Caesar's Women Page 8

  Interesting though all of this was for Caesar, the one man elected who worried him the most was tied neither to the boni nor to Pompey the Great. He was Gaius Papirius Carbo, a radical sort of man with his own axe to grind. For some time he had been heard to say in the Forum that he intended to prosecute Caesar's uncle, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, for the illegal retention of booty taken from Heracleia during Marcus Cotta's campaign in Bithynia against Rome's old enemy, King Mithridates. Marcus Cotta had returned in triumph toward the end of that famous joint consulship of Pompey and Crassus, and no one had questioned his integrity then. Now this Carbo was busy muddying old waters, and as a tribune of the fully restored Plebs he would be empowered to try Marcus Cotta in a specially convened Plebeian Assembly court. Because Caesar loved and admired his Uncle Marcus, Carbo's election was a big worry.

  The last ballot tile counted, the ten victorious men stood on the rostra acknowledging the cheers; Caesar turned away and plodded home. He was tired: too little sleep, too much Servilia. They had not met again until the day after the elections in the Popular Assembly some six days earlier, and, as predicted, both had something to celebrate. Caesar was curator of the Via Appia ("What on earth possessed you to take that job on?'' Appius Claudius Pulcher had demanded, astonished. "It's my ancestor's road, but that big a fool I am not! You'll be poor in a year"), and Servilia's so-called full brother Caepio had been elected one of twenty quaestors. The lots had given him duty inside Rome as urban quaestor, which meant he didn't have to serve in a province.

  So they had met in a mood of satisfaction as well as mutual anticipation, and had found their day in bed together so immensely pleasurable that neither of them was willing to postpone another. They met every day for a feast of lips, tongues, skin, and every day found something new to do, something fresh to explore. Until today, when more elections rendered a meeting impossible. Nor would they find time again until perhaps the Kalends of September, for Silanus was taking Servilia, Brutus and the girls to the seaside resort of Cumae, where he had a villa. Silanus too had been successful in this year's elections; he was to be urban praetor next year. That very important magistracy would raise Servilia's public profile too; among other things, she was hoping that her house would be chosen for the women-only rites of Bona Dea, when Rome's most illustrious matrons put the Good Goddess to sleep for the winter.

  And it was time too that he told Julia that he had arranged her marriage. The formal ceremony of betrothal would not take place until after Brutus donned his toga virilis in December, but the legalities were done, Julia's fate was sealed. Why he had put the task off when such was never his custom niggled at the back of his mind; he had asked Aurelia to break the news, but Aurelia, a stickler for domestic protocol, had refused. He was the paterfamilias; he must do it. Women! Why did there have to be so many women in his life, and why did he think the future held even more of them? Not to mention more trouble because of them?

  Julia had been playing with Matia, the daughter of his dear friend Gaius Matius, who occupied the other ground-floor apartment in Aurelia's insula. However, she came home sufficiently ahead of the dinner hour for him to find no further excuse for not telling her, dancing across the light-well garden like a young nymph, draperies floating around her immature figure in a mist of lavender blue. Aurelia always dressed her in soft pale blues or greens, and she was right to do so. How beautiful she will be, he thought, watching her; perhaps not the equal of Aurelia for Grecian purity of bones, but she had that magical Julia quality which Aurelia, so pragmatic and sensible and Cottan, did not. They always said of the Julias that they made their men happy, and he could believe that every time he saw his daughter. The adage was not infallible; his younger aunt (who had been Sulla's first wife) had committed suicide after a long affair with the wine flagon, and his cousin Julia Antonia was on her second ghastly husband amid increasing bouts of depression and hysterics. Yet Rome continued to say it, and he was not about to contradict it; every nobleman with sufficient wealth not to need a rich bride thought first of a Julia.

  When she saw her father leaning on the sill of the dining room window her face lit up; she came flying across to him and managed to make her scramble up and over the wall into his arms a graceful exercise.

  "How's my girl?" he asked, carrying her across to one of the three dining couches, and putting her down beside him.

  "I've had a lovely day, tata. Did all the right people get in as tribunes of the plebs?"

