1. First Man in Rome Page 9

  A statement which stuck in his mind, so that when he left the house shortly after and found the tenth hour of daylight still in the lap of the future, he turned at the foot of the Vestal Steps to the right rather than to the left, and skirted the beautiful little round temple of Vesta to walk up the narrow defile between the Regia and the Domus Publicus. Which brought him out onto the Via Sacra at the foot of the little incline called the Clivus Sacer. He strode up the Clivus Sacer briskly, anxious to reach the Porticus Margaritaria before the traders all went home. This big, airy shopping arcade built around a central quadrangle contained Rome's best jewelers. It had got its name from the pearl sellers who had established quarters in it when it had been newly erected; at that time the defeat of Hannibal had seen all the stringent sumptuary laws forbidding women to wear jewelry repealed, and in consequence the women of Rome spent wildly on every kind of gewgaw. Marius wanted to buy Julia a pearl, and knew exactly where to go, as did all who lived in Rome: the firm of Fabricius Margarita. The first Marcus Fabricius had been the first of all the pearl vendors, and set up his shop when what pearls there were came from freshwater mussels, bluff and rock and mud oysters, and the sea pen, and were small and mostly dark in color. But Marcus Fabricius made such a specialty of pearls that he followed like a sniffer-hound down the tracks of legends, journeyed to Egypt and Arabia Nabataea in search of ocean pearls and found them. In the beginning they had been still disappointingly small and irregular in shape, but they did have the true cream-white pearl color, and came from the waters of the Sinus Arabicus, far down near Aethiopia. Then as his name became known, he discovered a source of pearls from the seas around India and the pear-shaped island of Taprobane just below India. At which point he gave himself the last name of Margarita and established a monopoly of ocean pearl trade. Now, in the time of the consulship of Marcus Minucius Rufus and Spurius Postumius Albinus, his grandson another Marcus Fabricius Margarita was so well stocked that a rich man might be fairly sure if he went to Fabricius Margarita that he would find a suitable pearl in the shop right there and then. Fabricius Margarita did indeed have a suitable pearl on hand, but Marius walked home without it, electing to have its perfect marble-sized roundness and moonlit color set upon a heavy gold necklace surrounded by smaller pearls, a process which would consume some days. The novelty of actually wanting to gift a woman with precious things possessed his thoughts, jostling there amid memories of her kiss, her willingness to be his bride. A great philanderer he was not, but he knew enough about women to recognize that Julia did not present the picture of a girl allying herself where she could not give her heart; and the very idea of owning a heart as pure, as young, as blue-blooded as Julia's filled him with the kind of gratitude that cried out to shower her with precious things. Her willingness he saw as a vindication, an omen for the future; she was his pearl beyond price, so to her must come pearls, the tears of a distant tropical moon that fell into the deepest ocean and, in sinking to its bottom, froze solid. And he would find her an Indian adamas stone harder than any other substance known and as big as a hazelnut, and a wonderful green smaragdus stone with blue flickers in its heart, all the way from northern Scythia . . . and a carbunculus stone, as bright and glistening as a blister full of new blood …

  Crania was in, of course. When was she ever out? Waiting every day from the ninth hour onward to see if her husband would come home for dinner, postponing the meal a few minutes only at a time, she drove her appallingly expensive cook mad, and all too often ended in sniffling her way through a solitary repast designed to revive the vanished appetite of a glutton emerging from a fasting cure. The culinary masterpiece produced by the artiste in the kitchen was always, always wasted, whether Marius dined out or at home; for Crania had outlaid a fortune for a cook qualified to cast the most discriminating Epicure into ecstasies. When Marius did stay home to dinner he was faced with fare like dormice stuffed with foie gras, the tiniest fig-pecker birds daintied beyond imagination, exotic vegetables and pungent arrays of sauces too rich for his tongue and his belly, if not his purse. Like most Military Men, he was happiest with a hunk of bread and a bowl of pease-pottage cooked with bacon, and didn't care if he missed a meal or two anyway. Food was fuel for the body to him, not fuel for pleasure. That after so many years of marriage Grania had still not worked this out for herself was symptomatic of the vast distance between them. What Marius was about to do to Grania did not sit well with him, scant though his affection for her was. Their relationship had always been tinged with guilt