The breath hissed between Marius’s teeth. “Jupiter, Lucius Cornelius, it’s brilliant! But can they really do it? I mean, Boiorix has to bank on each division reaching Italian Gaul by—October?”
“I think the Teutones and the Cimbri will certainly do it. They’re well led and strongly motivated. About the others, I can’t be sure. Nor, I suspect, can Boiorix.”
Sulla slid off the couch and began to pace the floor. “There’s one more thing, Gaius Marius, and it’s a very serious thing. After eighteen years of homeless wandering, the Germans are tired. And they’re desperate to settle down. A huge number of children have grown old enough to become young warriors without ever knowinga homeland. There’s actually even been talk of going back to the Cimbrian Chersonnese. The sea has retreated long since, and the ground is sweet again.”
“I wish they would!” said Marius.
“It’s too late for that,” Sulla said, pacing up and down restlessly. “They’ve grown to like crusty white bread, you see, to put their butter on, and sop up their beef juice, and put into their awful blood puddings. They like the warmth of the southern sun and the proximity of the great white mountains. First Pannonia and Noricum, then Gaul. Ours is a richer world. And now that they’ve got Boiorix, they’ve made up their minds they’ll take it.”
“Not while I’m in charge, they won’t,” said Marius, and sagged in his chair. “Is that all?” he asked.
“All, yet nothing,” Sulla said, a little sadly. “I could talk about them for days. But that’s as much as you need to know as a beginning, certainly.”
“What about your wife, your sons? Have you left them to be knocked on the head because they’ve no warrior to support them?”
“Isn’t it funny?” Sulla asked himself, wondering. “I couldn’t do that! When the time came to go, I found I just—couldn’t. So I took Hermana and the boys to the Cherusci of Germania. They live to the north of the Chatti, along the Visurgis River. Her tribe is a part of the Cherusci, though it’s called the Marsi. Odd, don’t you find? We have our Marsi. The Germans have theirs. The name is pronounced exactly the same way. Makes you wonder.... How did we all come to be where we are? Is it in the nature of men to wander in search of fresh homelands? Will we of Rome grow tired of Italy one day, and migrate elsewhere? I’ve thought a great deal about the world since I joined the Germans, Gaius Marius.”
For a reason he couldn’t quite grasp, this last speech of Sulla’s moved Marius almost to tears; so he said in a gentler voice than usual, “I’m glad you didn’t leave her to die.”
“So am I, even though I couldn’t afford the time. I was worried that I wouldn’t reach you before the consular elections were due, because I thought my news would be a terrific help.” He cleared his throat. “Actually I took it upon myself—in your name, of course—to conclude a treaty of peace and friendly alliance with the Marsi of Germania. In some way, I thought, my German sons would then have the faintest whiff of Rome under their short straight Cherusci noses. Hermana has promised to raise them to think kindly of Rome.”
“Won’t you ever see her again?” asked Marius.
“Of course not!” said Sulla briskly. “Nor the twins. I do not intend ever again, Gaius Marius, to grow my hair or my moustaches, nor journey away from the lands around the Middle Sea. A diet of beef and milk and butter and oaten porridge does not agree with my Roman stomach, nor do I like going without a bath, nor do I like beer. I’ve done what I could for Hermana and the boys by putting them where their lack of a warrior will not mean they have to die. But I’ve told Hermana she must try to find another man. It’s sensible and proper. All going well, they’ll survive. And my boys will grow up to be good Germans. Fierce warriors, I hope! And bigger than me by far, I hope! Yet— if Fortune doesn’t intend them to survive—why, I’ll not know about it, will I?”
“Quite so, Lucius Cornelius.” Marius looked down at his hands where they curled about his cup, and seemed surprised that their knuckles were white.
“The only time I ever take credence of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle’s allegations about your vulgar origins,” said Sulla, sounding nothing but amused, “is when some incident rouses your dormant peasant sentimentality.”
Marius glared. “The worst of you—Sulla!—is that I will never know what makes you work! What makes your legs go up and down, what makes your arms swing, why you smile like a wolf. And what you really think. That I’ll never, never know.”
