1

With the coming of the winter rains, the war—such as it had been so far—against Numidia ground to a cheerless halt, neither side able to deploy its troops. Gaius Marius received his letter from his father-in-law, Caesar, and thought about what it contained, and wondered if the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle knew that he would become proconsul when the New Year arrived, his command successfully prorogued, a future triumph assured. Nor did anyone in the governor’s headquarters at Utica mention the defeat of Marcus Junius Silanus by the Germans, or the loss of all those troops.

Which didn’t mean, thought Marius resentfully, that these items were not known to Metellus; only that, as usual, his senior legate Gaius Marius would be the last man to be told. Poor Rutilius Rufus had been given the job of supervising the winter border garrisons, which put him out of touch with any developments short of the renewal of war; and Gaius Marius, recalled to duty in Utica, found himself the subordinate of Metellus Piggle-wiggle’s son! That young man, all of twenty years old and a cadet in his father’s personal train, enjoyed the task of commanding Utica’s garrison and defenses, so that in any matter to do with Utica’s military dispositions, Marius had to defer to the insufferably arrogant Piglet, as he soon came to be called— and not by Marius alone. Utica as a fortress aside, Marius’s duties involved doing all the chores the governor didn’t want to do—duties more suited to a quaestor than a senior legate. Feelings in consequence were running high, and Marius’s self-control was rapidly eroding, especially when Metellus Piglet amused himself at Marius’s expense, something he liked to do now that his father had indicated it amused him too. The near defeat on the river Muthul had provoked both Rutilius Rufus and Marius into angry criticism of the general, and led Marius to tell him that the best way to win the war against Numidia was to capture Jugurtha himself. “How can I do that?” Metellus had asked, sufficiently chastened by his first battle to listen. “By subterfuge,” Rutilius Rufus had said. “What kind of subterfuge?” “That,” said Gaius Marius in conclusion, “you will have to work out for yourself, Quintus Caecilius.”

But now that everyone was safely back in Africa Province enduring the boredom of wet days and routine tasks, Metellus Piggle-wiggle kept his own counsel. Until, that is, he made contact with a Numidian nobleman named Nabdalsa, and was obliged to call Marius into his interview with the man.

“Why?” asked Marius bluntly. “Can’t do your own dirty work, Quintus Caecilius?”

“Believe me, Gaius Marius, if Publius Rutilius were here, I wouldn’t be using you!” snapped Metellus. “But you know Jugurtha where I don’t, and presumably that means you know a little more than I do about how Numidian minds work! All I want you to do is sit and watch this Nabdalsa, and tell me afterward what you think.”

“I’m surprised you trust me enough to think I’ll give you an honest opinion,” said Marius.

Metellus raised his brows, genuinely taken aback. “You are here to fight against Numidia, Gaius Marius, why shouldn’t you give me an honest opinion?”

“Then bring the fellow in, Quintus Caecilius, and I’ll do my best to oblige.”

Marius knew of Nabdalsa, though he had never met him; he was an adherent of the legitimate claimant to the Numidian throne, Prince Gauda, who was at present living in quasi-regal state not far from Utica, in the flourishing township which had grown up on the site of Old Carthage. Thus Nabdalsa had come from Prince Gauda in Old Carthage, and was received by Metellus in frosty audience.

Metellus explained himself; the best and quickest way to solve the Numidian question and put Prince Gauda on the throne was to effect the capture of Jugurtha himself. Did Prince Gauda—or Nabdalsa—have any idea how the capture of Jugurtha might be effected?

“Through Bomilcar, dominus, definitely,” said Nabdalsa.

Metellus stared. “Bomilcar? But he’s Jugurtha’s half brother, his loyalest baron!”

“At the moment relations between them are rather strained,” said Nabdalsa.

“Why?” asked Metellus.

“It’s a question of the succession, dominus. Bomilcar wants to be designated regent in the event that anything should happen to Jugurtha, but Jugurtha refuses to consider it.”

“Regent, not heir?”

“Bomilcar knows he could never be heir, dominus. Jugurtha has two sons. However, they are very young.”

Frowning, Metellus tried to plumb the thought processes of alien minds. “Why is Jugurtha opposed? I should have thought that Bomilcar would represent an ideal choice.”

“It is the bloodline, dominus,” said Nabdalsa. “Baron Bomilcar is not descended from King Masinissa, so does not belong to the royal house.”

“I see.” Metellus straightened. “Very well, then, see what you can do to persuade Bomilcar that he ought to ally himself with Rome.” He turned to Marius. “How amazing! One would have thought that a man not noble enough to claim the throne would be the ideal choice for a regent.”

“In our kind of society, yes,” said Marius. “In Jugurtha’s it’s an invitation to murder of his sons. For how else could Bomilcar ascend the throne than by killing Jugurtha’s heirs and founding a new dynasty?”

Metellus turned back to Nabdalsa. “I thank you, Baron Nabdalsa. You may go.”

But Nabdalsa was not ready to go. “Dominus, I crave a small favor,” he said.

“What?” asked Metellus, none too pleased.

“Prince Gauda is anxious to meet you, and wonders why he has not yet been offered the opportunity. Your year as governor of Africa Province is almost over, yet still Prince Gauda waits for an invitation to meet you.”

“If he wants to meet me, what’s to stop him?” asked the governor blankly.

“He cannot just present himself, Quintus Caecilius,” said Marius. “You must extend a formal invitation.”

“Oh! Well, if that’s all there is to it, an invitation will be extended,” said Metellus, hiding his smile.

And, the invitation duly extended the very next day, so that Nabdalsa could bear it back personally to Old Carthage, Prince Gauda came to call on the governor.

It was not a happy meeting; two more different men than Gauda and Metellus scarcely lived. Weak and sickly and not very bright, Gauda behaved in the manner he considered proper, and Metellus considered atrociously high-handed. For, having learned that an invitation must be extended before the royal guest in Old Carthage could come calling, Metellus assumed his visitor would be humble, even obsequious. Far from it. Gauda started proceedings off by flying into a temper when Metellus didn’t rise to greet him, and ended the audience not many moments later by stalking out of the governor’s presence.

“I am royalty]” Gauda bleated to Nabdalsa afterward.

“Everyone knows that, your Highness,” soothed Nabdalsa. “However, the Romans are very odd about royalty. They regard themselves as superior to it because they deposed their kings many hundreds of years ago, and have chosen ever since to rule themselves without benefit of kings.”

“I don’t care if they worship shit!” said Gauda, his lacerated feelings still smarting. “I am my father’s legitimate son, where Jugurtha is his bastard! And when I appear among these Romans, they should rise to greet me, they should bow down before me, they should give me a throne to sit on, and they should cull their soldiers for the hundred finest specimens and give them to me as a bodyguard!”

“True, true,” said Nabdalsa. “I will see Gaius Marius. Perhaps Gaius Marius will be able to bring Quintus Caecilius to his senses.”

Everyone Numidian knew about Gaius Marius and Publius Rutilius Rufus, for Jugurtha had spread their fame in the days when he had first returned from Numantia, and had seen both of them frequently during his recent visit to Rome.

“Then see Gaius Marius,” said Gauda, and retired in a monumental huff back to Old Carthage, there to brood upon the wrongs done him by Metellus in Rome’s name, while Nabdalsa unobtrusively sought an interview with Gaius Marius.

“I’ll do what I can, Baron,” said Marius, sighing.

“I would appreciate it, Gaius Marius,” said Nabdalsa with feeling.

Marius grinned. “Your royal master taking it out on you, is he?”

Nabdalsa’s answer was a speaking look.

“The trouble is, my friend, that Quintus Caecilius considers himself infinitely better born than any Numidian prince. I very much doubt that anyone, especially I, could convince him to change his tune. But I’ll try, because I want you free to seek out Bomilcar. That’s a lot more important than squabbles between governors and princes,” said Marius.

“The Syrian prophetess says that the family Caecilius Metellus is riding for a fall,” said Nabdalsa thoughtfully.

“Syrian prophetess?”

“A woman called Martha,” said the Numidian. “Prince Gauda found her in Old Carthage, where it seems she was abandoned some years ago by a sea captain who believed she had successfully put a curse upon his ship. At first only the humble consulted her, but now her fame is very large, and Prince Gauda has taken her into his court. She has prophesied that Prince Gauda will indeed become King of Numidia, after the fall of Jugurtha. Though that fall, she says, will not be yet.”

“And what about the family Caecilius Metellus?”

“She says the whole family Caecilius Metellus is past the zenith of its power, and will grow less in number and less in wealth, surpassed by — among others — you yourself, dominus.”

