The sun tries its best to push through the gray woolen blanket of clouds, but it is no match, and so lingers just out of sight as a silvery dish. The weather blows neither warm nor cool, neither wet nor dry. The rolling green Spanish hills stand out in stark contrast to the milky sky as Cassius rides through them. Titinius and Marcus follow him closely and converse in low rumbles, their horses as close side by side as the animals are willing. The sound irks Cassius to the bone and he digs in his heels harder to his horse's sides to put more distance between him and the two men.
Nearly everything that day has gotten on his nerves in some way or another; their conversation is merely an extension of it. The night before Julius had demanded that they set out before dawn and so spend the entire day searching the hills for the prime encampment spot for the soldiers he would inevitably call in the war he would inevitably have them fight. To Cassius there didn't seem to be much cause for war in Hispania; he had seen nothing but sparse huts and villages the entire morning. But that was no matter. If anyone could stoke a conflict upon long-dead coals it was Gaius Julius, that much was certain.
Without pausing, Cassius glances quickly over his shoulder and sees that Julius lingers a full two-horse's length behind Titinius and Marcus. Cassius whips back around. The man had been that way all day, gazing sullenly at the ground as they moved and loathe to make his horse go at a pace above a leisurely trot. He is tired, yes, Cassius himself is exhausted as well, but Julius had been the one who put them all in this position. Cassius would have been content to fall asleep with a draught in his hand and awake leisurely in the mid-morning, and yet he isn't the one sulking far behind the other three.
Cassius huffs and snatches the reins tighter, wondering how fast he would have to go until Julius finally snapped out of his stupor and raced to catch up with him. He doesn't get far, however, when he is stopped by Titinius shouting.
"Ho, Cassius!" he calls, waving his hand. "We'll leave Caesar behind at this pace."
Cassius snaps the reins, coming to so abrupt a halt that his horse whinnies. "Tell him to catch up then."
Titinius, a woman in temperament as far as Cassius is concerned, says forgivingly, "He looks tired."
"We're all tired. His horse looks fine to me, and he's the one who walks."
"Very well then," Titinius says, and Cassius rides off ahead again. The four ride in silence, broken only by Julius' call to turn right at a bed of rocks. His voice is weak and pitiful. In his irritation, Cassius rides faster still.
They are riding through a small, lush valley alongside a stream when Marcus suggests they give drink to their horses and themselves. All tie their horses to the trunks of strong, squat trees, and sit for a moment at the water's edge but Julius does not drink a sip. He sits on the gravel banks, twisting his empty metal cup in his hands and staring into the water. Cassius is overcome with an inexplicable urge to hold the man in the water by his neck and drown him. To distract himself, Cassius goes to a bush and picks apart its leaves for berries.
"Julius, drink," Titinius says calmly. "You know as well as I do that you'll be sick if you don't."
"It'll be no use, Titinius," Julius replies, having made no movement. "It won't stay down if I do."
Cassius crushes a spindly branch of the bush in half.
"Cassius!" Titinius calls.
The bush is just far enough from the banks that the three could be conceivably out of earshot. Cassius pretends this is the case, studying closely the branch he holds between two fingers.
"Cassius!" Titinius calls again, this time walking to where Cassius stands. He takes him by the shoulder. "We should pitch our tents here."
"It's only mid-afternoon," Cassius says coldly, and gestures to the sky. "Look, the sun still burns high behind the clouds. We still have a whole day of searching ahead of us, as prescribed by his majesty Gaius Julius."
Titinius looks taken aback by Cassius' bitterness. "Cassius, I know you do not mean such cruel words," he says, but for a moment his dark eyes flick fearfully over Cassius' face as though he is not so sure. "He is ill, and we would be cruel to force him any further onwards. This is an adequate valley for us to stay, it has water and berries for the horses, birds in the trees and fish in the streams for us."
"You treat him with too much sympathy, Titinius."
"Is that not what a friend does for another?"
"Perhaps women coo in such a way over each other! But you would be foolish to think Julius would set aside his mighty plans if it were one of us to fall ill."
"If we were as ill as he is now, I would have no doubt to the contrary," Titinius snaps. In a lower and more mellow tone, he adds. "You know of his condition, Cassius. It would be dangerous for him to continue on in this way."
"Perhaps a man of his condition chose the wrong profession as a soldier," Cassius mumbles under his breath. Titinius neither hears the words nor asks Cassius to repeat them.
"Come," Titinius says, gesturing. "Let's set up the tents."
He, Marcus, and Cassius pitch the tents and drive them with sticks into the ground, while Julius sits against the trunk of a tree, watching them with downcast eyes. Cassius admits to himself that the man doesn't look well; his eyes are ringed with the bruises of sleeplessness, his pale cheeks flush with fever, and he shivers even beneath the cloak that Marcus gave him. But he is exaggerating no doubt, playing it up just the way he does everything else. That man was nothing but a show, an unending beggar of pathos.
