Why then did Servilia bother to listen outside the study on that freezing day late in November of the year Sulla landed in Italy? Certainly not because her husband's political activities interested her for his sake. She listened because he was the father of her beloved son, and she had made a vow that she would safeguard her son's inheritances, reputation, future welfare. It meant she had to keep herself informed about everything. Nothing must escape her! Especially her husband's political activities. Servilia didn't care for Carbo, though she acknowledged that he was no lightweight. But she had correctly assessed him as one who would look after his own interests ahead of Rome's; and she wasn't sure that Brutus was clearheaded enough to see Carbo's deficiencies. The presence of Sulla in Italy worried her deeply, for she was possessed of a genuinely political mind, and could see the pattern of future events more acutely than most men who had spent half a lifetime in the Senate. Of one thing she was sure; that Carbo didn't have sufficient strength in him to hold Rome together in the teeth of a man like Sulla. She took her eye away, presented her ear to the lattice instead, and sank to her knees on the painfully cold terrazzo floor. It was beginning to snow again a boon! The flakes formed a veil between her muffled body and the hive of domestic activity at the far end of the peristyle garden, where the kitchens were, and servants pattered back and forth. Not that fear of detection concerned her; Brutus's household would never have dared question her right to be anywhere she liked in any kind of posture. It was more that she liked to appear to Brutus's household in the light of a superior being, and superior beings did not kneel outside a husband's window to eavesdrop. Suddenly she tensed, pressed her ear closer. Carbo and her husband were talking again! "There are some good men among those eligible to run for praetor," Brutus was saying. "Carrinas and Damasippus are as capable as they are popular." "Huh!" from Carbo. "Like me, they let a hairless youth beat them in battle but unlike me, they at least had been warned that Pompeius is as ruthless as his father, and ten times as crafty. If Pompeius stood for praetor, he'd win more votes than Carrinas and Damasippus put together." "Pompeius's veterans carried the day," said Brutus in a reasonable tone. "Maybe. But if so, then Pompeius let them do their job without interference." Impatient, it seemed, to leap into the future, Carbo now changed the subject. Praetors are not what concern me, Brutus. I'm worried about the consulship thanks to your predictions of gloom! If necessary, I'll stand for consul myself. But whom can I take for a colleague? Who in this wretched city is capable of shoring me up rather than dragging me down? There will be war in the spring, nothing is surer. Sulla's not been well, but my intelligence sources say he'll face the next campaigning season in high fettle." "Illness was not his only reason for hanging back this past year," said Brutus. "We've heard rumors that he's stayed inert to give Rome the chance to capitulate without a war." "Then he stayed inert in vain!" said Carbo savagely. "Oh, enough of these speculations! Whom can I take as my fellow consul?" "Have you no ideas?" asked Brutus. "Not a one. I need someone capable of firing people's spirits someone who will inspire the young men to enlist, and the old men to wish they could enlist. A man like Sertorius. But you say flatly that he won't consent." "What about Marcus Marius Gratidianus, then?" "He's a Marius by adoption, and that's not good enough. I wanted Sertorius because he's a Marius by blood." There was a pause, but not of a helpless kind; hearing an indrawn breath from her husband, the listener outside the window stiffened to absolute stillness, determined not to miss a single word of what was coming. "If it's a Marius you want," said Brutus slowly, "why not Young Marius?" Another pause ensued, of the thunderstruck variety. Then Carbo said, "That's not possible! Edepol, Brutus, he's not much more than twenty years old!" "Twenty six, actually." "He's four years too young for the Senate!" "There's no constitutionally official age, in spite of the lex Villia annalis. Custom rules. So I suggest you have Perperna appoint him to the Senate at once." "He's not his father's bootlace!" cried Carbo. "Does that matter? Does it, Gnaeus Papirius? Really? I admit that in Sertorius you would have found your ideal member of the Marii no one in Rome commands soldiers better, or is more respected by them. But he won't consent. So who else is there except Young Marius?" "They'd certainly flock to enlist," said Carbo softly. "And fight for him like the Spartans for Leonidas." Do you think he could do it?'' "I think he'd like to try." "You mean he's already expressed a wish to be consul?" Brutus laughed, something he was not prone to do. "No, Carbo, of course not! Though he's a conceited sort of fellow, he's not actually very ambitious. I simply mean that I think if you went to him and offered him the chance, he'd jump at it. Nothing so far in his life has presented him with any opportunity to emulate his father. And in one respect at least, this will give him the opportunity to surpass his father. Gaius Marius came late into office. Young Marius will be consul at a younger age even than Scipio Africanus. No matter how he fares, there's fame in that for him." If he fares half as well as Scipio Africanus, Rome stands in no danger from Sulla." "Don't hope for a Scipio Africanus