The First Man in Rome (75 page)

"Then until Publius Rutilius arrives, my dearest, sweetest, most beautiful and darling wife, we won't even think about exasperating things like politics."

Sulla's homecoming was very different. For one thing, he journeyed toward it with none of Marius's simple, unconcealed, eager pleasure. Though why that should be, he didn't want to know, for, like Marius, he had been sexually continent during his two years in the African province—admittedly for reasons other than love of his wife, yet continent nevertheless. The brand-new and pristine page with which he had covered up his old life must never be sullied; no graft, no disloyalty to his superior, no intriguing or maneuvering for power, no intimations of fleshly weaknesses, no lessening of his Cornelian honor or
dignitas.

An actor to the core, he had thrown himself absolutely into the new role his term as Marius's quaestor had given him, lived it inside his mind as well as in all his actions, looks, words. So far it hadn't palled, for it had offered him constant diversion, enormous challenges, and a huge satisfaction. Unable to commission his own
imago
in wax until he became consul, or sufficiently famous or distinguished in some other way to warrant it, he could still look forward to commissioning Magius of the Velabrum to make a splendid mounting for his war trophies, his Gold Crown and
phalerae
and torcs, and look forward to being there supervising the installation of this testament to his prowess in the atrium of his house. For the years in Africa had been a vindication; though he would never turn into one of the world's great equestrians, he
had
turned into one of the world's natural soldiers, and the Magius trophy in his atrium would stand there to tell Rome of this fact.

And yet... everything from the old life was there just the same, and he knew it. The yearning to see Metrobius, the love of grotesquery—of dwarves and transvestites and raddled old whores and outrageous characters—the intractable dislike of women using their powers to dominate him, the capacity to snuff out a life when intolerably threatened, the unwillingness to suffer fools, the gnawing, consuming ambition. . . The actor's African theatrical run was over, but he wasn't looking at a prolonged rest; the future held many parts. And yet... Rome was the stage upon which his old self had postured; Rome spelled anything from ruin to frustration to discovery. So he journeyed toward Rome in wary mood, aware of the profound changes in himself, but also aware that very little had actually changed. The actor between parts, never a truly comfortable creature.

And Julilla waited for him very differently than Julia waited for Marius, sure that she loved Sulla far more than Julia loved Marius. To Julilla, any evidence whatsoever of discipline or self-control was proof positive of an inferior brand of love; love of the highest order should overwhelm, invade, shake down the spiritual walls, drive out all vestige of rational thought, roar tempestuously, trample down everything in its path as if some vast elephant. So she waited feverishly, unable to settle to anything other than the wine flask, her costume changed several times a day, her hair now up, now down, now sideways, her servants driven mad.

And all this she threw over Sulla like a pall woven from the most clinging and tentacular cobwebs. When he walked into the atrium, she was there running wildly across the room to him, arms outstretched, face transfigured; before he could look at her or collect himself to feel anything, she had glued her mouth to his like a leech on an arm, sucking, devouring, wriggling, wet, all blood and blackness. Her hands were groping after his genitals, she made noises of the most lascivious pleasure, then she actually began to wind her legs about him as he stood in that most unprivate place, watched by the derisive eyes of a dozen slaves, most of whom were total strangers to him.

He couldn't help himself; his hands came up and wrenched her arms down, his head went back and ripped her mouth away.

"Recollect yourself, madam!" he said. "We are
not
alone!"

She gasped as if he had spat in her face, but it sobered her into conducting herself more sedately; with pitifully casual artlessness she linked her arm through his and walked with him to the peristyle, then down to where her sitting room was, in Nicopolis's old suite of rooms.

"Is this private enough?" she asked, a little spitefully.

But the mood had been spoiled for him long before this spurt of spite; he didn't want her mouth or her hands probing their way into the most sequestered corners of his being without regard for the sensitivity of the layers they pierced.

"Later, later!" he said, moving to a chair.

She stood, poor frightened and bewildered Julilla, as if her world had ended. More beautiful than ever, but in a most frail and brittle way, from the sticklike arms poking out of what he recognized at once as draperies in the height of fashion—a man with Sulla's background never lost his instinct for line or style—to the enormous, slightly mad-looking eyes sunk deep into their orbits amid dense blue-black shadows.

