Caesar's Women (98 page)

“I wish you would, it costs money to repair locks.”

“Consider it done. I'll be round with a hammer, a bell, some cord and staples tomorrow. You can boast that you have the only Pontifex Maximus-installed bell in Rome.” Caesar pulled a chair around and sat down with a sigh of sheer content.

“You look like the cat that snatched the dinner quail for his own dinner, Gaius.”

“Oh, I snatched more than a quail. I made off with a whole peacock.”

“I'm consumed with curiosity.”

“Will you lend me two hundred talents, payable as soon as I make my province payable?”

“Now you're being sensible! Yes, of course.”

“Don't you want to know why?”

“I told you, I'm consumed with curiosity.”

Suddenly Caesar frowned. “Actually you mightn't approve.”

“If I don't, I'll tell you. But I can't until I know.”

“I need one hundred talents to pay Brutus for breaking his engagement to Julia, and another hundred talents to give Magnus as Julia's dowry.”

Crassus put his pen down slowly and precisely, no expression on his face. The shrewd grey eyes looked sideways at a lamp flame, then turned to rest on Caesar's face. “I have always believed,” the plutocrat said, “that one's children are an investment only fully realized if they can bring their father what he cannot have otherwise. I am sorry for you, Gaius, because I know you would prefer that Julia marry someone of better blood. But I applaud your courage and your foresight. Little though I like the man, Pompeius is necessary for both of us. If I had a daughter, I might have done the same thing. Brutus is a little too young to serve your ends, nor will his mother let him fulfill his potential. If Pompeius is married to your Julia, we can have no doubt of him, no matter how the boni prey upon his nerves.” Crassus grunted. “She is, besides, a treasure. She'll make the Great Man idyllically happy. In fact, were I younger, I'd envy him.”

“Tertulla would murder you,” Caesar chuckled. He looked at Crassus inquisitively. “What of your sons? Have you decided who will have them yet?”

“Publius is going to Metellus Scipio's daughter, Cornelia Metella, so he has to wait a few more years. Not a bad little thing considering tata's stupidity. Scipio's mother was Crassus Orator's elder daughter, so it's very suitable. As for Marcus, I've been thinking of Metellus Creticus's daughter.”

“A foot in the camp of the boni is a foot well placed,” said Caesar sententiously.

“So I believe. I'm getting too old for all this fighting.”

“Keep the wedding to yourself, Marcus,” said Caesar, rising.

“On one condition.”

“Which is?”

“That I'm there when Cato finds out.”

“A pity we won't see Bibulus's face.”

“No, but we could always send him a flask of hemlock. He's going to feel quite suicidal.”

Having very correctly sent a message ahead to make sure he was expected, Caesar walked early the next morning up to the Palatine to the house of the late Decimus Junius Silanus.

“An unusual pleasure, Caesar,” purred Servilia, inclining her cheek to receive a kiss.

Watching this, Brutus said nothing, did not smile. Since the day after Bibulus had retired to his house to watch the skies, Brutus had sensed something wrong. For one thing, he had succeeded in seeing Julia only twice between then and now, and on each occasion she hadn't really been there at all. For another, he was used to dining at the Domus Publica regularly several times in a market interval, yet of late when he had suggested it, he had been put off on the excuse of important confidential dinner guests. And Julia had looked radiant, so beautiful, so aloof; not exactly uninterested, more as if her interest lay elsewhere, a region inside her mind she had never opened to him. Oh, she had pretended to listen! Yet she hadn't heard a single word, just gazed into space with a sweet and secret half smile. Nor would she let him kiss her. On the first visit, it had been a headache. On the second, she hadn't felt like a kiss. Caring and apologetic, but no kiss was no kiss. Had he not known better, he would have thought someone else was kissing her.

Now here was her father on a formal embassage, heralded by a messenger, and clad in the regalia of the Pontifex Maximus. Had he ruined things by asking to marry Julia a year earlier than arranged? Oh, why did he feel this was all to do with Julia? And why didn't he look like Caesar? No flaw in that face. No flaw in that body. If there had been, Mama would have lost interest in Caesar long ago.

The Pontifex Maximus didn't sit down, but nor did he pace, or seem discomposed.

