Fortune's Favorites Page 12

  "Pompeius's veterans carried the day," said Brutus in a reasonable tone.

  "Maybe. But if so, then Pompeius let them do their job without interference." Impatient, it seemed, to leap into the future, Carbo now changed the subject. “Praetors are not what concern me, Brutus. I'm worried about the consulship-thanks to your predictions of gloom! If necessary, I'll stand for consul myself. But whom can I take for a colleague? Who in this wretched city is capable of shoring me up rather than dragging me down? There will be war in the spring, nothing is surer. Sulla's not been well, but my intelligence sources say he'll face the next campaigning season in high fettle."

  "Illness was not his only reason for hanging back this past year," said Brutus. "We've heard rumors that he's stayed inert to give Rome the chance to capitulate without a war."

  "Then he stayed inert in vain!" said Carbo savagely. "Oh, enough of these speculations! Whom can I take as my fellow consul?"

  "Have you no ideas?" asked Brutus.

  "Not a one. I need someone capable of firing people's spirits-someone who will inspire the young men to enlist, and the old men to wish they could enlist. A man like Sertorius. But you say flatly that he won't consent."

  "What about Marcus Marius Gratidianus, then?"

  "He's a Marius by adoption, and that's not good enough. I wanted Sertorius because he's a Marius by blood."

  There was a pause, but not of a helpless kind; hearing an indrawn breath from her husband, the listener outside the window stiffened to absolute stillness, determined not to miss a single word of what was coming.

  "If it's a Marius you want," said Brutus slowly, "why not Young Marius?"

  Another pause ensued, of the thunderstruck variety. Then Carbo said, "That's not possible! Edepol, Brutus, he's not much more than twenty years old!"

  "Twenty-six, actually."

  "He's four years too young for the Senate!"

  "There's no constitutionally official age, in spite of the lex Villia annalis. Custom rules. So I suggest you have Perperna appoint him to the Senate at once."

  "He's not his father's bootlace!" cried Carbo.

  "Does that matter? Does it, Gnaeus Papirius? Really? I admit that in Sertorius you would have found your ideal member of the Marii-no one in Rome commands soldiers better, or is more respected by them. But he won't consent. So who else is there except Young Marius?"

  "They'd certainly flock to enlist," said Carbo softly.

  "And fight for him like the Spartans for Leonidas."

  “Do you think he could do it?''

  "I think he'd like to try."

  "You mean he's already expressed a wish to be consul?"

  Brutus laughed, something he was not prone to do. "No, Carbo, of course not! Though he's a conceited sort of fellow, he's not actually very ambitious. I simply mean that I think if you went to him and offered him the chance, he'd jump at it. Nothing so far in his life has presented him with any opportunity to emulate his father. And in one respect at least, this will give him the opportunity to surpass his father. Gaius Marius came late into office. Young Marius will be consul at a younger age even than Scipio Africanus. No matter how he fares, there's fame in that for him."

  “If he fares half as well as Scipio Africanus, Rome stands in no danger from Sulla."

  "Don't hope for a Scipio Africanus in Young Marius," warned Brutus. "The only way he could prevent Cato the Consul from losing a battle was to stab him in the back."

  Carbo laughed, something he did often. "Well, that was a bit of luck for Cinna at least! Old Marius paid him a fortune not to press a charge of murder."

  "Yes," said Brutus, sounding very serious, "but that episode should point out to you some of the difficulties you'll face with Young Marius as your colleague in the consulship."

  "Don't turn my back?"

  "Don't turn your best troops over to him. Let him prove he can general troops before you do that."

  There came the noise of chair legs scraping; Servilia got to her feet and fled to the warmth of her workroom, where the young girl who did the nursery laundry was enjoying a rare chance to cuddle baby Brutus.

  The flare of scorching jealousy leaped inside Servilia before she could control it; her hand flashed out, cracked so hard against the girl's cheek that she fell from her perch on the crib, and in so doing, dropped the baby. Who didn't reach the floor because his mother swooped to catch him. Then, clasping him fiercely to her breast, Servilia literally kicked the girl from the room.

