LITMIR.BIZ

      Octavian woke in the late morning, feeling as if he had drunk bad red wine. His head pounded and his clenching stomach made him weak, so he had to lean against a wall and gather his strength as Fidolus brought out his horse. He wanted to vomit to clear his head, but there was nothing to bring up and he had to struggle not to heave dryly, making his head swell and hammer with the effort. He knew he needed a run to force blood back into his limbs, to force out the shame that made him burn. As the house slave went back inside for the saddle, Octavian pounded his thigh with a closed fist, harder and harder until he could see flashing lights whenever he closed his eyes. His weak flesh! He had been so careful after the first time, telling himself that he had caught some infection in a scratch, or some illness from the sour air in Egypt. His own men had found him insensible then, but they had assumed he’d drunk himself unconscious and saw nothing too odd in that, with Caesar feting the Egyptian queen along the Nile.

      He could feel a bruise begin to swell the muscle of his leg. Octavian wanted to shout out his anger. To be let down by his own body! Julius had taught him it was just a tool, like any other, to be trained and brought to heel like a dog or a horse. Yet now his two friends had seen him while he was … absent. He muttered a prayer to the goddess Carna that his bladder had not released this second time. Not in front of them.

      ‘Please,’ he whispered to the deity of health. ‘Cast it out of me, whatever it is.’

      He had woken clean and in rough blankets, but his memory ceased with the scroll from Rome. He could not take in the new reality. His mentor, his protector, had been killed in the city, his life ripped from him where he should have been safest. It was impossible.

      Fidolus passed the reins into his hands, looking worriedly at the young man who stood shaking in the morning sun.

      ‘Are you well, master? I can fetch a doctor from the town if you are ill.’

      ‘Too much drink, Fidolus,’ Octavian replied.

      The slave nodded, smiling in sympathy.

      ‘It doesn’t last long, master. The morning air will clear your head and Atreus is feeling his strength today. He will run to the horizon if you let him.’

      ‘Thank you. Are my friends awake?’ Octavian watched closely for a sign that the slave knew something about his collapse, but the expression remained innocent.

      ‘I heard someone moving about. Shall I call for them to join you?’

      Octavian mounted, landing heavily and making the mount snort and skitter across the yard. Fidolus began to move to take the reins but Octavian waved him off.

      ‘Not now. I’ll see them when I come back.’

      He dug in his heels and the horse lunged forward, clearly happy to be out of its stall with the prospect of a run. Octavian saw movement in the doorway of the house and heard Agrippa’s deep voice hail him. He didn’t turn. The clatter of hooves on stone was loud and he could not face the man, not yet.

      Horse and rider surged into a canter through the gate. Agrippa came skidding into the yard behind him, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. He stared after Octavian for a while, then yawned.

      Maecenas came out, still wearing the long shift he slept in.

      ‘You let him go alone?’ he said.

      Agrippa grinned at seeing the Roman noble so tousled, his oiled hair sticking out at all angles.

      ‘Let him work up a sweat,’ he said. ‘If he’s ill, he needs it. The gods alone know what he’s going to do now.’

      Maecenas noticed Fidolus, who had stayed back with his head down.

      ‘Get my horse ready, Fidolus – and the carthorse that suffers under my friend here.’

      The slave hurried back into the stable block, greeted with whinnies of excitement from the two horses in the gloom. The Romans exchanged a glance.

      ‘I think I fell asleep about an hour ago,’ Maecenas said, rubbing his face with his hands. ‘Have you thought what you’re going to do now?’

      Agrippa

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