Caesar's Women (17 page)

But, to do him justice, Pompey wasted no time puffing out his chest and rubbing his victory in to people like Catulus and Piso; he was too eager to begin what he had planned down to the last detail. And, if he needed further evidence of the people's faith in his ability to do away with piracy on the high seas once and for all, he could look with pride to the fact that on the day the leges Gabiniae were passed, the price of grain in Rome dropped.

Though some wondered at it, he did not choose his two old lieutenants from Spain among his legates—that is, Afranius and Petreius. Instead, he attempted to soothe the fears of the boni by picking irreproachable men like Sisenna and Varro, two of the Manlii Torquati, Lentulus Marcellinus and the younger of his wife Mucia Tertia's two half brothers, Metellus Nepos. It was to his tame censors Poplicola and Lentulus Clodianus, however, that he gave the most important commands, Poplicola of the Tuscan Sea and Lentulus Clodianus of the Adriatic Sea. Italy reposed between them, safe and secure.

He divided the Middle Sea into thirteen regions, each of which he allocated a commander and a second-in-command, fleets, troops, money. And this time there would be no insubordination, no assuming initiative by any of his legates.

“There can be no Arausio,” he said sternly in his command tent, his legates assembled before the great enterprise began. “If one of you so much as farts in a direction I have not myself in person instructed as the right direction for farting, I will cut out your balls and send you to the eunuch markets in Alexandria,” he said, and meant it. “My imperium is maius, and that means I can do whatever I like. Every last one of you will have written orders so detailed and complete that you don't have to decide for yourselves what's for dinner the day after tomorrow. You do as you're told. If any man among you isn't prepared to do as he's told, then speak up now. Otherwise it's singing soprano at the court of King Ptolemy, is that understood?”

“He may not be elegant in his phraseology or his metaphors,” said Varro to his fellow literatus, Sisenna, “but he does have a wonderful way of convincing people that he means what he says.”

“I keep visualizing an almighty aristocrat like Lentulus Marcellinus trilling out his tonsils for the delectation of King Ptolemy the Flautist in Alexandria,” said Sisenna dreamily.

Which set both of them to laughing.

Though the campaign was not a laughing matter. It proceeded with stunning speed and absolute efficiency in exactly the way Pompey had planned, and not one of his legates dared do aught else than as his written orders dictated. If Pompey's campaign in Africa for Sulla had astonished everyone with its speed and efficiency, this campaign cast that one into permanent shade.

He began at the western end of the Middle Sea, and he used his fleets, his troops, and—above all—his legates to apply a naval and military broom to the waters. Sweeping, sweeping, ever sweeping a confused and helpless heap of pirates ahead of the broom; every time a pirate detachment broke for cover on the African or the Gallic or the Spanish or the Ligurian coast, it found no refuge at all, for a legate was waiting for it. Governor-designate of both the Gauls, the consul Piso issued orders that neither province was to provide Pompey with aid of any kind, which meant that Pompey's legate in the area, Pomponius, had to struggle to achieve results. But Piso too bit the dust when Gabinius threatened to legislate him out of his provinces if he didn't desist. His debts mounting with frightening rapidity, Piso needed the Gauls to recoup his losses, so he desisted.

Pompey himself followed the broom from west to east, timing his visit to Rome in the middle to coincide with Gabinius's actions against Piso, and looked more gorgeous than ever when he publicly prevailed upon Gabinius not to be such a cad.

“Oh, what a poseur!” exclaimed Caesar to his mother, but not in any spirit of criticism.

Aurelia, however, was not interested in Forum doings. “I must talk to you, Caesar,” she said, ensconced in her chair in his tablinum.

Amusement fled; Caesar stifled a sigh. “What about?”

“Servilia.”

“There's nothing to say, Mater.”

“Did you make a remark to Crassus about Servilia?” was his mother's reply.

Caesar frowned. “To Crassus? No, of course not.”

“Then why did Tertulla come to see me on a fishing expedition? She did, yesterday.” Aurelia grunted a laugh. “Not one of Rome's more expert fisherwomen, Tertulla! Comes of her Sabine background, I suppose. The hills are not fishing territory for any save the real experts with a willow rod.”

“I swear I didn't, Mater.”

“Well, Crassus has an inkling, and passed his inkling on to his wife. I take it that you still prefer to keep the union a secret? With a view to resuming it once this child is born?”

“That is my intention.”

