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

by Colleen McCullough

  But he had walked into Dumnorix’s reception room at the worst possible moment, the moment in which a big woman, spitting curses, drew back her powerful white arm and punched Dumnorix on the jaw so hard Caesar heard his teeth rattle. Flat on the floor he went, while the woman, a fantastic cloud of red hair swirling about her like a general’s cloak, began to kick him. He came up swinging, was knocked down a second time and kicked again, no force spared. Another equally large but younger woman erupted into the room; she fared no better dealing with Red Hair, who blocked her crosscut and landed an uppercut which sent the newcomer sprawling senseless.

  Enjoying himself hugely, Caesar leaned on the wall to watch.

  Dumnorix wriggled out of the reach of those deadly feet, got to one knee with murder in his eyes, and saw his visitor.

  “Don’t mind me,” said Caesar.

  But that signaled the end of the round, if not the bout. Red Hair planted a vicious kick on the inanimate body of her second victim, then retreated, magnificent breasts heaving, dark blue eyes flashing, to stand staring at the incongruous sight of a Roman in the purple-bordered toga of high estate.

  “I didn’t—expect you—so soon!” panted Dumnorix.

  “So I gather. The lady boxes much better than the athletes at the games. However, if you like I’ll go back to my rooms and let you contend with your domestic crisis in peace. If peace is the right word.”

  “No, no!” Dumnorix straightened his shirt, picked up his shawl, and discovered that it had been wrenched off so violently that the brooch which held it on his left shoulder had torn the sleeve from its armhole. He glared at Red Hair and lifted one fist. “I’ll kill you, woman!”

  She curled her top lip in contempt but said nothing.

  “May I adjudicate?” asked Caesar, removing himself from the wall and strolling to place himself in a strategic position between Dumnorix and Red Hair.

  “Thank you but no, Caesar. I’ve just divorced the she-wolf.”

  “She-wolf. Romulus and Remus were fostered by a she-wolf. I suggest you put her in the field. She’d have no trouble beating the Germans.”

  Her eyes had widened at the name; she strode forward until she was scant inches from Caesar and thrust her chin out. “I am a wronged wife!” she cried. “My people are no use to him now that they are defeated and returned to their own lands, so he has divorced me! For no reason except his own convenience! I am not unfaithful, I am not poor, I am not a serf! He has divorced me for no valid reason! I am a wronged wife!”

  “Is that the competition?” Caesar asked her, pointing at the girl on the floor.

  Up went the top lip again. “Pah!” she spat.

  “Do you have children by this woman, Dumnorix?”

  “No, she’s barren!” cried Dumnorix, seizing on it.

  “I am not barren! What do you believe, that babies pop out of nothing on a Druid altar? Between the whores and the wine, Dumnorix, you’re not man enough to quicken any of your wives!” Up came her fist.

  Dumnorix backed away. “Touch me, woman, and I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear!” Out came his knife.

  “Now, now,” said Caesar reprovingly. “Murder is murder, and better done somewhere else than in front of a proconsul of Rome. However, if you want to box on, I’m willing to act as judge. Equal weapons, Dumnorix. Unless the lady would like a knife?”

  “Yes!” she hissed.

  What might have been said or done then was not, for the girl on the floor began to moan; Dumnorix, clearly besotted with her, rushed to kneel by her side.

  Red Hair turned to watch, while Caesar watched her. Oh, she was something else again! Tall and strapping, yet slender and feminine; her waist, cinched with a golden belt, was tiny between large breasts and hips; and her legs, he thought, lent her most of that imposing height. But it was her hair enraptured him. It poured in rivers of fire over her shoulders and down her back to well below her knees, so thick and rich it had a life of its own. Most Gallic women had wonderful hair, but never so much or so brilliant as this woman’s.

  “You’re of the Helvetii,” he said.

  She swung round to face him, seeming suddenly to see more than a purple-bordered toga. “You are Caesar?” she asked.

  “I am. But you haven’t answered my question.”

  “My father was King Orgetorix.”

  “Ah, yes. He killed himself before the migration.”

