The Grass Crown (105 page)

“Go, Lucius Decumius,” said Aurelia. “Please!”

“Not when he’s in a mood like this!”

“I will be better on my own. Please go.”

Lucius Decumius went.

“There was no need to be so hard on him,” she said, nostrils pinched. “He doesn’t know how to deal with you, and he has his loyalties, for all he is what he is. His devotion to Gaius Marius is on behalf of my son.”

Sulla perched on the edge of the couch, not sure whether to go or to stay. “Don’t be angry with me, Aurelia. If you are, then I’ll become angry with you. I agree, he’s a poor target. But he helped Gaius Marius put me in a situation I didn’t want, didn’t ask for, didn’t deserve!”

She drew a huge breath, exhaled slowly. “Yes, I can understand your feelings,” she said. “As far as it goes, you have some right.” Her head began to nod rhythmically. “I know that. I know that. I know you tried in every way possible to contain things legally, peacefully. But don’t blame Gaius Marius. It was Publius Sulpicius.”

“That’s specious,” said Sulla, beginning to relax. “You’re a consul’s daughter and a praetor’s wife, Aurelia. You’re more aware than most that Sulpicius couldn’t have got his program started had he not been backed by someone a great deal more influential than he was. Gaius Marius.”

“Was?” she asked sharply, eyes dilating.

“Sulpicius is dead. He was caught two days ago.”

Her hands went to her mouth. “And Gaius Marius?”

“Oh, Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius, always Gaius Marius! Think, Aurelia, think! Why would I want Gaius Marius dead? Kill the People’s hero? I’m not so big a fool! Hopefully I’ve given him a scare which will keep him out of Italy until I’ve got myself out of Italy. And not only for my own sake, woman. For Rome’s sake too. He can’t be allowed to fight Mithridates!” He shifted sideways on the couch, hands held like an advocate attempting to convince an antipathetic jury. “Aurelia, surely you’ve noticed that since he came back into public life exactly a year ago he’s tied himself to men he wouldn’t have said ave to in the old days? We all use minions we’d rather not use, we’re all obliged to suck up to men we’d rather spit on. But since that second stroke, Gaius Marius has resorted to tools and ploys he wouldn’t have touched on pain of death in the old days! I know what I am. I know what I’m capable of doing. And it’s no lie for me to say that I’m a more dishonest, unscrupulous man by far than Gaius Marius. Not only thanks to the life I’ve led. Thanks to the kind of man I am too. But he was never like that! He, to employ the likes of Lucius Decumius to get rid of a cadet who accused his precious son of murder? He, to employ the likes of Lucius Decumius to procure bully-boys and rabble? Think, Aurelia, think! The second stroke affected his mind.”

“You should never have marched on Rome,” she said.

“What other choice did I have, tell me that? If I could have found any other way, I would have! Unless you would rather have seen me continue to sit at Capua until Rome had a second civil war on her hands—Sulla versus Marius?”

Her color fled. “It could never have come to that!”

“Oh, there was a third alternative! That I lie down tamely under the feet of a maniac tribune of the plebs and a demented old man! Allow Gaius Marius to do to me what he did to Metellus Numidicus, use the Plebs to take away my lawful command? When he did that to Metellus Numidicus, Metellus Numidicus was no longer consul! I was consul, Aurelia! No one takes the command off a consul still in office. No one!”

“Yes, I see your point,” she said, color returning. Her eyes filled with tears. “They will never forgive you, Lucius Cornelius. You led an army on Rome.”

He groaned. “Oh, for the sake of all the gods, don’t cry! I have never seen you cry! Not even at my boy’s funeral! If you couldn’t cry for him, then you can’t cry for Rome!”

Her head was bent; the tears didn’t run down her cheeks, they splashed into her lap, and the light caught glitters off her wet black lashes. “When I am most moved, I cannot cry,” she said, and wiped her nose with the side of her hand.

“I don’t believe that,” he said, throat hard and aching.

She looked up. The tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m not crying for Rome,” she said huskily, and wiped her nose again. “I am crying for you.”