  The outer corners of his eyes pleated into fans of creases as he smiled; though his skin was naturally very pale, many years of an outdoor life in forums and courts and fields of military endeavor had browned its exposed surfaces, except in the depths of those creases at his eyes, where it remained very white. This contrast fascinated Julia, who liked him best when he wasn't in the midst of a smile or a squint, and displayed his fans of white stripes like warpaint on a barbarian. So she got up on her knees and kissed first one fan and then the other, while he leaned his head toward her lips and melted inside as he never had for any other female, even Cinnilla.

  "You know very well," he answered her, the ritual over, “that all the right people never get in as tribunes of the plebs. The new College is the usual mixture of good, bad, indifferent, ominous and intriguing. But I do think they'll be more active than this year's lot, so the Forum will be busy around the New Year."

  She was well versed in political matters, of course, since both father and grandmother were from great political families, but living in the Subura meant her playmates (even Matia next door) were not of the same kind, had scant interest in the machinations and permutations of Senate, Assemblies, courts. For that reason Aurelia had sent her to Marcus Antonius Gnipho's school when she turned six; Gnipho had been Caesar's private tutor, but when Caesar donned the laena and apex of the flamen Dialis on arrival of his official manhood, Gnipho had returned to conducting a school with a noble clientele. Julia had proven a very bright and willing pupil, with the same love of literature her father owned, though in mathematics and geography her ability was less marked. Nor did she have Caesar's astonishing memory. A good thing, all who loved her had concluded wisely; quick and clever girls were excellent, but intellectual and brilliant girls were a handicap, not least to themselves.

  "Why are we in here, tata?" she asked, a little puzzled.

  "I have some news for you that I'd like to tell you in a quiet place," said Caesar, not lost for how to do it now that he had made up his mind to do it.

  "Good news?"

  "I don't quite know, Julia. I hope so, but I don't live inside your skin, only you do that. Perhaps it won't be such good news, but I think after you get used to it you won't find it intolerable."

  Because she was quick and clever, even if she wasn't a born scholar, she understood immediately. "You've arranged a husband for me," she said.

  "I have. Does that please you?"

  "Very much, tata. Junia is betrothed, and lords it over all of us who aren't. Who is it?"

  "Junia's brother, Marcus Junius Brutus."

  He was looking into her eyes, so he caught the swift flash of a creature stricken before she turned her head away and gazed straight ahead. Her throat worked, she swallowed.

  "Doesn't that please you?" he asked, heart sinking.

  "It's a surprise, that's all," said Aurelia's granddaughter, who had been reared from her cradle to accept every lot Fate cast her way, from husbands to the very real hazards of childbearing. Her head came round, the wide blue eyes were smiling now. "I'm very pleased. Brutus is nice."

  "You're sure?"

  "Oh, tata, of course I'm sure!" she said, so sincerely that her voice shook. "Truly, tata, it's good news. Brutus will love me and take care of me, I know that."

  The weight of his heart eased, he sighed, smiled, took her little hand and kissed it lightly before enfolding her in a hug. It never occurred to him to ask her if she could learn to love Brutus, for love was not an emotion Caesar enjoyed, even the love he had known fo
r Cinnilla and for this exquisite sprite. To feel it left him vulnerable, and he hated that.

  Then she skipped off the couch and was gone; he could hear her calling in the distance as she sped to Aurelia's office.

  "Avia, avia, I am to marry my friend Brutus! Isn't that splendid? Isn't that good news?"

  Then came the long-drawn-out moan that heralded a bout of tears. Caesar listened to his daughter weep as if her heart was broken, and knew not whether joy or sorrow provoked it. He came out into the reception room as Aurelia ushered the child toward her sleeping cubicle, face buried in Aurelia's side.

  His mother's face was unperturbed. "I do wish," she said in his direction, “that female creatures laughed when they're happy! Instead, a good half of them cry. Including Julia."

  2

  Fortune certainly continued to favor Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, reflected Caesar early in December, smiling to himself. The Great Man had indicated a wish to eradicate the pirate menace, and Fortune obediently connived to gratify him when the Sicilian grain harvest arrived in Ostia, Rome's port facility at the mouth of the Tiber River. Here the deep-drafted freighters unloaded their precious cargo into barges for the final leg of the grain journey up the Tiber to the silo facilities of the Port of Rome itself. Here was absolute security, home at last.