  “They forced him to it.”

  “Does this mean you will return to your people?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Why?”

  “I have been divorced. No one will have me.”

  “Yes, that’s worth a punch or two.”

  “He wronged me! I have not deserved it!”

  Dumnorix had managed to get the girl to her feet, and stood with one arm about her waist. “Get out of my house!” he roared at Red Hair.

  “Not until you return my dowry!”

  “I’ve divorced you, I’m entitled to keep it!”

  “Oh, come, Dumnorix,” said Caesar pleasantly. “You’re a rich man, you don’t need her dowry. The lady says she cannot return to her people; therefore the least you can do is enable her to live somewhere in comfort.” He turned to Red Hair. “How much does he owe you?” he asked her.

  “Two hundred cows, two bulls, five hundred sheep, my bed and bedding, my table, my chair, my jewels, my horse, my servants and a thousand gold pieces,” she recited.

  “Give her back her dowry, Dumnorix,” said Caesar in a tone brooking no argument. “I’ll escort her off your lands into the Province and settle her somewhere far from the Aedui.”

  Dumnorix writhed. “Caesar, I couldn’t put you to the trouble!”

  “No trouble, I assure you. It’s on my way.”

  And so it had been arranged. When Caesar departed from the lands of the Aedui he went accompanied by two hundred cows, two bulls, five hundred sheep, a wagon full of furniture and chests, a small crowd of slaves and Red Hair on her high-stepping Italian horse.

  What Caesar’s own entourage thought of this circus they kept to themselves, thankful that for once the General wasn’t sitting in a pitching gig, dictating to two of them at full gallop. Instead he rode beside the lady at a leisurely pace and talked to her all the way from Matisco to Arausio, where he supervised the purchase of a property large enough to graze two hundred cows, two bulls and five hundred sheep, and installed Red Hair and her team of servants in the commodious house upon it.

  “But I have no husband, no protector!” she said.

  “Rubbish!” said he, laughing. “This is the Province; it belongs to Rome. Do you think the whole district of Arausio isn’t aware who settled you here? I’m the governor. No one will touch you. On the contrary, everyone will bend over backward to assist you. You’ll be inundated with offers of help.”

  “I belong to you.”

  “That’s what they’ll think, certainly.”

  She had done a great deal more fulminating during the journey than she had smiling, but now she smiled, her wide mouth showing all its splendid teeth. “And what do you think?” she asked.

  “I think I’d like to use your hair as a toga.”

  “I’ll comb it.”

  “No,” he said, climbing upon his road horse, which had normal hooves. “Wash it. That’s why I made sure your house has a proper bathtub. Learn to use it every day. I’ll see you in the spring, Rhiannon.”

  She frowned. “Rhiannon? That’s not my name, Caesar. You know my name.”

  “Too many x’s for linguistic pleasure. Rhiannon.”

  “It means—”

  “Wronged wife. Quite so.”

  He kicked his horse and cantered away, but back he came in the spring, as he had promised.

  What Dumnorix thought when his wronged wife returned to the lands of the Aedui in Caesar’s train he didn’t say, but it rankled. Especially when it became a delicious joke among the Aedui; the Wronged Wife fell pregnant very quickly, and bore Caesar a son the follow
ing winter in her house near Arausio. Which didn’t stop her traveling in the baggage train the next spring and summer. Wherever headquarters were established, there she and her baby made themselves at home and waited for Caesar. It was an arrangement which worked well; Caesar saw just enough of her to keep him fascinated, and she had taken his hint, kept herself and the baby so washed they shone.

  *

  He scooped the child out of the cot and kissed him, held the little flowerlike face against his own scratchy one, then lifted a small hand to kiss its dimpled knuckles.

  “He knew me despite the beard.”

  “I think he’d know you if you turned a different color.”

  “My daughter and my mother are dead.”

  “Yes. Trebonius told me.”

  “We won’t discuss it.”

  “Trebonius said he thought you’d stay here for the winter.”

  “Would you prefer to go back to the Province? I can send you, though I won’t take you.”

  “No.”

