The Grass Crown (77 page)

“How say my fellow tribunes?” asked Piso Frugi.

“I say, let it be as Gaius Marius suggests,” said Silvanus.

“And I,” said Carbo.

The other seven followed suit.

“How says the concilium plebis! Do I need to call for a formal vote, or will you show your hands?”

Every hand shot up.

“Titus Titinius, this Assembly orders you to report to Quintus Lutatius Catulus in Capua,” said Piso Frugi, allowing no smile to appear on his face. “Lictors, strike off his chains. He is free.”

But he refused to go until he had been brought to Gaius Marius, whereupon he fell to his knees and wept.

“Train your Capuan recruits well, Titus Titinius,” said Marius, his shoulders sagging in exhaustion. “And now, if I may be excused, I think it’s time I walked home.”

Lucius Decumius popped out from behind a pillar, face creased into smiles, his hand extended to Titus Titinius, but his gaze upon Gaius Marius. “There’s a litter for you, Gaius Marius.”

“I am not riding home in a litter when my feet got me this far!” said Gaius Marius. “Boy, help me up.” His huge right hand ate into Young Caesar’s thin arm until the flesh below its vise glowed dark red, but no expression save concern crossed Young Caesar’s face. He bent to the task of getting the Great Man to his feet as if it were no trouble. Once standing, Marius took his stick, the boy moved to support his left side, and down the steps they went like two conjoined crabs. Half of Rome, it seemed, escorted them up the hill, cheering Marius’s every effort.

The servants fought for the honor of escorting the grey-hued Marius to his room; no one noticed Young Caesar lag behind. When he thought himself alone he sank to a huddle in the passageway between door and atrium and lay motionless, eyes closed. Julia found him there some time later. Fear twisting her heart, she knelt beside him, oddly reluctant to call for help.

“Gaius Julius, Gaius Julius! What is it?”

As she took him into her arms he fell against her, his skin drained of color, his chest hardly moving. She drew his hand into hers to feel for a pulse and saw the livid bruise in the shape of Marius’s fingers upon the child’s upper arm.

“Gaius Julius, Gaius Julius!”

The eyes opened, he sighed and smiled, and the color came stealing back into his face. “Did I get him home?”

“Oh yes, Gaius Julius, you got him home magnificently,” said Julia, close to tears. “It’s worn you out more than it has him! These outside walks are going to be too much for you.”

“No, Aunt Julia, I can manage, truly. He won’t go with anyone else, you know that,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Yes, unfortunately I do. Thank you, Gaius Julius! Thank you more than I can say.” She studied the bruise. “He’s hurt you. I shall put something on it to make it feel better.”

The eyes filled with life and light, the mouth curved into the smile which melted Julia’s heart. “I know what will make it better, Aunt Julia.”

“What?”

“A kiss. One of your kisses, please.”

Kisses he got aplenty, and every kind of food he liked, and a book, and the couch in her workroom to rest upon; she would not let him go home until Lucius Decumius came to fetch him.

As the seasons wore on in that year which saw the course of the war turn in Rome’s favor at last, Gaius Marius and Young Caesar became one of Rome’s fixtures, the boy helping the man, the man slowly becoming more able to help himself. After that first day they turned their feet toward the Campus Martius, where the crowds were far less and their progress eventually provoked scant interest. As Marius grew stronger they walked further, culminating in the triumphant day they reached the Tiber at the end of the Via Recta; after a long rest, Gaius Marius swam in the Trigarium.

Once he began to swim regularly his progress accelerated. So did his fascination with the martial and equine exercises they encountered along their way; Marius had decided that it was high time Young Caesar started his military education. At last! At last Gaius Julius Caesar received the rudiments of skills he had longed to acquire. He was tossed into the saddle of a rather mettlesome pony and demonstrated that he was a born rider; he and Marius dueled with wooden swords until even Marius couldn’t fault the boy, and graduated him to the real thing; he was shown how to throw the pilum, and plugged the target every time; he learned to swim once Marius felt confident enough in the water to keep him out of trouble; and he listened to a new kind of story from Marius—the reminiscences of a general on the subject of generaling.

“Most commanders lose the battle before they ever get onto the field to fight,” said Marius to Young Caesar as they sat side by side on the river bank, wrapped in linen shrouds.

“How, Gaius Marius?”