on his side, for he was well aware that she had come to their marriage looking forward to a life of connubial bliss, cozy with children and shared dinners, a life centered on Arpinum, but with lots of trips to Puteoli, and perhaps a two-week holiday in Rome during the ludi Romani every September. But from first sight of her to first night of her, she had left him so utterly unmoved that he couldn't even begin to counterfeit liking and desire. It wasn't that she was ugly, she wasn't; her round face was pleasant enough, it had even been described to him as beautiful, with its large well-opened eyes and small full mouth. It wasn't that she was a termagant, she wasn't; in fact, her behavior was tailored to please him in every way she knew. The trouble was, she couldn't please him, not if she filled his cup with Spanish fly and took one of the fashionable courses in lascivious dancing. Most of his guilt stemmed from his knowledge that she did not have the faintest idea why she couldn't please him, even after many painful quizzes on the subject; he was never able to give her satisfactory answers, because he honestly didn't know why himself, and that was the real trouble. For the first fifteen years she had made a praiseworthy attempt to keep her figure, which was not at all bad full of breast, small of waist, swell of hip and brushed her dark hair dry in the sun after washing it, to give it plenty of lustrous red highlights; and outlined her soft brown eyes with a black line of stibium; and made sure she never stank of sweat or menses. If there was a change in him on this evening in early January when the door servant admitted him to his house, it was that he had finally found a woman who did please him, with whom he looked forward to marriage, a shared life. Perhaps in contrasting the two, Crania and Julia, he could find the elusive answer at last? And immediately he saw it. Grania was pedestrian, untutored, wholesome, domestic, the ideal wife for a Latin squire. Julia was aristocratic, scholarly, stately, political, the ideal wife for a Roman consul. In affiancing him to Grania, his family had naturally assumed he would lead the life of a Latin squire, this being the heritage of his blood, and chosen his wife accordingly. But Gaius Marius was an eagle, he flew the Arpinate coop. Adventurous and ambitious, formidably intelligent, a no-nonsense soldier who yet had vast imagination, he had come far and intended to go farther still, especially now he was promised a Julia of the Julius Caesars. She was the kind of wife he wanted! The kind of wife he needed. "Grania!" he called, dropping the huge bulk of his toga on the magnificent mosaic floor of the atrium and stepping out of it before the servant scurrying to retrieve it could get there and save its whiteness from contact with the soles of Gaius Marius's muddy boots. "Yes, dear?" She came running from her sitting room with pins and brooches and crumbs littering her wake, far too plump these days, for she had long learned to console her bitter loneliness with too many sweetmeats and syruped figs. "In the tablinum, please," he flung over his shoulder as he strode toward the room. Pattering quickly, she entered on his heels. "Shut the door," he said, moving to where his favorite chair stood behind his big desk, seating himself in it, and thus compelling her to sit like a client on the opposite side of a great expanse of polished malachite edged with tooled gold. "Yes, dear?" she asked, not fearfully, for he was never intentionally rude to her, nor did he ever ill-treat her in any way other than through the medium of neglect. He frowned, turning an ivory abacus over between his hands; hands she had always loved, for they were as graceful as they were strong, square of palm but long of finger, and he used them like an expert, firmly decisive. Head on one side, she stared at him, the stranger to whom she had be
en married for twenty-five years. A fine-looking man, was her verdict now, no different from a thousand other verdicts. Did she love him still? How could she know? After twenty-five years, what she had come to feel was a complicated fabric with absolutely no pattern to it, so airy in some places the light of her mind shone through it, yet so dense in others that it hung like a curtain between her thoughts and her vague idea of who and what Grania the person was. Rage, pain, bewilderment, resentment, grief, self-pity oh, so many, many emotions! Some felt so long ago they were almost forgotten, others fresh and new because she was now forty-five years old, her menses were dwindling, her poor unfruitful womb shrinking. If one emotion had come to dominate, it was ordinary, depressing, uninspiring disappointment; these days she even offered to Vediovis, the patron god of disappointments. Marius's lips opened to speak; by nature they were full and sensuous, but he had already disciplined them to the contours of strength before she had met him. Grania leaned a little forward to hang upon what he would say, every fiber of her being strung to