The Grass Crown Read online

  Whereas the best portrait of his old friend that Rutilius Rufus had ever seen had been a crude drawing in some black substance upon the outside wall of Rutilius Rufus's own house. Just a few lines was all—a single voluptuous curve to suggest that full lower lip, a sort of glitter for the eyes—how could whoever did it make black seem a glitter?—and no more than ten lines for each eyebrow. Yet it was Gaius Marius to the life, with all the pride, the intelligence, the indomitability, the sheer character. Only how did one describe it, that form of art? Vultum in peius fingere ... A face fashioned out of malice. But so good that the malice had turned into truth. Alas, before Rutilius Rufus could work out how he might remove the piece of plaster without its crumbling into a thousand fragments, there had been a heavy fall of rain, and Gaius Marius's best likeness was no more.

  No backstreet scrawler upon walls could ever do that to Lucius Cornelius Sulla, however. Without the magic of color, Sulla could have been any of a thousand fairly handsome men. Regular face, regular features, a proper Romanness about him that Gaius Marius could never own. Yet seen in color, he was unique. At forty-two he showed no signs of thinning hair—such hair! Neither red, nor gold. Thick, waving, worn perhaps a little too long. And eyes like the ice in a glacier, the palest of blues, ringed around with a blue as dark as a thundercloud. Tonight his thin, upcurving brows were a good brown, as were his long thick lashes. But Publius Rutilius Rufus had seen him in more urgent circumstances, and knew that tonight, as was his wont, he had applied stibium to them; for in reality, Sulla's brows and lashes were so fair they only showed at all because his skin was a pallid, almost unpigmented white.

  Women lost sanity, virtue, judgment over Sulla. They threw caution to the winds, outraged their husbands and fathers and brothers, gushed and giggled if he so much as glanced at them in passing. Such an able, intelligent man! A superlative soldier, an efficient administrator, brave as any man could hope to be, little short of perfection at organizing himself or others. And yet women were his downfall. Or so thought Publius Rutilius Rufus, whose nice but homely face and ordinary mousy coloring had never distinguished him from a myriad other men. Not that Sulla was a philanderer, or even an occasional ladykiller; as far as Rutilius Rufus knew, he behaved with admirable rectitude. But there was no doubt that a man who hungered to reach the top of the Roman political ladder stood a much better chance of doing so if he did not have a face like Apollo's; handsome men who were enormously attractive to women were generally mistrusted by their peers, dismissed as lightweights, or as effeminate fellows, or as potential cuckolders.

  Last year, thought Rutilius Rufus, his reminiscences meandering on, Sulla had run for election as a praetor. Everything seemed to be in his favor. His war record was splendid—and well advertised, for Gaius Marius had made sure the electors knew how invaluable Sulla had been to him, as quaestor, tribune, and finally legate. Even Catulus Caesar (who had no real cause to love Sulla, the author of his embarrassment in Italian Gaul, when Sulla, by instigating a mutiny, had saved Catulus Caesar's army from annihilation) had come forth and praised his services in Italian Gaul, the year the German Cimbri had been defeated. Then, during the few short days when Lucius Appuleius Saturninus had threatened the State, it had been Sulla, tirelessly energetic and efficient, who had enabled Gaius Marius to put an end to the business. For when Gaius Marius had issued an order, it had been Sulla who implemented it. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus—he whom Marius, Sulla and Rutilius Rufus called Piggle-wiggle—had been assiduous before he went into exile in explaining to everyone he knew that in his opinion, the successful conclusion of the war in Africa against King Jugurtha was entirely due to Sulla, that Marius had claimed the credit unfairly. For it had been thanks to Sulla's solo efforts that Jugurtha himself had been captured, and everyone knew that until Jugurtha was captured, the war in Africa would drag on. When Catulus Caesar and some of the other ultra-conservative leaders in the Senate agreed with Piggle-wiggle that the credit for the Jugurthine War should by rights go to Sulla, Sulla's star seemed sure to rise, his election as one of the six praetors a certainty. To all of which had to be added Sulla's own conduct in the matter—admirably modest, deprecating, fair-minded. Until the very end of the electoral campaign, he had insisted that his capture of Jugurtha must be attributed to Marius, as he himself had only been acting under Marius's orders. This kind of conduct the voters usually appreciated; loyalty to one's commander in the field or the Forum was highly prized.

