“My dear girl, I’ve been married to Lucius Cornelius for almost nine years,” said Dalmatica, who seemed to be shrinking in size, “and I can attest that it is an infamy.”
“All right, all right, have it your own way! I don’t care what he is! I just hate him, the vile beast!”
“I’ll try when I’m cooler, I promise.”
“Save yourself more of his displeasure, Mother. He won’t change his mind,” said Aemilia Scaura. “It’s my baby I’m worried about, it’s my baby matters to me.”
Dalmatica stared at her daughter painfully. “I can say the same thing.”
The cold wet towel fell into Aemilia Scaura’s lap. “Mother! You’re pregnant too?”
“Yes. I haven’t known for very long, but I’m sure.”
“What will you do? Does he know?”
“He doesn’t know. And I’ll do nothing that might provoke him to divorce me.”
“You’ve heard the tale of Aelia.”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Oh, Mother, that changes everything! I’ll behave, I’ll behave! He mustn’t be given any excuse to divorce you!”
“Then we must hope,” said Dalmatica wearily, “that he deals more kindly with your husband than he has with you.’
“He’ll deal more harshly.”
“Not necessarily,” said the wife who knew Sulla. “You were first to hand. Very often his first victim satisfies him. By the time Glabrio arrives to find out what’s the matter, he may be calm enough to be merciful.”
If he wasn’t calm enough to be merciful, Sulla was at least drained of the worst of his anger at Glabrio’s indiscreet words. And Glabrio was perceptive enough to see that blustering would only make his situation more perilous.
“There is no need for this, Lucius Cornelius,” he said. “If I have offended you, I will strive mightily to remove the cause of that offense. I wouldn’t put my wife’s position in jeopardy, I assure you.”
“Oh, your ex-wife is in no jeopardy,” said Sulla, smiling mirthlessly. “Aemilia Scaura—who is a member of my family!—is quite safe. But she cannot possibly stay married to a man who criticizes her stepfather and spreads stories about him that are manifest lies.”
Glabrio wet his lips. “My tongue ran away with me.”
“It runs away with you very often, I hear. That is your privilege, of course. But in future you’ll let it without the insulation of claiming to be a member of my family. You’ll let it and take your chances, just like everyone else. I haven’t proscribed a senator since my first list. But there’s nothing to stop my doing so. I honored you by appointing you to the Senate ahead of your thirtieth birthday, as I have a great many other young men of high family and illustrious forebears. Well, for the moment I will leave your name among the senators and will not attach it to the rostra. Whether in future I continue to be so clement depends on you, Glabrio. Your child is growing in the belly of my children’s half sister, and that is the only protection you have. When it is born, I will send it to you. Now please go.”
Glabrio went without another word. Nor did he inform any of his intimates of the circumstances behind his precipitate divorce. Nor the reasons why he felt it expedient to leave Rome for his country estates. His marriage to Aemilia Scaura had not mattered to him in an emotional way; she satisfied him, that was all. Birth, dowry, everything as it ought to be. With the years affection might have grown between them. It never would now, so much was sure. A small twinge of grief passed through him from time to time when he thought of her, mostly because his child would never know its mother.
What happened next did nothing to help heal the breach between Sulla and Dalmatica; Pompey came to see the Dictator the following morning, as directed.
“I have a wife for you, Magnus,” said Sulla without delay.
There was a quality of sleepy lion about Pompey that stood him in good stead when things happened he wished to think about before acting or speaking. So he took time to ingest this piece of information, face open rather than guarded; but what was going on inside his mind he did not betray. Rather, thought Sulla, watching him closely, he just rolled over in some metaphorical sun to warm his other side, and licked his chops to remove a forgotten morsel from his whiskers. Languid but dangerous. Yes, best to tie him to the family—he was no Glabrio.
Finally, “How considerate of you, Dictator!” said Pompey. “Who might she be?”
