The Grass Crown (71 page)

“You can go,” he said curtly to her guardians, and let his cold gaze rest upon his daughter’s mutinous face, so exquisite with its mixture of his coloring and her mother’s beauty, save that her eyes were all her own, very large and vividly blue.

“And what have you got to say for yourself, girl?”

“I’m ready this time, Father. You can hit me until you kill me—I don’t care! Because I am not marrying Quintus Pompeius, and you can’t make me!”

“If I have to tie you and drug you, my girl, you will marry Quintus Pompeius,” said Sulla in those soft tones which preceded maximum violence.

But, for all her tears and tantrums, she was far more Sulla’s child than she was Julilla’s. Visibly she settled on her feet as if to ward off some frightful blow, and put sapphire glitters in her eyes. “I will not marry Quintus Pompeius!”

“By all the gods, Cornelia, you will!”

“I will not!”

Normally so much defiance would have produced an uncontrollable rage in Sulla; but now, perhaps because he saw something belonging to his dead son in her face, he found himself unable to be truly angry. He blew through his nose ominously. “Daughter, do you know who Pietas is?” he asked.

“Of course I know,” said Cornelia Sulla warily. “She’s Duty.”

“Enlarge on that definition, Cornelia.”

“She’s the goddess of Duty.”

“What kind of duty?”

“All kinds.”

“Including the duty children owe their parents, is that not so?” asked Sulla sweetly.

“Yes,” said Cornelia Sulla.

“To defy the paterfamilias is a frightful thing, Cornelia. Not only does it offend Pietas, but under the law you must obey the head of your family. I am the paterfamilias,” said Sulla sternly.

“My first duty is to myself,” she said heroically.

Sulla’s lips began to quiver. “It is not, daughter. Your first duty is to me. You are in my hand.”

“Hand or no hand, Father, I will not betray myself!”

The lips stopped trembling, opened; Sulla burst into a huge roar of laughter. “Oh, go away!” he said when he could, and yelled after her, still laughing, “You’ll do your duty or I’ll sell you into slavery! I can, there’s nothing to stop me!”

“I’m already a slave!” she called back.

What a soldier she would have made! When his amusement allowed it, Sulla sat down to write to that Greek citizen of Smyrna, Publius Rutilius Rufus.

And that is exactly what happened, Publius Rutilius. The impudent little rubbish rolled me up! And has left me with no alternative than to carry out threats which cannot advance my intention to have myself elected consul in alliance with Quintus Pompeius. The girl is no use to me dead or a slave—and no use to young Quintus Pompeius if I have to tie her up and drug her in order to bring her before the marriage celebrant! So what do I do? I am asking you very seriously, and very desperately—what do I do? I remember the legend that it was you solved Marcus Aurelius Cotta’s dilemma when he had to choose a husband for Aurelia. So here’s another marital dilemma for you to solve, O admired and esteemed counselor.

I admit that things here are in such a state that, were it not for my inability to marry my daughter off where I need to marry her off, I would not have stopped to write to you. But now I’ve begun and—provided, that is, that you have a solution for my dilemma!—I may as well tell you what’s happening.

Our Princeps Senatus I left beginning a letter of his own to you, so I don’t need to apprise you of Gaius Marius’s awful catastrophe. I shall confine myself to airing my hopes and fears for the future, and can at least look forward to being able to wear my toga praetexta and sit on my ivory curule chair when I’m consul, as the Senate has instructed its curule magistrates to don their full regalia following Gaius Marius’s—and my!—victory over Silo’s Marsians. Hopefully this means we’ve seen the last of these silly, empty gestures of mourning and alarm.

It seems highly likely at the moment that next year’s consuls will be Lucius Porcius Cato Licinianus and—what a horrible thought!—Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. What a terrible pair! A puckered-up cat’s anus and an arrogant barbarian who can only look at the bridge of his own nose. I confess myself utterly at a loss to understand how or why some men come to the consulship. Clearly it is not enough to have been a good urban or foreign praetor. Or have a war record as long and illustrious as King Ptolemy’s pedigree. I am fast coming to the conclusion that the only really important factor is getting on side with the Ordo Equester. If the knights don’t like you, Publius Rutilius, you could be Romulus himself and not stand a chance in the consular elections. The knights put Gaius Marius in the consul’s chair six times, three of them in absentia. And they still like him! He’s good for business. Oh, they like a man to have ancestors too—but not enough to vote for him unless he’s either opened his moneybags very wide, or he’s offered them all sorts of added inducements like an easier loan market or inside news on everything the Senate contemplates doing.

