The Grass Crown Read online

  The water clock said it was the middle of the day. Six hours gone, six hours to go. Drip drip, drip drip. Time enough and more to visit Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle.

  Upon his return from exile, Metellus Numidicus had found himself turned into something of a legend. Not nearly old enough to be dead, he told himself exultantly, yet here he was, already become a part of Forum lore. They recounted the story of his Homeric career as censor, the fearless way he had dealt with Lucius Equitius, the beatings he had taken, the courage he displayed in coming back for more; and they gave the story of how he had gone into exile, with his stammering son cuh-cuh-cuh-counting that endless stream of denarii while the sun went down on the Curia Hostilia and Gaius Marius waited to enforce his oath of allegiance to Saturninus's second land bill.

  Yes, thought Metellus Numidicus after the last client of the day had been dismissed, I will pass into history as the greatest of a great family, the quintessential Quintus of the Caecilii Metelli. And he swelled with pride in himself, happy with being home again, pleased with his welcome, replete with an enormous satisfaction. Yes, it had been a long war against Gaius Marius! But now it was definitely over. And he had won, Gaius Marius had lost. Never again would Rome suffer the indignity of Gaius Marius.

  His steward scratched upon the door to his study.

  "Yes?" asked Metellus Numidicus.

  "Lucius Cornelius Sulla is asking to see you, domine."

  When Sulla came through the door Metellus Numidicus was already on his feet and halfway across the room, his hand stretched out in welcome.

  "My dear Lucius Cornelius, what a pleasure to see you," he said, oozing affability.

  "Yes, it's more than time I came to pay my personal respects in private," said Sulla, seating himself in the client's chair and assuming an expression of rather charming self-deprecation.

  "Some wine?"

  "Thank you."

  Standing by the console table upon which two flagons and some goblets of very nice Alexandrian glass reposed, Metellus Numidicus turned back toward Sulla, one eyebrow lifted, a slightly quizzical look on his face. "Is this an occasion to merit Chian unadulterated by water?" he asked.

  Sulla put on a smile suggesting that he was beginning to feel more at ease. "To water Chian down is a crime," he said.

  His host didn't move. "That's a politician's answer, Lucius Cornelius. I didn't think you belonged to the breed."

  "Quintus Caecilius, leave the water out of your wine!" cried Sulla. "I come in the hope that we can be good friends," he said, voice sincere.

  "In that case, Lucius Cornelius, we will drink our Chian without water."

  Back came Metellus Numidicus bearing two of the goblets; he placed one on Sulla's side of the desk, one on his own, then sat down, picked up his glass. "I drink to friendship," he said.

  "And I." Sulla sipped a little of his wine, frowned, and looked very directly at Metellus Numidicus. "Quintus Caecilius, I am going as senior legate with Titus Didius to Nearer Spain. I have no idea how long I'm likely to be away, but at this moment it looks as if it could be several years. When I come back, I intend to stand as soon as possible for election as praetor." He cleared his throat, sipped a little more wine. "Do you know the real reason why I was not elected praetor last year?"

  A smile played about the corners of Metellus Numidicus's mouth, too faint for Sulla to be able to decide whether it was ironic, malicious, or merely amused,

  "Yes, Lucius Cornelius, I do."

  "And what do you think?"

  "I think you greatly annoyed my dear friend Marcus Aemilius Scaurus in the matter of his wife."

  "Ah! Not because of my connection to Gaius Marius!"

  "Lucius Cornelius, no one with Marcus Aemilius's good sense would suffocate your public career because of a military connection to Gaius Marius. Though I wasn't here myself to see it, I did preserve sufficient contact with Rome to be aware that your relations with Gaius Marius have not been close in some time," said Metellus Numidicus smoothly. "Since you are no longer brothers-in-law, I find that understandable." He sighed. "However, it is unfortunate that, just when you had succeeded in divorcing yourself from Gaius Marius, you should almost provoke a divorce in the household of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus."

  "I did nothing dishonorable, Quintus Caecilius," said Sulla stiffly, careful not to let his anger at being patronized show, but moment by moment hardening in his resolve that this conceited mediocrity should die.

  "I know you did nothing dishonorable." Metellus Numidicus quaffed the last of his wine. "How sad it is that in the matter of women—particularly wives—even the oldest and wisest heads spin round like tops."