“I want to see this Syrian prophetess,” said Marius.

“It can be arranged. But you must come to Old Carthage, for she will not leave Prince Gauda’s house,” said Nabdalsa.

An audience with Martha the Syrian prophetess involved an audience with Prince Gauda first; resignedly Marius listened to the litany of complaints about Metellus, and made promises he hadn’t the faintest idea how he was going to keep.

“Rest assured, your Highness, that when I am in a position to do so, I will make sure you are treated with all the respect and deference to which your birth entitles you,” he said, bowing as low as even Gauda could have wished.

“That day will come!” said Gauda eagerly, grinning to reveal very bad teeth. “Martha says you will be the First Man in Rome, and before very long. For that reason, Gaius Marius, I wish to enroll myself among your clients, and I will make sure that my supporters in the Roman African province also enroll themselves as your clients. What is more, when I am King of Numidia, the whole of Numidia will be in your clientship.”

To this Marius listened amazed; he, a mere praetor, was being offered the kind of clients even a Caecilius Metellus might long for in vain! Oh, he had to meet this Martha, this Syrian prophetess!

Not many moments later he was given the chance, for she had asked to see him, and Gauda had him conducted to her apartments within the huge villa he was using as a temporary palace. A cursory glance was enough to assure Marius, bidden wait in her sitting room, that she was indeed held in high esteem, for the apartment was fabulously furnished, its walls painted with some of the finest murals he had ever been privileged to see, and its floors paved with mosaics equally as good as the murals.

When she came in she was wearing purple, another signal honor not normally accorded to one whose birth was not royal. And royal she certainly was not. A little, shriveled, skinny old lady who stank of stale urine and whose hair hadn’t been washed in what Marius suspected were literal years. She looked foreign, great beaky thin-bladed nose dominating a face of a thousand wrinkles, and a pair of black eyes whose light was as fierce and proud and vigilant as any eagle’s. Her breasts had sagged like two empty socks with toes full of pebbles, and swung visibly beneath the thin Tyrian purple shift which was all she wore above the waist. A Tyrian purple shawl was tied about her hips, her hands and feet were almost black with henna, and she tinkled when she walked from a myriad of bells, bracelets, rings, and trinkets, all of solid gold. Secured by a solid gold comb, a gauze veil of Tyrian purple covered the back of her head and fell over her spine like a windless flag.

“Sit down, Gaius Marius,” she said, pointing at a chair with one long-taloned finger, its gnarled length glittering from the many rings adorning it.

Marius did as he was told, unable to take his eyes from her ancient brown face. “Prince Gauda tells me that you have said I will be the First Man in Rome,” he said, and was forced to clear his throat. “I would like to hear more.”

She actually began to cackle a classic crone’s cackle, revealing gums toothless save for one yellowed incisor in her upper jaw. “Oh, yes, I’m sure you would,” she said, and clapped her hands for a servant. “Bring us an infusion of the dried leaves and some of those little cakes I like,” she ordered. Then to Gaius Marius she said, “It won’t be long. When it comes, we will talk. Until then, we will sit in silence.”

Not willing to offend her, he sat as he was bidden—in silence—and, when the steaming brew came, sipped at the cup of it she gave him, his nose suspicious, his instincts wary. It didn’t taste too bad, but as he wasn’t used to hot drinks, he burned his tongue and put the cup aside. She, clearly an expert, took birdlike sips at her own cup, downing each one with an audible gulp of pleasure.

“Delicious stuff, though I daresay you’d prefer wine.”

“No, not at all,” he murmured politely.

“Have a cake,” she mumbled, mouth full.

“Thank you, but no.”

“All right, all right, I can take a hint!” she said, and rinsed her mouth with another draft of the hot liquid. Out came one claw imperiously. “Give me your right hand.”

He gave. She took.

“Yours is a great destiny, Gaius Marius,” she said, eyes devouring the multiplicity of creases in his palm. “What a hand! It shapes whatever it puts itself to. And what a head line! It rules your heart, it rules your life, it rules everything except the ravages of time, Gaius Marius, for those no one can withstand. But you will withstand much that other men cannot. There is a terrible illness... But you will overcome it the first time it appears, and even the second time... There are enemies, enemies by the score... But you will overcome them... You will be consul the year after this one just beginning, which is to say, next year… And after that, you will be consul six more times... Seven times in all will you be consul, and you will be called the Third Founder of Rome, for you will save Rome from the greatest of all her perils!”

He was conscious of his face burning, burning, hot as a spear thrust into the fire. And of a whirling roaring inside his head. Of his heart pounding away like a hortator drumming at ramming speed. Of a thick red veil in front of his eyes. For she spoke the truth. He knew it.

“You have the love and respect of a great woman,” Martha went on, pawing now at the minor folds in his skin, “and her nephew will be the greatest of all the Romans for all time.”

“No, that’s me,” he said at once, his bodily responses calming into normality at this less palatable piece of news.

“No, it’s her nephew,” said Martha stubbornly. “A much greater man than you, Gaius Marius. He has the same first name as you, Gaius. But his family is her family, not yours.”

The fact was filed; he would not forget it. “What of my son?” he asked.

“Your son will be a great man too. But not as great as his father, nor will he live nearly as long in the number of his years. However, he will still be alive when your time comes.”

She pushed his hand away and tucked her dirty bare feet—toes a-tinkle with bells, ankles a-clash with bracelets—under her on the couch where she sat.

“I have seen all there is to see, Gaius Marius,” she said, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

“I thank you, Martha Prophetess,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling out his purse. “How much... ?”

She opened her eyes, wickedly black, evilly alive. “For you there is no fee. It is enough to be in the company of the truly great. Fees are for the likes of Prince Gauda, who will never be a great man, though he will be a king.” Came the cackle again. “But you know that, Gaius Marius, as surely as I do, for all that you have no gift to look into the future. Your gift is to see into the hearts of men, and Prince Gauda has a small heart.”

“Then once again I must thank you.”

“Oh, I do have a favor to ask of you,” she called to his back as he went to the door.

He turned immediately. “Yes?”

“When you are consul for the second time, Gaius Marius, bring me to Rome and treat me with honor. I have a wish to see Rome before I die.”

“You shall see Rome,” he said, and left her.

Consul seven times! The First Man in Rome! The Third Founder of Rome! What greater destiny could there be than that? How could another Roman surpass that? Gaius... She must mean the son of his younger brother-in-law, Gaius Julius Caesar Junior. Yes, his son would be Julia’s nephew—the only one to be named Gaius, certainly.

“Over my dead body,” said Gaius Marius, and climbed on his horse to ride back to Utica.

*

He sought an interview with Metellus the next day, and found the consul poring over a sheaf of documents and letters from Rome, for a ship had come in overnight, long delayed by stormy seas.

“Excellent news, Gaius Marius!” said Metellus, for once affable. “My command in Africa is prorogued, with proconsular imperium, and every likelihood of continued prorogation should I need more time.” That sheet of paper was dropped, another picked up, both for show, since he had obviously read them before Marius arrived; no one just scanned words on paper in silence and with a lightning glance of comprehension, for they had to be disentangled from each other and read aloud to aid the disentanglement process.

“It is just as well my army is intact, because it seems the general shortage of manpower in Italy has become acute, thanks to Silanus in Gaul. Oh, you don’t know about that, do you? Yes, my consular colleague was defeated by the Germans. Shocking loss of life.” He grabbed at another roll, held it up. “Silanus writes that there were upward of half a million German giants on the field.” Down went the scroll, the one he still held was brandished at Marius. “Here is the Senate notifying me that it has nullified the lex Sempronia of Gaius Gracchus limiting the numbers of campaigns a man must complete. High time! We can call up thousands of veterans if ever we need them.” Metellus sounded pleased.

“That is a very bad piece of legislation,” said Marius. “If a veteran wishes to retire, after ten years or six full campaigns, he should be entitled to do so without fear that he will ever again be mustered under the colors. We are eroding the smallholders, Quintus Caecilius! How can a man leave his little farm for what might now be twenty years of service in the legions, and expect to see it prosper in his absence? How can he sire sons to take his place, both on his little farm and in our legions? More and more it has become the duty of his barren wife to oversee their land, and women do not have the strength, the foresight, or the aptitude. We should be looking elsewhere for our soldiers— and we should be protecting them against bad generalship!”

Metellus had pokered up, lips thin. “It is not your place, Gaius Marius, to criticize the wisdom of the most illustrious governing body in our society!” he said. “Just who do you think you are?”