This unconscious grammatical betrayal of his Picentine origins grated, but Sulla did not let it show. He said, “My stepdaughter, Aemilia Scaura. Patrician. Of a family you couldn’t better if you looked for a millennium. A dowry of two hundred talents. And proven to be fertile. She’s pregnant to Glabrio. They were divorced yesterday. I realize, it’s a bit inconvenient for you to acquire a wife who is already expecting another man’s child, but the begetting was virtuous. She’s a good girl.”
That Pompey was not put off or put out by this news was manifest; he beamed foolishly. “Lucius Cornelius, dear Lucius Cornelius! I am delighted!”
“Good!” said Sulla briskly.
“May I see her? I don’t think I ever have!”
A faint grin came and went across the Dictator’s face as he thought of the bruises about Aemilia Scaura’s mouth; he shook his head. “Give it two or three market intervals, Magnus, then come back and I’ll marry you to her. In the meantime I’ll make sure every sestertius of her dowry is returned, and keep her here with me.”
“Wonderful!” cried Pompey, transported. “Does she know?’’
“Not yet, but it will please her very much. She’s been secretly in love with you ever since she saw you triumph,” lied Sulla blandly.
That shot penetrated the lion’s hide! Pompey almost burst with gratification. “Oh, glorious!” he said, and departed looking like a very well-fed feline indeed.
Which left Sulla to break the news to his wife and her daughter. A chore he found himself not averse to doing. Dalmatica had been looking at him very differently since this business had blown up out of a tranquillity almost nine years old, and he disliked her disliking him; as a result, he needed to hurt her.
The two women were together in Dalmatica’s sitting room, and froze when Sulla walked in on them unannounced. His first action was to study Aemilia Scaura’ s face, which was badly bruised and swollen below her nose. Only then did he look at Dalmatica. No anger or revulsion emanated from her this morning, though her dislike of him was there in her eyes, rather cold. She seemed, he thought, ill. Then reflected that women often took refuge in genuine illnesses when their emotions were out of sorts.
“Good news!” he said jovially.
To which they gave him no reply.
“I have a new husband for you, Aemilia.”
Shocked, she looked up and at him with tear—reddened, dull eyes. “Who?” she asked faintly.
“Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.”
“Oh, Sulla, really!” snapped Dalmatica. “I refuse to believe you mean it! Marry Scaurus’s daughter to that Picentine oaf? My daughter, of Caecilius Metellus blood? I will not consent!”
“You have no say in the matter.”
“Then I wish Scaurus were alive! He’d have plenty to say!”
Sulla laughed. “Yes, he would, wouldn’t he? Not that it would make any difference in the end. I need to tie Magnus to me with a stronger bond than gratitude—he doesn’t have a grateful bone in his body. And you, stepdaughter, are the only female of the family available at the moment.”
The grey shade in Dalmatica’s skin deepened. “Please don’t do this, Lucius Cornelius! Please!”
“I’m carrying Glabrio’s baby,” whispered Aemilia Scaura. “Surely Pompeius wouldn’t want me?”
“Who, Magnus? Magnus wouldn’t care if you’d had sixteen husbands and had sixteen children in your nursery,” said Sulla. “He knows a bargain when he sees one, and you’re a bargain for him at any price. I give you twenty days to heal your face, then you’ll marry him. After the child is born, I’ll send it
to Glabrio.”
The weeping broke out afresh. “Please, Lucius Cornelius, don’t do that to me! Let me keep my baby!”
“You can have more with Magnus. Now stop behaving like a schoolgirl and face facts!” Sulla’s gaze went to Dalmatica. “That goes for you as well, wife.”
He walked out, leaving Dalmatica to do what she could to comfort her daughter.
Two days later, Pompey informed him by letter that he had divorced his wife, and would like a firm wedding date.
“I plan to be out of town until the Nones of Sextilis,” said Sulla in his answer, “so I think two days after the Nones of Sextilis seems propitious. You may present yourself in my house at that time, not before.”
