The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
“I am divorcing you,” he said, and handed her the scrap of parchment upon which early this morning he had written the bill of divorcement.
What he said hardly penetrated; she spread the thick and slightly smelly rectangle of supple skin out on the surface of his desk and studied it presbyopically until its words kindled a response. Then she looked from parchment to husband.
“I have done nothing to deserve this,” she said dully.
“I disagree,” he said.
“What? What have I done?”
“You have not been a suitable wife.”
“And it has taken you all of twenty-five years to come to this conclusion?”
“No. I knew it from the beginning.”
“Why didn’t you divorce me then?”
“It didn’t seem important at the time.”
Oh, one hurt after another, one insult after another! The parchment vibrated in her grasp, she flung it away and clenched her hands into hard little fists.
“Yes, that’s about the sum of it!” she said, finally alive enough to be angry. “I never have been important to you. Not even important enough to divorce. So why are you doing it now?”
“I want to marry again,” he said.
Incredulity drove out rage; her eyes widened. “You?”
“Yes. I’ve been offered a marriage alliance with a girl of a very old patrician house.”
“Oh, come, Marius! The great despiser, turned snob?”
“No, I don’t believe so,” he said dispassionately, concealing his discomfort as successfully as his guilt. “Simply, this marriage means I will be consul after all.”
The fire of indignation in her died, snuffed out by the cold wind of logic. How could one argue against that? How could one blame? How could one fight anything so inevitable? Though never once had he discussed his political rejection with her, nor complained of how lightly they held him, she knew it just the same. And had wept for him, burned for him, wished there were some way she could rectify the sin of their omission, those Roman noblemen who controlled Roman politics. Yet what could she do, a Grania from Puteoli? Wealthy, respectable, unimpeachable as wives went. But utterly lacking in clout, owning no relatives capable of rectifying the injustices doled out to him; if he was a Latin squire, she was a Campanian merchant’s daughter, lowest of the low in a Roman nobleman’s eyes. Until recently, her family hadn’t held the citizenship.
“I see,” she said tonelessly.
And he was merciful enough to leave it at that, not to hint to her of his excitement, the glowing little kernel of love busy germinating in his dormant heart. Let her think it was purely a match of political expediency.
“I am sorry, Grania,” he said gently.
“So am I, so am I,” she said, starting to shake again, but this time with the chill prospect of grass widowhood, an even greater and more intolerable loneliness than the kind she was used to. Life without Gaius Marius? Unthinkable.
“If it’s any consolation, the alliance was offered to me, I didn’t actively seek it.”
“Who is she?”
“The elder daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar.”
“A Julia! That is looking high! You’ll certainly be consul, Gaius Marius.”
“Yes, I think so too.” He fiddled with his favorite reed pen, the little porphyry bottle of blotting sand with its perforated gold cap, the inkwell made from a chunk of polished amethyst. “You have your dowry, of course, and it’s more than adequate to meet your requirements. I invested it in more profitable enterprises than your father had, and since you’ve never touched it, it’s now very large indeed.” He cleared his throat. “I presume you’ll want to live closer to your own family, but I wonder if—at your age—it’s not advisable to have your own house, especially with your father dead, and your brother the paterfamilias.”
“You never slept with me often enough to give me a child,” she said, aching to her core in the midst of this icy solitude. “Oh, I wish I had a child!”
“Well, I’m damned glad you don’t! Our son would be my heir, and the marriage to Julia couldn’t have its significance.” He realized that didn’t sound the proper note, and added, “Be sensible, Grania! Our children would be grown up by now, and living lives of their own. No comfort to you at all.”
“There’d at least be grandchildren,” she said, the tears starting to gather. “I wouldn’t be so terribly alone!”
“I have been telling you for years, get yourself a little lapdog!” It wasn’t said unkindly, it was merely sound advice; he thought of better advice still, and added, “What you ought to do is marry again, actually.”
“Never!” she cried.
