1. First Man in Rome Read online

  A mile from the stables Sulla dismounted and removed the tack from the mule, throwing it aside into some bushes; then he smacked the animal on its rump and shooed it in the direction of its stables, sure it would find its way home. But when he began to plod toward the Capena Gate the mule followed him, and he was forced in the end to shy stones at it before it took the hint, swished its meager tail, and made off. Muffled in his hooded cloak, Sulla entered Rome just as the eastern sky was pearling; in nine hours of seventy-four minutes each he had ridden from Circei to Rome, no mean feat for a tired mule and a man who had only really learned to ride on the journey. The Steps of Cacus led from the Circus Maximus up onto the Germalus of the Palatine, and were surrounded by the most hallowed ground the spirit of Romulus's original city lived thereabouts, and a small uninspiring cavelet and spring in the rock was the place where the she-wolf had suckled the twins Romulus and Remus after they had been abandoned. To Sulla, this seemed a fitting place to abandon his trappings, so the cloak and the bandage were carefully tucked into a hollow tree behind the monument to the Genius Loci. His wound immediately began to bleed again, but sluggishly; and thus those in Clitumna's street who were out and about early were stunned to see the missing man come staggering along in a bloodied woman's tunic, filthy and mauled. Clitumna's household was astir, not having been to bed all at once since Hercules Atlas had blazed his way out of the place some thirty-two hours before. When the door servant admitted Sulla, looking ghastly, people flew from all directions to succor him. He was put to bed, bathed and sponged, none other than Athenodorus of Sicily was summoned to inspect his wounded head, and Gaius Julius Caesar came from next door to ask him what had happened, for the whole of the Palatine had been searching for him. "Tell me what you can," said Caesar, sitting by his bed. Sulla looked totally convincing. There was a blue shade of pain and weariness about his lips, his colorless skin was even paler than usual, and his eyes, glazed with exhaustion, were red-rimmed and bloodshot. "Silly," he said, slurring his words. "I shouldn't have tried to interfere with Hercules Atlas. But I'm strong, and I can look after myself. I just never counted on any man's being as strong as he turned out to be I thought he'd got a good act together, was all. He was roaring drunk, and he he just carried me away with him! I couldn't do a thing to stop him. Somewhere or other he put me down. I tried to get away, and he must have clouted me, I really don't know. But I came to in some alley in the Subura. I must have lain there, out to it, for at least a whole day. But you know what the Subura's like everyone left me to it. When I could move, I came home. That's all, Gaius Julius." "You're a very lucky young man," said Caesar, lips tight. "Had Hercules Atlas carried you back to his flat, you might have shared his fate." "His fate?" "Your steward came to see me yesterday when you didn't come home, and asked me what he should do. After I learned the story, I took some hired gladiators to the strong man's lodgings, and found an absolute shambles. For whatever reason, Hercules Atlas had wrecked the place splintered every piece of furniture, broken great holes in the walls with his fists, terrified the other residents of his insula so much that none of them had gone near. He was lying in the middle of the living room, dead. My personal belief is that he ruptured a blood vessel in his brain, and went mad with the agony of it. Either that, or some enemy poisoned him." An expression of distaste hovered on Caesar's face, and was resolutely ironed away. "He'd made a disgusting mess in dying. I think his servants found him first, but they'd gone long before I arrived. As we found no money whatsoever in the place, I presume they took whatever they could carry with them, and have run away. Did he, for instance, have a fee from your party? If so, it wasn't in the flat." Sulla closed his eyes, not needing to feign tiredness. "I had paid him in advance, Gaius Julius, so I can't tell you if he had money there." Caesar got to his feet. "Well, I have done all that I can." He looked down on the immobile figure in the bed sternly, knowing his look was wasted, for Sulla's eyes remained closed. "I do pity you deeply, Lucius Cornelius," he said, "but this conduct cannot go on, you know. My daughter nearly starved herself to death because of an immature emotional attachment to you, and has not even now recovered from that attachment. Which makes you a considerable nuisance to me as a neighbor, though I have to acquit you of encouraging my daughter, and must be fair enough to admit that she has made a considerable nuisance of herself to you. All of which suggests to me that you would do better if you lived elsewhere. I have sent to your stepmother in Circei and informed her what has transpired in her absence. I also informed her that she has long