  Several hundred ships converged on Ostia to discover no barges waiting; the quaestor for Ostia had mistimed things so badly that he had allowed the barges an extra trip upstream to Tuder and Ocriculum, where the Tiber Valley harvest was demanding transportation downstream to Rome. So while captains and grain tycoons fulminated and the hapless quaestor ran in ever-decreasing circles, an irate Senate directed the sole consul, Quintus Marcius Rex, to rectify matters forthwith.

  It had been a miserable year for Marcius Rex, whose consular colleague had died soon after entering office. The Senate had immediately appointed a suffect consul to take his place, but he too died, and too quickly even to insert his posterior into his curule chair. A hurried consultation of the Sacred Books indicated that no further measures ought to be taken, which left Marcius Rex to govern alone. This had utterly ruined his plan to proceed during his consulship to his province, Cilicia, bestowed on him when hordes of lobbying knight businessmen had succeeded in having it taken off Lucullus.

  Now, just when Marcius Rex was hoping to leave for Cilicia at last, came the grain shambles in Ostia. Red with temper, he detached two praetors from their law courts in Rome and sent them posthaste to Ostia to sort things out. Each preceded by six lictors in red tunics bearing the axes in their fasces, Lucius Bellienus and Marcus Sextilius bore down on Ostia from the direction of Rome. And at precisely the same moment, a pirate fleet numbering over one hundred sleek war galleys bore down on Ostia from the Tuscan Sea.

  The two praetors arrived to find half the town burning, and pirates busily forcing the crews of laden grain ships to row their vessels back onto the sea lanes. The audacity of this raid—whoever could have dreamed that pirates would invade a place scant miles from mighty Rome?—had taken everyone by surprise. No troops were closer than Capua, Ostia's militia was too concerned with putting out fires on shore to think of marshaling resistance, and no one had even had the sense to send an urgent message for help to Rome.

  Neither praetor was a man of decision, so both stood stunned and disorientated amid the turmoil on the docks. There a group of pirates discovered them, took them and their lictors prisoner, loaded them on board a galley, and sailed merrily off in the wake of the disappearing grain fleet. The capture of two praetors—one no less than the uncle of the great patrician nobleman Catilina—together with their lictors and fasces would mean at least two hundred talents in ransom!

  The effect of the raid inside Rome was as predictable as it was inevitable: grain prices soared immediately; crowds of furious merchants, millers, bakers and consumers descended upon the lower Forum to demonstrate against governmental incompetence; and the Senate went into a huddle with the Curia doors shut so that no one outside would hear how dismal the debate within was bound to be. And dismal it was. No one even wanted to open it.

  When Quintus Marcius Rex had called several times to no avail for speakers, there finally rose—it seemed with enormous reluctance—the tribune of the plebs-elect Aulus Gabinius, who looked, thought Caesar, even more the Gaul in that dim, filtered light. That was the trouble with all the men from Picenum—the Gaul in them showed more than the Roman. Including Pompey. It wasn't so much the red or gold hair many of them sported, nor the blue or green eyes; plenty of impeccably Roman Romans were very fair. Including Caesar. The fault lay in Picentine bone structure. Full round faces, dented chins, short noses (Pompey's was even snubbed), thinnish lips. Gaul, not Roman. It put them at a disadvantage, proclaimed to the whole of their world that they might protest all they liked that they were descended from Sabine migrants, but the truth was that they were descended from Gauls who had settled in Picenum over three hundred years ago.

  The reaction among the majority of the senators who sat on their folding stools was palpable when Gabinius the Gaul rose to his feet: distaste, disapproval, dismay. Under normal circumstances his turn to speak would have been very far down the hierarchy. At this time of year he was outranked by fourteen incumbent magistrates, fourteen magistrates-elect, and some twenty consulars—if, of course, everyone was present. Everyone was not. Everyone never was. Nonetheless, to have a tribunician magistrate open the debate was almost unprecedented.