“I believe you once told me who I was, Quintus Caecilius, very many years ago. As I remember, an Italian hayseed with no Greek was how you put it. And that may be true. But it does not disqualify me from commenting upon what I still deem a very bad piece of legislation,” said Marius, keeping his voice even. “We—and by ‘we’ I mean the Senate, of which illustrious body I am no less a member than you!—are allowing a whole class of citizens to die out because we haven’t got the courage or the presence of mind to put a stop to all these so-called generals we’ve been fielding now for years! The blood of Roman soldiers is not for wasting, Quintus Caecilius, it’s for living and healthy use!”

Marius got to his feet, leaning across Metellus’s desk, and continued his diatribe. “When we originally designed our army, it was for campaigns within Italy, so that men could go home again each winter, and manage their farms, and sire their sons, and supervise their women. But when a man enlists or is levied nowadays, he’s shipped overseas, and instead of a campaign lasting a single summer, it runs into years during which he never manages to go home, so that his six campaigns might take him twelve or even fifteen years to complete—in some place other than his homeland! Gaius Gracchus legislated to try to curtail that, and to stop the smallholdings of Italy becoming the prey of big-time speculating graziers!” He drew a sobbing breath, eyed Metellus ironically. “Oh, but I forgot, didn’t I, Quintus Caecilius? You’re one of those big-time speculating graziers yourself, aren’t you? And how you do love to see the smallholdings fall into your grasp because the men who ought to be home running them are dying on some foreign field through sheer aristocratic greed and carelessness!”

“Aha! Now we come to it!” cried Metellus, jumping to his feet and thrusting his face into Marius’s. “There it is! Aristocratic greed and carelessness, eh? It’s the aristocrat sticks in your craw, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you a thing or two, Gaius Marius Upstart! Marrying a Julia of the Julians can’t turn you into an aristocrat!”

“I wouldn’t want it to,” snarled Marius. “I despise the lot of you—save for the single exception of my father-in-law, who by some miracle has managed to remain a decent man in spite of his ancestry!”

Their voices had risen to shouts long since, and in the outer office all ears were turned their way.

“Go to it, Gaius Marius!” said a tribune of the soldiers.

“Hit him where it hurts, Gaius Marius!” said another.

“Piss all over the arrogant fellator, Gaius Marius!” said a third, grinning.

Which made it manifest that everyone liked Gaius Marius a great deal more than they liked Quintus Caecilius Metellus, all the way down to the ranker soldiers.

But the shouting had penetrated even further than the outer office; when the consul’s son, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Junior, burst in, the consul’s staff tried to look all efficiency and busy activity. Without sparing them a glance, Metellus Piglet opened the door to his father’s room.

“Father, your voices can be heard for miles!” said the young man, casting a glare of loathing at Marius.

He was very like his father physically, of average height and size, brown-haired, brown-eyed, modestly good-looking in a Roman way, and having nothing about him to make him stand out in a Roman crowd.

The interruption sobered Metellus, though it did little to diminish Marius’s rage. Neither of the antagonists made any move to sit down again. Young Metellus Piglet stood to one side, alarmed and upset, passionately devoted to his father but out of his depth, especially when he bethought himself of the indignities he had heaped upon the head of Gaius Marius ever since his father had appointed him commander of the Utica garrison. For he now saw for the first time a different Gaius Marius: physically enormous, of a bravery and courage and intelligence beyond the capacity of any Caecilius Metellus.

“I see no point in continuing this conversation, Gaius Marius,” said Metellus, hiding the trembling of his hands by pressing them, palms down, on the desk. “What did you come to see me about, anyway?”

“I came to tell you that I intend to leave service in this war at the end of next summer,” Marius said. “I’m going back to Rome to seek election as consul.”

Metellus looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “You are what?”

“I’m going to Rome to contest the consular elections.”

“No, you are not,” said Metellus. “You signed on as my senior legate—and with a propraetor’s imperium at that!—for the duration of my term as governor of Africa Province. My term has just been extended. Which means so has yours.”

“You can release me.”

“If I wish to release you. But I do not wish to,” said Metellus. “In fact, if I had my way, Gaius Marius, I’d bury you here in the provinces for the rest of your life!”

“Don’t make me do anything nasty, Quintus Caecilius,” Marius said, in quite a friendly voice.

“Make you do anything what? Oh, get out of here, Marius! Go and do something useful—stop wasting my time!” Metellus caught his son’s eye and grinned at him like a conspirator.

“I insist that I be released from service in this war so that I may stand for consul in Rome this coming autumn.”

Emboldened by his father’s growing air of lordly and indifferent superiority, Metellus Piglet began to break into muffled giggles, which fueled his father’s wit.

“I tell you what, Gaius Marius,” he said, smiling, “you are now almost fifty years of age. My son is twenty. Might I suggest that you stand for election as consul in the same year he does? By then you might just have managed to learn enough to pass muster in the consul’s chair! Though I’m sure my son would be delighted to give you a few pointers.’’

Young Metellus burst into audible laughter.

Marius looked at them from under his bristling eyebrows, his eagle’s face prouder and haughtier by far than theirs. “I will be consul,” he said. “Rest assured, Quintus Caecilius, that I will be consul—not once, but seven times.”

And he left the room, leaving the two Metelluses gazing after him in mingled puzzlement and fear. Wondering why they could find nothing amusing in that preposterous statement.

The next day Marius rode back to Old Carthage and sought an audience with Prince Gauda.

Admitted into the princely presence, he went down on one knee and pressed his lips to Gauda’s clammy limp hand.

“Rise, Gaius Marius!’’ cried Gauda delightedly, charmed by the sight of this magnificent-looking man doing him homage in such a genuinely respectful, admiring way.

Marius began to rise, then sank down on both knees, his hands outstretched. “Your royal Highness,” he said, “I am not worthy to stand in your presence, for I come before you as the most humble of petitioners.”

“Rise, rise!” squealed Gauda, more delighted still. “I will not hear of your asking me for anything on your knees! Here, sit by me and tell me what it is you want.”

The chair Gauda indicated was indeed by him—but one step lower than the princely throne. Bowing deeply all the way to the chair, Marius seated himself on its very edge, as if awed into discomfort by the radiance of the only being comfortably seated, namely Gauda himself.

“When you enrolled yourself as my client, Prince Gauda, I accepted the amazing honor you did me because I felt that I would be able to advance your cause in Rome. For I had intended to seek election as consul in the autumn.” Marius paused, sighed profoundly. “But, alas, it is not to be! Quintus Caecilius Metellus remains in Africa Province, his term as governor prorogued—which means that I, as his legate, may not leave his service without his permission. When I told him I wished to seek election as consul, he refused to allow me to leave Africa one day ahead of himself.’’

The noble scion of the Numidian royal house went rigid with the easy rage of a pampered invalid; well did he remember Metellus refusing to rise to greet him, refusing to bow low to him, refusing to permit him a throne in the governor’s presence, refusing him a Roman escort. “But this is beyond all reason, Gaius Marius!” he exclaimed. “How may we force him to change his mind?”

“Sire, your intelligence—your grasp of the situation—I am awed!” cried Marius. “That is exactly what we have to do, force him to change his mind.” He paused. “I know what you are going to suggest, but perhaps it might be better coming from my lips than yours, for it is a sordid business. So do, I beg you, allow me to say it!”

“Say it,” said Gauda loftily.

“Your royal Highness, Rome and the Senate, even the People through their two Assemblies, must be swamped with letters! Letters from you—and from every single burgher, pastoralist, grain grower, merchant, and broker in the entire Roman African province—letters informing Rome how inefficient, how grossly incompetent Quintus Caecilius Metellus’s conduct of this war against the Numidian enemy has been, letters explaining that the few successes we have enjoyed have all been my doing, not Quintus Caecilius Metellus’s. Thousands of letters, my prince! And not just written once, but written over and over again, until Quintus Caecilius Metellus relents, and grants me leave to go to Rome to seek election as consul.”

Gauda whinnied blissfully. “Isn’t it simply astonishing, Gaius Marius, how much in concert our two minds are? Letters are exactly what I was going to suggest!”

“Well, as I said, I knew that,” said Marius deprecatingly. “But is it possible, sire?”

“Possible? Of course it’s possible!” said Gauda. “All it takes is time and influence and money—and I think, Gaius Marius, that between the two of us we can get together a great deal more time and influence and money than Quintus Caecilius Metellus, don’t you?”

“I’m certainly hoping so,” said Marius.

