Caesar's Women (26 page)

“I understand,” said Rex savagely to Clodius, “that after he's made a grand tour of Asia Province he is to come here to Cilicia and 'tour the dispositions,' was how he put it.”

“Pompeius or Metellus Nepos?” asked Clodius, bewildered.

“Pompeius, of course! And as his imperium outranks mine even in my own province, I'll have to follow him around with a sponge in one hand and a chamber pot in the other!”

“What a prospect,” said Clodius clinically.

“It's a prospect I cannot abide!” snarled Rex. “Therefore Pompeius will not find me in Cilicia. Now that Tigranes is incapable of holding anywhere southwest of the Euphrates, I am going to invade Syria. It pleased Lucullus to set up a Lucullan puppet on the Syrian throne— Antiochus Asiaticus, he calls himself! Well, we shall see what we shall see. Syria belongs in the domain of the governor of Cilicia, so I shall make it my domain.”

“May I come with you?” asked Clodius eagerly.

“I don't see why not.” The governor smiled. “After all, Appius Claudius created a furor while he kicked his heels in Antioch waiting for Tigranes to give him an audience. I imagine that the advent of his little brother will be most welcome.”

It wasn't until Quintus Marcius Rex arrived in Antioch that Clodius began to see one revenge was at hand. “Invasion” was the term Rex had employed, but of fighting there was none; Lucullus's puppet Antiochus Asiaticus fled, leaving Rex—King—to do his own kingmaking by installing one Philippus on the throne. Syria was in turmoil, not least because Lucullus had released many, many thousands of Greeks, all of whom had flocked home. But some came home to discover that their businesses and houses had been taken over by the Arabs whom Tigranes had winkled out of the desert, and to whom he had bequeathed the vacancies created by the Greeks he had kidnapped to Hellenize his Median Armenia. To Rex it mattered little who owned what in Antioch, in Zeugma, in Samosata, in Damascus. But to his brother-in-law Clodius it came to matter greatly. Arabs, he hated Arabs!

To work went Clodius, on the one hand by whispering in Rex's ear about the perfidies of the Arabs who had usurped Greek jobs and Greek houses, and on the other hand by visiting every single discontented and dispossessed Greek man of influence he could find. In Antioch, in Zeugma, in Samosata, in Damascus. Not an Arab ought to remain in civilized Syria, he declared. Let them go back to the desert and the desert trade routes, where they belonged!

It was a very successful campaign. Soon murdered Arabs began to appear in gutters from Antioch to Damascus, or floated down the broad Euphrates with their outlandish garb billowing about them. When a deputation of Arabs came to see Rex in Antioch, he rebuffed them curtly; Clodius's whispering campaign had succeeded.

“Blame King Tigranes,” Rex said. “Syria has been inhabited by Greeks in all its fertile and settled parts for six hundred years. Before that, the people were Phoenician. You're Skenites from east of the Euphrates, you don't belong on the shores of Our Sea. King Tigranes has gone forever. In future Syria will be in the domain of Rome.”

“We know,” said the leader of this delegation, a young Skenite Arab who called himself Abgarus; what Rex failed to understand was that this was the hereditary title of the Skenite King. “All we ask is that Syria's new master should accord us what has become ours. We did not ask to be sent here, or to be toll collectors along the Euphrates, or inhabit Damascus. We too have been uprooted, and ours was a crueler fate than the Greeks'.”

Quintus Marcius Rex looked haughty. “I fail to see how.”

“Great governor, the Greeks went from one kindness to another. They were honored and paid well in Tigranocerta, in Nisibis, in Amida, in Singara, everywhere. But we came from a land so hard and harsh, so stung by sand and barren that the only way we could keep warm at night was between the bodies of our sheep or before the smoky fire given off by a wheel of dried dung. And all that happened twenty years ago. Now we have seen grass growing, we have consumed fine wheaten bread every day, we have drunk clear water, we have bathed in luxury, we have slept in beds and we have learned to speak Greek. To send us back to the desert is a needless cruelty. There is prosperity enough for all to share here in Syria! Let us stay, that is all we ask. And let those Greeks who persecute us know that you, great governor, will not condone a barbarity unworthy of any man who calls himself Greek,” said Abgarus with simple dignity.

