The Grass Crown (108 page)

“I am a condemned man, innkeeper, and there must be half a hundred parties of troopers looking for me. I saw one such ride through the gates of your town yesterday.”

“Yes, they’re in the forum with the duumviri right at this moment, Gaius Marius. Like you, they’ve had a sleep, and now they’re busy throwing their weight around. Half Minturnae knows you’re here, but you needn’t worry. We won’t give you up. Nor will we tell the duumviri, who are both the sort of man adheres to the letter of the law. Best they don’t know. If they did, they’d probably decide you ought to be executed, little though they’d relish the task.”

“I thank you,” said Marius warmly.

A short, plump little man who had not been present eleven hours earlier came up to Marius, hand outstretched. “I am Aulus Belaeus, and I am a merchant of Minturnae. I own a few ships. You tell me what you need, Gaius Marius, and you will have it.”

“I need a ship prepared to take me out of Italy and sail to wherever in the world I can find asylum,” said Marius.

“That’s not a difficulty,” said Belaeus promptly. “I have just the right lady sitting at her moorings in the bay. As soon as you’ve eaten, I’ll take you out to her.”

“Are you sure, Aulus Belaeus? It’s my life they’re after. If you help me, your own life might be forfeit.”

“I’m ready to take that risk,” said Belaeus tranquilly.

An hour later Marius was rowed out to a stout grain-carrier more used by far to adverse winds and heavy seas than Publius Murcius’s little coastal trader.

“She’s fresh from a refit after discharging her African grain cargo in Puteoli. I was intending to return her to Africa as soon as the winds were right,” said Belaeus, assisting his guest on board via a stout wooden stern ladder more like a set of steps. “Her holds are full of Falernian wine for the African luxury market, she’s in good ballast, and she’s well provisioned. I always keep my ships ready—one never knows about winds and weather.” This was said with a singularly affectionate smile for Gaius Marius.

“I don’t know how to thank you, except to pay you well.”

“This is an honor, Gaius Marius. Don’t strip me of it by trying to pay me, I beg you. I shall dine for the rest of my days on this story—how I, a merchant from Minturnae, helped the great Gaius Marius elude his pursuers.”

“And I shall not cease to be grateful, Aulus Belaeus.”

Belaeus descended to his skiff, waved goodbye, and had himself rowed the short distance to shore.

Even as he landed at the jetty closest to his ship, the fifty troopers who had been enquiring through the town came riding onto the dockside. Ignoring Belaeus—whom they did not at first connect with the ship at that moment hauling anchor—the hirelings of Sextus Lucilius looked across the water at the men leaning over the vessel’s side, and saw the unmistakable face of Gaius Marius.

The leading trooper spurred forward, cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted, “Gaius Marius, you are under arrest! Captain, you are harboring a fugitive from Roman justice! In the name of the Senate and People of Rome, I order you to put about and deliver Gaius Marius to me!”

On the ship, these hollered words were dismissed with a snort; the captain went placidly on with his preparations to sail. But Marius, looking back to see the good Belaeus taken by the troopers, swallowed painfully.

“Captain, stop!” he cried. “Your employer is now in the custody of men who really want me. I must go back!”

“It isn’t necessary, Gaius Marius,” said the captain. “Aulus Belaeus can look after himself. He gave you into my charge and told me to get you away. I must do as he says.”

“You will do as I say, captain. Put about!”

“If I did that, Gaius Marius, I’d never command another ship. Aulus Belaeus would use my guts for rigging.”

“Put about and put me in a boat, captain. I insist! If you won’t return me to the dockside, then row me ashore in some place where I have a chance to get away.” Marius stared fiercely, scowled. “Do it, captain! I insist!”

Much against his better judgment, the captain obeyed; there was something about Marius when he said he insisted that told all men this was a general used to being obeyed.

“I’ll set you ashore in the thick of the marshes, then,” said the unhappy captain. “I know the area well. There’s a safe path will take you back into Minturnae, where I suggest you hide until the troopers pass on. Then I’ll bring you on board again.”

Over the side once more, into yet another rowboat; this time, however, the fugitive departed from the far side of the vessel and used it to conceal his movements from the troopers, still calling across the water that Gaius Marius must be returned.

