3. Fortune's Favorites

  3. Fortune's Favorites

  Colleen Mccullough

  Colleen McCullough

  Fortunes Favorites

  PART I from APRIL 83 B.C. until DECEMBER 82 B.C.

  Though the steward held his five flamed lamp high enough to illuminate the two recumbent figures in the bed, he knew its light had not the power to waken Pompey. For this, he would need Pompey's wife. She stirred, frowned, turned her head away in an effort to remain asleep, but the vast house was murmuring beyond the open door, and the steward was calling her. Domina! Domina! Even in confusion modest servants did not make a habit of invading Pompey's bedchamber Antistia made sure she was decently covered before she sat up. "What is it? What's the matter?" "An urgent message for the master. Wake him and tell him to come to the atrium," barked the steward rudely. The lamp flames dipped and smoked as he swung on his heel and left; the door closed, plunging her into darkness. Oh, that vile man! He had done it deliberately! But she knew where her shift lay across the foot of the bed, drew it on, and shouted for a light. Nothing woke Pompey. Provided with a lamp and a warm wrap, Antistia finally turned back to the bed to discover him slumbering still. Nor did he seem to feel the cold, lying on his back uncovered to the waist. She had tried on other occasions and for other reasons to kiss him awake, but never could. Shakes and pummels it would have to be. "What?" he asked, sitting up and running his hands through his thick yellow thatch; the quiff above his peaked hairline stood up alertly. So too were the blue eyes surveying her alert. That was Pompey: apparently dead one moment, wide awake the next. Both soldiers' habits. "What?" he asked again. "There's an urgent message for you in the atrium." But she hadn't managed to finish the sentence before he was on his feet and his feet were shoved into backless slippers and a tunic was falling carelessly off one freckled shoulder. Then he was gone, the door gaping behind him. For a moment Antistia stood where she was, undecided. Her husband hadn't taken the lamp he could see in the dark as well as any cat so there was nothing to stop her following save her own knowledge that probably he wouldn't like it. Well, bother that! Wives were surely entitled to share news important enough to invade the master's sleep! So off she went with her little lamp barely showing her the way down that huge corridor flagged and walled with bare stone blocks. A turn here a flight of steps there and suddenly she was out of the forbidding Gallic fortress and into the civilized Roman villa, all pretty paint and plaster. Lights blazed everywhere; the servants had busied themselves to some effect. And there was Pompey clad in no more than a tunic yet looking like the personification of Mars oh, he was wonderful! He might even have confided in her, for his eyes did take her presence in. But at the same moment Varro arrived in startled haste, and Antistia's chance to share personally in whatever was causing the excitement vanished. "Varro, Varro!" Pompey shouted. Then he whooped, a shrill and eldritch sound with nothing Roman in it; just so had long dead Gauls whooped as they spilled over the Alps and took whole chunks of Italy for their own, including Pompey's Picenum. Antistia jumped, shivered. So, she noticed, did Varro. "What is it?" "Sulla has landed in Brundisium!" "Brundisium! How do you know?" "What does that matter?" demanded Pompey, crossing the mosaic floor to seize little Varro by both shoulders and shake him. "It's here, Varro! The adventure has begun!" "Adventure?" Varro gaped. "Oh, Magnus, grow up! It's not an adventure, it's a civil war and on Italian soil yet again!" "I don't care!" cried Pompey. "To me, it's an adventure. If you only knew how much I've longed for this news, Varro! Since Sulla left, Italy has been as tame as a Vestal Virgin's lapdog!" What about the Siege of Rome?'' asked Varro through a yawn. The happy excitement fled from Pompey's face, his hands fell; he stepped back and looked at Varro darkly. "I would prefer to forget the Siege of Rome!" he snapped. "They dragged my father's naked body tied to an ass through their wretched streets!" Poor Varro flushed so deeply the color flooded into his balding pate. "Oh, Magnus, I do beg your pardon! I did not I would not I am your guest please forgive me!" But the mood was gone. Pompey laughed, clapped Varro on the back. "Oh, it wasn't your doing, I know that!" The huge room was piercingly cold; Varro clasped his arms about his body. "I had better start for Rome at once." Pompey stared. "Rome? You're not going to Rome, you're coming with me! What do you think will happen in Rome? A lot of sheep running around bleating, the old women in the Senate arguing for days come with me, it will be much more fun!" "And where do you think you're going?" "To join Sulla, of course." "You don't need me for that, Magnus. Climb on your horse and ride off. Sulla will be glad to find you a place among his junior military tribunes, I'm sure. You've seen a lot of action." "Oh, Varro!" Flapping hands betrayed Pompey's exasperation. "I'm not going to join Sulla as a junior military tribune! I'm going to bring him three more legions! I, Sulla's lackey! Never! I intend to be his full partner in this enterprise." This astounding announcement broke upon Pompey's wife as upon Pompey's friend and houseguest; aware that she had gasped, almost voiced her shock aloud, Antistia moved quickly to a place where Pompey's eyes would not encounter her. He had quite forgotten her presence and she wanted to hear. Needed to hear.

