Fortune's Favorites Page 28

  He dashed the tears away. "I thought you were my son for a moment," he said harshly, and shivered.

  "He was my first cousin."

  "I remember you said you liked him."

  "I did."

  "Better than Young Marius, you said."

  "I did."

  "And you wrote a poem about him after he died, but you said it wasn't good enough to show me."

  "Yes, that's true."

  Sulla sank back into his chair, his hands trembling. "Sit, boy. There, where the light is best and I can see you. My eyes are not what they used to be." Drink him in! He is sent from the Great God, whose priest he is. "Your uncle Gaius Cotta told you what?"

  "Only that I had to see you, Lucius Cornelius."

  "Call me Sulla, it's what everybody calls me."

  "And I am called Caesar, even by my mother."

  "You are the flamen Dialis."

  Something flashed through the disquietingly familiar eyes-why were they so familiar, when his son's had been much bluer and sprightlier? A look of anger. Pain? No, not pain. Anger.

  "Yes, I am the flamen Dialis," Caesar answered.

  "The men who appointed you were enemies of Rome."

  "At the time they appointed me they were not."

  "That's fair enough." Sulla picked up his reed pen, which was encased in gold, then put it down again. "You have a wife."

  "I do."

  "She's Cinna's daughter."

  "She is."

  “Have you consummated your marriage?''

  "No."

  Up from behind his desk Sulla got to walk over to the window, which gaped wide open despite the freezing cold. Caesar smiled inwardly, wondering that his mother would have said-here was another who didn't care about the elements.

  "I have undertaken the restitution of the Republic," said Sulla, looking out the window straight at the statue of Scipio Africanus atop his tall column; at this altitude, he and tubby old Scipio Africanus were on the same level. "For reasons I imagine you will understand, I have chosen to begin with religion. We have lost the old values, and must return to them. I have abolished the election of priests and augurs, including the Pontifex Maximus. Politics and religion in Rome are inextricably intertwined, but I will not see religion made the servant of politics when it ought to be the other way round."

  "I do understand," said Caesar from his chair. "However, I believe the Pontifex Maximus must be elected."

  "What you believe, boy, does not interest me!"

  "Then why am I here?"

  "Certainly not to make smart remarks at my expense!"

  "I apologize."

  Sulla swung round, glared at the flamen Dialis fiercely. "You're not a scrap afraid of me, boy, are you?"

  Came the smile-the same smile!-the smile which caught at heart and mind together. “I used to hide in the false ceiling above our dining room and watch you talking to my mother. Times have changed, and so have all our circumstances. But it's hard to be afraid of someone you suddenly loved in the moment you found out he was not your mother's paramour."

  That provoked a roar of laughter, laughter to drive away a fresh spring of tears. "True enough! I wasn't. I did try once, but she was far too wise to have me. Thinks like a man, your mother. I bring no luck to women, I never have." The pale unsettling eyes looked Caesar up and down. "You won't bring any luck to women either, though there'll be plenty of women."

  "Why did you summon me, if not to seek my advice?"

  "It's to do with regulating religious malpractices. They say you were born on the same day of the year that Jupiter's fire finally went out."

  "Yes."

  "And how did you interpret that?"

  "As a good omen."

  "Unfortunately the College of Pontifices and the College of Augurs do not agree with you, young Caesar. They have made you and your flaminate their most important business for some time now. And have concluded that a certain irregularity in your flaminate was responsible for the destruction of the Great God's temple."

  The joy flooded into Caesar's face. "Oh, how glad I am to hear you say that!"

  "Eh? Say what?"

  "That I am not the flamen Dialis."

  "I didn't say that."

  "You did! You did!"

  "You've misinterpreted me, boy. You are definitely the flamen Dialis. Fifteen priests and fifteen augurs have arrived at that conclusion beyond a shadow of a doubt."

  The joy had died out of Caesar's face completely. "I'd rather be a soldier," he said gruffly. "I'm more suited for it."

  "What you'd rather be doesn't matter. It's what you are that does. And what your wife is."