*
Hercules Invictus was the god of the triumphing imperator and held sway over the Forum Boarium, in which lay the various meat markets, and which formed the large open space in front of the starting—post end of the Circus Maximus. There he had his Great Altar, his temple, and there too his statue, naked save on the day a general held his victory parade, when it was dressed in triumphal robes. Other temples to other aspects of Hercules also dotted the area, for he was the patron god of olives, of merchant plutocrats, and of commercial voyages personally placed under his protection.
On the feast day of Hercules Invictus, announced Sulla in a citywide proclamation, he would dedicate one tenth of his private fortune to the god, as thanks for the god’s favor in all his martial endeavors. A huge stir of anticipatory pleasure went through the populace, as Hercules Invictus had no temple funds, so could not keep the moneys donated to him; they were spent in his and the triumphing general’s name on providing a public feast for all free men in Rome. On the day before the Ides of Sextilis—this being the god’s feast day—five thousand tables of food would be laid out, each table catering for more than a hundred hungry citizens (which was not to say that there were half a million free males in Rome—what it did say was that the donor of the feast understood that it was hard to exclude spry grannies, determined wives and cheeky children). A list of the location of these five thousand tables was appended to the proclamation; a formidable exercise in logistics, such an occasion was very carefully planned and executed so that the participants by and large remained in their own districts, did not clog the streets or overflow into rival regions and thereby cause fights, public disturbances, crime waves and riots.
The event set in train, Sulla left for his villa at Misenum with his wife, his daughter, his children, his grandchildren, his stepdaughter, and Mamercus. Dalmatica had avoided him ever since the dissolution of Aemilia Scaura’s marriage to Glabrio, but when he did see her in passing, he had noticed that she looked ill. A holiday beside the sea was clearly called for. This entourage was augmented by the consul Decula, who drafted all Sulla’s laws for him, and by the ubiquitous Chrysogonus.
It was therefore some days after they had settled into seaside living before he found the leisure to spend a little time with his wife, still tending to avoid him.
“There’s no point in holding things like Aemilia against me,” he said in reasonable but unapologetic tones. “I will always do what I have to do. You should know that by now, Dalmatica.”
They were sitting in a secluded corner of the loggia overlooking the water, cooled by a gentle zephyr wind and shaded by a judiciously planted row of cypresses. Though the light was not harsh, it revealed that several days of healthier air had not served to improve Dalmatica’s ailment, whatever it might be; she looked drawn and grey, much older than her thirty-seven years.
“I do know it,” she said in answer to this overture of peace, but not with equanimity. “I wish I could accept it! But when my own children are involved, it’s different.”
“Glabrio had to go,” he said, “and there was only one way to do that—sever him from my family. Aemilia is young.
She will get over the blow. Pompeius is not such a bad fellow.”
“He is beneath her.”
“I agree. Nonetheless, I need to bind him to me. Marriage between him and Aemilia also drives home to Glabrio that he dare not continue to speak out against me, when I have the power to give Scaurus’s daughter to the likes of a Pompeius from Picenum.” He frowned. “Leave it be, Dalmatica! You don’t have the strength to withstand me.”
“I know that,” she said, low—voiced.
“You’re not well, and I’m beginning to think it has nothing to do with Aemilia,” he said, more kindly. “What is it?”
“I think—I think …”
“Tell me!”
“I’m going to have another child.”
“Jupiter!” He gaped, recovered, looked grim.
“I agree it isn’t what either of us wants at this time,” she said wearily. “I fear I am a little old.”
“And I am far too old.” He shrugged, looked happier. “Oh well, it’s an accomplished thing, and we’re equally to blame. I take it you don’t want to abort the process?”
“I delayed too long, Lucius Cornelius. It wouldn’t be safe for me at five months. I didn’t notice, I really didn’t.”
“Have you seen a doctor or a midwife?”
“Not yet.”
He got up. “I’ll send Lucius Tuccius to you now.”
She flinched. “Oh, Sulla, please don’t! He’s an ex-army surgeon, he knows nothing about women!”
“He’s better than all your wretched Greeks!”
“For doctoring men, I agree. But I would much rather see a lady doctor from Neapolis or Puteoli.”
