Caesar's Women (38 page)

A small silence fell, during which Caesar's face became grim; if Aurelia had been tempted to speak, sight of that change in his expression would have deterred her. It meant he was debating within himself whether to broach a less palatable subject, and the chances of that happening were greater if she effaced herself as much as possible. What less palatable subject could there be than money? So Aurelia held her peace.

“Crassus came to see me this morning,” said Caesar at last.

Still she said nothing.

“My creditors are restless.”

No word from Aurelia.

“The bills are still coming in from the days of my curule aedileship. That means I haven't managed to pay back anything I took as a loan.”

Her eyes dropped to look at the surface of the desk.

“That includes the interest on the interest. There's talk among them of impeaching me to the censors, and even with one of them my uncle, the censors would have to do what the law says they must. I would lose my seat in the Senate and all my goods would be sold up. That includes my lands.”

“Has Crassus any suggestions?” she ventured to asked.

“That I get myself elected Pontifex Maximus.”

“He wouldn't lend you money himself?”

“That,” said Caesar, “is a last resort as far as I'm concerned. Crassus is a great friend, but he's not got hay on his horns for nothing. He lends without interest, but he expects to be paid the moment he calls a loan in. Pompeius Magnus will be back before I'm consul, and I need to keep Magnus on my side. But Crassus detests Magnus, has done ever since their joint consulship. I have to tread a line between the pair of them. Which means I dare not owe either of them money.”

“I see that. Will Pontifex Maximus do it?”

“Apparently so, with opponents as prestigious as Catulus and Vatia Isauricus. Victory would tell my creditors I will be praetor, and I will be senior consul. And that when I go to my consular province I'll recoup my losses, if not before. They'll be paid in the end, if not in the beginning. Though compound interest is ghastly and ought to be outlawed, it does have one advantage: creditors charging compound interest stand to make huge profits when a debt is paid, even if only in part.”

“Then you had better be elected Pontifex Maximus.”

“So I think.”

The election to choose a new Pontifex Maximus and a fresh face for the College of Pontifices was set for twenty-four days' time. Who would own the fresh face was no mystery; the only candidate was Metellus Scipio. Both Catulus and Vatia Isauricus declared themselves available for election as Pontifex Maximus.

Caesar threw himself into campaigning with as much relish as energy. Like Catilina, the name and ancestry were an enormous help, despite the fact that neither of the other two candidates was a New Man, or even one of the moderately prominent boni. The post normally went to a man who had already been consul, but this advantage both Catulus and Vatia Isauricus held was negated to some extent at least by their ages: Catulus was sixty-one and Vatia Isauricus sixty-eight. In Rome the pinnacle of a man's ability, skills and prowess was considered to be his forty-third year, the year in which he ought to become consul. After that he was inevitably something of a has-been, no matter how huge his auctoritas or dignitas. He might be censor, Princeps Senatus, even consul a second time ten years further along, but once he attained the age of sixty he was inarguably past his prime. Though Caesar had not yet been praetor, he had been in the Senate for many years, he had been a pontifex for over a decade, he had shown himself a curule aedile of magnificence, he wore the Civic Crown on all public occasions, and he was known by the voters to be not only one of Rome's highest aristocrats, but also a man of huge ability and potential. His work in the Murder Court and as an advocate had not gone unnoticed; nor had his scrupulous care of his clients. Caesar in short was the future. Catulus and Vatia Isauricus were definitely the past—and tainted, both of them, with the faint odium of having enjoyed Sulla's favor. The majority of the voters who would turn up were knights, and Sulla had mercilessly persecuted the Ordo Equester. To counteract the undeniable fact that Caesar was Sulla's nephew by marriage, Lucius Decumius was deputed to trot out the old stories of Caesar's defying Sulla by refusing to divorce Cinna's daughter, and almost dying from disease when in hiding from Sulla's agents.

Three days before the election Cato summoned Catulus, Vatia Isauricus and Hortensius to a meeting at his house. This time there were no mushrooms like Cicero or youths like Caepio Brutus present. Even Metellus Scipio would have been a liability.

“I told you,” said Cato with his usual lack of tact, “that it was a mistake for both of you to stand. I'm asking now that one of you step down and throw his weight behind the other.”

