Fortune's Favorites Page 23

  Silence reigned absolutely for many long moments. Even Vatia and Metellus Pius sat white-faced and trembling, gazing at the naked clawed monster fit only to screech at the moon- oh, how could they have forgotten what lived inside Sulla?

  Lepidus too gazed white-faced and trembling, but the nucleus of his terror was not the monster inside Sulla; he was thinking of his beloved Appuleia, wife of many years, darling of his heart, mother of his sons-and daughter of Saturninus, who had indeed tried to make himself King of Rome. Why had Sulla made reference to her in the midst of that appalling outburst? What did he intend to do when he became Dictator?

  Sick to death of civil wars, of economic depression and far too many legions marching endlessly up and down Italy, the Centuriate Assembly voted in a law which appointed Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator for an unspecified period of time. Tabled at contio on the sixth day of November, the lex Valeria dictator legibus scribundis et rei publicae constituendae passed into law on the twenty-third day of November. It contained no specifics beyond the time span; as it bestowed virtually unlimited powers upon Sulla and also rendered him unanswerable for a single one of his actions, it did not need specificity. Whatever Sulla wanted to enact or do, he could.

  Many in the city fully expected a flurry of activity from him the moment his appointment as Dictator was tabled, but he did nothing until the appointment was ratified three nundinae later, in accordance with the lex Caecilia Didia.

  Having taken up residence in the house which had belonged to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (now a refugee in Africa), Sulla did, it seemed, little except walk constantly through the city. His own house had been wrecked and burned to the ground after Gaius Marius and Cinna had taken over Rome, and he walked across the Germalus of the Palatine to inspect its site, poke slowly among the heaps of rubble, gaze over the Circus Maximus to the lovely contours of the Aventine. At any time of day from dawn to dusk he might be seen standing alone in the Forum Romanum, staring up at the Capitol, or at the life-size statue of Gaius Marius near the rostra, or at some other among the numerous smaller statues of Marius, or at the Senate House, or at the temple of Saturn. He walked along the bank of the Tiber from the great trading emporium of the Aemilii in the Port of Rome all the way to the Trigarium, where the young men swam. He walked from the Forum Romanum to every one of Rome's sixteen gates. He walked up one alley and down another.

  Never did he display the slightest sign of fear for life or limb, never did he ask a friend to accompany him, let alone take a bodyguard along. Sometimes he wore a toga, but mostly he just wrapped himself voluminously in a more easily managed cloak-the winter was early, and promised to be as cold as the last. On one fine, unseasonably hot day he walked clad only in his tunic, and it could be seen then how small he was-though he had been a well-made man of medium size, people remembered. But he had shrunk, he was bent over, he crabbed along like an octogenarian. The silly wig was always on his head, and now that the outbreaks on his face were under control he had taken once more to painting his frost-fair brows and lashes with stibium.

  And by the time one market interval of the Dictator's wait for ratification was over, those who had witnessed his awful rage in the Senate but had not been direct objects of it (like Lepidus) had begun to feel comfortable enough to speak of this walking old man with some degree of contempt; so short is memory.

  "He's a travesty!" said Hortensius to Catulus, sniffing.

  "Someone will kill him," said Catulus, bored.

  Hortensius giggled. "Or else he'll tumble over in a fit or an apoplexy." He grasped at his brother-in-law's toga-swaddled left arm with his right hand, and shook it. "Do you know, I can't see why I was so afraid! He's here, but he's not here. Rome doesn't have a hard taskmaster after all-very peculiar! He's cracked, Quintus. Senescent."

  An opinion which was becoming prevalent among all classes as every day his uninspiring figure could be seen plodding along with wig askew and stibium garishly applied. Was that powder covering up his mulberry-hued scars? Muttering. Shaking his head. Once or twice, shouting at no one. Cracked. Senescent.