Sulla abandoned the struggle. “See whomever you like,” he said curtly, and left the loggia.
Several lady physicians and midwives came to see her; each agreed she was run down, then said that as time went on and the baby in her womb settled, she would feel better.
And so on the Nones of Sextilis the slaves packed up the villa and the cavalcade set off for Rome, Sulla riding ahead because he was too impatient to dawdle at the snail’s pace the women’s litters made inevitable. In consequence he reached the city two days ahead of the rest of his party, and plunged into the last—moment details concerning his coming feast.
“Every baker in Rome has been engaged to make the bread and the cakes, and the special shipments of flour are already delivered,” said Chrysogonus smugly; he had arrived in the city even earlier than Sulla.
“And the fish will be fresh? The weather is scorching.”
“All taken care of, Lucius Cornelius, I do assure you. I have had a section of the river above the Trigarium fenced off with nets, and the fish are already swimming there against the day. A thousand fish—slaves will commence to gut and cook on the morning of the feast.”
“The meats?”
“Will be freshly roasted and sweet, the guild of caterers has promised. Sucking pigs, chickens, sausages, baby lambs. I have had a message from Italian Gaul that the early apples and pears will arrive on time—five hundred wagons escorted by two squadrons of cavalry are proceeding down the Via Flaminia at this moment. The strawberries from Alba Fucentia are being picked now and packed in ice from the Mons Fiscellus. They will reach Rome the night before the feast—also under military escort.”
“A pity people are such thieves when it comes to food,” said the Dictator, who had been poor enough and hungry enough in his youth to understand, for all he pretended otherwise.
“If it were bread or porridge, Lucius Cornelius, there would be no need to worry,” soothed Chrysogonus. “They mostly steal what has a novel taste, or a season.”
“Are you sure we have enough wine?”
“There will be wine and food left over, domine.”
“None of the wine’s vinegary, I hope!”
“It is uniformly excellent. Those vendors who might have been tempted to throw in a few air—contaminated amphorae know well who the buyer is.” Chrysogonus smiled reminiscently. “I told every one of them that if we found a single amphora of vinegar, the lot of them would be crucified, Roman citizens or no.”
/> “I want no hitches, Chrysogonus. No hitches!”
But the hitch when it came bore no connection (or so it seemed) to the public feast; it involved Dalmatica, who arrived attended by every wisewoman Cornelia Sulla could find as they passed through the towns on the Via Appia.
“She’s bleeding,” said Sulla’s daughter to her father.
The relief on his face was naked. “She’ll lose the thing?” he asked eagerly.
“We think she may.”
“Far better that she does.”
“I agree it won’t be a tragedy if she loses the baby,” said Cornelia Sulla, who didn’t waste her emotions on anger or indignation; she knew her father too well. “The real worry is Dalmatica herself, tata.”
“What do you mean?”
“She may die.”
Something darkly appalled showed in his eyes, just what his daughter couldn’t tell; but he made a movement of distress, shook his head violently. “He is a harbinger of death!” he cried, then, “It is always the highest price! But I don’t care, I don’t care!” The look of amazement on Cornelia Sulla’s face brought him back to his senses, he snorted. “She’s a strong woman, she won’t die!”
“I hope not.”
Sulla got to his feet. “She wouldn’t consent to see him before, but she will now. Whether she wants to or not.”
“Who?”
“Lucius Tuccius.”
When the ex-army surgeon arrived in Sulla’s study some hours later, he looked grave. And Sulla, who had waited out those hours alone, had passed from horror at what always seemed to happen after he saw Metrobius, through guilt, to resignation. As long as he didn’t have to see Dalmatica; for he didn’t think he could face her.
“You don’t bear good tidings, Tuccius.”
“No, Lucius Cornelius.”
“What exactly is wrong?’’ Sulla asked, pulling at his lip.
“There seems to be a general impression that the lady Dalmatica is pregnant, and that is certainly what she thinks,” said Lucius Tuccius, “but I doubt the existence of a child.”
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