“No,” said Catulus.

“No,” said Vatia Isauricus.

“Why can't you understand that both of you split the vote?” cried Cato, pounding his fist on the dowdy table which served him as a desk. He looked gaunt and unwell, for last night had seen a heavy session with the wine flagon; ever since Caepio's death Cato had turned to wine for solace, if solace it could be called. Sleep evaded him, Caepio's shade haunted him, the occasional slave girl he used to assuage his sexual needs revolted him, and even talking to Athenodorus Cordylion, Munatius Rufus and Marcus Favonius could occupy his mind only for a short period at a time. He read and he read and he read, yet still his loneliness and unhappiness came between him and the words of Plato, Aristotle, even his own great-grandfather, Cato the Censor. Thus the wine flagon, and thus his shortness of temper as he glared at the two unyielding elderly noblemen who refused to see the mistake they were making.

“Cato is right,” said Hortensius, huffing. He too was not very young anymore, but as an augur he could not stand for Pontifex Maximus. Ambition could not cloud his wits, though his high living was beginning to. “One of you might beat Caesar, but both of you halve the votes either man alone could get.”

“Then it's time to bribe,” said Catulus.

“Bribe?” yelled Cato, pounding the table until it shook. “There's no point in even starting to bribe! Two hundred and twenty talents can't buy you enough votes to beat Caesar!”

“Then,” said Catulus, “why don't we bribe Caesar?”

The others stared at him.

“Caesar is close to two thousand talents in debt, and the debt is mounting every day because he can't afford to pay back a sestertius,” said Catulus. “You may take it from me that my figures are correct.”

“Then I suggest,” said Cato, “that we report his situation to the censors and demand that they act immediately to remove Caesar from the Senate. That would get rid of him forever!”

His suggestion was greeted with gasps of horror.

“My dear Cato, we can't do that!” bleated Hortensius. “He may be a pestilence, but he's one of us!”

“No, no, no! He is not one of us! If he isn't stopped he will tear all of us down, so I promise you!” roared Cato, fist hammering the defenseless table again. “Turn him in! Turn him in to the censors!”

“Absolutely not,” said Catulus.

“Absolutely not,” said Vatia Isauricus.

“Absolutely not,” said Hortensius.

“Then,” said Cato, looking cunning, “prevail upon someone well outside the Senate to turn him in—one of his creditors.”

Hortensius closed his eyes. A stauncher pillar of the boni than Cato did not exist, but there were times when the Tusculan peasant and the Celtiberian slave in him succeeded in overcoming truly Roman thought. Caesar was a kinsman to all of them, even Cato, no matter how remote the blood link might be—though in Catulus it was very close, come to think of it.

“Forget anything like that, Cato,” Hortensius said, opening his eyes wearily. “It is un-Roman. There is no more to be said.”

“We will deal with Caesar in the Roman way,” said Catulus. “If you are willing to divert the money you were to contribute toward bribing the electorate into bribing Caesar, then I will go to Caesar myself and offer it to him. Two hundred and twenty talents will make a fine first payment to his creditors. I am confident Metellus Scipio will agree.”

“Oh, so am I!” snarled Cato between his teeth. “However, you spineless lot of fools, you can count me out! I wouldn't contribute a lead forgery to Caesar's purse!”

Thus it was that Quintus Lutatius Catulus sought an interview with Gaius Julius Caesar in his rooms on the Vicus Patricii between the Fabricius dye works and the Suburan Baths. It took place on the day before the election, quite early in the morning. The subtle splendor of Caesar's office took Catulus aback; he hadn't heard that his first cousin once removed had a fine eye for furniture and superior taste, nor had he imagined a side like that to Caesar. Is there nothing the man hasn't been gifted with? he asked himself, sitting down on a couch before he could be bidden occupy the client's chair. In which assumption he did Caesar an injustice; no one of Catulus's rank would have been relegated to the client's chair.

“Well, tomorrow is the big day,” said Caesar, smiling as he handed a rock-crystal goblet of watered wine to his guest.

“That's what I've come to see you about,” said Catulus, and took a sip of what turned out to be an excellent vintage. “Good wine, but I don't know it,” he said, sidetracked.