  "Tomorrow you'll be sold!" she shrieked down the length of the colonnade enclosing the peristyle garden. Her voice changed, she merely shouted now: "Ditus! Ditus!"

  The steward, whose flowery name was Epaphroditus but was usually addressed as Ditus, came at the run. "Yes, domina?”

  "That girl-the Gaul you gave me to wash Baby's things-flog her and sell her as a bad slave."

  The steward gaped. "But domina, she's excellent! Not only does she wash well, she's absolutely devoted to Baby!"

  Servilia slapped Epaphroditus quite as hard as she had the girl, then demonstrated that she knew how to use a choice obscenity. “Now listen to me, you pampered, over-fed Greek fellator! When I give you an order you'll obey it without a word, let alone an argument! I don't care whose property you are, so don't go whining to the master, or you'll rue it! Now fetch the girl to your office and wait for me. You like her, so you won't flog her hard enough unless I'm there to see it."

  The crimson mark of her hand standing out on his face was complete to its fingers, but it didn't provoke the terror in him that her words did. Epaphroditus bolted.

  Servilia didn't ask for another maid; instead, she herself wrapped baby Brutus warmly in a fine wool shawl, and carried him down to the steward's office. The girl was tied down and a weeping Epaphroditus forced, under the basilisk glare of his mistress, to flog her until her back turned to bright red jelly and gobbets of her flesh flew everywhere. Incessant screams erupted from the room into the snow-muffled air, but the snow could not muffle those screams. Nor did the master appear to demand what was going on, for Brutus had gone with Carbo to see Young Marius, as Servilia had guessed.

  Finally Servilia nodded. The steward's arm fell. She walked up to inspect his handiwork closely, and looked satisfied. "Yes, good! She'll never grow skin back on that mess again. No point in offering her for sale, she wouldn't fetch a single sestertius. Crucify her. Out there in the peristyle. She'll serve as a warning to the rest of you. And don't break her legs! Let her die slowly."

  Back to her workroom Servilia marched, there to unwrap her son and change his linen diaper. After which she sat him on her lap and held him out at arm's length to adore him, leaning forward occasionally to kiss him tenderly and talk to him in a soft, slightly growling voice.

  They made a sufficiently pretty picture, the small dark child upon his small dark mother's knee. She was a beautiful woman, Servilia, endowed with a firmly voluptuous figure and one of those little pointed faces which have an air of many secrets in a stilly folded mouth and thickly lidded, hooded eyes. The child however, owned only his infant's beauty, for in truth he was plain and rather torpid-what people called a "good baby" in that he cried hardly at all and made no fusses.

  And so when he came home from the house of Young Marius did Brutus find them, and listened without comment to the coldly narrated story of the negligent laundress and her punishment. As he would never have dared to interfere with Servilia's smoothly efficient domestic arrangements (his house had never run as well before he married her, so much was sure), he made no alterations to his wife's sentence, and when his steward came to him later at his summons, did not remark upon the snow-smothered figure tied lolling to a cross in the garden.

  "Caesar! Where are you, Caesar?" He came strolling barefooted out of what used to be his father's study, a pen in one hand and a roll of paper in the other, wearing no more than a thin tunic. Frowning, because his mother's voice had interrupted his train of thought.

  But she, swaddled in layer
upon layer of exquisitely fine home-woven woolen fabric, was more concerned with the welfare of his body than the output of his mind, and said testily, "Oh, why will you ignore the cold? You do, you know! And no slippers either! Caesar, your horoscope suggests that you will suffer a terrible illness at about this time in your life, and you're aware it does. Why do you tempt the lady Fortune to touch the line of that evil aspect and bring it into being? Horoscopes are commissioned at birth to ensure that potential risks can be prevented from becoming real. Be good!"

  Her perturbation was absolutely genuine-and he knew it-so he gave her the smile for which he was already famous, a kind of unspoken apology that did not threaten his pride.

  "What is it?" he asked, resigned the moment he set eyes on her to the fact that his work would have to wait; she was clad for going out.

  "We've been sent for to your Aunt Julia's."

  “At this time of day? In this weather?''

  "I'm glad you've noticed the weather! Not that it prompts you to dress sensibly," said Aurelia.

