Caesar's Women (3 page)

“But still six years off. In the meantime, what?”

He twisted restlessly. “Oh, I can feel the walls of Rome hemming me in already, though I passed through them only hours ago! Give me a life abroad any day.”

“There are bound to be plenty of court cases. You're a famous advocate, quite up there with Cicero and Hortensius. You'll be offered some juicy ones.”

“But inside Rome, always inside Rome. Spain,” said Caesar, leaning forward eagerly, “was a revelation to me. Antistius Vetus proved a lethargic governor who was happy to give me as much work as I was willing to take on, despite my lowly status. So I did all the assizes throughout the province, as well as managed the governor's funds.”

“Now the latter duty,” said his mother dryly, “must have been a trial to you. Money doesn't fascinate you.”

“Oddly enough, I found it did when it was Rome's money. I took some lessons in accounting from the most remarkable fellow—a Gadetanian banker of Punic origin named Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major. He has a nephew almost as old as he is, Balbus Minor, who is his partner. They did a lot of work for Pompeius Magnus when he was in Spain, and now they seem to own most of Gades. What the elder Balbus doesn't know about banking and other things fiscal doesn't matter. It goes without saying that the public purse was a shambles. But thanks to Balbus Major, I tidied it up splendidly. I liked him, Mater.” Caesar shrugged, looked wry. “In fact, he was the only true friend I made out there.”

“Friendship,” said Aurelia, “goes both ways. You know more individuals than the rest of noble Rome put together, but you let no Roman of your own class draw too close to you. That's why the few true friends you make are always foreigners or Romans of the lower classes.”

Caesar grinned. “Rubbish! I get on better with foreigners because I grew up in your apartment block surrounded by Jews, Syrians, Gauls, Greeks, and the Gods know what else.”

“Blame it on me,” she said flatly.

He chose to ignore this. “Marcus Crassus is my friend, and you can't call him anything but a Roman as noble as I am myself.”

She riposted with “Did you make any money at all in Spain?”

“A little here and there, thanks to Balbus. Unfortunately the province was peaceful for a change, so there were no nice little border wars to fight with the Lusitani. Had there been, I suspect Antistius Vetus would have fought them himself anyway. But rest easy, Mater. My piratical nest egg is undisturbed, I have enough laid by to stand for the senior magistracies.”

“Including curule aedile?'' she asked, tone foreboding.

“Since I'm a patrician and therefore can't make a reputation as a tribune of the plebs, I don't have much choice,” he said, and took one of the pens from its cup to place it straight on the desk; he never fiddled, but sometimes it was necessary to have something other than his mother's eyes to look at. Odd. He had forgotten how unnerving she could be.

“Even with your piratical nest egg in reserve, Caesar, curule aedile is ruinously expensive. I know you! You won't be content to give moderately good games. You'll insist on giving the best games anyone can remember.”

“Probably. I'll worry about that when I come to it in three or four years,” he said tranquilly. “In the meantime, I intend to stand at next month's elections for the post of curator of the Via Appia. No Claudius wants the job.”

“Another ruinously expensive enterprise! The Treasury will grant you one sestertius per hundred miles, and you'll spend a hundred denarii on every mile.”

He was tired of the conversation; she was, as she always had been whenever they exchanged more than a few sentences, beginning to harp on money and his disregard for it. “You know,” he said, picking up the pen and putting it back in the cup, “nothing ever alters. I had forgotten that. While I was away I had started to think of you as every man dreams his mother must be. Now here is the reality. A perpetual sermon on my tendency to extravagance. Give it up, Mater! What matters to you does not matter to me.”

Her lips thinned, but she stayed silent for a few moments; then as she rose to her feet she said, “Servilia wishes to have a private interview with you as soon as possible.”

“What on earth for?” he asked.

“No doubt she'll tell you when you see her.”

“Do you know?”

“I ask no questions of anyone save you, Caesar. That way, I am told no lies.”

“You acquit me of lying, then.”

“Naturally.”

He had begun to get up, but sank back into his chair and plucked another pen from the cup, frowning. “She's interesting, that one.” His head went to one side. “Her assessment of the Bibulus rumor was astonishingly accurate.”

“If you remember, several years ago I told you she was the most politically astute woman of my acquaintance. But you weren't impressed enough by what I said to want to meet her.”

