Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough

  It wouldn't have been Rome had not the latecomers been subjected to considerable abuse for pushing their way past those already comfortably seated; though Messala Niger didn't care a hoot, poor Valeria found herself muttering a series of apologies as she pressed on. Then she had to pass directly behind Rome's Dictator; terrified that she might bump him, she fixed her eyes on the back of his head and his shoulders. He was wearing his silly wig, of course, and a purple-bordered toga praetexta, his twenty-four lictors crouched on the ground forward of the front row. And as she passed Valeria noticed a fat and fleecy sausage of purple wool adhering to the white folds of toga across Sulla's left shoulder; without stopping to think, she picked it off.

  He never showed a vestige of fear in a crowd, always seemed above that, oblivious to danger. But when he felt the light touch Sulla flinched, leaped out of his chair and turned around so quickly that Valeria stepped back onto someone's toes. The last ember of terror still dying out of his eyes, he took in the sight of a badly frightened woman, red-haired and blue-eyed and youthfully beautiful.

  "I beg your pardon, Lucius Cornelius," she managed to say, wet her lips, sought for some explanation for her conduct. Trying to be light, she held out the sausage of purple fluff and said, "See? It was on your shoulder. I thought if I picked it off, I might also pick off some of your luck." Her eyes filled with quick tears, resolutely blinked away, and her lovely mouth shook. "I need some luck!"

  Smiling at her without opening his lips, he took her outstretched hand in his and gently folded her fingers around the innocent cause of so much fear. "Keep it, lady, and may it bring you that luck," he said, and turned away to sit down again.

  But all through the gladiatorial games he kept twisting around to look at where Valeria sat with Messala Niger, Metellus Pius and the rest of that party; and she, very conscious of his searching scrutiny, would smile at him nervously, then blush and look away.

  "Who is she?" he asked the Piglet as the crowd, well pleased with the magnificent display, was slowly dispersing.

  Of course the whole party had noticed (along with a lot of other people), so Metellus Pius did not dissimulate. “Valeria Messala," he said. "Cousin of Niger and sister of Rufus, who is at the moment returning from the siege of Mitylene."

  "Ah!" said Sulla, nodding. "As wellborn as she is truly beautiful. Recently divorced, isn't she?"

  "Most unexpectedly, and for no reason. She's very cut up about it, as a matter of fact."

  "Barren?" asked the man who had divorced one wife for that.

  The Piglet's lip curled contemptuously. "I doubt it, Lucius Cornelius. More likely lack of use."

  "Hmm!" Sulla paused to think, then said briskly, "She must come to dinner tomorrow. Ask Niger and Metellus Nepos too-and yourself, of course. But not the other women."

  So it was that when the junior military tribune Marcus Valerius Messala Rufus arrived in Rome he found himself summoned to an audience with the Dictator, who didn't mince matters. He was in love with Rufus's sister, he said, and wished to marry her.

  “What could I say?'' asked Rufus of his cousin Niger.

  "I hope you said, delighted," said Niger dryly.

  "I said, delighted."

  "Good!"

  "But how does poor Valeria feel? He's so old and ugly! I wasn't even given a chance to ask her, Niger!"

  "She'll be happy enough, Rufus. I know he's nothing much to look at, but he's the unofficial King of Rome-and he's as rich as Croesus! If it doesn't do anything else for her, it will be balm to the wound of her undeserved divorce," said Niger strongly. "Not to mention how advantageous the marriage will be for us! I believe he's arranging for me to be a pontifex, and you an augur. Just hold your tongue and be thankful."

  Rufus took his cousin's sound advice, having ascertained that his sister genuinely thought Sulla attractive and desirable, and did want the marriage.

  Invited to the wedding, Pompey found a moment to have some private speech with the Dictator.

  "Half your luck," said that young man gloomily.

  "Yes, you haven't had too much luck with wives, have you?" asked Sulla, who was enjoying his wedding feast immensely, and feeling kindly disposed toward most of his world.

  "Valeria is a very nice woman," Pompey vouchsafed.

  Sulla's eyes danced. "Left out, Pompeius?"

  "By Jupiter, yes!"