  When his host moved to get up Sulla rose quickly to his feet, plucked both goblets from the table, and went to the console to refill them.

  "The lady is your niece, Quintus Caecilius," said Sulla, his back turned, the bulk of his toga hiding the table.

  "That is the only reason I know the full story."

  Having handed one goblet to Metellus Numidicus, Sulla sat down again. "Do you, being the lady's uncle—and being a very good friend of Marcus Aemilius's—consider my treatment fair?"

  A shrug, a mouthful of wine, a grimace. "Were you some mushroom, Lucius Cornelius, you would not be sitting here now. But yours is a very old and illustrious name, you are a patrician Cornelius, and you are a man of superior ability." He pulled another face, drank some more wine. "Had I been in Rome at the time my niece developed her fancy for you, I would of course have supported my friend Marcus Aemilius in anything he chose to do to rectify the situation. I gather he asked you to leave Rome, and you refused. Not a prudent thing to do!"

  Sulla laughed without amusement. "I suppose I didn't believe Marcus Aemilius would act less honorably than I had."

  "Oh, how much a few years in the Forum Romanum as a youth would have improved you!" exclaimed Metellus Numidicus. "You lack tact, Lucius Cornelius."

  "I daresay you're right," said Sulla, finding this the hardest role his life had yet called upon him to play. "But one cannot go back, and I need to go forward."

  "Nearer Spain with Titus Didius is definitely a step forward."

  Once more Sulla got up, poured two goblets of wine. "I must make at least one good friend in Rome before I go," he said, "and I would—I say it from the heart—very much like that friend to be you. In spite of your niece. In spite of your close ties to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus. I am a Cornelian, which means I cannot offer myself to you in the role of a client. Only as a friend. What do you say?"

  "I say—stay to dinner, Lucius Cornelius."

  And so Lucius Cornelius stayed to dinner, a pleasant and intimate affair, since Metellus Numidicus had originally intended to dine alone that day, a little tired of living up to his new status as a Forum legend. They talked about the indefatigable struggle of his son to end the exile on Rhodes.

  "No man was ever blessed with a better boy," said the returned exile, feeling his wine, for his intake had been considerable, and started well before his dinner.

  Sulla's smile was charm personified. "I cannot argue with that, Quintus Caecilius. Indeed, I call your son a good friend of mine. My boy is still a child. However, the blind prejudice of fatherhood says my boy is going to be hard to beat."

  "He is a Lucius, like you?"

  Sulla blinked, surprised. "Of course."

  "Odd, that," Metellus Numidicus said, the two words very carefully pronounced. "Isn't Publius the first name of the eldest son in your branch of the Cornelians?"

  "My father being dead, Quintus Caecilius, I can't ask him. Certainly I never remember his being sober enough while he was alive to talk about family customs."

  "Oh well, doesn't matter." Metellus Numidicus thought for a moment, then said, "On the subject of names, I suppose you know that—that Italian always called me Piggle-wiggle?"

  "I have heard Gaius Marius use it, Quintus Caecilius," said Sulla gravely, and leaned over to fill both the beautiful glas
s goblets from an equally beautiful glass flagon; how fortunate that Piggle-wiggle had a penchant for glass!

  "Disgusting!" said Metellus Numidicus, slurring the word.

  "Absolutely disgusting," agreed Sulla, feeling an enormous sense of well-being flow through him. Piggle-wiggle, Piggle-wiggle.

  "It took me a long time to live that name down."

  "I'm not surprised, Quintus Caecilius," said Sulla innocently.

  "Nursery slang! He couldn't even call me a fully fledged cunnus, that—that Italian."

  Suddenly Metellus Numidicus struggled to sit up, one hand to his brow, drawing audible breaths. "Oh, so dizzy! Can't—seem to—catch my—breath!"

  "Draw some more big deep ones, Quintus Caecilius."

  Obediently Metellus Numidicus labored, then gasped, "I—do not—feel well!"

  Sulla slid toward the back of his couch, where his shoes lay. "I'll get you a basin, shall I?"

  "Servants! Call—servants!" His hands went to his chest, he fell back. "My—lungs!"

  By now Sulla had come round to the front of the couch, and leaned across the table before it. "Are you sure it's your lungs, Quintus Caecilius?"