I should have been consul years ago. If I had been a praetor years ago. And, yes, it was the Princeps Senatus who foiled me. But he did it by enlisting the knights, whole flocks of whom follow him, bleating like little lambs. So, you might say, I am coming to dislike the Ordo Equester more and more. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I ask myself, to be in a position to do with them what I willed? Oh, I’d make them suffer, Publius Rutilius! On your behalf too.

Speaking of Pompey Strabo, he’s been very busy telling everyone in Rome how he’s covered himself in glory in Picenum. The real author of his relatively minor success, in my opinion, is Publius Sulpicius, who brought him an army from Italian Gaul and inflicted a nasty defeat upon a combined force of Picentes and Paeligni before ever he made contact with Pompey Strabo. Our cross-eyed friend, rot him, summered extremely comfortably locked up in Firmum Picenum. Anyway, now he’s out of his summer residence, Pompey Strabo is claiming all the credit for the victory over Titus Lafrenius, who died along with his men. Of Publius Sulpicius (who was there, and did most of the work), not a mention. And as if that were not enough, Pompey Strabo’s agents in Rome are making his battle sound a lot more significant than Gaius Marius’s actions against Marrucini and Marsi.

The war is on the turn. I know it in my bones.

I am sure I don’t have to detail the new enfranchisement law Lucius Julius Caesar intends to promulgate in December. Scaurus’s letter is full of it, I imagine. I gave the Princeps Senatus the news of this law scant hours ago, thinking he’d begin to roar in outrage. Instead, he was quite pleased. He thinks the idea of dangling the citizenship has a lot of merit, provided it isn’t extended to those in arms against us. Etruria and Umbria prey upon him; he feels the trouble in both areas would die down the moment all Etrurians and Umbrians were given the vote. Try though I did, I couldn’t persuade him that Lucius Julius’s law would only be the beginning—that before too long every Italian would be a Roman citizen, no matter how much and how fresh the Roman blood on his sword. I ask you, Publius Rutilius—what have we been fighting for?

Write back at once, tell me how to deal with girls.

Sulla included his letter to Rutilius Rufus in the packet the Princeps Senatus sent to Smyrna by special courier. That meant Rutilius Rufus would probably receive the packet within a month, and his answer would be carried back by the same courier over a similar period of time.

In fact, Sulla had his answer by the end of November. He was still in Campania, shoring up the convalescent Lucius Caesar, who had been awarded a triumph by the sycophantic Senate for his victory over Mutilus at Acerrae; that the two armies had returned to Acerrae and at the time of the decree were actively engaged in fresh hostilities was something the Senate preferred to ignore. The reason for the awarding of this triumph and no other, said the Senate, was that Lucius Caesar’s troops had hailed him imperator on the field. When Pompey Strabo heard about it his agents created such a fuss that the Senate then had to decree a triumph for Pompey Strabo as well. How low are we descended? asked Sulla of himself. To triumph over Italians is no triumph.

This signal honor had no power to excite Lucius Caesar. When Sulla asked him how he wished his triumph organized, he simply looked surprised, then said,

“Since there are no spoils, it will require no organization. I shall lead my army through Rome, that’s all.”

The winter hiatus had opened, and Acerrae it seemed was not much inconvenienced by the presence of two large armies outside its gates. While Lucius Caesar wrestled with the early drafts of his enfranchisement law, Sulla went to Capua to help Catulus Caesar and Metellus Pius the Piglet reorder the legions more than decimated by the second action in the Melfa Gorge; it was there in Capua that Rutilius Rufus’s letter found him.

My dear Lucius Cornelius, why is it that fathers can never seem to find the right way to handle their daughters? I despair! Not, mind you, that I had any trouble with my girl. When I married her to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, she was in raptures. This was undoubtedly because she was such a plain little thing, and not well dowered; her chief worry was that her tata wouldn’t manage to find her a husband at all. If I had brought her home that repellent son of Sextus Perquitienus’s, she would have swooned. As it was, when I conjured Lucius Piso up, she deemed him a gift straight from the gods, and has not stopped thanking me since. And so happy has the union been, in fact, that it seems the next generation plans to do the same—my son’s daughter is to marry my daughter’s son when they are old enough. Yes, yes, I know what old Caesar Grandfather used to say, but these will be the first lot of first cousins to marry on either side. They will litter excellent pups.

