The First Man in Rome (104 page)

As it turned out, the Cimbri were so busy scouting the tracks terracing the mountainsides that it was a full hour after the sun rose before they realized the Roman force was in retreat. Then confusion reigned until Boiorix arrived in person and got his enormous mass of men into some semblance of order. In the meantime the Roman column had indeed moved fast; when the Cimbri finally formed up to attack, the farthest legion from the bridge was already marching at the double across it.

The corps of engineers had worked feverishly among the beams and struts beneath the causeway from well before dawn.

"It's always the same!" complained the chief of engineers to Sulla when he came to see how the work was progressing. "I always have to deal with a properly built Roman bridge just when I want the wretched thing to fall apart with a gentle tug."

"Can you do it?" asked Sulla.

"Hope so,
legatus
!
There's not a bit of lashing or a bolt in the thing, though. Proper sockets and tongues, everything rabbeted together to hold it down, not up. So I can't pull it apart in a hurry without a bigger crane than any we've got with us, even if I had time to assemble a crane that big, which I don't. No, it's the hard way, I'm afraid, and that means it's going to be a bit wobbly when the last of our men are tramping across it," said the chief engineer.

Sulla frowned. "What's the hard way?"

"We're sawing through the main struts and beams."

"Then keep at it, man! I've got a hundred oxen coming to give you that gentle tug—enough?"

"It'll have to be," said the chief engineer, and moved off to look at the job from a different angle.

The Cimbric cavalry came shrieking and screaming down the valley, taking the deserted hurdles of five Roman camps in their stride, for these were routine walls and ditches; there hadn't been sufficient time to build anything else. Only the Samnite legion was left on the far side of the bridge, and was actually in the process of marching out of the main gate of its camp when the Cimbri flashed between them and the bridge, cutting them off. The Samnites turned files into ranks and prepared to withstand the coming charge, spears at the ready, faces set.

Watching helplessly from the opposite side of the bridge, Sulla waited for the first rush of cavalry to go by and wheel their horses, straining to see what the Samnite legion commander was going to do. This was young Scaurus, and now Sulla began to fret that he hadn't removed this timid son of an intrepid father and taken over command himself. But it was too late now; he couldn't recross the bridge because he didn't have enough men with him, and he didn't trust Catulus Caesar to see to the retreat, which meant he himself had to survive. Nor did he want to draw the Cimbri's attention to the existence of the bridge, for if they turned their barbarian eyes toward it, there plain to see were five Roman legions and a baggage train marching south and begging for pursuit. If necessary, he decided, he would have the oxen start to haul on the chains connecting them to the undermined bridge; but the moment he did that, there was no hope for the Samnite legion.

"Lead a charge, young Scaurus, lead a charge north!" he found himself muttering. "Roll them back, get your men to the bridge!"

The Cimbric cavalry was turning, its front ranks carried far past the Samnite camp by the impetus of their charge, and the ranks in the rear pulled back on their mounts to give the front ranks room to turn and gallop back; the whole press would then fall upon the Samnite camp, leap their horses up and over, and trample everything down so that the hordes of foot warriors could finish things off. From that point on, the cavalry would turn itself into a giant scoop, pushing the Samnites north into the mass of Cimbric infantry.

The only chance the Samnites had was to drive across the front of the rear ranks of horsemen and cut the front ranks off from this reinforcement, then bring down the mounts of both ranks with their spears, while those not engaged made a dash for the bridge. But where was young Scaurus? Why wasn't he doing it? A few moments more, and it would be too late!

The cheering of the three centuries of men Sulla had with him actually preceded his own view of the Samnite charge, for he was looking for a horse-mounted tribune of the soldiers, while the charge was led by a man on foot. Gnaeus Petreius, the Samnite
primus pilus
centurion.

Yelling along with the rest of his men, Sulla hopped and danced from one foot to the other as the Samnites not engaged began to stream across the bridge at a run, packing their numbers so close together that they gave the Cimbri no room to cut them off a second time. The front ranks of Cimbric horses were falling in hundreds before the rain of Samnite spears, warriors struggling to free themselves from fallen steeds, tangling themselves into an ever-increasing chaos as more Samnite spears hurtled to stick into heaving equine sides, chests, rumps, necks, flanks; and the rear ranks of Cimbric horse penned on the other side of the Samnites fared no better. In the end it was their own fallen cavalry which kept the Cimbric foot away. And Gnaeus Petreius came across the bridge behind the last of his men with hardly a German in pursuit.

