"Be honest, tell her the truth," advised Bibulus. "She's needed for the cause."
"I don't really see why, Bibulus," said Metellus Scipio.
"Then I'll go through it again for you, Scipio. We have to swing Pompeius onto our side. You do see that, don't you?"
"I suppose so."
"All right, I'll explain that too. It goes back to Luca and the conference Caesar held there with Pompeius and Marcus Crassus. Almost four years ago. April. Because Caesar's daughter held Pompeius in thrall, Caesar was able to persuade Pompeius to help legislate a second five-year command in Gaul for him. If Pompeius hadn't done that, Caesar would now be in permanent exile, stripped of everything he owns. And you'd be Pontifex Maximus, Scipio. Do remember that. He also persuaded Pompeius—and Crassus, though that was never as hard—to bring in a law which forbids the Senate to discuss Caesar's second five-year command before March of two years' time, let alone remove his command from him! Caesar bribed Pompeius and Crassus with their second consulship, but he couldn't have done that without Julia to help things along. What was to stop Pompeius's running for a second consulship anyway?"
"But Julia's dead," objected Metellus Scipio.
"Yes, but Caesar still holds Pompeius! And as long as Caesar does hold Pompeius, there's the chance that he'll manage to prolong his Gallic command beyond its present end. Until, in fact, he steps straight into a second consulship. Which he can do legally in less than four years."
"But why do you always harp on Caesar?" asked Metellus Scipio. "Isn't it Clodius who's the danger at the moment?"
Cato banged his empty cup down on the desk so suddenly that Metellus Scipio jumped. "Clodius!" he said contemptuously. "It isn't Clodius who will bring the Republic down, for all his fine plans! Someone will stop Clodius. But only we boni can stop the real enemy of the boni, Caesar."
Bibulus tried again. "Scipio," he said, "if Caesar manages to survive unprosecuted until he's consul for the second time, we will never bring him down! He'll force laws through the Assemblies that will make it impossible for us to arraign him in any court! Because now Caesar is a hero. A fabulously wealthy hero! When he was consul the first time, he had the name and little else. Ten years later, he'll be let do whatever he likes, because the whole of Rome is full of his creatures and the whole of Rome deems him the greatest Roman who ever lived. He'll get away with everything he's done—even the Gods will hear him laughing at us!"
"Yes, I do see all of that, Bibulus, but I also remember how hard we worked to stop him when he was consul the first time," said Metellus Scipio stubbornly. "We'd hatch a plot, it usually cost us a lot of money, and every time you'd say the same thing—it would be the end of Caesar. But it never was the end of Caesar!"
"That's because," said Bibulus, hanging on to his patience grimly, "we didn't have quite enough clout. Why? Because we despised Pompeius too much to make him our ally. But Caesar didn't make that mistake. I don't say he doesn't despise Pompeius to this day—who with Caesar's ancestry wouldn't?—but he uses Pompeius. Who has a huge amount of clout. Who even presumes to call himself the First Man in Rome, if you please! Pah! Caesar presented him with his daughter, a girl who could have married anyone, she was so highborn. A Cornelian and a Julian combined. Who was betrothed to Brutus, quite the richest and best-connected nobleman in Rome. Caesar broke that engagement. Enraged Servilia. Horrified everyone who mattered. But did he care? No! He caught Pompeius in his toils, he became unbeatable. Well, if we catch Pompeius in our toils, we'll become unbeatable! That's why you're going to offer him Cornelia Metella."
Cato listened, eyes fixed on Bibulus's face. The best, the most enduring of friends. A very tiny fellow, so silver of hair, brows and lashes that he seemed peculiarly bald. Silver eyes too. Sharp-faced, sharp-minded. Though he could thank Caesar for honing the razor edge on his mind.
"All right," said Metellus Scipio with a sigh, "I'll go home and talk to Cornelia Metella. I won't promise, but if she says she's willing, then I'll offer her to Pompeius."
"And that," said Bibulus when Cato returned from escorting Metellus Scipio off the premises, "is that." Cato lifted the plain pottery cup to his lips and drank again; Bibulus looked dismayed.
"Cato, must you?" he asked. "I used to think the wine never went to your head, but that isn't true anymore. You drink far too much. It will kill you."