Of course Marius didn’t leave it there. He went in person to every Roman, Latin, and Italian man of note from one end of Africa Province to the other, pleading his duties on Metellus’s behalf as his reason for needing to travel so far afield, so constantly. With him he carried a secret mandate from Prince Gauda, promising all sorts of concessions in Numidia once he was its king. And asking everyone to enroll as a client of Gaius Marius’s. Rain and mud and rivers overflowing their banks couldn’t stop Gaius Marius; he went on his way enlisting clients and gathering promises of letters, letters, and more letters. Thousands upon thousands of letters. Letters enough to sink Quintus Caecilius Metellus’s ship of state to the bottom of the sea of political extinction.

*

By February the letters from the Roman African province to every important man or body of men in Rome began to arrive, and continued to arrive by every ship thereafter. Said one of the early ones, from Marcus Caelius Rufus, Roman citizen owner of hundreds of iugera of land in the Bagradas River valley, producer of 240-fold wheat crops for the Roman market:

Quintus Caecilius Metellus has done very little in Africa save look after his own interests. It is my considered opinion that his intention is to prolong this war to increase his own personal glory and further his craving for power. Last autumn he gave out that it was his policy to weaken King Jugurtha’s position by burning Numidian crops and raiding Numidian towns, especially those containing treasure. As a result, my lands and the lands of many other Roman citizens in this province have been placed in jeopardy, for Numidian raiding parties are now retaliating inside the Roman province. The entire Bagradas Valley, so vital to Rome’s grain supply, lives in fear and trembling from one day to the next.

Furthermore, it has come to my ears, as it has to many others, that Quintus Caecilius Metellus cannot even manage his legates, let alone his army. He has deliberately wasted the potential of men as senior and capable as Gaius Marius and Publius Rutilius Rufus, putting the one to commanding his unimportant cavalry unit, and the other to work as his praefectus fabrum. His behavior toward Prince Gauda, regarded by the Senate and People of Rome as the rightful ruler of Numidia, has been insufferably arrogant, thoughtless, and sometimes cruel.

In conclusion, may I say that what little success last year’s campaigns produced is purely due to the efforts of Gaius Marius and Publius Rutilius Rufus. I am aware that they have been accorded no credit or thanks for their endeavors. May I recommend Gaius Marius and Publius Rutilius Rufus to your notice, and condemn most strongly the conduct of Quintus Caecilius Metellus?

This missive was addressed to one of the largest and most important grain merchants in Rome, a man whose influence among senators and knights was legion. Naturally, once he was apprised of Metellus’s shameful conduct of the war, his indignation waxed loud; his voice dinned in all sorts of interesting ears, with immediate effect. And as the days went by and the spate of letters kept coming, his voice was joined by many other voices. Senators began to flinch when they saw a merchant banker or maritime plutocrat coming their way, and the complacent satisfaction of the enormously powerful Caecilius Metellus clan was rapidly tumbling into dismay.

Off went letters from the Caecilius Metellus clan to its esteemed member Quintus Caecilius, proconsul of Africa Province, begging that he tone down his arrogance toward Prince Gauda, treat his senior legates with more consideration than he did his son, and try to drum up a couple of really impressive victories in the field against Jugurtha.

Then there broke the scandal of Vaga, which, having surrendered to Metellus in the late autumn, now rebelled and executed most of its Italian businessmen; the revolt had been fomented by Jugurtha—with the connivance of none other than Metellus’s personal friend, the garrison commander Turpilius. Metellus made the mistake of defending Turpilius when Marius demanded loudly that he be court-martialed for treason, and by the time the story reached Rome via hundreds of letters, it appeared that Metellus himself was as guilty of treason as was Turpilius. Off went more letters from the Caecilius Metellus clan to their esteemed Quintus Caecilius in Utica, begging that he choose his friends better, if he was going to insist upon defending them on treason charges.

Many weeks passed before Metellus could be brought to believe that Gaius Marius was the author of the Roman letter campaign; and even when he was forced to believe it, he was slow to understand the significance of this epistolary war—and even slower to counter it. He, a Caecilius Metellus, brought into disrepute in Rome on the word of a Gaius Marius and a sniveling pretender and a few vulgar colonial merchants? Impossible! Rome didn’t work that way. Rome belonged to him, not to Gaius Marius.

Once every eight days, regular as the calendar, Marius presented himself to Metellus and demanded to be released from service at the end of Sextilis; just as regularly, Metellus turned him down.

In all fairness to Metellus, he had other things on his mind than Marius and a few paltry letters turning up in Rome; most of his energies were taken up with Bomilcar. It had taken Nabdalsa many days to arrange an interview between himself and Bomilcar, then many more days to set up a secret meeting between Bomilcar and Metellus. But late in March the latter finally happened, in a small annex attached to the governor’s residence in Utica, to which Bomilcar was smuggled.

They knew each other fairly well, of course, for it was Metellus who had kept Jugurtha informed through Bomilcar during those last despairing days in Rome, Bomilcar rather than his king who had availed himself of Metellus’s hospitality, contained as it had been within the city’s pomerium.

However, there were few social niceties about this new meeting; Bomilcar was edgy, afraid his presence inside Utica would be detected, and Metellus was uncertain of himself in this new role of spymaster.

So Metellus didn’t mince matters. “I want to conclude this war with as few losses in men and materiel as possible, and in as short a time as possible,” he said. “Rome needs me elsewhere than an outpost like Africa.”

“Yes, I heard about the Germans,” said Bomilcar smoothly.

“Then you understand the haste,” said Metellus.

“Indeed I do. However, I fail to see what I personally can do to shorten the hostilities here.”

“I have been led to believe—and after considerable thought, I find myself convinced—that the quickest and best way to decide the fate of Numidia in a way favorable to Rome is to eliminate King Jugurtha,” the proconsul said.

Bomilcar considered the proconsul thoughtfully. No Gaius Marius, he knew well; not even a Rutilius Rufus. Prouder, haughtier, far more conscious of his station, yet not as competent or detached. As always to a Roman, Rome mattered. But the concept of Rome cherished by a Caecilius Metellus was very different from the concept of Rome cherished by Gaius Marius. What puzzled Bomilcar was the difference between the old Metellus of days in Rome and the Metellus who governed Africa Province; for though he knew about the letters, he had no appreciation of their importance.

“It’s true that Jugurtha is the wellhead for Numidian resistance to Rome,” Bomilcar said. “However, you may not be aware of the unpopularity of Gauda within Numidia. Numidia will never consent to be ruled by Gauda, legitimate or not.”

At the mention of Gauda’s name, an expression of distaste appeared on Metellus’s face. “Faugh!” he exclaimed, waving one hand. “A nothing! An apology for a man, let alone a ruler.” His light brown eyes dwelled shrewdly upon Bomilcar’s heavy face. “If anything should happen to King Jugurtha, I—and Rome, of course—was thinking more along the lines of putting a man on the Numidian throne whose good sense and experience have taught him to believe that Numidia’s interests are best served in a dutiful client kingship to Rome.”

“I agree; I think Numidia’s interests are best served in that way.” Bomilcar paused, wet his lips. “Would you consider me a possible King of Numidia, Quintus Caecilius?”

“Most definitely!” said Metellus.

“Good! In that case I shall happily work toward the elimination of Jugurtha.”

“Soon, I hope,” said Metellus, smiling.

“As soon as may be. There is no point in an assassination attempt. Jugurtha is too careful. Besides, he has the total loyalty of his royal guard. Nor do I think a coup would succeed. Most of the nobility are well satisfied with the way Jugurtha has ruled Numidia—and with his conduct of this war. If Gauda were a more attractive alternative, things might be different. I”—Bomilcar grimaced—”do not have the blood of Masinissa in my veins, which means I will need all of Rome’s support to ascend the throne successfully.”

“Then what is to be done?” demanded Metellus.

“I think the only way to do it is to maneuver Jugurtha into a situation where he can be captured by a Roman force—I don’t mean in a battle, I mean in an ambush. Then, you can kill him on the spot, or take him into custody and do what you like with him later,” said Bomilcar.

“All right, Baron Bomilcar. I take it you’ll get word to me in plenty of time to set up this ambush?”

“Of course. Border raids are the ideal opportunity, and Jugurtha plans to lead many of them as soon as the ground is dry enough. Though be warned, Quintus Caecilius. You may fail several times before you succeed in capturing someone as wily as Jugurtha. After all, I cannot afford to jeopardize my own survival—I am no use to Rome or myself if I’m dead. Rest assured, eventually I’ll manage to lead him into a good trap. Not even Jugurtha can lead a charmed life forever.”