Alas for Marius, the leader of the troop was a very far-sighted man; as the lighter came into view heading into the southern distance, he recognized Marius’s head between the six rowers bent to their task.

“Quick!” he shouted. “On your horses, men! Leave that stupid fellow, he’s not important. We’re going to follow that boat by land.”

It proved easy to do so, for a well-used track outlined the contour of the bay through the salt marshes which festered around the mouth of the Liris River; the troopers actually gained ground on the lighter rapidly, only losing sight of it when it disappeared into the rushes and reeds growing on the Liris mud flats.

“Keep going, we’ll find the old villain!”

Sextus Lucilius’s hirelings did indeed find him, two hours later, and just in time. Marius had abandoned his clothes and was floundering waist-deep in a patch of gluey black mud, exhausted and sinking. To pull him out wasn’t easy, but there were plenty of hands to help, and eventually the sucking mud parted reluctantly with its victim. One of the men took off his cloak and went to wrap it about Marius, but the leader stopped him.

“Let the old cripple go naked. Minturnae should see what a fine fellow the great Gaius Marius is! The whole town knew he was here. They’ll suffer for sheltering him.”

So the old cripple walked naked in the midst of the troopers, stumbling, limping, falling, all the way back to Minturnae; and the troopers didn’t care how long it took to make the journey. As they neared the town and houses began to cluster along the track, the leader called loudly to everyone to come and see the captured fugitive Gaius Marius, who would soon lose his head in the Minturnae forum. “Come one, come all!” the leader shouted.

At midafternoon the troopers rode into the forum with most of the town accompanying them, too stunned, too amazed to protest at the way the great Gaius Marius was being treated, and aware he was condemned for Great Treason. Yet a slow dull anger grew in the backs of their minds—surely Gaius Marius could not commit Great Treason!

The two chief magistrates were waiting at the foot of the meeting-hall steps surrounded by a guard of town beadles, hastily called up to let these arrogant Roman officials see that Minturnae was not entirely at their mercy, that if necessary Minturnae could fight back.

“We caught Gaius Marius about to sail away in a Minturnaean ship,” said the leader of the troop ominously. “Minturnae knew he was here, and Minturnae helped him.”

“Minturnae cannot be held responsible for the actions of a few Minturnaeans,” said the senior town magistrate stiffly. “However, you now have your prisoner. Take him and go.”

“Oh, I don’t want all of him!” said the leader, grinning. “I just want his head. You can keep the rest. There’s a nice stone bench over there will do the job. We’ll just lean him against it, and his head will be off in a trice.”

The crowd gasped, growled; the two magistrates looked grim, their beadles restless.

“On whose authority do you presume to execute in the forum of Minturnae a man who has been consul of Rome six times—a hero?” asked the senior duumvir. He looked the leader up and down, the troop up and down, determined to make them feel a little of what he had felt when they had accosted him so arrogantly shortly after dawn. “You don’t seem like Roman cavalry. How do I know you are who you say you are?”

“We’ve been hired specifically to do this job,” said the leader, growing steadily more uneasy as he saw the faces in the crowd and the beadles shifting their scabbards to come at their swords.

“Hired by whom? The Senate and People of Rome?” asked the duumvir in the manner of an advocate.

“That’s right.”

“I do not believe you. Show me proof.”

“This man is condemned of perduellio! You know what that means, duumvir. His life is forfeit in every Roman and Latin community. I’m not authorized to bring the whole man back to Rome alive. I’m authorized to bring back his head.”

“Then,” said the senior magistrate calmly, “you will have to fight Minturnae to get that head. Here in our town we are not common barbarians. A Roman citizen of Gaius Marius’s standing is not decapitated like a slave or a peregrinus.”

“Strictly speaking he’s not a Roman citizen!” said the leader savagely. “However, if you want the job done nicely, then I suggest you do it yourselves! I’m off to Rome to bring you back all the proof you need, duumvir! I’ll be back in three days. Gaius Marius had better be dead, otherwise this whole town will have to answer to the Senate and People of Rome. And in three days I will take the head from Gaius Marius’s dead body, according to my orders.”

