Caesar's Women (14 page)

“Aren't you going to say it, Gabinius?” Bibulus shouted from the bottom of the Well.

Gabinius looked innocent. “Say what, Bibulus?”

“The name, the name, the name!”

“I have no name, Bibulus, just a solution.”

“Rubbish!” came the harsh and blaring voice of Cato. “That is absolute rubbish, Gabinius! You have a name, all right! The name of your boss, your Picentine upstart boss whose chief delight is destroying every tradition and custom Rome owns! You're not up there saying all of this out of patriotism, you're up there serving the interests of your boss, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus!”

“A name! Cato said a name!” cried Gabinius, looking overjoyed. “Marcus Porcius Cato said a name!” Gabinius leaned forward, bent his knees, got his head as close to Cato below as he could, and said quite softly, “Weren't you elected a tribune of the soldiers for this year, Cato? Didn't the lots give you service with Marcus Rubrius in Macedonia? And hasn't Marcus Rubrius departed for his province already? Don't you think you should be making a nuisance of yourself with Rubrius in Macedonia, rather than being a nuisance in Rome? But thank you for giving us a name! Until you suggested Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, I had no idea which man would be best.”

Whereupon he dismissed the meeting before any of the boni tribunes of the plebs could arrive.

Bibulus turned away with a curt jerk of his head to the other three, lips set, eyes glacial. When he reached the surface of the lower Forum he put his hand out, clutched Brutus's forearm.

“You can run a message for me, young man,” he said, “then go home. Find Quintus Lutatius Catulus, Quintus Hortensius and Gaius Piso the consul. Tell them to meet me at my house now.”

Not very many moments later the three leading members of the boni sat in Bibulus's study. Cato was still there, but Ahenobarbus had gone; Bibulus deemed him too much of an intellectual liability in a council containing Gaius Piso, who was quite dense enough without reinforcements.

“It's been too quiet, and Pompeius Magnus has been too quiet,” said Quintus Lutatius Catulus, a slight and sandy-colored man whose Caesar ancestry showed less in him than his mother's Domitius Ahenobarbus.

Catulus's father, Catulus Caesar, had been a greater man opposing a greater enemy, Gaius Marius, and he had perished in his own way during the hideous slaughter Marius had inflicted on Rome at the beginning of his infamous seventh consulship. The son had been caught in an invidious position after he chose to remain in Rome throughout the years of Sulla's exile, for he had never truly expected Sulla to overcome Cinna and Carbo. So after Sulla became Dictator, Catulus had trodden very warily until he managed to convince the Dictator of his loyalty. It was Sulla had appointed him consul with Lepidus, who rebelled—one more unhappy chance. Though he, Catulus, had defeated Lepidus, it was Pompey who got the job fighting Sertorius in Spain, a far more important enterprise. Somehow that kind of thing had become the pattern of Catulus's life: never quite enough in the forefront to excel the way his formidable father had.

Embittered and now well into his fifties, he listened to the story Bibulus told without having the faintest idea how to combat what Gabinius was proposing to do beyond the traditional technique of uniting the Senate in opposition to any special commands.

Much younger, and fueled by a greater reservoir of hatred for the pretty fellows who would stand above all others, Bibulus knew too many senators would be inclined to favor the appointment of Pompey if the task was as vital as eradication of the pirates. “It won't work,” he said to Catulus flatly.

“It has to work!” Catulus cried, striking his hands together. “We cannot allow that Picentine oaf Pompeius and all his minions to run Rome as a dependency of Picenum! What is Picenum except an outlying Italian state full of so-called Romans who are actually descended from Gauls? Look at Pompeius Magnus—he's a Gaul! Look at Gabinius—he's a Gaul! Yet we genuine Romans are expected to abase ourselves before Pompeius Magnus? Elevate him yet again to a position more prestigious than genuine Romans can condone? Magnus! How could a patrician Roman like Sulla have permitted Pompeius to assume a name meaning great?”

“I agree!” snapped Gaius Piso fiercely. “It's intolerable !''

Hortensius sighed. “Sulla needed him, and Sulla would have prostituted himself to Mithridates or Tigranes if that had been the only way back from exile to rule in Rome,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“There's no point in railing at Sulla,” said Bibulus. “We have to keep our heads, or we'll lose this battle. Gabinius has circumstances on his side. The fact remains, Quintus Catulus, that the Senate hasn't dealt with the pirates, and I don't think the good Metellus in Crete will succeed either. The sack of Ostia was all the excuse Gabinius needed to propose this solution.”

