Caesar's Women (20 page)

“But you won't get the color of his skin or his hair or his eyes right,” said Cato in that same hard harsh voice, even harsher from the noises his throat had produced, “and I do not want this statue to look like a living man. I want everyone who sees it to know that he is dead. You will craft it in Thasian marble of solid grey and you will polish it until my brother glitters under the light of the moon. He is a shade, and I want his statue to look like a shade.”

The funeral was the most impressive this small Greek colony just to the east of the mouth of the Hebrus had ever seen, with every woman drawn into service as a professional mourner, and every stick of aromatic spice Aenus contained burned upon Caepio's pyre. When the obsequies were over, Cato gathered up the ashes himself and placed them in the exquisite little box, which never left his person from that day until he arrived in Rome a year later and, as was his duty, gave the box to Caepio's widow.

He wrote to Uncle Mamercus in Rome with instructions to act on as much of Caepio's will as was necessary before he himself returned, and was quite surprised to find he didn't need to write to Rubrius in Thessalonica. The ethnarch had most correctly notified Rubrius of Caepio's death the day it happened, and Rubrius had seen his chance. So with his letter of condolences to Cato there arrived all Cato's and Munatius Rufus's possessions. It's nearly the end of your year of service, chaps, said the governor's scribe's perfect handwriting, and I wouldn't ask either of you to come back here when the weather's closed in and the Bessi have gone home to the Danubius for the winter! Take a long vacation in the East, get over it the right way, the best way.

“I will do that,” said Cato, the box between his hands. “We will journey east, not west.”

But he had changed, as both Athenodorus Cordylion and Titus Munatius Rufus saw, both with sadness. Cato had always been a working lighthouse, a strong and steady beam turning, turning. Now the light had gone out. The face was the same, the trim and muscular body no more bowed or cramped than of yore. But now the hectoring voice had a tonelessness absolutely new, nor did Cato become excited, or enthused, or indignant, or angry. Worst of all, the passion had vanished.

Only Cato knew how strong he had needed to be to go on living. Only Cato knew what Cato had resolved: that never again would he lay himself open to this torture, this devastation. To love was to lose forever. Therefore to love was anathema. Cato would never love again. Never.

And while his shabby little band of three free men and three attendant slaves plodded on foot down the Via Egnatia toward the Hellespont, a freedman named Sinon leaned upon the rail of a neat little ship bearing him down the Aegaean before a brisk but steady winter wind, his destination Athens. There he would take passage for Pergamum, where he would find the rest of his bag of gold. Of that last fact he had no doubt. She was too crafty not to pay up, the great patrician lady Servilia. For a moment Sinon toyed with the idea of blackmail, then he laughed, shrugged, tossed an expiatory drachma into the briskly foaming wake as an offering to Poseidon. Carry me safely, Father of the Deep! I am not only free, I am rich. The lioness in Rome is quiet. I will not wake her to seek more money. Instead, I will increase what is legally mine already.

The lioness in Rome learned of her brother's death from Uncle Mamercus, who came round to see her the moment he received Cato's letter. She shed tears, but not too many; Uncle Mamercus knew how she felt, no one better. The instructions to the branch of her bankers in Pergamum had gone not long after Caepio, a risk she had decided to take before the deed happened. Wise Servilia. No curious accountant or banker would wonder why after the death of Caepio his sister sent a large sum of money to a freedman named Sinon who would pick it up in Pergamum.

And, said Brutus to Julia later that day, “I am to change my name, isn't that amazing?”

“Have you been adopted in someone's will?” she asked, quite aware of the usual manner in which a man's name would change.

“My Uncle Caepio died in Aenus, and I am his heir.” The sad brown eyes blinked away a few tears. “He was a nice man, I liked him. Mostly I suppose because Uncle Cato adored him. Poor Uncle Cato was there an hour too late. Now Uncle Cato says he's not coming home for a long time. I shall miss him.”

“You already do,” said Julia, smiling and squeezing his hand.

He smiled at her and squeezed back. No need to worry about Brutus's conduct toward his betrothed; it was as circumspect as any watchful grandmother could want. Aurelia had given up any kind of chaperonage very soon after the engagement contract was signed. Brutus was a credit to his mother and stepfather.