twanging point with the effort of concentrating. "I am divorcing you," he said, and handed her the scrap of parchment upon which early this morning he had written the bill of divorcement. What he said hardly penetrated; she spread the thick and slightly smelly rectangle of supple skin out on the surface of his desk and studied it presbyopically until its words kindled a response. Then she looked from parchment to husband. "I have done nothing to deserve this," she said dully. "I disagree," he said. "What? What have I done?" "You have not been a suitable wife." "And it has taken you all of twenty-five years to come to this conclusion?" "No. I knew it from the beginning." "Why didn't you divorce me then?" "It didn't seem important at the time." Oh, one hurt after another, one insult after another! The parchment vibrated in her grasp, she flung it away and clenched her hands into hard little fists. "Yes, that's about the sum of it!" she said, finally alive enough to be angry. "I never have been important to you. Not even important enough to divorce. So why are you doing it now?" "I want to marry again," he said. Incredulity drove out rage; her eyes widened. "You?" "Yes. I've been offered a marriage alliance with a girl of a very old patrician house." "Oh, come, Marius! The great despiser, turned snob?" "No, I don't believe so," he said dispassionately, concealing his discomfort as successfully as his guilt. "Simply, this marriage means I will be consul after all." The fire of indignation in her died, snuffed out by the cold wind of logic. How could one argue against that? How could one blame? How could one fight anything so inevitable? Though never once had he discussed his political rejection with her, nor complained of how lightly they held him, she knew it just the same. And had wept for him, burned for him, wished there were some way she could rectify the sin of their omission, those Roman noblemen who controlled Roman politics. Yet what could she do, a Grania from Puteoli? Wealthy, respectable, unimpeachable as wives went. But utterly lacking in clout, owning no relatives capable of rectifying the injustices doled out to him; if he was a Latin squire, she was a Campanian merchant's daughter, lowest of the low in a Roman nobleman's eyes. Until recently, her family hadn't held the citizenship. "I see," she said tonelessly. And he was merciful enough to leave it at that, not to hint to her of his excitement, the glowing little kernel of love busy germinating in his dormant heart. Let her think it was purely a match of political expediency. "I am sorry, Grania," he said gently. "So am I, so am I," she said, starting to shake again, but this time with the chill prospect of grass widowhood, an even greater and more intolerable loneliness than the kind she was used to. Life without Gaius Marius? Unthinkable. "If it's any consolation, the alliance was offered to me, I didn't actively seek it." "Who is she?" "The elder daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar." "A Julia! That is looking high! You'll certainly be consul, Gaius Marius." "Yes, I think so too." He fiddled with his favorite reed pen, the little porphyry bottle of blotting sand with its perforated gold cap, the inkwell made from a chunk of polished amethyst. "You have your dowry, of course, and it's more than adequate to meet your requirements. I invested it in more profitable enterprises than your father had, and since you've never touched it, it's now very large indeed." He cleared his throat. "I presume you'll want to live closer to your own family, but I wonder if at your age it's not advisable to have your own house, especially with your father dead, and your brother the paterfamilias." "You never slept with me often enough to give me a child," she said, aching to her core in the midst of this icy solitude. "Oh, I wish I had a child!" "Well, I'm damned glad you don't! Our son would be my heir, and the marriage to Julia couldn't have its significance." He realized that didn't sound the proper note, and added, "Be sensible, Grania! Our children would be grown up by now, and living lives of their own. No comfort to you at all." "There'd at least be grandchildren," she said, the tears starting to gather. "I wouldn't be so terribly alone!" "I have been telling you for years, get yourself a little lapdog!" It wasn't said unkindly, it was merely sound advice; he thought of better advice still, and added, "What you ought to do is marry again, actually." "Never!" she cried. He shrugged. "Have it your own way. Getting back to whereabouts you should live, I'm willing to buy a villa on the sea at Cumae and install you in it. Cumae's a comfortable distance by litter from Puteoli close enough to visit your family for a day or two, far enough away to assure you peace." Hope had gone. "Thank you, Gaius Marius." "Oh, don't thank me!" He got up and came round the desk to help her to her feet with an impersonal hand under her elbow. "You had better tell my steward what's happening, and think about which slaves you want to take