"I—don't—understand!" she cried to him then, not daring to move from where she stood, her gaze drinking him in not avidly anymore, but rather as the mouse drinks in the smile on the face of the cat: are you friend or enemy?

"Julilla," he said with what patience he could muster, "I am tired. I haven't had time to regain my land legs. I hardly know any of the faces in this house. And since I'm not in the least drunk, I have all a sober man's inhibitions about the degree of physical license a married couple should allow themselves in public."

"But I
love
you!" she protested.

"So I should hope. Just as I love you. Even so, there are boundaries," he said stiffly, wanting everything within his Roman sphere to be exactly right, from wife and domicile to Forum career.

When he had thought of Julilla during his two years away, he hadn't honestly remembered what sort of
person
she was—only how she looked, and how frantically, excitingly passionate she was in their bed. In fact, he had thought of her as a man thought of his mistress, not his wife. Now he stared at the young woman who was his wife, and decided she would make a far more satisfactory mistress—someone he visited upon his terms, didn't have to share his home with, didn't have to introduce to his friends and associates.

I ought never to have married her, he thought. I got carried away by a vision of my future seen through the medium of her eyes—for that was all she did, serve as a vessel to pass a vision through on its way from Fortune to Fortune's chosen one. I didn't stop to think that there would be dozens of young noblewomen available to me more suitable than a poor silly creature who tried to starve herself to death for love of me. That in itself is an excess. I don't mind excess— but not an excess I'm the object of. Only excess I'm the perpetrator of, thank you!
Why
have I spent my life tangled up with women who want to suffocate me?

Julilla's face altered. Her eyes slid away from the two pale inflexible orbs dwelling upon her in a clinical interest holding nothing of love, or of lust. There! Oh, what would she do without it? Wine, faithful trusty wine... Without stopping to think what he might think, she moved to a side table and poured herself a full goblet of unwatered wine, and downed it in one draft; only then did she remember him, and turn to him with a question in her gaze.

"Wine, Sulla?" she asked.

He was frowning. "You put that away mighty quick! Do you normally toss your wine back like that?''

"I needed a drink!" she said fretfully. "You're being very cold and depressing."

He sighed. "I daresay I am. Never mind, Julilla. I'll improve. Or maybe you should—yes, yes, give me the wine!" He almost snatched the goblet she had been extending mutely for some moments and drank from it, but not at a gulp, and by no means the entire contents. "When last I heard from you—you're not much of a letter writer, are you?"

The tears were pouring down Julilla's face, but she didn't sob; just wept soundlessly. "I hate writing letters!"

"That much is plain," he said dryly.

"Anyway, what about them?" she asked, pouring herself a second goblet and drinking it down as quickly as her first.

“I was going to say, when last I heard from you, I thought we had a couple of children. A girl and a boy, wasn't it? Not that you bothered to tell me of the boy; I had to find that out from your father."

"I was ill," she said, still weeping.

"Am I not to see my children?"

"Oh, down there!" she cried, pointing rather wildly toward the back of the peristyle.

He left her mopping at her face with a handkerchief and back at the wine flagon to refill her empty goblet.

His first glimpse of them was through the open window of their nursery, and they didn't see him. A woman's murmuring voice was in the background, but she was invisible; all of his sight was filled with the two little people he had generated. A girl—yes, she'd be half past two now—standing over a boy—yes, he'd be half past one!

She was enchanting, the most perfect tiny doll he had ever seen—head crowned with a mass of red-gold curls, skin of milk and roses, dimples in her plump pink cheeks, and under soft red-gold brows, a pair of the widest blue eyes, happy and smiling and full of love for her little brother.

He was even more enchanting, this son Sulla had never seen. Walking—that was good—not a stitch of clothing on him—that was what his sister was on at him about, so he must do it often—and talking—he was giving his sister back as good as she was giving him, the villain. And he was laughing. He looked like a Caesar—the same long attractive face, the same thick gold hair, the same vivid blue eyes as Sulla's dead father-in-law.