All in all, Jugurtha was well satisfied with the way things were going. Though he had suffered considerably from Marius’s raids into the more settled parts of his realm, he knew—none better—that the sheer size of Numidia was his greatest advantage and protection. And the settled parts of Numidia, unlike other nations, mattered less to the King than the wilderness. Most of Numidia’s soldiers, including the light-armed cavalry so famous throughout the world, were recruited among the peoples who lived a seminomadic existence far within the interior of the country, even on the far side of the mighty mountains in which the patient Atlas held up the sky on his shoulders; these peoples were known as Gaetuli and Garamantes; Jugurtha’s mother belonged to a tribe of the Gaetuli.

After the surrender of Vaga, the King made sure he kept no money or treasure in any town likely to be along the line of a Roman route march; everything was transferred to places like Zama and Capsa, remote, difficult to infiltrate, built as citadels atop unscalable peaks—and surrounded by the fanatically loyal Gaetuli. And Vaga turned out to be no Roman victory; once again Jugurtha had bought himself a Roman, the garrison commander, Turpilius. Metellus’s friend. Ha!

However, something was changed. As the winter rains began to dwindle, Jugurtha became more and more convinced of this. The trouble was, he couldn’t put his finger on what was changed. His court was a mobile affair; he moved constantly from one citadel to another, and distributed his wives and concubines among all of them, so that wherever he went, he could be sure of loving faces, loving arms. And yet—something was wrong. Not with his dispositions, nor with his armies, nor with his supply lines, nor with the loyalty of his many towns and districts and tribesmen. What he sensed was little more than a whiff, a twitch, a tingling sensation of danger from some source close to him. Though never once did he associate his premonition with his refusal to appoint Bomilcar regent.

“It’s in the court,” he said to Bomilcar as they rode from Capsa to Cirta at the end of March, walking their horses at the head of a huge train of cavalry and infantry.

Bomilcar turned his head and looked straight into his half brother’s pale eyes. “The court?”

“There’s mischief afoot, brother. Sown and cultivated by that slimy little turd Gauda, I’d be willing to bet,” said Jugurtha.

“Do you mean a palace revolution?”

“I’m not sure what I mean. It’s just that something is wrong. I can feel it in my bones.”

“An assassin?”

“Perhaps. I really don’t honestly know, Bomilcar! My eyes are going in a dozen different directions at once, and my ears feel as if they’re rotating, they’re so busy—yet only my nose has discovered anything wrong. What about you? Do you feel nothing?” he asked, supremely sure of Bomilcar’s affection, trust, loyalty.

“I have to say I feel nothing,” said Bomilcar.

Three times did Bomilcar maneuver the unwitting Jugurtha into a trap, and three times did Jugurtha manage to extricate himself unharmed. Without suspecting his half brother.

“They’re getting too clever,” said Jugurtha after the failure of the third Roman ambush. “This is Gaius Marius or Publius Rutilius at work, not Metellus.” He grunted. “I have a spy in my camp, Bomilcar.”

Bomilcar managed to look serene. “I admit the possibility. But who would dare?”

“I don’t know,” said Jugurtha, his face ugly. “But rest assured, sooner or later I will know.”

At the end of April, Metellus invaded Numidia, persuaded by Rutilius Rufus to content himself at first with a slighter target than the capital, Cirta; the Roman forces marched on Thala instead. A message came from Bomilcar, who had lured Jugurtha in person to Thala, and Metellus made a fourth attempt to capture the King. But as it wasn’t in Metellus to go about the storming of Thala with the speed and decision the job needed, Jugurtha escaped, and the assault became a siege. A month later Thala fell, and much to Metellus’s gratified surprise, yielded a large hoard of treasure Jugurtha had brought to Thala with him, and had been obliged to leave behind when he fled.

As May slid into June, Metellus marched to Cirta, where he received another pleasant surprise. For the Numidian capital surrendered without a fight, its very large complement of Italian and Roman businessmen a significantly pro-Roman force in town politics. Besides which, Cirta did not like Jugurtha any more than he liked Cirta.

The weather was hot and very dry, normal for that time of the year; Jugurtha moved out of reach of the slipshod Roman intelligence network by going south to the tents of the Gaetuli, and then to Capsa, homeland of his mother’s tribe. A small but heavily fortified mountain citadel in the midst of the Gaetulian remoteness, Capsa contained a large part of Jugurtha’s heart, for it was here his mother had actually lived since the death of her husband, Bomilcar’s father. And it was here that Jugurtha had stored the bulk of his treasure.

It was here in June that Jugurtha’s men brought Nabdalsa, caught coming away from Roman-occupied Cirta after Jugurtha’s spies in the Roman command finally obtained enough evidence of Nabdalsa’s treachery to warrant informing the King. Though always known as Gauda’s man, Nabdalsa had not been prevented from moving freely within Numidia; a remote cousin with Masinissa’s blood in him, he was tolerated and considered harmless.

“But I now have proof,” said Jugurtha, “that you have been actively collaborating with the Romans. If the news disappoints me, it’s chiefly because you’ve been fool enough to deal with Metellus rather than Gaius Marius.” He studied Nabdalsa, clapped in irons upon capture, and visibly wearing the signs of harsh treatment at the hands of Jugurtha’s men. “Of course you’re not in this alone,” he said thoughtfully. “Who among my barons has conspired with you?”

Nabdalsa refused to answer.

“Put him to the torture,” said Jugurtha indifferently.

Torture in Numidia was not sophisticated, though like all Eastern-style despots, Jugurtha did avail himself of dungeons and long-term imprisonment. Into one of Jugurtha’s dungeons, buried in the base of the rocky hill on which Capsa perched, and entered only through a warren of tunnels from the palace within the citadel’s walls, was Nabdalsa thrown, and there the subhumanly brutish soldiers who always seemed to inherit such positions applied the torture.

Not very long afterward, it became obvious why Nabdalsa had chosen to serve the inferior man, Gauda; he talked. All it had taken was the removal of his teeth and the fingernails of one hand. Summoned to hear his confession, the unsuspecting Jugurtha brought Bomilcar with him.

Knowing that he would never leave the subterranean world he was about to enter, Bomilcar gazed into the illimitable heights of the rich blue sky, sniffed the sweet desert air, brushed the back of his hand against the silky leaves of a flowering bush. And strove to carry the memories with him into the darkness.

The poorly ventilated chamber stank; excrement, vomitus, sweat, blood, stagnant water, and dead tissue clubbed together to form a miasma out of Tartarus, an atmosphereno man could breathe without experiencing fear. Even Jugurtha entered the place with a shiver.

The inquisition proceeded under terrible difficulties, for Nabdalsa’s gums continued to bleed profusely, and a broken nose prevented attempts to stanch the haemorrhage by packing the mouth. Stupidity, thought Jugurtha, torn by a mixture of horror at the sight of Nabdalsa and anger at the thoughtlessness of his brutes, beginning in the one place they ought to have kept free and clear of their attentions.

Not that it mattered a great deal. Nabdalsa uttered the one vital word on Jugurtha’s third question, and it was not too difficult to understand as it was mumbled out through the blood.

“Bomilcar.”

“Leave us,” said the King to his brutes, but was prudent enough still to order them to remove Bomilcar’s dagger.

Alone with the King and the half-conscious Nabdalsa, Bomilcar sighed. “The only thing I regret,” he said, “is that this will kill our mother.”

It was the cleverest thing he could have said under the circumstances, for it earned him a single blow from the executioner’s axe instead of the slow, lingering dying his half brother the King yearned to inflict upon him.

“Why?” asked Jugurtha.

Bomilcar shrugged. “When I grew old enough to start weighing up the years, brother, I discovered how much you had cheated me. You have held me in the same contempt you might have held a pet monkey.”

“What did you want?” Jugurtha asked.

“To hear you call me brother in front of the whole world.”

Jugurtha stared at him in genuine wonder. “And raise you above your station? My dear Bomilcar, it is the sire who matters, not the dam! Our mother is a Berber woman of the Gaetuli, and not even the daughter of a chief. She has no royal distinction to convey. If I were to call you brother in front of the whole world, all who heard me do so would assume that I was adopting you into Masinissa’s line. And that—since I have two sons of my own who are legal heirs—would be imprudent, to say the very least.”

“You should have appointed me their guardian and regent,” said Bomilcar.

“And raise you again above your station? My dear Bomilcar, our mother’s blood negates it! Your father was a minor baron, a relative nobody. Where my father was Masinissa’s legitimate son. It is from my father I inherit my royalty.”