He got off the couch, gave her his handkerchief, and stood behind her chair with one hand pressed into her shoulder. Best she should not see his face.

“I will love you forever for that,” he said, put his other hand in front of her face and took some of the tears from her lashes, then licked them from his palm. “It’s Fortune,” he said. “I was given the hardest consulship a man has ever had. Just as I was given the hardest life a man has ever had. I’m not the kind to surrender, and I’m not the kind to care how I win. There are plenty of eggs in the cups and plenty of dolphins down. But the race won’t be over until I’m dead.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I have taken your tears into me. Once I dropped an emerald quizzing-glass down a drain because it had no value to me. But I will never lose your tears.”

His hand left her, he left the house. Walking very proudly, enriched and uplifted. All the tears those other women had shed over him were selfish tears, shed for the sake of their own broken hearts. Not for his. Yet she who never wept had wept for him.

Perhaps another man would have softened, reconsidered. Not Sulla. By the time he reached his house, a long walk, that private exaltation was tucked away below conscious thought; he dined very pleasantly with Dalmatica, took her to bed and made love to her, then slept his normal dreamless ten hours—or if he dreamed, he did not remember. An hour before dawn he woke and rose without disturbing his wife, took some crisp, freshly baked bread and cheese in his study and stared abstractedly as he ate at a box about the size of one of his ancestral temples. It sat on the far corner of his desk, and it held the head of Publius Sulpicius Rufus.

The rest of the condemned had escaped; only Sulla and a few of his colleagues knew that no exhaustive attempts to apprehend them had been mounted. Sulpicius, however, had to go. Therefore to catch him was imperative.

The boat across the Tiber had been a ruse. Further downstream Sulpicius crossed back again, but bypassed Ostia in favor of the little harbor town of Laurentum, some few miles down the coast. Here the fugitive had tried to engage a ship—and here, with the aid of one of his own servants, he was run to earth. Sulla’s hirelings had killed him on the spot, but knew Sulla better than to ask for money without furnishing proof. So they cut off Sulpicius’s head, put it in a waterproofed box, and brought it to Sulla’s house in Rome. They were then paid. And Sulla had the head, still fairly fresh; it had only left its owner’s shoulders two days earlier.

On his way out of Rome on that second day of January, Sulla summoned Cinna to the Forum. And there, stapled to the wall of the rostra, was a tall spear carrying Sulpicius’s head. Sulla took Cinna ungently by the arm.

“Look well,” he said. “Remember what you see. Remember the expression on its face. They say that when a man’s head is taken, his eyes still have sight. If you did not believe that in the past, you will in the future. that’s a man who watched his own head hit the dust. Remember well, Lucius Cinna. I do not intend to die in the East. And that means I will return to Rome. If you tamper with my remedies for Rome’s current diseases, you too will watch your own head hit the dust.”

His answer was a look of scorn and contempt, but Cinna may as well have saved himself the effort. For the moment he finished speaking Sulla hauled his mule’s head around and trotted off up the Forum Romanum without a backward glance, his wide-brimmed hat upon his head. Not anyone’s picture of the successful general. But Cinna’s private picture of Nemesis.

He turned then to look up at the head, its eyes wide, its jaw sagging. Dawn had barely broken; if it was removed now, no one would see it.

“No,” said Cinna aloud. “It should stay there. Let all of Rome see how far the man who invaded Rome is prepared to go.”

In Capua, Sulla closeted himself with Lucullus and got down to the logistics of transferring his soldiers to Brundisium. It had been Sulla’s original intention to sail from Tarentum until he learned it did not possess sufficient transport ships. Brundisium it must be.

“You will go first, taking all the cavalry and two of the five legions,” Sulla said to Lucullus. “I’ll follow with the other three. However, don’t look for me on the other side of the Ionian Sea. As soon as you land in Elatria or Buchetium, march for Dodona. Strip every temple in Epirus and Acarnania—they won’t yield you a big fortune, but I suspect they’ll yield you enough. A pity the Scordisci plundered Dodona so recently. However, never forget that Greek and Epirote priests are canny, Lucius Licinius. It may be that Dodona managed to hide quite a lot from a collection of barbarians.”