  And yet, when the Centuriate electors assembled in the saepta on the Campus Martius and the Centuries one by one gave their choices, the name of Lucius Cornelius Sulla—so aristocratic and acceptable in itself—was not among the six successful candidates; to add insult to injury, some of the men who were elected were as mediocre in achievement as in their ability to show the proper ancestors.

  Why? Immediately after polling day, that was the question everyone attached to Sulla asked, though he said nothing. However, he knew why; a little later, Rutilius Rufus and Marius learned what Sulla already knew. The reason for his failure had a name, and was not physically very large. Caecilia Metella Dalmatica. Barely nineteen years old. And the wife of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus, he who had been consul in the year the Germans first appeared, censor in the year Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle had gone off to Africa to fight Jugurtha, and Leader of the House since his consulship, now seventeen years in the past. It had been Scaurus's son who was contracted to marry Dalmatica, but he had killed himself after Catulus Caesar's retreat from Tridentum, a self-confessed coward. And Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle, guardian of his seventeen-year-old niece, promptly gave her in marriage to Scaurus himself, though there were forty years between husband and wife.

  No one, of course, had asked Dalmatica how she felt about the union, and at first she hadn't been very sure herself. A little dazzled by the immense auctoritas and dignitas her new husband possessed, she was also glad to be free of her uncle Metellus Numidicus's stormy household, which at that time contained his sister, a woman whose sexual proclivities and hysterical behavior had made her a torment to live with. Dalmatica became pregnant at once (a fact which increased Scaurus's auctoritas and dignitas even more), and bore Scaurus a daughter. But in the meantime she had met Sulla at a dinner party given by her husband, and the attraction between them had been powerful, mutual, distressing.

  Aware of the danger she presented, Sulla had made no attempt to pursue an acquaintance with Scaurus's young wife. She, however, had different ideas. And after the shattered bodies of Saturninus and his friends were burned with all the honor their properly Roman status decreed, and Sulla began to go about the Forum and the city making himself known as part of his campaign to win a praetorship, Dalmatica too began to go about the Forum and the city. Wherever Sulla went, there too would be Dalmatica, all muffled in draperies, hiding behind a plinth or a column, sure that no one noticed her.

  Very quickly Sulla learned to avoid places like the Porticus Margaritaria, where indeed a woman of a noble house might be expected to haunt the jeweler's shops, and could claim innocent presence. That reduced her chances of actually speaking to him, but to Sulla her conduct was a resurrection of an old and awful nightmare—of the days when Julilla had buried him beneath an avalanche of love letters she or her girl had slipped into the sinus of his toga at every opportunity, in circumstances where he didn't dare draw attention to their actions. Well, that had ended in a marriage, a virtually indissoluble confarreatio union which had lasted—bitter, importunate, humiliating—until her death by suicide, yet one more terrible episode in an endless procession of women hungry to tame him.

  So Sulla had gone into the mean and stinking, crowded alleys of the Subura, and confided in the only friend he owned with the detachment he needed so desperately at that moment—Aurelia, sister-in-law of his dead wife, Julilla.

  "What can I do?" he had cried to her. "I'm trapped, Aurelia; it's Julilla all over again! I can't be rid of her!"

  "The tr
ouble is, they have so little to do with their time," said Aurelia, looking grim. "Nursemaids for their babies, little parties with their friends chiefly distinguished by the amount of gossip they exchange, looms they have no intention of using, and heads too empty to find solace in a book. Most of them feel nothing for their husbands because their marriages are made for convenience—their fathers need extra political clout, or their husbands the dowries or the extra nobility. A year down the road, and they're ripe for the mischief of a love affair." She sighed. "After all, Lucius Cornelius, in the matter of love they can exercise free choice, and in how many areas can they do that? The wiser among them content themselves with slaves. But the most foolish are those who fall in love. And that, unfortunately, is what has happened here. This poor silly child Dalmatica is quite out of her mind! And you are the cause of it."

