* * * From that time onward Gaius Marius was never in danger, though long and wearisome were his travels. In Aenaria nineteen of the fugitives were reunited, and waited then in vain for Publius Sulpicius. After eight days they decided sorrowfully that he would never come, and sailed without him. From Aenaria they braved the open waters of the Tuscan Sea and saw no land until they came to the northwestern cape of Sicily, where they put in at the fishing port of Erycina. There in Sicily Marius had hoped to remain, not wanting to venture any further from Italy than he needed; though his physical health was remarkably good considering all that had befallen him, even he himself was aware that all was not well inside his mind. He forgot things, and sometimes every word said to him sounded like the bar-bars of Scythians or Sarmatians; he smelled unidentifiable yet repellent odors, and endured fishing-nets coming down across his eyes to mar his vision, or would grow unbearably hot, or wonder where he was; his temper frayed, he imagined slights and insults. "Whatever it is inside of us that makes us think, be it in our chests as some say, or in our heads as Hippocrates says and I believe it must be inside our heads because I think with my eyes and ears and nose, so why should they be as far away from the source of thought as they are from heart or liver?" he rambled one day to his son while they waited in Erycina to hear from the governor. His voice trailed away, he knitted his huge brows in a fierce frown, pulled at them constantly. "Let me start again.. .. Something is chewing my mind away a little bit at a time, Young Marius. I know whole books still, and when I force myself to it, I can think straight I can conduct meetings, I can do anything I ever could in the past. But not always. And it's changing in ways I don't understand. At times I'm not even conscious of the changes. .. . You must allow me these vaguenesses and crotchets. I have to conserve my mental strength because one day soon I will be consul for the seventh time. Martha said I would be, and she was never wrong. Never wrong ... I told you that, didn't I?" Young Marius swallowed, forced the lump in his throat away. "Yes, Father, you did. Many times." "Did I ever tell you she prophesied something else?" The grey eyes came round to rest upon the father's battered and twisted face, very high in its color these days. Young Marius sighed softly, wondering whether Marius's mind was rambling again, or if this was still a lucid period. "No, Father." "Well, she did. She said I wasn't going to be the greatest man Rome would ever produce. Do you know who she said would be the very greatest Roman of them all?" "No, Father. But I'd like to know." Not even a ray of hope stole into Young Marius's heart; he knew it would not be he. The son of a Great Man is all too aware of his own deficiencies. "She said it would be Young Caesar." “Edepol!'' Marius wriggled, giggled, suddenly chillingly eldritch. "Oh, don't worry, my son! He won't be! I refuse to let anyone be greater than I am! That's why I'm going to nail Young Caesar's star to the bottom of the deepest sea." His son got to his feet. “You're tired, Father. I've noticed that these moods and difficulties you have are much worse when you're tired. Come and sleep."
The governor of Sicily was Gaius Marius's client Gaius Norbanus, who was in Messana dealing with an attempted invasion of Sicily by Marcus Lamponius and a force of rebel Lucanians and Bruttians. Sent as quickly as possible down the Via Valeria to Messana, Marius's messenger came back with the governor's answer in thirteen days.
Though I am acutely aware of my cliental obligations to you, Gaius Marius, I am also governor propraetore of a Roman province, and I am honor bound to observe my duty to Rome ahead of my duty to my patron. Your letter arrived after I had received an official directive from the Senate notifying me that I can offer you and the other fugitives no kind of succor. I am actually instructed to hunt you down and kill you if possible. That of course I cannot do; what I can do is to order your ship to leave Sicilian waters. Privately I wish you well, and hope that somewhere you find shelter and safety, though I doubt you will find it in any Roman territory. I should tell you that Publius Sulpicius was apprehended in Laurentum. His head adorns the rostra in Rome. A vile deed. But you will understand my position better when I tell you that the head of Sulpicius was fixed to the rostra by none other than Lucius Cornelius Sulla himself. No, not an order. He did the deed personally.
