The First Man in Rome (90 page)

Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was sitting with his back against the plinth of a statue of Scipio Africanus while Metellus Numidicus and two slaves tried to stanch the blood flowing freely from a cut on his temple; Crassus Orator and his boon companion (and first cousin) Quintus Mucius Scaevola were hovering near Scaurus, looking shaken; the two shocked young men Drusus and Caepio Junior were standing on the Senate steps, shepherded by Drusus's uncle Publius Rutilius Rufus, and by Marcus Aurelius Cotta; and the junior consul, Lucius Aurelius Orestes, not a well man at the best of times, was lying full length in the vestibule being tended by an anxious praetor.

Rutilius Rufus and Cotta both moved quickly to support Caepio Junior when he suddenly sagged against the dazed and white-faced Drusus, who had one arm about his shoulders.

"What can we do to help?" asked Cotta.

Drusus shook his head, too moved to speak, while Caepio Junior seemed not to hear.

"Did anyone think to send lictors to guard Quintus Servilius's house from the crowds?" asked Rutilius Rufus.

"I did," Drusus managed to say.

"The boy's wife?" asked Cotta, nodding at Caepio Junior.

"I've had her and the baby sent to my house," Drusus said, lifting his free hand to his cheek as if to discover whether he actually existed.

Caepio Junior stirred, looking at the three around him in wonder. "It was only the gold," he said. "All they cared about was the gold! They didn't even think of Arausio. They didn't condemn him for Arausio. All they cared about was the gold!"

"It is human nature," said Rutilius Rufus gently, "to care more about gold than about men's lives."

Drusus glanced at his uncle sharply, but if Rutilius Rufus had spoken in irony, Caepio Junior didn't notice.

"I blame Gaius Marius for this," said Caepio Junior.

Rutilius Rufus put his hand under Caepio Junior's elbow. "Come, young Quintus Servilius, Marcus Aurelius and I will take you to young Marcus Livius's house."

As they moved off the Senate steps, Lucius Antistius Reginus broke away from Lucius Cotta, Didius, and Baebius. He strode across to confront Norbanus, who backed away and took up a stance of aggressive self-defense.

"Oh, don't bother!" spat Antistius. "I wouldn't soil my hands with the likes of you, you cur!" He drew himself up, a big man with obvious Celt in him. "I'm going to the Lautumiae to free Quintus Servilius. No man in the history of our Republic has ever been thrown into prison to await exile, and I will not let Quintus Servilius become the first! You can try to stop me if you like, but I've sent home for my sword, and by living Jupiter, Gaius Norbanus, if you try to stop me, I'll kill you!"

Norbanus laughed. "Oh, take him!" he said. "Take Quintus Servilius home with you and wipe his eyes—not to mention his arse! I wouldn't go near
his
house, though, if I were you!"

"Make sure you charge him plenty!" Saturninus called in the wake of Antistius's diminishing figure. "He can afford to pay in gold, you know!"

Antistius swung round and flipped up the fingers of his right hand in an unmistakable gesture.

"Oh, I will not! "yelled Glaucia, laughing. "Just because you're a queen doesn't mean the rest of us are!"

Gaius Norbanus lost interest. "Come on," he said to Glaucia and Saturninus, "let's go home and eat dinner."

Though he was feeling very sick, Scaurus would sooner have died than demean himself by vomiting in public, so he forced his churning mind to dwell upon the three men walking away, laughing, animated, victorious.

"They're werewolves," he said to Metellus Numidicus, whose toga was stained with Scaurus's blood. "Look at them! Gaius Marius's tools!"

"Can you stand yet, Marcus Aemilius?" Numidicus asked.

"Not until I'm feeling surer of my stomach."

"I see Publius Rutilius and Marcus Aurelius have taken Quintus Servilius's two young men home," said Numidicus.

"Good. They'll need someone to keep an eye on them. I've never seen a crowd so out for noble blood, even in the worst days of Gaius Gracchus," said Scaurus, drawing deep breaths. "We will have to go very quietly for a while, Quintus Caecilius. If we push, those werewolves will push us harder."

"Rot Quintus Servilius and the gold!" snapped Numidicus.

Feeling better, Scaurus allowed himself to be helped to his feet. "So you think he took it, eh?"