  Caesar frowned, looked at Sulla searchingly. "That's the second time you've mentioned my wife."

  "You must divorce her," said Sulla baldly.

  "Divorce her? But I can't!"

  "Why not?"

  "We're married confarreatio."

  "There is such a thing as diffarreatio."

  “Why must I divorce her?''

  "Because she's Cinna's brat. It turns out that my laws pertaining to proscribed men and their families contain a minor flaw in regard to the citizen status of children under age. The priests and augurs have decided that the lex Minicia applies. Which means your wife-who is flaminica Dialis-is not Roman or patrician. Therefore she cannot be flaminica Dialis. As this flaminate is a dual one, the legality of her position is quite as important as yours. You must divorce her."

  "I won't do that," said Caesar, beginning to see a way out of this hated priesthood.

  "You'll do anything I say you must, boy!"

  "I will do nothing I think I must not."

  The puckered lips peeled back slowly. “I am the Dictator," said Sulla levelly. "You will divorce your wife."

  "I refuse," said Caesar.

  "I can force you to it if I have to."

  “How?'' asked Caesar scornfully. ' The rites of diffarreatio require my complete consent and co-operation."

  Time to reduce this young pest to a quivering jellyfish: Sulla let Caesar see the naked clawed creature which lived inside him, a thing fit only to screech at the moon. But even as the creature leaped forth, Sulla realized why Caesar's eyes were so familiar. They were like his own! Staring back at him with the cold and emotionless fixity of a snake. And the naked clawed creature slunk away, impotent. For the first time in his life Sulla was left without the means to bend another man to his will. The rage which ought by now to possess him could not come; forced to contemplate the image of himself in someone else's face, Lucius Cornelius Sulla was powerless.

  He had to fight with mere words. "I have vowed to restore the proper religious ethics of the mos maiorum," he said. "Rome will honor and care for her gods in the way she did at the dawn of the Republic. Jupiter Optimus Maximus is displeased. With you-or rather, with your wife. You are his special priest, but your wife is an inseparable part of your priesthood. You must separate yourself from this present unacceptable wife, take another one. You must divorce Cinna's non-Roman brat."

  "I will not," said Caesar.

  "Then I must find another solution."

  "I have-one ready to hand," said Caesar instantly. "Let Jupiter Best and Greatest divorce me. Cancel my flaminate."

  “I might have been able to do that as Dictator had I not brought the priestly colleges into the business. As it is, I am bound by their findings."

  "Then it begins to look," said Caesar calmly, "as if we have reached an impasse, doesn't it?"

  "No, it does not. There is another way out."

  "To have me killed."

  "Exactly."

  “That would put the blood of the flamen Dialis on your hands, Sulla."

  "Not if someone else has your blood on his hands. I do not subscribe to the Greek metaphor, Gaius Julius Caesar. Nor do our Roman gods. Guilt cannot be transferred."

  Caesar considered this. "Yes, I believe you're right. If you have someone else kill me, the guilt must fall on him."

  He rose to his fe
et, which gave him some inches over Sulla. "Then our interview is at an end."

  "It is. Unless you will reconsider."

  "I will not divorce my wife."

  "Then I will have you killed."

  "If you can," said Caesar, and walked out.

  Sulla called after him. "You have forgotten your laena and apex, priest!"

  "Keep them for the next flamen Dialis."

  He forced himself to stroll home, not certain how quickly Sulla would regain his equilibrium. That the Dictator had been thrown off balance he had seen at once; it was evident that not too many people defied Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

  The air was freezing, too cold for snow. And that childish gesture had cost him protection from the weather. Not important, really. He wouldn't die of exposure walking from the Palatine to the Subura. More important by far was his next course of action. For Sulla would have him killed, of that he had absolutely no doubt. He sighed. It would have to be flight. Though he knew he could look after himself, he had no illusions as to which of them would win did he remain in Rome. Sulla. However, he had at least a day's grace; the Dictator was as hampered by the slowly grinding machinery of bureaucracy as anyone else, and would have to squeeze an interview with one of those groups of quite ordinary-looking men into his crowded schedule; his foyer, as Caesar had quickly assessed, was filled with clients, not paid assassins. Life in Rome was not a bit like a Greek tragedy, no impassioned instructions were roared out to men straining like hounds at the leash. When Sulla found the time he would issue his orders. But not yet.