Indeed Cato never looked well these days, though he was one of those men whose figure hadn't suffered; he was as tall, as straight, as beautifully built as ever. But his face, which used to be so bright, so innocent, had sunk to ashen planes and fine wrinkles, despite the fact that he was only forty-one years old. The nose, so large that it was famous in a city of large noses, dominated the face completely; in the old days his eyes had done that, for they were widely opened, luminously grey.
And the short-cut, slightly waving hair was no longer auburn—more a speckled beige.
He drank and he drank. Especially since he had given Marcia to Hortensius. Bibulus knew why, of course, though Cato had never discussed it. Love was not an emotion Cato could cope with, particularly a love as ardent and passionate as the love he still felt for Marcia. It tormented him, it ate at him. Every day he worried about her; every day he wondered how he could live were she to die, as his beloved brother Caepio had died. So when the addled Hortensius had asked, he saw a way out. Be strong, belong to himself again! Give her away. Get rid of her.
But it hadn't worked. He just buried himself with his pair of live-in philosophers, Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus, and the three of them spent each night plundering the wine flagons. Weeping over the pompous, priggish words of Cato the Censor as if Homer had written them. Falling into a stuporous sleep when other men were getting out of bed. Not a sensitive man, Bibulus had no idea of the depth of Cato's pain, but he did love Cato, chiefly for that unswerving strength in the face of all adversity, from Caesar to Marcia. Cato never gave up, never gave in.
"Porcia will be eighteen soon," said Cato abruptly.
"I know," said Bibulus, blinking.
"I haven't got a husband for her."
"Well, you had hoped for her cousin Brutus...."
"He'll be home from Cilicia by the end of the month."
"Do you intend to try for him again? He doesn't need Appius Claudius, so he could divorce Claudia."
Came that neighing laugh. "Not I, Bibulus! Brutus had his chance. He married Claudia and he can stay married to Claudia."
"How about Ahenobarbus's son?"
The flagon tipped; a thin stream of red wine trickled into the plain pottery cup. The permanently haemorrhage-pinkened eyes looked at Bibulus over the rim of the cup. "How about you, old friend?" he asked.
Bibulus gasped. "Me?"
"Yes, you. Domitia's dead, so why not?"
"I—I—I never thought—ye Gods, Cato! Me?"
"Don't you want her, Bibulus? I admit Porcia doesn't have a hundred-talent dowry, but she's not poor. She's well enough born and very highly educated. And I can vouch for her loyalty." Down went some of the wine. "Pity, in fact, that she's the girl and not the boy. She's worth a thousand of him."
Eyes filling with tears, Bibulus reached out a hand across the desk. "Marcus, of course I'll have her! I'm honored."
But Cato ignored the hand. "Good," he said, and drank until the cup was empty.
2
On the seventeenth day of that January, Publius Clodius donned riding gear, strapped on a sword, and went to see his wife in her sitting room. Fulvia was lying listlessly on a couch, her hair undressed, delicious body still clad in a filmy saffron bed robe. But when she saw what Clodius was wearing, she sat up.
"Clodius, what is it?"
He grimaced, sat on the edge of her couch and kissed her brow. "Meum mel, Cyrus is dying."
"Oh, no!" Fulvia turned her face into Clodius's linen shirt, rather like the underpinnings of a military man's cuirass save that it was not padded. Then she lifted her head and stared at him in bewilderment. "But you're going out
of Rome, dressed like that! Why? Isn't Cyrus here?"
"Yes, he's here," said Clodius, genuinely upset at the prospect of Cyrus's death, and not because he would then lose the services of Rome's best architect. "That's why I'm off to the building site. Cyrus has got it into his head that he made an error in his calculations, and he won't trust anyone but me to check for him. I'll be back tomorrow."
"Clodius, don't leave me behind!"
"I have to," said Clodius unhappily. "You're not well, and I'm in a tearing hurry. The doctors say Cyrus won't last longer than another two or three days, and I have to put the poor old fellow's mind at rest." He kissed her mouth hard, got up.
"Take care!" she cried.
Clodius grinned. "Always, you know that. I've got Schola, Pomponius and my freedman Gaius Clodius for company. And I have thirty armed slaves as escort."
