The Grass Crown (106 page)

“It all depends,” said Mamercus cautiously. “What color are her eyes?”

“I don’t know,” said the father.

“A beautiful brilliant blue,” said the Piglet.

“What color is her hair?”

“Red—brown—auburn? I don’t know,” said the father.

“It’s the color of the sky after the sun has just disappeared,” said the Piglet.

“Is she tall?”

“I don’t know,” said the father.

“She’d come to the tip of your nose,” said the Piglet.

“What sort of skin does she have?”

“I don’t know,” said the father.

“Like a creamy-white flower, with six little gold freckles across her nose,” said the Piglet.

Both Sulla and Mamercus turned to stare at the suddenly scarlet and shrinking occupant of the middle couch.

“Sounds like you want to marry her, Quintus Caecilius,” said the father.

“No, no!” cried the Piglet. “But a man can look, Lucius Cornelius! She’s absolutely adorable.”

“Then I’d better have her,” said Mamercus, smiling at his good friend the Piglet. “I admire your taste in women, Quintus Caecilius. So I thank you, Lucius Cornelius. Consider your girl betrothed to me.”

“Her mourning period still has seven months to run, so there’s no hurry,” said Sulla. “Until it ends, she’ll be living with Dalmatica. Go and see her, Mamercus. I’ll write to her.”

Four days later Sulla set off for Brundisium with three very happy legions. They arrived to find Lucullus still encamped outside the city and having no trouble locating grazing for the cavalry’s horses and the army’s mules, since much of the land was Italian, and the season early winter. It was wet and blustery weather and continued wet and blustery, no ideal conditions for a long sojourn; the men became bored and spent too much of their time gambling. When Sulla arrived in person, however, they settled down. It was Lucullus they couldn’t stomach, not Sulla. He had no understanding of the legionary, Lucullus, and was not interested to understand any man so far beneath him on the social scale.

In calendar March, Lucullus set sail for Corcyra, his two legions and two thousand cavalry taking every ship the busy port could find. Which meant that Sulla had no choice but to wait for the return of the transports before he could sail himself. But at the beginning of May—he had very little left by then out of his two hundred talents of gold—Sulla finally crossed the Adriatic with three legions and a thousand army mules.

A good sailor, he leaned on the railing of his ship’s stern, gazing back across the faint wake at the smudge on the horizon that was Italy. And then Italy was gone. He was free. At fifty-three years of age he was finally going to a war he could win honorably, against a genuinely foreign foe. Glory, booty, battles, blood.

And so much for you, Gaius Marius! he thought exultantly. This is one war you cannot steal away from me. This war is mine!

Lucius Cornelius Cinna

It was Young Marius and Lucius Decumius who got Gaius Marius away from the temple of Tellus and hid him within the cella of the temple of Jupiter Stator on the Velia; it was Young Marius and Lucius Decumius who then searched for Publius Sulpicius, Marcus Laetorius, and the other noblemen who had buckled on a sword to defend Rome against the army of Lucius Cornelius Sulla; and it was Young Marius and Lucius Decumius who shepherded Sulpicius and nine others into the temple of Jupiter Stator not very long afterward.

“This is all we could find, Father,” said Young Marius, sitting down on the floor nearby. “I heard that Marcus Laetorius, Publius Cethegus, and Publius Albinovanus were seen slipping through the Capena Gate not long ago. But of the Brothers Granii I can find no sign. Hopefully that means they left the city even earlier.”

“What an irony,” said Marius bitterly to no one in particular, “to go to earth inside an establishment dedicated to the god who halts soldiers in retreat. Mine wouldn’t stand and fight, no matter what I promised them.”

“They weren’t Roman soldiers,” Young Marius pointed out.

“I know that!”

“I never thought Sulla would go through with it,” said Sulpicius, breathing as if he had been running for hours.

“I did—after I met him on the Via Latina at Tusculum,” said the urban praetor, Marcus Junius Brutus.

