The Raven and the Rose (4 page)

“I saw the procession from the Vestals’ box, but Antony and the other soldier were wearing full armor, it was impossible to recognize anyone. All I remember is two tall men and a shorter one with a laurel wreath on his head.”

Margo frowned disapprovingly. “You should pay more attention to politics, Julia. Your family is prominent and it’s part of your heritage to follow these things. After the Cordoba campaign Demeter has been seen everywhere at Caesar’s right hand. If he keeps on this way he will certainly have the right to an image long before he is an old man.”

“What else do you know about him?” Julia asked.

“Oh, that he was born in Corsica, son of a freedman farmer. He joined the provincial legion when hardly more than a child. It is said that he rose through the ranks quickly from so many acts of bravery that Caesar took personal notice of him and put him in the first cohort.”

“Why is he named for the Greek goddess of grain?”

“There are many Greeks in Corsica, have you forgotten your lessons?”

“Why do they call him ‘raven’?”

“For his coloring, I suppose.”

“How old is he?”

Margo stopped folding garments and looked at Julia sharply. “Why are you so curious?”

Julia shrugged, as if the matter were of no consequence. “He appeared to have Caesar’s complete trust.”

“As well as the infatuated interest of every silly young woman in Rome. Be careful, Julia. It would not be seemly for you to pay too much attention to an eligible young officer.”

Julia threw up her hands in exasperation. “You were just chiding me for not knowing who he was!”

“Awareness is one thing,” Margo said loftily. “Fascination is another.”

Julia tossed her braided belt at Margo and said, “You’re being ridiculous, Margo. Go now and get the
suffibulum
for the sacrifice tomorrow.”

Margo stared her down archly.

“Go!” Julia said.

Margo bowed and left the room.

* * *

Caesar and Marcus descended the vast temple steps toward the dictator’s litter, which was draped in purple silk and waiting in the street. Four towering German slaves in short green tunics stood ready to grasp the wooden hand rests and carry it.

Caesar looked over at his young companion and said, “Why so solemn, young Corvus? Are you sad that I didn’t leave you a magnificent bequest in my will?”

Marcus smiled slightly and shook his head.

“Or is it that little Vestal who caught your eye?” Caesar added, studying him perceptively.

Marcus looked at him briefly, then away.

“Ho, so you WERE smitten! Struck by Jove’s thunderbolt!” Caesar said, chuckling. “Too bad, my boy. Put that one out of your thoughts. The white rose has already been plucked, by the goddess herself. Rosalba is not for you.”

Marcus still said nothing.

“ I do admit it is a shame,” Caesar added, “for one such as that never to know the embrace of a man’s body or the suckle of children. Still, the Vestals serve a strong purpose for the state and they’re richly rewarded for it. I have a soft spot for them myself. Did you know they interceded for me when Sulla put a price on my head for refusing to divorce my first wife?”

“I heard something about it. I didn’t know the Vestals were involved.”

“Oh, yes. The Chief Vestal, not Livia but her predecessor Flavia, used her influence to keep me alive when I was a young lad and needed friends. A favor like that one doesn’t forget. Anyway, it was before you were born and the troubles of those days are long gone. We have new ones to deal with now.” Caesar narrowed his keen dark eyes. “Don’t you ever wonder why I take you with me on these personal missions, rather than that extra legionary bodyguard the Senate has fitted out for me?”

Marcus hesitated. “I thought you found the formal bodyguard ostentatious,” he finally said.

Caesar smiled thinly. “A diplomatic answer. The truth is that there are few people I can really trust. The Senate is filled with my enemies, everyone knows this, and each day there are new plots hatched against me. To take the reins of the state means to make of oneself a target. You are one of the few men I know who doesn’t want anything from me.”
 

Marcus smiled again. “You make me sound very stupid, General.”

Caesar shook his head. “All you want from life are the just rewards of a good soldier, and as long as I am alive I shall see that you get them.”

Marcus put his hand on his sword hilt as they reached Caesar’s litter.

“Go to the Suburra tonight and find a companion who will make you forget all about the white rose,” Caesar said, clapping his centurion on the shoulder as the slaves bowed low.

Marcus sighed. “I am tired of
quadrantariae
with transparent tunics and kohl rimmed eyes, stinking of Persian perfumes, their berry stained lips whispering lies.”

Caesar shrugged. “Such is the lot of the soldier. If you want to do better, take a wife.”

Marcus grinned. “I cannot support a wife on army pay. The raise you authorized to 225 denarii
a year hardly makes any of us in the legions wealthy.”

“You can support an army on the booty you carried back from Gaul and the Spanish campaign,” Caesar said dryly. “There’s not a man in your legion who didn’t return to Rome rich in plate and coins.” Caesar pulled back the curtains of his litter and climbed in, looking out at Marcus for the last word.

“Go out tonight, son, and have a good time. You need the relaxation,” he said.

“I will. I’m dining tonight at the home of Senator Valerius Gracchus.”

“Good. Gracchus sets a fine table. Give him my compliments.” Caesar pulled the litter curtains closed and tapped the roof for the slaves to proceed.

Marcus fell in behind the litter, thinking that as much as he respected Caesar, he was going to disregard the general’s advice in this instance.

 
He planned to see the golden haired Vestal again, no matter what he had to do to arrange it.
 

Chapter 2

Larthia Casca Sejana dismissed her hairdresser and stared moodily into the polished silver mirror she held. She didn’t know why she was conducting this elaborate toilette. Her husband was dead( he had scarcely noticed her when he was alive) and now her sole reason for going on seemed to be to uphold the memory of his sacred name. Although she was young and attractive, with thick light brown hair and wide gray eyes, her life had degenerated into a matron’s round of entertaining his business contacts and pledging portions of his fortune to various charities.

