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  For one thing, Sulla was drunk. That, Pompey might have been able to forgive, had this Sulla been the Sulla he remembered on the day of his inauguration as consul. But of that beautiful and fascinating man nothing was left, not even the dignity of a thatch of greyed or whitened hair. This Sulla wore a wig to cover his hairless skull, a hideous ginger-red affair of tight little curls below which two straight silver tongues of his own hair grew in front of his ears. His teeth were gone, and their going had lengthened his dented chin, made the mouth into a puckered gash below that unmistakable nose with the slight crease in its tip. The skin of his face looked as if it had been partially flayed, most of it a raw and bloody crimson, some few places still showing their original whiteness. And though he was thin to the point of scrawniness, at some time in the not too distant past he must have grown enormously fat, for the flesh of his face had fallen into crevices, and vast hollow wattles transformed his neck into a vulturine travesty.

  Oh, how can I shine against the backdrop of this mangled piece of human wreckage? wailed Pompey to himself, battling to stem the scorching tears of disappointment.

  They were almost upon each other. Pompey stretched out his right hand, fingers spread, palm vertical.

  "Imperator!" he cried.

  Sulla giggled, made a huge effort, stretched out his own hand in the general's salute. "Imperator!" he shouted in a rush, then fell against Pompey, his damp and stained leather cuirass stinking foully of waterbrash and wine.

  Varro was suddenly there on Sulla's other side; together he and Pompey helped Lucius Cornelius Sulla back to his inglorious mule and shouldered him up until he sprawled upon its bare and dirty hide.

  "He would insist on riding out to meet you as you asked," Varro said, low-voiced. "Nothing I could say would stop him."

  Mounted on his Public Horse, Pompey turned, beckoned his troops to march, then ranged himself on the far side of Sulla's mule from Varro, and rode on into Beneventum.

  "I don't believe it!" he cried to Varro after they had handed the almost insensible Sulla over to his keepers.

  "He had a particularly bad night last night," Varro said, unable to gauge the nature of Pompey's emotions because he had never been privy to Pompey's fantasies.

  "A bad night? What do you mean?"

  "It's his skin, poor man. When he became so ill his doctors despaired of his life, they sent him to Aedepsus–a small spa some distance from Euboean Chalcis. The temple physicians there are said to be the finest in all Greece. And they saved him, it's true! No ripe fruit, no honey, no bread, no cakes, no wine. But when they put him to soak in the spa waters, something in the skin of his face broke down. Ever since the early days at Aedepsus, he has suffered attacks of the most dreadful itching, and rips his face to raw and bleeding meat. He still eats no ripe fruit, no honey, no bread, no cakes. But wine gives him relief from the itching, so he drinks." Varro sighed. "He drinks far too much."

  "Why his face? Why not his arms or legs?" Pompey asked, only half believing this tale.

  "He had a bad sunburn on his face-don't you remember how he always wore a shady hat whenever he was in the sun? But there had been some local ceremony to welcome him, he insisted on going through with-it despite his illness, and his vanity prompted him to wear a helmet instead of his hat. I presume it was the sunburn predisposed the skin of his face to break down," said Varro, who was as fascinated as Pompey was revolted. “His whole head looks like a mulberry sprinkled with meal! Quite extraordinary!"

  "You sound exactly like an unctuous Greek physician," said Pompey, feeling his own face emerge from its plaster mask at last. “Where are we housed? Is it far? And what about my men?"

  “I believe that Metellus Pius has gone to guide your men to their camp. We're in a nice house not far down this street. If you come and break your fast now, we can ride out afterward and find your men." Varro put his hand kindly on Pompey's strong freckled arm, at a loss to know what was really wrong. There was no pity in Pompey's nature, so much he had come to understand; why therefore was Pompey consumed with grief?

  That night Sulla entertained the two new arrivals at a big dinner in his general's house, its object to allow them to meet the other legates. Word had flown around Beneventum of Pompey's advent-his youth, his beauty, his adoring troops. And Sulla's legates were very put out, thought Varro in some amusement as he eyed their faces. They all looked as if their nursemaids had cruelly snatched a delicious honeycomb from their mouths, and when Sulla showed Pompey to the locus consularis on his own couch, then put no other man between them, the looks spoke murder. Not that Pompey cared! He made himself comfortable with unabashed pleasure and proceeded to talk to Sulla as if no one else was present.