“Well, Sulla owns Rome now,” said Young Marius. “Father, what are we going to do?”

Sulpicius answered, detesting the way everyone deferred to Gaius Marius, who might have been consul six times and been of great help to a tribune of the plebs bent on destroying the Senate, but at this moment was merely a privatus. “We go to our homes and we behave as if nothing has happened,” he said firmly.

Marius turned his head to look at Sulpicius incredulously, more tired than he had ever been in his life, and horribly aware that his left hand, arm and jaw were needled with numbness. “You can if you like,” he said, rolling his tongue in his mouth because it felt funny. “I know Sulla. And I know what I’m going to do. Run for my life.”

“I think I agree with you,” said Brutus, the blue tinge to his lips darker than usual, his chest laboring to pull in more air. “If we stay, he’ll kill us. I saw his face at Tusculum.”

“He cannot kill us!” said Sulpicius positively; a much younger man, he was recovering his wits along with his breath. “No one will be more aware than Sulla that he’s nefas. He’ll bend over backwards to make sure everything he does from now on is legal.”

“Rubbish!” said Marius scornfully. “What do you think he’s going to do, shoo his men back to Campania tomorrow? Of course he won’t! He’ll occupy Rome and do whatever he wants.”

“He’d never dare,” said Sulpicius, realizing that, in similar case to many others in the Senate, he didn’t know Sulla well.

Marius found it in him to laugh. “Dare? Lucius Cornelius Sulla, dare? Grow up, Publius Sulpicius! Sulla would dare anything. And in the past he has. What’s worse, he dares after he thinks. Oh, he won’t try us for treason in some trumped-up court! That big a fool he’s not. He’ll just smuggle us off somewhere secret, kill us, and give out that we died in the battle.”

“That’s what I thinks too, Gaius Marius,” said Lucius Decumius. “He’d as soon kill his mother, that one.” He shivered, held up his right hand clenched into a fist, except that the index and the little fingers stuck up stiffly like two horns—the sign to ward off the Evil Eye. “He isn’t like other men.”

The nine lesser lights sat on the temple floor where they could watch the leaders debate, none of them important men in Senate or Ordo Equester, though all were members of one or the other. It had seemed a cause worth fighting for, to keep a Roman army out of Rome, but now that they had failed so miserably, each of them had arrived at that point where he deemed himself a fool for trying. Tomorrow their spines would stiffen again, as they all believed Rome worth dying for; but in the temple of Jupiter Stator, exhausted and disillusioned, they all hoped Marius would prevail over Sulpicius.

“If you go, Gaius Marius, I cannot stay,” said Sulpicius.

“Better to go, believe me. I certainly am,” said Marius.

“What about you, Lucius Decumius?” asked Young Marius.

Lucius Decumius shook his head. “No, I can’t leave. But—lucky for me!—I isn’t important. I have to look after Aurelia and Young Caesar—their tata is with Lucius Cinna at Alba Fucentia these days. I’ll keep an eye on Julia for you, Gaius Marius.”

“Whatever of my property Sulla can lay his hands on will be confiscated,” said Marius, and grinned smugly. “Isn’t it fortunate I have money buried everywhere?”

Marcus Junius Brutus hauled himself to his feet. “I’ll have to go home and bring away what I can.” He looked not to Sulpicius but to Marius. “Where are we going? Are we going our own ways, or is it better to go all together?”

“We’ll have to leave Italy,” said Marius, holding out his right hand to his son and his left to Lucius Decumius; he came to a standing position fairly easily. “I think we should leave Rome separately and stay separated until we’re well clear of Rome. Then it will be better if we stick together. I suggest we rendezvous on the island of Aenaria in one month’s time—the Ides of December. I won’t have any trouble locating Gnaeus and Quintus Granius to make sure they’re at the meeting place, and hopefully they’ll know where Cethegus, Albinovanus, and Laetorius are. After we reach Aenaria, leave it to me. I’ll procure a ship. From Aenaria we’ll sail to Sicily, I think. Norbanus is my client, and he’s the governor.”