  When he let himself into his mother's apartment he was blue with cold.

  "Where are your clothes?" asked Aurelia, gaping.

  "With Sulla," he managed to say. "I donated them to the next flamen Dialis. Mater, he showed me how to be free of it!"

  "Tell me," she said, and got him to sit over a brazier.

  He told her.

  "Oh, Caesar, why?" she cried at the end.

  "Come, Mater, you know why. I love my wife. That's first of all. All these years she's lived with us and looked to me for the kind of care neither father nor mother was willing to give her, and thought me the most wonderful aspect of her little life. How can I abandon her? She's Cinna's daughter! A pauper! Not even Roman anymore! Mater, I don't want to die. To live as the flamen Dialis is infinitely preferable to death. But there are some things worth dying for. Principles. The duties of a Roman nobleman you instilled in me with such uncompromising care. Cinnilla is my responsibility. I can't abandon her!" He shrugged, looked triumphant. "Besides, this is my way out. As long as I refuse to divorce Cinnilla, I am unacceptable to the Great God as his priest. So I just have to keep on refusing to divorce her."

  "Until Sulla succeeds in having you killed."

  "That's on the lap of the Great God, Mater, you know it is. I believe that Fortune has offered me this chance, and that I must take it. What I have to do is stay alive until after Sulla dies. Once he's dead, no one else will have the courage to kill the flamen Dialis, and the colleges will be forced to break my priestly chains. Mater, I do not believe Jupiter Optimus Maximus intends me as his special flamen! I believe he has other work for me. Work of better use to Rome."

  She argued no more. "Money. You'll need money, Caesar." And she ran her hands through her hair, as she always did when she was trying to find mislaid funds. "You will need more than two talents of silver, because that's the price of a proscribed man. If you're discovered in hiding, you'll need to pay considerably more than two talents to make it worth an informer's while to let you go. Three talents ought to give you a purchase price plus enough to live on. Now can I find three talents without talking to bankers? Seventy-five thousand sesterces ... I have ten thousand in my room. And the rents are due, I can collect them tonight. When my tenants hear why I need it, they'll pay up. They love you, though why they should I don't know-you're very difficult and obstinate! Gaius Matius might know how to get more. And I imagine Lucius Decumius keeps his ill-gotten gains in jars under his bed...."

  And off she went, still talking. Caesar sighed, got to his feet. Time to organize his flight. And he would have to talk to Cinnilla before he left, explain.

  He sent the steward, Eutychus, to fetch Lucius Decumius, and summoned Burgundus.

  Old Gaius Marius had bequeathed Burgundus to Caesar in his will; at the time Caesar had strongly suspected that he had done so as a last link in the chain of flamen Dialis with which he had bound Caesar hands and feet. If by any chance Caesar should not continue to be Jupiter's special priest, Burgundus was to kill him. But of course Caesar-who owned a great deal of charm-had soon made Burgundus his man, helped by the fact that his mother's gigantic Arvernian maidservant, Cardixa, had fastened her teeth into him. A German of the Cimbri, he had been eighteen when he was captured after the battle of Vercellae, and was now thirty-seven to Cardixa's forty-five. How much longer she could go on bearing a boy a year was one of the family jokes; their total at the moment was five. They had both been manumitted on the day Caesar put on his toga of manhood, but this formal rite of being freed had changed nothing save their citizen status, which was now Roman (though of course they had been enrolled in the urban tribe Suburana, and therefore owned worthless votes). Aurelia, who was both frugal and scrupulously fair, had always given Cardixa a reasonable wage, and thought Burgundus was worthy of good money too. They were believed to be saving this for their sons, as their living was provided for them.

  "But you must take our savings now, Caesar," Burgundus said in his thickly accented Latin. "You will need them."

