not even broken when the Gracchi were killed.
For the first time since running into the room, Antony noticed that he wasn’t alone. Brutus stood before him, a bloody dagger in his hand and framing him like loyal mutts were Cassius and Decimus Brutus.
“You killed him.” It wasn’t a question.
Brutus nodded very slightly, never blinking.
“ Why?”
Cassius answered him. “It’s what happens to usurpers.”
“There was nothing to usurp!” Antony screamed, and the entire senate, both those in and those out of the conspiracy, erupted into chaos.
As Antony was shoved back and forth in the rush out of the theater, he wondered why he had screamed. He knew that the senators were only waiting for direction; he failed to give those directions, and now he paid the price for losing his composure.
He was glad nobody in the crowd was looking at him anymore, because tears were streaming from his eyes like he was a woman in mourning, and he could not be seen like that- not even when contemplating the body of his master.
He made his way home in a trance, where Fulvia was waiting for him. Somehow, she had already heard the news of the murder, which didn’t surprise Antony at all.
“Come inside,” she said, “And for heaven’s sake, wash those hands of yours.”
---
Antony had never hated anybody in his life more than he hated Cassius when his son was brought to the conspirators on the Capitoline. He didn’t think it was possible for him to hate anybody more than he hated those three men that had engineered Caesar's death.
Antony was never good at putting his feelings aside for the sake of the Republic. It simply wasn’t in his nature, because to him, the Republic could not be separated from the people who ran it, who lived in it, and who fought for it.
But for the sake of peace, he had to try.
Antony wasn’t very good at peace either, it seemed. Lepidus had offered to host Brutus, so Antony was leading Cassius back to his own house to sup, Iulus lodged protectively in the crook of Antony’s arm. Iulus was no longer crying, but Antony still had trouble looking at Cassius without wanting to stab him through the stomach. Just like Cassius had done to Caesar.
“He’s a healthy looking boy,” Cassius said, the first words spoken between them since Iulus had first been returned to Antony.
“Shut the fuck up,” Antony said.
They proceeded to the house in silence.
When the door-slave let them in, Fulvia was standing in the atrium, a dagger in one hand and a baby blanket in the other, her cheek still red from the disagreement that morning. When she saw Iulus was alive, she dropped the dagger on the floor, and pulled Iulus violently out of Antony’s hands. Then she punched him in the stomach.
It took Antony a few seconds to catch his breath after he registered the blow, and by that point Cassius had already stepped far enough back that he wasn’t in range for Fulvia to hit him too.
“Don’t ever,” Fulvia said, “Hit me again.”
“You asked me to!” Antony said, once he had caught his breath.
“I want my son and my husband safe,” Fulvia said. “If I have to train you like a dog the same as I did with my last two husbands, I will, and I’m able. Don’t forget that when I told you to hit me, you listened. You were a creature built to obey people.”
Antony was uncomfortably aware that Cassius was standing right behind him, hearing this entire conversation. He was fine being emasculated, but in front of the enemy seemed a bit much to him.
“Can we talk in private, later, when-”
“I have half a mind to claw Cassius’s eyes out with my nails.” Cassius took another step back.
“Dogs,” Fulvia said, “Don’t get to choose where they’re trained. Go.” She pointed at the door to the dining room, and all gods be cursed for it, Antony went, Cassius following at his heel.
“I can see how she ran Clodius’s campaign so effectively,” Cassius said once they were out of Fulvia’s earshot.
“If you breathe a word of what you heard her say, I can’t guarantee your life will be spared again.”
That made Cassius laugh. “I have bigger problems than what you and your wife do. Like Rome, for example.”
Antony was relieved by the change of subject, but at the same time he was surprised the two of them were even able to have a civil conversation, after everything that had happened. He found he wasn’t angry at Cassius, exactly, he was angry at the whole lot of them. Trebonius, for distracting him from the murder. Brutus, for allowing it to happen. Decimus, for being a turncoat, and even Caesar himself, for attending the senate meeting despite the omens. He was upset about Iulus, of course, but he knew as well as any of them that a hostage was required. His son was only the most logical choice.
“Wine,” Antony said, breaking the silence. He motioned for a slave to pour them both a glass, lightly watered. He did not want to be sober for whatever was coming next.
Cassius frowned at how little water was added to the wine, but accepted the cup anyway, draining half of it in one sip. Antony supposed Cassius also needed relief from the events of the day.
“So,” Antony started, “Rome.”
“What about it?”
“How do you plan to deal with the second civil war in less than five years?”
Cassius frowned. “We’re not in a civil war.”
“Of course we are.”
“I see no legions.”
“They’re not wearing uniforms, but they’re here, in every bar and house and store, there are veterans, just waiting for a general to follow.”
“They’re waiting to be told not to fight,” Cassius snapped.
“Someone’s going to tell them to fight,” Antony said, “You know it as well as I.”
“And what, you want to become a second Caesar?”
“Do you have a dagger waiting for me if I do?”
“If you plan to make yourself a tyrant, then yes, I do. ”
“That’s good,” Antony said. “Political violence has always gone so well at restoring peace in the past, you know.”
Cassius just glared at him. Antony continued.