  He chewed his lip, hid his thoughts by staring at his hands. "Not a willing cause," he said.

  "I know that! But does Marcus Aemilius Scaurus?"

  "Ye gods, I hope he knows nothing!"

  Aurelia snorted. "I'd say he knows plenty."

  "Then why hasn't he come to see me? Ought I to see him?"

  "I'm thinking about that," said the landlady of an insula apartment building, the confidante of many, the mother of three children, the lonely wife, the busy soul who was never a busybody.

  She was sitting side-on to her work table, a large area completely covered by rolls of paper, single sheets of paper, and book buckets; but there was no disorder, only the evidence of many business matters and much work.

  If she could not help him, Sulla thought, no one could, for the only other person to whom he might have gone was not reliable in this situation. Aurelia was purely friend; Metrobius was also lover, with all the emotional complications that role meant, as well as the further complication of his male sex. When he had seen Metrobius the day before, the young Greek actor had made an acid remark about Dalmatica. Shocked, Sulla had only then realized that all of Rome must be talking about him and Dalmatica, for the world of Metrobius was far removed from the world Sulla now moved in.

  "Ought I see Marcus Aemilius Scaurus?" Sulla asked again.

  "I'd prefer that you saw Dalmatica, but I don't see how you possibly can," said Aurelia, lips pursed.

  Sulla looked eager. “Could you perhaps invite her here?''

  "Certainly not!" said Aurelia, scandalized. "Lucius Cornelius, for a particularly hard-headed man, sometimes you don't seem to have the sense you were surely born with! Don't you understand? Marcus Aemilius Scaurus is undoubtedly having his wife watched. All that's saved your white hide so far is lack of evidence to support his suspicions."

  His long canines showed, but not in a smile; for an unwary moment Sulla dropped his mask, and Aurelia caught a glimpse of someone she didn't know. Yet—was that really true? Better to say, someone she had sensed lived there inside him, but never before had seen. Someone devoid of human qualities, a naked clawed monster fit only to scream at the moon. And for the first time in her life, she felt terrible fear.

  Her visible shiver banished the monster; Sulla put up his mask, and groaned.

  "Then what do I do, Aurelia? What can I do?"

  "The last time you talked about her—admittedly that was two years ago—you said you were in love with her, though you'd only met her that once. It's very like Julilla, isn't it? And that makes it more unbearable by far. Of course, she knows nothing of Julilla beyond the fact that in the past you had a wife who killed herself—exactly the sort of fact to enhance your attractiveness. It suggests you're dangerous for a woman to know, to love. What a challenge! No, I very much fear poor little Dalmatica is hopelessly caught in your toils, however unintentionally you may have thrown them."

  She thought for a moment in silence, then held his eyes. "Say nothing, Lucius Cornelius, and do nothing. Wait until Marcus Aemilius Scaurus comes to you. That way, you look utterly innocent. But make sure he can find no evidence of infidelity, even of the most circumstantial nature. Forbid your wife to be out of your house when you are at home, in case Dalmatica bribes one of your servants to let her in. The trouble is, you neither understand women, nor like them very much. So you don't know how to deal with their worst excesses—and they bring out the worst in you. Her husband must come to you. But be kind to him, I beg you! He will find his visit galling, an old man with a young wife. Not a cuckold, but only because of your disinterest. Therefore you must do everything in your power to keep his pride intact. After all, his clout is only equaled by Gaius Marius's." She smiled. "I know that's one comparison he wouldn't agree with, but it's true. If you want to be praetor, you can't afford to offend him."

  Sulla took her advice, but unfortunately not all of it; and made a bad enemy because he was not kind, not helpful, did not strive to keep Scaurus's pride intact.

  For sixteen days after his interview with Aurelia, nothing happened, except that now he searched for Scaurus's watchers, and he took every precaution to give Scaurus no evidence of infidelity. There were furtive winks and covert grins among Scaurus's friends, and among his own; no doubt they had always been there to see, but he had closed his eyes to them.

