Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  “Why?” asked tata, surprised at his son’s continuing obtuseness. “Females are inferiors, young Lucius Cornelius. They weave their patterns in fabrics, not on the loom of time. They don’t have any importance in the world. They don’t make history. They don’t govern. We look after them because it is our duty. We shield them from worry, from poverty, from responsibility—that’s why, provided they don’t die in childbirth, they all live longer than we men do. In return, we demand obedience and respect from them.”

  “I see,” said Young Sulla, accepting this explanation in the light it was tendered—a simple statement of pure fact.

  “And now I must go. I have something to do,” said Sulla, getting up. “Are you eating?”

  “A little, but it’s hard to keep food down.”

  “I’ll be back later.”

  “Don’t forget, tata. I won’t be asleep.”

  First he had to behave normally, go off with Aelia to dinner at the house of Quintus Pompeius Rufus, very eager to commence friendly relations. Luckily Sulla had not indicated he would bring Cornelia Sulla along to meet the son; she had ceased her screaming, but, said Aelia, looking flustered, she had retired to her bed and announced she wouldn’t eat.

  Nothing else poor Cornelia Sulla might have thought to do in protest could have affected Sulla the way that news did; the eyes he turned on Aelia were like bitter stars, blazing ice.

  “That will stop!” he snapped, and was gone before Aelia could prevent him, down to Cornelia Sulla’s sleeping cubicle.

  He came through the door and hauled the weeping girl out of her narrow bed in the same stride, heedless of her fear, dragging her up from the floor onto her toes with his fingers locked in her hair. Again and again his hand cracked across her face. She didn’t scream, she emitted shrieks so high-pitched they were scarcely audible, more terrified by the look on her father’s face than by his physical abuse.

  Perhaps twelve times he struck her, then threw her away like a stuffed doll, so angry he didn’t care if the violence of his thrust killed her.

  “Don’t do it, girl,” he said then, very softly. “Don’t you try to bluff me with starvation! As far as I’m concerned, it would be good riddance! Your mother almost died because she wouldn’t eat. But let me tell you, you won’t do it to me! Starve yourself to death, or choke on the food I’ll have forced down your throat with a lot less consideration than a farmer gives to his goose! You will marry young Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and you’ll do it with a smile on your face and a song on your lips, or I’ll kill you. Do you hear me? I will kill you, Cornelia.”

  Her face was on fire, her eyes blackened, her lips swollen and split, her nose running blood, but the pain in her heart was far, far worse. In all her life she hadn’t known this kind of rage existed, or feared her father, or worried for her own safety. “I hear you, Father,” she whispered.

  Aelia was waiting outside the door, tears running down her cheeks, but when she went to enter Sulla grabbed her cruelly by one arm, and pulled her away.

  “Please, Lucius Cornelius, please!” Aelia moaned, the wife in her terrified, the mother in her anguished.

  “Leave her alone,” he said.

  “I must go to her! She needs me!”

  “She’ll stay where she is, and no one will go to her.”

  “Then let me stay home, please!” Try though she did to stem her tears, she was weeping harder.

  Sulla’s towering rage toppled, he could hear his heart beating, tears were close to the surface in him too—tears of reaction, not tears of grief. “All right, then stay home,” he said harshly, and drew a quivering breath. “I shall represent the family joy at the prospect of this marriage. But don’t go to her, Aelia, or I’ll deal with you as I’ve dealt with her.”

  Thus he went alone to the house of Quintus Pompeius Rufus, on the Palatine, but overlooking the Forum Romanum; and made a good impression upon the delighted Pompeius Rufus family, including its women, who were tickled at the thought that young Quintus would be marrying a patrician Julio-Cornelian. Young Quintus was a handsome fellow, green-eyed and auburn-haired, tall and graceful, but it didn’t take Sulla long to estimate his intelligence at about half that of his father. Which was all to the good; he would fill the consulship because his father had, he would breed red-haired children with Cornelia Sulla, and he would be a good husband, as faithful as considerate. In fact, thought Sulla, smiling in private amusement, little though his daughter would admit it did she know, young Quintus Pompeius Rufus would be far pleasanter and more tractable to live with than that spoiled and arrogant pup Gaius Marius had spawned.

