The Grass Crown (67 page)

“We are related, Mamercus Aemilius,” said the mother graciously. “My grandmother was Aemilia Tertia, daughter of Paullus.”

“Of course,” said Mamercus, and sat where indicated.

“We are also related through the Livii,” she pursued as she sat on a couch opposite him, her daughter beside her mumchance.

“I know,” said Mamercus, finding it difficult to think of a good way to introduce the reason for his call.

“What do you want?” asked Porcia, solving his dilemma bluntly.

So he stated his case with equal bluntness; Mamercus was not a man of easy words, for all that his mother had been a Cornelia of the Scipiones. Porcia and Servilia Gnaea sat and listened most attentively, but without giving away their thoughts.

“You would require us to live in the house of Marcus Livius Drusus for the next thirteen to fourteen years, is that right?” asked Porcia when he finished.

“Yes.”

“After which my daughter, dowered with two hundred talents, would be free to marry?”

“Yes.”

“And what about me?”

Mamercus blinked. He always thought of mothers continuing to live in the house of the paterfamilias—but of course that was this house, which Scaurus intended to sell.

And it would be a brave man who asked this particular mother-in-law to live with him! thought Mamercus, smiling inwardly.

“Would you be willing to accept the life tenancy of a seaside villa at Misenum or Cumae, together with a competency adequate for the needs of a retired lady?” he asked.

“I would,” said Porcia instantly.

“Then if all this is agreed to by legal and binding contract, may I assume both of you are willing to take on this burden, look after the children?”

“You may.” Porcia looked down her amazing nose. “Have the children a pedagogue?”

“No. The oldest boy is just about ten years old, and has been going to school. Young Caepio is not yet seven, and Young Cato only three,” said Mamercus.

“Nevertheless, Mamercus Aemilius, I think it vitally important that you find a good man to live in as tutor to all six children,” announced Porcia. “We will have no male in the house. While this is not a danger physically, for the children’s sake I feel there must be a man of authority who does not have slave status resident in the house. A pedagogue would be ideal.”

“You are absolutely correct, Porcia. I shall see to it at once,” said Mamercus, taking his leave.

“We will come tomorrow,” said Porcia, escorting him out.

“So soon? I’m very pleased, but don’t you have things to do, things to arrange?”

“My daughter and I own nothing, Mamercus Aemilius, beyond some clothes. Even the servants here belong to the estate of Quintus Servilius Caepio.” She held open the door. “Good day. And thank you, Mamercus Aemilius. You have rescued us from worse penury.”

Well, thought Mamercus as he hastened to the establishment in the Basilica Sempronia where he expected to find a pedagogue for sale, I’m glad I’m not one of those six poor children! Still, it will be a better life for them than living with my Claudia!

“We have quite a few suitable men on our books, Mamercus Aemilius,” said Lucius Duronius Postumus, the owner of one of Rome’s two best agencies for pedagogues.

“What’s the going price for a superior pedagogue these days?” Mamercus asked, never having had this particular duty to do before.

Duronius pursed his lips. “Anywhere between one hundred and three hundred thousand sesterces—even more if the product is the very best anywhere.”

“Phew!” whistled Mamercus. “Cato the Censor would not have been amused!”

“Cato the Censor was a parsimonious old fart,” said Duronius. “Even in his day, a good pedagogue cost a lot more than a miserable six thousand.”

“But I’m buying a tutor for three of his direct descendants!”

“Take it or leave it,” said Duronius, looking bored.

Mamercus stifled a sigh. Looking after these six children was proving to be an expensive business! “Oh, all right, all right, I suppose I’ll have to take it. When can I see the candidates?”

“Since I board all my readily marketable slaves within Rome, I’ll send them round to your house in the morning. What’s your absolute upper limit?”

“I don’t know! What’s a few more hundred thousand sesterces?” cried Mamercus, throwing his hands in the air. “Do your worst, Duronius! But if you send me a dunce or a cuckoo, I’ll castrate you with great pleasure!”

He did not mention to Duronius that he planned to free the man he bought; that would only have increased the price even more. No, whoever it was would be manumitted privately and taken into Mamercus’s own clientele. Which meant whoever it was could liberate himself no more easily from his employment than if he had still been a slave. A freedman client belonged to his ex-master.