He shrugged. “Have it your own way. Getting back to whereabouts you should live, I’m willing to buy a villa on the sea at Cumae and install you in it. Cumae’s a comfortable distance by litter from Puteoli—close enough to visit your family for a day or two, far enough away to assure you peace.”
Hope had gone. “Thank you, Gaius Marius.”
“Oh, don’t thank me!” He got up and came round the desk to help her to her feet with an impersonal hand under her elbow. “You had better tell my steward what’s happening, and think about which slaves you want to take with you. I’ll have one of my agents find a suitable villa at Cumae tomorrow. I’ll keep it in my name, of course, but I’ll deed you a life tenancy—or until you marry. All right, all right! I know you said you wouldn’t, but enterprising suitors will smother you like flies a honey-pot. You’re wealthy.” They had reached the door of her sitting room, and there he stopped, taking his hand away. “I’d appreciate it if you’d be out of here the day after tomorrow. In the morning, preferably. I imagine Julia will want to make changes to the house before she moves in, and we’re to marry in eight weeks, which doesn’t give me long to make whatever changes she wants. So—the morning of the day after tomorrow. I can’t bring her here to inspect the place until you’ve gone, it wouldn’t be proper.”
She started to ask him—something, anything—but he was already walking away.
“Don’t wait dinner for me,” he called as he crossed the vast expanse of the atrium. “I’m going to see Publius Rutilius, and I doubt I’ll be back before you’re in bed.”
Well, that was that. It wouldn’t break her heart to lose her occupancy of this huge barn of a house; she had always hated it, and hated the urban chaos of Rome. Why he had chosen to live on the damp and gloomy northern slope of the Arx of the Capitol had always puzzled her, though she knew the site’s extreme exclusivity had operated powerfully upon him. But there were so few houses in the vicinity that visiting friends meant long walks up many steps, and it was a residential political backwater; the neighbors, such as they were, were all terrific merchant princes with little interest in politics.
She nodded at the servant standing by the wall outside her sitting room. “Please fetch the steward at once,” she said.
The steward came, a majestic Greek from Corinth who had managed to get himself an education and then sold himself into slavery in order to make his fortune and eventually acquire the Roman citizenship.
“Strophantes, the master is divorcing me,” she said without shame, for there was no shame attached. “I must be gone from here by the day after tomorrow, in the morning. Please see to my packing.”
He bowed, hiding his amazement; this was one marriage he had never expected to see terminate sooner than death, for it had a mummified torpor about it rather than the kind of bitter warfare which usually led to divorce.
“Do you intend to take any of the staff, domina?” he asked, sure of his own continuance in this house, for he belonged to Gaius Marius, not to Grania.
“The cook, certainly. All the kitchen servants, otherwise he’ll be unhappy, won’t he? My serving girls, my seamstress, my hairdresser, my bath slaves, and both the page boys,” she said, unable to think of anyone else she depended upon and liked.
“Certainly, domina.” And he went away at once, dying to impart
Grania wandered into her spacious sitting room and looked around at its comfortable air of dishevelment, at her paints and workbox, at the nail-studded trunk in which reposed her baby trousseau, hopefully gathered, heartbreakingly unused.
Since no Roman wife chose or bought the furniture, Gaius Marius would not be handing any of it over; her eyes brightened a little, the tears trickled inward instead of down her cheeks, and were not replaced. Really, she had only tomorrow before leaving Rome, and Cumae was not one of the world’s greatest emporiums. Tomorrow she would go shopping for furniture to fill her new villa! How nice to be able to pick what she wanted! Tomorrow would be busy after all, no time for thinking, no empty hours to grieve. Much of the sting and shock began at once to evaporate; she could get through the coming night, now that she had a shopping spree to look forward to.
‘‘ Berenice!’’ she called, and then, when the girl appeared, “I’ll dine now, tell the kitchen.”
She found paper on which to compose her shopping list amid the clutter on her worktable, and left it where it sat ready for her to use as soon as she finished eating. And something else he had said to her—yes, that was it, the little lapdog. Tomorrow she would buy a little lapdog, first item on the list.
