Dedicated to the performers in McGill University's Julius Caesar cast (spring 2009), who inspired this story.

Gaia Trebonia enjoyed her status in the senate house. She was not particularly respected, to be sure; nor was she very well known, having never volunteered a single opinion during senate sessions. She was, however, the youngest, the most feminine, and consequentially the most frequently stared-at.

Her father was a serious man who expected the same behaviour out of his children. Trebonia was not serious. This wasn't out of any desire to rebel. She simply wasn't very bright, and saw no reason to pretend she was. Why disappoint people by promising them something different than what they were going to get? She hated when people were angry with her.

Yet, she was a senator. I am a senator, she would often mutter to herself at night in bed, or in front of the mirror. I am a senator of Rome, of the Republic! She looked breathtakingly fierce in her purple-striped toga, like Diana, she imagined, with her hair that wasn't gray and her face that wasn't lined. And in her head she would muse, I have power. This noble land is at my mercy.

Never aloud, she promised herself. Those who boasted aloud were exiled, and she didn't suppose her father would be thrilled should that transpire.

But silent boasts – Trebonia was comfortable with the fact that she herself was a manifested boast. "This is my daughter" – her father's voice, of course – "who is twenty years old, unimportant, and unremarkable in any way. Yet she is a Senator. She has power. This noble land is at her mercy. And why? Because I am suffect consul, and if I wish to install an unconditional supporter in the senate house, I have that power!"

And really, how could anyone fault him that when it was an accepted fact that no one held any power but Julius Caesar?

Trebonia supposed her father and Caesar were friends. It was Caesar, after all, who had appointed her father in the first place, and they conversed easily at parties. Obviously, Caesar had the advantage of status, and nobody was closer to him than Marc Antony.

Antony.

If Trebonia was honest with herself – and she saw no reason not to be – it was because of Antony that she enjoyed her status in the senate house. For Antony was not a politician, but a soldier and a reveler, and in the senate house, there were no gilded ingénues to amuse him, no fair Gallias or brown Nubians in bondage. There were no actresses or expensive skinny whores, nobody for Antony to stare at but for one: Trebonia.

And stare he did, with his satyric grin that made her grin in kind, his piercing violent eyes whose gaze was impossible to hold, his war-hewen arms evident even through the loose linen that made her imagine and blush. Did he want her? Trebonia pored over this question at night with a strip of sheet pressed between her thighs.

The obvious answer was a "yes", though a conditional one. Trebonia had been to more than a few senate parties where, with the absence of musicians or dancers to pinch, the pinches had landed instead on her own buttocks. But of course, under her father's unyielding gaze it was necessary that such pinches remained occasional, secret, and not reacted to.

So Antony wanted her as he wanted an untouchable whore. This did not bother Trebonia.

Her father frequently took wine at night with his colleagues, and he expected her to make a short appearance. Lately, though, as Caius Cassius' visits had begun to increase, Trebonius had been ordering her to remain away. This suited Trebonia, for Cassius was shifty and angry and always ignored her anyway.

It occurred to her that something conspiratorial might be afoot, but instinct cautioned her to refrain from revealing her suspicion. Even during her short time in politics she had witnessed more than a few exiles and executions and did not wish to be added to the number. If Caesar ordered, not even suffect consul could hope to overturn. And though Trebonius loved his children, he was a serious man.

Thirteen days into the third month, Cassius visited again after an absence of a week. Trebonia had been passing through the atrium as he entered, so she engaged in the expected courtesy conversation – a difficult task, due to Cassius' burning eyes, shifting hands and stiff tongue – and turned to leave, but her father blocked her exit.

"Tonight, Gaia, we require your presence."

Unsure, Trebonia followed the two not into the dining room, as she expected, nor the garden, but her father's private quarters. Servants brought wine and were dismissed, the door was locked, and curtains were drawn over the door and window.

Three chairs were positioned around a small table, and Trebonia reluctantly took the third. Her suspicions of conspiracy were confirmed now, and as her heart began to pound, she fought preemptively to prevent her lip from trembling.

"Trebonius" – it was customary that female senators were referred to by the male variant of their names – "Trebonius, your hand is required in our conspiracy."

And there it was, point-blank, like a slap in the face. "Your hand is required."

Trebonius surveyed her sternly. "Gaia, accept." Desperate, she shot a helpless glance at him. Her bottom lip tensed. "Gaia, Cassius is offering you a chance to aid in saving the republic. You must accept."

Trebonia spoke, mainly to keep her lip still. "What conspiracy? What must I do?"

Her father glared.

"You will know nothing until you accept," spat Cassius.

"Gaia…"

It was the warning tone in her father's voice that decided it, for in that moment, Trebonius was not the man she had lived with her whole life; he was the man who had stilled dozens of Gallic hearts and had once snapped the neck of a Greek slave in front of her.

"I accept," she whispered.

Before she could react, Cassius had grabbed her fingers, pinned her forearm next to his body with his elbow, and slashed the heel of her hand with a tiny blade. She gasped as the blood began to flow and instinctively struggled to pull back, but Cassius' thin arm held more strength than it showed. He used the knife to pry open a similar wound on his own right hand and pressed their twin gashes together.

"I invoke Pluto in our pledge of conspiracy," he intoned. "Let us be true and constant. Let us work for the good of the Republic. Let us restore peace and prosperity." Mechanically, he released her hand and began to wrap his own in a length of linen pulled from the folds of his toga. Trebonius took hers and did the same.

Trebonia's lip was now trembling unceasingly, to the point where she did not believe she could stop it.

"Now you are one of the faction," said Cassius. "You may know."

The questions she had had were quite forgotten.

"The plebeians mean to crown Caesar as King. This cannot happen. The Republic will fall, Rome will fail and we shall never be free."

Tenderly, Trebonius tied off the linen and cupped his daughter's hand in his own. His eyes were soft and proud.

This moment between father and daughter, predictably, went unnoticed by Cassius. "We mean to perform a tyrannicide imminently, on the senate floor."

Dully, Trebonia raised her eyes to meet Cassius'. "Kill him?" Cassius nodded. She turned back towards her father. "And I am to work in your place?"

"Gaia, be assured, I am as much a member as you are." He revealed an identical scabbed line across his own right hand that Trebonia had not noticed; she supposed Cassius had spent his rhetoric already on her father. "But they do not need a useless old man. You, with your youth and capability, are what they require."

For a moment, Trebonia meant to mutter an assent, but realized the reddening bandage spoke for her.

"Trebonius." After a few seconds, she realized Cassius was addressing her. "I must tell you, we are singularly devoted to the goal and value secrecy above all. We are also each of us powerful and wealthy, as you know. If word of your disloyalty reaches our ears – and if it exists, it will – we shall remove the risk."

Trebonia gasped once again and glanced at her father, who nodded grimly.

"Your first test of loyalty will take place tomorrow night. We assemble promptly at half past the stroke of two at the villa of the Junii. Be not late, or we shall assume you have turned."

Tense, Trebonia bowed her head. Trebonius cleared his throat.

"Cassius, I believe we are done. If you will with me to the front door, we have more to discuss. Gaia, to bed with you."

Trebonius locked the door behind them as they exited. Obediently, Trebonia went forth in the direction of her room as the men paced and muttered towards the front doors. She didn't remove her dress, though, or brush out her hair; instead she sat staring at her pale, trembling reflection.

"I am a senator," she tried.

A knock preceded her father into the room. Respectfully, she stood as he walked toward her with open arms. They embraced, a gesture that had been unfamiliar to them since Trebonia's childhood.

"I am honoured to be your father."

Trebonia tried not to sob into his tunic.

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