  The worst of it was that he still wanted Dalmatica—or loved her—or was obsessed by her—or all three. Julilla once more. The pain, the hatred, the hunger to lash out in any direction at anyone who got in his way. From a dream about making love to Dalmatica, he would pass in a flash to a dream about breaking her neck and seeing her dance insanely across a patch of moonlit grass in Circei—no, no, that was how he had killed his stepmother! He began frequently to open the secret drawer in the cupboard which housed the mask of his ancestor Publius Cornelius Sulla Rufinus Flamen Dialis, take from it his little bottles of poisons and the box containing white foundry powder—that was how he had killed Lucius Gavius Stichus and Hercules Atlas the strongman. Mushrooms? That was how he had killed his mistress—eat these, Dalmatica!

  But time and experience had accumulated since Julilla died, and he knew himself better; he couldn't kill Dalmatica any more than he had been able to kill Julilla. With the women of noble and ancient houses, there was no other alternative than to see the business out to its last and bitterest flicker. One day—some day—he and Caecilia Metella Dalmatica would finish what he at this moment did not dare to start.

  Then Marcus Aemilius Scaurus came knocking on his door, that same door which had felt the hands of many ghosts, and oozed a drop of malice from out of its woody cells. The act of touching it contaminated Scaurus, who thought only that this interview was going to be even harder than he had envisioned.

  Seated in Sulla's client's chair, the doughty old man eyed his host's fair countenance sourly through clear green orbs which gave the lie to the lines upon his face, the hairlessness of his skull. And wished, wished, wished that he could have stayed away, that he didn't have to beggar his pride to deal with this hideously farcical situation.

  "I imagine you know why I'm here, Lucius Cornelius," said Scaurus, chin up, eyes direct.

  "I believe I do," said Sulla, and said no more.

  "I have come to apologize for the conduct of my wife, and to assure you that, having spoken to you, I will proceed to make it impossible for my wife to embarrass you further.'' There! It was out. And he was still alive, hadn't died of shame. But at the back of Sulla's calm dispassionate gaze he fancied he discerned a faint contempt; imaginary, perhaps, but it was that which turned Scaurus into Sulla's enemy.

  "I'm very sorry, Marcus Aemilius." Say something, Sulla! Make it easier for the old fool! Don't leave him sitting there with his pride in tatters! Remember what Aurelia said! But the words refused to come out. They milled inchoate within his mind and left his tongue a thing of stone, silent.

  "It will be better for everyone concerned if you leave Rome. Take yourself off to Spain," Scaurus said finally. "I hear that Lucius Cornelius Dolabella can do with competent help."

  Sulla blinked with exaggerated surprise. "Can he? I hadn't realized things w
ere so serious! However, Marcus Aemilius, it isn't possible for me to uproot myself and go to Further Spain. I've been in the Senate now for nine years, it's time I sought election as a praetor."

  Scaurus swallowed, but strove to continue seeming pleasant. "Not this year, Lucius Cornelius," he said gently. "Next year, or the year after. This year you must leave Rome."

  "Marcus Aemilius, I have done nothing wrong!" Yes, you have, Sulla! What you are doing at this very moment is wrong, you're treading all over him! "I am three years past the age for a praetor, my time grows short. I shall stand this year, which means I must stay in Rome."

  "Reconsider, please," said Scaurus, rising to his feet.

  "I cannot, Marcus Aemilius."

  "If you stand, Lucius Cornelius, I assure you, you won't get in. Nor will you get in next year, or the year after that, or the year after that," said Scaurus evenly. "So much I promise you. Believe my promise! Leave Rome."

  "I repeat, Marcus Aemilius, I am very sorry. But remain in Rome to stand for praetor, I must," said Sulla.

  And so it had all fallen out. Injured in both auctoritas and dignitas though he may have been, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus was still able to marshal more than enough influence to ensure that Sulla was not elected a praetor. Other, lesser men saw their names entered on the fasti; nonentities, mediocrities, fools. But praetors nonetheless.