The Grass Crown (36 page)

Drusus shook his head positively. “Mama,” he said, the word slipping out without his noticing it, “Livia Drusa is dying from an injury sustained during the birth of her last child. The doctors say it, and I believe them. Instead of healing, the injury has broken down. Haven’t you noticed the smell in her room?”

“Of course. But I still think she believes she’s cursed.”

“I’ll get the girl,” said Drusus, getting up.

“I confess I’d like to see her,” said Cornelia Scipionis, and settled back to wait by filling her mind with that slipped “Mama.”

Small. Very dark. Mysteriously pretty. Enigmatic. Yet so filled with fire and power that she reminded her grandmother of a house built upon a stoppered-up fumarole. One day the shutters would burst open, the roof would fly off, and there she would stand revealed for all the world to see. A seething mass of poisons and scorching gales. What on earth could have made her so unhappy?

“Servilia, this is your grandmother, Cornelia Scipionis,” said Drusus, not leaving go of his niece’s shoulder.

Servilia sniffed, said nothing.

“I’ve just been to visit your mother,” said Cornelia Scipionis gently. “Did you know that she believes you’ve cursed her?”

“Does she? Good,” said Servilia. “I did curse her.”

“Oh, well, thank you,” said the grandmother, and waved her away without any expression on her face. “Back to the nursery!”

When he returned, Drusus was grinning widely. “That was brilliant!” he said, sitting down. “You squashed her flat.”

“No one will ever squash Servilia flat,” said Cornelia Scipionis, then added thoughtfully, “Unless it’s a man.”

“Her father has done it already.”

“Oh, I see…. I did hear that he refuses to acknowledge any of his children.”

“That is correct. The others were too young to be affected. But Servilia was heartbroken at the time—or I think she was. It’s hard to tell, Mama. She’s as sly as she is dangerous.”

“Poor little thing.”

“Hah!” said Drusus.

Cratippus came at that moment, ushering Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus.

Very like Drusus to look at, he yet lacked the power everyone sensed in Drusus. Twenty-seven to Drusus’s thirty-seven, no brilliant career as a young advocate in the courts had been forthcoming, no brilliant political future was predicted for him, as it always had been for Drusus. Even so, he had a certain phlegmatic strength his older brother lacked, and the things poor Drusus had had to learn unaided after the battle of Arausio had been offered to Mamercus from birth, thanks to the presence of his mother, a true Cornelian of the Scipionic branch—broad-minded, educated, intellectually curious.

Cornelia Scipionis shifted up on her seat to make room for Mamercus, who hung back a little shyly when Drusus made no move to welcome him, just gazed at him searchingly.

“Be of good cheer, Marcus Livius,” their mother said. “You are full brothers. And you must become good friends.”

“I never thought we weren’t full brothers,” said Mamercus.

“I did,” said Drusus grimly. “What is the truth of it, Mama? What you’ve said to me today, or what you told my father?”

“What I’ve said today. What I told your father enabled me to escape. I make no excuses for my conduct—I was probably all you thought me and more, Marcus Livius, even if for different reasons.” She shrugged. “I don’t have the temperament to repine, I live in the present and the future, never the past.”

Drusus held out his right hand to his brother, and smiled. “Welcome to my house, Mamercus Aemilius,” he said.

Mamercus took the hand, then moved forward and kissed his brother on the lips. “Mamercus,” he said shakily. “Just Mamercus. I’m the only Roman with that name, so call me Mamercus.”

“Our sister is dying,” said Drusus, not releasing Mamercus’s hand when he sat down, his brother next to him.

“Oh… I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t Claudia tell you?” asked their mother, scowling. “I gave her a detailed message for you.”

“No, she just said you’d rushed off with Marcus Livius.”

Cornelia Scipionis made up her mind; another escape was necessary. “Marcus Livius,” she said, looking at him with tears in her eyes, “I have given all of myself to your brother for the last twenty-seven years.” She winked the tears away. “My daughter I will never get to know. But you and Marcus Porcius are going to be left with six children to care for and no woman in the house—unless you plan to marry again?”

Drusus shook his head emphatically. “No, Mama, I don’t.”

“Then if you wish it I will come here to live, and look after the children.”

“I wish it,” said Drusus, and turned to his brother with a new smile. “It is good to know I have more family.”

On Young Cato’s two-month anniversary, Livia Drusa died. In some ways it was a happy death, as she had known its imminence, and striven to do everything in her power to make her passing easier for those she left behind. The presence of her mother she found an enormous comfort, knowing her children would be cared for with love and family feeling. Taking strength from Cornelia Scipionis (who excluded Servilia from all sight of Livia Drusa), she came to terms with her dying and thought no more of curses, of Evil Eyes. More important by far was the fate of those destined to live.

