Caesar's Women (4 page)

“A pity you hadn't,” said Servilia through her teeth (which she did not grind, though she wanted to).

“Where's Marcus Junius? They said you took him with you.”

“Brutus! Call him Brutus, like everyone else!”

“I do not approve of the change this past decade has brought to our names,” he said, growing louder. “A man may have one or two or even three nicknames, but tradition demands that he be referred to by his first and family names alone, not by a nickname.”

“Well, I for one am profoundly glad of the change, Cato! As for Brutus, he isn't available to you.”

“You think I'll give up,” he went on, his tone now achieving its habitual hectoring mode, “but I never will, Servilia. While there is life in me, I'll never give up on anything. Your son is my blood nephew, and there is no man in his world. Whether you like it or not, I intend to fulfill my duty to him.”

“His stepfather is the paterfamilias, not you.”

Cato laughed, a shrill whinny. “Decimus Junius is a poor puking ninny, no more fit than a dying duck to have supervision of your boy!”

Few chinks in his enormously thick hide though Cato had, Servilia knew where every one of them was. Aemilia Lepida, for example. How Cato had loved her when he was eighteen! As silly as a Greek over a young boy. But all Aemilia Lepida had been doing was using Cato to make Metellus Scipio come crawling.

Servilia said, apropos of nothing, “I saw Aemilia Lepida at Aurelia's today. How well she looks! A real little wife and mother. She says she's more in love with Metellus Scipio than ever.”

The barb visibly lodged; Cato went white. “She used me as bait to get him back,” he said bitterly. “A typical woman—sly, deceitful, unprincipled.”

“Is that how you think of your own wife?” asked Servilia with a broad smile, eyes dancing.

“Atilia is my wife. If Aemilia Lepida had honored her promise and married me, she would soon have found out that I tolerate no woman's tricks. Atilia does as she's told and lives an exemplary life. I will permit nothing less than perfect behavior.”

“Poor Atilia! Would you order her killed if you smelled wine on her breath? The Twelve Tables allow you to do so, and you're an ardent supporter of antique laws.”

“I am an ardent supporter of the old ways, the customs and traditions of Rome's mos maiorum,” he blared, the nose squeezing its nostrils until they looked like blisters on either side of it. “My son, my daughter, she and I eat food she has personally seen prepared, live in rooms she has personally seen tended, and wear clothing she has personally spun, woven and sewn.”

“Is that why you're so bare? What a drudge she must be!”

“Atilia lives an exemplary life,” he repeated. “I do not condone farming the children out to servants and nannies, so she has the full responsibility for a three-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy. Atilia is fully occupied.”

“As I said, she's a drudge. You can afford enough servants, Cato, and she knows that. Instead, you pinch your purse and make her a servant. She won't thank you.” The thick white eyelids lifted, Servilia's ironic black gaze traveled from his toes to his head. “One day, Cato, you might come home early and discover that she's seeking a little extramarital solace. Who could blame her? You'd look so pretty wearing horns on your head!”

But that shaft went wide; Cato simply looked smug. “Oh, no chance of that,” he said confidently. “Even in these inflated times I may not exceed my great-grandfather's top price for a slave, but I assure you that I choose people who fear me. I am scrupulously just—no servant worth his salt suffers under my care!—but every servant belongs to me, and knows it.”

“An idyllic domestic arrangement,” said Servilia, smiling. “I must remember to tell Aemilia Lepida what she's missing.” She turned her shoulder, looking bored. “Go away, Cato, do! You'll get Brutus over my dead body. We may not share the same father—I thank the Gods for that mercy!—but we do share the same kind of steel. And I, Cato, am far more intelligent than you.” She managed to produce a sound reminiscent of a cat's purr. “In fact, I am more intelligent by far than either of my half brothers.”

This third barb pierced him to the marrow. Cato stiffened, his beautiful hands clenched into fists. “I can tolerate your malice when it's aimed at me, Servilia, but not when your target is Caepio!” he roared. “That is an undeserved slur! Caepio is your full brother, not my full brother! Oh, I wish he was my full brother! I love him more than anyone else in the world! But I will not permit that slur, especially coming from you!”