“But why Aenaria?” asked Sulpicius, still unhappy at the decision to quit Rome.

“Because it’s an island, it’s off the beaten track, and it’s not very far from Puteoli. I have many relatives and a lot of money in Puteoli,” said Marius, flapping his left hand around as if it annoyed him. “My second cousin Marcus Granius—he’s the cousin of Gnaeus and Quintus, they’ll go to him—is a banker. He has the use of a large part of my cash fortune. While we all make our separate ways to Aenaria, Lucius Decumius here will go to Puteoli with a letter from me to Marcus Granius. Granius will send sufficient funds from Puteoli to Aenaria to enable all twenty of us to live decently while we’re away.” He tucked the offending hand into his general’s sash. “Lucius Decumius will also look for the others. We will be twenty, I assure you. It costs money to be an exile. But don’t worry. I have money. Sulla won’t stay in Rome forever. He’ll go to fight Mithridates. Curse him! And when he’s too committed to that war to contemplate a return to Italy, we’ll all come home again. My client Lucius Cinna will be consul in the New Year, and he’ll make sure we return.”

Sulpicius looked astonished. “Your client?”

“I have clients everywhere, Publius Sulpicius, even among the great patrician families,” said Gaius Marius complacently; he was beginning to feel better—or rather, the numbness had settled down. Moving toward the temple entrance, he turned to the others and said, “Keep your courage up! It was prophesied that I would be consul of Rome seven times, so this absence is purely a temporary one. And when I am consul a seventh time, you will all be rewarded greatly.”

“I need no reward, Gaius Marius,” said Sulpicius stiffly. “I do this for Rome alone.”

“That’s true of everyone here, Publius Sulpicius. In the meantime, we’d better get a move on. I give Sulla until darkness to garrison all the gates. Our best alternative is the Capena—but be careful, all of you.”

Sulpicius and the other nine disappeared at a run up the Clivus Palatinus, but when Marius started to walk along the Velia toward the Forum and his house, Lucius Decumius detained him.

“Gaius Marius, you and I are going to the Capena Gate at once,” said the little man from the Subura. “Young Marius can dash home and pick up a bit of ready money, he’s the youngest and fittest. If he finds the Capena Gate garrisoned, he can find some other way out, even if he has to go over the walls. He can write that letter to your cousin, and your wife can add a bit to convince him.”

“Julia!” said Marius desolately.

“You’ll see her again, just like you said. The prophecy, eh? Seven times consul. You’ll be back. She’ll worry a lot less if she knows you’re already on your way. Young Marius, your tata and I will wait among the tombs just beyond the gate. We’ll try to keep an eye out for you, but if we can’t, then look for us there.”

While Young Marius turned in the direction of home, his father and Lucius Decumius walked up the Clivus Palatinus.

Just inside the Porta Mugonia they entered the narrow street which ran to the old meeting houses above the Via Triumphalis, where a flight of steps led down off the Palatium. Noises in the distance told them that Sulla and his troops were moving from the Esquiline down into the Palus Ceroliae, but when Marius and Decumius hurried through the huge Capena Gate, no one garbed like a soldier was anywhere near it. They walked a short distance down the road before placing themselves behind a tomb from which they could see the gate comfortably. Many people came through Capena during the next two hours; not everyone wanted to remain in a Rome held by a Roman army.

Then they saw Young Marius. He was leading the donkey kept for fetching large loads from the marketplace or firewood from the hill of the Janiculum. With him walked a woman muffled closely in a dark mantle.

“Julia!” cried Marius, not caring who saw him emerge from his hiding place.

Her pace quickened, she met him and snuggled against him, eyes closing as his arms went round her. “Oh, Gaius Marius, I was sure I had missed you!” she said, and lifted her face to receive his kiss, and another, and another.

How many years had they been married? Yet it was still a deep pleasure to kiss, even in the grief and anxiety pressing upon them at that moment.

“Oh, I shall miss you!” she said, trying not to weep.