There were many words of love and consolation for Cato Salonianus, many instructions and desires, and his was the face her dimming eyes rested upon at the last, his was the hand she clung to, his the love she felt wash her away into oblivion. For her brother Drusus there were words of love and encouragement too, and words of consolation. The only child she asked to see was Young Caepio.

“Take care of your little brother Cato,” she mumbled, and kissed him with lips fiery from fever.

“Take care of my children,” she said to her mother.

And to Cato Salonianus she said, “I never realized Penelope died before Odysseus.” They were her last words.

Publius Rutilius Rufus

Though his experience in the law courts was nonexistent and his knowledge of Roman law minimal, Sulla enjoyed being the praetor urbanus. For one thing, he had common sense; for another, he surrounded himself with good assistants whom he was never afraid to ask on those occasions when he needed advice; and, by no means least, he had the right kind of mind for the job. What he chiefly enjoyed was what he privately thought of as his autonomy—no more being lumped with Gaius Marius! Finally he was beginning to be known for himself, as a distinct and separate entity. His tiny retinue of clients increased, and his habit of taking his son with him everywhere was deemed charming; his son, vowed Sulla, would have every conceivable advantage, including a youthful career in the law courts and the right commanders in the army.

The lad not only looked like a Caesar, but had some of the Julian brand of attractiveness as well, so that he made friends easily, and those he made, he tended to keep, thanks to a turn of mind as sympathetic as it was fair. Chief among his friends was a lad some five months older than Sulla’s son, a scrawny boy with an enormous cranium rather than head, named Marcus Tullius Cicero. Oddly enough, he came from Gaius Marius’s home town of Arpinum; his grandfather had been the brother-in-law of Gaius Marius’s brother, Marcus, both being married to Gratidia sisters. All of this Sulla was not put to discover, for when Young Sulla brought Cicero home, Sulla found himself buried beneath a huge landslide of information; Cicero was a talker.

There was, for instance, no need to ask what the boy from Arpinum was doing in Rome—Sulla was quickly told.

“My father is a good friend of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, the Princeps Senatus,” said young Cicero importantly, “and also a good friend of Quintus Mucius Scaevola the Augur. And he is the client of Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator! So when Father realized I was just too gifted and intelligent to remain in Arpinum, he moved us to Rome. That was last year. We have a nice house on the Carinae, next door to the temple of Tellus—Publius Rutilius Rufus lives on the other side of the temple. I am studying with both Quintus Mucius Augur and Lucius Crassus Orator, though more with Lucius Crassus Orator, because Quintus Mucius Augur is so old. We’ve been coming to Rome for years, of course—I started my Forum studies when I was only eight. We’re not country bumpkins, Lucius Cornelius! Much better stock than Gaius Marius!”

Hugely amused, Sulla sat and let the thirteen-year-old rattle on, privately wondering when the inevitable was going to happen; when that great melon of a head would snap itself off its too-slender stem, go crashing to the ground and roll away, still talking. It nodded so, it heaved itself up and down and sideways, it burdened its owner in ways obviously uncomfortable, precarious.

“Do you know,” Cicero asked artlessly, “that I already have an audience when I give my exercises in rhetoric? There’s no argument my preceptors can set me that I can’t win!”

“I gather, then, that you’re planning a career as an advocate?” Sulla asked, sneaking a few words in edgeways.

“Oh, certainly! But not like the great Aculeo—my blood is good enough to seek the consulship! Well, the Senate first, naturally. I shall have a great public career. Everyone says so!” Cicero’s head flopped forward. “In my experience, Lucius Cornelius, a legal exposure to the electorate is much more effective than that tired old grandmother, the army.”

Gazing at him with a fascinated eye, Sulla said gently, “I managed to get where I am on my tired old granny’s back, Marcus Tullius. I never had a legal career, yet here I am, urban praetor.”

Cicero brushed this aside. “Yes, but you didn’t have my advantages, Lucius Cornelius. I shall be praetor in my fortieth year, as is correct and proper.”

Sulla gave up. “I’m positive you will, Marcus Tullius.”

“Yes, tata,” said Young Sulla later, when he was alone with his father, and therefore at liberty to revert to the childhood diminutive of tata, “I know he’s a bit of a terrible wart, but I do rather like him anyway. Don’t you?”

“I think young Cicero is frightful, my son, but I agree that he’s likable. Is he really as good as people say?”

“Hear him, and judge for yourself, tata.”