“Well, now I have met her. And I'm impressed— though not by her arrogance. She actually presumed to patronize me.”

Something in his voice arrested Aurelia's progress to the door; she swung round to stare at Caesar intently. “Silanus is not your enemy,” she said stiffly.

That provoked a laugh, but it died quickly. “I do sometimes fancy a woman who is not the wife of an enemy, Mater! And I think I fancy her just a little. Certainly I must find out what she wants. Who knows? Maybe it's me.”

“With Servilia, impossible to tell. She's enigmatic.”

“I was reminded a trifle of Cinnilla.”

“Do not be misled by romantic sentiment, Caesar. There is no likeness whatsoever between Servilia and your late wife.” Her eyes misted. “Cinnilla was the sweetest girl. At thirty-six, Servilia is no girl, and she's far from sweet. In fact, I'd call her as cold and hard as a slab of marble.”

“You don't like her?”

“I like her very well. But for what she is.” This time Aurelia reached the door before turning. “Dinner will be ready shortly. Are you eating here?”

His face softened. “How could I disappoint Julia by going anywhere today?” He thought of something else, and said, “An odd boy, Brutus. Like oil on the surface, but I suspect that somewhere inside is a very peculiar sort of iron. Julia seemed rather proprietary about him. I wouldn't have thought he'd appeal to her.”

“I doubt he does. But they're old friends.” This time it was her face softened. “Your daughter is extraordinarily kind. In which respect she takes after her mother. There's no one else from whom she could have inherited that characteristic.”

As it was impossible for Servilia to walk slowly, she went home at her usual brisk pace, Brutus still toiling to keep up, but without voicing a complaint; the worst of the heat had gone out of the sun, and he was, besides, once more immersed in hapless Thucydides. Julia was temporarily forgotten. So was Uncle Cato.

Normally Servilia would have spoken to him occasionally, but today he may as well not have been with her for all the notice she took of him. Her mind was fixed on Gaius Julius Caesar. She had sat with a thousand worms crawling through her jaw the moment she saw him, stunned, blasted, unable to move. How was it that she had never seen him before? The smallness of their circle ought to have guaranteed that they met. But she had never even set eyes on him! Oh, heard about him—what Roman noblewoman hadn't? For most, the description of him sent them running to find any ploy which might introduce him to them, but Servilia was not a woman of that kind. She had simply dismissed him as another Memmius or Catilina, someone who slew women with a smile and traded on that fact. One look at Caesar was enough to tell her he was no Memmius, no Catilina. Oh, he slew with a smile and traded on that fact—no argument there! But in him was much more. Remote, aloof, unattainable. Easier now to understand why the women he indulged with a brief affair pined away afterward, and wept, and despaired. He gave them what he didn't value, but he never gave them himself.

Owning a quality of detachment, Servilia passed then to analysis of her reaction to him. Why him, when for thirty-six years no man had really meant more to her than security, social status? Of course she did have a penchant for fair men. Brutus had been chosen for her; she met him first on her wedding day. That he was very dark had been as big a disappointment as the rest of him turned out to be. Silanus, a fair and strikingly handsome man, had been her own choice. One which continued to satisfy her on a visual level, though in every other respect he too had proven a sad disappointment. Not a strong man, from his health to his intellect to his backbone. No wonder he hadn't managed to sire any sons on her! Servilia believed wholeheartedly that the sex of her offspring was entirely up to her, and her first night in Silanus's arms had made her resolve that Brutus would remain an only son. That way, what was already a very considerable fortune would be augmented by Silanus's very considerable fortune too. A pity that it was beyond her power to secure a third and far greater fortune for Brutus! Caesar forgotten because her son had intruded, Servilia's mind dwelled with relish upon those fifteen thousand talents of gold her grandfather Caepio the Consul had succeeded in stealing from a convoy in Narbonese Gaul some thirty-seven years ago. More gold than the Roman Treasury held had passed into Servilius Caepio's keeping, though it had long ago ceased to be actual gold bullion. Instead it had been converted into property of all kinds: industrial towns in Italian Gaul, vast wheatlands in Sicily and Africa Province, apartment buildings from one end of the Italian Peninsula to the other, and sleeping partnerships in the business ventures senatorial rank forbade. When Caepio the Consul died it all went to Servilia's father, and when he was killed during the Italian War it went to her brother, the third to bear the name Quintus Servilius Caepio during her lifetime. Oh yes, it had all gone to her brother Caepio! Her Uncle Drusus had made sure he inherited, though Uncle Drusus had known the truth. And what was the truth? That Servilia's brother Caepio was only her half brother: in reality he was the first child her mother had borne to that upstart Cato Salonianus, though at the time she had still been married to Servilia's father. Who found himself with a cuckoo in the Servilius Caepio nest, a tall, long-necked, red-haired cuckoo with a nose which proclaimed to all of Rome whose child he was. Now that Caepio was a man of thirty, his true origins were known to everyone in Rome who mattered. What a laugh! And what justice! The Gold of Tolosa had passed in the end to a cuckoo in the Servilius Caepio nest.