Throughout all this, Marius had been standing swaying in the midst of the troopers, a ghastly apparition whose plight had moved many to tears. Angry at being cheated, one of the troopers drew his sword to cut Marius down, but the crowd was suddenly all among the horses, hands reaching for the fugitive to draw him out of reach of swords, ready to fight. As were the beadles.

“Minturnae will pay!” snarled the leader.

“Minturnae will execute the prisoner according to his dignitas and auctoritas,” said the senior magistrate. “Now leave!”

“Just one moment!” roared a hoarse voice. Gaius Marius came forward among a host of Minturnaean men. “You may have fooled these good country people, but you don’t fool me! Rome has no cavalry to hunt condemned men down—neither Senate nor People hires it, only individuals. Who hired you?”

So evocative of old times under the standards was the power in Marius’s voice that the leader’s tongue had answered before his prudence could prevent it. “Sextus Lucilius,” he said.

“Thank you!” said Marius. “I will remember.”

“I piss on you, old man!” said the leader scornfully, and pulled his horse’s head around with a vicious jerk. “You have given me your word, magistrate! When I return I expect Gaius Marius to be a dead man and his head ready for lopping!”

The moment the troop had ridden off, the duumvir nodded to his beadles. “Put Gaius Marius in confinement,” he said.

The magistrate’s men plucked Marius from the middle of the crowd and escorted him gently to a single cell beneath the podium of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, normally only used to shut up a violent drunkard for the night, or imprison someone gone mad until more permanent arrangements could be made.

As soon as Marius had been led away the crowd knotted into clusters suddenly talking urgently, none going any further than the taverns around the perimeter of the square. And here Aulus Belaeus, who had witnessed the whole incident, began to move among the groups, himself talking urgently.

Minturnae owned several public slaves, but among them was one extremely useful fellow whom the town had bought from an itinerant dealer two years before, and never regretted paying the hefty price of five thousand denarii asked. Then eighteen years old, now twenty, he was a gigantic German of the Cimbric nation, by name of Burgundus. He stood a full head higher than the few men of six feet Minturnae owned, and his thews were mighty, his strength of that breathtaking kind undamped by brilliance of intellect or oversensitivity of spirit—not surprising in one who had been six years old when he was taken after the battle of Vercellae and subjected ever since to the life of the enslaved barbarian. Not for him, the privileges and emoluments of the polished Greek who sold himself into slavery because it increased his chances of prosperity; Burgundus was paid a pittance, lived in a dilapidated wooden hut on the edge of town, and thought he had been visited by the magic wagon of the goddess Nerthus when some woman sought him out, curious to see what sort of lover a barbarian giant made. It never occurred to Burgundus to escape, nor did he find his lot an unhappy one; on the contrary, he had enjoyed his two years in Minturnae, where he felt quite important and knew himself valued. In time, he had been given to understand, his stips would be increased and he would be allowed to marry, to have children. And if he continued to work well, his children would be deemed free.

The other public slaves were put to weeding and sweeping, painting, washing down buildings and other kinds of maintenance, but Burgundus alone inherited the jobs requiring heavy labor or more than normal human strength. It was Burgundus who cleared the Minturnaean drains and sewers when they blocked after floods, Burgundus who removed a flyblown carcass of horse or ass or other big animal from an inconvenient place, Burgundus who took down trees considered dangerous, Burgundus who went after a savage dog, Burgundus who dug ditches single-handed. Like all huge creatures, the German was a gentle and docile man, aware of his own strength and in no need to prove it to anyone; aware too that if he aimed a playful blow at someone, that someone could well die as the result of it. He had therefore developed a technique to handle drunken sailors and overly aggressive little men determined to conquer him, and sported a few scars because of his forbearance—but also sported a kindly enough reputation in the town.

Having been maneuvered into the unenviable task of executing Gaius Marius and determined they would do their duty in as Roman a way as possible (and also aware that this duty would not be popular with the inhabitants of the town), the magistrates sent for Burgundus the handyman at once.

He, in ignorance of the events in Minturnae that day, had been piling huge stones in a heap below the walls on the Via Appia side of town, preparatory to beginning some repairs. And, fetched by a fellow slave, walked in the direction of the forum with his long, deceptively slow strides while the other public servant half-ran to keep up with him.