  In the two and a half years she had been his wife, Pompey had left her side for more than a day on only one occasion. Oh, the loveliness of that! To enjoy his undivided attention! Tickled, chided, rumpled, ruffled, hugged, bitten, bruised, tumbled ... Like a dream. Who could ever have imagined it? She, the daughter of a senator of mere middle rank and barely sufficient fortune, to find herself given in marriage to Gnaeus Pompeius who called himself Magnus! Rich enough to marry anyone, the lord of half Umbria and Picenum, so fair and handsome everyone thought he looked like a reincarnation of Alexander the Great what a husband her father had found for her! And after several years of despairing that she would never find a suitable husband, so small was her dowry. Naturally she had known why Pompey had married her; he had needed a great service from her father. Who happened to be the judge at Pompey's trial. That had been a trumped up affair, of course all of Rome had known it. But Cinna had desperately needed vast sums to fund his recruitment campaign, and young Pompey's wealth was going to provide those vast sums. For which reason had young Pompey been indicted upon charges more correctly directed at his dead father, Pompey Strabo that he had illegally appropriated some of the spoils from the city of Asculum Picentum. Namely, one hunting net and some buckets of books. Trifling. The catch lay not in the magnitude of the offense, but in the fine; were Pompey to be convicted, Cinna's minions empaneled to decide the size of the penalty were at perfect liberty to fine him his entire fortune. A more Roman man would have settled to fight the case in court and if necessary bribe the jury; but Pompey whose very face proclaimed the Gaul in him had preferred to marry the judge's daughter. The time of year had been October, so while November and December wore themselves away, Antistia's father had conducted his court with masterly inaction. The trial of his new son in law never really eventuated, delayed by inauspicious omens, accusations of corrupt jurors, meetings of the Senate, agues and plagues. With the result that in January, the consul Carbo had persuaded Cinna to look elsewhere for the money they so desperately needed. The threat to Pompey's fortune was no more. Barely eighteen, Antistia had accompanied her dazzling marital prize to his estates in the northeast of the Italian peninsula, and there in the daunting black stone pile of the Pompey stronghold had plunged wholeheartedly into the delights of being Pompey's bride. Luckily she was a pretty little girl stuffed with dimples and curves, and just ripe for bed, so her happiness had been undiluted for quite a long time. And when the twinges of disquiet began to intrude, they came not from her adored Magnus but from his faithful retainers, servants and minor squires who not only looked down on her, but actually seemed to feel free to let her know they looked down o
n her. Not a great burden as long as Pompey was close enough to come home at night. But now he was talking of going off to war, of raising legions and enlisting in Sulla's cause! Oh, what would she do without her adored Magnus to shield her from the slights of his people?