  Sulla was sober, and apparently not itching. His face had crusted over a little since the morning, he was calm and friendly, and obviously quite entranced with Pompey. I can't be wrong about Pompey if Sulla sees it too, thought Varro.

  Deeming it wiser at first to keep his gaze concentrated within his immediate vicinity rather than to inspect each man in the room in turn, Varro smiled at his couch companion, Appius Claudius Pulcher. A man he liked and esteemed. "Is Sulla still capable of leading us?" he asked.

  "He's as brilliant as he ever was," said Appius Claudius. "If we can keep him sober he'll eat Carbo, no matter how many troops Carbo can field." Appius Claudius shivered, grimaced. "Can you feel the evil presences in this room, Varro?"

  "Very definitely," said Varro, though he didn't think the kind of atmosphere he felt was what Appius Claudius meant.

  "I've been studying the subject a little," Appius Claudius proceeded to explain, "among the minor temples and cults at Delphi. There are fingers of power all around us-quite invisible, of course. Most people aren't aware of them, but men like you and me, Varro, are hypersensitive to emanations from other places."

  "What other places?" asked Varro, startled.

  "Underneath us. Above us. On all sides of us," said Appius Claudius in sepulchral tones. "Fingers of power! I don't know how else to explain what I mean. How can anyone describe invisible somethings only the hypersensitive can feel touching them? I'm not talking about the gods, or Olympus, or even numina. ..."

  But the others in the room had lured Varro's attention away from poor Appius Claudius, who continued to drone on happily while Varro assessed the quality of Sulla's legates.

  Philippus and Cethegus, the great tergiversators. Every time Fortune favored a new set of men, Philippus and Cethegus turned their togas inside out or back to the right side again, eager to serve the new masters of Rome; each of them had been doing it for thirty years. Philippus was the more straightforward of the two, had been consul after several fruitless tries and even became censor under Cinna and Carbo, the zenith of a man's political career. Whereas Cethegus-a patrician Cornelius remotely related to Sulla-had remained in the background, preferring to wield his power by manipulating his fellow backbenchers in the Senate. They lay together talking loudly and ignoring everybody else.

  Three young ones also lay together ignoring everybody else-what a lovely trio! Verres, Catilina and Ofella. Villains all, Varro was sure of it, though Ofella was more concerned about his dignitas than any future pickings. Of Verres and of Catilina there could be no doubt; the future pickings ruled them absolutely.

  Another couch held three estimable, upright men- Mamercus, Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus (an adopted Varro, actually the brother of Sulla's loyalest follower, Lucullus). They patently disapproved of Pompey, and made no attempt to conceal it.

  Mamercus was Sulla's son-in-law, a quiet and steady man who had salvaged Sulla's fortune and got his family safely to Greece.

  Metellus Pius the Piglet and his quaestor Varro Lucullus had sailed from Liguria to Puteoli midway through April, and marched across Campania to join Sulla just before Carbo's Senate mobilized the troops who might otherwise have stopped them. Until Pompey had appeared today, they had basked in the full radiance of Sulla's grateful approval, for they had brought him two
legions of battle-hardened soldiers. However, most of their attitude was founded in the who of Pompey, rather than in the what or even in the why. A Pompeius from northern Picenum? An upstart, a parvenu. A non-Roman! His father, nicknamed The Butcher because of the way he conducted his wars, might have achieved the consulship and great political power, but nothing could reconcile him and his to Metellus Pius or Varro Lucullus. No genuine Roman, of senatorial family or not, would have, at the age of twenty-two, taken it upon himself-absolutely illegally!-to bring the great patrician aristocrat Lucius Cornelius Sulla an army, and then demand to become, in effect, Sulla's partner. The army which Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus had brought Sulla automatically became his, to do with as he willed; had Sulla accepted it with thanks and then dismissed Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus, they would perhaps have been angered, but they would have gone at once. Punctilious sticklers, both of them, thought Varro. So now they lay on the same couch glaring at Pompey because he had used the troops he had brought Sulla to elicit a top command neither his age nor his antecedents permitted. He had held Sulla to ransom.

