The First Man in Rome (41 page)

Marius nodded. "I agree with you, Gaius Julius. Slave testimony is of value only if it is freely given—and is as logical as it is patently truthful."

"So the upshot of all this was that Lucius Cornelius went from abject poverty to decent wealth over the course of two months," Caesar went on. "From Nicopolis he inherited enough to be admitted to the knights' census, and from Clitumna enough to be admitted to the Senate. Thanks to Scaurus's fuss about the absence of censors, a new pair were elected last May. Otherwise Lucius Cornelius would have had to wait for admission to the Senate for several years."

Marius laughed. "Yes, what did actually happen? Didn't anyone want the censors' jobs? I mean, to some extent Fabius Maximus Eburnus is logical, but Licinius
Getha
?
He was thrown out of the Senate by the censors eight years ago for immoral behavior, and only got back into the Senate by getting himself elected a tribune of the plebs!"

"I know," said Caesar gloomily. "No, I think what happened was that everyone was reluctant to stand for fear of offending Scaurus. To want to be censor seemed like a want of respect and loyalty for Scaurus, so the only ones who stood were quite incapable of that kind of sensitivity. Mind you, Getha's easy enough to deal with—he's only in it for the status and a few silver handshakes from companies bidding for State contracts. Where Eburnus—well, we all know he's not right in the head, don't we, Gaius Marius?"

Yes, thought Gaius Marius, we do indeed! Immensely old and of an aristocracy surpassed only by the Julius clan, the Fabius Maximus line had died out, and was kept going only by a series of adoptions. The Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus who had been elected censor was an adopted Fabius Maximus; he had sired only one son, and then five years earlier, he had executed this one son for unchastity. Though there was no law to prevent Eburnus from executing his son when acting as
paterfamilias,
the execution of wives or children under the protective shelter of family law had long fallen into disuse. Therefore, Eburnus's action had horrified the whole of Rome.

"Mind you, it's just as well for Rome that Getha has an Eburnus as his colleague," said Marius thoughtfully. "I doubt he'll get away with much, not with Eburnus there."

"I'm sure you're right, but oh, that poor young man, his son! Mind you, Eburnus is really a Servilius Caepio, and the Servilius Caepio lot are all rather strange when it comes to sexual morality. Chaster than Artemis of the Forest, and vocal about it too. Which really makes one wonder."

"So which censor persuaded which to let Lucius Cornelius Sulla into the Senate?" asked Marius. "One hears he hasn't exactly been a pillar of sexual morality, now that I can associate his name with his face."

"Oh, I think the moral laxity was mostly boredom and frustration," said Caesar easily. "However, Eburnus did look down his knobby little Servilius Caepio nose and mutter a bit, it's true. Where Getha would admit a Tingitanian ape if the price was right. So in the end they agreed Lucius Cornelius might be enrolled—but only upon conditions."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Lucius Cornelius is conditionally a senator—he has to stand for election as a quaestor and get in the first time. If he fails, then he's no longer a senator."

"And will he get in?"

"What do you think, Gaius Marius?"

"With a name like his? Oh, he'll get in!"

"I hope so." But Caesar looked dubious. Uncertain. A little embarrassed? He drew a breath and leveled a straight blue gaze at his son-in-law, smiling ruefully. "I vowed, Gaius Marius, that after your generosity when you married Julia, I would never ask you for another favor. However, that's a silly sort of vow. How can one know what the future will need? Need. I need. I need another favor from you."

"Anything, Gaius Julius," said Marius warmly.

"Have you had sufficient time with your wife to find out why Julilla nearly starved herself to death?" asked Caesar.

"No." The stern strong eagle's face lit up for a moment in pure joy. "What little time we've had together since I returned home hasn't been wasted in talking, Gaius Julius!"

Caesar laughed, sighed. "I wish my younger daughter was cast in the same mould as my older! But she isn't. It is probably my fault, and Marcia's. We spoiled her, and excused her much the three older children were not excused. On the other hand, it is my considered opinion that there is an innate lack in Julilla as well. Just before Clitumna died, we found out that the silly girl had fallen in love with Lucius Cornelius, and was trying to force him—or us—or both him and us—it is very difficult to know just what she intended, if ever she really knew herself—anyway, she wanted Lucius Cornelius, and she knew I would never give my consent to such a union."