The horses, all good ones, had been brought in from the stables outside the Servian Walls at the Vallis Camenarum, and had drawn quite a crowd of onlookers in the narrow lane into which Clodius's front door opened; so many mounts within Rome were most unusual. In these turbulent times it was customary for contentious men to go everywhere with a bodyguard of slaves or hired toughs, and Clodius was no exception. But this was a lightning trip, it had not been planned, and Clodius expected to be back before he had been missed. The thirty slaves were, besides, all young and trained in the use of the swords they wore, even if they were not equipped with cuirasses or helmets.
"Where are you off to, Soldiers' Friend?" called a man from the crowd, grinning widely.
Clodius paused. "Tigranocerta? Lucullus?" he asked.
"Nisibis, Lucullus," the man answered.
"Those were the days, eh?"
"Nearly twenty years ago, Soldiers' Friend! But none of us who were there have ever forgotten Publius Clodius."
"Who's grown old and tame, soldier."
"Where are you off to?" the man repeated.
Clodius vaulted into the saddle and winked at Schola, already mounted. "The Alban Hills," he said, "but only overnight. I'll be in Rome again tomorrow." He turned his horse and rode off down the lane in the direction of the Clivus Palatinus, his three boon companions and the thirty armed slaves falling in behind.
"The Alban Hills, but only overnight," said Titus Annius Milo thoughtfully. He pushed a small purse of silver denarii across the table to the man who had called out to Clodius from the crowd. "I'm obliged," he said, and rose to his feet.
"Fausta," he said a moment later, erupting into his wife's sitting room, "I know you don't want to come, but you are coming to Lanuvium with me at dawn tomorrow, so pack your things and be ready. That's not a request, it's an order."
To Milo, the acquisition of Fausta represented a considerable victory over Publius Clodius. She was Sulla's daughter, and her twin brother, Faustus Sulla, was an intimate of Clodius's, as was Sulla's disreputable nephew, Publius Sulla. Though Fausta had not been a member of the Clodius Club, her connections were all in that direction; she had been wife to Pompey's nephew, Gaius Memmius, until he caught her in a compromising situation with a very young, very muscular nobody. Fausta liked muscular men, but Memmius, although he was quite spectacularly handsome, was a rather thin and weary individual who was quite nauseatingly devoted to his mother, Pompey's sister. Now Publius Sulla's wife.
As he was notably muscular, even if not as young as Fausta was used to, Milo hadn't found it difficult to woo her and wed her. Clodius had screamed even louder than Faustus or Publius Sulla! Admittedly Fausta wasn't cured of her predilection for very young, very muscular nobodies; scant months ago Milo had been forced to take a whip to one Gaius Sallustius Crispus for indiscretions with her. What Milo didn't broadcast to a delighted Rome was that he had also used the whip on Fausta. Brought her to heel very nicely too.
Unfortunately Fausta hadn't taken after Sulla, a stunning-looking man in his youth. No, she took after her great-uncle, the famous Metellus Numidicus. Lumpy, dumpy, frumpy. Still, all women were the same with the lights out, so Milo enjoyed her quite as much as he did the other women with whom he dallied.
Remembering the feel of the whip, Fausta didn't argue. She cast Milo a look of anguish, then clapped her hands to summon her retinue of servants.
Milo had vanished, calling for his freedman named Marcus Fustenus, who didn't bear the name Titus Annius because he had passed into Milo's clientele after being freed from a school for gladiators. Fustenus was his own name. He was a Roman sentenced to gladiatorial combat for doing murder.
"Plans are changed a bit, Fustenus," said Milo curtly when his henchman appeared. "We're still off to Lanuvium—what a wonderful piece of luck! My reasons for heading down the Via Appia tomorrow are impeccable; I can prove that my plans to be in my hometown to nominate the new flamen have been in place for two months. No one will be able to say I had no right to be on the Via Appia. No one!"
Fustenus, almost as large an individual as Milo, said nothing, just nodded.
"Fausta has decided to accompany me, so you'll hire a very roomy carpentum," Milo went on.
Fustenus nodded.