in Young Marius," warned Brutus. "The only way he could prevent Cato the Consul from losing a battle was to stab him in the back." Carbo laughed, something he did often. "Well, that was a bit of luck for Cinna at least! Old Marius paid him a fortune not to press a charge of murder." "Yes," said Brutus, sounding very serious, "but that episode should point out to you some of the difficulties you'll face with Young Marius as your colleague in the consulship." "Don't turn my back?" "Don't turn your best troops over to him. Let him prove he can general troops before you do that." There came the noise of chair legs scraping; Servilia got to her feet and fled to the warmth of her workroom, where the young girl who did the nursery laundry was enjoying a rare chance to cuddle baby Brutus. The flare of scorching jealousy leaped inside Servilia before she could control it; her hand flashed out, cracked so hard against the girl's cheek that she fell from her perch on the crib, and in so doing, dropped the baby. Who didn't reach the floor because his mother swooped to catch him. Then, clasping him fiercely to her breast, Servilia literally kicked the girl from the room. "Tomorrow you'll be sold!" she shrieked down the length of the colonnade enclosing the peristyle garden. Her voice changed, she merely shouted now: "Ditus! Ditus!" The steward, whose flowery name was Epaphroditus but was usually addressed as Ditus, came at the run. "Yes, domina? "That girl the Gaul you gave me to wash Baby's things flog her and sell her as a bad slave." The steward gaped. "But domina, she's excellent! Not only does she wash well, she's absolutely devoted to Baby!" Servilia slapped Epaphroditus quite as hard as she had the girl, then demonstrated that she knew how to use a choice obscenity. Now listen to me, you pampered, over fed Greek fellator! When I give you an order you'll obey it without a word, let alone an argument! I don't care whose property you are, so don't go whining to the master, or you'll rue it! Now fetch the girl to your office and wait for me. You like her, so you won't flog her hard enough unless I'm there to see it." The crimson mark of her hand standing out on his face was complete to its fingers, but it didn't provoke the terror in him that her words did. Epaphroditus bolted. Servilia didn't ask for another maid; instead, she herself wrapped baby Brutus warmly in a fine wool shawl, and carried him down to the steward's office. The girl was tied down and a weeping Epaphroditus forced, under the basilisk glare of his mistress, to flog her until her back turned to bright red jelly and gobbets of her flesh flew everywhere. Incessant screams erupted from the room into the snow muffled air, but the snow could not muffle those screams. Nor did the master appear to demand what was going on, for Brutus had gone with Carbo to see Young Marius, as Servilia had guessed. Finally Servilia nodded. The steward's arm fell. She walked up to inspect his handiwork closely, and looked satisfied. "Yes, good! She'll never grow skin back on that mess again. No point in offering her for sale, she wouldn't fetch a single sestertius. Crucify her. Out there in the peristyle. She'll serve as a warning to the rest of you. And don't break her legs! Let her die slowly." Back to her workroom Servilia marched, there to unwrap her son and change his linen diaper. Af
ter which she sat him on her lap and held him out at arm's length to adore him, leaning forward occasionally to kiss him tenderly and talk to him in a soft, slightly growling voice. They made a sufficiently pretty picture, the small dark child upon his small dark mother's knee. She was a beautiful woman, Servilia, endowed with a firmly voluptuous figure and one of those little pointed faces which have an air of many secrets in a stilly folded mouth and thickly lidded, hooded eyes. The child however, owned only his infant's beauty, for in truth he was plain and rather torpid what people called a "good baby" in that he cried hardly at all and made no fusses. And so when he came home from the house of Young Marius did Brutus find them, and listened without comment to the coldly narrated story of the negligent laundress and her punishment. As he would never have dared to interfere with Servilia's smoothly efficient domestic arrangements (his house had never run as well before he married her, so much was sure), he made no alterations to his wife's sentence, and when his steward came to him later at his summons, did not remark upon the snow smothered figure tied lolling to a cross in the garden.
"Caesar! Where are you, Caesar?" He came strolling barefooted out of what used to be his father's study, a pen in one hand and a roll of paper in the other, wearing no more than a thin tunic. Frowning, because his mother's voice had interrupted his train of thought. But she, swaddled in layer upon layer of exquisitely fine home woven woolen fabric, was more concerned with the welfare of his body than the output of his mind, and said testily, "Oh, why will you ignore the cold? You do, you know! And no slippers either! Caesar, your horoscope suggests that you will suffer a terrible illness at about this time in your life, and you're aware it does. Why do you tempt the lady Fortune to touch the line of that evil aspect and bring it into being? Horoscopes are commissioned at birth to ensure that potential risks can be prevented from becoming real. Be good!" Her perturbation was absolutely genuine and he knew it so he gave her the smile for which he was already famous, a kind of