Marius looked incredulous. "And knowing there was a clandestine relationship between them, you've allowed the marriage to go ahead?"

"No, no, Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius was never in any way implicated!" Caesar cried. "I assure you, he had nothing to do with what she did."

"But you said she gave him a grass crown two New Years ago," Marius objected.

"Believe me, the meeting was innocent, at least on his part. He didn't encourage her—in fact, he tried to discourage her. She brought disgrace upon herself and us, because she actually attempted to suborn him into declaring feelings for her which he knew I would never condone. Let Julia tell you the whole story, and you'll see what I mean," said Caesar.

"In which case, how is it they're getting married?"

"Well, when he inherited his fortune and was able to take up his proper station in life, he asked me for Julilla's hand. In spite of the way she had treated him."

"The grass crown," said Marius thoughtfully. "Yes, I can understand how he'd feel bound to her, especially when her gift changed his luck."

"I understand it too, which is why I have given my consent." Again Caesar sighed, more heavily. "The trouble is, Gaius Marius, that I feel none of the liking for Lucius Cornelius that I do for you. He's a very strange man—there are things in him that set my teeth on edge, and yet I have no idea in the world what those things are. And one must always strive to be fair, to be impartial in judgments."

"Cheer up, Gaius Julius, it will all turn out well in the end," said Marius. "Now what can I do for you?"

"Help Lucius Cornelius get elected quaestor," said Caesar, speech crispening now he had a man's problem to deal with. "The trouble is that no one knows him. Oh, everyone knows his
name
!
Everyone knows he's a genuine patrician Cornelius. But the
cognomen
Sulla isn't one we hear of these days, and he never had the opportunity to expose himself in the Forum and the law courts when he was a very young man, nor did he ever do military service. In fact, if some malicious noble chose to make a fuss about it, the very fact that he's never done military service could keep him out of office—and out of the Senate. What we're hoping is that no one will ask too closely, and in that respect this pair of censors are ideal. It didn't occur to either of them that Lucius Cornelius was not able to train on the Campus Martius or join the legions as a junior military tribune. And luckily it was Scaurus and Drusus who enrolled Lucius Cornelius as a knight, so our new censors simply assume the old censors went into everything a great deal more thoroughly than they actually did. Scaurus and Drusus were understanding men, they felt Lucius Cornelius should be given his chance. And besides, the Senate wasn't in question at the time."

“Do you want me to bribe Lucius Cornelius into office?'' Marius asked.

Caesar was old-fashioned enough to look shocked.  “Most definitely not! I can see where bribing might be excusable if the consulship was the prize, but
quaestor!
Never! Also, it would be too risky. Eburnus has his eye on Lucius Cornelius, he'll be watching for any opportunity to disqualify him—and prosecute him. No, the favor I want is far different and less comfortable for you if he turns out to be hopeless. I want you to ask for Lucius Cornelius as your personal quaestor—give him the accolade of a personal appointment. As you well know, once the electorate realizes a candidate for the quaestorship has already been asked for by a consul-elect, he is certain to be voted in."

Marius didn't answer immediately; he was busy digesting the implications. No matter really whether Sulla was innocent of any complicity in the deaths of his mistress and his stepmother, his testamentary benefactresses. It was bound to be said later on that he had murdered them if he made sufficient political mark to be consular material; someone would unearth the story, and a whispering campaign that he had murdered to get his hands on enough money to espouse the public career his father's poverty had denied him would be a gift from the gods in the hands of his political rivals. Having a daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar to wive would help, but nothing would scotch the slur entirely. And in the end there would be many who believed it, just as there were many who believed Gaius Marius had no Greek. That was the first objection. The second lay in the fact that Gaius Julius Caesar couldn't quite bring himself to like Sulla, though he had no concrete grounds for the way he felt. Was it a matter of Smell rather than Thought? Animal instincts? And the third objection was the personality of Julilla. His Julia, he knew now, would never have married a man she considered unworthy, no matter how desperate the Julius Caesar financial plight. Where Julilla had shown that she was flighty, thoughtless, selfish—the kind of girl who couldn't pick a worthy mate if her life depended upon it. Yet she had picked Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Then he let his mind go far from the Caesars, cast it back to that early drizzly morning on the Capitol when he had covertly watched Sulla watching the bulls bleed to death. And then he knew what was the right thing to do, what he was going to answer. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was
important.
Under no circumstances must he be allowed to slide back into obscurity. He must inherit his birthright.

