The First Man in Rome (30 page)

"I never have liked them," said Sulla, not interested.

"All the more for me," she said, and giggled.

"What's so special about this lot, anyway?" Sulla asked.

"At the moment you can buy mushrooms by the ton in the markets, and dirt-cheap too."

"These are
mine,"
she tried to explain. "
I
found them,
I
 saw how absolutely perfect they were,
I
 picked them. The ones in the markets are any old how—full of grubs, holes, spiders, the gods know what. Mine will taste much better, I promise you."

They did taste better. When Nicopolis brought them into the kitchen the cook handled them suspiciously, but had to admit he couldn't fault them with eyes or nose.

"Fry them lightly in a little oil," said Nicopolis.

As it happened, the vegetable slave had brought home a huge basket of mushrooms from the markets that morning, so cheap that the entire staff was allowed to gorge on them, and had been doing so all day. Therefore no one was tempted to steal a few of the new arrivals; the cook was able to fry all of them just long enough to soften them and heat them through, then tossed them in a dish with a little freshly ground pepper and a squeeze of onion juice, and sent them to the dining room for Nicopolis. Who ate of them ravenously, her appetite sharpened by the day out—and by Clitumna's monumental fit of the sulks. For, of course, the moment it was too late to send a servant to catch them, Clitumna had regretted her decision not to go on the famous picnic. Subjected to a paean on the subject throughout dinner, she reacted badly, and ended her day by announcing that she would sleep alone.

It was eighteen hours later before Nicopolis experienced a pain in her belly. She became nauseated and was a little sick, but had no diarrhoea, and admitted the pain was bearable, she'd known worse. Then she urinated a small volume of fluid red with blood, and panicked.

Doctors were summoned at once; the household ran about distractedly; Clitumna sent servants out to look for Sulla, who had gone out early in the day without leaving any word of his destination.

When Nicopolis's heart rate went up and her blood pressure fell, the doctors looked grave. She had a convulsion, her respiration grew slow and shallow, her heart began to fibrillate, and she passed inexorably into coma. As it happened, no one even thought of mushrooms.

"Kidney failure," said Athenodorus of Sicily, now the most successful medical practitioner on the Palatine.

Everyone else concurred.

And about the time that Sulla came rushing home, Nicopolis died from a massive internal haemorrhage—the victim, said the doctors, of a complete systemic collapse.

"We should perform an autopsy," said Athenodorus.

"I agree," said Sulla, who didn't mention mushrooms.

"Is it catching?" asked Clitumna pathetically, looking old and ill and desperately alone.

Everyone said no.

The autopsy confirmed the diagnosis of renal and hepatic failure: kidneys and liver were swollen, congested, and full of haemorrhages. The envelope around Nicopolis's heart had bled, as had the linings of her stomach, her small intestine, and her colon. The innocent-looking mushroom called The Destroyer had done its subtle work well.

Sulla organized the funeral (Clitumna was too prostrated) and walked in the procession as chief mourner, ahead of the stars of the Roman comedic and mimetic theaters; their presence assured a good attendance, which would have pleased Nicopolis.

And when Sulla returned to Clitumna's house afterward, he found Gaius Julius Caesar waiting for him. Throwing off his dark mourning toga, Sulla joined Clitumna and her guest-in her sitting room. On few occasions had he set eyes on Gaius Julius Caesar, and knew the senator not at all; that the senator would visit Clitumna because of the untimely death of a Greek strumpet struck Sulla as very odd, so he was on his guard and punctiliously correct as he was introduced.

"Gaius Julius," he said, bowing.

"Lucius Cornelius," said Caesar, bowing also.

They did not shake hands, but when Sulla sat down, Caesar resumed his own seat with apparent tranquillity. He turned to the weeping Clitumna and spoke kindly.

"My dear, why stay?" he asked. "Marcia is waiting next door for you. Have your steward take you to her. Women stand in need of women's company in times of grief."

Without a word Clitumna rose and tottered to the door, while the visitor reached into his dark toga and produced a small roll of paper, which he then laid on the table.

"Lucius Cornelius, your friend Nicopolis had me draw up her will and lodge it with the Vestals a long time ago. The lady Clitumna is aware of its contents, which is why she did not need to stay to hear me read it."