“Are you saying,” asked Cato, “that we won't manage to keep Pompeius out of the command Gabinius is suggesting?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Pompeius can't win against the pirates,” said Gaius Piso, smiling sourly.

“Exactly,” said Bibulus. “It may be that we'll have to watch the Plebs issue that special command, then sit back and bring Pompeius down for good after he fails.”

“No,” said Hortensius. “There is a way of keeping Pompeius out of the job. Put up another name to the Plebs that it will prefer to Pompeius's.”

A small silence fell, broken by the sharp sound of Bibulus's hand cracking down on his desk. “Marcus Licinius Crassus!” he cried. “Brilliant, Hortensius, brilliant! He's quite as good as Pompeius, and he has massive support among the knights of the Plebs. All they really care about is losing money, and the pirates lose them millions upon millions every year. No one in Rome will ever forget how Crassus handled his campaign against Spartacus. The man's a genius at organization, as unstoppable as an avalanche, and as ruthless as old King Mithridates.”

“I don't like him or anything he stands for, but he does have the blood,” from Gaius Piso, pleased. “Nor are his chances any less than Pompeius's.”

“Very well then, we ask Crassus to volunteer for the special command against the pirates,” said Hortensius with satisfaction. “Who will put it to him?”

“I will,” said Catulus. He looked at Piso sternly. “In the meantime, senior consul, I suggest that your officers summon the Senate into session at dawn tomorrow. Gabinius didn't convoke another meeting of the Plebs, so we'll bring the matter up in the House and secure a consultum directing the Plebs to appoint Crassus.”

But someone else got in first, as Catulus was to discover when he tracked Crassus down at his home some hours later.

Caesar had left the Senate steps in a hurry, and went straight from the Forum to Crassus's offices in an insula behind the Macellum Cuppedenis, the spice and flower markets which the State had been compelled to auction off into private ownership years before; it had been the only way to fund Sulla's campaigns in the East against Mithridates. A young man at the time, Crassus had not owned the money to buy it; during Sulla's proscriptions it fell at another auction, and by then Crassus was in a position to buy heavily. Thus he now owned a great deal of very choice property behind the eastern fringe of the Forum, including a dozen warehouses wherein merchants stored their precious peppercorns, nard, incenses, cinnamon, balms, perfumes and aromatics.

He was a big man, Crassus, taller than he looked because of his width, and there was no fat on him. Neck, shoulders and trunk were thickset, and that combined with a certain placidity in his face had caused all who knew him to see his resemblance to an ox—an ox which gored. He had married the widow of both his elder brothers, a Sabine lady of fine family by name of Axia who had become known as Tertulla because she had married three brothers; he had two promising sons, though the elder, Publius, was actually Tertulla's son by his brother Publius. Young Publius was ten years from the Senate, while the son of Crassus's loins, Marcus, was some years younger than that. No one could fault Crassus as a family man; his uxoriousness and devotion were famous. But his family was not his abiding passion. Marcus Licinius Crassus had only one passion—money. Some called him the richest man in Rome, though Caesar, treading up the grimy narrow stairs to his lair on the fifth floor of the insula, knew better. The Servilius Caepio fortune was almost infinitely larger, and so too the fortune of the man he went to see Crassus about, Pompey the Great.

That he had chosen to walk up five flights of stairs rather than occupy more commodious premises lower down was typical of Crassus, who understood his rents exquisitely well. The higher the floor, the lower the rent. Why fritter away a few thousands of sesterces by himself using profitable lower floors which could be rented out? Besides, stairs were good exercise. Nor did Crassus bother with appearances; he sat at a desk in one corner of a room in permanent turmoil with all his senior staff beneath his eyes, and cared not a whit if they jostled his elbow or talked at the tops of their voices.

“Time for a little fresh air!” shouted Caesar, jerking his head in the direction of the doorway behind him.

Crassus got up immediately to follow Caesar down and out into a different kind of turmoil, that of the Macellum Cuppedenis.

