The First Man in Rome (117 page)

But Scaurus did not smile. He threw his head back and went into peal after peal of joyous, full-throated laughter.

Late in the spring Sulla came back from Italian Gaul, and called to see Gaius Marius immediately after a bath and a change of clothing. Marius, he discovered, looked anything but well, a finding which did not surprise him. Even in the very north of the country the events surrounding the passing of the
lex Appuleia
had not suffered in the telling. Nor was it necessary for Marius to retell the story; they simply looked at each other wordlessly, and everything which needed to pass between them on a basic level did so wordlessly.

However, once the emotional rush abated a little and the first cup of good wine was finished, Sulla did broach the more unpalatable externals of the subject.

"Your credibility's suffered shockingly," he said.

"I know, Lucius Cornelius."

"It's Saturninus, I hear."

Marius sighed. "Well, and can you blame him for hating me? He's given half a hundred speeches from the rostra, and by no means all to properly convoked assemblies. Every one accusing me of betraying him. In fact, since he's a brilliant speaker, the tale of my treachery hasn't lost in his style of translation to the crowds. And he draws the crowds too. Not merely regular Forum frequenters, but men of the Third and Fourth and Fifth Classes who seem fascinated by him to the extent that whenever they have a day off, they turn up in the Forum to listen to him."

"Does he speak that often?" asked Sulla.

"He speaks every single day!"

Sulla whistled. "That's something new in the annals of the Forum! Every day? Rain or shine? Formal meetings or no formal meetings?"

"Every single day. When the urban praetor—his own boon companion Glaucia—obeyed his orders from the Pontifex Maximus to instruct Saturninus that he couldn't speak on market days or holidays or non-comitial days, he simply ignored it. And because he's a tribune of the plebs, no one has seriously tried to haul him down." Marius frowned, worried. "In consequence, his fame keeps spreading, and we now see a whole new breed of Forum frequenter—those who come solely to hear Saturninus harangue. He has—I don't quite know what you'd call it—I suppose the Greeks have the word for it, as usual—they'd say
kharisma
. They feel his passion, I think, because of course not being regular Forum frequenters they're not connoisseurs of rhetoric, and don't give tuppence how he wiggles his littlest finger or varies the style of his walk. No, they just stand there gaping up at him, becoming more and more excited at what he says, and end in cheering him wildly."

"We'll have to keep an eye on him, won't we?" Sulla asked. He looked at Marius very seriously. "Why did you do it?"

There was no pretence at ignorance; Marius answered at once. "I didn't have any choice, Lucius Cornelius. The truth is that I'm not—I don't know—
devious
enough to see around all the corners I should if I'm to keep a pace to two ahead of men like Scaurus. He caught me as neatly as anyone could have wanted. I acknowledge the fact freely."

"But in one way you've salvaged the scheme," said Sulla, trying to comfort him. "The second land bill is still on the tablets, and I don't think the Plebeian Assembly—-or the Assembly of the People, for that matter—is going to invalidate it. Or at least, I'm told that's how things stand."

"True," said Marius, not looking comforted. He hunched his head into his shoulders, sighed. "Saturninus is the victor, Lucius Cornelius, not I. It's
his
sense of outrage keeping the Plebs firm. I've lost them." He writhed, threw out his hands. "How am I ever going to get through the rest of this year? It's an ordeal to have to walk through the volley of boos and hisses from the region around the rostra whenever Saturninus is speaking, but as for walking into the Curia— I
loathe
it! I loathe the sleek smile on Scaurus's seamy face, I loathe the insufferable smirk on that camel Catulus's face—I'm not made for the political arena, and that's a truth I've just begun to find out."

"But you climbed the
cursus honorum,
Gaius Marius!" Sulla said. ' 'You were one of the great tribunes of the plebs! You knew the political arena, and you loved it, otherwise you could never have been a great tribune of the plebs."

Marius shrugged. "Oh, I was young then, Lucius Cornelius. And I had a good brain. But a political animal I am not.''

"So you're going to yield the center of the stage to a posturing wolfshead like Saturninus? That doesn't sound like the Gaius Marius I know," said Sulla.

"I'm not the Gaius Marius you know," said Marius with a faint smile. "The new Gaius Marius is very, very tired. A stranger to me as much as to you, believe me!"

"Then go away for the summer, please!"

"I intend to," said Marius, "as soon as you tie the knot with Aelia."