The oxen had been putting their shoulders to the job long before this happened, for the hundred beasts harnessed two abreast couldn't gather impetus in under many moments, the lead beasts pulling, then the next, and so on down the fifty pairs until the chains tightened and the bridge began to feel the strain. Being a good stout Roman bridge, it held for much longer than even the chief of engineers—a pessimistic fellow, like all his breed—had thought; but eventually one of the struts parted company with its companions, and amid groans, snaps, pops, and roars the Tridentine bridge across the Athesis gave way. Its timbers tumbled into the torrent and whirled away downstream like straws bobbing about in a garden fountain.

Gnaeus Petreius was wounded in the side, but not badly; Sulla found him sitting while the legion's surgeons peeled away his mail shirt, his face streaked with a mixture of mud, sweat, and horse dung, but looking remarkably fit and alert nonetheless.

"Don't touch that wound until you've got him clean, you
mentulae
!" Sulla snarled. "Wash every last bit of dung off him first! He's not going to bleed to death, are you, Gnaeus Petreius?"

"Not Gnaeus Petreius!" said the centurion, grinning broadly. "We did it, eh, Lucius Cornelius? We got 'em all across, and only a handful of dead on the other side!"

Sulla sank down beside him and leaned his head too close to the centurion's to permit of anyone's overhearing.  “What happened to young Scaurus?"

Down went Petreius's lips. "Got a dose of the shits while he should have been thinking, then when I kept pushing him as to what to do, he passed out on me. Just fell over in a faint. He's all right, poor young chap; some of the lads carried him over the bridge. Pity, but there it is. None of his dad's guts, none at all. Ought to have been a librarian."

"I can't tell you how glad I am you were there, and not some other
primus pilus.
I just didn't think! The moment I did, I kicked myself because I didn't relieve him of the command myself," said Sulla.

"Doesn't matter, Lucius Cornelius, it all worked out in the end. At least this way, he knows his limitations."

The surgeons were back with enough water and sponges to wash off a dozen men; Sulla got up to let them get to work, extending his right arm. Gnaeus Petreius held up his own, and the two men expressed everything they felt in that handshake.

"It's the grass crown for you," said Sulla.

"No!" said Petreius, looking embarrassed.

"But yes. You saved a whole legion from death, Gnaeus Petreius, and when a man single-handedly saves a whole legion from death, he wears the grass crown. I shall see to it myself," said Sulla.

Was that the grass crown Julilla had seen in his future all those years ago? wondered Sulla as he headed off down the slope to the town to organize wagon transportation for Gnaeus Petreius, the hero of Tridentum. Poor Julilla! Poor, poor Julilla… She never had managed to do anything right, so perhaps that extended to her brushes against the strange manifestations of Fortune. The sole Julia not born with the gift of making her men happy, that had been Julilla. Then his mind passed to other, more important things; Lucius Cornelius Sulla was not about to start blaming himself for Julilla. Her fate had nothing to do with him; she brought it on herself.

Catulus Caesar had his army back in the camp outside Verona before Boiorix was able to get the last of his wagons across the last of several rickety bridges, and commence the downhill trek to the lush plains of the Padus River. At first Catulus Caesar had insisted they stand and fight the Cimbri near Lake Benacus, but Sulla, firmly in the saddle now, would not countenance it. Instead, he made Catulus Caesar send word to every city and town and village from Aquileia in the east to Comum and Mediolanum in the west: Italian Gaul-across-the-Padus was to be evacuated by all Roman citizens, Latin Rights holders, and Gauls unwilling to fraternize with the Germans. The refugees were to move south of the Padus and leave Italian Gaul-across-the-Padus completely to the Cimbri.

"They'll be like pigs in acorn mush," said Sulla confidently, veteran of a year of living among the Cimbri. “When they get a taste of the pastures and the peace between Lake Benacus and the north bank of the Padus, Boiorix won't be able to hold his people together. They'll scatter in a hundred different directions, you wait and see."

"Looting, wrecking, burning," said Catulus Caesar.

"That—
and
forgetting what they're supposed to be doing, namely, invading Italy. Cheer up, Quintus Lutatius! At least it's the most Gallic of the Gauls on the Italian side of the Alps, and they won't cross the Padus until they've picked it as clean as a hungry man a chicken's carcass. Our own people will be gone well ahead of the Germans, carrying everything they value. Their land will keep; we'll get it back when Gaius Marius comes."