“But you’re not legitimate, are you?”

“I am not. Nevertheless, the blood is there. And blood tells.”

Bomilcar turned away. “Get it over and done with,” he said. “I failed—not you, but myself. Reason enough to die. Yet—beware, Jugurtha.”

“Beware? Of what? Assassination attempts? Further treachery, other traitors?”

“Of the Romans. They’re like the sun and the wind and the rain. In the end they wear everything down to sand.”

Jugurtha bellowed for the brutes, who came tumbling in ready for anything, only to find nothing untoward, and stood waiting for orders.

“Kill them both,” said Jugurtha, moving toward the door. “But make it quick. And send me both their heads.”

The heads of Bomilcar and Nabdalsa were nailed to the battlements of Capsa for all to see. For a head was more than a mere talisman of kingly vengeance upon a traitor; it was fixed in some public place to show the people that the right man had died, and to prevent the appearance of an imposter.

Jugurtha told himself he felt no grief, just felt more alone than ever before. It had been a necessary lesson: that a king could trust no man, even his brother.

However, the death of Bomilcar had two immediate results. One was that Jugurtha became completely elusive, never staying more than two days in any one place, never informing his guard where he was going next, never allowing his army to know what his plans for it were; authority was vested in the person of the King, no one else. The other result concerned his father-in-law, King Bocchus of Mauretania, who had not actively aided Rome against his daughter’s husband, but had not actively aided Jugurtha against Rome either; the feelers went out from Jugurtha to Bocchus at once, and Jugurtha put increased pressure upon Bocchus to ally himself with Numidia, eject Rome from all of Africa.

*

By the end of summer, Quintus Caecilius Metellus’s position in Rome had been totally undermined. No one there could find a kindly word to say about him or his conduct of the war. And still the letters kept coming, steady, relentless, influential in the extreme.

After the capture of Thala and the surrender of Cirta, the Caecilius Metellus faction had managed to gain some ground among the knights’ lobbies, but then came further news from Africa that made it clear neither Thala nor Cirta would ensure an end to the war; and after that came reports of endless, pointless skirmishes, of advances further into the Numidian west achieving nothing, of funds misused and six legions kept in the field at huge cost to the Treasury and with no end to the expense in sight. Thanks to Metellus, the war against Jugurtha would certainly drag on for at least another year.

The consular elections were scheduled for mid-October, and Marius’s name—now on everyone’s lips—was constantly bruited about as a candidate. Yet time went on, and still he didn’t appear in Rome. Metellus remained obdurate.

“I insist upon going,” said Marius to Metellus for what must have been the fiftieth time.

“Insist all you like,” said Metellus. “You’re not going.”

“Next year I will be consul,” said Marius.

“An upstart like you consul? Impossible!”

“You’re afraid the voters would elect me, aren’t you?” asked Marius smugly. “You won’t let me go because you know I will be elected.”

“I cannot believe any true Roman would vote for you, Gaius Marius. However, you’re an extremely rich man, and that means you can buy votes. Should you ever at any time in the future be elected consul—and it won’t be next year!— you may rest assured that I will gladly expend every ounce of energy I possess in proving in a court of law that you bought office!”

“I don’t need to buy office, Quintus Caecilius, I never have bought office. Therefore feel free to try,” said Marius, still annoyingly smug.

Metellus tried a different tack. “I am not letting you go—reconcile yourself to that. As a Roman of the Romans, I would betray my class if I did let you go. The consulship, Gaius Marius, is an office far above anyone of your Italian origins. The men who sit in the consul’s ivory chair must fit it by birth, by the achievements of their ancestors as much as by their own. I would rather be disgraced and dead than see an Italian from the Samnite borderlands—a semi-literate boor who ought never even have been praetor!—sit in the consul’s ivory chair! Do your worst—or do your best! It makes not one iota of difference to me. I would rather be disgraced and dead than give you permission to go to Rome.”

“If necessary, Quintus Caecilius, you will be both,” said Marius, and left the room.

Publius Rutilius Rufus attempted to bring both men to reason, his motives concern for Rome as well as for Marius.

“Leave politics out of it,” he said to them. “The three of us are here in Africa to beat Jugurtha, but neither of you is interested in devoting your energies to that end. You’re more concerned with getting the better of each other than you are of Jugurtha, and I, for one, am fed up with the situation!”

“Are you accusing me of dereliction of duty, Publius Rutilius?” asked Marius, dangerously calm.

“No, of course I’m not! I’m accusing you of withholding that streak of genius I know you to possess in warfare. I am your equal tactically. I am your equal logistically. But when it comes to strategy, Gaius Marius—the long-term look at war—you have no equal at all anywhere. Yet have you devoted any time or thought to a strategy aimed at winning this war? No!”

“And where do I fit into this paean of praise for Gaius Marius?” asked Metellus, tight-lipped. “For that matter, where do I fit into this paean of praise for Publius Rutilius Rufus? Or am I not important?”

“You are important, you unmitigated snob, because you are the titular commander in this war!” snapped Rutilius Rufus. “And if you think you’re better at tactics and logistics than I, or better at tactics and logistics and strategy than Gaius Marius, do not feel backward at coming forward about it, I beg you! Not that you would. But if it’s praise you want, I am prepared to give you this much—you’re not as venal as Spurius Postumius Albinus, nor as ineffectual as Marcus Junius Silanus. Your main trouble is that you’re just not as good as you think you are. When you displayed sufficient intelligence to enlist me and Gaius Marius as your senior legates, I thought the years must have improved you. But I was wrong. You’ve wasted our talents as well as the State’s money. We’re not winning this war, we’re engaged in an extremely expensive impasse. So take my advice, Quintus Caecilius! Let Gaius Marius go to Rome, let Gaius Marius stand for consul—and let me organize our resources and devise our military maneuvers. As for you—devote your energies to undermining Jugurtha’s hold over his people. You are welcome to every scrap of public glory as far as I’m concerned, provided that within these four walls you’re willing to admit the truth of what I’m saying.”

“I admit nothing,” said Metellus.

And so it went on, all through late summer and well into autumn. Jugurtha was impossible to pin down, indeed seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. When it became obvious even to the least ranker legionary that there was not going to be a confrontation between the Roman army and the Numidian army, Metellus withdrew from far western Numidia and went into camp outside Cirta.

Word had come that Bocchus of Mauretania had finally yielded to Jugurtha’s pressure tactics, formed up his army, and marched to join his son-in-law somewhere to the south; united, rumor had it, they planned to move on Cirta. Hoping to join battle at last, Metellus made his dispositions and listened with more interest than usual to Marius and Rutilius Rufus. But it was not to be. The two armies lay some miles apart, with Jugurtha refusing to be drawn. Impasse descended again, the Roman position too strongly defended for Jugurtha to attack, and the Numidian position too ephemeral to tempt Metellus out of his camp.

*

And then, twelve days before the consular elections in Rome, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle formally released Gaius Marius from his service as senior legate in the campaign against Jugurtha.

“Off you go!” said Metellus, smiling sweetly. “Rest assured, Gaius Marius, that I will make all of Rome aware that I did release you before the elections.”

“You think I won’t get there in time,” said Marius.

“I think—nothing, Gaius Marius.”

Marius grinned. “That’s true enough, at any rate,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “Now where’s the piece of paper that says I’m formally released? Give it to me.”

Metellus handed over Marius’s marching orders, his smile somewhat fixed, and as Marius reached the door he said, not raising his voice, “By the way, Gaius Marius, I have just had some wonderful news from Rome. The Senate has extended my governorship of Africa Province and my command in the Numidian war into next year.”

“That’s nice of the Senate,” said Marius, and vanished.

“I piss on him!” Marius said to Rutilius Rufus moments later. “He thinks he’s cooked my goose and saved his own. But he’s wrong. I’m going to beat him, Publius Rutilius, you wait and see! I’m going to be in Rome in time to stand for consul, and then I’m going to have his prorogued command torn off him. And have it given to myself.”

Rutilius Rufus eyed him thoughtfully. “I have a great deal of respect for your ability, Gaius Marius,” he said, “but in this case, time is going to prove Piggle-wiggle the winner. You’ll never make it to Rome for those elections.”

“I will,” said Marius, sounding supremely confident.

He rode from Cirta to Utica in two days, pausing to snatch a few hours’ sleep en route, and ruthlessly commandeering a fresh horse at every opportunity. Before nightfall of the second day he had hired a small, fast ship he found in Utica harbor. And at dawn of the third day he set sail for Italy, having offered a costly sacrifice to the Lares Permarini on the seashore just as light began to filter into the eastern rim of the world.