unspoken apology that did not threaten his pride. "What is it?" he asked, resigned the moment he set eyes on her to the fact that his work would have to wait; she was clad for going out. "We've been sent for to your Aunt Julia's." At this time of day? In this weather?'' "I'm glad you've noticed the weather! Not that it prompts you to dress sensibly," said Aurelia. "I do have a brazier, Mater. In fact, I have two." "Then go into the warmth and change," she said. "It is freezing in here, with the wind whistling down the light well." Before he turned to go, she added, "Best find Lucius Decumius. We're all asked." That meant both his sisters, which surprised him it must be a very important family conference! Almost he opened his mouth to assure his mother that he didn't need Lucius Decumius, that a hundred women would be safe under his protection; then he shut it. He wouldn't win, so why try? Aurelia always knew how she wanted things done. When he emerged from his rooms he was wearing the regalia of the flamen Dialis, though in weather like this he wore three tunics beneath it, woolen breeches to below his knees, and thick socks inside a pair of baggy boots without straps or laces. His priest's laena took the place of another man's toga; this clumsy double layered garment was cut on the full circle, contained a hole in its middle through which he poked his head, and was richly colored in broad stripes of alternating scarlet and purple. It reached to his knees and completely concealed his arms and hands, which meant, he thought ruefully (trying to find some virtue in his detested laena), that he did not need to wear mittens in this icy storm. Atop his head sat the apex, a close fitting ivory helmet surmounted by a spike upon which was impaled a thick disc of wool. Since officially becoming a man, Caesar had adhered to the taboos which hedged the flamen Dialis around; he had abandoned military practice on the Campus Martius, he allowed no iron to touch his person, he wore no knots or buckles, said hello to no dog, had his footwear made from the leather of an animal killed accidentally, and ate only those things his role as flamen Dialis permitted. That his chin displayed no beard was because he shaved with a bronze razor; that he had managed to wear boots when his priestly clogs were impractical was only because he had personally designed a style of boot to fit well without using the normal devices which made it snug around ankle and calf. Not even his mother knew how deeply he loathed his lifelong sentence as Priest of Jupiter. When he had become a man at half past fifteen, he had assumed the senseless shibboleths of his flaminate without a murmur or a look, and Aurelia had heaved a sigh of relief. The early rebellion had not lasted. What she couldn't know was his true reason for obeying: he was a Roman to his core, which meant he was committed absolutely to the customs of his country, and he was inordinately superstitious. He had to obey! If he did not, he would never obtain the favor of Fortune. She would not smile upon him or his endeavors, he would have no luck. For despite this hideous lifelong sentence, he still believed Fortune would find a way out for him if he did his best to serve Jupiter Optimus Maximus as his special priest. Thus obedience did not mean reconciliation, as Aurelia thought it did. Obedience only meant that with every passing day he hated being flamen Dialis more. And hated it most because under the law there could be no escape. Old Gaius Marius had succeeded in shackling him forever. Unless Fortune rescued him. Caesar was seventeen, would not be eighteen until another seven months had elapsed; but he looked older, and he carried himself like a consular who had also been censor. The height and the broad shoulders helped, of course, allied as they were to a gracefully muscular frame. His father had been dead for two and a half years, which meant he had come very early into his title of paterfamilias, and now wore it naturally. The extreme good looks of his boyhood had not faded, though they had become more manly his nose, thank all the gods, had lengthened to a form properly, bumpily Roman, and saved him from a prettiness which would have been a great burden to one who so ardently desired to be everything a man should be soldier, statesman, lover of women without suspicion that he was also a lover of men. His family was assembled in the reception room, garbed for a long, cold walk. Except, that is, for his wife, Cinnilla. At eleven years of age she was not considered adult enough to attend these rare gatherings of the clan. However, she was present, the only small and dark member of the house; when Caesar entered, her pansy black eyes flew to his face just as they always did. He adored her, moved to her now and swept her off her feet to hold her in his arms, kissing her soft pink cheek with his eyes closed the better to inhale the exquisite perfume of a child kept clean and balmed by his mother. "Doomed to stay home?" he asked, kissing her cheek again. "One day I'll be big enough," she said, showing dimples in her enchanting smile. "Indeed you will! And then you'll be more important than Mater, because you'll be the mistress of the house." He put the child down, smoothed his hand over her mass of waving black hair, and winked at Aurelia. "I won't be the mistress of this house," she said solemnly. "I'll be the flaminica Dialis, and mistress of a State house." "True," he said lightly. "How could I have forgotten?" Out into the driving snow he went, up past the shops which