Metellus Numidicus looked scornful. "Oh, come, don't try to hoodwink me, Marcus Aemilius!" he said. "You know him as well as I do. Of course he took it! And I'll never forgive him for taking it. It belonged to the Treasury.''

"The trouble is," said Scaurus as he began to walk on what felt like a series of very uneven clouds, "that we have no internal system whereby men like you and me can punish those among our own who betray us."

Metellus Numidicus shrugged. "There can be no such system, you are aware of that. To institute one would be to admit that our own men do sometimes fall short of what they should be. And if we show our weaknesses to the world, we're finished."

"I'd rather be dead than finished," said Scaurus.

"And I." Metellus Numidicus sighed. "I just hope our sons feel as strongly as we do."

"That," said Scaurus wryly, "was an unkind thing to say."

"Marcus Aemilius, Marcus Aemilius! Your boy is very young! I can't see anything very wrong with him, truly."

"Then shall we exchange sons?"

"No," said Metellus Numidicus, "if for no other reason than that the gesture would kill your son. His worst handicap is that he knows very well he lives under your disapproval.''

"He's a weakling," said Scaurus the strong.

"Perhaps a good wife might help," said Numidicus.

Scaurus stopped and turned to face his friend. "Now that's a thought! I hadn't earmarked him for anyone yet, he's so—grossly immature. Have you someone in mind?"

"My niece. Dalmaticus's girl, Metella Dalmatica. She'll be eighteen in about two years. I'm her guardian now that dear Dalmaticus is dead. What do you say, Marcus Aemilius?"

"It's a deal, Quintus Caecilius! A deal!"

Drusus had sent his steward Cratippus and every physically fit slave he owned to the Servilius Caepio house the moment he realized that Caepio the father was going to be convicted.

Unsettled by the trial and the very little she had managed to overhear of conversation between Caepio Junior and Caepio the father, Livia Drusa had gone to work at her loom for want of something else to do; no book could keep her enthralled, even the love poetry of the spicy Meleager. Not expecting an invasion by her brother's servants, she took alarm from the expression of controlled panic on Cratippus's face.

"Quick,
dominilla,
get together anything you want to take away with you!" he said, glancing around her sitting room. "I have your maid packing your clothes, and your nanny taking care of the baby's needs, so all you have to do is show me what you want to bring away for yourself— books, papers, fabrics."

Eyes enormous, she stared at the steward. "What is it? What's the matter?"

"Your father-in-law,
dominilla.
Marcus Livius says the court is going to convict him," said Cratippus.

"But why should that mean I have to leave?" she asked, terrified at the thought of going back to live in the prison of her brother's house now that she had discovered freedom.

"The city is out for his blood,
dominilla."

What color she still retained now fled. "His
blood
!
Are they going to kill him?"

"No, no, nothing quite as bad as that," Cratippus soothed. "They'll confiscate his property. But the crowd is so angry that your brother thinks it likely when the trial is over that many of the most vengeful may come straight here to loot."

Within an hour Quintus Servilius Caepio's house was devoid of servants and family, its outer gates bolted and barred; as Cratippus led Livia Drusa away down the Clivus Palatinus, a big squad of lictors came marching up it, clad only in tunics and bearing clubs instead of
fasces.
They were going to take up duty outside the house and keep any irate crowds at bay, for the State wanted Caepio's property intact until it could be catalogued and auctioned.

Servilia Caepionis was there at Drusus's door to bring her sister-in-law inside, her face as pale as Livia Drusa's.

"Come and look," she said, hurrying Livia Drusa through peristyle-garden and house, guiding her out to the loggia, which overlooked the Forum Romanum.

And there it was, the end of the trial of Quintus Servilius Caepio. The milling throng was sorting itself out into tribes to vote about the sentence of far-away exile and huge damages, a curious swaying series of surging lines which were orderly enough in the well of the Comitia, but became chaotic where the huge crowds of onlookers fused into them. Knots indicated fights in progress, eddies revealed where the fights had begun to escalate into something approaching riot nuclei; on the Senate steps many men were clustered, and on the rostra at the edge of the well of the Comitia stood the tribunes of the plebs and a small, lictor-hedged figure Livia Drusa presumed was her father-in-law, the accused.

Servilia Caepionis had begun to weep; too numb yet to feel like crying, Livia Drusa moved closer to her.