In the end there was only one suitable man—and of course he was the most expensive. Duronius knew his business. Given that there would be two adult women in the house without a paterfamilias to supervise them, the tutor had to be of great moral integrity as well as a pleasant, understanding man. The successful candidate was named Sarpedon, and he hailed from Lycia in the south of the Roman Asia Province. Like most of his kind, he had sold himself voluntarily into slavery, deeming his chances of a comfortable, well-fed old age considerably better if he spent the years between in service to a Roman of high degree. Either he would earn his freedom, or he would be looked after. So he had taken himself off to the Smyrna offices of Lucius Duronius Postumius, and been accepted. This would be his first post—that is, his first time of purchase. He was twenty-five years old, extremely well read in both Greek and Latin; his spoken Greek was the purest Attic, and his spoken Latin so good he might have been a genuine Roman. But none of that was responsible for his getting the job. He got the job because he was appallingly ugly—so short he came only to Mamercus’s chest, thin to the point of emaciation, and badly scarred from a fire in his childhood. His voice, however, was beautiful, and out of his maimed face there looked two very lovely, kind eyes. When informed he was to be freed immediately and that his name would henceforth be Mamercus Aemilius Sarpedon, he knew himself the most fortunate of men; his wage would be much higher and his citizenship Roman. One day he would be able to retire to his home town of Xanthus and live like a potentate.

“It’s an expensive exercise,” said Mamercus to Scaurus as he dropped a roll of paper on Scaurus’s desk. “And, I warn you, as executor for the Servilius Caepio side of things, you’re not going to get off any lighter than the two of us are as Drusus’s executors. Here’s the bill so far. I suggest we split it down the middle between the two estates.”

Scaurus picked up the paper and unfurled it. “Tutor… Four hundred thousand?”

“You go and talk to Duronius!” snapped Mamercus. “I’ve done all the work, you’ve issued all the directives! There are going to be two Roman noblewomen in that house whose virtue has to be ensured, so there can be no handsome tutors living there as well. The new pedagogue is repellently ugly.”

Scaurus giggled. “All right, all right, I’ll take your word for it! Ye gods, what prices we endure today!” He perused further. “Dowry for Servilia Gnaea, two hundred talents—well, I can’t grizzle about that, can I, when I suggested it? House expenses per annum not including repairs and maintenance, one hundred thousand sesterces… Yes, that’s modest enough… Da da, da dee… Villa at Misenum or Cumae? What on earth for?”

“For Porcia, when Servilia Gnaea is free to marry.”

“Oh, merda! I never thought of that! Of course you’re right. No husband would take her on as well as marry a lump like Servilia Gnaea… Yes, yes, you’ve got a deal! We’ll split it right down the middle.”

They grinned at each other. Scaurus got to his feet. “A cup of wine, Mamercus, I think! What a pity your wife wouldn’t co-operate! It would have saved both of us—in our capacity as executors of the estates—a great deal of money.”

“Since it isn’t coming out of our own purses and the estates can well afford to bear the cost, Marcus Aemilius, why should we care? Domestic peace is worth any price.” He took the wine. “I’m leaving Rome in any case. It’s time I did my military duty.”

“I understand,” said Scaurus, sitting down again.

“Until my mother died I had thought it my principal duty to stay in Rome and help her with the children. She hadn’t been well since Drusus died. Broke her heart. But now the children are properly organized, I’ve no excuse. So I’m going.”

“Who to?”

“Lucius Cornelius Sulla.”

“Good choice,” said Scaurus, nodding. “He’s the coming man.”

“Do you think so? Isn’t he a little old?”

“So was Gaius Marius. And face it, Mamercus—who else is there? Rome is thin of great men at the moment. If it wasn’t for Gaius Marius we wouldn’t have one victory under our belts—and as he rightly says in his report, it was very Pyrrhic at that. He won. But Lupus had lost in a far worse way the day before.”

“True. I’m disappointed in Lucius Julius, however. I would have deemed him capable of great things.”

“He’s too highly strung, Mamercus.”

“I hear the Senate is now calling this the Marsic War.”

“Yes, the Marsic War is how it will go down in the history books, it seems.” Scaurus looked impish. “After all, you know, we can’t call it the Italian War! That would send everyone in Rome into a flat panic—they might think we were actually fighting all of Italy! And the Marsi did send us a formal declaration of war. By calling it the Marsic War, it looks smaller, less important.”

Mamercus stared, astonished. “Who thought of that?”

“Philippus, of course.”

“Oh, I’m glad I’m going!” said Mamercus, getting up. “If I stayed, who knows? I might get inducted into the Senate!”

“You must be of an age to stand for quaestor, surely.”

“I am. But I’m not standing. I shall wait for the censors,” said Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus.