The answer to your dilemma, Lucius Cornelius, is really ridiculously simple. All it requires is the connivance of Aelia, for you yourself must appear to have no part in it. Let Aelia commence by dropping the girl some heavy hints that you are changing your mind about the marriage, that you are thinking of looking elsewhere. Aelia must drop a few names too—names of absolutely repulsive fellows, like the son of Sextus Perquitienus. The girl will find all this most unwelcome.

Gaius Marius’s moribund condition is—pardon the pun, do!—a stroke of good luck, for Young Marius can enter into no marriage while the paterfamilias is incapacitated. You see, it is essential that Cornelia Sulla be given the chance to meet privately with Young Marius. After she learns that her husband may be worse by far than young Quintus Pompeius. Have Aelia take the girl with her to visit Julia at a time when Young Marius is home, and let no impediment prevent their meeting—you had better make sure Julia understands what is afoot!

Now Young Marius is a very spoiled and self-centered sort of fellow. Believe me, Lucius Cornelius, he will do or say nothing to endear himself to your lovesick child. Aside from his father’s illness, the chief thing on his mind at the moment is who is going to have the honor of enduring him as a staff cadet. He is quite intelligent enough to know that whoever it is won’t let him get away with a tenth as much as his father did—but some commanders are more lenient than others. I gather from Scaurus’s letter that no one wants him, no one is willing to ask for him personally, and that his fate rests entirely upon the whim of the contubernalis committee. My little network of informants tells me Young Marius is dabbling heavily in Women and Wine, not necessarily in that order. Yet one more reason why Young Marius won’t fall into an ecstatic transport at seeing Cornelia Sulla, relic of his childhood—for whom, when he was fifteen or sixteen, he cherished tender thoughts—and probably used her good nature then in ways she never noticed. He is not much different now than he was then. The difference is that he thinks he is, and she thinks he’s not. Believe me, Lucius Cornelius, he will commit every possible blunder, and she will irritate him into the bargain.

Once the girl has had her interview with Young Marius, tell Aelia to harp a little harder on the fact that she thinks you’re veering away from the Pompeius Rufus alliance—that you need the backing of a very rich knight.

And now I shall tell you an invaluable secret about women, Lucius Cornelius. A woman may have decided adamantly that she doesn’t want some suitor—yet if that suitor should suddenly withdraw for reasons other than her spurning of his suit, a woman inevitably decides to take a closer look at the catch which is busy swimming away. After all, your girl has never even seen her fish! Aelia must produce some impressive reason why Cornelia Sulla must attend a dinner at the house of Quintus Pompeius Rufus—the father is in Rome on furlough, or the mother is sick, or anything. Could dear Cornelia Sulla possibly see her way to swallowing her dislike just enough to eat one meal in the presence of her despised fish? I guarantee you, Lucius Cornelius, that she will agree. And—since I have seen her fish—I am absolutely confident your girl will change her mind. He is exactly the sort to appeal to her. She’ll always be cleverer than he, and have no trouble establishing herself as the head of the household. Irresistible! She is so like you. In some ways.

Sulla put the letter down, head spinning. Simple? How could Publius Rutilius concoct such a tortuous scheme as this, yet have the gall to term it simple? Military maneuvers were less complex! However, it was worth a try. Anything was worth a try. So he resumed his reading in a slightly happier frame of mind, anxious to see what else Rutilius Rufus had to say.

Matters in my small corner of our vast world are not good. I suppose no one in Rome these days has the time or the interest to follow events in Asia Minor. But somewhere, no doubt, there is a report lying in the Senate offices which by now our Princeps Senatus will have seen. He will also see the letter I have sent to him by the same courier as this one.

There is a Pontic puppet on the throne of Bithynia. Yes, the moment he was sure Rome’s back was turned, King Mithridates invaded Bithynia! Ostensibly the leader of the invasion was Socrates, the younger brother of King Nicomedes the Third—which accounts for the fact that Bithynia is still calling itself a free country, having exchanged King Nicomedes for King Socrates. It seems a contradiction in terms to call a king Socrates, doesn’t it? Can you imagine Socrates of Athens permitting himself to be crowned a king? However, no one in Asia Province is under any delusion that Bithynia is “free.” In all save name, Bithynia is now the fief of Mithridates of Pontus—who must, incidentally, be fuming at the dilatory conduct of King Socrates! For King Socrates let King Nicomedes get away. Despite his accumulation of years, Nicomedes skipped across the Hellespont as nimbly as a goat; rumor here in Smyrna has it that he is en route for Rome, there to complain about the loss of the throne the Senate and People of Rome graciously let him sit on. You’ll see him in Rome before the end of the year, burdened down with a large part of the contents of the Bithynian treasury.