“They won’t hide anything from me,” said Lucullus, smiling.

’”Good! March your men overland to Delphi, and do what you have to do. Until I reach you, it’s your theater of war.”

“What about you, Lucius Cornelius?” Lucullus asked.

“I’ll have to wait at Brundisium until your transports return, but before that I’ll have to wait in Capua until I’m sure things are quiet in Rome. I don’t trust Cinna, and I don’t trust Sertorius.”

As three thousand horses and a thousand mules were not popular residents around Capua, Lucullus marched for Brundisium by the middle of January, though winter was fast approaching and both Lucullus and Sulla doubted that Lucullus would sail much before March or April. Despite his urgent need to leave Capua, Sulla still hesitated; the reports from Rome were not promising. First he heard that the tribune of the plebs Marcus Vergilius had made a magnificent speech to the Forum crowd from the rostra, and had avoided infringing Sulla’s laws by refusing to call it a meeting. Vergilius had advocated that Sulla—no longer consul—be stripped of his imperium and brought to Rome—by force if necessary—to answer charges of treason for the murder of Sulpicius and the unlawful proscription of Gaius Marius and eighteen others, still at large.

Nothing came of the speech, but Sulla then heard that Cinna was actively lobbying many of the backbenchers for their support when Vergilius and another tribune of the plebs, Publius Magius, submitted a motion to the Senate to recommend to the Centuriate Assembly that Sulla be stripped of his imperium and made to answer charges of treason and murder. The House refused steadfastly to countenance any of these ploys, but Sulla knew they boded no good; they all knew he was still in Capua with three legions, so they had obviously decided he would not have the courage to march on Rome a second time. They felt they could defy him with impunity.

At the end of January a letter came to Sulla from his daughter, Cornelia Sulla.

Father, my position is desperate. With my husband and my father-in-law both dead, the new paterfamilias—my brother-in-law who now calls himself Quintus—is behaving abominably toward me. He has a wife who dislikes me intensely. While my husband and my father-in-law were alive, there could be no trouble. Now, however, the new Quintus and his dreadful wife are living with my mother-in-law and me. By rights the house belongs to my son, but that seems to have been forgotten. My mother-in-law—naturally, I suppose—has transferred her allegiance to her living son. And they have all taken to blaming you for Rome’s troubles as well as their own. They even talk that you deliberately sent my father-in-law to his death in Umbria. As a result of all this, my children and I find ourselves without servants, we are given the same food to eat as the servants, and we are poorly housed. When I complain, I am told that technically I am your responsibility! Just as if I had not borne my late husband a son who is actually the heir to most of his grandfather’s fortune! That too is a great source of resentment. Dalmatica is beseeching me to live with her in your house, but I feel I cannot do that until I obtain your permission.

What I would ask of you ahead of providing a home for me in your own house, Father (if in the midst of your own troubles you have time to think of me), is that you find me another husband. There are still seven months of my mourning period left. If you will give your consent I would like to spend them in your house under the protection and chaperonage of your wife. But I do not want to impose upon Dalmatica any longer than that. I must have my own home.

I am not like Aurelia, I do not want to live on my own. Nor can I face the kind of life Aelia seems genuinely to enjoy, Marcia’s tyrannies notwithstanding. Please, Father, if you can find me a husband I would so much appreciate it! Marriage to the worst of men is infinitely preferable to invading the house of another woman. I say it with feeling.

In myself I am quite well, though plagued by a cough due to the coldness of my room. As are the children. It has not escaped me that there would be little grief in this house if something were to happen to my son.

Considered dispassionately, Cornelia Sulla’s plaint was the smallest particle of aggravation; yet it was the particle which tipped the balance in Sulla’s unsettled mind. Until he received it he hadn’t known which was his best course. Now he knew. That course had nothing to do with Cornelia Sulla. But he had an idea about her poor little life too. How dare some jumped-up Picentine lout imperil the health and happiness of his daughter! And her son!

He sent off two letters, one to Metellus Pius the Piglet ordering him to come to Capua from Aesemia and bring Mamercus with him, the other to Pompey Strabo. The Piglet’s letter consisted of two bald sentences. Pompey Strabo received more.

