Fortune's Favorites (42 page)

“Certainly more than I can afford,” said Caesar calmly.

“Then you're a spendthrift,” said Sulla, anything but.

Caesar shrugged. “Money is a tool, Lucius Cornelius. I don't care whether I have it or not, if counting up a hoard is what you believe to be the purpose of money. I believe money must be passed on. Otherwise it stagnates. So does the economy. What money comes my way from now on, I will use to further my public career.”

“That's a good way to go bankrupt.”

“I'll always manage,” said Caesar, unconcerned.

“How can you know that?”

“Because I have Fortune's favor. I have luck.”

Sulla shivered. “I have Fortune's favor! I have luck! But remember-there is a price to pay. Fortune is a jealous and demanding mistress.”

“They're the best kind!” said Caesar, and laughed so infectiously that the room went quiet. Many of the men present took that memory of a laughing Caesar into the future with them-not because they suffered any premonitions, but because he had two qualities they envied him-youth and beauty.

Of course he couldn't leave until after the last guest was gone, and that was not until many hours later; by then he had every last one of them assessed and filed away because he had that kind of mind, always storing up whatever it encountered. Yes, an interesting company, was his verdict.

“Though I found none I was tempted to make a friend of,” he said to Gaius Matius at dawn the next day. “Sure you don't want to come with me, Pustula? You have to serve in your ten campaigns, you know.”

“No, thank you. I have no wish to be so far from Rome. I will wait for a posting, and hope it's Italian Gaul.”

The farewells were genuinely exhausting. Wishing he might have dispensed with them, Caesar endured them with what patience he could muster. The worst feature of it was the many who had clamored to go with him, though he had steadfastly refused to take anyone save Burgundus. His two body servants were new purchases-a fresh start, men with no knowledge of his mother.

Finally the goodbyes were over-Lucius Decumius, his sons and the Brethren of the crossroads college, Gaius Matius, his mother's servants, Cardixa and her sons, his sister Ju-Ju, his wife, and his mother. Caesar was able to climb on his inglorious mule and ride away.

Not two months had gone by when Sulla decided that Rome had adjusted satisfactorily to the presence of his proscriptions. The slaughter was only marginally more subtle than Marius's slaughter during the few days of his seventh consulship; the streets of Rome didn't run with quite so much blood, and there were no bodies piled in the lower Forum Romanum. The bodies of those killed in Sulla's proscriptions (the victims were forbidden funeral rites and interment) were dragged with a meat hook under the sternum to the Tiber, and thrown in; only the heads were piled in the lower Forum Romanum, around the perimeter of the public fountain known as the Basin of Servilius.

As the amount of property gathered in for the State by the administrator, Chrysogonus, accumulated, a few more laws came into being: the widow of a man proscribed could not remarry, and the wax masks of Gaius Marius and Young Marius, of Cinna or his ancestors, or of any proscribed man and his ancestors, could not be displayed at any family funeral.

The house of Gaius Marius had been sold at auction to the present Sextus Perquitienus, grandson of the man who had made that family's fortune, and next door to whom Marius had erected his house; it now served as an annex for art works to the Perquitienus residence, though it was not incorporated in it.

At first the auctions Chrysogonus conducted saw the estates of the proscribed knocked down to successful bidders at a fair market price, but the amount of money to buy was not great, so that by the time the tenth auction occurred, the prices being realized were dropping rapidly. It was at this moment that Marcus Crassus began to bid. His technique was shrewd; rather than set his heart on the best property on the agenda, he chose to concentrate upon less desirable estates, and was able to pick them up for very little. The activities of Lucius Sergius Catilina were more feral. He concentrated upon informing Chrysogonus of traitorous talk or actions, and thus succeeded in having his elder brother Quintus proscribed, after which he ensured that his brother-in-law Caecilius was proscribed. The brother was sent into exile, but the brother-in-law died, and Catilina applied to the Dictator for a special law to inherit, arguing that in neither case was he named in the will, nor was he a direct heir-both men had male children. When Sulla acceded to his request, Catilina became rich without needing to spend a single sestertius at the auctions.

It was in a dually chilly climate, therefore, that Sulla celebrated his triumph on the last day of January. Ordinary Rome turned out en masse to do him honor, though the knights stayed home, apparently on the theory that should Sulla or Chrysogonus see their faces, they might wind up on the next proscription list. The Dictator displayed the spoils and tributes of Asia and King Mithridates with every tricky device conceivable to camouflage the fact that his conclusion of the war had been as hasty as it was premature, and that in consequence the booty was disappointing considering the wealth of the enemy.

On the following day Sulla held an exposition rather than a triumph, displaying what he had taken from Young Marius and Carbo; he was careful to inform the spectators that these items were to be returned to the temples and people they had been taken from. On this day the restored exiles-men like Appius Claudius Pulcher, Metellus Pius, Varro Lucullus and Marcus Crassus-marched not as senators of Rome, but as restored exiles, though Sulla considerately spared them the indignity of having to don the Cap of Liberty, normally the headgear of freedmen.