“I really can't do anything to help you,” said Rex, unmoved. “I'm not issuing orders to ship all of you back to the desert, but I will have peace in Syria. I suggest you find the worst of the Greek troublemakers and sit down with them to parley.”

Abgarus and his fellow delegates took part of that advice, though Abgarus himself never forgot Roman duplicity, Roman connivance at the murder of his people. Rather than seek out the Greek ringleaders, the Skenite Arabs first of all organized themselves into well-protected groups, and then set about discovering the ultimate source of growing discontent among the Greeks. For it was bruited about that the real culprit was not Greek, but Roman.

Learning a name, Publius Clodius, they then found out that this young man was the brother-in-law of the governor, came from one of Rome's oldest and most august families, and was a cousin by marriage of the conqueror of the pirates, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Therefore he could not be killed. Secrecy was possible in the desert wastes, but not in Antioch; someone would sniff the plot out and tell.

“We will not kill him,” said Abgarus. “We will teach him a severe lesson.”

Further enquiries revealed that Publius Clodius was a very strange Roman nobleman indeed. He lived, it turned out, in an ordinary house among the slums of Antioch, and he frequented the kind of places Roman noblemen usually avoided. But that of course made him accessible. Abgarus pounced.

Bound, gagged and blindfolded, Publius Clodius was carried to a room without windows, a room without murals or decorations or differences from half a million such rooms in Antioch. Nor was Publius Clodius allowed to see beyond a glimpse as the cloth over his eyes was removed along with his gag, for a sack was slipped over his head and secured around his throat. Bare walls, brown hands, they were all he managed to take in before a less complete blindness descended; he could distinguish vague shapes moving through the rough weave of the bag, but nothing more.

His heart tripped faster than the heart of a bird; the sweat rolled off him; his breath came short and shallow and gasping. Never in all his life had Clodius been so terrified, so sure he was going to die. But at whose hands? What had he done?

The voice when it came spoke Greek with an accent he now recognized as Arabic; Clodius knew then that he would indeed die.

“Publius Clodius of the great Claudius Pulcher family,” said the voice, “we would dearly love to kill you, but we realize that is not possible. Unless, that is, after we free you, you seek vengeance for what will be done here tonight. If you do try to seek vengeance, we will understand that we have nothing to lose by killing you, and I swear by all our gods that we will kill you. Be wise, then, and quit Syria after we free you. Quit Syria, and never come back as long as you live.”

“What—you—do?'' Clodius managed to say, knowing that whatever it was could not be less than torture and flogging.

“Why, Publius Clodius,” said the voice, unmistakably amused, “we are going to make you into one of us. We are going to turn you into an Arab.”

Hands lifted the hem of his tunic (Clodius wore no toga in Antioch; it cramped his style too much) and removed the loincloth Romans wore when out and about the streets clad only in a tunic. He fought, not understanding, but many hands lifted him onto a flat hard surface, held his legs, his arms, his feet.

“Do not struggle, Publius Clodius,” said the voice, still amused. “It isn't often our priest has something this large to work on, so the job will be easy. But if you move, he might cut off more than he intends to.”

Hands again, pulling at his penis, stretching it out— what was happening? At first Clodius thought of castration, wet himself and shit himself, all amid outright laughter from the other side of the bag depriving him of sight; after which he lay perfectly still and shrieked, screamed, babbled, begged, howled. Where was he, that they didn't need to gag him?

They didn't castrate him, though what they did was hideously painful, something to the tip of his penis.

“There!” said the voice. “What a good boy you are, Publius Clodius! One of us forever. You should heal very well if you don't dip your wick in anything noxious for a few days.”

On went the loincloth over the shit, on went the tunic, and then Clodius knew no more, though afterward he never knew whether his captors had knocked him out or whether he had fainted.

He woke up in his own house, in his own bed, with an aching head and something so sore between his legs that it was the pain registered first, before he remembered what had happened. Pain forgotten, he leaped from the bed and, gasping with terror that perhaps nothing remained, he put his hands beneath his penis and cradled it to see what was there, how much was left. All of it, it seemed, except that something odd glistened purply between crusted streaks of blood. Something he usually saw only when he was erect. Even then he didn't really understand, for though he had heard of it, he knew no people save for Jews and Egyptians who were said to do it, and he knew no Jews or Egyptians. The realization dawned very slowly, but when it did Publius Clodius wept. The Arabs did it too, for they had made him into one of them. They had circumcised him, cut off his foreskin.