  "Rome is absolutely stuffed with beautiful noblewomen. Why not pick one out and ask her tata for her hand?"

  "I'm no good at that sort of warfare."

  "Rubbish! You're young-rich--handsome-and famous," said Sulla, who liked to tick things off. "Ask, Magnus! Just ask! It would be a fussy father who turned you down."

  "I'm no good at that sort of warfare," Pompey repeated.

  The eyes which had been dancing now surveyed the young man shrewdly; Sulla knew perfectly well why Pompey wouldn't ask. He was too afraid of being told that his birth wasn't good enough for this or that patrician young lady. His ambition wanted the best and his opinion of himself insisted he have the best, but that niggling doubt as to whether a Pompeius from Picenum would be considered good enough held him back time after time. In short, Pompey wanted someone's tata to ask him. And nobody's tata had.

  A thought popped into Sulla's mind, of the sort which had led him to dower Rome with a stammering Pontifex Maximus.

  "Do you mind a widow?" he asked, eyes dancing again.

  "Not unless she's as old as the Republic."

  "I believe she's about twenty-five."

  "That's acceptable. The same age as me."

  "She's dowerless."

  "Her birth concerns me a lot more than her fortune." "Her birth," said Sulla happily, "is absolutely splendid on both sides. Plebeian, but magnificent!"

  "Who?" demanded Pompey, leaning forward. "Who?" Sulla rolled off the couch and stood looking at him a little tipsily. "Wait until I've had my nuptial holiday, Magnus. Then come back and ask me again."

  For Gaius Julius Caesar his return had been a kind of triumph he thought perhaps the real thing later on might never equal. He was not only free, but vindicated. He had won a major crown.

  Sulla had sent for him at once, and Caesar had found the Dictator genial; the interview took place just before his wedding-which all of Rome was talking about, but not officially. Thus Caesar, bidden seat himself, did not mention it.

  "Well, boy, you've outdone yourself."

  What did one say? No more candor after Lucullus! "I hope not, Lucius Cornelius. I did my best, but I can do better."

  "I don't doubt it, it's written all over you." Sulla directed a rather sly glance at him. "I hear that you succeeded in assembling a fleet of unparalleled excellence in Bithynia."

  Caesar couldn't help it; he flushed. "I did as I was told. Exactly," he said, teeth shut.

  "Smarting about it, eh?"

  “The accusation that I prostituted myself to obtain that fleet is unjustified."

  "Let me tell you something, Caesar," said the Dictator, whose lined and sagging face seemed softer and younger than it had when Caesar had last seen him over a year ago. "We have both been the victims of Gaius Marius, but you at least are fully freed of him at-what age? Twenty?"

  "Just," said Caesar.

  "I had to suffer him until I was over fifty years old, so think yourself lucky. And, if it's any consolation, I don't give a rush who a man sleeps with if he serves Rome well."

  "No, it is no consolation!" snapped Caesar. "Not for Rome-not for you-not for Gaius Marius!-would I sell my honor."

  "Not even for Rome, eh?"

  "Rome ought not to ask it of me if Rome is who and what I believe her to be."

  "Yes, that's a good answer," said Sulla, nodding. "A pity it doesn't always work out that way. Rome-as you will find out-can be as big a whore as anyone else. You've not had an easy life, though it hasn't been as hard as mine. But you're like me, Caesar. I can see it! So can your mother. The slur is present. And you will have to live with it. The more famous you become, t
he more eminent your dignitas, the more they'll say it. Just as they say I murdered women to get into the Senate. The difference between us is not in nature, but in ambition. I just wanted to be consul and then consular, and perhaps censor. My due. The rest was foisted on me, mostly by Gaius Marius."

  "I want no more than those things," said Caesar, surprised.

  "You mistake my meaning. I am not talking about actual offices, but about ambition. You, Caesar, want to be perfect. Nothing must happen to you that makes you less than perfect. It isn't the unfairness of the slur concerns you-what rankles is that it detracts from your perfection. Perfect honor, perfect career, perfect record, perfect reputation. In suo anno all the way and in every way. And because you require perfection of yourself, you will require perfection from all around you- and when they prove imperfect, you'll cast them aside. Perfection consumes you as much as gaining my birthright did me."