  It had taken a great deal of courage for such a vain man to expose his aged crudities to general gaze; only Sulla knew how much he loathed what disease had done to him, only Sulla knew how much he yearned again to be the magnificent man he was when he left to fight King Mithridates. But, he had told himself, shunning his mirror, the sooner he nerved himself to show Rome what he had become, the sooner he would learn to forget what the mirror would have shown him had he looked. And this did happen. Chiefly because his walks were not aimless, not evidence of senility. Sulla walked to see what Rome had become, what Rome needed, what he had to do. And the more he walked, the angrier he became-and the more excited, because it was in his hand to take this dilapidated, threadbare lady and turn her into the beauty she used to be.

  He waited too for the arrival of some people who mattered to him, though he didn't think of himself as loving them, or even needing them-his wife, his twins, his grown-up daughter, his grandchildren-and Ptolemy Alexander, heir to the throne of Egypt. They had been waiting patiently for many months under the care of Chrysogonus, first in Greece, then in Brundisium, but by the end of December they would be in Rome. For a while Dalmatica would have to live in Ahenobarbus's house, but Sulla's own residence had recently begun rebuilding; Philippus-looking brown and extremely fit-had arrived from Sardinia, unofficially convoked the Senate, and browbeaten that cowed body into voting nonexistent public funds to give back to Sulla what the State had taken away. Thank you, Philippus!

  On the twenty-third day of November, Sulla's dictatorship was formally ratified, and passed into law. And on that day Rome awoke to find every statue of Gaius Marius gone from the Forums Romanum, Boarium, Holitorium, various crossroads and squares, vacant pieces of land. Gone too were the trophies hung in his temple to Honor and Virtue on the Capitol, fire-damaged but still habitable for lifeless suits of enemy armor, flags, standards, all his personal decorations for valor, the cuirasses he had worn in Africa, at Aquae Sextiae, at Vercellae, at Alba Fucentia. Statues of other men had gone too-Cinna, Carbo, Old Brutus, Norbanus, Scipio Asiagenus-but perhaps because they were far fewer in number, their going was not noticed in the same way as the disappearance of Gaius Marius. He left a huge gap, a whole grove of empty plinths with his name obliterated from each, herms with their genitalia hammered off.

  And at the same time the whispers increased about other, more serious disappearances; men were vanishing too! Men who had been strong and loud in their support of Marius, or Cinna, or Carbo, or of all three. Knights in the main, successful in business during a time when business success was difficult; knights who had gained lucrative State contracts, or loaned to partisans, or enriched themselves in other ways from affiliations to Marius, to Cinna, to Carbo, or to all three. Admittedly no senator had puffed out of existence, but suddenly the total of men who had was big enough to be noticed. Whether because of this public awareness or as a side effect of it, people now saw these men vanishing; some sturdy-looking private individuals, perhaps ten or fifteen in number, would knock upon a knight's street door, be admitted, and then scant moments later would emerge with the knight in their midst, and march him off to-no one knew where!

  Rome stirred uneasily, began to see the peregrinations of her wizened master as something more than just benign excursions; what had been quite amusing in a saddened way now took on a more sinister guise, and the innocent eccentricities of yesterday became the suspicious purposes of today and the terrifying objectives of tomorrow. He never spoke to anyone! He talked to himself! He stood in one place for far too long looking at who knew what! He had shouted once or twice! What was he really doing? And why was he doing it?

  Exactly in step with this growing apprehension, the odd activities of those innocuous-looking bands of private persons who knocked on the street doors of houses belonging to knights became more overt. They were now noticed to stand here or there taking notes, or to follow like sha
dows behind an affluent Carboan banker or a prosperous Marian broker. The disappearing men disappeared with increasing frequency. And then one group of private persons knocked upon the street door of a pedarius senator who had always voted for Marius, for Cinna, for Carbo. But the senator was not marched away. When he emerged into the street there was a flurry of arms, the sweep of a sword, and his head fell to the ground with a hollow thock!, and rolled away. The body lay emptying itself of blood down the gutter, but the head disappeared.