nestled in the outer wall of Aurelia's apartment house, to the rounded apex of that triangular building. Here was located what appeared to be a tavern, yet was not; it was the headquarters of the College of Crossroads Brethren who supervised the well being and spiritual life of the crossroads outside its double doors, especially the towerlike shrine to the Lares and the big fountain, which now flowed sluggishly amid a tumble of ethereally blue icicles, so cold was this winter. Lucius Decumius was in residence at his usual table in the back left hand corner of the huge, clean room. Grizzled these days but face as unlined as ever, he had recently admitted his two sons to membership, and was training them in all the multifarious activities of his college. So they sat one on either side of him like the two lions which always flanked a statue of Magna Mater grave, tawny, thick maned, yellow eyed, claws furled. Not that Lucius Decumius in any way resembled Magna Mater! He was little, skinny, and anonymous looking; his sons took after their mother, who was a large Celtic lady from the Ager Gallicus. To no one unacquainted with him did he seem what he actually was brave, tortuou
sly subtle, amoral, enormously intelligent, loyal. The three Decumii brightened when Caesar walked through the door, but only Lucius Decumius rose. Threading his way between the tables and benches, he reached Caesar, stood on tiptoe and kissed the young man on the lips more fondly than he did either of his sons. It was the kiss of a father, though it was given to someone whose only connection with him lay tangled amid the cords of his not inconsiderable heart. "My boy!" he crowed, and took Caesar's hand. "Hello, dad," Caesar answered with a smile, lifted Lucius Decumius's fingers and pressed them against his cold cheek. "Been sweeping out some dead man's house?" asked Lucius Decumius, in reference to Caesar's priestly regalia. "Nasty weather for dying! Have a cup of wine to warm you, eh?" Caesar grimaced. He had never managed to cultivate a real liking for wine, try though Lucius Decumius and his brethren had to instill it in him. "No time, dad. I'm here to borrow a couple of the brethren. I have to take my mother and sisters to the house of Gaius Marius, and she doesn't trust me to do it on my own, of course." "Wise woman, your mother," said Lucius Decumius with a look of wicked glee. He beckoned to his sons, who rose at once and came to join him. "Togs on, lads! We're going to take the ladies to the house of Gaius Marius." No resentment of their father's obvious preference for Gaius Julius Caesar colored the emotions of Lucius Decumius Junior or young Marcus Decumius; they simply nodded, clapped Caesar on the back in great affection, and went off to find their warmest clothing. "Don't come, dad," said Caesar. "Stay here out of the cold." But that didn't suit Lucius Decumius, who allowed his sons to dress him much as a doting mother might have dressed her toddling offspring. "Where's that oaf Burgundus?" he asked as they spilled out into the swirling snow. Caesar chuckled. "No use to anyone at the moment! Mater sent him down to Bovillae with Cardixa. She might have started breeding late, but she's produced one baby giant every year since she first set eyes on Burgundus. This will be number four, as you well know." "You'll never be short of bodyguards when you're consul." Caesar shivered, but not from the cold. "I'll never be consul," he said harshly, then lifted his shoulders and tried to be pleasant. "My mother says it's like feeding a tribe of Titans. Ye gods, they can eat!" "Good people, but." "Yes, good people," said Caesar. By this time they had reached the outer door of Aurelia's apartment, and collected the womenfolk. Other aristocratic ladies might have elected to ride in litters, especially in such weather, but not the Julian ladies. They walked, their progress down the Fauces Suburae somewhat eased by the Decumius sons, who shuffled ahead to blaze a path through the accumulating snow. The Forum Romanum was utterly deserted, and looked odd bled of its vividly colored columns and walls and roofs and statues; everything was marble white, seemed sunk in a deep and dreamless sleep. And the imposing statue of Gaius Marius near the rostra had a bank of snow perched on either bushy eyebrow, masking the normally fierce glare of his dark eyes. Up the Hill of the Bankers they toiled, through the vast portals of the Fontinalis Gate, and so to the door of Gaius Marius's house. As its peristyle garden lay at the back of the mansion, they entered straight into the foyer, and there peeled off outer garments (save for Caesar, doomed to wear his regalia). Lucius Decumius and his sons were taken away by the steward, Strophantes, to sample some excellent food and wine, while Caesar and the women entered the atrium. Had the weather been less unnaturally cold, they might have remained there, since it was well past dinnertime, but the open rectangle of the compluvium in the roof was acting like a vortex, and the pool below it was a twinkling crust of rapidly melting snowflakes. Young Marius appeared then to welcome them and usher them through into the dining room, which would be warmer, he said. He looked, thought Caesar warily, almost afire with happiness, and the emotion suited him. As tall as Caesar (who was his first cousin), he was more heavily built, fair of hair and grey of eye, handsome, impressive. Physically far more attractive than his father, he yet lacked that vital something which had made of Gaius Marius one of