“In one of two ways, mostly. Some understand the art of command so little that they actually think all they have to do is point the enemy out to the legions, then stand back to watch the legions do their stuff. But others have their heads so full of manuals and hints from the generals of their cadet days that they go by the book when to go by the book is to beg for defeat. Every enemy—every campaign—every battle, Gaius Julius!—is unique. It must be approached with the respect due to the unique. By all means plan what you’re going to do the night before on a sheet of parchment in the command tent, but don’t regard that plan as cut-and-dried. You wait to form the true plan until you see the enemy, the lay of the land on the morning of the engagement, how the enemy is drawn up, and where his weaknesses are. Then you decide! Preconceptions are almost always fatal to your chances. And things can change even as the battle progresses, because every moment is unique! Your men’s mood might change—or the site mud up faster than you thought it would—or dust might rise to obscure every sector of the field—or the enemy general spring a real surprise—or flaws and weaknesses show up in your own plans or the plans of the enemy,” said Marius, quite carried away.

“Is it never possible for a battle to go exactly as it was planned the night before?” asked Young Caesar, eyes shining.

“It has happened! But about as frequently as hens grow teeth, Young Caesar. Always remember—whatever you’ve planned and no matter how complex your plan might be—be prepared to alter it in the twinkling of an eye! And here’s another pearl of wisdom, boy. Keep your plan as simple as possible. Simple plans always work better than tactical monstrosities, if for no other reason than you, the general, cannot implement your plan without using the chain of command. And the chain of command gets vaguer the lower down and the farther away from the general it gets.”

“It would seem that a general must have a very well-trained staff and an army drilled to perfection,” said the boy pensively.

“Absolutely!” cried Marius. “that’s why a good general always makes sure he addresses his troops before the battle. Not to boost morale, Young Caesar. But to let the rankers know what he plans to do. If they know what he plans to do, they can interpret the orders they get from the bottom of the chain of command.”

“It pays to know your soldiers, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed it does. It also pays to make sure they know you. And make sure they like you. If men like their general, they’ll work harder and take bigger risks for him. Don’t ever forget what Titus Titinius said from the rostra. Call the men every name under the sun, but never give them reason to suppose you despise them. If you know your ranker soldiers and they know you, twenty thousand Roman legionaries can beat a hundred thousand barbarians.”

“You were a soldier before you were a general.”

“I was. An advantage you’ll never really have, Young Caesar, because you’re a patrician Roman nobleman. And yet I say that if you’re not a soldier before you’re a general, you can never be a general in the true sense.” Marius leaned forward, eyes looking at something far beyond the Trigarium and the neat sward of the Vatican plain. “The best generals were always soldiers first. Look at Cato the Censor. When you’re old enough to be a cadet, don’t skulk behind the lines making yourself useful to your commander—get out in the front line and fight! Ignore your nobility. Every time there’s a battle, turn yourself into a ranker. If your general objects and wants you to ride around the field bearing messages, tell him you’d rather fight. He’ll let you because he doesn’t hear it very often from his own kind. You must fight as an ordinary soldier, Young Caesar. How else when you come to command can you understand what your soldiers in the front line are going through? How can you know what frightens them—what puts them off—what cheers them up—what makes them charge like bulls? And I’ll tell you something else too, boy!”

“What?” asked Young Caesar eagerly, drinking in every word with bated breath.

“It’s time we went home!” said Marius, laughing. Until he saw the look on Young Caesar’s face. “Now don’t get on your high horse with me, boy!” he barked, annoyed because his joke had fallen flat and Young Caesar was furious.

“Don’t you dare tease me about something so important!” the child said, his voice as soft and gentle as Sulla’s could be in a like moment. “This is serious, Gaius Marius! You’re not here to entertain me! I want to know everything you know before I’m old enough to be a cadet—then I can go on learning from a more solid base than anyone else. I will never stop learning! So cut out your unfunny jokes and treat me like a man!”

“You’re not a man,” said Marius feebly, staggered at the storm he had raised and not sure how to deal with it.

“When it comes to learning I’m more a man than any man I know, including you!” Young Caesar’s voice was growing louder; several nearby wet and shivering faces turned his way. Even in the midst of this towering rage, however, there was still presence of mind; he glanced at their neighbors and got abruptly to his feet, nostrils pinched, lips set hard. “I don’t mind being a child when Aunt Julia treats me like a child,” he said, quietly now, “but when you treat me like a child, Gaius Marius, I—am—mortally insulted! I tell you, I won’t have it!” Out went one hand to pull Marius up. “Come on, let’s go home. I’m out of patience with you today.”