  Everyone began to find a reason for drifting past the rostra to count the heads-Carbo, Young Marius, Carrinas, Censorinus, Scipio Asiagenus, Old Brutus, Marius Gratidianus, Pontius Telesinus, Brutus Damasippus, Tiberius Gutta of Capua, Soranus, Mutilus.... No, that was all! The head of the backbencher senator was not there. Nor any head of any man who had vanished. And Sulla continued to walk with his idiotic wig not quite straight, and his brows and lashes painted. But whereas before people used to stop and smile to see him-albeit smiled with pity-now people felt a frightful hole blossom in their bellies at sight of him, and scrambled in any direction save toward him, or bolted at a run away from him. Wherever Sulla now was, no one else was. No one watched him. No one smiled, albeit with pity. No one accosted him. No one molested him. He brought a cold sweat in his wake, like the wraiths which issued from the mundus on the dies religiosi.

  Never before had one of the great public figures been so shrouded in mystery, so opaque of purpose. His behavior was not normal. He should have been standing on the rostra in the Forum telling everyone in magnificent language all about his plans, or throwing rhetorical sand in the Senate's eyes. Speeches of intent, litanies of complaint, flowery phrases-he should have been talking. To someone, if not everyone. Romans were not prone to keep their counsel. They talked things over. Hearsay ruled. But from Sulla, nothing. Just the solitary walks which acknowledged no complicity, implied no interest. And yet-all of it had to be emanating from him! This silent and uncommunicative man was the master of Rome.

  On the Kalends of December, Sulla called a meeting of the Senate, the first such since Flaccus had spoken. Oh, how the senators hurried and scurried to the Curia Hostilia! Feeling colder even than the air, pulses so rapid heartbeats could not be counted, breathing shallow, pupils dilated, bowels churning. They huddled on their stools like gulls battered by a tempest, trying not to look up at the underside of the Curia roof for fear that, like Saturninus and his confederates, they would be felled in an instant by a rain of tiles from above.

  No one was impervious to this nameless terror-even Flaccus Princeps Senatus-even Metellus Pius-even military darlings like Ofella and panders like Philippus and Cethegus. And yet when Sulla shuffled in he looked so harmless! A pathetic figure! Except that he was ushered in by an unprecedented twenty-four lictors, twice as many as a consul was entitled to-and twice as many as any earlier dictator.

  "It is time that I told you of my intentions," Sulla said from his ivory seat, not rising; his words came out in jets of white vapor, the chamber was so cold. “I am legally Dictator, and Lucius Valerius, the Leader of the House, is my Master of the Horse. Under the provisions of the Centuriate law which gave me my position, I am not obliged to see other magistrates elected if I so wish. However, Rome has always reckoned the passing of the years by the names of the consuls of each year, and I will not see that tradition broken. Nor will I have men call this coming year 'In the Dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla.' So I will see two consuls elected, eight praetors elected, two curule and two plebeian aediles elected, ten tribunes of the plebs elected, and twelve quaestors. And to give magisterial experience to men too young to be admitted into the Senate, I will see twenty-four tribunes of the soldiers elected, and I will appoint three men to be moneyers, and three to look after Rome's detention cells and asylums."

  Catulus and Hortensius had come in a state of terror so great that both sat with anal sphincters clenched upon bowel contents turned liquid, and hid their hands so that others would not see how they shook. Listening incredulously to the Dictator announcing that he would hold elections for all the magistracies! They had expected to be pelted from the roof, or lined up and beheaded, or sent into exile with everything they owned confiscated-they had expected anything but this! Was he innocent? Did he not know what was going on in Rome? And if he did not know, who then was responsible for those disappearances and murders?