And the dormant heart of Lucius Cornelius Sulla didn't just awaken with a leisurely stretch and a yawn, it leaped into the world of feeling as Athene must have leaped fully grown and fully armed from the brow of Zeus, clanging and calling a clarion. In the doorway he went down on his knees and held out both arms to them, eyes shimmering.
"Tata
is here," he said.
"Tata
has come home." They didn't even hesitate, let alone shrink away, but ran into the circle of his arms and covered his rapt face with kisses.

Publius Rutilius Rufus turned out not to be the first magistrate to visit Marius at Cumae; the returned hero had scarcely settled into a routine when his steward came inquiring if he would see the noble Lucius Marcius Philippus. Curious as to what Philippus wanted—for he had never met the man, and knew the family only in the most cursory way—Marius bade his man bring the visitor into his study.

Philippus didn't prevaricate; he got straight to the reason for his call. A rather soft-looking fellow, thought Marius— too much flabby flesh around his waist, too much jowl beneath his chin—but with all the arrogance and self-assurance of the Marcius clan, who claimed descent from Ancus Marcius, the fourth King of Rome, and builder of the Wooden Bridge.

"You don't know me, Gaius Marius," he said, his dark brown eyes looking directly into Marius's own, "so I thought I would take the earliest opportunity to rectify the omission—given that you
are
next year's senior consul, and that I am a newly elected tribune of the plebs."

"How nice of you to want to rectify the omission," said Marius, his smile devoid of any irony.

"Yes, I suppose it is," said Philippus blandly. He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, an affectation Marius had never cared for, deeming it unmasculine.

"What may I do for you, Lucius Marcius?"

"Actually, quite a lot." Philippus poked his head forward, his face suddenly less soft, distinctly feral. "I find myself in a bit of financial bother, Gaius Marius, and I thought it behooved me to—shall we say—offer my services to you as a tribune of the plebs. I wondered, for instance, if there was a small trifle of legislation you'd like passed. Or perhaps you would just like to know that you have a loyal adherent among the tribunes of the plebs back in Rome while you're away keeping the German wolf from our door. Silly Germans! They haven't yet realized that Rome is a wolf, have they? But they will, I'm sure. If anyone can teach them the wolfish nature of Rome, you will."

The mind of Marius had moved with singular speed during this preamble. He too sat back, but didn't cross his legs. "As a matter of fact, my dear Lucius Marcius, there
is
a small trifle I'd like passed through the Plebeian Assembly with a minimum of fuss or attention. I would be delighted to assist you to extricate yourself from your financial bother if you can spare me any legislative bother."

"The more generous the donation to my cause, Gaius Marius, the less fuss or attention my law will receive," said Philippus with a broad smile.

"Splendid! Name your price," said Marius.

"Oh, dear! Such
bluntness
!
"

"Name your price," Marius repeated.

"Half a million," said Philippus.

"Sesterces," said Marius.

"Denarii," said Philippus.

"Oh, I'd want a lot more than just a trifle of legislation for half a million denarii," said Marius.

"For half a million denarii, Gaius Marius, you will get a lot more. Not only my services during my tribunate, but thereafter as well. I do pledge it."

"Then we have a deal."

"How easy!" exclaimed Philippus, relaxing. "Now what is it I can do for you?''

"I need an agrarian law," said Marius.

"Not
easy!" Philippus sat up straight, looking stunned. "What on this earth do you want a land bill for? I need money, Gaius Marius, but only if I am to live to spend what's left over after I pay my debts! It is no part of my ambitions to be clubbed to death on the Capitol, for I assureyou, Gaius Marius, that a Tiberius Gracchus I am not!"

"The law is agrarian in nature, yes, but not contentious," said Marius soothingly. "I assure
you,
Lucius Marcius, that I am not a reformer or a revolutionary, and have other, better uses for the poor of Rome than to gift them with Rome's precious
ager publicus
!
I'll enlist them in the legions—and make them work for any land I give them! No man should get anything for nothing, for a man is not a beast."