  "I do have a brazier, Mater. In fact, I have two."

  "Then go into the warmth and change," she said. "It is freezing in here, with the wind whistling down the light well." Before he turned to go, she added, "Best find Lucius Decumius. We're all asked."

  That meant both his sisters, which surprised him-it must be a very important family conference! Almost he opened his mouth to assure his mother that he didn't need Lucius Decumius, that a hundred women would be safe under his protection; then he shut it. He wouldn't win, so why try? Aurelia always knew how she wanted things done.

  When he emerged from his rooms he was wearing the regalia of the flamen Dialis, though in weather like this he wore three tunics beneath it, woolen breeches to below his knees, and thick socks inside a pair of baggy boots without straps or laces. His priest's laena took the place of another man's toga; this clumsy double-layered garment was cut on the full circle, contained a hole in its middle through which he poked his head, and was richly colored in broad stripes of alternating scarlet and purple. It reached to his knees and completely concealed his arms and hands, which meant, he thought ruefully (trying to find some virtue in his detested laena), that he did not need to wear mittens in this icy storm. Atop his head sat the apex, a close-fitting ivory helmet surmounted by a spike upon which was impaled a thick disc of wool.

  Since officially becoming a man, Caesar had adhered to the taboos which hedged the flamen Dialis around; he had abandoned military practice on the Campus Martius, he allowed no iron to touch his person, he wore no knots or buckles, said hello to no dog, had his footwear made from the leather of an animal killed accidentally, and ate only those things his role as flamen Dialis permitted. That his chin displayed no beard was because he shaved with a bronze razor; that he had managed to wear boots when his priestly clogs were impractical was only because he had personally designed a style of boot to fit well without using the normal devices which made it snug around ankle and calf.

  Not even his mother knew how deeply he loathed his lifelong sentence as Priest of Jupiter. When he had become a man at half-past fifteen, he had assumed the senseless shibboleths of his flaminate without a murmur or a look, and Aurelia had heaved a sigh of relief. The early rebellion had not lasted. What she couldn't know was his true reason for obeying: he was a Roman to his core, which meant he was committed absolutely to the customs of his country, and he was inordinately superstitious. He had to obey! If he did not, he would never obtain the favor of Fortune. She would not smile upon him or his endeavors, he would have no luck. For despite this hideous lifelong sentence, he still believed Fortune would find a way out for him-if he did his best to serve Jupiter Optimus Maximus as his special priest.

  Thus obedience did not mean reconciliation, as Aurelia thought it did. Obedience only meant that with every passing day he hated being flamen Dialis more. And hated it most because under the law there could be no escape. Old Gaius Marius had succeeded in shackling him forever. Unless Fortune rescued him.

  Caesar was seventeen, would not be eighteen until another seven months had elapsed; but he looked older, and he carried himself like a consular who had also been censor. The height and the broad shoulders helped, of course, allied as they were to a gracefully muscular frame. His father had been dead for two and a half years, which meant he had come very early into his title of paterfamilias, and now wore it naturally. The extreme good looks of his boyhood had not faded, though they had become more manly-his nose, thank all the gods, had lengthened to a form properly, bumpily Roman, and saved him from a prettiness which would have been a great burden to one who so ardently desired to be everything a man should be-soldier, statesman, lover of women without suspicion that he was also a lover of men.

  His family was assembled in the reception room, garbed for a long, cold walk. Except, that is, for his wife, Cinnilla. At eleven years of age she was not considered adult enough to attend these rare gatherings of the clan. However, she was present, the only small and dark member of the house; when Caesar entered, her pansy-black eyes flew to his face just as they always did. He adored her, moved to her now and swept her off her feet to hold her in his arms, kissing her soft pink cheek with his eyes closed the better to inhale the exquisite perfume of a child kept clean and balmed by his mother.

  "Doomed to stay home?" he asked, kissing her cheek again.

  "One day I'll be big enough," she said, showing dimples in her enchanting smile.

  "Indeed you will! And then you'll be more important than Mater, because you'll be the mistress of the house." He put the child down, smoothed his hand over her mass of waving black hair, and winked at Aurelia.