Sulla started, then laughed. "Ye gods, I'd forgotten all about it!" He got to his feet gracefully, a beautifully made man in the prime of life. "I'd better go home and seek an audience with our mutual mother-in-law, hadn't I? No doubt she's breaking her neck"—he shivered—"to leave me."

The shiver meant nothing to Marius, who seized upon the comment instead. "Yes, she's anxious. I've bought her a nice little villa not far from ours at Cumae."

"Then home I go, as fleet as Mercury chasing a contract to repave the Via Appia!" He held out his hand. "Look after yourself, Gaius Marius. If Aelia's still willing, I'll tie the knot at once." A thought occurred to him, he laughed.  “You're absolutely right! Catulus Caesar looks like a camel!
Monumental
hauteur!"

Julia was waiting outside the study to waylay Sulla as he left. "What do you think?" she asked anxiously.

"He'll be all right, little sister. They beat him, and he suffers. Take him down to Campania, make him bathe in the sea and wallow in the roses."

"I will, as soon as you're married."

"I'm marrying, I'm marrying!" he cried, holding up his hands in surrender.

Julia sighed. "There's one thing we cannot get away from, Lucius Cornelius, and that is that less than half a year in the Forum has worn Gaius Marius down more than ten years in the field with his armies."

It seemed everyone needed a rest, for when Marius left for Cumae, public life in Rome simmered down to a tepid inertia. One by one the notables quit the city, unbearable during the height of summer, when every kind of enteric fever raged amid Subura and Esquiline, and even Palatine and Aventine were only debatably healthy.

Not that life in the Subura worried Aurelia unduly; she dwelled in the midst of a cool cavern, the greenery of the courtyard and the immensely thick walls of her insula keeping the heat at bay. Gaius Matius and his wife, Priscilla, were in like condition to herself and Caesar, for Priscilla too was heavily pregnant, her baby due at the same time as Aurelia's.

The two women were very well looked after. Gaius Matius hovered helpfully, and Lucius Decumius popped in every day to make sure all was right. The flowers still came regularly, supplemented since her pregnancy with little gifts of sweetmeats, rare spices, anything Lucius Decumius thought might keep his darling Aurelia's appetite keen.

"As if I'd lost it!" she laughed to Publius Rutilius Rufus, another regular caller.

Her son, Gaius Julius Caesar, was born on the thirteenth day of Quinctilis, which meant that his birth was entered in the register at the temple of Juno Lucina as occurring two days before the Ides of Quinctilis, his status as patrician, his rank as senatorial. He was very long and consequently weighed somewhat more than he looked to weigh; he was very strong; he was solemn and quiet, not prone to wailing; his hair was so fair it was practically invisible, though on close examination he actually had quite a lot of it; and his eyes from birth were a pale greenish-blue, ringed around with a band of blue so dark it was almost black.

"He's someone, this son of yours," said Lucius Decumius, staring into the baby's face intently. "Will you look at them eyes! Give your grandmother a fright, they would!"

"Don't say such things, you horrible little wart!" growled Cardixa, who was enslaved by this first boy-child.

"Gimme a look at downstairs," Lucius Decumius demanded, snatching with grubby fingers at the baby's diapers. "Oho ho ho ho ho!" he crowed. "Just as I thought! Big nose, big feet, and big dick!"

"Lucius Decumius!'
' said Aurelia, scandalized.

"That does it! Out you go!" roared Cardixa as she picked him up by the scruff of his neck, and dropped him outside the front door as smaller women might have dumped a kitten.

Sulla called to see Aurelia almost a month after the baby's birth, explaining that she was the only familiar face left in Rome, and apologizing if he was imposing.

"Of course not!" she said, delighted to see him. "I'm hoping you can stay for dinner—or if you can't today, perhaps you can come tomorrow? I'm so starved for company!"

"I can stay," he said without ceremony. "I only really came back to Rome to see an old friend of mine—he's come down with a fever."

"Who's that? Anyone I know?" she asked, more out of courtesy than curiosity.

But for a short moment he looked as if she had asked an unwelcome question, or perhaps a painful one; the expression on his face interested her far more than the identity of his sick friend, for it was dark, unhappy, angry. Then it was gone, and he was smiling with consummate ease.

"I doubt you know him," he said. "Metrobius."

"The actor?"

"The same. I used to know a lot of people in the theater. In the old days. Before I married Julilla and entered the Senate. A different world.'' His strange light eyes wandered around the reception room. "More like this world, only seamier. Funny! It seems now like a dream."