Marius grasped the hand and went home without a murmur.

Which was just as well, as things turned out. When they came through the door they found Julia waiting for them anxiously, the marks of tears on her face.

“Oh, Gaius Marius, something dreadful!” she cried, quite forgetting he ought not to be upset; even now in his illness, when disaster struck Julia turned to Marius as to a savior.

“What is it, meum mel?”

“Young Marius!” Seeing her husband’s look of stunned shock, she blundered on frantically. “No, no, he’s not dead, my love! He isn’t injured either! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be giving you such frights—but I don’t know where I am, or what to do!”

“Then sit down over there, Julia, and compose yourself. I will sit on one side of you and Gaius Julius will sit on the other side, and you can tell both of us—calmly, clearly, and without gushing like a fountain.”

Julia sat down. Marius and Young Caesar ranged themselves on either side of her. Each took one of her hands and patted it.

“Now begin,” said Marius.

“There’s been a great battle against Quintus Poppaedius Silo and the Marsi. Somewhere near Alba Fucentia, I think. The Marsi won. But our army managed to retreat without losing a huge number of men,” said Julia.

“Well, I suppose that’s an improvement,” said Marius heavily. “Go on. I presume there’s more.”

“Lucius Cato the Consul was killed shortly before our son ordered the retreat.”

“Our son ordered the retreat?”

“Yes.” Tears threatened, were resolutely suppressed.

“How do you know all this, Julia?”

“Quintus Lutatius called to see you earlier today. He’s been on some sort of official visit to the Marsic theater, I gather to do with Lucius Cato’s chronic troop troubles. I don’t know—I’m not honestly sure,” said Julia, taking the hand Young Caesar held from him and lifting it to her head.

“We won’t worry about why Quintus Lutatius was visiting the Marsic theater,” said Marius sternly. “I take it he was an observer of this battle Cato lost?”

“No, he was at Tibur. that’s where our army retreated to after the battle. It was a debacle, apparently. The soldiers weren’t led at all. The only one who preserved his reason was our son, it seems. that’s why it was he sounded the retreat. On the way to Tibur he tried to restore order among the soldiers, but he didn’t get anywhere. The poor fellows were quite demented.”

“Then why—what is so wrong, Julia?”

“There was a praetor waiting at Tibur. A new legate posted to Lucius Cato. Lucius Cornelius Cinna… I’m sure that’s the name Quintus Lutatius said. So when the army reached Tibur, Lucius Cinna took over from Young Marius, and everything seemed all right. Lucius Cinna even commended our son for his good sense.” Julia plucked both hands from their keepers and wrung them together.

“Seemed all right. What happened then?”

“Lucius Cinna called a meeting to find out what went wrong. There were only a few tribunes and cadets to question—all the legates apparently were killed, for there were none got back to Tibur,” said Julia, trying desperately to be lucid. “Then when Lucius Cinna came to the circumstances surrounding the death of Lucius Cato the Consul—one of the other cadets accused our son of murdering him!”

“I see,” said Marius calmly, looking unperturbed. “Well, Julia, you know the story, I don’t. Continue.”

“This other cadet said Young Marius tried to persuade Lucius Cato to order the retreat. But Lucius Cato rounded on him and called him the son of an Italian traitor. He refused to order the retreat, he said it was better every Roman man on the field died than to live in dishonor. He turned his back on Young Marius in contempt. And the other cadet says our son stuck his sword up to the hilt in Lucius Cato’s back! Then our son took over the command, and ordered the retreat.” Julia was weeping.

“Couldn’t Quintus Lutatius have waited to tell me rather than burdening you with this news?” asked Marius harshly.

“He truly didn’t have the time, Gaius Marius.” She wiped her eyes, tried to compose herself. “He is sent for urgently from Capua, he had to travel on at once. In fact he said he ought not have delayed to visit Rome and see us, so we must be grateful to him. He said you would know what to do. And when Quintus Lutatius said that, I knew he believed our son did kill Lucius Cato! Oh, Gaius Marius, what will you do? What can you do? What did Quintus Lutatius mean, you would know?”