“Then I suggest you throw a little dust in Crassus's eyes, Caesar. I don't mind the man, nor do I mind his Sabine wife, but rumors have to start somewhere, and this is a start.”

The frown kept gathering. “Oh, bother rumors! I'm not particularly concerned about my own part in this, Mater, but I bear poor Silanus no grudges, and it would be far better if our children remained in ignorance of the situation. Paternity of the child isn't likely to be called into doubt, as both Silanus and I are very fair, and Servilia very dark. However the child turns out, it will look as likely to be his as mine, if it does not resemble its mother.”

“True. And I agree with you. Though I do wish, Caesar, that you had chosen some other object than Servilia!”

“I have, now that she's too big to be available.”

“Cato's wife, you mean?”

He groaned. “Cato's wife. A desperate bore.”

“She'd have to be to survive in that household.”

Both his hands came to rest on the desk in front of him; he looked suddenly businesslike. “Very well, Mater, do you have any suggestions?”

“I think you ought to marry again.”

“I don't want to marry again.”

“I know that! But it is the best way to throw a little dust in everyone's eyes. If a rumor looks likely to spread, create a new rumor which eclipses it.”

“All right, I'll marry again.”

“Have you any particular woman you'd like to marry?”

“Not a one, Mater. I am as clay in your hands.”

That pleased her immensely; she huffed contentedly. “Good!”

“Name her.”

“Pompeia Sulla.”

“Ye gods, no!” he cried, appalled. “Any woman but her!”

“Nonsense. Pompeia Sulla is ideal.”

“Pompeia Sulla's head is so empty you could use it as a dice box,” said Caesar between his teeth. “Not to mention that she's expensive, idle, and monumentally silly.”

“An ideal wife,” Aurelia contended. “Your dalliances won't worry her, she's too stupid to add one and one together, and she has a fortune of her own adequate enough for all her needs. She is besides your own first cousin once removed, being the daughter of Cornelia Sulla and the granddaughter of Sulla, and the Pompeii Rufi are a more respectable branch of that Picentine family than Magnus's branch. Nor is she in the first flush of youth— I would not give you an inexperienced bride.”

“Nor would I take one,” said Caesar grimly. “Has she any children?”

“No, though her marriage to Gaius Servilius Vatia lasted for three years. I don't think, mind you, that Gaius Vatia was a particularly well man. His father—Vatia Isauricus's elder brother, in case you need reminding—died too young to enter the Senate, and about all the political good Rome got from the son was to give him a suffect consulship. That he died before he could assume office was typical of his career. But it does mean Pompeia Sulla is a widow, and therefore more respectable than a divorced woman.”

He was coming around to the idea, she could see that, and sat now without flogging her argument to the death; the notion was planted, and he could tend it for himself. “How old is she now?” he asked slowly.

“Twenty-two, I believe.”

“And Mamercus and Cornelia Sulla would approve? Not to mention Quintus Pompeius Rufus, her half brother, and Quintus Pompeius Rufus, her full brother?''

“Mamercus and Cornelia Sulla asked me if you'd be interested in marrying her, that's how the thought occurred to me,” said Aurelia. “As for her brothers, the full one is too young to be consulted seriously, and the half one is only afraid that Mamercus will ship her home to him instead of allowing Cornelia Sulla to shelter her.”

Caesar laughed, a wry sound. “I see the family is ganging up on me!” He sobered. “However, Mater, I can't see a young fowl as exotic as Pompeia Sulla consenting to live in a ground-floor apartment right in the middle of the Subura. She might prove a sore trial for you. Cinnilla was as much your child as your daughter-in-law, she would never have disputed your right to rule this particular roost had she lived to be a hundred. Whereas a daughter of Cornelia Sulla might have grander visions.”

“Do not worry about me, Caesar,” said Aurelia, getting to her feet well satisfied; he was going to do it. “Pompeia Sulla will do as she's told, and suffer both me and this apartment.”

Thus did Gaius Julius Caesar acquire his second wife, who was the granddaughter of Sulla. The wedding was a quiet one, attended only by the immediate family, and it took place in Mamercus's domus on the Palatine amid scenes of great rejoicing, particularly on the part of the bride's half brother, freed from the prospective horror of having to house her.