Sulla shook his head emphatically. “No, thank you! I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, presumptuous little Arpinate mushroom!”

“Scaurus Princeps Senatus is terrifically impressed with him,” said Young Sulla, leaning against his father with an ease and familiarity that poor young Cicero would never know; poor young Cicero was already discovering that his father was too much the country squire to impress Roman nobles, and was generally dismissed as some sort of relative of Gaius Marius’s. Anathema! The result was that young Cicero was rapidly withdrawing from his father, too aware that to be labeled with Gaius Marius was a disadvantage he didn’t need in his pursuit of high office.

“Scaurus Princeps Senatus,” said Sulla to his son with some satisfaction, “has too much on his plate at the moment to worry about young Marcus Tullius Cicero.”

It was a fair comment. As Leader of the House, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus normally attended to foreign embassages and those aspects of foreign relations not considered likely to lead to a war. Few senators honestly considered any foreign nation not a province of Rome’s important enough to occupy their time, so the Leader of the House was always scratching to find members for any committee which didn’t carry the perquisite of a trip abroad at State expense, and they were scant. Thus it was that the senatorial answer to the aggrieved Socrates, younger son of the deceased King of Bithynia, took ten months to formulate before the courier left for Nicomedia. It was not an answer likely to please Socrates, as it confirmed the third King Nicomedes in his tenure of the throne, and dismissed the claim of Socrates emphatically.

Then before that matter was resolved, Scaurus Princeps Senatus inherited yet another squabble concerning a foreign throne. Queen Laodice and King Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia arrived in Rome, refugees from King Tigranes of Armenia and his father-in-law, King Mithridates of Pontus. Fed up with being ruled by a son of Mithridates and the grandson of his Pontic puppet, Gordius, the Cappadocians had been trying ever since Gaius Marius departed from Mazaca to find a truly Cappadocian king. Their Syrian choice had died, rumored by poison at the hand of Gordius, so the Cappadocians dug deeply into their genealogical records and came up with a Cappadocian baron who definitely had royal blood in his veins, one Ariobarzanes. His mother—inevitably named Laodice—was a cousin of the last King Ariarathes who could honestly be called Cappadocian. Off the throne came the boy-king Ariarathes Eusebes and his grandfather Gordius, who fled at once to Pontus. But, aware that thanks to Gaius Marius Rome was looking his way, Mithridates did not act directly; he employed Tigranes of Armenia as his agent. Thus it was Tigranes who invaded Cappadocia, Tigranes who selected the new Cappadocian king. Not a son of Mithridates of Pontus this time. Pontus and Armenia in conference had agreed that no child could sit comfortably on that throne. The new King of Cappadocia was Gordius himself.

But Laodice and Ariobarzanes got away, and duly appeared in Rome in the early spring of the year Sulla was urban praetor. Their presence was a great difficulty for Scaurus, who had been heard (and read, in letters) often enough to say that the fate of Cappadocia must be left in the hands of its people. His advocacy of King Mithridates of Pontus was now an embarrassment, though the accusation of Laodice and Ariobarzanes that Mithridates was behind the invasion of Tigranes of Armenia could not be proven.

“You’ll have to go and see for yourself,” said Sulla to Scaurus as they left the poorly attended meeting of the Senate that had debated the matter of Cappadocia.

“Wretched nuisance!” Scaurus grumbled. “I can’t afford to leave Rome at the moment.”

“Then you’ll have to appoint someone else,” said Sulla.

But Scaurus drew his meager frame upward, chin especially, and assumed the burden. “No, Lucius Cornelius, I’ll go.”

And go he did, a whirlwind visit not to Cappadocia but to see King Mithridates at his court in Amaseia. Wined and dined, feted and applauded, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus had a wonderful time in Pontus. As the King’s guest, he went hunting lion and bear; as the King’s guest, he went fishing on the Euxine for fighting tunny and dolphin; as the King’s guest, he went exploring some of the more famous beauty spots—waterfalls, ravines, towering peaks; as the King’s guest, he feasted on cherries, the most delicious fruit he had ever tasted.

Assured that Pontus harbored no desire to rule Cappadocia, the conduct of Tigranes was deplored and deprecated. And having found the Pontic court gracefully Hellenized and entirely Greek-speaking, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus packed up and went home in one of the King’s ships.

“He fell for it,” said Mithridates to his cousin Archelaus, smiling broadly.

“I think in great measure due to your letters to him during the past two years,” said Archelaus. “Keep writing to him, Great One! It’s a splendid investment.”

“So was the bag of gold I gave him.”

“Very true!”