  His master was tall for a Roman, two inches over six feet, but Burgundus was four inches taller and twice as wide. His fair face, homely by Roman standards because its nose was far too short and straight and its mouth too wide, looked its normal solemn self when he said this, but his light blue eyes betrayed his love-and his respect.

  Caesar smiled at Burgundus, shook his head. "I thank you for the offer, but my mother will manage. If she doesn't- why, then I will accept, and pay you back with interest."

  Lucius Decumius came in accompanied by a swirl of snow; Caesar hastened to finish with Burgundus.

  “Pack for both of us, Burgundus. Warm stuff. You can carry a club. I will carry my father's sword." Oh, how good to be able to say that! I will carry my father's sword! There were worse things than being a fugitive from the Dictator's wrath.

  "I knew that man meant trouble for us!" said Lucius Decumius grimly, though he didn't mention the time when Sulla had frightened him almost witless with a look. "I've sent my boys home for money, you'll have enough." A glare buried itself in Burgundus's back. "Listen, Caesar, you can't go off in this sort of weather with only that big clod! The boys and I will come too."

  Expecting this, Caesar gave Lucius Decumius a look which silenced protest. "No, dad, I can't allow that. The more of us there are, the more likely I am to attract attention."

  "Attract attention?" Lucius Decumius gaped. "How can you not attract attention with that great dolt shambling along behind you? Leave him at home, take me instead, eh? No one ever sees old Lucius Decumius, he's a part of the plaster."

  "Inside Rome, yes," Caesar said, smiling at Decumius with great affection, "but in Sabine country, dad, you'd stick out like dog's balls. Burgundus and I will manage. And if I know you're here to look after the women, I'll have a lot less to worry about while I'm away."

  As this was the truth, Lucius Decumius subsided, muttering.

  "The proscriptions have made it more important than ever that someone be here to guard the women. Aunt Julia and Mucia Tertia have no one except us. I don't think they'll come to any harm up there on the Quirinal, everyone in Rome loves Aunt Julia. But Sulla doesn't, so you'll have to keep watch on them. My mother"-he shrugged-"my mother is herself, and that's as bad as it is good when it comes to dealing with Sulla. If things should change-if, for instance, Sulla should decide to proscribe me, and because of me, my mother-then I leave it to you to get my household out.
" He grinned. "We've put too much money into feeding Cardixa's boys to see Sulla's State end up making a profit on them!"

  "Nothing will happen to any of them, little Peacock."

  "Thanks, dad." Caesar bethought himself of another matter. "I must ask you to hire us a couple of mules and get the horses from the stables."

  This was Caesar's secret, the one aspect of his life he kept from everyone save Burgundus and Lucius Decumius. As flamen Dialis he couldn't touch a horse, but from the time when old Gaius Marius had taught him to ride he had fallen in love with the sensation of speed, and with the feel of a horse's powerful body between his knees. Though he wasn't rich in any way except his precious land, he did have a certain amount of money which was his, and which his mother would not have dreamed of managing. It had come to him in his father's will, and it enabled him to buy whatever he needed without having to apply to Aurelia. So he had bought a horse. A very special horse.

  In all ways but this one Caesar had found the strength and self-denial to obey the dictates of his flaminate; as he tended to be indifferent to what he ate the monotonous diet did not cost him a pang, though many a time he had longed to take his father's sword out of the trunk in which it reposed and swing it around his head. The one thing he had not been able to give up was his love of horses and riding. Why? Because of the association between two different living creatures and the perfection of the result. So he had bought a beautifully made chestnut gelding as fleet as Boreas and called it Bucephalus, after the legendary horse of Alexander the Great. This animal was the greatest joy in his life. Whenever he could sneak away he would walk to the Capena Gate, outside which Burgundus or Lucius Decumius waited with Bucephalus. And he would ride, streaking down the towpath along the Tiber without regard for life or limb, swerving around the patient oxen which drew the barges upriver-and then, when that ceased to be interesting, he would head off across the fields taking stone walls in his stride, he and his beloved Bucephalus as one. Many knew the horse, nobody knew the rider; for he trousered himself like a mad Galatian and wore a Median scarf wound round head and face.