The taming of Pompey proved to be more difficult than reconciling Rome to the proscriptions, as Sulla learned the day before he held his triumph. Pompey had ignored his instructions from the Dictator and sailed with his whole army from Africa to Italy. The letter he sent Sulla from Tarentum informed Sulla that his army had refused to let him sail without every last one of his loyal soldiers coming along, and he claimed to have been powerless to prevent this mass embarkation (without explaining how it was that he had gathered sufficient ships to fit five extra legions and two thousand horse on board); at the end of his missive he again asked to be allowed to celebrate a triumph.

The Dictator sped a couriered letter to Tarentum in which for the second time he denied Pompey this mouth-watering triumph. The same courier carried back a letter from Pompey to Sulla apologizing for the refractory behavior of his army, which he protested yet again he could not control. Those naughty, naughty soldiers were insisting their darling general be allowed his well-deserved triumph! If the Dictator were to continue his negative attitude, Pompey was very much afraid his naughty, naughty soldiers might take matters into their own hands, and elect to march to Rome. He himself would-of course!-do everything in his power to prevent this!

A second letter was galloped from Sulla down the Via Appia to Tarentum, containing a third refusal: NO TRIUMPH. This proved to be one refusal too many. Pompey's six legions and two thousand cavalry troopers set out to march to Rome. Their darling general came along with them, protesting in another letter to Sulla that he was only doing so in order to prevent his men taking actions they might later have cause to regret.

The Senate had been privy to every episode in this duel of wills, horrified at the presumption of a twenty-four-year-old knight, and had issued a senatus consultum to back every one of Sulla's orders and denials. So when Sulla and the Senate were informed that Pompey and his army had reached Capua, resistance hardened. The time was now nearing the end of February, winter storms came and went, and the Campus Martius was already crowded because other armies were sitting on it-two legions belonging to Lucius Licinius Murena, the ex-governor of Asia Province and Cilicia, and two legions belonging to Gaius Valerius Flaccus, the ex-governor of Gaul-across-the-Alps. Each of these men was to triumph shortly.

Hot on the heels of the inevitable letter ordering Pompey to halt at Capua (and informing Pompey that there were four battle-hardened legions occupying the Campus Martius), the Dictator himself left Rome in the direction of Capua. With him were the consuls Decula and the elder Dolabella, Metellus Pius the Pontifex Maximus, Flaccus Princeps Senatus the Master of the Horse, and an escort of lictors; no soldiers traveled with them to protect them.

Sulla's letter caught Pompey before he could leave Capua, and the news that four battle-hardened legions were encamped outside Rome shocked him into remaining where he was. It had never been Pompey's intention to go to war against Sulla; the march was a bluff purely designed to obtain a triumph. So to learn that the Dictator had four battle-hardened legions at his immediate disposal broke upon Pompey like a torrent of ice-cold water. He himself knew he was bluffing-but did Sulla know it? Of course not! How could he? To Sulla, this march would look like a repeat of his own from Capua in the year that he had been consul. Pompey flew into an absolute funk.

So when the news came that Sulla in person was approaching without an army to back him, Pompey scrambled frantically to ride out of his camp and up the Via Appia-also without his army to back him. The circumstances of this meeting bore some resemblance to their first encounter at the ford across the Calor River. But today Sulla was not drunk, though inevitably he was mounted upon a mule. He was dressed in the purple-bordered toga praetexta and preceded by twenty-four lictors shivering in crimson tunics and brass-bossed black leather belts, with the ominous axes inserted in their bundles of rods. In Sulla's wake there followed thirty more lictors-twelve belonging to Decula, twelve to the elder Dolabella, and six to the Master of the Horse, who had a praetor's rank. So the occasion was more dignified and impressive than had been that at the Calor crossing. More in tune with poor Pompey's original fantasies.

But there could be no arguing that Pompey had grown in stature during the twenty-two months which had elapsed since his original meeting with Sulla; he had conducted one campaign in conjunction with Metellus Pius and Crassus, another in Clusium with Sulla and Crassus, and a third in complete command abroad. So now he didn't quibble about wearing his best gold-plated suit of armor, and flashed and glittered quite as much as did his gaily caparisoned Public Horse. The Dictator's party was coming up on foot; unwilling to look more martial, Pompey dismounted.

Sulla was wearing his Grass Crown, an unkind reminder that Pompey as yet had not managed to win one-had not managed to win a Civic Crown, for that matter! Silly wig and all, scar-spattered face and all, the Dictator still contrived to look every inch the Dictator. Pompey was quick to note it. The lictors moved twelve to either side of the road, thus permitting the tanned young man in his gold-plated armor to walk between their files toward Sulla, who had halted and arranged his party so that he stood a few feet ahead of the others, but was not isolated from them.