From the outset of his term as praetor urbanus, Sulla began to intrigue for one of the two governorships of the Spains, thus his cultivation of Scaurus Princeps Senatus—and, through Scaurus, of the other Senate leaders. Catulus Caesar he doubted he could ever win over entirely, due to events along the Athesis River when the Cimbric Germans had invaded Italian Gaul. But on the whole he did well, and by the beginning of June he felt himself assured of Further Spain, the better Spain to govern when it came to a man’s making plenty of extra money.

But Fortune, who loved him so well, put on the guise of a strumpet, and seemed yet again to betray him. Titus Didius had come home from Nearer Spain to celebrate a triumph, leaving his quaestor to govern until the end of the year. And two days after Titus Didius, Publius Licinius Crassus celebrated a triumph for his victories in Further Spain; his quaestor was also left behind to govern until the end of the year. Titus Didius had ensured all was quiet in Nearer Spain before he departed, having waged a thorough war and utterly exhausted the Celtiberian natives. But Publius Crassus had hustled himself from his province early without the same precautions; he had collared the tin concessions, and wanted to co-ordinate his activities within some companies in which he owned sleeping partnerships. Voyaging to the Cassiterides—the fabled Tin Isles—he had overawed all who met him with the magnificence of his Romanness, offered better terms and guaranteed firmer delivery on the shores of the Middle Sea for every pound of tin the miners could produce. The father of three sons, he had used his time in Further Spain to line his own nest, and had left a province far from subjugated.

Not two market intervals after Publius Crassus celebrated his triumph the day before the Ides of June, word came that the Lusitani had erupted with renewed vigor and determination. The praetor Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, sent to Further Spain as a relief governor, settled down to acquit himself so well that many talked of proroguing his command into the following year; his was a very powerful family, and naturally the Senate wished to please him. Which meant Sulla could no longer hope for Further Spain.

Nearer Spain was removed from him too, in October, when the quaestor left to govern after Titus Didius’s departure sent an urgent message for help; from the Vascones to the Cantabrians to the Illergetes, Nearer Spain was also in revolt. Being urban praetor, Sulla could not volunteer to go, and had to watch from the praetor’s tribunal while the consul, Gaius Valerius Flaccus, was hastily equipped and sent to govern Nearer Spain.

Where else was left? Macedonia? It was a consular province, rarely if ever given to a praetor, yet only that year it had been given to last year’s urban praetor, the New Man Gaius Sentius. Who had promptly demonstrated that he was brilliant, thus was not likely to be replaced halfway through a campaign he had mounted with his equally capable legate, Quintus Bruttius Sura. Asia? That province, Sulla knew, was already promised to another Lucius Valerius Flaccus. Africa? A backwater these days, a nothing. Sicily? A backwater, a nothing. Sardinia, together with Corsica? Another backwater, another nothing.

Desperate for money, Sulla was forced to watch every avenue to a lucrative governorship blocked one by one, while he was confined to Rome and the courts. The consulship was only two years away in time, and among his fellow praetors were Publius Scipio Nasica and the Lucius Flaccus who had enough influence to have already ensured he would be governor of Asia Province the following year. Both men with the money to bribe heavily. Another praetor, Publius Rutilius Lupus, was even richer. Unless he could make a fortune abroad, Sulla knew he had no hope.

Only the company of his son kept him sane, kept him from doing something stupid even though he knew it would ruin his chances forever. Metrobius was there in the same city, but thanks to Young Sulla he managed to resist his overwhelming impulse to seek Metrobius out. The urban praetor was very well known by sight to everyone in Rome by the end of his year in office—and Sulla was, into the bargain, a striking-looking man. The presence of his children negated his using his own house for a rendezvous, and that apartment out on the Caelian Hill where Metrobius lived was impossible. Goodbye, Metrobius.

To make matters worse, Aurelia was not available either; Gaius Julius Caesar had finally come home that summer, and poor Aurelia’s freedom had come to an abrupt end. He had called once, to find a stiff welcome from a stiff lady, who formally asked him not to call again. No information was imparted that gave him any idea exactly what the trouble was, but he had no trouble imagining its nature. Gaius Julius Caesar would be contesting the praetorian elections in November, Gaius Marius would be throwing a still considerable weight behind him, and Caesar’s wife would be one of the most watched women in Rome, even though she dwelt in the Subura. No one had told Sulla of the furor he had inadvertently caused among the vacationing Gaius Mariuses, but Sextus Caesar’s wife, Claudia, had told the story as a good joke to Aurelia’s husband at his welcome-home party. Though everyone passed it off as just that, a good joke, Caesar himself was not amused.