  "I do not regard myself as perfect!"

  "I didn't say that. Listen to me! I said you want to be perfect. Scrupulous to the highest mathematical power. It won't change. You won't change. But when you have to you will do whatever you have to do. And every time you fall short of perfection, you'll loathe it-and yourself." Sulla held up a piece of paper. "Here is a decree which I will post on the rostra tomorrow. You have won the Civic Crown. According to my laws that entitles you to a seat in the Senate, a special place at the theater and in the circus, and a standing ovation on every occasion when you appear wearing your Civic Crown. You will be required to wear it in the Senate, at the theater and in the circus. The next meeting of the Senate is half a month away. I will expect to see you in the Curia Hostilia."

  And the interview was over. But when Caesar reached home he found one more accolade from Sulla. A very fine and leggy young chestnut stallion with a note clipped to its mane that said: "There is no need to ride a mule any longer, Caesar. You have my full permission to ride this beast. He is, however, not quite perfect. Look at his feet."

  When Caesar looked, he burst out laughing. Instead of neat uncloven hooves, the stallion's feet were each divided into two toes, a little like a cow's.

  Lucius Decumius shivered. "You better have him cut!" he said, not seeing any joke. "Don't want no more like him around!"

  "On the contrary," said Caesar, wiping his eyes. "I can't ride him much, he can't be shod. But young Toes here is going to carry me into every battle I fight! And when he isn't doing that, he'll be covering my mares at Bovillae. Lucius Decumius, he's luck! I must always have a Toes. Then I'll never lose a battle."

  His mother saw the changes in him instantly, and wondered why he sorrowed. Everything had gone so well for him! He had come back with the corona civica and had been glowingly mentioned in dispatches. He had even been able to inform her that the drain on his purse had not been as drastic as she had feared; King Nicomedes had given him gold, and his share of the spoils of Mitylene had been the greater because of his Civic Crown.

  "I don't understand," said Gaius Matius as he sat in the garden at the bottom of the light well, hands linked about his knees as he stared at Caesar, similarly seated on the ground. "You say your honor has been impeached, and yet you took a bag of gold from the old king. Isn't that wrong?"

  From anyone else the question would not have been tolerated, but Gaius Matius was a friend since infancy.

  Caesar looked rueful. "Had the accusation come before the gold, yes," he said. "As it was, when the poor old man gave me the gold it was a simple guest-gift. Exactly what a client king ought to give to an official envoy from his patron, Rome. As he gives tribute, what he bestows upon Rome's envoys is free and clear." Caesar shrugged. "I took it with gratitude, Pustula. Life in camp is expensive. My own tastes are not very grand, but one is forever obliged to contribute to the common mess, to special dinners and banquets, to luxuries which everyone else asks for. The wines have to be of the best, the foods ridiculous-and it doesn't matter that I eat and drink plain. So the gold made a big difference to me. After Lucullus had said what he did to me, I thought about sending the gold back. And then I realized that if I did, I would hurt the King. I can't possibly tell him what Lucullus and Bibulus said."

  "Yes, I see." Gaius Matius sighed. "You know, Pavo, I am so glad I don't have to become a senator or a magistrate. It's much nicer being an ordinary knight of the tribuni aerari!"

  But that Caesar could not even begin to comprehend, so he made no comment about it. Instead, he returned to Nicomedes. "I am honor bound to go back," he said, "and that will only add fuel to the rumors. During the days when I was flamen Dialis I used to think that nobody was interested in the doings of people like junior military tribunes. But it isn't so. Everyone gossips! The gods know among how many people Bibulus has been busy, tattling the story of my affair with King Nicomedes. I wouldn't put it past Lucullus either. Or the Lentuli, for that matter. Sulla certainly knew all the juicy details."

  "He has favored you," said Matius thoughtfully.

  "He has. Though I can't quite understand why."

  "If you don't know, I have no chance!" An inveterate gardener, Matius noticed two tiny leaves belonging to a just-germinated weed, and busied himself digging this offender out of the grass. "Anyway, Caesar, it seems to me you'll just have to live the story down. In time it will die. All stories do."