As Cassius watches him, Julius looks up and meets his eye. Julius gives the ghost of a smile, but nothing more. No offer to help, no apology for being an invalid, nothing. Cassius turns his attention back to the tent and grits his teeth. The work isn't hard, but he would appreciate the four of them working like equals, not feeling like a servant toiling while his master looks on. Cassius himself had been ill scarcely a week ago, in the beginnings of this trip, but he had buried his aching muscles and tender throat and pulled his weight like the rest of them. Leave it to Caesar to make a spectacle out of what was likely a head cold. Cassius pounds the stake in so hard it makes a small rip in the tent fabric.
"Careful!" Marcus cries. "This is our only tent!"
"Forgive me," Cassius says coolly. "A little too enthusiastic for my own good."
Titinius eyes him but says nothing.
After the tent is pitched, Cassius and Marcus practically carry Julius in, he leans so heavily upon them, while Titinius prepares a blanket and cloak on the ground in the tent's corner furthest from the entrance. Julius collapses upon it, coughing horribly.
"Give me a drink, Titinius!" he gasps, a pitiful sound like the voice of a little girl.
Titinius has him sip from his own cup, before saying to no one in particular, "Soon, I must search for dinner."
Caesar has lain down, trembling with shivers in the mess of cloak and blanket. His breaths come quickly and shallowly, the kind of breaths meant to stave off nausea.
"I can stay with him," Marcus says, but Titinius shakes his head. He keeps his rigid back turned to Cassius as he speaks.
"Cassius will. He volunteered earlier."
They all wait in silence for what must be hours as Julius tosses and turns in the midst of a fever dream. When he settles at last with a soft groan but does not wake, Titinius cups Cassius' shoulder and says that he and Marcus will return shortly.
Cassius nods and makes a noise in his throat. As the two men leave, Cassius turns his back on Julius, preferring instead to peer out the tent flap at the soft green grass. What a beautiful valley lay just out of reach, dark green mounds disappearing into fog and mist and separated by a narrow and tranquil stream. And yet here he was, trapped in a dirty and musty old tent, breathing air damp with the stench of sickness.
There is a stirring rustle behind him. "Cassius?"
Cassius hums his assent and turns only halfway. "I indeed."
"Water, Cassius." The words are coarse and strained, as though squeezing through a passageway too narrow for them to enter.
Cassius turns the full way. "There is none." He shrugs, showing empty palms faced upward. "Titinius and Marcus will bring some back from the river."
"Please," Julius whimpers frantically, eyes wide as though behind Cassius a gate to the Underworld had suddenly opened. He coughs and wheezes. "I can scarcely breathe, Cassius."
"I have nothing to give you."
To Cassius' disbelief, tears well up in Julius' eyes, but he is soon overtaken by more coughing. His shivers quickly turn to outright shaking, and saliva trails from his lips. For a moment Cassius' own heart pounds with a fervor; there appears nothing acted about this fit and he begins to worry. He could run now to the stream and fetch water, but that would mean leaving Caesar alone in the tent. So he merely watches, his hands twitching for the first time that day with a desire to help rather than hurt.
But just as always, he does nothing.
Titinius and Marcus return, and that night Cassius builds a fire upon which they roast two fish and a pigeon. Julius faints at the suggestion of his eating, but he drinks constantly. Cassius watches him with the softest teeth of guilt gnawing at his stomach, but it doesn't seem that Caesar has any recollection of his friend refusing him in an hour of need.
And soon, Cassius has no recollection of it, either. All memory of fear and concern for his friend as he shook in the clutch of illness were gone, replaced instead by more fires to stroke Cassius' irritability. Many times during the night, always just as Cassius slips into the twilight edge of sleep, Julius cries out, likely for the water he never seemed to remember was at his hand. Titinius especially is maddenly patient, giving into the horrendous display each time and holding Caesar's head as he drinks. Cassius could have killed them all, but instead he pokes angry holes in the dirt with his thumbnail.
This goes on for three days and three nights, and by the time the fever breaks, Cassius' head is so heavy with sleeplessness that he can barely see. But even so he does not complain, does not even breathe a word when Titinius wakes him after five restless hours of sleep and says that they should move on. Cassius knows he is stronger than Caesar, and he makes a point to demonstrate it as they clean up the tent. It is still the three of them; Caesar is still too weak to do anything but supervise as they erase all evidence of ever their being there. But in the years to come, this valley in Spain will become a point on Cassius' mental list to refute the crowd's idea that Gaius Julius was the greatest ruler Rome had ever seen. When they raise their arms and cry "Ave Caesar!", Cassius will think immediately of the man who lay on the dirt floor of a tent, crying and whimpering for a cup of water.