The Grass Crown (61 page)

“Please do, Sextus Julius.”

“I am not old,” said Sextus Caesar huskily, “but I am a sick man, as everyone in this House knows. I wheeze. I have had more than adequate military experience in my younger days, mostly with Gaius Marius in Africa and in the Gauls against the Germans. I also served at Arausio, where my malady undoubtedly saved my life. However, with winter coming on, I will prove of little use in an Apennine campaign. I am older, and my chest is weak. I will of course do my duty. I am a Roman of a great family. But in all of this, no one has yet mentioned cavalry. We will need cavalry. I would like to ask this House to excuse me duty as a commander in the field among the mountains. Instead, let me gather a fleet of transports and spend the colder months gathering cavalry from Numidia, from Gaul-across-the-Alps, and from Thrace. I can also enlist Roman citizens living abroad in our infantry. It is a job I feel myself fitted for. And then when I return, I will gladly take on any field command you might care to suggest.” He cleared his throat, began slightly to wheeze. “To take my place as a legate, I would ask the House to consider Gaius Marius.”

“Hoh! Brothers-in-law!” cried Lupus, jumping to his feet. “It won’t work, Sextus Julius, it won’t work! After listening to you for years, it seems to me that yours is a most convenient ailment! It comes and it goes on order! I can do it too—listen!” Lupus began to draw in noisy breaths.

“You may have grown tired of hearing me wheeze, Publius Lupus, but you haven’t listened,” said Sextus Caesar gently. “I don’t make a noise when I inhale. I make it when I exhale.”

“I don’t care when you make your wretched noises!” shouted Lupus. “You’re not avoiding your duty with me, any more than I’ll take Gaius Marius in your place!”

“One moment, if you please,” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus, rising to his feet. “I have something to say about this.” He looked at Lupus on the dais with much the same expression on his face as he had worn when Varius accused him of treason. “You are not one of my best-loved people, Publius Lupus! In fact, it pains me deeply that you happen to have the same name as my dear friend, Publius Rutilius cognominated Rufus. Well, you may be relations, but there’s absolutely no relationship between you! Rufus the Red was one of this House’s chief adornments, very sorely missed. Lupus the Wolf is one of this House’s most pernicious ulcers, very sore!”

“You’re insulting me!” gasped Lupus. “You can’t! I’m consul!”

“I am the Leader of the House, Publius Wolf Man, and I think at my age I have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can do what I like—because when I do something, Publius Wolf Man, I have good reason and Rome’s best interests at heart! Now, you miserable little worm, sit there and pull your head in! And I do not mean that part of your anatomy attached to your neck! Who do you think you are? You’re only sitting in that particular chair because you had enough money to bribe the electorate!”

Purple with rage, Lupus opened his mouth.

“Don’t do it, Lupus!” Scaurus snarled. “Sit there, be quiet!”

Scaurus turned then to Gaius Marius, who sat absolutely straight on his stool; how he felt about his name’s being omitted no one present could tell. “Here is a very great man,” said Scaurus. “Only the gods know how many times in my life I have cursed him! Only the gods know how many times in my life I have wished he never existed! Only the gods know how many times in my life I have been his worst enemy! But as time drips away faster and faster and wears my life ever thinner, ever frailer, I find myself remembering with affection fewer and fewer men. It is not merely a factor concerned with the increasing imminence of death and dying. It is an accumulation of experience which tells me who is worth remembering with affection—and who is not. Some of the men I have loved most, I feel nothing for now. Some of the men I have hated most, I feel everything for now.”

Knowing very well that Marius was now looking at him with a twinkle in his eyes, Scaurus carefully avoided looking back; if he did, he knew he’d dissolve into fits of laughter, and this speech was coming from his very spirit as well as his heart. An acute sense of humor could be a wretched nuisance!

“Gaius Marius and I have been through a whole world together,” he said, staring at the livid Lupus. “He and I have sat side by side in this House and glared at each other for more years than you, Wolf Man, have worn an adult’s toga! We have fought and brawled, we have pushed and pulled. But we have fought together against the enemies of the Republic too. We have gazed down together upon the bodies of men who would have ruined Rome. We have stood shoulder to shoulder. We have laughed together—and we have wept together. I say again! Here is a very great man. A very great Roman.”

Now Scaurus walked down the floor to the doors, and stood in front of them. “Like Gaius Marius, like Lucius Julius, like Lucius Cornelius Sulla, I am today convinced we face a terrible war. Yesterday I was not convinced. Why the change? Who knows, save the gods? When the established order of things tells us that matters are a certain way because they have been that same certain way for a very long time, we find it hard to alter what we feel, and our feelings cloud our intellects. But then in the smallest scrap of time the scales fall from our eyes, and we see clearly. That has happened to me today. It happened to Gaius Marius today. Probably it happened to most of us here in the House today. A thousand little signs are suddenly visible that yesterday we could not see.