Not long turned ten (her birthday was in January), Julia was profoundly glad that Brutus was a credit to his mother and stepfather. When Caesar had told her of her marital fate she had been appalled, for though she pitied Brutus, she knew that no amount of time or exposure to him would turn pity into affection of the kind that held marriages together. The best she could say of him was that he was nice. The worst she could say of him was that he was boring. Though her age precluded any romantic dreams, like most little girls of her background she was very much attuned to what her adult life would be, and therefore very much aware of marriage. It had proven hard to go to Gnipho's school and tell her classmates of her betrothal, for all that she had used to think it would give her great satisfaction to put herself on a par with Junia and Junilla, as yet the only betrothed girls there. But Junia's Vatia Isauricus was a delightful fellow, and Junilla's Lepidus dashingly handsome. Whereas what could one say about Brutus? Neither of his half sisters could abide him— at least not to hear them talk at school. Like Julia, they deemed him a pompous bore. Now here she was to marry him! Oh, her friends would tease her unmercifully! And pity her.

“Poor Julia!” said Junia, laughing merrily.

However, there was no point in resenting her fate. She had to marry Brutus, and that was that.

“Did you hear the news, tata?” she asked her father when he came home briefly after the dinner hour had ended.

It was awful now that Pompeia lived here. He never came home to sleep, rarely ate with them, passed through. Therefore to have news which might detain him long enough for a word or two was wonderful; Julia seized her chance.

“News?” he asked absently.

“Guess who came to see me today?” she asked gleefully.

Her father's eyes twinkled. “Brutus?”

“Guess again!”

“Jupiter Optimus Maximus?”

“Silly! He doesn't come as a person, only as an idea.”

“Who, then?” he asked, beginning to shift about restlessly. Pompeia was home; he could hear her in the tablinum, which she had made her own because Caesar never worked there anymore.

“Oh, tata, please please stay a little while longer!”

The big blue eyes were strained with anxiety; Caesar's heart and conscience smote him. Poor little girl, she suffered from Pompeia more than anyone else because she didn't see much of tata.

Sighing, he picked her up and carried her to a chair, sat himself down and put her on his knee. “You're growing quite tall!” he said, surprised.

“I hope so.” She began to kiss his white fans.

“Who came to see you today?” he asked, keeping very still.

“Quintus Servilius Caepio.”

His head jerked, turned. “Who?”

“Quintus Servilius Caepio.”

“But he's quaestoring Gnaeus Pompeius!”

“No, he isn't.”

“Julia, the only member of that family left alive is not here in Rome!” said Caesar.

“I am afraid,” said Julia softly, “that the man you mean is no longer alive. He died in Aenus in January. But there is a new Quintus Servilius Caepio, because the will names him and he must soon be formally adopted.”

Caesar gasped. “Brutus?”

“Yes, Brutus. He says he'll now be known as Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus rather than Caepio Junianus. The Brutus is more important than the Junius.”

“Jupiter!”

“Tata, you're quite shocked. Why?”

His hand went to his head, he gave his cheek a mock slap. “Well, you wouldn't know.” Then he laughed. “Julia, you will marry the richest man in Rome! If Brutus is Caepio's heir, then the third fortune he adds to his inheritance pales the other two into insignificance. You'll be wealthier than a queen.”

“Brutus didn't say anything like that.”

“He probably doesn't really know. Not a curious young man, your betrothed,” said Caesar.

“I think he likes money.”

“Doesn't everyone?” asked Caesar rather bitterly. He got to his feet and put Julia in the chair. “I'll be back shortly,” he said, dashed through the door into the dining room, and then, so Julia presumed, into his study.

The next thing Pompeia came flying out looking indignant, and stared at Julia in outrage.

“What is it?” asked Julia of her stepmother, with whom she actually got on quite well. Pompeia was good practice for dealing with Brutus, though she acquitted Brutus of Pompeia's stupidity.

“He just threw me out!” said Pompeia.

“Only for a moment, I'm sure.”

It was indeed only for a moment. Caesar sat down and wrote a note to Servilia, whom he hadn't seen since May of the preceding year. Of course he had meant to get around to seeing her again before now (it was March), but time got away, he was frying several other fish. How amazing. Young Brutus had fallen heir to the Gold of Tolosa!