“I won’t be away so very long, Julia.”

“I can’t believe Lucius Cornelius has done this!”

“If I were in his boots, Julia, I’d have done the same.”

“You’d never lead an army on Rome!”

“I’m not so sure. In all fairness to him, the provocation was overmastering. If he hadn’t done this, he’d be finished. And men like Lucius Cornelius and I can’t accept that fate, we just can’t. The luck of it was that he had the army and the magistracy. I didn’t. But if our places had been reversed—I think I would have done what he did. It was a brilliant move, you know. And in all the history of Rome, there are only two men with the courage to have done it—Lucius Cornelius and me.” He kissed her again, then released her. “Go home now, Julia, and wait for me. If Lucius Cornelius takes our house away, go to your mother in Cumae. Marcus Granius has more money of mine by far than I’ve asked him for, so apply to him if you’re in need. In Rome, apply to Titus Pomponius.” He thrust her away. “Now go, Julia, go!”

She went, looking back over her shoulder; but Marius had turned to speak to Lucius Decumius, and wasn’t watching. Her heart swelled with pride. That was how it should be! When important things needed to be done in a hurry, a man ought not to waste his time looking longingly after his wife. Strophantes and six strong servants were hovering near the gate to escort her home; Julia looked where she was going, and stepped out purposefully.

“Lucius Decumius, you’ll have to hire horses for us. I don’t ride comfortably these days, but a gig would be too noticeable,” Marius was saying. He looked at his son. “Did you get the bag of gold I save for emergencies?”

“Yes. And a bag of silver denarii. I have the letter to Marcus Granius for you, Lucius Decumius.”

“Good. Give Lucius Decumius some of the silver too.”

And so did Gaius Marius escape from Rome, he and his son riding hired horses, and leading an ass.

“Why not a boat across the river and a port in Etruria?” asked Young Marius.

“No, I think that’s the way Publius Sulpicius will go. I’d rather head for Ostia, it’s closest,” said Marius, a little easier in himself because that awful pricking numbness was not so pronounced—or was it that he was getting used to it?

It was not yet fully dark when they rode into the outskirts of Ostia and saw the town walls looming ahead of them.

“No gate guards, Father,” said Young Marius, whose vision these days was better than Marius’s.

“Then we’ll get ourselves inside before orders come to post some, my son. We’ll go down to the dockside and see what’s what.”

Marius selected a prosperous-looking wharf tavern, and left Young Marius minding the horses and the ass in the darkest shadows while he went to hire a ship.

Obviously Ostia had not yet heard the news that Rome had fallen, though everyone was talking about Sulla’s historic march; the whole complement of the inn recognized Marius as soon as he walked through the door, but no one acted as if he was a known fugitive.

“I have to get away to Sicily in a hurry,” said Marius, paying for wine for everybody. “Any chance of a good ship ready to sail?”

“You can have mine for a price,” said one salty-looking man, leaning forward. “Publius Murcius at your service, Gaius Marius.”

“If we can sail tonight, Publius Murcius, it’s a deal.”

“I can up anchor just before midnight,” said Murcius.

“Excellent!”

“I’ll need to be paid in advance.”

Young Marius came in shortly after his father had concluded his bargain; Marius rose to his feet, smiled around the room, and said, “My son!” before drawing Young Marius outside onto the docks.

“You’re not coming with me,” he said as soon as they were alone. “I want you to find your own way to Aenaria. The risk to you if you come with me is far greater. Take the ass and both horses and ride for Tarracina.”

“Father, why not come with me? Tarracina would be safer.”

“I’m too infirm to ride so far, Young Marius. I’ll take ship from here and hope the winds behave.” He kissed his son, a mere peck. “Take the gold. Leave me the silver.”

“Half and half, Father, or none at all.”

Marius sighed. “Gaius Marius Junior, why couldn’t you have told me you killed Cato the Consul? Why did you deny it?”

His son stared, flabbergasted. “You’d ask me that? At a time like this? Is it so important?”