  Since the Pompeii Rufi were still at heart country folk, the dinner was well over before darkness fell, even though Rome was in the depths of seasonal winter. Knowing he had one more task to perform before he went home, Sulla stood atop the Ringmakers’ Steps leading down to the Via Nova and the Forum Romanum, and looked into the distance frowningly. Too far to walk out to see Metrobius, and too dangerous too. Where else might he fill in an hour or so?

  The answer came the moment his eyes rested upon the smoky declivity of the Subura—Aurelia, of course. Gaius Julius Caesar was off again governing Asia Province. Provided he made sure Aurelia was adequately chaperoned, why shouldn’t he pay her a visit? He ran down the steps with the ease and suppleness of a man far junior to himself in years, and strode off toward the Clivus Orbius, the quickest way to the Subura Minor and that triangular insula of Aurelia’s.

  Eutychus admitted him, but a little reluctantly; Aurelia’s manner was much the same.

  “Are your children up?” Sulla asked.

  She smiled wryly. “Unfortunately, yes. I seem to have bred owls, not larks. They hate to go to bed, and they hate to get up.”

  “Then give them a treat,” he said, sitting down on a well-padded and comfortable couch. “Invite them to join us, Aurelia. There are no better chaperones than one’s children.”

  Her face lightened. “You are quite right, Lucius Cornelius.”

  So their mother settled the children in a far corner of the room, the two girls grown tall because they were nearing puberty, and the boy grown tall because that was his fate, always to be much taller than the rest.

  “It’s good to see you,” Sulla said, ignoring the wine the steward put at his elbow.

  “And good to see you.”

  “Better than last time, eh?”

  She laughed. “Oh, that! I was in serious trouble with my husband, Lucius Cornelius.”

  “I understood that! Why? No loyaler or chaster wife ever lived than you, as I have good cause to know.”

  “Oh, he didn’t think I had been disloyal, any more than he believed I had been unchaste. The trouble between Gaius Julius and me is more—theoretical,” said Aurelia.

  “Theoretical?” asked Sulla, smiling broadly.

  “He doesn’t like the neighborhood. He doesn’t like my acting as a landlady. He doesn’t like Lucius Decumius. And he doesn’t like the way I’m raising our children, who can all speak the local cant as well as they can speak Palatine Latin. They also speak about three different kinds of Greek, plus Aramaic, Hebrew, Arvernian Gallic, Aeduan Gallic, Tolosan Gallic, and Lycian.”

  “Lycian?”

  “We have a Lycian family on the third floor these days, you see. The children go wherever they like, not to mention that they pick up languages the way you or I might pick up pebbles on a beach. I didn’t realize the Lycians had a language of their own, and incredibly antique too. It’s akin to Pisidian.”

  “Did you have a very bad argument with Gaius Julius?”

  She shrugged, pulled her mouth down. “Bad enough.”

  “Made worse by the fact that you stood up for yourself in a most unladylike, un-Roman-woman way,” said Sulla tenderly, fresh from assaulting his own daughter for doing exactly that. But Aurelia was Aurelia, she couldn’t be measured by any standards save her own—as many people said, with admiration rather than condemnation, so strong was her spell.

/>   “I’m afraid I did stand up for myself,” she said, not seeming very sorry. “In fact, I stood up for myself so well that my husband lost.” Her eyes were suddenly sorrowful. “And that, as I’m sure you will appreciate, Lucius Cornelius, was the worst part about our difference of opinion. No man of his status likes losing a fight with his wife. So he retreated into a kind of aloof disinterest and wouldn’t even consider a re-match, for all my prodding. Oh, dear!”

  “Has he fallen out of love with you?”

  “I don’t think so. I wish he had! It would make life a great deal easier for him when he’s here,” she said.

  “So you wear the toga these days.”

  “I am afraid so. Purple border and all.”

  His lips thinned, he nodded wisely. “You should have been a man, Aurelia. I never saw it until now, but it’s a truth.”

  “You’re right, Lucius Cornelius.”

  “So he was glad to go away to Asia Province, and you were glad to see him go, eh?”

  “You’re right again, Lucius Cornelius.”