“Everything got so much better when Clodius was murdered on the Appian way, and certainly nothing bad happened when the Egyptians decided to hand us Pompey’s head on a silver platter. Oh! And the Gracchi too, that was a wonderful decision on everyone’s part. Of course we can’t forget all the things Sulla and Marius and Cinna did, and-”
“Shut up. ”
“What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you killed the most important man in Rome in cold blood at the foot of the statue of his rival? Did you think there would be peace?”
Cassius was silent.
“I asked,” said Antony, “If you thought there would be peace.”
“I thought things would get better.”
“ How, Cassius? How would things get better? There’s just another corpse in the forum and another man to mourn. More soldiers will die. More people will rise to fill the power vacuum. Do you think that’s better?”
“The senate will rise to fill the power vacuum it abandoned.”
“No it won’t. You know that, so why pretend otherwise?” Antony paused. “How did you convince Brutus to do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“He never did have the balls to orchestrate an assassination. Tell me how you convinced him to lead.”
“I didn’t have to convince him. He and I both knew Caesar was dangerous.”
“Give it up. What did you say to him?”
“Maybe he came to me. Maybe you don’t know Brutus as well as you think you do.”
Antony considered that, and then considered the fact that Cassius was a terrible liar. “I’ve always been able to read you better than you read me,” he said. “Did you lie to him? Bully him? Fuck him?”
“I told Brutus that Caesar had made himself a king.” Cassius fell silent for a long moment, until prompted to speak by Antony.
“And?”
“And I told him that the killing of a king is a pious action.”
“And?”
“And what?” Cassius asked, glaring. “I told you what I said. There’s nothing more.”
“What did he say to it?”
“He agreed with me.”
“Bullshit.”
“He did. ”
“I know what happened, Cassius,” Antony said, leaning forward. “I know you better than I know myself.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because I want you to tell me.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything. We were friends when we were little, you knew Brutus ten years ago before we all picked our sides. You knew me even less than you knew him-”
“And I was your only friend for three full years before you met Brutus-”
“And after I met him, we barely talked.”
“I wonder why that is,” Antony said.
“Because you’re an ass.”
“But I still heard every one of your secrets for three years-”
“I didn’t tell you everything-”
“You might as well have, you’ve never been able to lie-”
“This isn't about Brutus.” Cassius took a deep breath. “This isn’t about Brutus, okay?”
“We weren’t talking about Brutus,” Antony said quietly. “We were talking about you.” And there it was, hanging between them. You were never a full person without Brutus there.
“It’s about Caesar. Not me.”
“It’s about all of Rome, Cassius. What do you do now?”
“What do I do? I have no power here.”
“All soldiers say that. Do you think Brutus is going to make a choice on what to do now? Lepidus? The real powers of both our sides are sitting on this couch.”
Cassius ground his jaw down so hard that Antony was sure he must have cracked a tooth. “Caesar is declared a tyrant,” he finally said. “That’s non-negotiable.”
“But all his previous acts are upheld.”
“We can’t-”
“That’s non-negotiable too. Or do you want to lose your standing as a praetor?”
“You have to pick a new co-consul. One from the liberators.”
“Too far. I pick a new co-consul, Lucius Antonius.”
“It’ll start to look like a monarchy if you pick your brother.”
“Nothing will get done if I pick you.”
“I didn’t tell you to pick me as your co-consul-”
“You might as well have, you’re as power-hungry as always-”
“This isn’t about me, it’s about all of Rome-”
“And finally you’re speaking sense,” said Antony. “It’s not about you. It’s about the whole damn republic, and if I pick a conspirator to be my co-consul, the people of Rome are going to revolt. I don’t think you understand how much they loved Caesar, Cassius. The tide has to be tipped towards my side, or the people will riot.”
“Fine,” said Cassius.
“I wouldn’t go home tonight, either,” Antony said. “Odds are that your house is already aflame.” He lounged on the couch, waiting for Cassius to speak the inevitable. Antony would be a good host, but only if asked.
“Can I stay tonight,” Cassius finally said, when he realized that Antony wouldn’t open the conversation.
“Of course. What kind of a host would I be if I didn’t offer you guest rooms?”
“You didn’t offer. I asked.”
“And I said you could stay. Be a good guest, and I won’t be a bad host.”
“Are you threatening-”
“I’m not threatening anything,” Antony said. “You have a better chance of staying alive here than you do by going anywhere else, so right now, you’re a beggar. What leverage do you have?”
Cassius stood up. “Take me to the guest rooms.”
“I could turn all of Rome against you in less than an hour,” Antony said. “But I won’t. Because no matter how much you think the man you killed was a tyrant, we who carried out his orders only wanted peace. And how much worse is that for you?” Antony lowered his voice. “When his will is read tomorrow in the forum- and it will be, the people will demand it- you’ll find him generous, even in death. I’d bet my life on that. And you will look like a fool.”
“The guest rooms.”
“Right. Remember what I told you,” Antony said, as he led Cassius towards the back hall.
“Remember that I don’t give a shit,” said Cassius, who couldn’t bear not to have the last word.
“You’ll care,” Antony said. “Soon.”