“You sail to an unimaginably great destiny, Gaius Marius,” said the priest who made the offering to the gods who protect all those who voyage on the sea. “I have never seen better omens than today.”

His words were no surprise to Marius. Ever since Martha the Syrian prophetess had told him what his future held, he had remained unshaken in his conviction that things would turn out just as she predicted. So as the ship crept from Utica harbor, he leaned tranquilly on the rail and waited for a wind. It came out of the southwest at a steadily brisk twenty sea miles, and it blew the ship from Utica to Ostia in just three days, a perfect following wind in a perfect following sea, no need to hug the coast, no need to put in anywhere for shelter or provisions. All the gods were on his side, as Martha had foretold.

News of the miraculous voyage beat him into Rome, even though he delayed in Ostia only long enough to pay for his ship and reward its captain generously; so when he rode into the Forum Romanum and dismounted before the consul Aurelius’s electoral table, a crowd had gathered. A crowd which cheered and applauded him wildly, and gave him to understand that he was the hero of the hour. Surrounded by people clapping him on the back, beaming at his magical appearance, Marius stepped up to the consul suffectus who had taken the place of Servius Sulpicius Galba, condemned by the Mamilian Commission, and laid Metellus’s letter down on the table.

“If you will excuse the fact that I have not waited to change into the whitened toga, Marcus Aurelius,” he said, “I am here to lodge my name as a candidate in the consular contest.”

“Provided you can prove that Quintus Caecilius has freed you from your obligation to him, Gaius Marius, I will accept your name gladly,” said the suffect consul, stirred by the crowd’s welcome and aware that the most influential knights in the city were hurrying from every basilica and porticus around as the news of Marius’s unexpected arrival spread.

How Marius had grown! How wonderfully substantial he looked as he stood half a head taller than those around him, smiling his fierce smile! How wide his shoulders, to take the burden of the consulship upon them! For the first time in his long career the Italian hayseed with no Greek experienced genuine political adulation; not the wholesome faithful esteem of soldiers, but the fickle self-serving adoration of the Forum masses. And Gaius Marius loved it, not because his image of himself needed it, but because it was so alien, so tainted, so inexplicable.

He plunged into the five most hectic days of his life, with neither the time nor the energy to give Julia more than a quick hug, and never home at an hour when his son might have been shown to him. For that hysterical welcome when he declared his candidacy was not an indication that he could win; the enormously influential Caecilius Metellus faction joined hands with every other aristocratic faction, patrician and plebeian, in a last-ditch effort to keep the Italian hayseed with no Greek out of the consul’s ivory curule chair. His strength lay among the knights, thanks to his Spanish connections and to Prince Gauda’s promises of coming concessions in a Gaudane Numidia, but there were many knights whose ties were to the various factions allied against him.

And people talked, people argued, people questioned, people debated: would it truly be a good thing for Rome to elect the New Man Gaius Marius consul? New Men were a risk. New Men didn’t know the noble life. New Men made mistakes noblemen did not. New Men were New Men were New Men... Yes, his wife was a Julia of the Julians. Yes, his military record was an adornment to Rome. Yes, he was so rich he could confidently be expected to keep himself above corruption. But who had ever seen him in the law courts? Who had ever heard him speak about laws and lawmaking? Wasn’t it true that he had been a disruptive element in the College of Tribunes of the Plebs all those years ago, with his defiance of those who knew Rome and Rome’s needs better than he, and that obnoxious law which had narrowed the voting bridges in the saepta? And look at his age! He would be a full fifty years old if he became consul, and old men made poor consuls.

And over and above all these speculations and objections, the Caecilius Metellus faction made meaty capital out of the most repellent aspect of Gaius Marius as consul. He was not a Roman of the Romans. He was an Italian. Was Rome so devoid of suitable Roman noblemen that the consulship should go to an Italian New Man? Surely among the candidates were half a dozen men more worthy than Gaius Marius! Romans all. Good men all.

Of course Marius spoke, to small groups and to large ones, in the Forum Romanum, in the Circus Flaminius, from the podiums of various temples, in the Porticus Metelli, in all the basilicae. And he was a good speaker, well trained in rhetoric, though he had not used his skills until after he entered the Senate. Scipio Aemilianus had seen to his oratical polish. He held his audiences; no one walked away or dismissed him as a poor sort of speaker, though he couldn’t rival Lucius Cassius or Catulus Caesar. Many were the questions thrown at him, some from those who simply wanted to know, some from those he himself had put up to ask, some from those his enemies had put up to ask, and some from those who were interested to hear the differences between his answers and Metellus’s reports to the Senate.

The election itself was a quiet and orderly one, held in the voting grounds out on the Campus Martius, at the place called the saepta. Elections in the thirty-five tribes could be called in the well of the Comitia in the Forum Romanum, for it was easy to organize tribal voters in a relatively confined space; but the elections of the Centuriate Assembly were massively unwieldy in size, requiring as they did the deployment of the Centuries in the Five Classes.

As the vote of each century was called, starting with the First Century of the First Class, the pattern began to emerge: Lucius Cassius Longinus was going to be the choice of every century, but their choices of the second consul were rich and varied. Sure enough, the First and Second Classes voted so solidly for Lucius Cassius Longinus that he was returned in first place without missing a century, and so was designated the senior consul, who held the fasces for the month of January. But the name of the junior consul wasn’t known until almost the end of the Third Class, so close was the contest between Gaius Marius and Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar.

And then it happened. The successful candidate for junior consul was Gaius Marius. The Caecilius Metelluses were still able to influence Centuriate voting—but not enough to keep Gaius Marius out. And that could be classified as a great triumph for Gaius Marius, the Italian hayseed with no Greek. He was a genuine New Man, the first of his family to hold a seat in the Senate, the first of his family to make his home inside the city of Rome, the first of his family to make a huge fortune, the first of his family to make a mark in the army.

*

Late in the afternoon of election day, Gaius Julius Caesar held a celebratory dinner, a family affair. His contact with Marius had been confined to a quick handshake in the Forum and another quick handshake on the Campus Martius when the centuries had assembled, so desperate had Marius’s five-day election campaign been.

“You’ve had unbelievable luck,” said Caesar, leading his guest of honor to the dining room while his daughter Julia went off to find her mother and younger sister.

“I know it,” said Marius.

“We’re very thin as to men today,” Caesar went on, “with both my sons still in Africa, but I can offer you one more man as moral support, so we do equal the women.”

“I have letters from Sextus and Gaius Julius, and plenty of news about their exploits,” Marius said as they arranged themselves comfortably on the couch.

“Later will do.”

The promised third man entered the dining room, and Marius started in surprise; for he recognized the young yet mature man who had been standing among the knights almost three years before while the sacrificial bull of the new consul Minucius Rufus had so fought its dying. How could one forget that face, that hair?

“Gaius Marius,” said Caesar with a little constraint, “I would like you to meet Lucius Cornelius Sulla, not only my next-door neighbor, but also my fellow senator, and soon to be my other son-in-law.”

“Well!” exclaimed Marius, extending his hand and shaking Sulla’s with great warmth. “You’re a lucky man, Lucius Cornelius.”

“I’m well aware of it,” said Sulla with feeling.

Caesar had chosen to be a trifle unorthodox in his dining arrangements, keeping the top couch for himself and Marius, and relegating Sulla to the second couch; not an insult, as he was careful to explain, but to make the group look a little larger, and give everyone plenty of room.

How interesting, thought Marius with a mental frown; I have never before seen Gaius Julius Caesar feeling at a disadvantage. But this oddly beautiful fellow upsets him in some way, throws him off balance....

And then the women came in, seated themselves on straight chairs opposite their partners, and the dinner got under way.

Try as he would not to present the picture of a doting elderly husband, Marius found his eyes constantly drawn to his Julia, who had grown in his absence into a ravishing young matron, gracious, unafraid of her new responsibilities, an excellent mother and chatelaine—and the most ideal of wives. Whereas, decided Marius, Julilla had not grown up satisfactorily at all. Of course he had not seen her in the worst throes of her wasting illness—which had ceased to plague her some time before, yet had left her with what he could only call a thin attitude to life—thin of body, thin of intellect, thin of experience, thin of contentment. Feverish in her talk, fluttery in her manner, she was prone to jump from fright, and could not stay settled on her chair; nor could she restrain herself from dominating her betrothed’s attention, so that he often found himself excluded from the conversation between Marius and Caesar.