“If it’s any consolation, brother-in-law, nor will anyone else. Even me,” said Sulla.
5
It looked, that November, as if Gaius Marius would never succeed in becoming consul for the following year. A letter from Lucius Appuleius Saturninus drove out all hope of a plebiscite authorizing him to stand in absentia a third time.
The Senate won’t stand by idly again, because most of Rome is now convinced the Germans won’t come at all. Ever. In fact, the Germans have turned into a new Lamia, a monster employed to strike terror into every heart so often and for so long that eventually she holds no terror.
Naturally your enemies have made a great deal out of the fact that this is your second year in Gaul-across-the-Alps repairing roads and digging ship canals, and that your presence there with a large army is costing the State more than it can afford, especially with the price of wheat what it is.
I’ve tested the electoral water in the matter of your standing in absentia a third time, and the toe I dipped in has dropped off from the frost. Your chances would be somewhat better if you came to Rome to stand in person. But of course if you do that, your enemies will argue that the so-called emergency in Gaul-across-the-Alps does not actually exist.
However, I’ve done what I can for you, mainly lining up support in the Senate so you will at least have your command prorogued with proconsular status. This will mean next year’s consuls will be your superiors. And as a final note of cheer, the favored consular candidate for next year is Quintus Lutatius Catulus. The electors are so fed up with his standing every single year that they’ve decided to get rid of him by voting him in. I trust this finds you well.
When Marius finished reading Saturninus’s short missive, he sat frowning for a long time. Though the news it imparted was cheerless, there was yet a faintly jaunty feel to the letter; as if Saturninus too was deciding Gaius Marius was a man of the past, and was busy realigning his priorities.
Gaius Marius had no polling appeal. No more knight clout. For the Germans were much less of a threat than the Sicilian slave war and the grain supply; Lamia the monster was dead.
Well, Lamia the monster wasn’t dead, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla was alive to prove it. Only what was the point of sending Sulla to Rome to testify to this fact when he, Gaius Marius, had no excuse to accompany Sulla to Rome? Without support and power, Sulla wouldn’t prevail; he’d have to tell his whole story to too many men alienated from his commander, men who would find the idea of a Roman aristocrat masquerading as a Gaul for almost two years so disturbing they would end in having Rome dismiss Sulla’s story as unstable, unreliable, unacceptable. No, either both of them journeyed to Rome, or neither of them did.
Out came blank paper, pen, ink: Gaius Marius wrote to Lucius Appuleius Saturninus.
Vindicated you may be, Lucius Appuleius, but remember it was I who enabled you to survive until you were vindicated. You are still beholden to me, and I expect a clientlike loyalty from you.
Do not assume I cannot come to Rome. An opportunity may still arise. Or at least, I expect you to act as if I will indeed appear in Rome. Therefore here is what I want. The most immediate necessity is to postpone the consular elections, a job you and Gaius Norbanus as tribunes of the plebs are well able to do. You will do it. Wholeheartedly. Throwing all your energy into the job. After that, I expect you to use the brain you were born with to seize upon the first opportunity which will enable you to put pressure on the Senate and People to call me to Rome.
I will get to Rome, never doubt it. So if you want
to rise a great deal higher than the tribunate of the plebs, it behooves you to remain Gaius Marius’s man.
And by the end of November an east wind blew Gaius Marius a smacking kiss from the goddess Fortuna, in the shape of a second letter from Saturninus that arrived by sea two days before the Senate courier and his dispatches reached Glanum. Saturninus said, very humbly:
I do not doubt you will reach Rome. Not one day after I received your chastening note, your esteemed colleague Lucius Aurelius Orestes, the junior consul, died suddenly. And, still feeling the lash of your displeasure, I seized upon this opportunity to force the Senate into recalling you. That had not been the plan formulated by the Policy Makers, who through the agency of the Leader of the House recommended that the Conscript Fathers choose a consul suffectus to fill the ivory chair left vacant by Orestes. But—amazing luck!—only the day before, Scaurus had delivered a long speech in the House to the effect that your presence in Gaul-across-the-Alps was an affront to the credulity of all Good Men, that you had manufactured the German panic to get yourself elected a virtual dictator. Of course the moment Orestes died, Scaurus changed his tune completely—the House did not dare recall you to exercise the electoral functions of the consul with the German menace threatening Italy, so the House must appoint a suffect consul to get the elections under way.