"Very well, Gaius Julius," he said without the slightest hesitation in his voice, "tomorrow I shall request the Senate to give me Lucius Cornelius Sulla for my quaestor.''

Caesar beamed. "Thank you, Gaius Marius! Thank you!"

"Can you marry them before the Assembly of the People meets to vote for the quaestors?" he asked.

"It shall be done," said Caesar.

*     *     *

And so, less than eight days later Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Julia Minor, younger daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar, were married in the old-style
confarreatio
ceremony, two patricians bound together for life. Sulla's career was off with a bound; personally requested by the consul-elect Gaius Marius as his quaestor, and united in wedlock to a family whose
dignitas
and integrity were above reproach, it seemed he couldn't lose.

In which jubilant spirit he approached his wedding night, he who had never really fancied being tied down to a wife and family responsibilities. Metrobius had been dismissed before Sulla applied to the censors for enrollment as a senator, and though the parting had been more fraught with emotion than he could cope with easily—for the boy loved him dearly, and was heartbroken—Sulla was firm in his resolution to put all such activities behind him forever. Nothing was going to jeopardize his rise to fame.

Besides which, he knew enough about his emotional state to understand that Julilla was very precious to him, and not merely because she symbolized his luck, though in his thoughts he classified his feelings for her around that luck. Simply, Sulla was incapable of defining his feelings for any human being as love. Love to Sulla was something other, lesser people felt. As defined by these other, lesser people, it seemed a very odd business, filled with illusions and delusions, at times noble to the point of imbecility and at other times base to the point of amorality. That Sulla could not recognize it in himself was due to his conviction that love negated common sense, self-preservation, enlightenment of the mind. In the years to come he did not ever see that his patience and forbearance in the matter of his flighty, labile wife were all the evidence of love he actually needed. Instead, he put the patience and forbearance down as virtues intrinsic to his own character, and so failed to understand himself or love, and so failed to grow.

A typical Julius Caesar wedding, it was more dignified by far than it was bawdy, though the weddings Sulla had attended were bawdier by far than they were dignified, so he endured the business rather than enjoyed it. However, when the time came there were no drunken guests outside his bedroom door, no wasting of his time having to forcibly eject them from his house. When the short journey from one front door to the next was over, and he picked Julilla up—how airy she felt, how ephemeral!—to carry her over the threshold, the guests who had accompanied them melted away.

As immature virgins had never formed a part of his life, Sulla experienced no misgivings about how events ought to go, and so saved himself a lot of unnecessary worry. For whatever the clinical status of her hymen, Julilla was as ripe, as easy to peel, as a peach caught dropping of its own volition from the tree. She watched him shed his wedding tunic and pull off the wreath of flowers on his head, as fascinated as she was excited. And pulled off her own layers upon layers without being asked, cream and flame and saffron bridal layers, the seven-tiered tiara of wool upon her head, all the special knots and girdles.

They gazed at each other then in complete satisfaction, Sulla beautifully put together, Julilla too thin, yet retaining a willowy grace of line which did much to soften what in someone else would have been angular and ugly. And it was she who moved to him, put her hands on his shoulders and with exquisitely natural and spontaneous voluptuousness inched her body against his, sighing in delight as his arms slid round her and began to stroke her back in long, hard sweeps of both hands.

He adored her lightness, the acrobatic suppleness with which she responded as he lifted her high above his head, let her twine herself about him. Nothing he did alarmed or offended her, and everything he did to her which she could in reciprocation do to him, she did. Teaching her to kiss took seconds; and yet through all their years together, she never stopped learning how to kiss. A wonderful, beautiful, ardent woman, anxious to please him, but greedy for him to please her. All his. Only his. And which of them that night could ever imagine that things might change, be less perfect, less wanted, less welcome?