"Hire lots of other conveyances for the servants and the baggage. We're going to stay for some time." Milo flourished a sealed note. "Have this sent round to Quintus Fufius Calenus at once. Since I have to share a carriage with Fausta, I may as well have some decent company on the road. Calenus will do."
Fustenus nodded.
"The full bodyguard, with so many valuables in the wagons." Milo smiled sourly. "No doubt Fausta will want all her jewels, not to mention every citrus-wood table she fancies. A hundred and fifty men, Fustenus, all cuirassed, helmeted and heavily armed."
Fustenus nodded.
"And send Birria and Eudamas to me immediately."
Fustenus nodded and left the room.
It was already well into the afternoon, but Milo kept sending servants flying hither and thither until darkness fell, at which time he could lie back, satisfied, to eat heartily of a much-delayed dinner. All was in place. Quintus Fufius Calenus had indicated extreme delight at accompanying his friend Milo to Lanuvium; Marcus Fustenus had organized horses for the bodyguard of one hundred and fifty men, wagons and carts and rickety carriages for the baggage and servants, and a most comfortably commodious carpentum for the owners of this impressive entourage.
At dawn Calenus arrived at the house; Milo and Fausta set off with him on foot to a point just outside the Capena Gate, where the party was already assembled and the carpentum waited.
"Very nice!" purred Fausta, disposing herself on the well-padded seat with her back to the mules; she knew better than to usurp the seat which allowed its occupants to travel forward. On this Milo and Calenus ensconced themselves, pleased to discover that a small table had been erected between them whereon they could play at dice, or eat and drink. The fourth place, that beside Fausta, was occupied by two servants squeezed together: one female to attend Fausta, one male to wait on Milo and Calenus.
Like all carriages, the carpentum had no devices to absorb some of the shock of the road, but the Via Appia between Capua and Rome was very well kept, its surface smooth because a new layer of hard-tamped cement dust was laid over its stones and watered at the beginning of each summer. The inconvenience of travel was therefore more vibration than jolt or jar. Naturally the servants in the lesser vehicles were not so well off, but everyone was happy at the thought of going somewhere. About three hundred people started off down the common road which bifurcated into the Via Appia and the Via Latina half a mile beyond the Capena Gate. Fausta had brought along her maids, hairdressers, bathwomen, cosmeticians and laundresses as well as some musicians and a dozen boy dancers; Calenus had contributed his valet, librarian and a dozen other servants; and Milo had his steward, his wine steward, his valet, a dozen menservants, several cooks and three bakers. All of the more exalted slaves had their own slaves to attend them as well. The mood was merry, the pace a reasonable five miles per hour, which would get them to Lanuvium in a little
over seven hours.
The Via Appia was one of Rome's oldest roads. It belonged to the Claudii Pulchri, Clodius's own family, for it had been built by his ancestor Appius Claudius the Blind, and its care and upkeep between Rome and Capua was still in the purlieus of the family. As it was the Claudian road, it was also where the patrician Claudii placed their tombs. Generations of dead Claudians lined the road on either side, though of course the tombs of other clans were also present. Not that the outlook was a serried array of tubby round monuments; sometimes a whole mile would go by between them.
Publius Clodius had been able to ascertain that the dying Cyrus had been mistaken: his calculations were perfect, there was no danger whatsoever that the daring structure the old Greek had designed would tumble to the bottom of the precipice it straddled. Oh, what a site for a villa! A view which would make Cicero choke on his own envious buckets of drool, pay the cunnus back for daring to erect his new house to a height which had blocked Clodius's view of the Forum Romanum. As Cicero was a compulsive collector of country villas, it wouldn't be long before he was sneaking down past Bovillae to see what Clodius was doing. And when he did see what Clodius was doing, he'd be greener than the Latin Plain stretched out before him.
Actually the checking of Cyrus's measurements had been done so quickly that Clodius might have returned to Rome that same night. But there was no moon, which made riding hazardous; best to go on to his existing villa near Lanuvium, snatch a few hours' sleep, and start back to Rome shortly after dawn. He had brought no baggage and no servants but there was a skeleton staff at the existing villa, capable of producing a meal for himself, Schola, Pomponius and Gaius Clodius the freedman-the thirty slaves who formed his escort ate what they had brought with them in their saddlebags.
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