“I elected to remain in Rome because I know I will be of best use to Rome within her body politic. But that is not true of Gaius Marius. Whether—like me!—you have disagreed with him far more often than you have agreed with him, or whether—like Sextus Julius!—you are tied to him by the double bond of fondness as well as marriage, all of you must admit—as I admit!—that in Gaius Marius we have a military talent of an excellence and a breadth of experience far greater than the rest of us put together. I would not care if Gaius Marius was ninety years old and had had three strokes! I would still be standing here saying what I am saying now—if the man can put words and ideas together the way he does, then we must use him where he shines the brightest—in the field! Confront your bigotry, Conscript Fathers! Gaius Marius is the same age as I am myself, a mere sixty-seven years, and the single stroke he suffered occurred ten years ago. As your Princeps Senatus, I say to you adamantly, Gaius Marius must serve as chief legate to Publius Lupus, and put his multiple talents to best use.”

No one spoke. No one, it seemed, breathed, even Sextus Caesar. Scaurus sat down beside Marius, with Catulus Caesar on his other side. Lucius Caesar looked at the three of them, then up along the same row toward the doors, where Sulla sat. His eyes met Sulla’s; Lucius Caesar became conscious of an accelerated heartbeat. What did Sulla’s eyes say? So many things it was not possible to tell.

“Publius Rutilius Lupus, I offer you the opportunity to accept voluntarily Gaius Marius as your senior legate. If you refuse, then I will put the matter to the House in a division.”

“All right, all right!” cried Lupus. “But not as my sole senior legate! Let him share the post with Quintus Servilius Caepio!”

Marius threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Done!” he shouted. “The October Horse harnessed to a nag!”

Of course Julia was waiting for Marius, as anxious as only a politician’s devoted wife could be. It always fascinated Marius that she seemed to know by instinct when something formidable was going to be discussed in the Senate. He hadn’t honestly known himself before he set out for the Curia Hostilia today. Yet she knew!

“Is it war?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Very bad? Only the Marsi, or others as well?”

“I’d say about half of the Italian Allies, probably with more to join. I should have known it all along! But Scaurus was in the right of it. Emotions clouding facts. Drusus knew. Oh, if only he had lived, Julia! If he had lived the Italians would have got their citizenship. And war wouldn’t be upon us.”

“Marcus Livius died because there are some men who will not let the Italians have the franchise on any terms.”

“Yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right.” He changed the subject. “Do you think our cook will have an apoplexy if he’s asked to make a sumptuous dinner for a tribe of people tomorrow?”

“I’d say he’ll go into an ecstatic frenzy. He’s always complaining we don’t entertain enough.”

“Good! Because I’ve invited a tribe to dinner tomorrow.”

“Why, Gaius Marius?”

He shook his head, scowled. “Perhaps because I have an odd feeling that it will be the last time for many of us, mea vita. meum mel. I love you, Julia.”

“And I, you,” she said tranquilly. “Now who’s for dinner?”

“Quintus Mucius Scaevola, as I hope he’s going to be our boy’s father-in-law. Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Sextus Julius Caesar. Gaius Julius Caesar. And Lucius Julius Caesar.”

Julia was looking a little dismayed. “Wives too?”

“Yes, wives too.”

“Oh, dear!”

“What’s that for?”

“Scaurus’s wife, Dalmatica! And Lucius Cornelius!”

“Oh, all that happened years ago,” said Marius scornfully. “We’ll put the men on the couches in strict order of rank, then you can put the women where they’ll do the least harm. How’s that?”

“Well, all right,” said Julia, still looking doubtful. “I had better sit Dalmatica and Aurelia facing Lucius and Sextus Julius, Aelia and Licinia opposite the lectus medius. Claudia and I will sit looking at Gaius Julius and Lucius Cornelius.” She giggled. “I don’t think Lucius Cornelius has slept with Claudia!”

Marius’s eyebrows danced wildly. “You mean to say he’s slept with Aurelia after all?”

“No! Honestly, Gaius Marius, sometimes you are exasperating!”

“Sometimes you are,” countered Marius. “In all this, where do you plan to put our son? He’s nineteen, you know!”

Julia placed Young Marius on the lectus imus at its foot, the lowest place a man could occupy. Nor did Young Marius object; the next-lowest man had been an urban praetor, his uncle Gaius Julius, and beyond him was another urban praetor, his uncle Lucius Cornelius. The rest of the men were consulars, with his father holding two more consulships than the rest put together. That was a nice feeling for Young Marius—yet how could he hope to better his father’s record? The only way was to become consul at a very early age, even younger than Scipio Africanus or Scipio Aemilianus had been.