"You sound rather sorry," said Aurelia gently.

"No, not really."

"And will he get well, your friend Metrobius?"

"Oh, yes! It's just a fever."

A silence fell, not uncomfortable, which he broke without words by getting up and walking across to the big open space which served as a window onto the courtyard.

"It's lovely out there."

"I think so."

"And your new son? How is he?"

She smiled. "You shall see for yourself shortly."

"Good." He remained staring at the courtyard.

"Lucius Cornelius, is everything all right?" she asked.

He turned then, smiling; she thought what an attractive man he was, in a most unusual way. And how disconcerting those eyes were—so light—so ringed with darkness. Like her son's eyes. And for some reason that thought made her shiver.

"Yes, Aurelia, everything's all right," Sulla said.

"I wish I thought you were telling me the truth."

He opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment Cardixa came in bearing the infant heir to the Caesar name.

"We're off upstairs to the fourth floor," she said.

"Show Lucius Cornelius first, Cardixa."

But the only children Sulla was really interested in were his own two, so he peered dutifully into the baby's face, then glanced at Aurelia to see if this satisfied her.

"Off you go, Cardixa," she said, putting Sulla out of his misery. "Who is it this morning?"

"Sarah."

She turned to Sulla with a pleasant, unselfconscious smile. "I have no milk, alas! So my son goes everywhere for his food. One of the great advantages of living in a big community like an insula. There are always at least half a dozen women nursing, and everyone is nice enough to offer to feed my babies."

"He'll grow up to love the whole world," said Sulla. "I imagine you have the whole world as tenants."

"I do. It makes life interesting."

Back he went to gaze at the courtyard.

"Lucius Cornelius, you're only half here," she accused softly. "Something
is
the matter! Can't you share it with me? Or is it one of those men-only difficulties?"

He came to sit down on the couch opposite hers. "I just never have any luck with women," he said abruptly.

Aurelia blinked. "In what way?"

"The women I—love. The women I marry."

Interesting; he found it easier to speak of marriage than of love. "Which is it now?" she asked.

"A bit of both. In love with one, married to another."

"Oh, Lucius Cornelius!" She looked at him with genuine liking but not an ounce of desire. "I shan't ask you any names, because I don't really want to know. You ask me the questions, I'll try to come up with the answers."

He shrugged. "There's nothing much to say! I married Aelia, found for me by our mother-in-law. After Julilla, I wanted a perfect Roman matron—someone like Julia, or you if you were a little older. When Marcia introduced me to Aelia, I thought she was ideal—calm, quiet, good-humored, attractive, a nice person. And I thought, terrific! I'll have me my Roman matron at last. I can't love anyone, I thought, so I may as well be married to someone I can like."

"You liked your German wife, I believe," Aurelia said.

"Yes, very much. I still miss her in peculiar ways. But she's not a Roman, so she's no use to the senator in Rome, is she? Anyway, I decided Aelia would turn out much the same as Hermana." He laughed, a hard sound. "But I was wrong! Aelia turns out to be dull, pedestrian, and boring. A very nice person indeed, but oh, five moments in her company, and I'm yawning!"

"Is she good to your children?"

"Very good. No complaints there!" He laughed again. "I ought to have hired her as a nurserymaid—she'd have been ideal. She adores the children, and they adore her."

He was talking now almost as if she didn't exist, or as if she didn't matter as an auditor, only as a presence who gave him an excuse to say aloud what he had long been thinking.

"Just after I came back from Italian Gaul, I was invited to attend a dinner party at Scaurus's," he went on. "A bit flattered. A bit apprehensive. Wondered if they were all going to be there—Metellus Piggle-wiggle and the rest— and try to wean me away from Gaius Marius. She was there, poor little thing. Scaurus's wife. By all the gods in the world, why did it have to be her married to Scaurus? He could be her great-grandfather! Dalmatica. That's what they call her. One way of keeping them all straight, the thousands of Caecilia Metellas. I took one look at her and I loved her. At least I think it's love. There's pity in it too, but I never seem to stop thinking of her, so that means it's got to be love, doesn't it? She's
pregnant.
Isn't that disgusting? No one asked her what she wanted, of course. Metellus Piggle-wiggle just gave her to Scaurus like a honeycomb to a child. Here, your son's dead, take this consolation prize! Have another son! Disgusting. And yet—if they knew the half of me, they'd be the ones disgusted. I can't see it, Aurelia. They're more immoral than I am! But you'd never get
them
to see it that way."