the Roman immortals. Many generations would go by, Caesar reflected, before every schoolchild ceased to learn about the exploits of Gaius Marius. Such would not be the lot of his son, Young Marius. This was a house Caesar loathed visiting; too much had happened to him here. While other boys of his age had been heedlessly frittering away their time playing on the Campus Martius, he had been required to report here every day to act as nurse/companion to the aged and vindictive Gaius Marius. And though he had swept strenuously with his sacred broom after Marius died here, that malign presence still lingered. Or so Caesar thought. Once he had admired and loved Gaius Marius. But then Gaius Marius had appointed him the special priest of Jupiter, and in that one stroke had rendered it impossible for Caesar ever to rival him. No iron, no weapons, no sight of death no military career for the flamen Dialis! An automatic membership in the Senate without the right to stand for election as a magistrate no political career for the flamen Dialis! It was Caesar's fate to be honored without earning that honor, revered without earning that reverence. The flamen Dialis was a creature belonging to the State, housed and paid and fed by the State, a prisoner of the mos maiorum, the established practices of custom and tradition. But of course Caesar's revulsion could never endure past the moment in which he set eyes upon his Aunt Julia. His father's sister, the widow of Gaius Marius. And, differently from his mother, the person in the world he loved the most. Indeed, he loved her more than he did his mother, if love could be classified as a simple rush of sheer emotion. His mother was permanently grafted to his intellect because she was adversary, adherent, critic, companion, equal. Whereas Aunt Julia enfolded him in her arms and kissed him on the lips, beamed at him with her soft grey eyes innocent of the faintest condemnation. Life for him without either one was unthinkable. Julia and Aurelia elected to sit side by side on the same couch, ill at ease because they were women, and women did not recline on couches. Forbidden by custom to lie comfortably, they perched on the edge with their feet dangling clear of the floor and their backs unsupported. "Can't you give the women chairs?" asked Caesar of Young Marius as he shoved bolsters behind his mother and his aunt. "Thank you, nephew, we'll manage now you've propped us up," said Julia, always the peacemaker. "I don't think the house has enough chairs for all of us! This is a conference of women." An inalienable truth, acknowledged Caesar ruefully. The male element of this family was reduced to two men: Young Marius and Caesar. Both only sons of dead fathers. Of women, there were more. Had Rome been present to see Julia and Aurelia side by side, Rome would have enjoyed the spectacle of two of her most beautiful women encompassed in one glance. Though both were tall and slim, Julia owned the innate grace of the Caesars, whereas Aurelia moved with brisk, no nonsense economy. One, Julia, had softly waving blonde hair and widely opened grey eyes, and might have posed for the statue of Cloelia in the upper Forum Romanum. The other, Aurelia, had ice brown hair and a quality of beauty which had, in her youth, caused her to be likened to Helen of Troy. Dark brows and lashes, a pair of deeply set eyes many of the men who had tried to marry her had insisted were purple, and the profile of a Greek goddess. Julia was now forty five years old to Aurelia's forty. Both had been widowed in distressing though very different circumstances. Gaius Marius had died of his third and most massive stroke, but only after launching and pursuing an orgy of murder no one in Rome would ever forget. All his enemies had died and some of his friends and the rostra had bristled with the heads as thickly as pins in a cushion. With this sorrow, Julia lived. Aurelia's husband, loyal to Cinna after the death of Marius as was only fitting in one whose son was married to Cinna's younger daughter had gone to Etruria to recruit troops. One summer morning in Pisae he had bent over to lace up his boot, and died. A ruptured blood vessel in his brain was the conclusion reached at postmortem; he was burned on a pyre without a single member of his family present, and his ashes were then sent home to his wife. Who did not even know her husband was dead when Cinna's messenger came to present her with the funerary urn. How she felt, what she thought, no one knew. Even her son, made head of his family a month short of his fifteenth birthday. N
o tear had she shed that anyone had seen, and the look on her face had not changed. For she was Aurelia, fastened up inside herself, apparently more attached to her work as landlady of a busy insula than to any human being save for her son. Young Marius had no sisters, but Caesar had two older than himself. Both of them looked like their Aunt Julia; there were strong echoes of Aurelia in Caesar's face, but not in either of his sisters'. Julia Major, called Lia, was now twenty one years old, and carried the faintest suggestion of something careworn in her expression. Not without reason. Her first husband, a penniless patrician by name of Lucius Pinarius, had been the love of her heart, so she had been allowed albeit reluctantly to marry him. A son had arrived less than a year later, and shortly after that happy event (which did not turn out to have the hoped for sobering effect on Lucius Pinarius's character or behavior), Lucius Pinarius died in mysterious circumstances. Murder