Definitely it was time to be nice to his mother. This was one betrothal could not be broken for any reason.

The trouble with Publius Clodius was not lack of birth, intellect, ability or money; it was lack of direction, both in the sense of where he wanted to go and in the sense of firm guidance from his elders. Instinct told him he was born to be different, but that was not a novel thought in one springing from the patrician Claudii. If any Roman clan could be said to be stuffed with individualists, it was that of the patrician Claudii. Odd, considering that of all the patrician Famous Families, the Claudian was the youngest, having appeared at about the same time as King Tarquinius Superbus was deposed by Lucius Junius Brutus, and the era of the Republic began. Of course the Claudii were Sabines, and Sabines were fierce, proud, independent, untamable, warlike; they had to be, for they hailed from the Apennines to the north and east of Roman Latium, a cruelly mountainous area whose pockets of kindness were few and far between.

Clodius's father had been that Appius Claudius Pulcher who never managed to recoup his family fortune after his nephew, the censor Philippus, had thrown him out of the Senate and confiscated all his property as punishment for his stubborn loyalty to the exiled Sulla. His mother, the awesomely noble Caecilia Metella Balearica, had died giving birth to him, the sixth child in six years— three boys and three girls. The vicissitudes of war and always managing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time had meant that Appius Claudius Senior was never home, and that in turn had meant that Clodius's oldest brother, Appius Claudius Junior, was usually the only voice of authority available. Though all five of his charges were turbulent, self-willed and full of a desire to wreak havoc, baby Publius was the worst of them. Had he sampled some nonexistent firm discipline, perhaps Publius would have been less subject to the whims which dominated his childhood, but as all five of his elder siblings spoiled him atrociously, he did precisely as he liked, and very early in his life was convinced that of any Claudian who ever lived, he was the most different.

At about the moment that his father died in Macedonia, he told big brother Appius that he would in future spell his name the popular way, Clodius, and would not use the family cognomen of Pulcher. Pulcher meant beautiful, and it was true that most of the Claudii Pulchri were handsome or beautiful; the original owner of the nickname, however, had received it because he owned a singularly unbeautiful character. “What a beauty!” people had said of him, and Pulcher stuck.

Naturally Publius Clodius had been allowed to popularize the spelling of his name; the precedent had been set with his three sisters, the eldest of whom was known as Claudia, the middle as Clodia, and the youngest as Clodilla. Big brother Appius so doted on his charges that he could never resist granting any of them whatever they wanted. For example, if the adolescent Publius Clodius liked to sleep with Clodia and Clodilla because he had nightmares, why not? Poor little things, no mother and no father! Big brother Appius mourned for them. A fact which littlest brother Publius Clodius was well aware of, and used ruthlessly.

At about the time that young Publius Clodius had put on his toga virilis and officially become a man, big brother Appius had brilliantly retrieved the tottering family fortune by marrying the spinster lady Servilia Gnaea; she had looked after six other noble orphans, those belonging to the Servilius Caepio, Livius Drusus and Porcius Cato menage. Her dowry was as immense as her lack of beauty. But they had care of orphans in common and she turned out to suit sentimental big brother Appius, who promptly fell in love with his thirty-two-year-old bride (he was twenty-one), settled down to a life of uxorious content, and bred children at the rate of one a year, thus living up to Claudian tradition.

Big brother Appius had also managed to provide extremely well for his three dowerless sisters: Claudia went to Quintus Marcius Rex, soon to be consul; Clodia went to their first cousin Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer (who was also the half brother of Pompey's wife, Mucia Tertia); and Clodilla went to the great Lucullus, fully thrice her age. Three enormously wealthy and prestigious men, two of whom were old enough to have already cemented familial power, and Celer not needing to do so because he was the senior grandson of Metellus Balearicus as well as the grandson of the distinguished Crassus Orator. All of which had worked out particularly well for young Publius Clodius, as Rex had not managed to sire a son on Claudia, even after some years of marriage; Publius Clodius therefore confidently expected to be Rex's heir.