“Brutus,” he said, “I know of no way to give bad news that can soften the blow, so I'll be blunt. I'm breaking your contract of betrothal to Julia.” A slender scroll was placed on the table. “This is a draft on my bankers for the sum of one hundred talents, in accordance with the agreement. I am very sorry.”

Shock sent Brutus sagging into a chair, where he sat with his poor mouth agape on no word of protest, his large and haunting eyes fixed on Caesar's face with the same expression in them an old dog has when it realizes that its beloved master is going to have it killed because it is no longer useful. His mouth closed, worked upon speech, but no word emerged. Then the light in his eyes went out as clearly and quickly as a snuffed candle.

“I am very sorry,” Caesar said again, more emotionally.

Shock had brought Servilia to her feet, nor for long moments could she find speech either. Her eyes went to Brutus in time to witness the dying of his light, but she had no idea what was really happening to him, for she was as far from Brutus in temperament as Antioch was from Olisippo.

Thus it was Caesar felt Brutus's pain, not Servilia. Never conquered by a woman as Julia had conquered Brutus, he could yet understand exactly what Julia had meant to Brutus, and he found himself wondering whether if he had known he would have had the courage to kill like this. But yes, Caesar, you would have. You've killed before and you'll kill again. Yet rarely eye to eye, as now. The poor, poor fellow! He won't recover. He first wanted my daughter when he was fourteen years old, and he has never changed or wavered. I have killed him—or at least killed what his mother has left alive. How awful to be the rag doll between two savages like Servilia and me. Silanus also, but not as terribly as Brutus. Yes, we've killed him. From now on he's one of the lemures.

“Why?” rasped Servilia, beginning to pant.

“I'm afraid I need Julia to form another alliance.”

“A better alliance than a Caepio Brutus? There's isn't one!”

“Not in terms of eligibility, that's true. Nor in terms of niceness, tenderness, honor, integrity. It's been a privilege to have your son in my family for so many years. But the fact remains that I need Julia to form another alliance.”

“Do you mean you'd sacrifice my son to feather your own political nest, Caesar?” she asked, teeth bared.

“Yes. Just as you'd sacrifice my daughter to serve your ends, Servilia. We produce children to inherit the fame and enhancement we bring the family, and the price our children pay is to be there to serve our needs and the needs of our families. They never know want. They never know hardship. They never lack literacy and numeracy. But it is a foolish parent who does not bring a child up to understand the price for high birth, ease, wealth and education. The Head Count can love and spoil their children freely. But our children are the servants of the family, and in their turn they will expect from their children what we expect from them. The family is perpetual. We and our children are but a small part of it. Romans create their own Gods, Servilia, and all the truly Roman Gods are Gods of the family. Hearth, storage cupboards, the household, ancestors, parents and children. My daughter understands her function as a part of the Julian family. Just as I did.”

“I refuse to believe there's anyone in Rome could offer you more politically than Brutus!”

“That might be true ten years from now. In twenty years, definitely. But I need additional political clout at this very moment. If Brutus's father were alive, things would be different. But the head of your family is twenty-four years old, and that applies to Servilius Caepio as much as to Junius Brutus. I need the help of a man in my own age group.”

Brutus hadn't moved, nor closed his eyes, nor wept. He even heard all the words exchanged between Caesar and his mother, though he didn't actually feel them. They were just there, and they meant things he understood. He would remember them. Only why wasn't his mother angrier?

In fact Servilia was furiously angry, but time had taught her that Caesar could best her in every encounter if she pitted herself directly against him. After all, nothing he could say could make her angrier. Be controlled, be ready to find the chink, be ready to slip inside and strike.

“Which man?” she asked, chin up, eyes watchful.

Caesar, there's something wrong with you. You're actually enjoying this. Or you would be if it were not for that poor broken young man over there. In the amount of time it will take you to speak the name, you will see a better sight than the day you told her you wouldn't marry her. Blighted love can't kill Servilia. But the insult I'm going to offer her just might.…

“Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus,” he said.

“Who?”

“You heard me.”

“You wouldn't!” Her head shook. “You wouldn't!” Her eyes protruded. “You wouldn't!” Her legs gave way, she tottered to a chair as far from Brutus as she could get. “You wouldn't!”

“Why not?” he asked coolly. “Tell me a better political ally than Magnus, and I'll break the engagement between him and Julia just as readily as I've broken this one.”