  He passed then to his trip to the East, and gained one more auditor; Young Caesar scrambled up beside his mother on her couch, and listened avidly as Sulla recounted the story of his meetings with Mithridates, Tigranes, and the Parthian envoys.

  The boy was almost nine years old. And more beautiful than ever, Sulla noted, unable to take his eyes off that fair face. So like Young Sulla! Yet not like Young Sulla at all. He had emerged from his questioning phase and passed into his listening phase, and sat leaning against Aurelia, eyes shining, lips parted, his face a constantly changing panorama reflecting his mind, his body still.

  At the end he had questions to ask, asking them with more intelligence than Scaurus, more education than Marius, more interest than either. How does he know all this? asked Sulla of himself, finding himself speaking with an eight-year-old on precisely the same level as he had with Scaurus and Marius.

  “What do you think will happen?” Sulla asked, not because he patronized, but because he was intrigued.

  “War with Mithridates and Tigranes,” said Young Caesar.

  “Not war with the Parthians?”

  “Not for a long time to come. But if we win a war against Mithridates and Tigranes, it brings Pontus and Armenia within our fold, and then the Parthians will start to worry about Rome the way Mithridates and Tigrane’s do at the moment.”

  Sulla nodded. “Quite right, Young Caesar.”

  For a further hour they talked, then Sulla rose to go, ruffling Young Caesar’s hair in farewell. Aurelia walked with him to the door, shaking her head slightly to the hovering Eutychus, who began to shepherd children bedward.

  “How is everyone?” Aurelia asked, allowing Sulla to open the door onto the Vicus Patricius, still thronged with people, even though darkness had long fallen.

  “Young Sulla has a bad cold, and Cornelia Sulla a very sore face,” he said, unconcerned.

  “Young Sulla I understand, but what happened to your girl?”

  “I walloped her.”

  “Oh, I see! For what crime, Lucius Cornelius?”

  “It appears she and Young Marius had decided they would marry when the time came. But I’ve just promised her to the son of Quintus Pompeius Rufus. She decided to show her independence by starving herself to death.”

  “Ecastor! I suppose the poor child didn’t even know about her mother’s efforts in that direction?”

  “No.”

  “But she knows now.”

  “She certainly does.”

  “Well, I know the young man slightly, and I’m sure she’ll be a lot happier with him than she would with Young Marius!”

  Sulla laughed. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “What about Gaius Marius?”

  “Oh, he didn’t want the match either.” Sulla’s top lip curled up to show his teeth. “He’s after Scaevola’s daughter.”

  “He’ll get her without too much trouble—ave, Turpillia.” This last was said to a passing crone, who promptly stopped walking and stood looking as if she wanted to talk.

  Sulla took his leave, while Aurelia leaned against the doorframe and looked attentive as Turpillia started to speak.

  It never worried Sulla to traverse the Subura after dark, any more than it worried Aurelia to see him disappear into the night. No one molested Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The moment he entered them, he had the stews of Rome written all over him. If anything about his conduct might have puzzled Aurelia, it was the fact that he walked off up the Vicus Patricius instead of down it toward the Forum Romanum and the Palatine.

  He was going to see Censorinus, who lived on the upper Viminal in the street which led to the Punic apple tree. A respectable knightly neighborhood, but not nearly imposing enough to house one who sported an emerald quizzing-glass.

  At first it seemed as if Censorinus ‘s steward was going to deny him entry, but Sulla could always deal with that; he simply looked nasty, and something in the steward’s mind clattered a warning so strong that he automatically held the door wide open. Still smiling nastily, Sulla walked through the narrow passage which led from the front door to the reception room of the ground-floor insula apartment, and stood looking about him while the steward pattered off to find his master.

  Oh, yes, very nice! The frescoes on the walls were newly done, and in the latest style, rich red panels depicting the events which led to the yielding up of Briseis to Agamemnon by the Prince of Phthia, Achilles; they were framed in beautifully painted artificial agate-stones which merged into a splendid dark green dado, also painted rather than the real thing. The floor was a colored mosaic, the drapes were a purple so black it was definitely Tyrian, and the couches were covered with gold and purple tapestry of the best workmanship. Not bad for a middling member of the Ordo Equester, thought Sulla.