"Yes?" asked Sulla, at a loss. He could rind nothing further to say, and so sat dumbly, gazing at Caesar rather blankly.

Caesar moved to the crux of the matter. "Lucius Cornelius, the lady Nicopolis made you her sole heir."

Sulla's expression remained blank. "She did?"

"She did."

"Well, I suppose if I'd thought about it, I would have known she'd be bound to do that," said Sulla, recovering. "Not that it matters. Everything she had, she spent."

Caesar looked at him keenly. "She didn't, you know. The lady Nicopolis was quite wealthy."

"Rubbish!" said Sulla.

"Truly, Lucius Cornelius, she was quite wealthy. She owned no property, but she was the widow of a military tribune who did extremely well out of booty. What he left her, she invested. As of this morning, her estate is in excess of two hundred thousand denarii," said Caesar.

There could be no mistaking the genuineness of Sulla's shock. Whatever Caesar might have thought of him until that moment, he knew he was now looking at a man who possessed no inkling of this information; Sulla sat stupefied.

Then he sank back in his chair, put shaking hands up to his face, shuddered, and gasped. "So much!
Nicopolis?"

"So much. Two hundred thousand denarii. Or eight hundred thousand sesterces, if you prefer. A knight's portion."

Down came Sulla's hands. "Oh, Nicopolis!" he said.

Caesar got to his feet, extending his hand. Sulla took it dazedly.

"No, Lucius Cornelius, don't get up," said Caesar warmly. "My dear fellow, I cannot tell you how delighted I am for you. I know it's difficult to salve your grief at this early stage, but I would like you to know that I've often wished with all my heart that one day you would better your fortune—and your luck. In the morning I'll commence probate. You had better meet me in the Forum at the second hour. By the shrine of Vesta. For now, I bid you good day."

After Caesar had gone, Sulla sat without moving for a long time. The house was as silent as Nicopolis's grave; Clitumna must have stayed next door with Marcia, and the servants were creeping about.

Perhaps as many as six hours went by before he finally got up, stiff and sore, and stretched a little. The blood began to flow, his heart to fill with fire.

"Lucius Cornelius, you are on your way at last," he said, and began to laugh.

Though it started very softly, his laughter swelled and rolled into a shriek, a roar, a howl of mirth; the servants, listening terrified, debated among themselves as to which one was going to venture into Clitumna's sitting room. But before they could reach a decision, Sulla stopped laughing.

Clitumna aged almost overnight. Though her years numbered only fifty, the death of her nephew had kicked the ageing process into a gallop; now the death of her dearest friend—and her lover—compounded her devastation. Not even Sulla had the power to jolly her out of her megrims. Not mime nor farce could lure her out of the house, nor could her regular visitors Scylax and Marsyas provoke a smile. What appalled her was the shrinking world of her intimates as well as her own encroaching dotage; if Sulla should abandon her—for his inheritance from Nicopolis had freed him from economic dependence upon her—she would be completely alone. A prospect she dreaded.

Soon after Nicopolis died, she sent for Gaius Julius Caesar. "One cannot leave anything to the dead," she said to him, "and so I must alter my will yet again."

The will was altered forthwith, and taken back to repose in the Vestal pigeonholes.

Still she moped. Her tears dropped like rain, her once restless hands were folded in her lap like two unbaked leaves of pastry waiting for the cook to fill them. Everyone worried; everyone understood there was nothing to be done save wait for time to heal. If there was time.

For Sulla it was time.

Julilla's latest missive said:

I love you, even though the months and now the years have shown me how little my love is returned, how little my fate matters to you. Last June I turned eighteen, by rights I should be married, but I have managed to postpone that evil necessity by making myself ill. I must marry you, you and no one but you, my most beloved, my dearest Lucius Cornelius. And so my father hesitates, unable to present me to anyone as a suitable or desirable bride, and I shall keep it that way until you come to me and say that you will marry me. Once you said I was a baby, I would grow out of my immature love for you, but surely so long after— it is almost two years—I have proven my worth, I have proven that my love for you is as constant as the return of the sun from the south each spring. She is gone, your thin Greek lady I hated with every breath I drew, and cursed, and wished dead dead dead. You see how powerful I am, Lucius Cornelius? Why then do you not understand that you cannot escape me? No heart can be as full of love as mine and not generate reciprocation. You do love me, I know you love me. Give in, Lucius Cornelius, give in. Come and see me, kneel down beside my bed of pain and sorrow, let me draw down your head onto my breast, and offer me your kiss. Don't sentence me to die! Choose to let me live. Choose to marry me.