  He was still trying to convince Varro that the only proper alternative was to go with him to join Sulla, but that prim and pedantic little fellow so elderly in mind for one who had not been in the Senate more than two years! was still resisting. "How many troops has Sulla got?" Varro was asking. "Five veteran legions, six thousand cavalry, a few volunteers from Macedonia and the Peloponnese, and five cohorts of Spaniards belonging to that dirty swindler, Marcus Crassus. About thirty nine thousand altogether." An answer which had Varro clawing at the air. "I say again, Magnus, grow up!" he cried. "I've just come from Ariminum, where Carbo is sitting with eight legions and a huge force of cavalry and that is just the beginning! In Campania alone there are sixteen other legions! For three years Cinna and Carbo gathered troops there are one hundred and fifty thousand men under arms in Italy and Italian Gaul! How can Sulla cope with such numbers?" "Sulla will eat them," said Pompey, unimpressed. "Besides, I'm going to bring him three legions of my father's hardened veterans. Carbo's soldiers are milk smeared recruits." "You really are going to raise your own army?" "I really am." "Magnus, you're only twenty two years old! You can't expect your father's veterans to enlist for you!" "Why not?" asked Pompey, genuinely puzzled. "For one thing, you're eight years too young to qualify for the Senate. You're twenty years away from the consulship. And even if your father's men would enlist under you, to ask them to do so is absolutely illegal. You're a private citizen, and private citizens don't raise armies." "For over three years Rome's government has been illegal," Pompey countered. "Cinna consul four times, Carbo twice, Marcus Gratidianus twice the urban praetor, almost half the Senate outlawed, Appius Claudius banished with his imperium intact, Fimbria running round Asia Minor making deals with King Mithridates the whole thing is a joke!" Varro managed to look like a pompous mule not so very difficult for a Sabine of the rosea rura, where mules abounded. "The matter must be solved constitutionally," he said. That provoked Pompey to outright laughter. "Oh, Varro! I do indeed like you, but you are hopelessly unrealistic! If this matter could be solved constitutionally, why are there one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Italy and Italian Gaul?" Again Varro clawed the air, but this time in defeat. "Oh, very well, then! I'll come with you." Pompey beamed, threw his arm around Varro's shoulders and guided him in the direction of the corridor which led to his rooms. "Splendid, splendid! You'll be able to write the history of my first campaigns you're a better stylist than your friend Sisenna. I am the most important man of our age, I deserve to have my own historian at my side." But Varro had the last word. "You must be important! Why else would you have the gall good pun, that! to call yourself Magnus?" He snorted. "The Great! At twenty two, The Great! The best your father could do was to call himself after his cross eyes!" A sally Pompey ignored, busy now with steward and armorer, issuing a stream of instructions. And then finally the vividly painted and gilded atrium was empty save for Pompey. And Antistia. He came across to her. "Silly little kitten, you'll catch a chill," he scolded, and kissed her fondly. "Back to bed, my honey cake." "Can't I help you pack?" she asked, sounding desolate. "My men will do that for me, but you can watch." This time the way was lit by a servant bearing a massive chandelier; fitting herself into Pompey's side, Antistia (still clutching her own little lamp) walked with him to the room where all his war gear was stored. An imposing collection. Fully ten different cuirasses hung from T shaped poles gold, silver, steel, leather strapped with phalerae and swords and helmets hung from pegs on the walls, as did kilts of leather straps and various kinds of padded underpinnings. "Now stay there and be an absolutely darling little mouse," Pompey said as he lifted his wife like a feather and put her atop a couple of big chests, her feet dangling clear of the floor. Where she was forgotten. Pompey and his menservants went through every item one by one would it be useful, was it going to be necessary? Then when Pompey had ransacked the other trunks scattered around the room, he carelessly transferred his wife to a different perch in order to ransack her original seat, tossing this and that to the waiting slaves, talking away to himself so happily that Antistia could cherish no illusions he was going to miss his wife, his home, or civilian life. Of course she had always known that he regarded himself first and foremost as a soldier, that he despised the more customary pursuits of his peers rhetoric, law, government, assemblies, the plots and ploys of politics. How many times had she heard him say he would vault himself into the consul's ivory chair on his spear, not on fine words and empty phrases? Now here he was putting his boast into practice, the soldier son of a soldier father going off to war. The moment the last of the slaves had staggered away under armloads of equipment, Antistia slid off her trunk and went to stand in front of her husband. "Before you go, Magnus, I must speak to