  "It hasn't been a good year, has it?" Aulus Gabinius asked the House after completing the formalities of addressing those above and below him in the pecking order. "During the past six years we have attempted to wage war against the pirates of Crete alone, though the pirates who have just sacked Ostia and captured the grain fleet—not to mention kidnapped two praetors and their insignia of office—don't hail from anywhere half as far away as Crete, do they? No, they patrol the middle of Our Sea from bases in Sicily, Liguria, Sardinia and Corsica. Led no doubt by Megadates and Pharnaces, who for some years have enjoyed a really delightful little pact with various governors of Sicily like the exiled Gaius Verres, whereby they can go wherever they please in Sicilian waters and harbors. I imagine they rounded up their allies and shadowed this grain fleet all the way from Lilybaeum. Perhaps their original intention was to raid it at sea. Then some enterprising person in their pay at Ostia sent them word that there were no barges at Ostia, nor likely to be for eight or nine days. Well, why settle for capturing a part only of the grain fleet by attempting to raid it at sea? Better to do the job while it lay intact and fully laden in Ostia harbor! I mean, the whole world knows Rome keeps no legions in her home territory of Latium! What was to stop them at Ostia? What did stop them at Ostia? The answer is very short and simple—nothing!"

  This last word was bellowed; everyone jumped, but no one replied. Gabinius gazed about and wished Pompey was present to hear him. A pity, a great pity. Still, Pompey would love the letter Gabinius intended to send him this night!

  "Something has got to be done," Gabinius went on, "and by that I do not mean the usual debacle so exquisitely personified by the campaign our chief Little Goat is still waging in Crete. First he barely manages to defeat some Cretan rabble in a land battle, then he lays siege to Cydonia, which eventually capitulates—but he lets the great pirate admiral Panares go free! So a couple more towns fall, then he lays siege to Cnossus, within whose walls the great pirate admiral Lasthenes is skulking. When the fall of Cnossus looks inevitable, Lasthenes destroys what treasures he can't carry away with him, and escapes. An efficient siege operation, eh? But which disaster causes our chief Little Goat more sorrow? The flight of Lasthenes or the loss of the treasure trove? Why, the loss of the treasure trove, of course! Lasthenes is only a pirate, and pirates don't ransom each other. Pirates expect to be crucified like the slaves they once were!"

  Gabinius the Gaul from Picenum paused, grinning savagely in the way a Gaul could. He drew a deep breath, then said, "Something has got to be
done!" And sat down.

  No one spoke. No one moved.

  Quintus Marcius Rex sighed. "Has no one anything to say?" His eyes roamed from one tier to another on both sides of the House, and rested nowhere until they encountered a derisive look on Caesar's face. Now why did Caesar stare like that?

  “Gaius Julius Caesar, you were once captured by pirates, and you managed to get the better of them. Have you nothing to say?" asked Marcius Rex.

  Caesar rose from his seat on the second tier. "Just one thing, Quintus Marcius. Something has got to be done." And sat down.

  The sole consul of the year lifted both hands in the air as a gesture of defeat, and dismissed the meeting.

  "When do you intend to strike?" asked Caesar of Gabinius as they left the Curia Hostilia together.

  "Not quite yet," said Gabinius cheerfully. "1 have a few other things to do first, so does Gaius Cornelius. I know it's customary to start one's year as a tribune of the plebs with the biggest things first, but I consider those bad tactics. Let our esteemed consuls-elect Gaius Piso and Manius Acilius Glabrio warm their arses on their curule chairs first. I want to let them think Cornelius and I have exhausted our repertoire before I so much as attempt to reopen today's subject."

  "January or February, then."

  "Certainly not before January," said Gabinius.

  "So Magnus is fully prepared to take on the pirates."

  “Down to the last bolt, nail and skin of water. I can tell you, Caesar, that Rome will never have seen anything like it."

  "Then roll on, January." Caesar paused, turned his head to look at Gabinius quizzically. “Magnus will never succeed in getting Gaius Piso on his side, he's too glued to Catulus and the boni, but Glabrio is more promising. He's never forgotten what Sulla did to him."

  "When Sulla forced him to divorce Aemilia Scaura?''