As the priestess unbound the will of Caesar from its box and lead straps, Octavian continued to glance back at the crowd. He recognised some faces he thought might be senators, but in cloaks and mantles against the morning cold, he could not be certain. He had been away too long.
Agrippa nudged him to pay attention as the priestess scanned the first tablet, a line appearing on her forehead. When she looked up, she seemed to stare straight at Octavian. He waited, his heart thumping painfully in his chest and his mouth drying, so that he ran his tongue around the inside to free his lips.
‘“For the honour of Rome, hear the will of Gaius Julius Caesar,”’ she began.
Octavian clenched his fists, hardly able to stand the tension. He felt Gracchus look over at him, the man’s expression unreadable.
‘“Gaius Octavian is my heir. I acknowledge him as blood of my blood and, by these words, I claim and adopt him as my son.”’
Octavian felt a great shudder run through him and he would have staggered if Agrippa hadn’t put out an arm. His hearing vanished in the pounding of his pulse and when he felt an itch on his face, he scrubbed at it, leaving a red welt on his skin. It was too much to take in and he hardly heard the lines that followed, watching the priestess of Vesta hand down the tablets as she read them out. At one point, the men and women in the crowd cheered raucously and Octavian could not understand why. He was numb with emotion, overwhelmed at the hand of Caesar reaching out from death to touch him.
The face of Gracchus was the picture of sourness as he considered the fortune his patron could have had, with a tenth of Caesar’s wealth. It was almost a legend, how much gold the leader of Rome had brought back from his conquests, at one point flooding so much of it into the city that it devalued the currency by almost a third. Octavian was the heir to all of it and Gracchus decided on the instant to be a more amenable companion. He would never again stand in the presence of such wealth, he was certain. Reaching out, he was about to clap Octavian on the back, but Maecenas caught the wrist and just smiled at him.
‘Let’s not make a show, not here,’ Maecenas said in a low voice. ‘We are unknown to the crowd and that is the way it should stay until we have had a little time to think about all this.’
Gracchus forced a sickly grin and nodded, jerking back his arm from a grip of surprising strength. He had not seen Maecenas spar or train in their rush from the coast and he never noticed the short blade in the noble’s other hand as he let go, or the fact that Agrippa was behind him, ready to hammer him into the ground at the first sign of aggression.
The list of clients and individual bequests seemed to take an age. Octavian glowered in disgust when he heard the name of Brutus and the huge sum of gold left to him. There was no mention of Cleopatra and the son that she had borne. All Maecenas’ friends knew was that she had left Rome after the assassination, presumably to go home to Egypt.
‘“The rest is the property of Gaius Octavian, adopted as my son, into the house of Julii. I leave Rome in your hands.”’
Octavian felt his eyes sting. It was too easy to imagine Julius sitting in some quiet room, writing the words in wax, with the future laid out before him. Octavian began to wish he was alive for the thousandth time since hearing the news, then wrestled himself free of the thought as it formed. There was no going back, no wishing away of the new Rome.
The priestess handed down the last tablet and saw it placed with reverence back into the chest. One of her acolytes put out a hand and she stepped down, her part finished. Octavian looked around him as the crowd exhaled held breaths and began to talk. He saw Mark Antony nod to his men and begin to move.
‘Time to go, I think,’ Maecenas said softly by his ear. ‘We can use the house of Brucellus this evening. It is untouched by the riots and he promises to provide a fine meal for us. There is a lot to discuss.’
Octavian felt his friend’s hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him away from the temple of Vesta. He resisted, suddenly sick of being made to walk in secrecy in his own city.
‘Priestess!’ he shouted, without warning.
Maecenas stiffened at his side.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed. ‘Half the Senate have spies here! Let me get you away first and then we can decide what to do.’
Octavian shook his head.
‘Priestess!’ he called again.
Quintina Fabia paused in the act of accepting a mantle of rich cloth from one of her followers. She looked around, finding him from the reaction of the crowd as they stared.
‘I am Gaius Octavian, named as heir in the will you have just read,’ he said clearly.
Maecenas groaned, keeping his dagger ready in case one of the crowd attacked them. None of them knew their enemies in the city, not yet.
‘What do you want of me?’ she said. It was rumoured that she had been an actress in her youth. Whether that was true or not, she had a performer’s instinct, ignoring the offered cloak and stepping back onto the low platform.
‘I wish to record a change of name with you, as the keeper of records.’
The priestess cocked her head slightly as she thought. The young man she faced in the crowd had just been given incredible wealth, if he could live long enough to lay hands on it. She glanced over to where Mark Antony watched the scene playing out between them. Her first instinct had been to tell Octavian to wait for an audience, but under that sulphurous gaze, the corner of her mouth quirked.
‘What name would suit the heir to Rome?’ she said.
‘Only one,’ Octavian replied. ‘Gaius Julius Caesar, that I may honour the man whose name I will bear.’
Quintina Fabia smiled wider at that, delighted at the bravado of the young Roman. His friends stood in shock around him, while she wanted to applaud.
‘You will need two witnesses of good standing to swear to your identity,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Come and see me at noon, in the House of Virgins.’ She paused again, watching Mark Antony from under her lashes. The consul was standing like a stunned ox.
‘Welcome home, Octavian,’ she said.
He nodded, mute. Away on his right, the consul began to stride off and Octavian turned to follow him.
‘Consul!’ he shouted.
Maecenas put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t do anything rash, Octavian,’ he murmured. ‘Let him go.’
Octavian brushed off the hand and kept going.
‘He was Caesar’s friend,’ he said. ‘He will hear me.’
‘Agrippa!’ Maecenas called.
‘Here.’
The big man was already moving, pushing through the packed crowd after Octavian. With a curse, the legionary Gracchus followed in their wake.
As Mark Antony watched the priestess talk with the young man, he shook his head, feeling sweat break out on his skin. It was too much to take in. The Senate had summoned him for a meeting at noon and he wanted to bathe first, so that he could face them fresh and clean. He turned away, his lictors and centurions all around him. He heard his title called across the forum but ignored it. He had barely gone twenty paces before the bristling awareness of his men made his temper rise. The group of four were pushing