The euphoria lasted until Grania’s solitary dinner was almost done, at which point she emerged from shock and promptly plunged into grief. Up went both hands to her hair, wrenching and pulling frenziedly; her mouth opened in a keening wail, the tears poured out in rivers. Every servant scattered, leaving her abandoned in the dining room to howl into the gold-and-purple tapestry covering her couch.
“Just listen to her!” said the cook bitterly, pausing in his packing-up of special pans, pots, tools; the sound of his mistress’s agony came clearly into his domain at the far end of the peristyle-garden. “What’s she got to cry about? I’m the one going into exile—she’s been there for years, the fat silly old sow!”
6
The lot which gave the province of Roman Africa to Spurius Postumius Albinus was drawn on New Year’s Day; not twenty-four hours later, he nailed his colors to the mast, and they were the colors of Prince Massiva of Numidia.
Spurius Albinus had a brother, Aulus, ten years younger than himself, newly admitted to the Senate, and eager to make a name. So while Spurius Albinus lobbied strenuously yet behind the scenes for his new client Prince Massiva, it fell to Aulus Albinus to escort Prince Massiva through all the most important public places of the city, introducing him to every Roman of note, and whispering to Massiva’s agents what sort of gift would be appropriate to send to every Roman of note Massiva met. Like most members of the Numidian royal house, Massiva was a well-set-up and good-looking Semite with a brain between his ears, capableof exerting charm, and lavish in the distribution of largesse. His chief advantage lay not in the undeniable legitimacy of his claim, but rather in the Roman delight of a divided camp; there was no thrill in a united Senate, no spice in a series of unanimous votes, no reputations to be made in amicable co-operation.
At the end of the first week of the New Year, Aulus Albinus formally presented the case of Prince Massiva to the House, and, on his behalf, claimed the throne of Numidia for the legitimate branch. It was Aulus Albinus’ s maiden speech, and a good one. Every Caecilius Metellus sat up and listened, then applauded at the end of it, and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was delighted to speak in support of Massiva’s petition. This, he said, was the answer to the vexed question as to what to do about Numidia—get it back on the right path with a lawful king at the reins, not a desperate pretender whose bloodline was not good enough to unite the whole country behind him, and who had established his tenure of the throne by murder and bribery. Before Spurius Albinus dismissed the meeting, the Senate was making noises indicating it was very ready to vote in favor of dismissing the present King, and replacing him with Massiva.
“We’re up to our necks in boiling water,” said Bomilcar to Jugurtha. “All of a sudden I’m not being invited to dine anywhere, and our agents can’t find any ears prepared to listen.”
“When is the Senate going to vote?” asked the King, his voice calm and steady.
“The fourteenth day before the Kalends of February is the next meeting scheduled for the House—that is seven days from tomorrow, sire.”
The King straightened his shoulders. “It will go against me, won’t it?”
“Yes, sire,” said Bomilcar.
“In that case, it is pointless my trying to continue to do things the Roman way.” Jugurtha was visibly growing in size, an awful majesty swelling him now that had been kept hidden since he came with Lucius Cassius to Italy. “From now on, I will do things my way—the Numidian way.”
The rain had cleared, a cold sun shone; Jugurtha’s bones longed for the warmer winds of Numidia, his body longed for the friendly and unavaricious comfort of his harem, his mind longed for the ruthless logic of Numidian plain dealing. Time to go home! Time to start recruiting and training an army, for the Romans were never going to let go.
He paced up and down the colonnade flanking the gigantic peristyle-garden, then beckoned to Bomilcar and strode with him to the center of the open air, by the loudly splashing fountain.
“Not even a bird can hear us,” he said then.
Bomilcar stiffened, prepared himself.
“Massiva must go,” said the King.
“Here? In Rome?”
