The Grass Crown Page 7

  "Well, I think it's more than time we all went round to see Young Caesar for ourselves," said Cotta, who was growing a little stout, and in consequence breathed noisily.

  But Aurelia struck her hands together in dismay, looking from one interested face to another with such trouble and pain in her own that the other three paused, shocked. They had known her since birth, and never before had seen her dealing with a situation she clearly felt beyond, her.

  "Oh, please!" she cried. "No! Don't you understand? What you propose to do is exactly what I cannot allow to happen! My son must think of himself as ordinary! How can he do that if three people descend on him to quiz him— and gush over his answers!—and fill him with false ideas of his own importance?"

  A red spot burgeoned in each of Rutilia's cheeks. "My dear girl, he is my grandson!" she said, tight-lipped.

  "Yes, Mama, I know, and you shall see him and ask him whatever you wish—but not yet! Not as-part of a crowd! He—is—so—clever! What any other child of his age wouldn't think to question, he knows the answers to! Let Uncle Publius come on his own for the moment, please!"

  Cotta nudged his wife. "Good idea, Aurelia," he said with great affability. "After all, he has his second birthday soon—halfway through Quinctilis, isn't it? Aurelia can invite us to his birthday party, Rutilia, and we'll be able to see for ourselves without the child's suspecting a special motive for our presence."

  Swallowing her ire, Rutilia nodded. "As you wish, Marcus Aurelius. Is that all right with you, daughter?"

  "Yes," said Aurelia gruffly.

  Of course Publius Rutilius Rufus succumbed to Young Caesar's ever-increasing mastery of charm, and thought him wonderful, and could hardly wait to tell his mother so.

  "I don't know when I've taken such a fancy to anyone since you rejected every servant girl your parents chose for you, and came home yourself with Cardixa," he said, smiling. "I thought then what a pearl beyond price you were! And now I find my pearl has produced—oh, not a moonbeam, but a slice of the sun."

  "Stop waxing lyrical, Uncle Publius! This sort of thing is not why I asked you here to see him," said the mother, edgy.

  But Publius Rutilius Rufus thought it imperative that she should understand, and sat down with her on a bench in the courtyard at the bottom of the light-well which pierced the center of the insula. It was a delightful spot, as the other ground-floor tenant, the knight Gaius Matius, had a flair for gardening that bordered on perfection. Aurelia called the light-well her hanging gardens of Babylon, for plants trailed over the balconies on every floor, and creepers rooted in the earth of the courtyard had over the years grown all the way to the very top of the shaft. This being summer, the garden itself was redolent with the perfume of roses and wallflowers and violets, and blossoms drooped and reared in every shade of blue, pink, lilac, the year's color scheme.

  "My dear little niece," said Publius Rutilius Rufus very seriously, taking both her hands in his, and making her turn to look into his eyes, "you must try to see what I see. Rome is no longer young, though by that I do not mean to imply that Rome is in her dotage. Only consider. . . Two hundred and forty-four years of the kings, then four hundred and eleven years of the Republic. Rome has been in existence now for six hundred and fifty-five years, growing ever mightier. But how many of the old families are still producing consuls, Aurelia? The Cornelii. The Servilii. The Valerii. The Postumii. The Claudii. The Aemilii. The Sulpicii. The Julii haven't produced a consul in nearly four hundred years—though I think there will be several Julii in the curule chair in this generation. The Sergii are so poor they've been reduced to finding money by farming oysters. And the Pinarii are so poor they'll do virtually anything to enrich themselves. Among the plebeian nobility matters are better than among the patricians. Yet it seems to me that if we are not careful, Rome will eventually belong to New Men— men without ancestors, men who can claim no connection to Rome's beginnings, and therefore will be indifferent to what kind of place Rome becomes."