“Ave, Pompeius Magnus!” cried Sulla, right hand lifted.

“Ave, Dictator of Rome!” cried Pompey, transported with joy. Sulla had actually called him in public by the third name he had given himself-he could now officially be Pompey the Great!

They kissed on the mouth, something neither man enjoyed. And, the lictors preceding as always, turned slowly to walk in the direction of Pompey's camp, the others following on.

“You're prepared to admit I'm Great!” said Pompey happily.

“The name has stuck,” said Sulla. “But so has Kid Butcher.”

“My army is determined that I triumph, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Your army has absolutely no right to make that determination, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.”

Out flew both powerful, freckled arms. “What can I do?”' he cried. “They won't take a scrap of notice of me!”

“Rubbish!” said Sulla roundly. “Surely you realize, Magnus, that throughout the course of four letters-if you count the original one you received in Utica-you have demonstrated that you are not competent enough to control your troops?”

Pompey flushed, drew his small mouth in even smaller. “That is not a fair criticism!” he exclaimed.

“It most certainly is. You have admitted its truth yourself in no less than three letters.”

“You're deliberately failing to understand!” said Pompey, red-faced. “They're only behaving like this because they love me!”

“Love or hate, insubordination is insubordination. If they belonged to me, I'd be decimating them.”

“It's a harmless insubordination,” Pompey protested lamely.

“No insubordination is harmless, as you well know. You are threatening the legally appointed Dictator of Rome.”

“This is not a march on Rome, Lucius Cornelius, it's just a march to Rome,” labored Pompey. “There is a difference!

My men simply want to see that I receive what is due to me.”

“What is due to you, Magnus, is whatever I, as Dictator of Rome, decide to give you. You are twenty-four years old. You are not a senator. I have agreed to call you by a wonderful name which could only be improved by degree-Magnus can go to Maximus, but nowhere else-unless it be diminished to Parvus–or Minutus–or even Pusillus,” said Sulla.

Pompey stopped in the middle of the road, faced Sulla; the party behind somehow forgot to stop until they were well and truly close enough to hear.

“I want a triumph!” said Pompey loudly, and stamped a foot.

“And I say you can't have one!” said Sulla, equally loudly.

Pompey's broad, temper-reddened face grew beetling, the thin lips drew back to reveal small white teeth. “You would do well to remember, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Dictator of Rome, that more people worship the rising than the setting sun!”

For no reason any of the enthralled listeners could determine, Sulla burst out laughing. He laughed until he cried, slapping his hands helplessly on his thighs and quite losing control of the many folds of toga draped upon his left arm; it began to fall away and drag upon the ground. “Oh, very well!” he gasped when he could speak at all. “Have your triumph!” And then, still shaken by fresh guffaws, he said, “Don't just stand there, Magnus, you great booby! Help me pick up my toga!”

“You are a complete fool, Magnus,” said Metellus Pius to Pompey when he had an opportunity to speak in private.

“I think I've been very clever,” said Pompey smugly.

Still not consul though he had entered into his late forties, the Piglet had aged well; his curly brown hair was frosted with white at the temples and his skin bore none but attractive lines at the corners of his brown eyes. Even so, next to Pompey he paled into insignificance. And he knew it. Not so much with envy as with sadness.

“You've been anything but clever,” the Piglet said, pleased to see the brilliant blue eyes widen incredulously. “I know our master considerably better than you do, and I can tell you that his intelligence is greater than both of ours put together. If he has a failing, it is only a failing of temperament-not of character! And this failing doesn't affect the brilliance of his mind one iota. Nor does it affect the consummate skill of his actions, as man or as Dictator.”

Pompey blew a derisive noise. “Oh, Pius, you're not making any sense! Failing? What failing of Sulla's can you possibly mean?”

“His sense of the ridiculous, of course. Better to cuh-cuh-call it that than a sense of huh-huh-huh-humor.” The Piglet floundered, his own disability recollected, and stopped for a few moments to discipline his tongue. “I mean things like his appointing me the Pontifex Maximus when I stumble over my words. He can never resist that kind of joke.”

Pompey contrived to look bored. “I have no idea where you are going, Pius, or what it has to do with me.”

“Magnus, Magnus! He's been having a laugh at your expense all along! That's what it has to do with you. He always intended that you should triumph-what does he care about your age or your knight's status? You're a military hero, and he raises them to all kinds of exalted heights! But he wanted to see how much it meant to you, and how far you'd go to get it. You should never have risen to his bait. Now, he has you properly assessed and tucked away in his mental accounting system. He knows now that your courage is almost the equal of your self-esteem, not to mention your ambition. Almost. But not quite. He knows now that at the bitter end, Magnus, you won't stick the course.”