  Metellus Numidicus writhed, half-reclining, one hand still clutching at his chest, the other, fingers curled into claws, crawling across the couch toward Sulla. "So—dizzy! Can't—breathe! Lungs!"

  Sulla bellowed, "Help! Quickly, help!"

  The room filled with slaves immediately; calmly efficient, he sent several for doctors and set others to propping Metellus Numidicus up on bolsters, for he would not lie down.

  "It won't be long, Quintus Caecilius," he said gently as he sat down on the front edge of the couch, kicking the table aside with his shod foot; both the goblets fell to the floor along with the wine and water flagons, and broke into small pieces. "Here," he said to the straining, bright-faced, terrified Metellus Numidicus, "take my hand." And to one dumbfounded servant standing helplessly by, "Clean up that mess, would you? I wouldn't want anyone cut."

  He remained holding Metellus Numidicus's hand while the slave removed the shards and splinters from the floor and mopped up the liquid, almost entirely water; and he was still holding Metellus Numidicus's hand when the room filled up with yet more people, doctors and their acolytes; and by the time Metellus Pius the Piglet arrived, Metellus Numidicus would not let go Sulla's hand even to extend it to his indefatigable and beloved son.

  So while Sulla held Metellus Numidicus's hand and the Piglet wept inconsolably, the doctors went to work.

  "The potion of hydromel with hyssop and crushed caper root," said Apollodorus of Sicily, still reigning supreme on the best side of the Palatine. "I think we will blood him too. Praxis, my lancet, please."

  But Metellus Numidicus was too busy breathing to swallow the honeyed potion; his blood when the vein was opened streamed out a vivid scarlet.

  "It is a vein, I am sure it is a vein!" said Apollodorus Siculus to himself, then said to the other physicians, "How bright the blood is!"

  "He fights us so, Apollodorus, it is no wonder the blood is bright," said Publius Sulpicius Solon the Athenian Greek. "Do you think—a plaster on the chest?"

  "Yes, it must be a plaster on the chest," said Apollodorus of Sicily, looking grave, and snapping his fingers imperiously at his chief assistant. "Praxis, the barbatum plaster!"

  Still Metellus Numidicus struggled for breath, beat at his chest with his free hand, looked with clouding eyes at his son, refused to lie down, clung to Sulla's hand.

  "He is not dark blue in the face," said Apollodorus Siculus in his stilted Greek to Metellus Pius and Sulla, "and that I do not understand! Otherwise, he has all the signs of a morbid acuteness in the lungs." He nodded to where his assistant was smearing a black and sticky mess thickly upon a square of woolen fabric. "This is the best poultice, it will draw the noxious elements out. Scraped verdigris—a properly separated litharge of lead—alum—dried pitch—dried pine resin—all mixed to the right consistency with vinegar and oil. See, it is ready!"

  Sure enough, the poultice was finished. Apollodorus of Sicily smoothed it upon the bared chest himself, and stood with praiseworthy calm to watch the barbatum plaster do its work.

  But it could not cure, any more than the bloodletting or the potion; slowly Metellus Numidicus relinquished his hold on life, and on Lucius Cornelius Sulla's hand. Face a bright red, eyes no longer capable of seeing, he passed from paralysis to coma, and so died.

  As Sulla left the room, he heard the little Sicilian physician say timidly to Metellus Pius, "Domine, there should be an autopsy," and heard the devastated Piglet say:

  "What, so you Greek incompetents can butcher him as well as kill him? No! My father will go to his pyre unmolested!"

  His eyes on Sulla's back, the Piglet pushed between the cluster of doctors and followed Sulla out into the atrium.

  "Lucius Cornelius!"

  Slowly Sulla turned, his face when he presented it to Metellus Pius a picture of sorrow; the tears welled in his eyes, slipped down his cheeks unchecked. "My dear Quintus Pius!" he said.

  Shock still kept the Piglet on his feet, and his own weeping had lessened. "I can't believe it! My father is dead!"

  "Very sudden," said Sulla, shaking his head. A sob burst from him. "Very sudden! He was so well, Quintus Pius! I called to pay him my respects and he invited me to dinner. We had such a pleasant time! And then, when dinner was over—this!"

  "Oh, why, why, why?" The Piglet's tears began to increase again. "He was just home, he wasn't old!"