  "Of course," the Dictator went on in that irritatingly indistinct diction his toothlessness had wrought, "you realize that when I say elections, I do not mean candidates. I will tell you-and the various Comitia!-whom you will elect. Freedom of choice is not possible at this time. I need men to help me do my work, and they must be the men I want, not the men whom the electors would foist on me. I am therefore in a position to inform you who will be what next year. Scribe, my list!" He took the single sheet of paper from a clerk of the House whose sole duty seemed to be its custodian, while another secretary lifted his head from his work, which was to take down with a stylus on wax tablets everything Sulla said.

  “Now then, consuls ... Senior-Marcus Tullius Decula. Junior-Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella-"

  He got no further. A voice rang out, a togate figure leaped to his feet: Quintus Lucretius Ofella.

  "No! No, I say! You'd give our precious consulship to Decula! No! Who is Decula? A nonentity who sat here safe and sound inside Rome while his betters fought for you, Sulla! What has Decula done to distinguish himself? Why, as far as I know he hasn't even had the opportunity to wipe your podex with his sponge-on-a-stick, Sulla! Of all the miserable, malicious, unfair, unjust tricks! Dolabella I can understand-all of your legates got to know of the bargain you made with him, Sulla! But who is this Decula? What has this Decula done to earn the senior consulship? I say no! No, no, no!"

  Ofella paused for breath.

  Sulla spoke. “My choice for senior consul is Marcus Tullius Decula. That is that."

  "Then you can't be allowed to have the choice, Sulla! We will have candidates and a proper election-and I will stand!"

  "You won't," said the Dictator gently.

  "Try and stop me!" Ofella shouted, and ran from the chamber. Outside a crowd had gathered, anxious to hear the results of this first meeting of the Senate since Sulla had been ratified Dictator. It was not composed of men who thought they had anything to fear from Sulla-they had stayed at home. A small crowd, but a crowd nonetheless. Pushing his way through it without regard for the welfare of anyone in his path, Ofella stormed down the Senate steps and across the cobblestones to the well of the Comitia and the rostra set into its side.

  "Fellow Romans!" he cried. "Gather round, hear what I have to say about this unconstitutional monarch we have voluntarily appointed to lord over us! He says he will see consuls elected. But there are to be no candidates-just the two men of his choice! Two ineffectual and incompetent idiots-and one of them, Marcus Tullius Decula, is not even of a noble family! The first of his family to sit in the Senate, a backbencher who scrambled into a praetorship under the treasonous regime of Cinna and Carbo! Yet he is to be senior consul while men like me go unrewarded!"

  Sulla had risen and walked slowly down the tesselated floor of the Curia to the portico, where he stood blinking in the stronger light and looking mildly interested as he watched Ofella shouting from the rostra. Without drawing attention to themselves, perhaps fifteen ordinary-looking men began to cluster together at the foot of the Senate steps right in the path of Sulla's eyes.

  And slowly the senators crept out of the Curia to see and hear what they could, fascinated at Sulla's calm, emboldened by it too-he wasn't the monster they had begun to think him, he couldn't be!

  "Well, fellow Romans," Ofella went on, voice more stentorian as he got into stride, "I am one man who will not lie down under these studied insults! I am more entitled to be consul than a nonentity like Decula! And it is my opinion that the electors of Rome, if offered a choice, will choose me over both of Sulla's men! Just as there are others they would choose
did others step forward and declare themselves candidates!"

  Sulla's eyes met those of the leader of the ordinary-looking men standing just below him; he nodded, sighed, leaned his weary body against a convenient pillar.

  The ordinary-looking men moved quietly through the thin crowd, came to the rostra, mounted it, and laid hold of Ofella. Their gentleness was apparent, not real; Ofella fought desperately, to no avail. Inexorably they bent him over until he collapsed on his knees. Then one of them took a handful of hair, stood well back, and pulled until head and neck were extended. A sword flashed up and down. The man holding the hair staggered despite his wide stance in the moment when his end parted company with the rest of Ofella, then whipped the head on high so all could see it. Within moments the Forum was empty save for the stunned Conscript Fathers of the Senate.