  “We’ll build a better house before the snow comes.”

  “I’d like that.”

  As they continued to talk quietly, he walked up and down the room holding the child in the crook of his arm, stroking the red-gold curls, the flawless skin, the fan of lashes drooping on a rosy cheek.

  “He’s asleep, Caesar.”

  “Then I suppose I must put him down.”

  Into the cot well wrapped in soft purple wool, head upon a purple pillow; Caesar remained gazing for a moment, then put his arm about Rhiannon and walked with her from the room.

  “It’s late, but I have dinner ready if you’re hungry.”

  He lifted a tress of hair. “Always, when I see you.”

  “Dinner first. You’re not very enthusiastic about food, so I have to get as much of it into you as I can. Roast venison and roast pork with bubbled skin. Crusty bread still hot from the oven, and six different vegetables from my garden.”

  She was a wonderful housekeeper in a way very different from a Roman woman; of the blood royal, yet down on her knees in her vegetable garden, or making the cheese herself, or turning the mattress on her bed, which always came with her, as did her table and her chair.

  The room was warm from several braziers glowing amid the shadows, and the walls were hung with bear skins and wolf pelts wherever the boards had shrunk and the wind whistled through, and it was, besides, not yet winter. They ate entwined on the same couch, a contact more friendly than fleshly, and then she took her harp, put it upon her knee and played.

  Perhaps, he thought, that was another reason why she still delighted him. They made such wonderful music, the long-haired Gauls, fingers plucking at many more strings than a lyre possessed, music at once wild and delicate, passionate and stirring. And oh, how they could sing! As she began to sing now, some soft and plaintive air as much sound as words, sheer emotion. Italian music was more melodic, yet lacked the untamed improvisation; Greek music was more mathematically perfect, yet lacked the power and the tears. This was music in which words didn’t matter but the voice did. And Caesar, who loved music even more than literature or the visual arts, listened rapt.

  After which making love to her was like an extension of the music. He was the wind roaring through the sky, he was the voyager on an ocean of stars—and found his healing in the song of her body.

  3

  At first it looked as if the breaking Gallic storm would be Celtic after all. Caesar had been snugly ensconced in his new stone house for a month when word came that the Carnute elders, egged on by the Druids, had killed Tasgetius, their king. Not usually something of concern, but in this case very worrying; it had been Caesar’s influence had elevated Tasgetius to the kingship. The Carnutes were peculiarly important over and above their numbers and their wealth, for the center of the Druidic web spread throughout Gaul of the Long-hairs was located in the lands of the Carnutes at a place called Carnutum, the navel of the Druidic earth. It was neither oppidum nor town, more a carefully oriented collection of oak, rowan and hazel groves interspersed with small villages of Druid dwellings.

  Druidic opposition to Rome was implacable. Rome represented a new, different, alluring apostasy bound to collide with and destroy the Druidic ethos. Not because of the coming of Caesar. The feeling and the attitude were well entrenched by this time, the result of almost two hundred years of watching the Gallic tribes of the south succumb to Romanization. The Greeks had been in the Province far longer, but had remained in the hinterland around Massilia and preferred to be indifferent to barbarians. Whereas the Romans were incurably busy people, had the knack of setting the standard and style of living wherever they settled, and had the habit of extending their highly prized citizenship to those who co-operated with them and rendered good service. They fought crisp wars to eliminate undesirable characteristics like taking heads—a favorite pastime among the Salluvii, who lived between Massilia and Liguria— and would always be back to fight another war if they hadn’t done too well in the last one. It had been the Greeks who brought the vine and the olive to the south, but the Romans who had transformed the native peoples of the Province into Roman thinkers: people who no longer honored the Druids, who sent their wellborn sons to study in Rome instead of in Carnutum.

  Thus Caesar’s advent was a culmination rather than a root cause. Because he was Pontifex Maximus and therefore head of the Roman religion, the Chief Druid had asked for an interview with him during his visit to the lands of the Carnutes in that first year Rhiannon had journeyed with him.

  “If Arvernian is acceptable you can send the interpreter away,” said Caesar.