Publius Clodius left on the next available ship for Tarsus, sailing serenely through waters free at last from pirates thanks to Pompey the Great. In Tarsus he took ship for Rhodus, and in Rhodus for Athens. By then he had healed so beautifully that it was only when he held himself to urinate that he remembered what the Arabs had done to him. It was autumn, but he beat the gales across the Aegaean Sea, landed in Athens. From there he rode to Patrae, crossed to Tarentum, and faced the fact that he was almost home. He, a circumcised Roman.

The journey up the Via Appia was the worst leg of his trip, for he understood how brilliantly the Arabs had dealt with him. As long as he lived, he could never let anyone see his penis; if anyone did, the story would get out and he would become a laughingstock, an object of such ridicule and merriment that he would never be able to brazen it out. Urinating and defaecating he could manage; he would just have to learn to control himself until absolute privacy was at hand. But sexual solace? That was a thing of the past. Never again could he frolic in some woman's arms unless he bought her but didn't know her, used her in the darkness and kicked her out lightless.

Early in February he arrived home, which was the house big brother Appius Claudius owned on the Palatine, thanks to his wife's money. When he walked in, big brother Appius burst into tears at sight of him, so much older and wearier did he seem; the littlest one of the family had grown up, and clearly not without pain. Naturally Clodius wept too, so that some time went by before his tale of misadventure and penury tumbled out. After three years in the East, he returned more impoverished than when he had left; to get home, he had had to borrow from Quintus Marcius Rex, who had not been pleased, either at this summary, inexplicable desertion or at Clodius's insolvency.

“I had so much!” mourned Clodius. “Two hundred thousand in cash, jewels, gold plate, horses I could have sold in Rome for fifty thousand each—all gone! Snaffled by a parcel of filthy, stinking Arabs!”

Big brother Appius patted Clodius's shoulder, stunned at the amount of booty: he hadn't done half as well out of Lucullus! But of course he didn't know of Clodius's relationship with the Fimbriani centurions, or that that was how most of Clodius's haul had been acquired. He himself was now in the Senate and thoroughly at ease with his life, both domestically and politically. His term as quaestor for Brundisium and Tarentum had been officially commended, a great start to what he hoped would be a great career. And he was also the bearer of great news for Publius Clodius, news he revealed as soon as the emotion of meeting calmed down.

“There's no need to worry about being penniless, my dearest little brother,” said Appius Claudius warmly. “You'll never be penniless again!”

“I won't? What do you mean?” asked Clodius, bewildered.

“I've been offered a marriage for you—such a marriage! In all my days I never dreamed of it, I wouldn't have looked in that direction without Apollo's appearing to me in my sleep—and Apollo didn't. Little Publius, it's wonderful! Incredible!”

When Clodius turned white at this marvelous news, Appius Claudius put the reaction down to happy shock, not terror.

“Who is it?” Clodius managed to say. Then, “Why me?”

“Fulvia!” big brother Appius trumpeted. “Fulvia! Heiress of the Gracchi and the Fulvii; daughter of Sempronia, the only child of Gaius Gracchus; great-granddaughter of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi; related to the Aemilii, the Cornelii Scipiones—”

“Fulvia? Do I know her?” asked Clodius, looking stupefied.

“Well, you may not have noticed her, but she's seen you,” said Appius Claudius. “It was when you prosecuted the Vestals. She couldn't have been more than ten years old—she's eighteen now.”

“Ye gods! Sempronia and Fulvius Bambalio are the most remote pair in Rome,” said Clodius, dazed. “They can pick and choose from anyone. So why me?”

“You'll understand better when you meet Fulvia,” said Appius Claudius, grinning. “She's not the granddaughter of Gaius Gracchus for nothing! Not all Rome's legions could make Fulvia do something Fulvia doesn't want to do. Fulvia picked you herself.”

“Who inherits all the money?” asked Clodius, beginning to recover—and beginning to hope that he could manage to talk this divine plum off the tree and into his lap. His circumcised lap.

“Fulvia inherits. The fortune's bigger than Marcus Crassus's.”

“But the lex Voconia—she can't inherit!”