with you. I'll have one of my agents find a suitable villa at Cumae tomorrow. I'll keep it in my name, of course, but I'll deed you a life tenancy or until you marry. All right, all right! I know you said you wouldn't, but enterprising suitors will smother you like flies a honey-pot. You're wealthy." They had reached the door of her sitting room, and there he stopped, taking his hand away. "I'd appreciate it if you'd be out of here the day after tomorrow. In the morning, preferably. I imagine Julia will want to make changes to the house before she moves in, and we're to marry in eight weeks, which doesn't give me long to make whatever changes she wants. So the morning of the day after tomorrow. I can't bring her here to inspect the place until you've gone, it wouldn't be proper." She started to ask him something, anything but he was already walking away. "Don't wait dinner for me," he called as he crossed the vast expanse of the atrium. "I'm going to see Publius Rutilius, and I doubt I'll be back before you're in bed." Well, that was that. It wouldn't break her heart to lose her occupancy of this huge barn of a house; she had always hated it, and hated the urban chaos of Rome. Why he had chosen to live on the damp and gloomy northern slope of the Arx of the Capitol had always puzzled her, though she knew the site's extreme exclusivity had operated powerfully upon him. But there were so few houses in the vicinity that visiting friends meant long walks up many steps, and it was a residential political backwater; the neighbors, such as they were, were all terrific merchant princes with little interest in politics. She nodded at the servant standing by the wall outside her sitting room. "Please fetch the steward at once," she said. The steward came, a majestic Greek from Corinth who had managed to get himself an education and then sold himself into slavery in order to make his fortune and eventually acquire the Roman citizenship. "Strophantes, the master is divorcing me," she said without shame, for there was no shame attached. "I must be gone from here by the day after tomorrow, in the morning. Please see to my packing." He bowed, hiding his amazement; this was one marriage he had never expected to see terminate sooner than death, for it had a mummified torpor about it rather than the kind of bitter warfare which usually led to divorce. "Do you intend to take any of the staff, domina?" he asked, sure of his own continuance in this house, for he belonged to Gaius Marius, not to Grania. "The cook, certainly. All the kitchen servants, otherwise he'll be unhappy, won't he? My serving girls, my seamstress, my hairdresser, my bath slaves, and both the page boys," she said, unable to think of anyone else she depended upon and liked. "Certainly, domina." A
nd he went away at once, dying to impart this fabulous piece of gossip to the rest of the staff, and especially looking forward to breaking the news of his move to the cook; that conceited master of the pots wouldn't welcome the exchange of Rome for Puteoli! Grania wandered into her spacious sitting room and looked around at its comfortable air of dishevelment, at her paints and workbox, at the nail-studded trunk in which reposed her baby trousseau, hopefully gathered, heartbreakingly unused. Since no Roman wife chose or bought the furniture, Gaius Marius would not be handing any of it over; her eyes brightened a little, the tears trickled inward instead of down her cheeks, and were not replaced. Really, she had only tomorrow before leaving Rome, and Cumae was not one of the world's greatest emporiums. Tomorrow she would go shopping for furniture to fill her new villa! How nice to be able to pick what she wanted! Tomorrow would be busy after all, no time for thinking, no empty hours to grieve. Much of the sting and shock began at once to evaporate; she could get through the coming night, now that she had a shopping spree to look forward to. '' Berenice!'' she called, and then, when the girl appeared, "I'll dine now, tell the kitchen." She found paper on which to compose her shopping list amid the clutter on her worktable, and left it where it sat ready for her to use as soon as she finished eating. And something else he had said to her yes, that was it, the little lapdog. Tomorrow she would buy a little lapdog, first item on the list. The euphoria lasted until Crania's solitary dinner was almost done, at which point she emerged from shock and promptly plunged into grief. Up went both hands to her hair, wrenching and pulling frenziedly; her mouth opened in a keening wail, the tears poured out in rivers. Every servant scattered, leaving her abandoned in the dining room to howl into the gold-and-purple tapestry covering her couch. "Just listen to her!" said the cook bitterly, pausing in his packing-up of special pans, pots, tools; the sound of his mistress's agony came clearly into his domain at the far end of the peristyle-garden. "What's she got to cry about? I'm the one going into exile she's been there for years, the fat silly old sow!"