“Look in your mirror, Cato. All of Rome knows the truth.”

“Our mother was part Rutilian—Caepio inherited his coloring from that side of her family!”

“Rubbish! The Rutilians are sandy-fair, on the short side, and quite lacking the nose of a Cato Salonianus.” Servilia snorted contemptuously. “Like to like, Cato. From the time of your birth, Caepio gave himself to you. You're peas from the same pod, and you've stayed as thick as pea soup all your lives. Won't be parted, never argue— Caepio is your full brother, not mine!”

Cato got up. “You're a wicked woman, Servilia.”

She yawned ostentatiously. “You just lost the battle, Cato. Goodbye, and good riddance.”

He flung his final word behind him as he left the room: “I will win in the end! I always win!”

“Over my dead body you'll win! But you'll be dead before me.”

After which she had to deal with another of the men in her life: her husband, Decimus Junius Silanus, whom she had to admit Cato had summed up neatly as a puking ninny. Whatever was the matter with his gut, he did have a tendency to vomit, and he was inarguably a shy, resigned, rather characterless man. All of his goods, she thought to herself as she watched him pick his way through dinner, are on his countertop. He's just a pretty face, there's nothing behind. Yet that is so obviously not true of another pretty face, the one belonging to Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar… I am fascinated with him, by him. For a moment there I thought I was fascinating him too, but then I let my tongue run away with me, and offended him. Why did I forget he's a Julian? Even a patrician Servilian like me doesn't presume to arrange the life or the affairs of a Julian.…

The two girls she had borne Silanus were at dinner, tormenting Brutus as usual (they deemed Brutus a weed). Junia was a little younger than Caesar's Julia, seven, and Junilla was almost six. Both were medium brown in coloring, and extremely attractive; no fear they would displease their husbands! Very good looks and fat dowries were an irresistible combination. They were, however, already formally betrothed to the heirs of two great houses. Only Brutus was uncommitted, though he had made his own choice very clear. Little Julia. How odd he was, to have fallen in love with a child! Though she did not usually admit it to herself, this evening she was in a mood for truth, and acknowledged that Brutus was sometimes a puzzle to her. Why for instance did he persist in fancying himself an intellectual? If he didn't pull himself out of that particular slough, his public career would not prosper; unless like Caesar they also had tremendous reputations as brave soldiers, or like Cicero had tremendous reputations in the law courts, intellectuals were despised. Brutus wasn't vigorous and swift and outgoing like either Caesar or Cicero. A good thing perhaps that he would become Caesar's son-in-law. Some of that magical energy and charm would rub off, had to rub off. Caesar …

Who sent her a message the following day that he would be pleased to see her privately in his rooms on the lower Vicus Patricii, two floors up in the apartment building between the Fabricius dye works and the Suburan Baths. At the fourth hour of day on the morrow, one Lucius Decumius would be waiting in the ground-floor passage to conduct her upstairs.

Though Antistius Vetus's term as governor of Further Spain had been extended, Caesar had not been honor-bound to remain there with him; Caesar had not bothered to secure a personal appointment, just taken his chances of a province in the lots. In one way it might have been enjoyable to linger in Further Spain, but the post of quaestor was too junior to serve as the basis for a great Forum reputation. Caesar was well aware that the next few years of his life must be spent as much as possible in Rome: Rome must constantly see his face, Rome must constantly hear his voice.

Because he had won the Civic Crown for outstanding valor at the age of twenty, he had been admitted to the Senate ten years before the customary age of thirty, and was allowed to speak inside that chamber from the very beginning instead of existing under the law of silence until he was elected a magistrate of higher rank than quaestor. Not that he had abused this extraordinary privilege; Caesar was too shrewd to make himself a bore by adding himself to a list of speakers already far too long. He didn't have to use oratory as a means of attracting attention, as he carried a visible reminder of his near-unique position on his person. Sulla's law stipulated that whenever he appeared on public business, he must wear the Civic Crown of oak leaves upon his head. And everyone at sight of him was obliged to rise and applaud him, even the most venerable consulars and censors. It set him apart and above, two states of being he liked very much. Others might cultivate as many influential intimates as they could; Caesar preferred to walk alone. Oh, a man had to have hordes of clients, be known as a patron of tremendous distinction. But rising to the top—he was determined he would!—by bonding himself to a clique was not a part of Caesar's plans. Cliques controlled their members.