  An angry Censorinus emerged from the passage to his inner rooms, baffled by the conduct of his steward, who did not appear.

  “Well, what do you want?” Censorinus demanded.

  “Your emerald quizzing-glass,” said Sulla gently.

  “My what?”

  “You know, Censorinus, the one given to you by the agents of King Mithridates.”

  “King Mithridates? I don’t know what you mean! I have no such object as an emerald quizzing-glass.”

  “Nonsense, of course you do. Give it to me.”

  Censorinus choked, face purple, then pallid.

  “Do give me your emerald quizzing-glass, Censorinus!”

  “I’ll give you nothing except conviction and exile!”

  Before Censorinus could move, Sulla was standing so close to him that it might have passed to an onlooker as a farcical embrace; and then Sulla’s hands were on his shoulders, but not like a lover’s. They bit, they hurt, they were iron claws.

  “Listen, you contemptible maggot, I’ve killed better men by far than you,” said Sulla very softly, his tones actually amorous. “Stay out of court, or you’ll be dead. I mean it! Abandon this ridiculous prosecution of me, or you’ll be dead. As dead as a legendary strongman named Hercules Atlas. As dead as a woman with a broken neck below the cliffs of Circei. As dead as a thousand Germans. As dead as anyone is who threatens me and mine. As dead as Mithridates will be, if I decide he must die. You can tell him that when you see him. He’ll believe you! He clipped his tail between his legs and fled Cappadocia when I told him to go. Because he knew. Now you know, don’t you?”

  There was no reply, nor did Censorinus attempt to struggle free of that cruel hold. Still and quiet save for his breathing, he gazed at Sulla’s too-close face as if he had never seen this man before, and did not know what to do.

  One of Sulla’s hands left Censorinus’s shoulder to slip inside his tunic, its fingers reaching for what was on the end of a stout leather cord; the other of Sulla’s hands slipped from Censorinus’s other shoulder and clamped around his scrotum, and crushed it. While Censorinus screamed as shrilly as a dog when the wheels of a wagon pass over it, Sulla ripped
the leather thong apart with the fingers of one hand as easily as if it had been made of wool, then put the flashing green thing dangling from it inside his toga. No one came running to see who screamed. Sulla turned on his heel and walked out without hurrying.

  “Oh, I feel better!” he cried as he opened the door, and laughed so long that only its closing shut the sound from out of Censorinus’s ears.

  *

  Rage and frustration at the conduct of Cornelia Sulla vanished, home Sulla went with footsteps as light as a child’s, face a picture of happiness. Happiness wiped away in the thinnest sliver of time when he opened his own front door and discovered, instead of the hushed, dimly lit peace of sleeping tenants, a blaze of light from every lamp, a huddle of strange young men, a steward wiping tears from his streaming eyes.

  “What is it?” Sulla asked, gasping.

  “Your son, Lucius Cornelius!” cried the steward.

  Sulla waited to hear no more, but ran to the room off the peristyle-garden where Aelia had put the boy to get over his cold. She was standing outside its door, wrapped in a shawl.

  “What is it?” Sulla asked again, grabbing at her.

  “Young Sulla is very ill,” she whispered. “I called the doctors two hours ago.”

  Pushing the doctors aside, Sulla appeared beside his son’s bed looking benevolent and relaxed.

  “What is this, Young Sulla, giving everybody such a fright?”

  “Father!” Young Sulla cried, smiling.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “So cold, Father! Do you mind if I call you tata in front of strangers?”

  “Of course not.”

  “The pain, it’s terrible!”

  “Whereabouts, my son?”

  “Behind my breast-bone, tata. So cold!”

  He breathed shallowly, loudly, with obvious distress; to Sulla it seemed a parody of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle’s death scene, which perhaps was why Sulla could not believe in this as a death scene. Yet Young Sulla looked as if he were dying. Impossible!

  “Don’t talk, my son. Can you lie down?” This, because the doctors had propped him into a sitting position.

  “Can’t breathe, lying down.” The eyes, ringed with what looked like black bruises, looked up at him piteously. “Tata, please don’t go away, will you?”