  The grip on her hands tightened. "Aurelia, your son is of the oldest and most illustrious lineage. Among the patrician families still surviving, only the Fabii can compare with the Julii, and the Fabii have had to adopt for three generations to fill the curule chair. Those among them who are genuine Fabii are so odd that they hide themselves away. Yet here in Young Caesar is a member of the old patriciate with all the energy and intelligence of a New Man. He is a hope for Rome of a kind I never thought to see. For I do believe that to grow even greater, Rome must be governed by those of the blood. I could never say this to Gaius Marius—whom I love, but whom I deplore. In the course of his phenomenal career Gaius Marius has done Rome more harm than half a hundred German invasions. The laws that he has tumbled, the traditions he has destroyed, the precedents he has created—the Brothers Gracchi at least were of the old nobility, and tackled what they saw as Rome's troubles with some vestige of respect for the mos maiorum, the unwritten tenets of our ancestors. Whereas Gaius Marius has eroded the mos maiorum and left Rome prey to many kinds of wolves, creatures bearing no relationship whatsoever to the kind old wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus."

  So arresting and unusual, her wide and lucent eyes were fixed on Publius Rutilius Rufus's face almost painfully, and she did not notice how strongly he held on to her hands. For here at last she was being offered something to seize hold of, a guidance through the shadowy realm she trod with Young Caesar.

  "You must appreciate Young Caesar's significance, and do everything in your power to put his feet firmly on the path to pre-eminence. You must fill him with a purpose no one save he can accomplish—to preserve the mos maiorum and renew the vigor of the old ways, the old blood."

  "I understand, Uncle Publius," said Aurelia gravely.

  "Good!" He rose to his feet, drawing her up with him.

  "I shall bring a man to see you tomorrow, at the third hour of the day. Have the boy here."

  And so it was that the child Gaius Julius Caesar Junior passed into the care of one Marcus Antonius Gnipho. A Gaul from Nemausus, his grandfather had been of the tribe Salluvii, and hunted heads with great relish during constant raids upon the settled Hellenized folk of coastal Gaul-across-the-Alps until he and his small son were captured by a determined party of Massiliotes. Sold into slavery, the grandfather soon died, whereas the son had been young enough to survive the transition from headhunting barbarian to domestic servant in a Greek household. He had turned out to be a clever fellow, and was still young enough to marry and raise a family when he managed to save enough to buy his freedom. His choice of a bride had fallen upon a Massiliote Greek girl of modest background, and he met with her father's approval despite his alien hugeness and his bright red hair. Thus his son, Gnipho, had grown up in a free man environment, and soon demonstrated that he shared his father's scholarly bent.

  When Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had carved a Roman province along the coast of Gaul-across-the-Alps lapped by the Middle Sea, he had taken a Marcus Antonius with him as one of his senior legates, and that Marcus Antonius had used the services of Gnipho's father as interpreter and scribe. So when the war against the Arverni was successfully concluded, Marcus Antonius had secured the Roman citizenship for Gnipho's father as no mean token of his thanks; the generosity of the Antonii was always lavish. A freedman at the time Marcus Antonius had employed him, Gnipho's father therefore could be absorbed into Antonius's own rural tribe.

  The boy Gnipho had early evinced a desire to teach, as well as having an interest in geography, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and engineering. So after he assumed the toga of manhood his father put him on a ship and sent him to Alexandria, the intellectual hub of the world. There in the cloisters of the museum library he had studied under the Librarian himself, Diokles.

  But the heyday of the library was over, its librarians no longer of the quality of Eratosthenes; and so when Marcus Antonius Gnipho turned twenty-six, he decided to settle in Rome, and there to teach. At first he had taken on the role of grammatic
us, taught rhetoric to young men; then, a little wearied by the posturings of noble Roman youths, he opened a school for younger boys. From the very first it was a success, and soon he was able to ask the highest fees without discomfort. He had no worries about paying the rent upon two large rooms on the quiet sixth floor of an insula far from the crowded squalor of the Subura, and was also able to afford four rooms one floor higher up in the same Palatine palace for his private living quarters and the housing of his four expensive slaves, two of whom attended to his personal needs, and two of whom assisted him in his dual classrooms.

  When Publius Rutilius Rufus had called to see him, he laughed, assuring his visitor that he had no intention of giving up his profitable little venture in order to pander to a baby. Rutilius Rufus then offered him a properly drawn-up contract which included a luxurious apartment in an even better Palatine insula, and more money than his school brought in. Still Marcus Antonius Gnipho laughed a refusal.