Catulus Caesar winced, but held his tongue; he had learned how biting was Sulla's tongue. But more than that, he had learned how ruthless was Sulla. How cold, how inflexible, how determined. An odd intimate for Gaius Marius, despite the fact they were brothers-in-law. Or had been brothers-in-law. Did Sulla get rid of his Julia too? wondered Catulus Caesar, who in the many hours of thought he expended upon Sulla had remembered a rumor that had circulated among the Julius Caesar brothers and their families around the time Sulla had emerged out of obscurity into public life, and married his Julia-Julilla. That he had found the money to enter public life by murdering his—mother?—stepmother?—mistress?—nephew? Well, when the time came to return to Rome, thought Catulus Caesar, he would make a point of making inquiries about that rumor. Oh, not to use it blatantly, or even right away; just to have ready for the future, when Lucius Cornelius might hope to run for praetor. Not aedile, let him have the joy of that—and the ruinous drain on his purse. Praetor. Yes, praetor.

When the legions had marched into camp outside Verona, Catulus Caesar knew the first thing he had to do was send word posthaste to Rome of the disaster up the Athesis; if he didn't, he suspected Sulla would via Gaius Marius, so it was important that his be the first version Rome absorbed. With both the consuls in the field, a dispatch to the Senate was addressed to the Leader of the House, so to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus did Catulus Caesar send his report, including with it a private letter which more accurately detailed what had actually occurred. And he entrusted the report and letter, heavily sealed, to young Scaurus, son of the Princeps Senatus, ordering him to take the packet to Rome at the gallop.

"He's the best horseman we've got," Catulus Caesar said blandly to Sulla.

Sulla eyed him with the same ironic, superior derision he had shown during their interview about the mutiny. "You know, Quintus Lutatius, you own the most exquisitely refined kind of cruelty I've ever encountered," Sulla said.

"Do you wish to countermand the order?" asked Catulus Caesar, sneering. "You have the clout to do so."

But Sulla shrugged, turned away. "It's your army, Quintus Lutatius. Do what you like."

And he had done what he liked, sent young Marcus Aemilius Scaurus posthaste to Rome bearing the news of his own disgrace.

"I have given you this duty, Marcus Aemilius Junior, because I cannot think of a worse punishment for a coward of your family background than to bring to his own father the news of both a military failure and a personal failure," said Catulus Caesar in measured, pontifical tones.

Young Scaurus—pallid, hangdog, pounds lighter in weight than he had been two weeks earlier—stood to attention and tried not to look at his general. But when Catulus Caesar named the task, young Scaurus's eyes—a paler, less beautiful version of his father's green—dragged themselves unwillingly to Catulus Caesar's haughty face.

"Please, Quintus Lutatius!" he gasped. "Please, I beg of you, send someone else! Let me face my father in my own time!"

"Your time, Marcus Aemilius Junior, is Rome's time," said Catulus Caesar icily, the contempt welling up in him. "You will ride at the gallop to Rome, and give the Princeps Senatus my consular dispatch. A coward in battle you may be, but you are one of the best horsemen we possess, and you have a name sufficiently illustrious to procure you good mounts all the way. You need have no fear, you know! The Germans are well to the north of us, so you'll find none to threaten you in the south."

Young Scaurus rode like a sack of meal in the saddle for mile after mile after mile, down the Via Annia and the Via Cassia to Rome, a shorter journey but a rougher. His head bobbed up and down in time to the gait of his horse, his teeth clicking together in a kind of heartbeat, curiously comforting. At times he talked to himself.

"If I had any courage there to screw up, don't you think I would have found it?'' he asked the phantom listeners in wind and road and sky. "What can I do when there is no courage in me, Father? Where does courage come from?  Why did I not receive my share? How can I tell you of the pain and fear, the
terror
I felt when those awful savages came shrieking and screaming like the Furies? I couldn't move! I couldn't even control my bowels, let alone my heart! It swelled up and up and up until it burst, until I fell down inanimate, glad I was dead! And then I woke to find myself alive after all, still full of terror—my bowels still loose—the soldiers who carried me to safety washing themselves free of my stinking shit in the river under my very eyes, with such contempt, such loathing! Oh, Father, what is courage? Where did my share go? Father,
listen
to me, let me try to explain! How can you blame me for something I do not possess? Father,
listen
to me!"