The Grass Crown (120 page)

This woman understands everything! thought Cinna, flesh creeping. He took his leave as quickly as he could, given that he had to stay long enough to make it look as if he might have spoken to Marius.

The vigil was continuous, each member of the family taking a turn to sit with the dying man, Julia in her chair beside him. But when his turn came, Young Caesar refused to enter that room.

“I may not be in the presence of death,” he said, face smooth, eyes innocent.

“But Gaius Marius is not dead,” said Aurelia, glancing at Scaevola and his wife.

“He might die while I was there. I couldn’t allow that,” said the boy firmly. “After he is dead and his body removed, I will sweep out his room in the purification rites.”

The trace of derision in his blue gaze was so slight only his mother saw it. Saw it and felt a numbness crawling through her jaw, for in it she recognized a perfect hate—not too hot, not too cold, not at all devoid of cerebration.

When Julia finally emerged to rest—Young Marius having removed her physically from her husband’s side—it was Young Caesar who went to her and took her away to her sitting room. On the point of getting up, Aurelia read a different message in her son’s eyes, and subsided immediately. She had lost all her control of him, he was free.

“You must eat,” said the boy to his beloved aunt, settling her full length on her couch. “Strophantes is coming.”

“Truly, I am not hungry!” she said in a whisper, face as white as the bleached linen cover the steward had spread on the couch for her to rest upon; her own bed was the one she shared with Gaius Marius, she had no other in that house.

“Hungry or not, I intend to feed you a little hot soup,” Young Caesar said in that voice even Marius had not argued against. “It’s necessary, Aunt Julia. This could go on for many days. He won’t leave go of life easily.”

The soup came, together with some cubes of stale bread; Young Caesar made her drink soup and sippets, sitting on the edge of the couch and coaxing softly, gently, inexorably. Only when the bowl was empty did he desist, and then took most of the pillows away, covered her, smoothed back the hair from her brow tenderly.

“How good you are to me, little Gaius Julius,” she said, eyes clouding with sleep.

“Only to those I love,” he said, paused, and added, “Only to those I love. You. My mother. No one else.” He bent over and kissed her on the lips.

While she slept—which she did for several hours—he sat curled in a chair watching her, his own eyelids heavy, though he would not let them fall. Drinking her in tirelessly, piling up a massive memory; never again would she belong to him in the way she did sleeping there.

Sure enough, her waking dispelled the mood. At first she tried to panic, calming when he assured her Gaius Marius’s condition had not changed in the least.

“Go and have a bath,” her nurse said sternly, “and when you come back, I’ll have some bread and honey for you. Gaius Marius does not know whether you’re with him or not.” Finding herself hungry after sleeping and bathing, she ate the bread and honey; Young Caesar remained curled in his chair, frowning, until she rose to her feet.

“I’ll take you back,” he said, “but I cannot enter.”

“No, of course you can’t. You’re flamen Dialis now. I’m so sorry you hate it!”

“Don’t worry about me, Aunt Julia. I’ll solve it.” She took his face between her hands and kissed him. “I thank you for all your help, Young Caesar. You’re such a comfort.”

“I only do it for you, Aunt Julia. For you, I would give my life.” He smiled. “Perhaps it’s not far from the truth to say I already have.”

Gaius Marius died in the hour before dawn, when life is at its ebbing point and dogs and cockerels cry. It was the seventh day of his coma, and the thirteenth day of his seventh consulship.

“An unlucky number,” said Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, shivering and rubbing his hands together.

Unlucky for him but lucky for Rome, was the thought in almost every head when he said it.

“He must have a public funeral,” said Cinna the moment he arrived, this time accompanied by his wife, Annia, and his younger daughter, Cinnilla, who was the wife of the flamen Dialis.

But Julia, dry-eyed and calm, shook her head adamantly. “No, Lucius Cinna, there will be no State funeral,” she said. “Gaius Marius is wealthy enough to pay for his own funeral expenses. Rome is in no condition to argue about finances. Nor do I want a huge affair. Just the family. And that means I want no word of Gaius Marius’s death to leave this house until after his funeral is over.” She shuddered, grimaced. “Is there any way we can get rid of those dreadful slaves he enlisted at the last?” she asked.

“That was all taken care of six days ago,” said Cinna, going red; he never could conceal his discomfort. “Quintus Sertorius paid them off on the Campus Martius and ordered them to leave Rome.”

“Oh, of course! I forgot for the moment,” said the widow. “How kind of Quintus Sertorius to solve our troubles!” No one there knew whether or not she was being ironic. She looked across to her brother, Caesar. “Have you fetched Gaius Marius’s will from the Vestals, Gaius Julius?”

“I have it here,” he said.

“Then let it be read. Quintus Mucius, would you do that for us?” she asked of Scaevola.