you," she said. Clearly this he regarded as a waste of his precious time, but he did pause. "Well, what is it?" "How long are you going to be away?" "Haven't the slightest idea," he said cheerfully. "Months? A year?" "Months, probably. Sulla will eat Carbo." "Then I would like to return to Rome and live in my father's house while you're gone." But he shook his head, clearly astonished at her proposal. "Not a chance!" he said. "I'm not having my wife running round Carbo's Rome while I'm with Sulla in the field against the selfsame Carbo. You'll stay here." "Your servants and other people don't like me. If you're not here, it will go hard for me." "Rubbish!" he said, turning away. She detained him by stepping in front of him once more. "Oh, please, husband, spare me just a few moments of your time! I know it's a valuable commodity, but I am your wife." He sighed. "All right, all right! But quickly, Antistia!" "I can't stay here!" "You can and you will." He moved from one foot to the other. "When you're absent, Magnus even for a few hours your people are not kind to me. I have never complained because you are always kind to me, and you've been here except for the time you went to Ancona to see Cinna. But now there is no other woman in your house, I will be utterly alone. It would be better if I returned to my father's house until the war is over, truly." "Out of the question. Your father is Carbo's man." "No, he is not. He is his own man." Never before had she opposed him, or even stood up to him; Pompey's patience began to fray. "Look, Antistia, I have better things to do than stay here arguing with you. You're my wife, and that means you'll stay in my house." "Where your steward sneers at me and leaves me in the dark, where I have no servants of my own and no one to keep me company," she said, trying to appear calm and reasonable, but beginning to panic underneath. "That's absolute rubbish!" "It is not, Magnus. It is not! I don't know why everyone looks down on me, but everyone does." "Well, of course they do!" he said, surprised at her denseness. Her eyes widened. "Of course they look down on me? What do you mean, of course?" He shrugged. "My mother was a Lucilia. So was my grandmother. And what are you?" "That is a very good question. What am I?" He could see she was angry, and it angered him. Women! Here he was with his first big war on his hands, and this creature of no significance was determined to stage her own drama! Did women have no sense at all? "You're my first wife," he said. "First wife?" "A temporary measure." "Oh, I see!" She looked thoughtful. "A temporary measure. The judge's daughter, I suppose you mean." "Well, you've always known that." "But it was a long time ago, I thought it had passed, I thought you loved me. My family is senatorial, I'm not inappropriate." "For an ordinary man, no. But you're not good enough for me.'' "Oh, Magnus, where do you get your conceit from? Is that why you have never once finished yourself inside me? Because I'm not good enough to bear your children?" "Yes!" he shouted, starting to leave the room. She followed him with her little lamp, too angry now to care who heard. "I was good enough to get you off when Cinna was after your money!" "We've already established that," he said, hurrying. "How convenient for you then, that Cinna is dead!" "Convenient for Rome and all good Romans." "You had Cinna m
urdered!" The words echoed down the stone corridor that was big enough to allow the passage of an army; Pompey stopped. "Cinna died in a drunken brawl with some reluctant recruits." "In Ancona your town, Magnus! Your town! And right after you had been there to see him!" she cried. One moment she was standing in possession of herself, the next she was pinned against the wall with Pompey's hands about her throat. Not squeezing. Just about her throat. "Never say that again, woman," he said softly. "It's what my father says!" she managed, mouth dry. The hands tightened ever so slightly. "Your father didn't like Cinna much. But he doesn't mind Carbo in the least, which is why it would give me great pleasure to kill him. But it won't give me any pleasure to kill you. I don't kill women. Keep your tongue behind your teeth, Antistia. Cinna's death had nothing to do with me, it was a simple accident." "I want to go to my father and mother in Rome!" Pompey released her, gave her a shove. "The answer is no. Now leave me alone!" He was gone, calling for the steward; in the distance she could hear him telling that abominable man that she was not to be allowed to leave the precincts of the Pompey fortress once he was off to his war. Trembling, Antistia returned slowly to the bedroom she had shared with Pompey for two and a half years as his first wife a temporary expedient. Not good enough to bear his children. Why hadn't she guessed that, when she had wondered many times why he always withdrew, always left a slimy puddle for her to clean off her belly? The tears were beginning to gather. Soon they would fall, and once they did she would not be able to stop them for hours. Disillusionment before love has lost its keenest edge is terrible. There came another of those chilling barbarian whoops, and faintly Pompey's voice: "I'm off to war, I'm off to war! Sulla has landed in Italy, and it's war!"