by a confederate was thought likely, but no proof could be found. So Lia, aged nineteen, found herself a widow in such an impoverished state that she had been obliged to return to live under her mother's roof. But between her marriage and her widowhood the identity of the paterfamilias had changed, and she now discovered that her young brother was not nearly as softhearted or malleable as her father had been. She must marry again, said Caesar but a man of his choosing, for, "It is clear to me," he said to her dispassionately, "that, left to your own devices, you will pick another idiot." Quite how or where Caesar had found Quintus Pedius, no one knew (though some suspected a collaboration with Lucius Decumius, who might be a seedy little man of the Fourth Class, but who had remarkable contacts), but home he came with Quintus Pedius, and betrothed his widowed oldest sister to this stolid, upright Campanian knight of good but not noble family. He was not handsome. He was not dashing. At forty, he was not even very young. But he was colossally rich and almost pathetically grateful for the chance to marry a lovely and youthful woman of the most exalted patrician nobility. Lia had swallowed, looked at her fifteen year old brother, and graciously accepted; even at that age, Caesar could put something into his face and eyes that killed argument before it was born. Luckily the marriage had turned out well. Lucius Pinarius might have been handsome and dashing and young, but as a husband he had been disappointing. Now Lia discovered that there were many compensations in being the darling of a rich man twice her age, and as time went on she grew very fond of her uninspiring second husband. She bore him a son, and was so settled into her delightfully luxurious life on her husband's estates outside Teanum Sidicinum that when Scipio Asiagenus and then Sulla had established camps in the neighborhood, she flatly refused to go home to her mother, who would, she knew, regulate her exercise, her diet, her sons and her life to suit her own austere ideas. Of course Aurelia had arrived in person (after, it seemed, an unexpected meeting with Sulla a meeting about which she had said little beyond mentioning it), and Lia had been bundled to Rome. Without her sons, alas; Quintus Pedius had preferred to keep them with him in Teanum. Julia Minor, called Ju Ju, had been married in the early part of this year, not long after her eighteenth birthday. No chance that she would be allowed to pick someone unsuitable! Caesar did the picking, though she had railed against his highhanded usurpation of a task she felt herself fully able to perform. Of course he won. Home he came with another colossally rich suitor, this time of an old senatorial family, and himself a backbencher senator content to stay on the back benches. He hailed from Aricia, just down the Via Appia from the Caesar lands at Bovillae, and that fact made him Latin, which was one cut above mere Campanian. After setting eyes on Marcus Atius Balbus, Ju Ju had married him without a murmur; compared to Quintus Pedius he was quite reasonable, being a mere thirty seven, and actually handsome for such an advanced age. Because Marcus Atius Balbus was a senator, he owned a domus in Rome as well as enormous estates at Aricia, so Ju Ju could congratulate herself on yet one more advantage over her elder sister; she at least lived more or less permanently in Rome! On that late afternoon when all the family was summoned to the house of Gaius Marius, she was beginning to be heavy with child. Not that her pregnancy had prevented her mother from making her walk! "It isn't good for pregnant women to coddle themselves," said Aurelia. "That's why so many of them die in childbirth." "I thought you said they died because they ate nothing but fava beans," Ju Ju had countered, wistfully eyeing the litter in which she had made the journey from her husband's house on the Carinae to her mother's apartment building in the Subura. "Those too. Pythagorean physicians are a menace." One more woman was present, though by blood she was not related to any of the others or at least, not closely related. Her name was Mucia Tertia, and she was Young Marius's wife. The only daughter of Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, she had been called Mucia Tertia to distinguish her from her two famous cousins, the daughters of Scaevola the Augur. Though she wasn't precisely beautiful, Mucia Tertia had disturbed many a man's sleep. A muddy green in color, her eyes were abnormally far apart and thickly fringed by black lashes which were longer at the outer corners of her eyes, thereby accentuating the distance between them; though she never said so, she deliberately trimmed her lashes shorter at the inner corners of her eyes with a tiny pair of ivory scissors from Old Egypt. Mucia Tertia was well aware of the nature of her unusual attractions. Her long, straight nose somehow managed not to be a disadvantage, even if the purists did think there ought to be some sort of bump or break in it. Again, her mouth was far from the Roman ideal of beauty, being very wide; when she smiled, she showed what seemed like a hundred perfect teeth. But her lips were full and sensuous, and she had a thick, creamy skin which went well with her dark red hair. Caesar for one found her alluring, and at half past seventeen was already highly experienced in sexual matters. Every female in the Subura had indicated willingness to help such a lovely young man find his amatory feet, and few were deterred when they