“Yes, and within the next seven days. If Massiva is not dead before the Senate takes its vote, our task will be that much harder. With Massiva dead, there can be no vote. It will buy us time.”
“I’ll kill him myself,” said Bomilcar.
But Jugurtha shook his head violently. “No! No! The assassin must be a Roman,” he said. “Your job is to find the Roman assassin who will kill Massiva for us.”
Bomilcar stared, aghast. “My lord king, we’re in a foreign country! We don’ t know where or how, let alone who!”
“Ask one of our agents. Surely there’s one we can trust,” said Jugurtha.
That was more concrete; Bomilcar worked at it for some moments, nipping at the short hairs of his beard beneath his bottom lip with strong teeth. “Agelastus,” he said at last. “Marcus Servilius Agelastus, the man who never smiles. His father is Roman, he was born and bred here. But his heart is with his Numidian mother, of that I’m sure.”
“I leave it to you. Do it,” said the King, and walked away down the path.
*
Agelastus looked stunned. “Here? In Rome?”
“Not only here, but within the next seven days,” said Bomilcar. “Once the Senate votes for Massiva—as it will!—we’ll have a civil war on our hands in Numidia. Jugurtha won’t let go, you know that. Even if he were willing to let go, the Gaetuli wouldn’t let him.”
“But I haven’t the faintest idea how to find an assassin!”
“Then do the job yourself.”
“I couldn’t!” wailed Agelastus.
“It has to be done! Surely in a city this size there are plenty of people willing to do murder for a good sum of money,” Bomilcar persisted.
“Of course there are! Half the proletariat, if the truth is known. But I don’t mix in those circles, I don’t know any of the proletarii! After all, I can’t just approach the first seedy-looking fellow I see, clink a bag of gold at him, and ask him to kill a prince of Numidia!” moaned Agelastus.
“Why not?” asked Bomilcar.
“He might report me to the urban praetor, that’s why!”
“Show him the gold first, and I guarantee he won’t. In this city, everyone has his price.”
“Maybe that is indeed so, Baron,” said Agelastus, “but I for one am not prepared to put your theory to the test.”
And from that stand he would not be budged.
&nb
Everyone said the Subura was Rome’s sink, so to the Subura Bomilcar went, clad inconspicuously, and without a single slave to escort him. Like every visitor of note to Rome, he had been warned never to venture into the valley northeast of the Forum Romanum, and now he understood why. Not that the alleys of the Subura were any narrower than those of the Palatine, nor were the buildings as oppressively high as those on the Viminal and upper Esquiline.
No, what distinguished the Subura at first experience was people, more people than Bomilcar had ever seen. They leaned out of a thousand thousand windows screeching at each other, they elbowed their way through presses of bodies so great all movement was slowed to a snail’s pace, they behaved in every rude and aggressive manner known to the race of men, spat and pissed and emptied their slops anywhere they fancied they saw a space open up, were ready to pick a fight with anyone who so much as looked at them sideways.
The second impression was of an all-prevailing squalor, an appalling stench. As he made his way from the civilized Argiletum to the Fauces Suburae, as the initial stretch of the main thoroughfare was known, Bomilcar was incapable of taking in anything beyond smell and dirt. Peeling and dilapidated, the very walls of the buildings oozed filth in runnels, as if the bricks and timber of which they were made had been mortared with filth. Why, he found himself wondering, hadn’t they just let the whole district burn down last year, instead of fighting so hard to save it? Nothing and no one in the Subura was worth saving! Then as he penetrated deeper—careful as he walked not to turn off the Subura Major, as the main street was now called, into any of the gaps between the buildings on either side, for he knew if he did, he might never find his way out again—disgust was replaced by amazement. For he began to see the vitality and hardiness of the inhabitants, and experience a cheerfulness beyond his comprehension.
The language he heard was a bizarre mixture of Latin and Greek and a little Aramaic, an argot which probably couldn’t be understood by anyone who didn’t live in the Subura, for certainly in his extensive wanderings around the rest of Rome, he had never heard its like.