  Very tenderly Sulla gathered Metellus Pius to him, pressed the jerking head into his left shoulder, his right hand stroking the Piglet's hair. But the eyes looking past that cradled head reflected the washed-out satisfaction following a great and physical emotion. What could he possibly do in the future to equal that amazing experience? For the first time he had inserted himself completely into the extremis of a dying, been much more than merely its perpetrator; he had been its minister as well.

  The steward emerged from the triclinium to find the son of his dead master being comforted by a man who shone like Apollo. Then he blinked, shook his head. Imagination.

  "I ought to go," said Sulla to the steward. "Here, take him. And send for the rest of the family."

  Outside on the Clivus Victoriae, Sulla stood for long enough to allow his eyes to get used to the darkness. Laughing softly to himself, he moved off in the direction of the temple of Magna Mater. When he saw the barred maw of a drain he dropped his empty little bottle into its blackness.

  "Vale, Piggle-wiggle, Piggle-wiggle!" he howled, and raised his hands to clutch at the sullen sky. "Oh, I feel better!"

  5

  "Jupiter!" said Gaius Marius, putting Sulla's letter down to stare at his wife. ".What is it?"

  "Piggle-wiggle is dead."

  The refined Roman matron her son thought would die if she heard anything cruder than Ecastor! didn't turn a hair; she had been used to hearing Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus referred to as Piggle-wiggle since the first days of her marriage. "Oh, that's too bad," she said, not knowing what her husband wanted her to say.

  "Too bad! It's almost too good—too good to be true!" Marius picked up the scroll again and spread it out to mumble his way through his initial reading. Once he had deciphered its endless scrawl, he read it out more loudly and coherently to Julia, his voice betraying his elation.

  The whole of Rome turned out for the funeral, which was the biggest I for one can remember—but then, I was not much interested in funerals when Scipio Aemilianus was popped on his pyre.

  The Piglet is beside himself with grief, and has definitely branded himself Pius forevermore by weeping and wailing from one gate of Rome to the next. The Caecilius Metellus ancestors were a homely lot if their imagines are anything to go by, which I presume they are. Some of the actors wearing them hopped and skipped and jumped like some sort of peculiar hybrid frog-cricket-deer, and I found myself wondering just where the Caecilii Metelli came from
. An odd breeding ground, at any rate.

  The Piglet clings to me these days, probably because I was there when Piggle-wiggle died, and—since his dear tata wouldn't leave go my hand—the Piglet is convinced all differences between me and Piggle-wiggle were at an end. I didn't tell him my invitation to dinner was a spur of the moment thing. One fact of interest—all through the time his tata was dying and even afterward, the Piglet never stammered once. Mind you, he only developed his speech impediment after the battle of Arausio, so one must assume it is a nervous tic of the tongue rather than an innate defect. He says it bothers him most these days when he remembers it, or he has to give a formal speech. I keep visualizing him conducting a religious ceremony! How hard I'd laugh to see everybody shifting from one foot to another while the Piglet tripped over his tongue and was forced to start all over again.

  I write this on the eve of departing for Nearer Spain, and what hopefully will be a good war. From the reports, the Celtiberians are absolutely boiling and the Lusitani creating havoc in the Further Province, where my remote Cornelian cousin Dolabella has had a trifling success or two without stamping rebellion out.

  The tribunes of the soldiers have been elected, and Quintus Sertorius goes with Titus Didius too. Almost like old times. Except that our leader is a different— and a less outstanding—New Man than Gaius Marius. I shall write whenever there is news, but in return I expect you to write and tell me what sort of man is King Mithridates.

  "What was Lucius Cornelius doing, dining with Quintus Caecilius?" asked Julia curiously.

  "Currying favor, I suspect," said Marius gruffly.

  "Oh, Gaius Marius, no!"

  "And why shouldn't he, Julia? I don't blame him. Piggle-wiggle is—was—in high fettle, and his clout is certainly greater than mine these days. Under the circumstances, poor Lucius Cornelius can't attach himself to Scaurus, and I also understand why he has not tried to attach himself to Catulus Caesar." Marius gave a sigh, shook his head. "However, Julia, at some time in the future I predict that Lucius Cornelius will mend all his fences, and stand on excellent terms with the lot of them."