While Lucius Caesar licked his wounds in Teanum Sidicinum, Gaius Papius Mutilus In crossed the Volturnus River and then the Calor River. When he reached Nola he was greeted with hysterical joy. The town had managed to overthrow a two-thousand-strong garrison the moment Lucius Caesar left, and proudly showed Mutilus a makeshift prison where the Roman cohorts had been put. It was a small paddock inside the walls where sheep and pigs had been kept before slaughter, now fenced in by a very high stone barricade topped with broken sherds, and patrolled constantly. To keep the Romans docile, said the Nolans, they were only being fed once every eight days, and watered every third day.

“Good!” said Mutilus, pleased. “I’ll address them myself.”

To deliver his speech he used the wooden platform from which the Nolans threw bread and water to the captives in the mire below. “My name,” he shouted, “is Gaius Papius Mutilus! I am a Samnite. And by the end of the year I will be ruling all Italy, including Rome! You don’t stand a chance against us. You’re weak, worn out, used up. Townspeople overcame you! Now here you are, penned up like the animals which used to be kept in the same place, but crowded in worse than those animals were. Two thousand of you in a paddock that used to hold two hundred pigs. Uncomfortable, isn’t it? You’re sick. You’re hungry. You’re thirsty. And I’m here to tell you it’s going to get worse. From now on you don’t get fed at all, and you’ll get water every five days. There is an alternative, however. You can enlist in the legions of Italia. Think it over.”

“There’s nothing to think over!” cried Lucius Postumius, the garrison commander. “Here we stay!”

Papius climbed down, smiling. “I’ll give them sixteen days,” he said. “They’ll surrender.”

Things were going very well for Italia. Gaius Vidacilius had invaded Apulia and found himself in a bloodless theater of war—Larinum, Teanum Apulum, Luceria and Ausculum all joined the Italian cause, their men flocking to enlist in the Italian legions. And when Mutilus reached the coast at Crater Bay, the seaports of Stabiae, Salernum and Surrentum declared for Italy, as well as the river port of Pompeii.

Finding himself the owner of four fleets of warships, Mutilus decided to carry the campaign onto the water by launching an attack upon Neapolis. But Rome had had a great deal more experience at sea. The Roman admiral, Otacilius, successfully beat the Italian ships back to their home ports. Determined not to yield, the Neapolitans stoically beat out the fires caused by Mutilus’s bombardment of the waterfront warehouses with oil-soaked, blazing missiles.

In every town where the Italian populace had succeeded in forging an alliance with Italia, the Roman populace was put to death. Among those towns was Nola; Servius Sulpicius Galba’s courageous hostess perished with the rest. Even when apprised of this, the starving garrison of Nola held out until Lucius Postumius called a meeting, not a difficult thing to do; two thousand men in a compound designed for two hundred pigs meant a degree of crowding that made it hard for the men to lie down.

“I think all the rankers should surrender,” Postumius said, looking with tired eyes at tired faces. “The Italians are going to kill us, of that we may be sure. And I for one must defy them until I am dead. Because I am the commander. It is my duty. Whereas you rankers owe Rome a different kind of duty. You must stay alive to fight in other wars—foreign wars. So join the Italians, I beg of you! If you can desert to your own side after joining, do so. But at all costs stay alive. Stay alive for Rome.” He paused to rest. “The centurions must surrender too. Without her centurions, Rome is lost. As for my officers, if you wish to capitulate, I will understand. If you do not, I will understand.”

It took Lucius Postumius a long time to persuade the soldiers to do as he asked. Everyone wanted to die, if only to show the Italians they couldn’t cow genuine Romans. But in the end Postumius won, and the legionaries did surrender. However, talk though he did, try though he did, he couldn’t persuade the centurions. Nor did his four military tribunes want to give in. They all died—centurions, military tribunes, and Lucius Postumius himself.

Before the last man in the Nolan pigpen was dead, Herculaneum declared for the Italian cause and murdered its Roman citizens. Now jubilant, sure of himself, Mutilus stepped up his sea war. Lightning raids were launched against Neapolis for a second time, Puteoli, Cumae, and Tarracina; this brought Latium’s coast into the conflict and exacerbated already festering resentments between Romans, Latins, and the Italians of Latium. Admiral Otacilius fought back doggedly, and with sufficient success to prevent the Italians taking any port beyond Herculaneum; though many a waterfront burned, and men died.