outworn her welcome in this street, and she might be more comfortable housed on the Carinae or the Caelian. We are a quiet body of people hereabouts. It would pain me to have to lodge a complaint and a suit with the urban praetor to protect our entitlement to peace, quiet, and physical well-being. But pain or no, I am prepared to lodge that suit if I have to, Lucius Cornelius. Like the rest of your neighbors, I have had enough." Sulla didn't move, didn't open his eyes; as Caesar stood wondering how much of this homily had sunk in, his ears heard a snore. He turned at once and left. But it was Sulla who got a letter from Circei first, not Gaius Julius Caesar. The next day a messenger came bearing a missive from Clitumna's steward, informing Sulla that the lady Clitumna's body, had been found at the base of the cliff bordering her estate. Her neck had been broken in the fall, but there were no suspicious circumstances. As Sulla knew, said the steward, the lady Clitumna's mental state had been extremely depressed of late. Sulla swung his legs out of bed and stood up. "Run me a bath, and set out my toga," he said. The little wound on his brow was healing nicely, but its edges were livid and swollen still; aside from that, there was nothing left to suggest his condition of the day before. "Send for Gaius Julius Caesar," he said to Iamus the steward when he was dressed. On this coming interview, Sulla understood with perfect clarity, all of his future hinged. Thank the gods that Scylax had taken Metrobius home from the party, protest though the lad did that he wanted to see what had happened to his beloved Sulla. That, and Caesar's early arrival on the scene, represented the only flaws in Sulla's plans. What an escape! Truly his luck was in its ascendancy! The presence of Metrobius in Clitumna's house when Caesar had been summoned by the worried Iamus would have cooked Sulla's goose forever. No, Caesar would never damn Sulla on hearsay, but the evidence of his own eyes would have put an entirely different complexion upon the situation. And Metrobius would not have been backward in coming forward. I am treading on eggshells, said Sulla to himself, and it is high time I stopped. He thought of Stichus, of Nicopolis, of Clitumna, and he smiled. Well, now he could stop. He received Caesar looking every inch the patrician Roman, immaculate in white, the narrow knight's stripe adorning the right shoulder of his tunic, his magnificent head of hair cut and combed into a manly yet becoming style. "I apologize for having to drag you here yet again, Gaius Julius," said Sulla, and handed Caesar a small roll of paper. "This has just arrived from Circei, and I thought you ought to see it at once." Without a change of expression Caesar read it very slowly, his lips moving, but the sound of the words he said over to himself very quiet. He was weighing, Sulla knew, each and every word as he separated it from the uninterrupted flow of letters on the paper. Done, he laid the sheet down. "It is the third death," said Caesar, and actually seemed happy about that fact. "Your household is sadly diminished, Lucius Cornelius. Please accept my condolences." "I presumed that you had made Clitumna's will for her," Sulla said, standing very straight, "otherwise I assure you that I would not have bothered you." "Yes, I have made several wills for her, the last one just after Nicopolis died." His handsome face, his direct blue eyes, everything about Caesar was carefully, legally noncommittal. "I would like you to tell me, Lucius Cornelius, what exactly you felt for your stepmother.'' Here it was, the frailest eggshell yet. He must tread as surely and delicately as a cat on a windowsill strewn with broken shards a full twelve floors above the pavement. "I remember saying something to you before, Gaius Julius," he said, "but I'm glad to have the opportunity to speak at greate
r length about her. She was a very silly and stupid and vulgar woman, but as it happens, I was fond of her. My father" and Sulla's face twisted "was an incurable drunkard. The only life I ever remember with him and for some years with my older sister too, until she married and escaped was a nightmare. We were not impoverished gentry, Gaius Julius. We didn't live in a style in any way reminiscent of our origins. We were so poor we had no slave, not one. If it hadn't been for the charity of an old marketplace teacher, I, a patrician of the gens Cornelius, would not even have learned to read and write. I have never done my basic military training on the Campus Martius, nor learned to ride a horse, nor been the pupil of some advocate in the law courts. Of soldiering, of rhetoric, of public life, I know nothing. Such did my father do to me. And so I was fond of her. She married my father, and she took him and me to live with her, and who knows? Perhaps, had my father and I gone on living in the Subura, I would one day have gone quite mad, and murdered him, and offended the gods beyond mercy. As it was, until he died she took the brunt of him, and I was liberated. Yes, I was fond of