discovered Caesar insisted they be bathed and clean; the word had gone out very quickly that young Caesar was equipped with a couple of mighty weapons, and knew how best to use them. Most of the reason Mucia Tertia interested Caesar lay in a certain quality of enigma she owned; try as he might, she was one person he couldn't see to the bottom of. She smiled readily to display those hundred perfect teeth, yet the smile never originated in her extraordinary eyes, and she gave off no clues of gesture or expression as to what she really thought. She had been married for four years of apparent indifference, as much on Young Marius's side as on hers. Their conversation together was pleasantly chatty but quite formal; they never exchanged those glances of secret understanding most married couples did; no move did either make to touch the other, even when no one was looking; and they had no children. If the union was genuinely devoid of feeling, Young Marius for one certainly did not suffer; his philanderings were common knowledge. But what about Mucia Tertia, of whom no whisper had ever circulated concerning indiscretion, let alone infidelity? Was Mucia Tertia happy? Did she love Young Marius? Or did she hate him? Impossible to tell, and yet and yet Caesar's instincts said she was desperately unhappy. The group had settled down, and every eye was now fixed on Young Marius, who perversely had elected to sit upon a chair. Not to be outdone, Caesar too drew up a chair, but far removed from where Young Marius sat in the hollow of the U formed by the three dining couches; he sat behind his mother's shoulder, on the outside of the U, and so could not see the faces of his most beloved women. To him, it seemed more important by far to look at Young Marius, Mucia Tertia, and the steward Strophantes, who had been asked to attend and who stood near the doorway, having quietly refused Young Marius's invitation to seat himself. Wetting his lips an unusual sign of nervousness Young Marius began to speak. "Earlier this afternoon, I had a visit from Gnaeus Papirius Carbo and Marcus Junius Brutus." "That's an odd combination," said Caesar, who didn't want his cousin to flow on without interruption; he wanted Young Marius a little flustered. The look Young Marius flashed him was angry, but not angry enough to fluster his thinking. A start only. Then Caesar found his ploy foiled. Said Young Marius, They came to ask me if I would st
and for the consulship in conjunction with Gnaeus Carbo. I said I would." The stir was general. Caesar saw amazement on the faces of his sisters, a sudden spasm in his aunt's spine, a peculiar but unfathomable look in Mucia Tertia's remarkable eyes. "My son, you're not even in the Senate," said Julia. "I will be tomorrow, when Perperna puts me on the rolls." "You haven't been quaestor, let alone praetor." "The Senate is willing to waive the usual requirements." "You don't have the experience or the knowledge!" Julia persisted, her voice despairing. "My father was consul seven times. I grew up surrounded by consulars. Besides, you can't call Carbo inexperienced." Asked Aurelia, "Why are we here?" Young Marius shifted his earnest and appealing gaze from his mother to his aunt. To talk the matter over between us, of course!" he said, a little blankly. "Rubbish!" said Aurelia bluntly. "Not only have you made up your mind already, but you've also told Carbo you'll run as his colleague. It seems to me that you've dragged us out of our warm house just to listen to news the city gossip 'would have brought to our ears almost as quickly." "That's not so, Aunt Aurelia!" "Of course it's so!" snapped Aurelia. Skin bright red, Young Marius turned back to his mother, a hand extended to her in appeal. "Mama, it's not so! I know I told Carbo I'd stand, but but I always intended to listen to what my family had to say, truly! I can change my mind!" "Hah! You won't change your mind," said Aurelia. Julia's fingers fastened upon Aurelia's wrist. "Be quiet, Aurelia! I want no anger in this room." "You're right, Aunt Julia anger is the last emotion we want," said Caesar, inserting himself between his mother and his aunt. From this new vantage spot he stared at his first cousin intently. "Why did you say yes to Carbo?" he asked. A question which didn't fool Young Marius for a moment. "Oh, give me credit for more intelligence than that, Caesar!" he said scornfully. "I said yes for the same reason you would have, if you didn't wear a laena and an apex." "I can see why you'd think I would have said yes, but in actual fact I never would have. In suo anno is the best way." "It's illegal," said Mucia Tertia unexpectedly. "No," said Caesar before Young Marius could answer. "It's against the established custom and even against the lex Villia annalis, but it's not exactly illegal. It could only become prosecutably illegal if your husband usurped the position against the will of Senate and People. Senate and People can legislate to nullify the lex Villia. And that is what will happen. Senate and People will procure the necessary legislation, which means the only one who will declare it illegal is Sulla." A silence fell. "That is the worst of it," said Julia, voice faltering. "You'll be in the field against Sulla." "I would have been in the field against Sulla anyway, Mama," said Young Marius. But not as the inaugurated representative of Senate and People. To be consul is to accept ultimate responsibility. You will be leading Rome's armies." A tear trickled down Julia's cheek. "You'll be the focus of Sulla's thoughts, and