When it became clear that all of the peninsula south of northern Campania was Italian territory, Lucius Julius Caesar conferred with his senior legate, Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

“We’re completely cut off from Brundisium, Tarentum, and Rhegium, there can be no doubt of it,” said Lucius Caesar gloomily.

“If we are, then let’s forget about them,” said Sulla cheerily. “I’d rather we concentrated upon northern Campania. Mutilus has laid siege to Acerrae, which means he’s moving toward Capua. If Acerrae surrenders, Capua will go—its livelihood is Roman, but its heart is with Italia.”

Lucius Caesar sat up, affronted. “How can you be so—so merry when we can’t contain Mutilus or Vidacilius?” he demanded.

“Because we will win,” said Sulla strongly. “Believe me, Lucius Julius, we will win! This isn’t an election, you know. In an election, the early vote reflects the outcome. But in war, victory eventually goes to the side that doesn’t give in. The Italians are fighting for their freedom, they say. Now on cursory inspection that might seem like the best of all motives. But it isn’t. It’s an intangible. A concept, Lucius Julius, nothing more. Whereas Rome is fighting for her life. And that is why Rome will win. The Italians aren’t fighting for life in the same way at all. They already know a life they’ve been used to for generations upon generations. It may not be ideal, it may not be what they want. But it is tangible. You wait, Lucius Julius! When the Italian people grow tired of fighting for a dream, the balance will tip against Italia. They’re not an entity. They don’t have a history and a tradition like ours. They lack the mos maiorum! Rome is real. Italia is not.”

Apparently Lucius Caesar’s mind was deaf, even if his ears were not. “If we can’t keep the Italians out of Latium, we’re done for. And I don’t think we’ll keep them out of Latium.”

“We will keep them out of Latium!” Sulla insisted, not losing one iota of his confidence.

“How?” asked the morbid man in the general’s chair.

“For one thing, Lucius Julius, I am the bearer of good tidings. Your cousin Sextus Julius and his brother Gaius Julius have landed in Puteoli. Their ships contain two thousand Numidian cavalry and twenty thousand infantrymen. Most of the foot soldiers are veterans into the bargain. Africa yielded up thousands of Gaius Marius’s old troops—a bit grizzled round the temples, but determined to fight for the homeland. By now they should all be in Capua, being outfitted and undergoing retraining. Four legions, Quintus Lutatius feels, rather than five under-strength legions, and I agree with him. With your permission, I’ll send two legions to Gaius Marius in the north now that he’s commander-in-chief, and we’ll keep the other two here in Campania.” Sulla sighed, grinned jubilantly.

“It would be better to keep all four here in Campania,” said Lucius Caesar.

“I don’t think we can do that,” said Sulla gently but very firmly. “The troop losses in the north have been far greater than ours, and the only two battle-hardened legions are shut up in Firmum Picenum with Pompey Strabo.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Lucius Caesar smothered his disappointment. “Much and all as I detest Gaius Marius, I have to admit I rest far easier now he’s in full command. Things might improve in the north.”

“And they will here too!” Sulla chirped brightly, smothering, not disappointment, but exasperation—ye gods, did any second-in-command ever have such a negative general to deal with? He leaned forward across Lucius Caesar’s desk, face suddenly stern. “We have to draw Mutilus off from Acerrae until the new troops are ready, and I have a plan how to do that.”

“What?”

“Let me take the two best legions we have, march for Aesernia.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me, Lucius Julius, trust me!”

“Well…”

“We must draw Mutilus off Acerrae! A feint at Aesernia is the best way. Trust me, Lucius Julius! I’ll do it, and I won’t lose my men doing it either.”

“How will you go?” Lucius Caesar asked, remembering the debacle in the defile near Atina when he met Scato.

“The same way you did. Up the Via Latina to Aquinum, then through the Melfa Gorge.”

“You’ll be ambushed.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be ready,” said Sulla blithely, finding that the deeper went Lucius Caesar’s depressions, the higher were his own flights of fancy.

However, to the Samnite leader Duilius, the two trim-looking legions which appeared on the road from Aquinum seemed far from ready to tackle an ambush. By late afternoon the head of the Roman column was marching jauntily into the maw of the defile, and he could distinctly hear the centurions and tribunes shouting among the ranks that they’d better be all inside and camped before darkness, or there’d be punishment duties for everyone.

Duilius stared down from the top of the crags, frowning, unconsciously chewing his nails. Was this Roman brashness the height of idiocy, or some brilliant ploy? As soon as the Roman front ranks had become properly visible, he knew who was leading them—and leading them on foot at that—Lucius Cornelius Sulla, unmistakable in his big floppy headgear. And Sulla had no reputation for idiocy, even though his activities in the field so far had been minimal. It seemed from the look of the scurrying figures that Sulla was setting about making a very strongly fortified camp, which suggested that his plan was to hang on to the gorge, eject the Samnite garrison.