“He's an—an—an upstart! A nobody! An ignoramus!”

“As to the first, I agree with you. As to the second and third descriptions, I can't. Magnus is far from a nobody. He's the First Man in Rome. Nor is he an ignoramus. Whether we like it or not, Servilia, Kid Butcher from Picenum has carved a wider path through Rome's forest than Sulla managed to. His wealth is astronomical, and his power greater. We should thank our luck that he'd never go as far as Sulla because he doesn't dare. All he really wants is to be accepted as one of us.”

“He'll never be one of us!” she cried, fists clenched.

“Marrying a Julia is a step in the right direction.”

“You ought to be flogged, Caesar! There's thirty years of age between them—he's an old man and she's hardly a woman yet!”

“Oh, shut up!” he said wearily. “I can tolerate you in most of your moods, domina, but not in righteous indignation. Here.”

He tossed a small object into her lap, then walked over to Brutus. “I really am very sorry, lad,” he said, gently touching the still-hunched shoulder. Brutus didn't shrug him off; his eyes lifted to Caesar's face, but the light was gone.

Ought he to say what he had fully intended to say, that Julia was in love with Pompeius? No. That would be too cruel. There wasn't enough of Servilia in him to make it worth the pain. Then he thought of saying Brutus would find someone else. But no.

There was a swirl of scarlet and purple; the door closed behind the Pontifex Maximus.

The thing in Servilia's lap was a large strawberry-pink pebble. In the act of pitching it through the open window into the garden, she saw the light catch it alluringly, and stopped. No, not a pebble. Its plump heart shape was not unlike the strawberry of its color, but it was luminous, brilliant, sheened as subtly as a pearl. A pearl? Yes, a pearl! The thing Caesar had tossed in her lap was a pearl as big as the biggest strawberry in any Campanian glade, a wonder of the world.

Servilia liked jewelry very much, loved ocean pearls most of all. Her rage trickled away as if the rich pink-red pearl sucked it up and fed on it. How sensational it felt! Smooth, cool, voluptuous.

A sound intruded; Servilia looked up. Brutus had fallen to the floor, unconscious.

After a semisenseless and wandering Brutus was put into his bed and briskly dosed with a soporific herbal potion, Servilia put on a cloak and went to visit Fabricius the pearl merchant in the Porticus Margaritaria. Who remembered the pearl well, knew exactly where it had come from, secretly marveled at a man who could give this beauty away to a woman neither outstandingly lovely nor even young. He valued it at six million sesterces, and agreed to set it for her in a cage of finest gold wire attached to a heavy gold chain. Neither Fabricius nor Servilia wanted to pierce the dimple at its top; a wonder of the world should be unmarred.

From the Porticus Margaritaria it was only a step or two to the Domus Publica, where Servilia asked to see Aurelia.

“Of course you're on his side!” she said aggressively to Caesar's mother.

Aurelia's finely feathered black brows rose, which made her look very much like her son. “Naturally,” she said calmly.

“But Pompeius Magnus? Caesar's a traitor to his own class!”

“Come now, Servilia, you know Caesar better than that! Caesar will cut his losses, not cut off his nose to spite his face. He does what he wants to do because what he wants to do is what he ought to do. If custom and tradition suffer, too bad. He needs Pompeius, you're politically acute enough to see that. And politically acute enough to see how perilous it would be to depend on Pompeius without tethering him by an anchor so firm no storm can pry him loose.” Aurelia grimaced. “Breaking the engagement cost Caesar dearly, from what he said when he came home after telling Brutus. Your son's plight moved him deeply.”

It hadn't occurred to Servilia to think of Brutus's plight because she viewed him as a mortally insulted possession, not as a person. She loved Brutus as much as she loved Caesar, but she saw her son inside her own skin, assumed he felt what she felt, yet could never work out why his behavior over the years was not her behavior. Fancy falling over in a fainting fit!

“Poor Julia!” she said, mind on her pearl.

That provoked a laugh from Julia's grandmother. “Poor Julia, nothing! She's absolutely ecstatic.”

The blood drained from Servilia's face, the pearl vanished. “You surely don't mean—?”

“What, didn't Caesar tell you? He must have felt sorry for Brutus! It's a love match, Servilia.”