They were good friends, Caesar and Crassus, had been since Caesar had served with Crassus during the war against Spartacus. Many wondered at this peculiar association, for the differences between them blinded observers to the far greater similarities. Under those two very contrasting facades existed the same kind of steel, which they understood even if their world did not.

Neither man did what most men would have done, namely to go over to a famous snack bar and buy spiced minced pork encased in a deliciously light and flaky pastry made by covering flour dough with cold lard, folding it and rolling it, then more lard, and repeating the process many times. Caesar as usual wasn't hungry, and Crassus deemed eating anywhere outside his own home a waste of money. Instead, they found a wall to lean on between a busy school of boys and girls taking their lessons in the open air and a booth devoted to peppercorns.

“All right, we're well protected against eavesdroppers,” said Crassus, scratching his scalp; it had quite suddenly made itself visible after his year as Pompey's junior consul when most of his hair fell out—a fact Crassus blamed on the worry of having to earn an extra thousand talents to replace what he had spent on making sure he ended up the consul with the best reputation among the people. That his baldness was more likely due to his age did not occur to him; he would turn fifty this year. Irrelevant. Marcus Crassus blamed everything on worries about money.

“I predict,” said Caesar, eyes on an adorable little dark girl in the impromptu classroom, “that you will receive a visit this evening from none other than our dear Quintus Lutatius Catulus.”

“Oh?” asked Crassus, his gaze fixed on the extortionate price chalked on a wooden card propped up against a glazed ceramic jar of peppercorns from Taprobane. “What's in the wind, Caesar?”

“You should have abandoned your ledgers and come to today's meeting of the Plebeian Assembly,” said Caesar.

“Interesting, was it?”

“Fascinating, though not unexpected—by me, at any rate. I had a little conversation with Magnus last year, so I was prepared. I doubt anyone else was save for Afranius and Petreius, who kept me company on the Curia Hostilia steps. I daresay they thought someone might smell which way the wind was blowing if they stood in the Well of the Comitia. Cicero kept me company too, but out of curiosity. He has a wonderful nose for sensing which meetings might be worth attending.”

No fool politically either, Crassus withdrew his gaze from the costly peppercorns and stared at Caesar. “Oho! What's our friend Magnus up to?”

“Gabinius proposed to the Plebs that it should legislate to give an unlimited imperium and absolutely unlimited everything else to one man. Naturally he didn't name the man. The object of this unlimited everything is to put an end to the pirates,” said Caesar, smiling when the little girl slammed her wax tablet down on the head of the little boy next to her.

“An ideal job for Magnus,” said Crassus.

“Of course. I understand, incidentally, that he's been doing his homework for over two years. However, it won't be a popular commission with the Senate, will it?”

“Not among Catulus and his boys.”

“Nor among most members of the Senate, I predict. They'll never forgive Magnus for forcing them to legitimize his desire to be consul.”

“Nor will I,” said Crassus grimly. He drew a breath. “So you think Catulus will ask me to run for the job in opposition to Pompeius, eh?”

“Bound to.”

“Tempting,” said Crassus, his attention attracted to the school because the little boy was bawling and the pedagogue was trying to avert a free-for-all among his pupils.

“Don't be tempted, Marcus,” said Caesar gently.

“Why not?”

“It wouldn't work, Marcus. Believe me, it wouldn't work. If Magnus is as prepared as I think Magnus is, then let him have the job. Your businesses suffer the effects of piracy as much as any businesses do. If you're clever, you'll stay in Rome and reap the rewards of pirate-free waterways. You know Magnus. He'll do the job, and he'll do it properly. But everyone else will wait and see. You can use the however many months this general skepticism will give you to prepare for the good times to come,” said Caesar.

That was, as Caesar well knew, the most compelling argument he could have put forward.

Crassus nodded and straightened. “You've convinced me,” he said, and glanced up at the sun. “Time to put in a bit more work on those ledgers before I go home to receive Catulus.”

The two men picked their way unconcernedly through the chaos which had descended upon the school, with Caesar giving the small cause of it all a companionable grin as he passed her. “Bye-bye, Servilia!” he said to her.

Crassus, about to go the other way, looked startled. “Do you know her?” he asked. “Is she a Servilia?”

“No, I don't know her,” called Caesar, already fifteen feet away. “But she does remind me vividly of Julia's prospective mother-in-law!”