  "At least come and see the child," said Rutilius Rufus. "If someone dangles a bait the size of this one under your nose, you'd be a fool if you declined to look."

  When he met Young Caesar, the teacher changed his mind.

  "Not," he said to Publius Rutilius Rufus, "because he is who he is, or even because of his amazing intelligence. I am committing myself to Young Caesar as his tutor because I like him enormously—and I fear for his future."

  "That wretched child!" Aurelia said to Lucius Cornelius Sulla when he called in late September to see her. "The family clubbed together to find the money to hire him a magnificent pedagogue, and what happens? The pedagogue has fallen for his charm!"

  "Huh," said Sulla, who hadn't called to hear a litany— even of complaint—about any of Aurelia's offspring. Children bored him, no matter how bright and charming; that his own did not bore him was a source of mystery. No, he had called to tell Aurelia he was going away.

  "So you're deserting me too," she said, offering him grapes from her courtyard garden.

  "Very soon, I'm afraid. Titus Didius wants to ship his troops to Spain by sea, and early winter's the best time of year. However, I'm going ahead by land to prepare for their arrival."

  "Tired of Rome?"

  "Wouldn't you be, in my shoes?"

  "Oh, yes."

  He moved restlessly, clenched his fists in frustration. "I am never going to get there, Aurelia!"

  But that only provoked a laugh. "Pooh! You've got October Horse written all over you, Lucius Cornelius. One day it will come, you wait and see."

  "Not entirely, I hope," he said, laughing too. "I'd like to keep my head on my shoulders—which is more than the poor October Horse ever does! Why is that, I wonder? The trouble with all our rituals is that they're so old we don't even understand the language in which we rattle off the prayers, let alone know why we harness war-horses in pairs to chariots, and race them, and then sacrifice the right-hand beast of the winning team. As for fighting over its head—!" So bright was the light that his pupils had contracted to pinpoints and gave him the look of a blinded seer; the eyes he turned on her were filled with a seer's pain—not a pain of past or present, but doomed by knowledge of the future. And he cried out, "Aurelia, Aurelia! Why is it that I never manage to be happy?"

  Her heart squeezed itself up, she pressed her nails into her palms. "I don't know, Lucius Cornelius."

  "Nor do I."

  How horrible to offer him good sense, yet what else could she do? "I think you need to be busy."

  He answered her dryly. "Oh, definitely! When I'm busy, I have no time to think."

  "So I find it," she said huskily, and then said, "There ought to be more to life than that."

  They were sitting in the reception room alongside the low wall of the courtyard garden, one on either side of a table, the grapes, all swollen and purple, in a dish between them. When she finished speaking she continued to look at him, though he had turned his gaze away from her. How attractive he is! she thought, feeling a sudden stab of a private misery she normally kept completely below conscious level. He has a mouth like my husband's, and beautiful it is. Beautiful. Beautiful. ..

  Up came Sulla's eyes, straight into hers; Aurelia blushed scarlet. His face changed, exactly how, hard to define—he just seemed to become more of himself. Out went his hand to her, a sudden and bewitching smile lighting him.

  "Aurelia—"

  She put her own hand into his, caught her breath, felt dizzy. "What, Lucius Cornelius?" she managed to ask.

  "Have an affair with me!"

  Her mouth was dry, she felt she must swallow or lose consciousness, yet could not; and his fingers around hers were like the last threads of a slipping life, she could not leave them go and survive.

  How he got himself around the table she never afterward understood, only looked up at his face so close to hers, the sheen on his lips, the layers in his eyes flaked as in the depths of polished marble. Fascinated, she watched a muscle in his right arm move beneath its sheath of skin, and found herself vibrating rather than trembling, as weak, as lost. ..

  She closed her eyes and waited, and then when she felt his mouth touch hers, she kissed him as if starved of love for some long eternity, awash with more emotions than she had ever known existed, stunned, terrified, exalted, burned to a cinder.

  One moment more and the whole room lay between them, Aurelia flat against a brightly painted wall as if trying to lose a dimension, Sulla by the table drawing in great breaths, with the sun seeding fire through his hair.