  "Sulla says it won't."

  Matius sniffed. "Because the stories about him haven't died? Come, Caesar! He's a bad man. You're not. You couldn't be."

  "I'm capable of murder, Pustula. All men are."

  "I didn't say you weren't, Pavo. The difference is that Sulla is a bad man and you are not."

  And from that stand Gaius Matius would not be budged.

  Sulla's wedding came and went; the newly wed pair left Rome to enjoy a holiday in the villa at Misenum. But the Dictator was back for the next meeting of the Senate, to which Caesar had been commanded. He was now, at twenty years of age, one of Sulla's new senators. A senator for the second time at twenty!

  It ought to have been the most wonderful day of his life, to walk into the filled Senate chamber wearing his chaplet of oak leaves and find the House risen to its feet-including consulars as venerable as Flaccus Princeps Senatus and Marcus Perperna-with hands vigorously applauding in this one permissible infraction of Sulla's new rules of conduct for the Senate.

  Instead, the young man found his eyes studying face after face for any hint of amusement or contempt, wondering how far the story had spread, and who despised him. His progress was an agony, not helped when he ascended to the back row wherein the pedarii sat-and wherein he fully expected he himself would sit-to find Sulla shouting at him to sit with the men of the middle tier, wherein soldier heroes were located. Of course some men chuckled; it was kindly laughter, and meant to approve of his embarrassment. But of course he took it as derision and wanted to crawl into the furthest, darkest corner.

  Through all of it, he had never wept.

  When he came home after the meeting-a rather boring one-he found his mother waiting in the reception room. Such was not her habit; busy always, she rarely left her office for very long during the day. Now, stomach roiling, she waited for her son in a stilled patience, having no idea of how she could broach a subject he clearly did not wish to discuss. Had she been a talker it would have been easier for her, of course. But words came hard to Aurelia, who let him divest himself of his toga in silence. Then when he made a movement toward his study she knew she had to find something to say or he would leave her; the vexed subject would remain unbroached.

  "Caesar," she said, and stopped.

  Since he had put on his toga of manhood it had been her custom to address him by his cognomen, mostly because to her "Gaius Julius" was her husband, and his death had not changed the file of references in her mind. Besides which, her son was very much a stranger to her, the penalty she paid for all those years of keeping him at a distance because she feared for him and could not allow herself to be warm or kind.

  He halted, one brow rai
sed. "Yes, Mater?"

  "Sit down. I want to talk to you."

  He sat, expression mildly enquiring, as if she could have nothing of great moment to say.

  "Caesar, what happened in the east?" she asked baldly.

  The mild enquiry became tinged with a mild amusement. "I did my duty, won a Civic Crown, and pleased Sulla," he said.

  Her beautiful mouth went straight. "Prevarication," she said, "does not suit you."

  "I wasn't prevaricating."

  "You weren't telling me what I need to know either!"

  He was withdrawing, eyes chilling from cool to cold. "I can't tell you what I don't know."

  "You can tell me more than you have."

  "About what?"

  "About the trouble."

  "What trouble?"

  “The trouble I see in your every movement, your every look, your every evasion."

  "There is no trouble."

  "I do not believe that."

  He rose to go, slapping his thighs. "I can't help what you believe, Mater. There is no trouble."

  “Sit down!''

  He sat down, sighing softly.

  “Caesar, I will find out. But I would much rather it came from you than from someone else."

  His head went to one side, his long fingers locked around themselves, his eyes closed. Then he sighed again, and shrugged. "I obtained a splendid fleet from King Nicomedes of Bithynia. Apparently this was a deed of absolute uniqueness. It was said of me that I obtained it by having sexual relations with the King. So I have returned to Rome the owner of a reputation not for bravery or efficiency or even cunning, but for having sold my body in order to achieve my ends," he said, eyes still closed.

  She didn't melt into sympathy, exclaim in horror, or wax indignant. Instead, she sat without saying anything until her son was obliged to open his eyes and look at her. It was a level exchange of glances, two formidable people finding pain rather than consolation in each other, but prepared to negotiate.