At the age of sixteen Publius Clodius went for his tirocinium fori, his apprenticeship as legal advocate and aspiring politician in the Forum Romanum, then spent a year on the parade grounds of Capua playing at soldiers, and returned to Forum life aged eighteen. Feeling his oats and aware that the girls thought him swoonable, Clodius looked around for a feminine conquest who fitted in with his ideas of his own specialness, which were growing by leaps and bounds. Thus he conceived a passion for Fabia—who was a Vestal Virgin. To set one's sights on a Vestal was frowned upon, and that was just the sort of amorous adventure Clodius wanted. In every Vestal's chastity resided Rome's luck; most men recoiled in horror from the very thought of seducing a Vestal. But not Publius Clodius.

No one in Rome asked or expected the Vestal Virgins to lead sequestered lives. They were permitted to go out to dinner parties provided the Pontifex Maximus and the Chief Vestal gave approval of the venue and the company, and they attended all the priestly banquets as the equals of priests and augurs. They were permitted to have masculine visitors in the public parts of the Domus Publica, the State-owned house they shared with the Pontifex Maximus, though it was required to be a chaperoned business. Nor were the Vestals impoverished. It was a great thing for a family to have a Vestal in its ranks, so girls not needed to cement alliances by marriage were often given up to the State as Vestals. Most came with excellent dowries; those unprovided for were dowered by the State.

Also aged eighteen, Fabia was beautiful, sweet-natured, merry and just a little stupid. The perfect target for Publius Clodius, who adored to make mischief of the kind which made people stiffen with outraged disapproval. To woo a Vestal would be such a lark! Not that Clodius intended to go as far as actually deflowering Fabia, for that would lead to legal repercussions involving his own much-beloved hide. All he really wanted was to see Fabia pine away from love and want of him.

The trouble began when he discovered that he had a rival for Fabia's affections: Lucius Sergius Catilina, tall, dark, handsome, dashing, charming—and dangerous. Clodius's own charms were considerable, but not in Catilina's league; he lacked the imposing height and physique, for one, nor did he radiate an ominous power. Ah yes, Catilina was a formidable rival. About his person hung many rumors never proven, glamorous and evil rumors. Everyone knew he had made his fortune during Sulla's proscriptions by proscribing not only his brother-in-law (executed) but also his brother (exiled). It was said he had murdered his wife of that moment, though if he had, no one tried to make him answer for the crime. And, worst of all, it was said he had murdered his own son when his present wife, the beauteous and wealthy Orestilla, had refused to marry a man who already had a son. That Catilina's son had died and that Catilina had married Orestilla everyone knew. Yet had he murdered the poor boy? No one could say for certain. Lack of confirmation did not prevent much speculation, however.

There were probably similar motives behind Catilina's siege of Fabia and Clodius's attempted siege. Both men liked making mischief, tweaking Rome's prudish nose, provoking a furor. But between the thirty-four-year-old man of the world Catilina and the eighteen-year-old inexpert Clodius lay the success of the one and the failure of the other. Not that Catilina had laid siege to Fabia's hymen; that reverenced scrap of tissue remained intact, and Fabia therefore technically chaste. Yet the poor girl had fallen desperately in love with Catilina, and yielded everything else. After all, what was the harm in a few kisses, the baring of her breasts for a few more kisses, even the application of a finger or tongue to the deliciously sensitive parts of her pudenda? With Catilina whispering in her ear, it had seemed innocent enough, and the resulting ecstasy something she was to treasure for the rest of her term as a Vestal—and even further than that.

The Chief Vestal was Perpennia, unfortunately not a strict ruler. Nor was the Pontifex Maximus resident in Rome; he of course was Metellus Pius, waging war against Sertorius in Spain. Fonteia was next in seniority, after her the twenty-eight-year-old Licinia, then Fabia at eighteen, followed by Arruntia and Popillia, both aged seventeen. Perpennia and Fonteia were almost the same age, around thirty-two, and looking forward to retirement within the next five years. Therefore the most important thing on the minds of the two senior Vestals was their retirement, the decline in value of the sestertius, and the consequent worry as to whether what had been plump fortunes would run to comfort in old age; neither woman contemplated marriage after her term as a Vestal had finished, though marriage was not forbidden to an ex-Vestal, only thought to be unlucky.