  "I—can't!" she said, a quiet scream.

  "Then may you never know another moment's peace!"

  Determined even in the midst of this towering rage that he would do nothing she could find laughable or farcical, he dealt magnificently with his toga, abandoned on the floor; then, every footstep telling her he would never come back, he walked out of that place as if he were the victor of the field.

  But there could be no satisfaction for himself in being the victor of the field—he was too furious at his defeat. Home Sulla walked with such a storm wrapped round him that whole crowds leaped out of his way. How dared she! How dared she sit there with the hunger naked in her eyes, lead him on with a kiss—such a kiss!—then tell him she couldn't. As if she hadn't wanted it more than he. He ought to kill her, break her slender neck, see her face puff up from some poison, watch those purple eyes bulge out as his fingers tightened about her throat. Kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, said the heart he could hear in his ears, said the blood distending the veins of forehead and scalp. Kill her, kill her, kill her! And no less a part of that gigantic fury was the knowledge that he couldn't kill her any more than he had been able to kill Julilla, kill Aelia, kill Dalmatica. Why? What did these women have that women like Clitumna and Nicopolis did not?

  At sight of him when he erupted into the atrium his servants scattered, his wife retreated voiceless to her own room, and his house shrank in upon itself, so huge was its silence. In his study he went straight to the little wooden temple which held the wax mask of his ancestor the flamen Dialis, and wrenched open the drawer hidden in its perfect flight of steps. The first object his groping fingers fastened around was a tiny bottle, and there it lay upon his palm, its clear contents lapping sluggishly inside its walls of greenish glass. He looked, and he looked.

  The time he spent looking down at what he held in his hand had no measure, nor could his mind now dredge up one single thought; all he owned was rage. Or was it pain? Or was it grief? Or was it just a monumental loneliness? From fire he fell down through warmth to coolness, and finally to ice. Only then could he face this frightful disability, the fact that he, so enamored of murder as a solace as well as a necessity, could not physically perform the deed upon a woman of his own class. With Julilla as with Aelia, he had at least found comfort in witnessing their manifest misery because of him, and with Julilla he had known the satisfaction of causing her death; for there could be no doubt that had she not seen his reunion with Metrobius, she would have continued
to guzzle her wine and fix her great hollow yellow eyes upon him mournfully in silent, eternal reproach. With Aurelia, however, he could count on no reaction lasting longer than his presence in her house; as soon as he had gone out her front door, no doubt, she had picked up the pieces of a momentary lapse and buried herself in her work. By tomorrow, she would forget him completely. That was Aurelia. May she rot! May she be chewed up by worms! The malignant sow!

  In the midst of these futile, age-old curses, he caught himself up and grinned a twisted travesty of amusement. No comfort there. Ridiculous, ludicrous. The gods took no note of human frustrations or desires, and he was not of that kind who could in some awful, mysterious way transfer his destructive thoughts into a death wish which bore fruit. Aurelia still lived within him, he needed to banish her before he went to Spain if he was to bend all his energies to the advancement of his career. He needed a something to replace the ecstasy he would have known in breaching the walls of Aurelia's citadel. The fact that until he surprised the look on her face he had harbored no wish to seduce her was beside the point—the urge had been so powerful, so all-pervasive that he could not shake himself free of it.

  Rome, of course. Once he got to Spain it would all go away. If he could find some kind of satisfaction now. In the field he never suffered these dreadful frustrations, perhaps because he was too busy, perhaps because death lay all around him, perhaps because he could tell himself he was moving upward. But in Rome—and he had been in Rome now for almost three years—he came eventually to a degree of thwarted boredom which in the past had only dissipated after literal or metaphorical murder.

  He fell, ice-cold, into a reverie; faces came and went, of victims and of those he wished were victims. Julilla. Aelia. Dalmatica. Lucius Gavius Stichus. Clitumna. Nicopolis. Catulus Caesar—how nice to wipe that haughty camel's look away forever! Scaurus. Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle. Piggle-wiggle ... Slowly Sulla got up, slowly closed the secret drawer. But kept the little bottle in his hand.