Enforcèd Ceremony

"I denied you not."

"You did."

"I did not, Brutus. He was but a fool that brought my answer back!" I shout. 

"Brutus hath rived my heart!" I yell, my voice breaking under the weight of my words.

"You love me not." I spit, turning away and pacing through the tent.

"I do not like your faults," He corrects me calmly.

"A friendly eye could never see such faults." I reply bitterly.

"A flatterer's would not, though they do appear as high as Olympus." He sneers.

"O come Antony!" I shout, half to Brutus and half to perhaps myself. "Come young Octavius! Come! Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius, for Cassius is aweary of the world: hated by the one he loves; braved by his brother; checked like a bondman; all his faults observed. O, I could weep my spirit from mine eyes!"

"There is my dagger!" I scream at Brutus, snatching my dagger from my sheath with such force I know there is heat on the leather. "Deliver Cassius from bondage because he himself cannot do it alone!" Brutus turns the pallor of a ghost, his mouth agape as not unlike fish from the river.

"And here," I continue, my voice falling, trembling, as the cold brush of the blade pricks my bare throat, "my naked breast."

"Caius–" Brutus begins, but I stop him.

"Strike as thou didst at Caesar!" I scream, falling to my knees before Brutus as my voice tears at my throat as if the words were tempered in fire, the same as the tears cooled my cheeks aflame with passion, and the blade kissed it's mark. "For I know, when thou dost hate him worst, thou lovedst him better than ever thou lovedst Cassius!"

"Sheathe your dagger, beloved." Brutus says, so stoic and laced with tenderness that I had never seen in him, even when our marriage-bed beckoned us, "leave not!" in the shining mornings after the nights were spent late long after the water clock ran dry.

"You lack the courage of the conviction which I hath lain upon you. Deliver me my dearest, Marcus Brutus!"

"Be angry when you will, it shall have scope." Brutus says, a small smile gracing his lips and borne on the broadness of his matured jaw.

"O Cassius," he says, looking down upon me with the kindness of a mother, "you are yoked with a lamb that carries anger as the flint bears fire, who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark, and straight is cold again."

I smile and tilt my head up so that I may look to my beloved.

"Hath Cassius lived," I ask spitefully, "to be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus when grief and blood is ill-tempered vexeth him?"

Brutus sighs, casting his repentant gaze to the floor with a guilted smile.

"When I spoke that," he whispers haltingly, his voice grating as stone upon stone from the knives of shouted word, "I was ill-tempered too."

"Do you confess so much?" I ask, incredulous inflection entering my words, moved that the stoic, noble, gentle Marcus Brutus should admit fault at the hand his emotions, for he seemed to have none.

"Give me your hand." I whisper and as he obeys I touch his jeweled fingers to my lips and turn his palm to gently feel the result of turmoil and labor protruding harshly from the tips of his fingers across my lips and jaw, a thing which hath been absent in the time of his senate.

"And my heart too," he whispers, smiling as his hand moves to hold my face in his hand, and his thumb moves gently over the bones of my cheek. His body leans forward and I bow my head in obedience to feel his lips press and linger on my brow and my body feels the strength of his arms around my frame for such a length of time that I close my eyes and allow the sounds of our shared silence to come to my ear.

"O Brutus!" I murmur into his shoulder, ignoring the cold press of the buckle that holds his cloak away from him, and ignoring the tears that cloud my vision as much as choler did.

"What's the matter, dear one?" Brutus asks, separating ourselves but never allowing his touch to leave me. His fingers move across my body, and I think were the circumstances changed they would be impassioned and hot with desire.

"Have not you love enough to bear with me when that rash humor which my mother gave me makes me forgetful?" I ask, as tears fill my upturned eyes once more and I look upon my Brutus with earnest.

"Yes, Cassius, make no mistake, I have more than enough love for you, and from henceforth, when you are overearnest with your Brutus, he'll think your mother chides, and leave you so, I swear this." He says, smiling. Just then, the doors of the tent stir with the rattle of voices.

"Let us take our guests," he says, before pressing his warmed lips to mine, for only a moment, that, by miracle, so long in our thoughts that it kindled the flame of lust in each of us and we wished the moment longer.

"Do not forget, Cassius," Brutus says, lusty passion covering his voice, "that you shall stay the night in my own tent, as it seems you have forgotten your own dwellings in your earlier, heated, haste." We share a chaste smile at his choosy words.

"How is it possible that I forget where I bed tonight, when the person whose bed I share has been branded wholly onto my heart?" I answer, smiling broadly, just as a poet steps into the tent, making idle prattle with Lucillius.

***

"What in the name of heaven was that banter, Cassius?" Brutus asks, shifting the weight of his body to look at my figure in the dark.

" 'I cannot drink enough of Brutus's love'! Durst you reveal our mischief to the counsel?" He asks.

"Dear Brutus," I whisper in the night, "I did not intend such a folly. Perhaps I was still bewitched by your outward manner? Or perhaps your heart? Or perhaps even both?" Brutus smiles.

"Now, how does the noble Cassius know just what to say to Brutus to have Brutus willing to be most obedient to him?" He asks, and I see that his eyes gleam with his recently spent passion, even in the dark.

"Brutus would be my servant? Ye gods, I have been favored immensely to have such a physique and temperament at my bidding!" I laugh.

"No, Brutus could ne'er serve me. I could not command such a hot tempest of a man, nor would I desire to. We are all free men." I say with more certainty than I say that Caesar should have been slain.

"Very well then." Brutus says, "I am satisfied. Let us sleep as one, my beloved Caius Cassius, for I fear it may be the last."

"Yes, to bed then." I say. "But Brutus, you are always a man of such dreadfully dreary talk; I forbid you to say such things, for they are not true. Sleep, my dearest Marcus Brutus and make not your thoughts your prison."

"As you wish, Cassius." He says. "Sleep well, dear one, and know my love shall never waiver, whether I be speaking to Cassius or," he says with a laugh, "Cassius's mother."

"Sleep well, gentle Brutus, and know the same is true of my love for you." I say, closing my eyes and allowing Brutus to embrace me in our make-do marriage-bed for what could perhaps be the last.