“I grow it myself, actually,” said Caesar.

“Near Bovillae?”

“No, in a little vineyard I own in Campania.”

“That accounts for it.”

“What was it you wished to discuss, cousin?” asked Caesar, not about to be sidetracked into oenology.

Catulus drew a deep breath. “It has come to my attention, Caesar, that your financial affairs are in a state of acute embarrassment. I'm here to ask you not to stand for election as the Pontifex Maximus. In return for doing me that favor, I will undertake to give you two hundred silver talents.” He reached into the sinus of his toga and withdrew a small rolled paper which he extended to Caesar.

Not so much as a glance did Caesar give it, nor did he make any attempt to take it. Instead, he sighed.

“You would have done better to use the money to bribe the electors,” he said. “Two hundred talents would have helped.”

“This seemed more efficient.”

“But wasted, cousin. I don't want your money.”

“You can't afford not to take it.”

“That is true. But I refuse to take it nonetheless.”

The little roll remained in Catulus's extended hand. “Do please reconsider,” he said, two spots of crimson beginning to show in his cheeks.

“Put your money away, Quintus Lutatius. When the election is held tomorrow I will be there in my particolored toga to ask the voters to return me as Pontifex Maximus. No matter what.”

“I beg you, Gaius Julius, one more time. Take the money!''

“I beg you, Quintus Lutatius, one more time. Desist!”

Whereupon Catulus threw the rock-crystal goblet down on the floor and walked out.

Caesar sat for a moment gazing at the starred pink puddle spreading across the minute checkerboard of mosaic tiles; then he rose, went to the service room for a rag, and wiped the mess up. The goblet fell into small crazed pieces the moment he put his hand upon it, so he carefully collected all the fragments into the rag, bunched it into a parcel, and threw it into the refuse container in the service room. Armed with a fresh rag, he then completed his cleaning.

* * *

“I was glad he threw the goblet down so hard,” said Caesar to his mother the next morning at dawn when tie called to receive her blessing.

“Oh, Caesar, how can you be glad? I know the thing well—and I know how much you paid for it.”

“I bought it as perfect, yet it turned out to be flawed.”

“Ask for your money back.”

Which provoked an exclamation of annoyance. “Mater, Mater, when will you learn? The crux of the matter has nothing to do with buying the wretched thing! It was flawed. I want no flawed items in my possession.”

Because she just didn't understand, Aurelia abandoned the subject. “Be successful, my dearest son,” she said, kissing his brow. “I won't come to the Forum, I'll wait here for you.”

“If I lose, Mater,” he said with his most beautiful smile, “you'll wait for a long time! If I lose, I won't be able to come home at all.”

And off he went, clad in his priest's toga of scarlet and purple stripes, with hundreds of clients and every Suburan man streaming after him down the Vicus Patricii, and a feminine head poking out of every window to wish him luck.

Faintly she heard him call to his windowed well-wishers: “One day Caesar's luck will be proverbial!”

After which Aurelia sat at her desk and totted up endless columns of figures on her ivory abacus, though she never wrote one answer down, nor remembered afterward that she had worked so diligently with nothing to show for it.

He didn't seem to be away very long, actually; later she learned it had been all of six springtime hours. And when she heard his voice issuing jubilantly from the reception room, she hadn't the strength to get up; he had to go to find her.

“You regard the new Pontifex Maximus!” he cried from the doorway, hands clasped above his head.

“Oh, Caesar!” she said, and wept.

Nothing else could have unmanned him, for in all his life he could never remember her shedding a tear. He gulped, face collapsing, stumbled into the room and lifted her to her feet, his arms about her, her arms about him, both of them weeping.

“Not even for Cinnilla,” he said when he was able.

“I did, but not in front of you.”

He used his handkerchief to mop his face, then performed the same service for her. “We won, Mater, we won! I'm still in the arena, and I still have a sword in my hand.”

Her smile was shaky, but it was a smile. “How many people are out in the reception room?” she asked.

“A terrible crush, that's all I know.”

“Did you win by much?”

“In all seventeen tribes.”

“Even in Catulus's? And Vatia's?”

“I polled more votes in their two tribes than they did put together, can you imagine it?”

“This is a sweet victory,” she whispered, “but why?”