  Of all of them, however, by far the most intriguing to Varro was Marcus Licinius Crassus. In the autumn of the previous year he had arrived in Greece to offer Sulla two and a half thousand good Spanish soldiers, only to find his reception little warmer than the one he had received from Metellus Pius in Africa during the summer.

  Most of the chilly welcome was due to the dramatic failure of a get-rich-quick scheme he and his friend the younger Titus Pomponius had engineered among investors in Cinna's Rome. It had happened toward the end of the first year, which saw Cinna joined with Carbo in the consulship, when money was beginning rather coyly to appear again; news had come that the menace of King Mithridates was no more, that Sulla had negotiated the Treaty of Dardanus with him. Taking advantage of a sudden surge of optimism, Crassus and Titus Pomponius had offered shares in a new Asian speculation. The crash occurred when word came that Sulla had completely reorganized the finances of the Roman province of Asia, that there would be no tax-gathering bonanza after all.

  Rather than stay in Rome to face hordes of irate creditors, both Crassus and Titus Pomponius had decamped. There was really only one place to go, one man to conciliate: Sulla. Titus Pomponius had seen this immediately, and gone to Athens with his huge fortune intact. Educated, urbane, something of a literary dilettante, personally charming, and just a trifle too fond of little boys, Titus Pomponius had soon come to an understanding with Sulla; but finding that he adored the atmosphere and style of life in Athens, he had chosen to remain there, given himself the cognomen of Atticus–Man of Athens.

  Crassus was not so sure of himself, and had not seen that Sulla was his only alternative until much later than Atticus.

  Circumstances had conspired to leave Marcus Licinius Crassus head of his family-and impoverished. The only money left belonged to Axia, the widow not only of his eldest brother, but also the widow of his middle brother. The size of her dowry had not been her sole attraction; she was pretty, vivacious, kindhearted and loving. Like Crassus's mother, Vinuleia, she was a Sabine from Reate, and fairly closely related to Vinuleia at that. Her wealth came from the rosea rura, best pasture in all of Italy and breeding ground of fabulous stud donkeys which sold for enormous sums-sixty thousand sesterces was not an uncommon price for one such beast, potential sire of many sturdy army mules.

  When Axia's husband, the eldest Crassus son, Publius, was killed outside Grumentum during the Italian War, she was left a widow-and pregnant. In that tightly knit and frugal family, there seemed only one answer; after her ten months of mourning were over, Axia married Lucius, the second Crassus son. By whom she had no children. When he was murdered by Fimbria in the street outside his door, she was widowed again. As was Vinuleia, for Crassus the father, seeing his son cut down and knowing what his fate would be, killed himself on the spot.

  At the time Marcus, the youngest Crassus son, was twenty-nine years old, the one whom his father (consul and censor in his day) had elected to keep at home in order to safeguard his name and bloodline. All the Crassus property was confiscated, including Vinuleia's. But Axia's family stood on excellent terms with Cinna, so her dowry wasn't touched. And when her second ten-month period of mourning was over, Marcus Licinius Crassus married her and took her little son, his nephew Publius, as his own. Three times married to each of three brothers, Axia was known ever after as Tertulla- Little Three. The change in her name was her own suggestion; Axia had a harsh un-Latin ring to it, whereas Tertulla tripped off the tongue.

  The glorious scheme Crassus and Atticus had concocted-which would have been a resounding success had Sulla not done the unexpected regarding the finances of Asia Province-shattered just as Crassus was beginning to see the family wealth increase again. And caused him to flee with a pittance in his purse, all his hopes destroyed. Behind him he left two women without a male protector, his mother and his wife. Tertulla bore his own son, Marcus, two months after he had gone.