  "I won't be the mistress of this house," she said solemnly. "I'll be the flaminica Dialis, and mistress of a State house."

  "True," he said lightly. "How could I have forgotten?"

  Out into the driving snow he went, up past the shops which nestled in the outer wall of Aurelia's apartment house, to the rounded apex of that triangular building. Here was located what appeared to be a tavern, yet was not; it was the headquarters of the College of Crossroads Brethren who supervised the well-being and spiritual life of the crossroads outside its double doors, especially the towerlike shrine to the Lares and the big fountain, which now flowed sluggishly amid a tumble of ethereally blue icicles, so cold was this winter.

  Lucius Decumius was in residence at his usual table in the back left-hand corner of the huge, clean room. Grizzled these days but face as unlined as ever, he had recently admitted his two sons to membership, and was training them in all the multifarious activities of his college. So they sat one on either side of him like the two lions which always flanked a statue of Magna Mater-grave, tawny, thick-maned, yellow-eyed, claws furled. Not that Lucius Decumius in any way resembled Magna Mater! He was little, skinny, and anonymous-looking; his sons took after their mother, who was a large Celtic lady from the Ager Gallicus. To no one unacquainted with him did he seem what he actually was-brave, tortuously subtle, amoral, enormously intelligent, loyal.

  The three Decumii brightened when Caesar walked through the door, but only Lucius Decumius rose. Threading his way between the tables and benches, he reached Caesar, stood on tiptoe and kissed the young man on the lips more fondly than he did either of his sons. It was the kiss of a father, though it was given to someone whose only connection with him lay tangled amid the cords of his not inconsiderable heart.

  "My boy!" he crowed, and took Caesar's hand.

  "Hello, dad," Caesar answered with a smile, lifted Lucius Decumius's fingers and pressed them against his cold cheek.

  "Been sweeping out some dead man's house?" asked Lucius Decumius, in reference to Caesar's priestly regalia. "Nasty weather for dying! Have a cup of wine to warm you, eh?"

  Caesar grimaced. He had never managed to cultivate a real liking for wine, try though Lucius Decumius and his brethren had to instill it in him. "No time, dad. I'm here to borrow a couple of the brethren. I have to take my m
other and sisters to the house of Gaius Marius, and she doesn't trust me to do it on my own, of course."

  "Wise woman, your mother," said Lucius Decumius with a look of wicked glee. He beckoned to his sons, who rose at once and came to join him. "Togs on, lads! We're going to take the ladies to the house of Gaius Marius."

  No resentment of their father's obvious preference for Gaius Julius Caesar colored the emotions of Lucius Decumius Junior or young Marcus Decumius; they simply nodded, clapped Caesar on the back in great affection, and went off to find their warmest clothing.

  "Don't come, dad," said Caesar. "Stay here out of the cold."

  But that didn't suit Lucius Decumius, who allowed his sons to dress him much as a doting mother might have dressed her toddling offspring. "Where's that oaf Burgundus?" he asked as they spilled out into the swirling snow.

  Caesar chuckled. "No use to anyone at the moment! Mater sent him down to Bovillae with Cardixa. She might have started breeding late, but she's produced one baby giant every year since she first set eyes on Burgundus. This will be number four, as you well know."

  "You'll never be short of bodyguards when you're consul."

  Caesar shivered, but not from the cold. "I'll never be consul," he said harshly, then lifted his shoulders and tried to be pleasant. "My mother says it's like feeding a tribe of Titans. Ye gods, they can eat!"

  "Good people, but."

  "Yes, good people," said Caesar.

  By this time they had reached the outer door of Aurelia's apartment, and collected the womenfolk. Other aristocratic ladies might have elected to ride in litters, especially in such weather, but not the Julian ladies. They walked, their progress down the Fauces Suburae somewhat eased by the Decumius sons, who shuffled ahead to blaze a path through the accumulating snow.

  The Forum Romanum was utterly deserted, and looked odd bled of its vividly colored columns and walls and roofs and statues; everything was marble-white, seemed sunk in a deep and dreamless sleep. And the imposing statue of Gaius Marius near the rostra had a bank of snow perched on either bushy eyebrow, masking the normally fierce glare of his dark eyes.