"Poor Sulpicius!" said Marius, blinking away easy tears. Then he squared his shoulders and said, "Very well, on we go! We'll see how we are received in the African province." But there too they were permitted no entry; the governor Publius Sextilius had also received orders, and could do no more for the fugitives than to advise them to go somewhere else before duty prompted him to hunt them down and kill them. On they went to Rusicade, the port serving Cirta, capital of Numidia. King Hiempsal now ruled Numidia; the son of Gauda, he was a better man by far. When the King got Marius's letter he was at his court in Cirta, not far from Rusicade. Impaled on the horns of the biggest dilemma his tenure of the kingdom had yet given him, he dithered for some time Gaius Marius had put his father on the throne, yet Gaius Marius might also be the man who put the son off it. For Lucius Cornelius Sulla also had some claim to pre-eminence in Numidia. After some days of cogitation, he moved himself and part of his court to Icosium, far west of Roman presence, and bade Gaius Marius and his colleagues sail to join him there. The King allowed them to move ashore, placing several comfortable villas at their disposal. He also entertained them frequently in his own house, large enough to be called a small palace, though not nearly as commodious as his establishment in Cirta. As a consequence of this restricted space, the King left some of his wives and all of his concubines behind, taking with him to Icosium only his queen, Sophonisba, and two minor wives, Salammbo and Anno. An educated individual in the best traditions of Hellenistic monarchs, he kept no sort of oriental state, but rather allowed his guests to mingle freely among all the members of his household sons, daughters, wives. Which unfortunately led to complications. Young Marius was now twenty-one years of age, and finding his feet as a man. Very fair and very handsome, he was also a fine physical specimen; too restless to settle himself to any mental task, he sought release in hunting, something King Hiempsal did not enjoy. However, his junior wife Salammbo did. The African plains teemed with wildlife elephants and lions, ostrich and gazelle, antelope and bear, panther and gnu and Young Marius spent his days out learning how to hunt animals he had never seen before. With Princess Salammbo as his guide and preceptress. Perhaps thinking the public nature of these expeditions and the number of people involved in staffing them were sufficient protection to ensure the virtue of his junior wife, King Hiempsal saw no harm in sending Salammbo out with Young Marius; perhaps too he was grateful to have this overactive creature off his hands for days at a time. Himself closeted with Marius (who had markedly improved in his thinking since coming to Icosium), talking over old times, learning the stories of those campaigns in Numidia and Africa against Jugurtha, Hiempsal took copious notes for the archives of his family, and made bold to dream of an era when one of his sons or grandsons might actually be deemed grand enough to marry a Roman noblewoman. He had no illusions, Hiempsal; call himself royal he might, rule a big rich land he might, but in the eyes of the Roman nobility, he and his were less than the dust. Of course the secret was not kept. One of the King's minions reported to him that the days Salammbo spent with Young Marius were innocent enough, but the nights an entirely different matter. This revelation threw the King into a panic; on the one hand he could not ignore the unchastity of his wife, but on the other hand he could not do what he would normally have done execute the cuckolder. So he salvaged what dignity he could out of the affair by informing Gaius Marius that the situation was too delicate to allow the fugitives to stay any longer, and asking Marius to sail as soon as his ship was properly provisioned. "Young fool!" said Marius as they walked down to the harbor. "Weren't there enough ordinary women available? Did you have to pilfer one of Hiempsal's wives?" Young Marius grinned, tried to look contrite, and failed. "I'm sorry, Father, but she really was delicious. Besides, I didn't seduce her she seduced me." "You could have turned her down, you know." "I co
uld have," said Young Marius impenitently, "but I didn't. She really was delicious." "You're using the correct tense, my son. Was is right. The stupid woman has parted company with her head because of you." Knowing perfectly well that Marius was only annoyed because they were now obliged to move on, that otherwise he would have been pleased his boy could lure a foreign queen into indiscretion, Young Marius continued to grin. Salammbo's fate worried neither of them; she knew the penalty for being caught would be on her own head. "That's too bad," said Young Marius. "She really was '' "Don't say it!" his father interrupted sharply. "If you were smaller or I could balance on one leg, I'd put my boot so far up your arse I kicked your teeth out! We were comfortable." "Kick me if you like," said Young Marius, bending over and presenting his rear to his father jokingly, legs wide, head between his knees. Why should he fear to do it? His crime was the sort a father could forgive his son with pleasure; and besides, in all his life Young Marius had never felt his father's hand, let alone his foot. Whereupon Marius gestured to the faithful Burgundus, who slid his arm around Marius's waist and took his weight. Up came the right leg; Marius planted his heavy boot hard and accurately right inside the sensitive crevice between the son's buttocks. That Young Marius did not pass out was purely due to pride; the pain was truly frightful. For some days he remained in agony, talking very hard to persuade himself that his father's action had not been deliberate malice, that he had misgauged the intensity of his father's feelings about the incident with Salammbo.
From Icosium they sailed east along the north African coast and made no inhabited landfalls between Icosium and Gaius Marius's new destination the island of Cercina, in the African Lesser Syrtis. Here at last they did find safe harbor, for here were some thousands of Marius's veteran legionaries settled to a life far removed from war. A little bored with farming wheat on hundred-iugera allotments, the grizzled veterans welcomed their old commander with open arms, made much of him and his son, and vowed that it would take every army Sulla's Rome could marshal to prize loose their hold on Gaius Marius and freedom. More worried about his father since that kick, Young Marius watched him closely; consumed with grief, he now saw many tiny evidences of a crumbling mentality, and marveled at the way his father was forgiven much because of who he was, or would suddenly summon up an enormous effort of will and seem perfectly normal. To those who didn't see him often or intimately, there seemed nothing worse wrong with him than an occasional lapse of memory, or a look of puzzlement, or a tendency to wander off the subject if it failed to hold his interest. But could he hold a seventh consulship? Young Marius doubted it.
2. The Grass Crown Page 87