Brutus winced, wrenched out of his preoccupation; his mother had ground her teeth as she strode along, a hideous sound which caused all who heard it to blanch and flee. But Brutus couldn't flee. All he could hope was that she ground her teeth for some reason unconnected with him. So too hoped the slaves who preceded her, rolling terrified eyes at each other as their hearts pattered and the sweat suddenly poured off them.

None of this did Servilia so much as notice, her short and sturdy legs opening and closing like the shears of Atropos as she stormed along. Wretched Caepio! Well, it was too late for Brutus to inherit now. Caepio had married the daughter of Hortensius the advocate, of one of Rome's oldest and most illustrious plebeian families, and Hortensia was healthily pregnant with their first child. There would be many more children; Caepio's fortune was so vast even a dozen sons couldn't dent it. As for Caepio himself, he was as fit and strong as were all the Cato breed of that ludicrous and disgraceful second marriage Cato the Censor had contracted in his late seventies, to the daughter of his slave, Salonius. It had happened a hundred years ago, and Rome at the time had fallen down laughing, then proceeded to forgive the disgusting old lecher and admit his slave-offspring into the ranks of the Famous Families. Of course Caepio might die in an accident, as his blood father, Cato Salonianus, had done. Came the sound of Servilia's teeth again: faint hope! Caepio had survived several wars unscathed, though he was a brave man. No, it was bye-bye to the Gold of Tolosa. Brutus would never inherit the things it had purchased. And that just wasn't fair! At least Brutus was a genuine Servilius Caepio on his mother's side! Oh, if only Brutus could inherit that third fortune, he would be richer than Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Crassus combined!

Some few feet short of the Silanus front door both slaves bolted for it, pounded on it, vanished the moment they scrambled inside. So that by the time Servilia and her son were admitted, the atrium was deserted; the household knew Servilia had ground her teeth. She therefore received no warning as to who waited for her in her sitting room, just erupted through its entrance still fulminating about Brutus's ill luck in the matter of the Gold of Tolosa. Her outraged eyes fell upon none other than her half brother, Marcus Porcius Cato. Brutus's much-beloved Uncle Cato.

He had adopted a new conceit, taken to wearing no tunic under his toga because in the early days of the Republic no one had worn a tunic under his toga. And, had Servilia's eyes been less filled with loathing of him, she might have admitted that this startling and extraordinary fashion (which he could prevail on no one to emulate) suited him. At twenty-five years of age he was at the peak of his health and fitness, had lived hard and sparingly as an ordinary ranker soldier during the war against Spartacus, and ate nothing rich, drank nothing save water. Though his short and waving hair was a red-tinged chestnut and his eyes were large and a light grey, his skin was smooth and tanned, so he contrived to look wonderful in exposing all of the right side of his trunk from shoulder to hip. A lean and hard and nicely hairless man, he had well-developed pectoral muscles, a flat belly, and a right arm which produced sinewy bulges in the proper places. The head on top of a very long neck was beautifully shaped, and the mouth was distractingly lovely. In fact, had it not been for his amazing nose, he might have rivaled Caesar or Memmius or Catilina for spectacular good looks. But the nose reduced everything else to sheer insignificance, so enormous, thin, sharp and beaked was it. A nose with a life of its own, so people said, awed into worship.

“I was just about to go,” Cato announced in a loud, harsh, unmusical voice.