Having had no time to start using my tribunate to postpone any elections, I now found it unnecessary to do so. Instead, I rose in the House and made a very fine speech to the effect that our esteemed Princeps Senatus couldn’t have it both ways. Either there was a German menace, or there was not. And I chose to accept his speech of the day before as his honest opinion—there was no German menace, therefore there was no need to fill the dead junior consul’s chair with a suffectus. No, I said, Gaius Marius must be recalled; Gaius Marius must finally do the job he had been elected to do—carry out the duties of a consul. I didn’t need to accuse Scaurus of altering his viewpoint to fit the new set of circumstances in his second speech; everyone got the message.
Hopefully this will beat the courier. The time of year favors the sea over the road. Not that you are not perfectly capable of working out what must have been the sequence of events the moment you get the Senate’s communication! Only that if I do beat the courier, you have a little extra time to plan your campaign in Rome. I am starting things moving among the electors, naturally, and by the time you reach Rome you should have a most respectable deputation of leading lights of the People begging you to stand for the consulship.
“We’re on our way!” said Marius jubilantly to Sulla, tossing him Saturninus’s letter. “Pack your things—there’s no time to lose. You are going to tell the House that the Germans will invade Italy on three separate fronts in the autumn of next year, and I am going to tell the electors that I am the only man capable of stopping them.”
“How far do I go?” asked Sulla, startled.
“Only as far as you have to. I’ll introduce the subject, and state the findings. You’ll testify to their truth, but not in a way which gives the House to understand that you became a barbarian yourself.” Marius looked rueful. “Some things, Lucius Cornelius, are best left unsaid. They don’t know you well enough yet to understand what kind of man you are. Don’t give them information they can use against you later on. You’re a patrician Roman. So let them think your daring deeds were done inside a patrician Roman skin.”
Sulla shook his head. “It’s manifestly impossible to go prowling among the Germans looking like a patrician Roman!”
“They don’t know that,” said Marius with a grin. “Remember what Publius Rutilius said in his letter? The armchair generals on the back benches, he called them. Well, they’re armchair spies too, on the front benches as well as the back. They would not know the rules for spying if the rules ran up their arses!” And he began to laugh. “In fact, I wish I’d asked you to keep your moustaches and long hair for a little while. I’d have dressed you as a German and paraded you around the Forum. And you know what would happen, don’t you?”
Sulla sighed. “Yes. No one would recognize me.”
“Correct. So we won’t put unbearable strain on their Roman imaginations. I’ll be speaking first, and you take your cue from me,” said Marius.
*
To Sulla, Rome offered none of the political vigor or domestic warmth it did to Gaius Marius. In spite of his brilliant quaestorship—under Marius—and his brilliant career as a spy—under Marius—he was just another one of the Senate’s young up-and-coming men, walking in the shadow of the First Man in Rome. Nor was his future political career going anywhere fast enough, especially considering his late entry into the Senate; he was patrician and therefore not permitted to become a tribune of the plebs, he didn’t have the money to run for curule aedile, and he hadn’t been in the Senate long enough to run for praetor. That was the political side of things. At home he found a bitter and enervating atmosphere polluted by a wife who drank too much and neglected her children, and by a mother-in-law who disliked him quite as much as she disliked her situation. That was the domestic side of things.
Well, the political climate would improve for him, he was not so depressed he couldn’t see it; but the climate in his home could do nothing else than deteriorate. And what made it harder coming to Rome this time was that he was passing from his German wife to his Roman one. For just about a year he had lived with Hermana in the midst of an environment more alien to his aristocratic world than the old world of the Suburan stews had been. And Hermana was his solace, his fortress, his one normal point of reference in that bizarre barbarian society.