  2

  Dawn had scarcely broken when Pompey, clad in glittering silver armor and flanked by his eighteen year old brother and by Varro, led a little party of clerks and scribes into the marketplace of Auximum. There he planted his father's standard in the middle of its open space and waited with ill concealed impatience until his secretariat had assembled itself behind a series of trestle tables, sheets of paper at the ready, reed pens sharpened, cakes of ink dissolved in heavy stone wells. By the time all this was done, the crowd had gathered so thickly that it spilled out of the square into the streets and lanes converging upon it. Light and lithe, Pompey leaped onto a makeshift podium beneath Pompey Strabo's woodpecker standard. "Well, it's come!" he shouted. "Lucius Cornelius Sulla has landed in Brundisium to claim what is rightfully his an uninterrupted imperium, a triumph, the privilege of depositing his laurels at the feet of Jupiter Optimus Maximus inside the Capitol of Rome! At just about this time last year, the other Lucius Cornelius he cognominated Cinna was not far away from here trying to enlist my father's veterans in his cause. He did not succeed. Instead, he died. Today you see me. And today I see many of my father's veterans standing before me. I am my father's heir! His men are my men. His past is my future. I am going to Brundisium to fight for Sulla, for he is in the right of it. How many of you will come with me?'' Short and simple, thought Varro, lost in admiration. Maybe the young man was correct about vaulting into the consul's curule chair on his spear rather than on a wave of words. Certainly no face he could discern in that crowd seemed to find Pompey's speech lacking. No sooner had he finished than the women began to drift away clucking about the imminent absence of husbands and sons, some wringing their hands at the thought, some already engrossed in the practicalities of filling kit bags with spare tunics and socks, some looking studiously at the ground to hide sly smiles. Pushing excited children out of the way with mock slaps and kicks, the men shoved forward to cluster about those trestle tables. Within moments, Pompey's clerks were scribbling strenuously. From a nice vantage spot high on the steps of Auximum's old temple of Picus, Varro sat and watched the activity. Had they ever volunteered so lightheartedly for cross eyed Pompey Strabo's campaigns? he wondered. Probably not. That one had been the lord, a hard man but a fine commander; they would have served him with goodwill but sober faces. For the son, it was clearly different. I am looking at a phenomenon, Varro thought. The Myrmidons could not have gone more happily to fight for Achilles, nor the Macedonians for Alexander the Great. They love him! He's their darling, their mascot, their child as much as their father. A vast bulk deposited itself on the step next to him, and Varro turned his head to see a red face topped by red hair; a pair of intelligent blue eyes were busy assessing him, the only stranger present. "And who might you be?" asked the ruddy giant. "My name is Marcus Terentius Varro, and I'm a Sabine." "Like us, eh? Well, a long time ago, at any rate." A horny paw waved in the direction of Pompey. Look at him, will you? Oh, we've been waiting for this day, Marcus Terentius Varro the Sabine! Be he not the Goddess's honeypot?" Varro smiled. "I'm not sure I'd choose that way of putting it, but I do see what you mean." "Ah! You're not only a gentleman with three names, you're a learned gentleman! A friend of his, might you be?" "I might be." "And what might you do for a crust, eh?" "In Rome, I'm a senator. But in Reate, I breed mares." "What, not mules?" "It's better to breed the mares than their mule offspring. I have a little bit of the rosea rura, and a few stud donkeys too.'' How old might you be?'' "Thirty two," said Varro, enjoying himself immensely. But suddenly the questions ceased; Varro's interlocutor disposed himself more comfortably by resting one elbow on the step above him and stretching out a Herculean pair of legs to cross his ankles. Fascinated, the diminutive Varro eyed grubby toes almost as large as his own fingers. "And what might your name be?" he asked, falling into the local vernacular quite naturally. "Quintus Scaptius." "Might you have enlisted?" "All Hannibal's elephants couldn't stop me!" "Might you be a veteran?" "Joined