There were the boni, for example: the “good men.” Of all the many factions in the Senate, they had the most clout. They could often dominate the elections, staff the major courts, cry loudest in the Assemblies. Yet the boni stood for nothing! The most one could say about them was that the only thing they had in common with each other was a rooted dislike of change. Whereas Caesar approved of change. There were so many things screaming out for alteration, amendment, abolition! Indeed, if service in Further Spain had shown Caesar anything, it was that change had to come. Gubernatorial corruption and rapacity would kill the empire unless they were curbed; and that was only one change among the many he wanted to see. Wanted to implement. Every aspect of Rome desperately needed attention, regulation. Yet the boni traditionally and adamantly opposed change of the most minor kind. Not Caesar's sort of people. Nor was Caesar popular with them; their exquisitely sensitive noses had sniffed out the radical in Caesar a long time ago.

In fact, there was only one sure road to where Caesar was going: the road of military command. Yet before he could legally general one of Rome's armies he would have to rise at least as high as praetor, and to secure election as one of these eight men who supervised the courts and system of justice required that the next six years be spent inside the city. Canvassing, electioneering, struggling to cope with the chaotic political scene. Keeping his person at the forefront of his world, gathering influence, power, clients, knight supporters from the commercial sphere, followers of all sorts. As himself and solely for himself, not as one of the boni or any other group which insisted its members think alike—or preferably not bother to think at all.

Though Caesar's ambition extended beyond leading his own faction; he wanted to become an institution called the First Man in Rome. Primus inter pares, the first among his equals, all things to all men, owning the most auctoritas, the most dignitas; the First Man in Rome was clout personified. Whatever he said was listened to, and no one could pull him down because he was neither King nor Dictator; he held his position by sheer personal power, was what he was through no office, no army at his back. Old Gaius Marius had done it the hard way, by conquering the Germans, for he had owned no ancestors to tell men he deserved to be the First Man in Rome. Sulla had the ancestors, but did not earn the title because he made himself Dictator. Simply, he was Sulla—great aristocrat, autocrat, winner of the awesome Grass Crown, undefeated general. A military legend hatched in the political arena, that was the First Man in Rome.

Therefore the man who would be the First Man in Rome could not belong to a faction; he had to create a faction, stand forth in the Forum Romanum as no one's minion, yet a most fearsome ally. In this Rome of today, being a patrician made it easier, and Caesar was a patrician. His remote ancestors had been members of the Senate when it had consisted of a mere hundred men who advised the King of Rome. Before Rome so much as existed, his ancestors had been kings themselves, of Alba Longa on the Alban Mount. And before that, his thirty-nine times great-grandmother was the Goddess Venus herself; she had borne Aeneas, King of Dardania, who had sailed to Latin Italia and set up a new kingdom in what would one day be the home domain of Rome. To come from such stellar stock predisposed people to look to a man as leader of their faction; Romans liked men with ancestors, and the more august the ancestors were, the better a man's chances to create his own faction.

Thus it was that Caesar understood what he had to do between now and the consulship, nine years away. He had to predispose men to look upon him as worthy to become the First Man in Rome. Which didn't mean conciliating his peers; it meant dominating those who were not his peers. His peers would fear him and hate him, as they did all who aspired to be called the First Man in Rome. His peers would fight his ambition tooth and nail, stop at nothing to bring him down before he was too powerful ever to bring down. That was why they loathed Pompey the Great, who fancied himself the present First Man in Rome. Well, he wouldn't last. The title belonged to Caesar, and nothing, animate or inanimate, would stop his taking it. He knew that because he knew himself.

At dawn on the day after he arrived home, it was gratifying to discover that a tidy little band of clients had presented themselves to pay him their compliments; his reception room was full of them, and Eutychus the steward was beaming all over his fat face at sight of them. So too was old Lucius Decumius beaming, chirpy and angular as a cricket, hopping eagerly from foot to foot when Caesar emerged from his private rooms.