No doubt, Gnaeus Pompeius, you are aware of the goings-on in Rome—the imprudent actions of Lucius Cinna, not to mention his tamed pack of tribunes of the plebs. I think, my friend and colleague in the north, that you and I know each other well enough, at least by reputation—and I regret that our careers have not permitted us a closer friendship—to understand that our aims and intentions are of like kind. I find in you a conservatism and respect for the old ways similar to my own, and I know you bear Gaius Marius no affection. Or Cinna, I strongly suspect.

If you truly feel that Rome would be better served by sending Gaius Marius and his legions to fight King Mithridates, then tear this up as of now. But if you prefer to see me and my legions go to fight King Mithridates, read on.

As things stand in Rome at the present time, I am helpless to commence the venture I ought to have commenced last year well before my consulship expired. Instead of setting off for the East, I am obliged to remain in Capua with three of my legions to ensure that I am not stripped of my imperium, arrested, and made to stand trial for no worse crime than strengthening the mos maiorum. Cinna, Sertorius, Vergilius, Magius, and the rest talk of treason and murder, of course.

Leaving aside my legions here in Capua and the two before Aesernia plus the one before Nola, yours are the only legions left in Italy. I can rely upon Quintus Caecilius at Aesernia and Appius Claudius at Nola to uphold me and my deeds while consul; what I am writing to ask is whether I can also rely upon you and your legions. It may be that after I leave Italy nothing will stop Cinna and his friends. I am happy to face the consequences of that eventuality when the time comes. I can assure you that if I return from the East victorious, I will make my enemies pay.

What concerns me is my present position. I need to be guaranteed sufficient time to depart from Italy, and (as you well know) that could mean as long as four or five more months. Winds across the Adriatic and the Ionian at this season are notoriously capricious, and storms frequent. I cannot afford to take any risks with troops Rome will need desperately.

Gnaeus Pompeius, would you undertake on my behalf the task of informing Cinna and his confederates that I am legally commissioned to go to this eastern war? That if they attempt to hinder my departure, it will go ill with them? That for the moment, at least, they must cease and desist this badgering?

Please consider me your friend and colleague in every regard if you feel you can answer me in the affirmative. I await your reply most anxiously.

Pompey Strabo’s reply actually reached Sulla before his legates arrived from Aesernia. It was written in his own atrocious hand, and consisted of one brief, laconic sentence:

“Don’t worry, I’ll fix everything.”

So when the Piglet and Mamercus finally presented themselves at Sulla’s rented house in Capua, they found Sulla more genial and relaxed than their own informants in Rome had led them to believe remotely possible.

“Don’t worry, everything’s fixed,” said Sulla, grinning.

“How can that be?” gasped Metellus Pius. “I hear there are charges looming—murder, treason!”

“I wrote to my very good friend Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and poured out my troubles to him. He says he’ll fix everything.”

“He will too,” said Mamercus, a slow smile dawning.

“Oh, Lucius Cornelius, I’m so glad!” cried the Piglet. “It isn’t fair, the way they’re treating you! They were far kinder to Saturninus! The way they’re carrying on at the moment, anyone would think Sulpicius was a demigod, not a demagogue!” He paused, struck by his own inadvertent verbal cleverness. “I say, that was quite well put, wasn’t it?”

“Save it for the Forum when you run for consul,” said Sulla. “It’s wasted on me. My schooling never went beyond the elementary.”

Remarks like that puzzled Mamercus, who now resolved to sit the Piglet down and make him tell everything he knew or suspected about the life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Oh, there were always Forum stories circulating about anyone unusual or excessively talented or notorious in some way, but Mamercus didn’t listen to Forum stories, deeming them the exaggerations and embellishments of idle minds.

“They’ll kill your laws as soon as you leave Italy. What are you going to do when you come home again?” asked Mamercus.

“Deal with it when it arrives, not a whisker before.”

“Can you deal with it, Lucius Cornelius? I would think it will be an impossible situation.”