Young Marius knew there was a marriage in the wind for him, with Scaevola’s girl. He hadn’t met Mucia, as she was too young to go to dinner parties, though he had heard she was very pretty. Not surprising; her mother, a Licinia, was still a very beautiful woman. Married now to Metellus Celer, son of Metellus Balearicus. Adultery. Little Mucia had two Caecilius Metellus half brothers. Scaevola had married a second Licinia, less beautiful; it was this Licinia who came with him to the party, and had a wonderful time.

Yet, wrote Lucius Cornelius Sulla to Publius Rutilius Rufus in Smyrna,

I thought it was a dreadful affair. That it was not an appalling disaster was due entirely to Julia, who made sure every male was accommodated precisely according to protocol, then sat the ladies where they couldn’t get into trouble. With the result that all I saw of Aurelia and Scaurus’s wife, Dalmatica, was their backs.

I know Scaurus is writing to you, because our letters are going with the same courier, so I won’t repeat news of our imminent war with the Italians, nor give you a resume of the speech Scaurus gave in the House in praise of Gaius Marius—I am quite sure Scaurus has sent you a copy! I will only say that I thought Lupus’s action a disgrace, and couldn’t sit there silent when I realized Lupus wasn’t going to employ our Old Master. What galls me most is that a donkey like Lupus—no wolf, he!—will command a whole theater of war, while Gaius Marius is set to some menial task. The most intriguing factor is the affability with which Gaius Marius greeted the news that he would have to share his duties as senior legate with Caepio. I wonder what the Arpinate fox plans for that particular donkey? Something nasty, I suspect.

But I have wandered away from the dinner party, and must get back to it, as Scaurus and I have agreed to, one, each write at length, and two, divide the subject matter between us. I inherited the gossip, which isn’t at all fair. Scaurus is a bigger gossip than anyone I know except you, Publius Rutilius. Scaevola was there because Gaius Marius is busy arranging for Young Marius to marry Scaevola’s daughter by the first of his two Licinias. Mucia (called Mucia Tertia to distinguish her from Scaevola the Augur’s two elderly Mucias) is around thirteen now. I feel sorry for the girl . Young Marius is not one of my favorite people. An arrogant, conceited, ambitious pup. Whoever has to deal with him in times to come will have trouble on his hands. Not in the same league as my dear dead son.

Publius Rutilius, never having had much family life—as boy or as man, it seems to me—my son was infinitely precious. From the first time I saw him, a naked laughing tot in the nursery, I loved him with all my heart. In him, I found the perfect companion. No matter what I did, he thought it a wonder. On my journey to the East, he added a whole dimension of interest and enthusiasm. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t give me the advice or opinion a grown man of my own age would have. He always understood. He was always sympathetic. And then he died. So suddenly, so unexpectedly! If one could but have time, I said to myself, if one could but prepare… Yet what preparation can a father make for the death of his son?

Since he died, old friend, the world has greyed. I seem not to care the way I did. It is almost a year now, and in one way I suppose I have learned to cope with his absence. But in most ways I never will learn to cope. I am missing a part of the core of myself, there is an emptiness that never can be filled. I find myself, for instance, utterly unable to talk about him to anyone; I hide his name as if he had never been. Because the pain is just too much to bear. As I write of him now, I weep.

But I did not mean to write about my boy either. It is that wretched dinner party supposed to be engaging my pen! Perhaps what prompted thought of him (though I am never without them, I admit it) was the fact that she was there. Little Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, the wife of Scaurus. I imagine she is now about twenty-eight years old, or close to that. She married Scaurus at seventeen—at the beginning of the year we beat the Cimbri, as I remember. There is a girl aged ten, and a boy aged about five. Both Scaurus’s beyond a shadow of doubt, for I have seen the poor little things—as plain as one of Cato the Censor’s farmsteads. Scaurus is already talking about marrying the girl to the son of Scaevola the Augur’s great friend, Manius Acilius Glabrio. Though they’ve been consular for long enough to escape any taint of the homo novus, it’s not their bloodline is the lure. More the family wealth, almost up there with the Servilii Caepiones, I imagine. But I myself don’t care for the Acilii Glabriones, even if this Manius Acilius Glabrio’s granddad did side with Gaius Gracchus. Like the rest who sided with Gaius Gracchus, he died for it! Well now. I think that was quite a gossipy anecdote, don’t you? You don’t? Lamia take you, then!