Yes, for Sulla it was time. Time to end many things. Time to slough off Clitumna, and Julilla, and all those other dreadful human commitments which tied his spirit down and cast such eerie shadows into the corners of his mind. Even Metrobius must go.

Thus midway through October Sulla went to knock on Gaius Julius Caesar's door at an hour when he could confidently expect the master of the house to be at home. And confidently expect that the women of the house would be banished to their quarters; Gaius Julius Caesar was not the kind of husband or father to permit his womenfolk to rub shoulders with his clients or his men friends. For though a part of his reason for knocking on Gaius Julius Caesar's door was to rid himself of Julilla, he had no wish to set eyes on her; every part of him, every thinking component, every source of energy, must be focused on Gaius Julius Caesar and what he had to say to Gaius Julius Caesar. What he had to say must be said without arousing any suspicion or mistrust.

He had already gone with Caesar to have Nicopolis's will probated, and come into his inheritance so easily, so free from reproach, that he was doubly wary. Even when he had presented himself to the censors, Scaurus and Drusus, everything went as smoothly as a well-orchestrated theatrical production, for Caesar had insisted upon going with him, and stood guarantor for the authenticity of all the papers he had had to produce for censorial scrutiny. At the end of it all, none other than Marcus Livius Drusus and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus had risen to their feet and shaken him by the hand and congratulated him sincerely. It was like a dream—but was it possible he would never again have to wake?

So, without the slightest need to contrive it, imperceptibly he had slipped into an acquaintance with Gaius Julius Caesar that ripened into a rather distant kind of friendly tolerance. To the Caesar house he never went; the acquaintance was pursued in the Forum. Both Caesar's sons were in Africa with their brother-in-law, Gaius Marius, but he had come to know Marcia a little in the weeks since Nicopolis had died, for she had made it her business to visit Clitumna. And it had not been hard to see that Marcia eyed him askance; Clitumna, he suspected, was not as discreet as she might have been about the bizarre relationship among Sulla and herself and Nicopolis. However, he knew very well that Marcia found him dangerously attractive, though her manner gave him to understand that she had classified his attractiveness somewhere between the alien beauty of a snake and a scorpion.

Thus Sulla's anxieties as he knocked on Gaius Julius Caesar's door halfway through October, aware that he did not dare postpone the next phase of his plans any further. He must act before Clitumna began to cheer up. And that meant he had to be sure of Gaius Julius Caesar.

The lad on door duty opened to him immediately, and did not hesitate to admit him, which indicated to Sulla that he had been placed on Caesar's list of those he was prepared to see anytime he was home.

"Is Gaius Julius receiving?" he asked.

"He is, Lucius Cornelius. Please wait," said the lad, and sped off toward Caesar's study.

Prepared to wait for a little while, Sulla strolled into the modest atrium, noting that this room, so plain and unadorned, contrived to make Clitumna's atrium look like the anteroom to an Eastern potentate's harem. And as he debated the nature of Caesar's atrium, Julilla walked into it.

For how long had she persuaded every servant likely to be given door duty that she must be told the moment Lucius Cornelius came to call? And how long would it be before the lad sped where he ought to have sped in the beginning, to tell Caesar who had come to call?

These two questions flew into Sulla's mind faster than it took a flicker of lightning to extinguish itself, faster than the responses of his body to the shock of the sight of her.

His knees gave way; he had to put out a hand to grab at the first object it could find, which happened to be an old silver-gilt ewer standing on a side table. Since the ewer was not anchored to the table, his frantic clutching at it unseated it, and it fell to the floor with a ringing, clanging crash just as Julilla, hands over her face, ran out of the room again.