“There are always ways, Mamercus, but you may believe me when I say that I won’t be spending my leisure during this campaign on wine and women!” laughed Sulla, who did not appear anxious. “I am one of Fortune’s beloved, you see. Fortune always looks after me.”

They settled down then to discuss the remnants of the war in Italy, and the doggedness with which the Samnites hung on; they still controlled most of the territory between Aesernia and Corfinium, as well as the cities of Aesernia and Nola.

“They’ve hated Rome for centuries, and they’re the best haters in the world,” said Sulla, and sighed. “I had hoped that by the time I left for Greece, Aesernia and Nola would have capitulated. As it is, they may well be waiting for me when I come home.”

“Not if we can help it,” said the Piglet.

A servant scratched, murmured that dinner was ready if Lucius Cornelius was.

Lucius Cornelius was. He got to his feet and led the way into the dining room. While the food was on the table and the servants scurried in and out, Sulla kept the conversation light and inconsequential; they enjoyed the luxury permitted only to old friends, of each having a couch to himself.

“Do you never entertain women, Lucius Cornelius?” asked Mamercus when the servants had been dismissed.

Sulla shrugged, grimaced. “On campaign, away from the wife, all that, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Women are too much trouble, Mamercus, so the answer is no.” Sulla laughed. “If that was asked because of your custodial duty toward Dalmatica, then you’ve got an honest answer.”

“As a matter of fact, it wasn’t asked for any reason outside of sheer vulgar curiosity,” said Mamercus, unabashed.

Sulla put his cup down and stared across at the couch opposite his own, where Mamercus reclined; he now studied this guest more carefully than he had in the past. No Paris or Adonis or Memmius, certainly. Dark hair very closely cropped, an indication it had no curl and his barber despaired of it; a bumpy face with a broken, rather flattened nose; dark eyes deeply set; good brown skin with a sheen to it, his best feature. A healthy man, Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus. Fit enough to have killed Silo in single combat—he had been awarded the corona civica for that. Therefore he was brave. Not so brilliant that he’d ever be a danger to the State, but no fool, either. According to the Piglet, he was steady and reliable in every emergency, and confident in command situations. Scaurus had loved him dearly, made him executor of his will.

Of course Mamercus knew perfectly well that he was suddenly being subjected to a minute examination; why did he feel as if he was being assessed by a prospective lover?

“Mamercus, you’re married, aren’t you?” Sulla asked.

That jolted him into blinking. “Yes, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Any children?”

“A girl, now aged four.”

“Attached to your wife?”

“No. She’s an awful woman.”

“Ever think of divorce?”

“Constantly while ever I’m in Rome. Out of Rome, I try not to think of her for any reason.”

“What’s her name? Her family?”

“Claudia. She’s one of the sisters of the Appius Claudius Pulcher at present besieging Nola.”

“Oh, not a wise choice, Mamercus! that’s a queer family.”

“Queer? I’d call them downright strange.”

Metellus Pius had quite forgotten to recline; he was sitting bolt upright, eyes wide, and fixed on Sulla.

“My daughter is now a widow. She’s not quite twenty years old. She has two children, a girl and a boy. Have you ever seen her?”

“No,” said Mamercus calmly, “I don’t believe I ever have.”

“I’m her father, so in her case I’m no judge. But they tell me she’s lovely,” said Sulla, picking up his wine cup.

“Oh, she is, Lucius Cornelius! Absolutely ravishing!” said the Piglet, beaming fatuously.

“There you are, there’s an outside opinion.” Sulla looked into his cup, then flicked the lees expertly onto an empty platter. “Fives!” he exclaimed, delighted. “Fives are lucky for me.” The eyes gazed directly at Mamercus. “I am looking for a good husband for my poor girl, whose in-laws are making her very miserable. She has a forty-talent dowry—which is more than most girls have—she has proven her fertility, she has one boy, she is still young, she is a patrician on both sides—her mother was a Julia—and she has what I’d call a nice nature. I don’t mean she’s the sort who will lie down and let you wipe your boots all over her, but she gets on with most people. Her late husband, the younger Quintus Pompeius Rufus, seemed quite besotted by her. So what do you say? Interested?”