It was a short testament, and turned out to be very recent; Marius had made it, apparently, while he lay with his army to the south of the Janiculum. The bulk of his estate went to his son, Young Marius, with the maximum he could allow left to Julia in her own right. A tenth of the estate he bequeathed to his adopted nephew, Marcus Marius Gratidianus, which meant Gratidianus was suddenly a very wealthy man; the estate of Gaius Marius was enormous. And to Young Caesar he left his German slave, Burgundus, as thanks for all the precious time out of his boyhood Young Caesar had given up to help an old man recover the use of his left side.

Now why did you do that, Gaius Marius? asked the boy silently of himself. Not for the reason you say! Perhaps to ensure the cessation of my career should I manage to de-flaminate myself? Is he to kill me when I pursue the public career you do not want me to have? Well, old man, two days from now you’ll be ashes. But I will not do what a prudent man ought to do—kill the Cimbric lump. He loved you, just as once I loved you. It is a poor reward for love to be done to death—be that death of the body or the spirit. So I will keep Burgundus. And make him love me.

The flamen Dialis turned to Lucius Decumius. “I am in the way here,” he said. “Will you walk home with me?”

“You’re going? Good!” said Cinna. “Take Cinnilla home for me, would you? She’s had enough.”

The flamen Dialis looked at his seven-year-old flaminica. “Come, Cinnilla,” he said, giving her the smile he was well aware worked woman-magic. “Does your cook make good cakes?”

Shepherded by Lucius Decumius, the two children emerged into the Clivus Argentarius and walked down the hill toward the Forum Romanum. The sun was risen, but its rays were not yet high enough to illuminate the bottom of the damp gulch wherein lay the whole reason for Rome’s being.

“Well, look at that! The heads are gone again! I wonder, Lucius Decumius,” the flamen Dialis mused as his foot touched the first flagstone at the rim of the Comitia well, “if one sweeps the dead presence out of the place where he died with an ordinary broom, or if one has to use a special broom?” He gave a skip, and reached for his wife’s hand. “There’s nothing for it, I’m afraid! I shall have to find the books and read them. It would be dreadful to get one iota of the ritual wrong for my benefactor Gaius Marius! If I do nothing else, I must rid us of all of Gaius Marius.”

Lucius Decumius was moved to prophesy, not because he had the second sight, but because he loved. “You’ll be a far greater man than Gaius Marius,” he said.

“I know,” said Young Caesar. “I know, Lucius Decumius, I know!”

FINIS

The First Man in Rome, which was the initial book in this projected series of novels, laid in the backdrop of an alien world. After it, I am obliged by the sheer length of this project to restrict my detail to what is necessary to advance characters and plot—both of which, being history, are in one sense already established.

Wherever possible, anachronisms are avoided; but sometimes an anachronistic word or phrase is the only way to get one’s point across. There are not many. What I would like my readers to know is that each one of them has been carefully considered before being resorted to. I am, after all, writing in English for an audience separated by two thousand years from the people and events which make up these books; even the greatest of the modern scholars on the period has occasionally to resort to anachronisms.

The Glossary that follows has been rewritten. Some items have been removed, others inserted. There are now entries under: Arausio, Battle of; Saturninus; the Gold of Tolosa: all events or people featuring in The First Man in Rome, now become part of history as far as events and people in The Grass Crown are concerned.

Some of the drawings are repeated, as these characters are still important. Others have been added. The likenesses of Marius, Sulla, King Mithridates, and Young Pompey are authentic, the others taken from anonymous (that is, unidentified) portrait busts of Republican date. As no portrait busts of famous Republican Romans are known to have been taken in their youth, the drawing of Young Pompey is the first I have “youthened.” It is the famous bust of Pompey in his fifties with the weight of middle age removed and the lines of living taken out of the face. I did this because Plutarch assures us that the Young Pompey was striking and beautiful enough to remind his contemporaries of Alexander the Great—very difficult to see in the likeness of the middle-aged man! However, once the extra thirty-odd pounds are removed, one can discern a very attractive young man.

The style of the maps has changed somewhat. One learns by experience and actually has the opportunity to mend earlier style mistakes, a luxury open to me because I am writing sequentially.

A word about the bibliography. For those who have written to me (care of the publisher) requesting a copy—do not despair! It is coming, if it has not already arrived. The trouble is that I have produced two novels—each over 400,000 words in length and drafted several times—within twelve months of each other. Spare time is not something I have had, and the formal compilation of a bibliography is a daunting task. Hopefully now done with.

I must thank a few people by name, and others too numerous to single out by name. My classical editor, Dr. Alanna Nobbs of Macquarie University, Sydney. Miss Sheelah Hidden. My agent, Frederick T. Mason. My editors, Carolyn Reidy and Adrian Zackheim. My husband, Ric Robinson. Kaye Pendleton, Ria Howell, Joe Nobbs, and the staff.

Table of Contents