  “I had heard that you speak several of our tongues, but why Arvernian?” the Chief Druid asked.

  “My mother had a servant, Cardixa, from the Arverni.”

  A faint anger showed. “A slave.”

  “Originally, but not for many years.”

  Caesar looked the Chief Druid up and down: a handsome, yellow-haired man in his late forties, dressed simply in a long white linen tunic; he was clean-shaven and devoid of ornament.

  “Do you have a name, Chief Druid?”

  “Cathbad.”

  “I expected you to be older, Cathbad.”

  “I might say the same, Caesar.” It was Caesar’s turn to be looked up and down. “You’re Gallic fair. Is that unusual?”

  “Not very. It’s actually more unusual to be very dark. You can tell from our third names, which often refer to some physical characteristic. Rufus, which indicates red hair, is a common cognomen. Flavus and Albinus indicate blond hair. A man with truly black hair and eyes is Niger.”

  “And you are the high priest.”

  “Yes.”

  “You inherited the position?”

  “No, I was elected Pontifex Maximus. The tenure is for life, as with all our priests and augurs, who are all elected. Whereas our magistrates are elected for the term of one year only.”

  Cathbad blinked, slowly. “So was I elected. Do you really conduct the rituals of your people?”

  “When I’m in Rome.”

  “Which puzzles me. You’ve been the chief magistrate of your people and now you lead armies. Yet you are the high priest. To us, a contradiction.”

  “The two are not irreconcilable to the Senate and People of Rome,” said Caesar genially. “On the other hand, I gather that the Druids constitute an exclusive group within the tribe. What one might call the intellectuals.”

  “We’re the priests, the doctors, the lawyers and the poets,” said Cathbad, striving to be genial.

  “Ah, the professionals! Do you specialize?”

  “A little, particularly those who love to doctor. But all of us know the law, the rituals, the history and the lays of our people. Otherwise we are not Druids. It takes twenty years to make one.”

  They were talking in the main hall of the public building in Cenabum, and quite alone now that the interpreter had been sent away. Caesar had chosen to wear the toga and tunic of the Pontif
ex Maximus, magnificent-looking garments broadly striped in scarlet and purple.

  “I hear,” said Caesar, “that you write nothing down—that if all the Druids in Gaul were to be killed on the same day, knowledge would also die. But surely you’ve preserved your lore on bronze or stone or paper! Writing isn’t unknown here.”

  “Among the Druids it is, though we can all read and write. But we do not write down anything which pertains to our calling. That we memorize. It takes twenty years.”

  “Very clever!” said Caesar appreciatively.

  Cathbad frowned. “Clever?”

  “It’s an excellent way to preserve life and limb. No one would dare to harm you. Little wonder a Druid can walk fearlessly onto a field of battle and stop the fighting.”

  “That is not why we do it!” Cathbad cried.

  “I realize that. But it’s still clever.” Caesar switched to another touchy subject. “Druids pay no taxes of any kind, is that right?”

  “We pay no taxes, it is true,” said Cathbad, pose subtly stiffer, face stubbornly impassive.

  “Nor serve in the army?”

  “Nor serve as warriors.”

  “Nor put your hands to any menial task.”

  “It’s you who are clever, Caesar. Your words put us in the wrong. We serve, we earn our rewards. I’ve already told you, we are the priests, the doctors, the lawyers and the poets.”

  “You marry?”

  “Yes, we marry.”

  “And are supported by the working people.”

  Cathbad hung on to his temper. “In return for our services, which are irreplaceable.”

  “Yes, I understand that. Very clever!”

  “I had assumed you would be more tactful, Caesar. Why should you go out of your way to insult us?”

  “I don’t insult you, Cathbad. I’m after the facts. We of Rome know very little of the living structure within the Gallic tribes who have not come in contact with us until now. Polybius has written a little about you Druids, and some other lesser men of history mention you. But it is my duty to report on these things to the Senate, and the best way to find out is to ask,” said Caesar, smiling, but not with charm. Cathbad was impervious to it. “Tell me about women.”