She was miserably bored.

Larthia picked up a utensil from her dressing table and plucked a hair from her left brow, examining herself critically. She was several shades less vivid than her firehaired, green eyed sister Julia, but she was still far too pretty to spend her life as keeper of the memory of Consul Sejanus. The only compensation of her current role was that as the consul’s widow she’d been able for some time to handle her own money and operate free of the
patria potestas
, the authority of her father. That worthy gentleman had sold her to the Consul Sejanus and her younger sister Julia to the Vestals and then succumbed, it was said, to a jug of poisoned wine. He’d found both of his daughters advantageous positions before a slave he had flogged took revenge by slipping a tincture of mercury into his after dinner libation cup.

Now her husband was dead, her father was dead, and the only man she still had to deal with was her grandfather, Casca, whom she wished would die. He was coming to visit her shortly and she did not want to see him. She was tired, restless, and bitter, over three years the widow of a much older man who’d been far more interested in bedding twelve year old slave boys than sleeping with his wife. By some miracle he’d left her pregnant when he went to assume the governorship of Cilicia, and she had begged off accompanying him on account of her condition. She had lost the baby, which might have been some comfort to her, and then made excuses not to join Sejanus until he died of some barbarian fever. Now she had his fortune, but couldn’t have a good time with it because her grandfather Casca, the
paterfamilias
, still lived, and claimed the father’s authority over Larthia that his son had relinquished when he died. She was snared by the sterile fate of the honorable Roman widow, and she was still less than twenty-two years old.

Larthia had never accepted the submissive role of Roman women. Controlled completely by the men in their lives, first their fathers, then their husbands, they were free to direct their own destiny only if they were lucky enough to outlive their mates and strong enough to resist the considerable social pressure to marry again. She’d been lucky, and she was strong, but Casca, though old, still exerted his influence, and Larthia was afraid of him.

His whole family was afraid of him. That’s why Larthia had married Sejanus at the age of fifteen, because her grandfather had wanted the political alliance with the wealthy Consul, even though the latter’s sexual proclivities were well known. Her sister Julia’s fate, also dictated by the family, had been even worse. Larthia had some chance of autonomy if her grandfather died, but Julia was trapped for thirty years in the life of a perpetual virgin because her father had not been man enough to object when Casca put her name forward for the honor.
 

All of it was sordid, and none of it was fair.

“Decimus Gnaeus Casca awaits you in the atrium, mistress,” the old slave Nestor announced from her bedroom doorway.

Larthia sighed and rose. She moved quickly through the vast house, which had been decorated tastefully and expensively by Sejanus’ previous wife, and in which she still felt like a guest. She saw her grandfather waiting for her in the atrium, or entry hall, flanked by the masks of Sejanus’ ancestors hanging on the frescoed walls.
 

Larthia bent and kissed the hand he offered. “Grandfather,” she said. “Welcome.”

Casca was in his sixties, older than any man had a right to be. His thin white hair barely covered his pink skull and his elaborately draped toga was bleached snow white in order to make its purple border more vivid. Under it his tunic sleeves were fringed and the tunic itself, visible at his waist, had two vertical bands of purple woven into the cloth.
 

Larthia found his affectations ridiculous. He was too ancient to be a dandy.
 

She led him inside to the
tablinum
, or parlor, where they reclined on a plush couch, the carved arms of which were inlaid with African ivory.

“How is your health?” Larthia inquired. It was the standard first question, and she gestured for Nestor to come forward as her grandfather recounted his recent visit to a physician who prescribed juniper wood wine for his sciatica.

“Would you like some refreshment?” Larthia asked Casca, who shook his head.
 

She waved the servant back, and he bowed his way out of the room.
 

They made small talk for a little while longer, until Larthia grew impatient and said, “Grandfather, why are you here? If you’ve come to put forward another candidate for my remarriage, I’ll say again that I am not interested.” Larthia took great satisfaction in resisting him as much as she could. He would make sure she paid for it if she did anything scandalous that disgraced his name, but he couldn’t legally force her to marry again.

At least Sejanus had left her that much.

Casca shook his head. “No. I have no energy to spend on debating with you now.”

Larthia suspected she knew the reason. He was too busy plotting against Caesar to waste his time scrambling for influence through marital intrigues. That had been his occupation in former, more settled times.

“Well, then, what is it?”

“I have purchased a bodyguard for you.”

Larthia stared at him. “A what?”

“You heard me.”

“Grandfather, that’s absurd. I have hundreds of slaves, several of them always accompany me when I go out, why do I need a bodyguard? Who would wish to do me harm?”

Casca rose and began to pace; he looked worried and it crossed Larthia’s mind for the first time that maybe the old man really did care about her.
 

“Do I have to instruct you about the current situation? Do you spend all of your time inspecting fabrics from Persia and grooming your hair with Jerusalem aloes? Rome is split into factions! I am not popular with some of them! They might take their differences with me out on you.”

“Why don’t you say what you mean? You’re opposing the ruling faction, led by Caesar.”

“Caesar is nothing less than a dictator. I want the Republic back,” Casca said.

You hypocrite, Larthia thought. He wanted his power back, and Hades take the Republic. Casca was jealous of Caesar and always had been.

“Caesar doesn’t want to be a king. He thrice refused the crown proffered by Mark Antony at the festival of the Lupercal,” Larthia said reasonably.

“Caesar already is a king, he doesn’t need a crown to prove it,” Casca replied darkly.

Larthia sighed. “So your solution to this internal strife is to buy some slave to follow me around the shops and watch me buying oysters from the fishmongers? Really, grandfather, I fear that you have lost your mind.”