her." "She was fond of you too, Lucius Cornelius," said Caesar. "Her will is simple and straightforward. It leaves everything she had to you." Easy, easy! Not too much joy, but not too much grief either! The man he was facing was very intelligent and must have great experience of men. "Did she leave me enough to enter the Senate?'' he asked, looking into Caesar's eyes. "More than enough." Sulla visibly sagged. "I can't believe it!" he said. "Are you sure? I know she had this house and the villa at Circei, but I didn't think there was much else." "On the contrary, she was an extremely wealthy woman money invested, stocks and interests in all kinds of companies, as well as in a dozen merchant ships. I advise you to divest yourself of the ships and the company shares, and use the funds they realize to buy property. You'll need to have your affairs in exquisite order to satisfy the censors." "It's a dream!" said Sulla. "I can understand that you must find it so, Lucius Cornelius. But rest assured, it's all real enough." Caesar sounded tranquil, not repelled by Sulla's reaction, nor suspicious of feigned grief his common sense would have told him a Lucius Cornelius Sulla could never feel for a Clitumna, no matter how kind to his father she might have been. "She might have gone on for years and years," said Sulla, voice wondering. "Mine is a happy fate after all, Gaius Julius. I never thought to be able to say that. I shall miss her. But I hope that in the years to come, the world will say that the greatest contribution she made to it was in her dying. For I intend to be an ornament to my class and to the Senate." Did that sound all right? Did it imply what he intended it to imply? "I agree, Lucius Cornelius, that it would make her happy to think you used her bequest fruitfully," said Caesar, taking what Sulla said exactly the right way. "And I trust there will be no more wild parties? No more dubious friends?" "When a man can espouse the life his birth entitles him to, Gaius Julius, there is no need for wild parties or dubious friends." Sulla sighed. "They were a way of passing the time. I daresay that must seem inexplicable to you. But the life I have lived for over thirty years has hung on my neck like a huge millstone." "Of course it has," said Caesar. A horrifying thought occurred to Sulla. "But there are no censors! What can I do?" "Well, though there is no need to elect more until four more years have elapsed, one of the conditions Marcus Scaurus put upon his voluntary resignation such as it was was that new censors be elected next April. You will just have to contain yourself until then," Caesar said comfortably. Sulla girded himself, drew a deep breath. "Gaius Julius, I have one further request to make of you," he said. The blue eyes held an expression Sulla found impossible to fathom, as if Caesar knew what was coming yet how could that be, when the idea had just popped into his mind? The most brilliant idea yet, the luckiest. For if Caesar consented, Sulla's application to the censors would have far greater weight than mere money, far greater effect than the claim of birth, marred as it was by the kind of life he had led. "What request is that, Lucius Cornelius?" asked Caesar. "That you consider me as a husband for your daughter Julilla," he said. "Even after she injured you so?" "I love her," said Sulla, and believed he meant it. "At the moment Julilla is nowhere near well enough to contemplate marriage," said Caesar, "but I will take note of your request, Lucius Cornelius." He smiled. "Perhaps you deserve each other, after so much trouble." "She gave me a grass crown," said Sulla. "And do you know, Gaius Julius, it was only after that my luck turned?" "I believe you." Rising, he prepared to go. "Nonetheless, for the moment we will say nothing to anyone of your interest in marrying Julilla. Most particularly, I charge you to stay away from her. However you feel about her, she is still trying to find her way out of her predicament, and I want no easy solution presented to her." Sulla accompanied Caesar to the door, and there held out his hand, smiling with his lips closed; for no one knew the effect of those overlong and oversharp canines better than their owner. Not for Gaius Julius Caesar any nasty chilling grins. No, Caesar was to be treasured and courted. Ignorant of the proposition Caesar had once put to Gaius Marius about a daughter, Sulla had come to the same conclusion. What better way to endear himself to the censors and the electorate than to have a Julia as his wife? Especially when there was one so close to hand she had nearly died for him. "Iamus!" Sulla called when he had shut the door. "Lucius Cornelius?" "Don't bother with dinner. Put the house into mourning for the lady Clitumna, and see to the return of all her servants from Circei. I'm leaving at once to see to her funeral." And, thought Sulla, packing quickly, I shall take young Metrobius with me, and say goodbye. Goodbye to every last trace of the old life, goodbye to Clitumna. None of it will I miss save Metrobius. And him I will miss. Badly.