"Cratippus said the crowd might go to Father's house to loot it," she said. "I didn't know! Nobody told me anything!"

Dragging out her handkerchief, Servilia Caepionis dried her tears. "Marcus Livius has feared it all along," she said. "It's that wretched story about the Gold of Tolosa! Had it not got around, things would have been different. But most of Rome seems to have judged Father before his trial—and for something he's not even on trial for!"

Livia Drusa turned away. "I must see where Cratippus has put my baby."

That remark provoked a fresh flood of tears in Servilia Caepionis, who so far had not managed to become pregnant, though she wanted a baby desperately. "Why haven't I conceived?" she asked Livia Drusa. "You're so lucky! Marcus Livius says you're going to have a second baby, and I haven't even managed to start my first one!"

"There's plenty of time," Livia Drusa comforted. "They were away for months after we were married, don't forget, and Marcus Livius is much busier than my Quintus Servilius. It's commonly said that the busier the husband is, the harder his wife finds it to conceive."

"No, I'm barren," Servilia Caepionis whispered. "I know I'm barren; I can feel it in my bones! And Marcus Livius is so kind, so forgiving!" She broke down again.

"There, there, don't fret about it so," said Livia Drusa, who had managed to get her sister-in-law as far as the atrium, where she looked about her for help. "You won't make it any easier to conceive by becoming distraught, you know. Babies like to burrow into placid wombs."

Cratippus appeared.

"Oh, thank the gods!" cried Livia Drusa. "Cratippus, fetch my sister's maid, would you? And perhaps you could show me whereabouts I am to sleep, and whereabouts little Servilia is?"

In such an enormous house, the accommodation of several additional important people was not a problem; Cratippus had given Caepio Junior and his wife one of the suites of rooms opening off the peristyle-garden, and Caepio the father another, while baby Servilia had been located in the vacant nursery along the far colonnade.

"What shall I do about dinner?" the steward came to ask Livia Drusa as she began to direct the unpacking.

"That's up to my sister, Cratippus, surely! I'd much rather not do anything to usurp her authority."

"She's lying down in some distress,
dominilla."

"Oh, I see. Well, best have dinner ready in an hour— the men might want to eat. But be prepared to postpone it."

There was a stir outside in the garden; Livia Drusa went out to see, and found her brother Drusus supporting Caepio Junior along the colonnade.

"What is it?" she asked. "How may I help?" She looked at Drusus. "What is it?" she repeated.

"Quintus Servilius our father-in-law is condemned. Exile no closer than eight hundred miles from Rome, a fine of fifteen thousand talents of gold—which means confiscation of every lamp wick and dead leaf the whole of his family owns—and imprisonment in the Lautumiae until Quintus Servilius can be deported," said Drusus.

"But everything Father owns won't amount to a hundred talents of gold!" said Livia Drusa, aghast.

“Of course. So he'll never be able to come home again.''

Servilia Caepionis came running, looking, thought Livia Drusa, like Cassandra flying from the conquering Greeks, hair wild, eyes huge and blurred with tears, mouth agape.

"What is it, what is it?" she cried,

Drusus coped with her firmly but kindly, dried her tears, forbade her to cast herself on her brother's chest. And under this treatment she calmed with magical swiftness.

"Come, let's all go to your study, Marcus Livius," she said, and actually led the way.

Livia Drusa hung back, terrified.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Servilia Caepionis.

"We can't sit in the study with the men!"

“Of course we can!'' said Servilia Caepionis impatiently. "This is no time to keep the women of the family in ignorance, as Marcus Livius well knows. We stand together, or we fall together. A strong man must have strong women around him."

Head spinning, Livia Drusa tried to assimilate all the mood twists of the previous moments, and understood at last what a mouse she had been all her life. Drusus had expected a wildly disturbed wife to greet him, but then expected her to calm down and become extremely practical and supportive; and Servilia Caepionis had behaved exactly as he expected.

So Livia Drusa followed Servilia Caepionis and the men into the study, and managed not to look horrified when Servilia Caepionis poured unwatered wine for the whole company. Sitting sipping the first undiluted liquor she had ever tasted, Livia Drusa hid her storm of thoughts. And her anger.

At the end of the tenth hour Lucius Antistius Reginus brought Quintus Servilius Caepio to Drusus's house. Caepio looked exhausted, but more annoyed than depressed.