he is the most formidable man! I don't know him as well as your Aunt Aurelia does, Gaius, but I know him quite well enough. I've even liked him, in the days when he used to take care of your father he did, you know. He used to smooth over the little awkwardnesses which always seemed to happen around your father. A more patient and perceptive man than your father. A man of some honor too. But your father and Lucius Cornelius share one very important factor in common when all else fails, from constitution to popular support, they are or should that be were? both capable of going to whatever lengths are necessary to achieve their aims. That's why both of them have marched on Rome in the past. And that is why Lucius Cornelius will march on Rome again if Rome takes this course, elects you consul. The very fact of your election will tell him that Rome intends to fight him to the end, that there can be no peaceful resolution." She sighed, wiped the tear away. "Sulla is why I wish you'd change your mind, dear Gaius. If you had his years and background, you might possibly win. But you do not. You cannot win. And I will lose my one and only child." It was the plea of a reasonable and mature adult; Young Marius was neither, and his face as he listened to this heartfelt speech only set. His lips parted to answer. "Well, Mater," said Caesar, getting in first, "as Aunt Julia says, you know Sulla better than any of the rest of us! How do you feel about it?" Little discomposed Aurelia, and she had no intention of telling them the details of her last discomposure: that awful, tragic encounter with Sulla in his camp. "It is true, I do know Sulla well. I've even seen him within the last six months, as all of you know. But in the old days I was always the last person he saw before he left Rome, and the first person he saw when he came back. Between his goings and his comings, I hardly saw him at all. That is typical of Sulla. At heart he's an actor. He can't live without drama. And he knew how to make an otherwise innocuous situation pregnant with meaning. That's why he chose to see me at the moments he did. It invested my presence in his life with more color, more significance. Instead of a simple visit to a lady with whom he liked to talk of relatively unimportant things, each visit became a farewell or a reunion. He endowed me with portent, I think it would be fair to say that." Caesar smiled at her. "You haven't answered my question, Mater," he said gently. "Nor I have," said that extraordinary woman without alarm or guilt. "I will proceed to do so." She looked at Young Marius sternly. What you must understand is that if you face Sulla as the inaugurated representative of the Senate and People that is, as consul you will endow yourself with portent as far as Sulla is concerned. Your age combined with the identity of your father Sulla will use to heighten the drama of his struggle to achieve dominance in Rome. All of which is scant comfort to your mother, nephew. For her sake, give up this idea! Face Sulla on the field as just another military tribune." "How do you feel?" asked Young Marius of Caesar. "I say do it, cousin. Be consul ahead of your year." "Lia?" She turned troubled eyes toward her Aunt Julia and said, "Please don't do it, cousin!" "Ju Ju?" "I agree with my sister." "Wife?" "You must go with your fortune." "Strophantes?" The old steward sighed. "Domine, do not do it!" With nods that rocked his upper body gently, Young Marius sat back on his chair and flung an arm along its tall back. He pursed his mouth, blew through his nostrils softly. "Well, no surprises, at any rate," he said. "My female relatives and my steward exhort me not to step out of my time and status and imperil my person. Perhaps my aunt is trying to say that I will also imperil my reputation. My wife puts it all on the lap of Fortune am I one of Fortune's favorites? And my cousin says I must go ahead." He got to his feet, a not unimposing presence. "I will not go back on my word to Gnaeus Papirius Carbo and Marcus Junius Brutus. If Marcus Perperna agrees to enroll me in the Senate, and the Senate agrees to procure the necessary legislation, I will declare myself a candidate for the consulship." "You haven't really told us why," said Aurelia. "I would have thought that was obvious. Rome is desperate. Carbo can find no suitable colleague. So where did he turn? To the son of Gaius Marius. Rome loves me! Rome needs me! That is why," said the young man. Only the oldest and loyalest of retainers would have found the courage to say what Strophantes did, speaking not only for the stricken mother, but for the father who was dead: "It is your father Rome loves, domine. Rome turns to you because of your father. Rome doesn't know you, except that you are the son of the man who saved her from the Germans, who won the first victories in the war against the Italians, and who was consul seven times. If you do this thing, it will be because you are your father's son, not because you are yourself." Young Marius loved Strophantes, as the steward well knew; considering its implications, he took the steward's speech very well. His lips tightened, that was all. When Strophantes was done, he merely said, "I know. It is up to me to show Rome that Young Marius is the equal of his dear old dad." Caesar looked at the floor, said nothing. Why, he was asking himself, didn't the crazy old man give the laena and apex of the flamen Dialis to someone else? I could do it. But Young Marius never will.
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