And this was where Licinia came in. Third in age among the six, she was the most comfortably off, and though she was more closely related to Licinius Murena than to Marcus Licinius Crassus, the great plutocrat was nonetheless a cousin and a friend. Licinia called him in as senior consultant in financial matters, and the three senior Vestals spent many a cozy hour huddled together with him discussing business, investments, unhandy fathers when it came to profitably safe dowries.

While all the time right under their noses Catilina was dallying with Fabia, and Clodius was trying. At first Fabia did not understand what the youth was about, for compared to Catilina's smooth expertise, Clodius's advances were clumsily callow. Then when Clodius pounced on her murmuring endearments through little kisses all over her face, she made the mistake of laughing at his absurdity, and sent him away with the sound of her chuckles booming in his ears. That was not the right way to handle Publius Clodius, who was used to getting what he wanted, and had never in his entire life been laughed at. So huge was the insult to his image of himself that he determined on immediate revenge.

He chose a very Roman method of revenge: litigation. But not the relatively harmless kind of litigation Cato, for instance, had elected after Aemilia Lepida had jilted him when he was eighteen. Cato had threatened breach of promise. Publius Clodius laid charges of unchastity, and in a community which on the whole abhorred the death penalty for crimes, even against the State, this was the one crime which still carried an automatic death penalty.

He didn't content himself with revenge upon Fabia. Charges of unchastity were laid against Fabia (with Catilina), Licinia (with Marcus Crassus), and Arruntia and Popillia (both with Catilina). Two courts were set up, one to try the Vestals, with Clodius himself prosecuting the Vestals, and one to try the accused lovers, with Clodius's friend Plotius (he too had popularized his name, from Plautius to Plotius) prosecuting Catilina and Marcus Crassus.

All those charged were acquitted, but the trials caused a great stir, and the ever-present Roman sense of humor was highly tickled when Crassus got off by declaring simply that he had not been after Licinia's virtue, but rather her snug little property in the suburbs. Believable? The jury certainly thought so.

Clodius worked very hard to convict the women, but he faced a particularly able and learned defense counsel in Marcus Pupius Piso, who was assisted by a stunning retinue of junior advocates. Clodius's youth and lack of hard evidence defeated him, particularly after a large panel of Rome's most exalted matrons testified that all three accused Vestals were virgo intacta. To compound Clodius's woes, both judge and jury had taken against him; his cockiness and feral aggression, unusual in such a young man, set everyone's back up. Young prosecutors were expected to be brilliant, but a trifle humble, and “humble” was not a word in Clodius's vocabulary.

“Give up prosecuting” was Cicero's advice—kindly meant—after it was all over. Cicero of course had attended as part of Pupius Piso's defense team, for Fabia was his wife's half sister. “Your malice and your prejudices are too naked. They lack the detachment necessary for a successful career as a prosecutor.”

That remark did not endear Cicero to Clodius, but Cicero was a very small fish. Clodius itched to make Catilina pay, both for beating him to Fabia and for wriggling out of a death penalty.

To make matters worse, after the trials people who might have been expected to help him shunned Clodius instead. He also had to endure a rare tongue-lashing from big brother Appius, very put out and embarrassed.

“It's seen as sheer spite, little Publius,” big brother Appius said, “and I can't change people's minds. You have to understand that nowadays people recoil in horror at the mere thought of a convicted Vestal's fate—buried alive with a jug of water and a loaf of bread? And the fate of the lovers—tied to a forked stake and flogged to death? Awful, just awful! To have secured the conviction of any one of them would have taken a mountain of evidence that couldn't be refuted, whereas you couldn't even produce a small hillock of evidence! All four of those Vestals are connected to powerful families whom you have just antagonized mortally. I can't help you, Publius, but I can help myself by leaving Rome for a few years. I'm going east to Lucullus. I suggest you do the same.”

But Clodius was not about to have anyone decide the future course of his life, even big brother Appius. So he sneered, turned his shoulder. And sentenced himself thereby to four years of skulking around a city which snubbed him unmercifully, while big brother Appius in the East accomplished deeds which showed all of Rome that he was a true Claudian when it came to making mischief. But as his mischief contributed greatly to the discomfiture of King Tigranes, Rome admired it—and him—enormously.