Pompeia was very beautiful, all of Rome said it, and Caesar (no ardent bridegroom) decided Rome was right. Her hair was dark red and her eyes bright green, some sort of breeding compromise between the red-gold of Sulla's family and the carrot-red of the Pompeii Rufi, Caesar supposed; her face was a classic oval and her bones well structured, her figure good, her height considerable. But no light of intelligence shone out of those grass-colored orbs, and the planes of her face were smooth to the point of highly polished marble. Vacant. House to let, thought Caesar as he carried her amid a reveling band of celebrants all the way from the Palatine to his mother's apartment in the Subura, and making it look far lighter work than it was. Nothing compelled him to carry her, he had to do that only to lift her across the threshold of her new home, but Caesar was ever a creature out to prove he was better than the rest of his world, and that extended to feats of strength his slenderness belied.

Certainly it impressed Pompeia, who giggled and cooed and threw handfuls of rose petals in front of Caesar's feet. But the nuptial coupling was less a feat of strength than the nuptial walk had been; Pompeia belonged to that school of women who believed all they had to do was lie on their backs, spread their legs, and let it happen. Oh, there was some pleasure in lovely breasts and a delightful dark-red thatch of pubic hair—quite a novelty!— but she wasn't juicy. She wasn't even grateful, and that, thought Caesar, put even poor Atilia ahead of her, though Atilia was a drab flat-chested creature quite quenched by five years of marriage to the ghastly young Cato.

“Would you like,” he asked Pompeia, lifting himself up on an elbow to look at her, “a stick of celery?”

She blinked her preposterously long, dark lashes. “A stick of celery?” she asked vaguely.

“To crunch on while I work,” he said. “It would give you something to do, and I'd hear you doing it.”

Pompeia giggled because some infatuated youth had once told her it was the most delicious sound, tinkling water over gemstones in the bed of a little brook. “Oh, you are silly!” she said.

Back he flopped, but not on top of her. “You are absolutely right,” he said. “I am indeed silly.”

And to his mother, in the morning: “Do not expect to see much of me here, Mater.”

“Oh dear,” said Aurelia placidly. “Like that, is it?”

“I'd rather masturbate!” he said savagely, and left before he could get a tongue-lashing for vulgarity.

Being curator of the Via Appia, he was learning, made far greater demands on his purse than he had expected, despite his mother's warning. The great road connecting Rome with Brundisium cried out for some loving care, as it was never adequately maintained. Though it had to endure the tramp of numberless armies and the wheels of countless baggage trains, it was so old it had become rather taken for granted; beyond Capua especially it suffered.

The Treasury quaestors that year were surprisingly sympathetic, though they included young Caepio, whose relationship to Cato and the boni had predisposed Caesar to think he would have to battle ceaselessly for funds. Funds were forthcoming; just never enough. So when the cost of bridge making and resurfacing outran his public funds, Caesar contributed his own. Nothing unusual about that; Rome always expected private donations too.

The work, of course, appealed to him enormously, so he supervised it himself and did all the engineering. After he married Pompeia he hardly visited Rome. Naturally he followed Pompey's progress in that fabulous campaign against the pirates, and had to admit that he could scarcely have bettered it himself. This went as far as applauding Pompey's clemency as the war wound itself up along the Cilician coast, and Pompey dealt with his thousands of captives by resettling them in deserted towns far from the sea. He had, in fact, done everything the right way, from ensuring that his friend and amanuensis Varro was decorated with a Naval Crown to supervising the sharing out of the spoils in such a way that no legate was able to snaffle more than he was entitled to, and the Treasury plumped out considerably. He had taken the soaring citadel of Coracesium the best way, by bribery from within, and when that place fell, no pirate left alive could delude himself that Rome did not now own what had become Mare Nostrum, Our Sea. The campaign had extended into the Euxine, and here too Pompey carried all before him. Megadates and his lizardlike twin, Pharnaces, had been executed; the grain supply to Rome was organized and out of future danger.

Only in the matter of Crete had he failed at all, and that was due to Metellus Little Goat, who adamantly refused to honor Pompey's superior imperium, snubbed his legate Lucius Octavius when he arrived to smooth things over, and was generally held to have been the cause of Lucius Cornelius Sisenna's fatal stroke. Though Pompey could have dispossessed him, that would have meant going to war against him, as Metellus made plain. So in the end Pompey did the sensible thing, left Crete to Metellus and thereby tacitly agreed to share a tiny part of the glory with the inflexible grandson of Metellus Macedonicus. For this campaign against the pirates was, as Pompey had said to Caesar, simply a warm-up, a way to stretch his muscles for a greater task.