  But where to go? Spain, decided Crassus. In Spain lay a relic of past Crassus wealth. Years before, Crassus's father had sailed to the Tin Isles, the Cassiterides, and negotiated an exclusive contract for himself to convey tin from the Cassiterides across northern Spain to the shores of the Middle Sea. Civil war in Italy had destroyed that, but Crassus had nothing left to lose; he fled to Nearer Spain, where a client of his father's, one Vibius Paecianus, hid him in a cave until Crassus was sure that the consequences of his fiscal philandering were not going to follow him as far as Spain. He then emerged and began to knit his tin monopoly together again, after which he acquired some interests in the silver-lead mines of southern Spain.

  All very well, but these activities could only prosper if the financial institutions and trading companies of Rome were made available to him again. Which meant he needed an ally more powerful than anyone he knew personally: he needed Sulla. But in order to woo Sulla (since he lacked the charm and the erudition possessed so plentifully by Titus Pomponius Atticus) he would have to bring Sulla a gift. And the only gift he could possibly offer was an army. This he raised among his father's old clients; a mere five cohorts, but five well-trained and well-equipped cohorts.

  His first port of call after he left Spain was Utica, in Africa Province, where he had heard Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, he whom Gaius Marius had called the Piglet, was still trying to hold on to his position as governor. He arrived early in the summer of the previous year, only to find that the Piglet-a pillar of Roman rectitude-was not amused by his commercial activities. Leaving the Piglet to make his own dispositions when his government fell, Crassus went on to Greece, and Sulla, who had accepted his gift of five Spanish cohorts, then proceeded to treat him coldly. :

  Now he sat with his small grey eyes fixed painfully upon Sulla, waiting for the slightest sign of approval, and obviously most put out to see Sulla interested only in Pompey. The cognomen of Crassus had been in the Famous Family of Licinius for many generations, but they still managed to breed true to it, Varro noted; it meant thickset (or perhaps, in the case of the first Licinius to be called Crassus, it might have meant intellectually dense?). Taller by far than he looked, Crassus was built on the massive lines of an ox, and had some of that animal's impassive placidity in his rather expressionless face.

  Varro gave the assembled men a final glance, and sighed. Yes, he had been right to spend most of his thoughts upon Crassus. They were all ambitious, most of them were probably capable, some of them were as ruthless as they were amoral, but-leaving Pompey and Sulla out of it, of course-Marcus Crassus was the man to watch in the future.

  Walking back to their own house alongside a completely sober Pompey, Varro found himself very glad that he had yielded to Pompey's exhortations and attached himself at first hand to this coming campaign.

  "What did you and Sulla talk about?" he asked.

  "Nothing earthshaking," said Pompey.

  "You kept your voices low enough." '

  "Yes, di
dn't we?" Varro felt rather than saw Pompey's grin. "He's no fool, Sulla, even if he isn't the man he used to be. If the rest of that sulky assemblage couldn't hear what we said, how do they know we didn't talk about them?"

  "Did Sulla agree to be your partner in this enterprise?"

  “I got to keep command of my own legions, which is all I wanted. He knows I haven't given them to him, even on loan."

  “Was it discussed openly?''

  "I told you, the man is no fool," said Pompey laconically. "Nothing much was said. That way, there is no agreement between us, and he is not bound."

  "You're content with that?"

  "Of course! He also knows he needs me," said Pompey.

  Sulla was up by dawn the next morning, and an hour later had his army on the march in the direction of Capua. By now he had accustomed himself to spurts of activity that coincided with the state of his face, for the itching was not perpetually there; rather, it tended to be cyclic. Having just emerged from a bout and its concomitant intake of wine, he knew that for some days he would have a little peace-provided he did absolutely nothing to trigger another cycle. This required a rigid policing of his hands, which could not be permitted to touch his face for any reason. Not until a man found himself in this predicament did he understand how many times his hands would go to his face without volition, without any awareness. And here he was with the weeping vesicles growing harder as they struggled to heal, and all the tickles, tingles, tiny movements of the skin that healing process involved. It was easiest on the first day, which was today, but as the days went on he would tend to forget, would reach up to scratch a perfectly natural itch of nose or cheek-and the whole ghastly business could start again. Would start again. So he had disciplined himself to get as much done as possible before the next outbreak, and then to drink himself insensible until it passed.