Tacking himself onto the Cimbric comet’s tail had not been difficult, for Sulla was more than just another brave and physically strong warrior; he was a warrior who thought. In bravery and physical strength many of the Germans left him far behind. But where they were an unalloyed metal, he was the tempered finality—cunning as well as brave, slippery as well as strong. Sulla was the small man facing the giant, the man who, in order to excel in armed combat, had no other way of going about it than to think. Therefore he had been noticed on the field against the Spanish tribes of the Pyrenees at once, and accepted into the warrior confraternity.
Then he and Sertorius had agreed that if they were to blend into this strange world to the point where they would rise high enough to be privy to German policies (such as they were), they would have to be more than useful soldiers. They would have to carve themselves niches in tribal life. So they had separated, chosen different tribes, and then taken women from among the ranks of those women recently widowed.
His eye had lighted upon Hermana because she was an outsider herself, and because she had no children. Her man had been the chief of his Cimbric tribe; otherwise the women of the tribe would never have tolerated her foreign presence among them when, in effect, she usurped a place which ought to have been filled by a Cimbric woman. And the angry women were already clubbing her to death inside their minds when Sulla—a meteor among the warriors—climbed into her wagon and thereby established his claim to her. They would be foreigners together. There was no sentiment or attraction of any kind in his selection of the Cheruscic Hermana; simply, she needed him more than a Cimbric woman would have within the tribal enclave, and also owed the tribe far less than a Cimbric woman would have. Thus if she should discover his Roman origins, Hermana would be far less likely to report him than a Cimbric woman.
As German women went, she was very ordinary. Most were tall, strongly yet gracefully built, with long legs and high breasts, flaxen hair, the bluest of eyes—and fair of face if one could forgive the ugliness of wide mouths and straight little noses. Hermana was a great deal shorter even than Sulla (who as Romans went was a respectable height at about three inches less than six feet—Marius, an inch over six feet, was very tall), and plumper than most of her fellows. Though her hair was extremely thick and long, it was definitely of that indeterminate shade universally known as mouse, and her eyes were a darkish grey-fa
wn to match her hair. For the rest, she was German enough—the bones of her skull were well defined, and her nose was like a short straight blade, fine and thin. She was thirty years old, and had been barren; if her man had not been the chief, and autocratic to the point of refusing to cast her off, Hermana would have died.
What made her distinctive enough to have been the choice of two men of superior quality in succession was not obvious on the surface. Her first man had called her different and interesting, but could be no more specific; Sulla thought her a natural aristocrat, a finicky aloof lady who yet radiated a powerfully sexual message.
They fitted together very well in every way, for she was intelligent enough to be undemanding, sensible enough not to trammel him, passionate enough to make bedding her a pleasure, articulate enough to make her an interesting communicant, and industrious enough to give him no additional work. Hermana’s beasts were always herded together properly, branded properly, milked properly, mated properly, medicined properly. Hermana’s wagon was always in tiptop condition, its canopy kept taut and patched or mended, its wooden tray oiled and chinked, its big wheels greased with a mixture of butter and beef drippings along the axle junctions and linch-pins, and never missing spokes or segments of their rims. Hermana’s pots and crocks and vessels were kept clean; her provisions were carefully stored against damp and marauders; her clothing and rugs were aired and darned; her killing and quartering knives were superbly sharp; her oddments were never put away in some place she forgot. Hermana, in fact, was everything Julilla was not. Except a Roman of blood as good as his own.
When she discovered she was pregnant—in fact, she fell at once—both of them were delighted, Hermana for one extra reason. She was now vindicated in the eyes of the tribe to which she did not belong, and the blame for her previous sterility was now thrown squarely upon the shoulders of her dead chieftain. A fact which didn’t please the women of the tribe one little bit, for they had long hated her. Not that there was much they could do about it, because by spring, when the Cimbri set off on their trek northward to the lands of the Atuatuci, Sulla was the new chief. Hermana, it might safely be inferred, had more than her share of luck.
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