“He can’t succeed,” said Duilius at last, still frowning. “Still, we’ll do what we can tonight. It’s too late to attack him—but I can make ii impossible for him to retreat tomorrow when I do attack. Tribune, get a legion on the road in his rear, and do it quietly, understand?”

Sulla stood with his second-in-command on the floor of the gorge watching the intensely busy legionaries.

“I hope this works,” said his second-in-command, none other than Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius the Piglet.

Since the death of his father, Numidicus Piggle-wiggle, the Piglet’s affection for Sulla had grown rather than diminished. He had gone south to Capua with Catulus Caesar and spent the early months of the war helping to put Capua on a war footing. This posting to Sulla was his first genuinely martial commission since the Germans, and he burned to excel, yet was determined too that Sulla should have no grounds to complain about his conduct; whatever the orders were, he intended to follow them to the letter.

Up went Sulla’s fine brows, undarkened these days. “It will work,” he said serenely.

“Wouldn’t it just be better to stay here and throw the Samnites out of the gorge? That way, we’d have permanent access to the east,” said the Piglet, looking eager.

“It wouldn’t work, Quintus Caecilius. Yes, we could free the gorge. But we don’t have the two spare legions it would take to hold the gorge in perpetuity. Which means the Samnites would move back into it the moment we left. They have the spare legions. So it’s more important to show them that what seems an impregnable position isn’t necessarily so.” Sulla grunted, a contented sound. “Good, it’s dark enough. Have the torches kindled—and make it look convincing.”

Metellus Pius made it look convincing; to the watchers on the heights it appeared all through the hours of night that the fortification of Sulla’s camp went on at frantic pace.

“They’ve decided to take the gorge off us, no doubt of it,” said Duilius. “Fools! They’re shut in here for the duration.” He too sounded contented.

But the rising of the sun showed Duilius his mistake. Behind the huge mounds of rock and earth thrown up against the sides of the cliffs, there were no soldiers at all; having baited the Samnite bull, the Roman wolf had slunk away. To the east, not to the west. From his vantage point Duilius could see the rear of Sulla’s column dwindling to a pall of dust on the road to Aesernia. And there was nothing he could do about it, for his orders were explicit; he was to garrison the Melfa Gorge, not pursue a formidable little force down onto the shelterless plains. The best he could do in this situation was to send a warning to Aesernia.

Even that recourse proved useless. Sulla punched a hole in the lines of the besiegers and got his expedition inside the city with scarcely a casualty.

“He’s too good,” was the next Italian message, this time from Gaius Trebatius, commanding the Samnite siege, to Gaius Papius Mutilus, attacking Acerrae. “Aesernia is too sprawling to enclose with the number of men I have; I couldn’t spread myself out enough to prevent his getting in, nor compress myself enough to keep him from spreading his invaders. Nor do I think I can prevent his getting out if he decides he wants to.”

The beleaguered city, Sulla soon discovered, was cheerful and undistressed; there were ten cohorts of good soldiers inside, those deserted by Scipio Asiagenes and Acilius having been joined by refugees from Venafrum and then Beneventum. The city also had a competent commander in the person of Marcus Claudius Marcellus.

“The supplies and extra arms you’ve brought us are welcome,” said Marcellus. “We will survive here for many moons to come.”

“Do you plan to stay here yourself, then?”

Marcellus nodded, grinned fiercely. “Of course! Having been driven out of Venafrum, I am determined I will not budge from Latin Aesernia.” His smile faded. “All the Roman citizens of Venafrum and Beneventum are dead, killed by the townsfolk. How much they hate us, the Italians! Especially the Samnites.”

“Not without reason, Marcus Claudius.” Sulla shrugged. “But that’s in the past and for the future. All which concerns us is victory in the field—and holding on to those towns which are defiant Roman outposts in a sea of Italians.” He leaned forward. “This is a war of the spirit too. The Italians must be taught that Rome and Romans are inviolate. I sacked every settlement between the Melfa Gorge and Aesernia, even if it was only a pair of cottages. Why? To demonstrate to the Italians that Rome can operate behind enemy lines and take the fruits of Italian soil to revictual places like Aesernia. If you can hold out here, my dear Marcus Claudius, you too will teach the Italians a lesson.”