his daddy's army when I was seventeen. That was eight years ago, but I've already served in twelve campaigns, so I don't have to join up anymore unless I might want to," said Quintus Scaptius. "But you did want to." "Hannibal's elephants, Marcus Terentius, Hannibal's elephants!" Might you be of centurion rank?'' "I might be for this campaign." While they talked, Varro and Scaptius kept their eyes on Pompey, who stood just in front of the middle table joyfully hailing this man or that among the throng. "He says he'll march before this moon has run her course," Varro observed, "but I fail to see how. I admit none of these men here today will need much if any training, but where's he going to get enough arms and armor? Or pack animals? Or wagons and oxen? Or food? And what will he do for money to keep his great enterprise going?'' Scaptius grunted, apparently an indication of amusement. "He does not need to worry about any of that! His daddy gave each of us our arms and armor at the start of the war against the Italians; then after his daddy died, the boy told us to hang on to them. We each got a mule, and the centurions got the carts and oxen. So we'd be ready against the day. You'll never catch the Pompeii napping! There's wheat enough in our granaries and lots of other food in our storehouses. Our women and children won't go hungry because we're eating well on campaign." "And what about money?" asked Varro gently. "Money?" Scaptius dismissed this necessity with a sniff of contempt. "We served his daddy without seeing much of it, and that's the truth. Wasn't any to be had in those days. When he's got it, he'll give it to us. When he hasn't got it, we'll do without. He's a good master." "So I see." Lapsing into silence, Varro studied Pompey with fresh interest. Everyone told tales about the legendary independence of Pompey Strabo during the Italian War: how he had kept his legions together long after he was ordered to disband them, and how he had directly altered the course of events in Rome because he had not disbanded them. No massive wage bills had ever turned up on the Treasury's books when Cinna had them audited after the death of Gaius Marius; now Varro knew why. Pompey Strabo hadn't bothered to pay his troops. Why should he, when he virtually owned them? At this moment Pompey left his post to stroll across to Picus's temple steps. "I'm off to find a campsite," he said to Varro, then gave the Hercules sitting next to Varro a huge grin. "Got in early, I see, Scaptius." Scaptius lumbered to his feet. "Yes, Magnus. I'd best be getting home to dig out my gear, eh?" So everyone
called him Magnus! Varro too rose. "I'll ride with you, Magnus." The crowd was dwindling, and women were beginning to come back into the marketplace; a few merchants, hitherto thwarted, were busy putting up their booths, slaves rushing to stock them. Loads of dirty washing were dropped on the paving around the big fountain in front of the local shrine to the Lares, and one or two girls hitched up their skirts to climb into the shallow water. How typical this town is, thought Varro, walking a little behind Pompey: sunshine and dust, a few good shady trees, the purr of insects, a sense of timeless purpose, wrinkled winter apples, busy folk who all know far too much about each other. There are no secrets here in Auximum! "These men are a fierce lot," he said to Pompey as they left the marketplace to find their horses. "They're Sabines, Varro, just like you," said Pompey, "even if they did come east of the Apennines centuries ago." "Not quite like me!" Varro allowed himself to be tossed into the saddle by one of Pompey's grooms. "I may be a Sabine, but I'm not by nature or training a soldier." "You did your stint in the Italian War, surely." "Yes, of course. And served in my ten campaigns. How quickly they mounted up during that conflagration! But I haven't thought of a sword or a suit of chain mail since it ended.'' Pompey laughed. "You sound like my friend Cicero." "Marcus Tullius Cicero? The legal prodigy?" "That's him, yes. Hated war. Didn't have the stomach for it, which my father didn't understand. But he was a good fellow all the same, liked to do what I didn't like to do. So between us we kept my father mighty pleased without telling him too much." Pompey sighed. "After Asculum Picentum fell he insisted on going off to serve under Sulla in Campania. I missed him!"