The Year of Confusion(91)

“So,” Caesar said, “thieves fell out?”

“That’s what happened, but we seldom see thieves on such a scale, or so strange.”

We were silent for a while, then Julia spoke up. “Uncle Caius, who is to be your heir?”

Caesar smiled with infinite weariness and great cynicism. “Let’s keep them all guessing, shall we?”

Two days later Gupta was dead in his prison cell. I was sure he’d swallowed his tongue, but Asklepiodes examined the body and was of the opinion that he had meditated himself to death. Whatever the cause, he was not a normal man. His sister, if that was what she was, escaped. One morning a dead guard was found in her cell, his clothes off and his neck broken. They should have set eunuchs to guard her. She was never seen or heard from again.

It was all so long ago. I never expected to live this long. I’ve outlived all of them. I even outlived Callista, and she lived to be a very old woman.

Of course it was Atia’s brat, Octavius, who inherited, and he showed his gratitude in a singular way. He made Caesar a god, his deification solemnly ratified by the Senate and the College of Pontifexes. In this way did Caius Julius Caesar, finally, surpass all other Romans since the time of Romulus.

These things happened in the years 709 and 710 of the City of Rome, in the dictatorship of Caius Julius Caesar.

The latter year has ever since been known as the Year of Confusion.