He bore it well, Marius noted, and seemed genuinely devoted to Julilla, fascinated no doubt by the way she focused her emotions upon him. But that, the practical Marius decided, would not last beyond six months of marriage. Not with a Lucius Cornelius Sulla the bridegroom! Nothing about him suggested a natural preference for female company, or an uxorious inclination.

At the end of the meal Caesar announced that he was taking Gaius Marius off to his study for a private talk. “Stay here if you like, or go about your various ways,” he said calmly. “It is too long since Gaius Marius and I have met.”

“There have been changes in your household, Gaius Julius,” said Marius as they got comfortable in the tablinum.

“Indeed there have—and therein lies most of my reason for wanting to get you on your own without delay.”

“Well, I’m consul on New Year’s Day next, and that’s my life disposed of tidily,” said Marius, smiling. “I owe it all to you—and not the least do I owe you the happiness of a perfect wife, an ideal partner in my enterprises. I’ve had little time to give her since my return, but now that I am elected, I intend to rectify that. Three days from now I’m taking Julia and my son to Baiae, and we’re going to forget the whole world for a month.”

“It pleases me more than you can know to hear you speak with such affection and respect of my daughter.’’

Marius leaned back a little more comfortably in his chair. “Very well. Now to Lucius Cornelius Sulla. I remember some words you had to say about an aristocrat without the money to take up the life his birth entitled him to, and the name was his, your son-in-law to be. What happened to change things?”

“According to him, luck. He says if it goes on the way it has since he met Julilla, he’s going to have to add a second nickname—Felix—to the name he inherited from his father. Who was a drunkard and a wastrel, but who married the wealthy Clitumna fifteen years ago or more, and died not long after: Lucius Cornelius met Julilla on New Year’s Day almost three years ago, and she gave him a grass crown without knowing the significance of what she had done. He maintains that from that moment, his luck changed. First Clitumna’s nephew died, who was her heir. Then a woman called Nicopolis died and left Lucius Cornelius a small fortune—she was, I gather, his mistress. And not many moons after that, Clitumna committed suicide. Having no heirs of her own blood, she left her whole fortune—the house next door, a villa at Circei, and some ten million denarii—to Lucius Cornelius.”

“Ye gods, he does deserve to add Felix to his name,” said Marius, rather dryly. “Are you being naive about this, Gaius Julius, or have you proved to your satisfaction that Lucius Cornelius Sulla didn’t help any of the dead into Charon’s ferry across the Styx?”

Caesar acknowledged the shaft with a raised hand, but grinned. “No, Gaius Marius, I assure you I have not been naive. I cannot implicate Lucius Cornelius in any of the three deaths. The nephew expired after a long bowel and stomach disorder, where the Greek freedwoman Nicopolis died of massive kidney failure within—I don’t know, a day, two days, certainly no longer. Both were autopsied, and nothing suspicious was found. Clitumna was morbidly depressed before she killed herself. It happened at Circei, at a time when Lucius Cornelius was most definitely here in Rome. I’ve subjected all Clitumna’s household slaves, both here and in Circei, to exhaustive questioning, and it is my considered opinion that there is nothing more to know about Lucius Cornelius Sulla.’’ He grimaced. “I have always been against torturing slaves to find evidence of crime because I don’t think evidence produced by torture is worth a spoonful of vinegar. But I genuinely do not believe Clitumna’s slaves would have a tale to tell even if they were tortured. So I elected not to bother.”

Marius nodded. “I agree with you, Gaius Julius. Slave testimony is of value only if it is freely given—and is as logical as it is patently truthful.”

“So the upshot of all this was that Lucius Cornelius went from abject poverty to decent wealth over the course of two months,” Caesar went on. “From Nicopolis he inherited enough to be admitted to the knights’ census, and from Clitumna enough to be admitted to the Senate. Thanks to Scaurus’s fuss about the absence of censors, a new pair were elected last May. Otherwise Lucius Cornelius would have had to wait for admission to the Senate for several years.”

Marius laughed. “Yes, what did actually happen? Didn’t anyone want the censors’ jobs? I mean, to some extent Fabius Maximus Eburnus is logical, but Licinius Getha? He was thrown out of the Senate by the censors eight years ago for immoral behavior, and only got back into the Senate by getting himself elected a tribune of the plebs!”

“I know,” said Caesar gloomily. “No, I think what happened was that everyone was reluctant to stand for fear of offending Scaurus. To want to be censor seemed like a want of respect and loyalty for Scaurus, so the only ones who stood were quite incapable of that kind of sensitivity. Mind you, Getha’s easy enough to deal with—he’s only in it for the status and a few silver handshakes from companies bidding for State contracts. Where Eburnus—well, we all know he’s not right in the head, don’t we, Gaius Marius?”

Yes, thought Gaius Marius, we do indeed! Immensely old and of an aristocracy surpassed only by the Julius clan, the Fabius Maximus line had died out, and was kept going only by a series of adoptions. The Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus who had been elected censor was an adopted Fabius Maximus; he had sired only one son, and then five years earlier, he had executed this one son for unchastity. Though there was no law to prevent Eburnus from executing his son when acting as paterfamilias, the execution of wives or children under the protective shelter of family law had long fallen into disuse. Therefore, Eburnus’s action had horrified the whole of Rome.

“Mind you, it’s just as well for Rome that Getha has an Eburnus as his colleague,” said Marius thoughtfully. “I doubt he’ll get away with much, not with Eburnus there.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but oh, that poor young man, his son! Mind you, Eburnus is really a Servilius Caepio, and the Servilius Caepio lot are all rather strange when it comes to sexual morality. Chaster than Artemis of the Forest, and vocal about it too. Which really makes one wonder.”

“So which censor persuaded which to let Lucius Cornelius Sulla into the Senate?” asked Marius. “One hears he hasn’t exactly been a pillar of sexual morality, now that I can associate his name with his face.”

“Oh, I think the moral laxity was mostly boredom and frustration,” said Caesar easily. “However, Eburnus did look down his knobby little Servilius Caepio nose and mutter a bit, it’s true. Where Getha would admit a Tingitanian ape if the price was right. So in the end they agreed Lucius Cornelius might be enrolled—but only upon conditions.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Lucius Cornelius is conditionally a senator—he has to stand for election as a quaestor and get in the first time. If he fails, then he’s no longer a senator.”

“And will he get in?”

“What do you think, Gaius Marius?”

“With a name like his? Oh, he’ll get in!”

“I hope so.” But Caesar looked dubious. Uncertain. A little embarrassed? He drew a breath and leveled a straight blue gaze at his son-in-law, smiling ruefully. “I vowed, Gaius Marius, that after your generosity when you married Julia, I would never ask you for another favor. However, that’s a silly sort of vow. How can one know what the future will need? Need. I need. I need another favor from you.”

“Anything, Gaius Julius,” said Marius warmly.

“Have you had sufficient time with your wife to find out why Julilla nearly starved herself to death?” asked Caesar.

“No.” The stern strong eagle’s face lit up for a moment in pure joy. “What little time we’ve had together since I returned home hasn’t been wasted in talking, Gaius Julius!”

Caesar laughed, sighed. “I wish my younger daughter was cast in the same mould as my older! But she isn’t. It is probably my fault, and Marcia’s. We spoiled her, and excused her much the three older children were not excused. On the other hand, it is my considered opinion that there is an innate lack in Julilla as well. Just before Clitumna died, we found out that the silly girl had fallen in love with Lucius Cornelius, and was trying to force him—or us—or both him and us—it is very difficult to know just what she intended, if ever she really knew herself—anyway, she wanted Lucius Cornelius, and she knew I would never give my consent to such a union.”

Marius looked incredulous. “And knowing there was a clandestine relationship between them, you’ve allowed the marriage to go ahead?”

“No, no, Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius was never in any way implicated!” Caesar cried. “I assure you, he had nothing to do with what she did.”

“But you said she gave him a grass crown two New Years ago,” Marius objected.

“Believe me, the meeting was innocent, at least on his part. He didn’t encourage her—in fact, he tried to discourage her. She brought disgrace upon herself and us, because she actually attempted to suborn him into declaring feelings for her which he knew I would never condone. Let Julia tell you the whole story, and you’ll see what I mean,” said Caesar.

“In which case, how is it they’re getting married?”

“Well, when he inherited his fortune and was able to take up his proper station in life, he asked me for Julilla’s hand. In spite of the way she had treated him.”

“The grass crown,” said Marius thoughtfully. “Yes, I can understand how he’d feel bound to her, especially when her gift changed his luck.”

“I understand it too, which is why I have given my consent.” Again Caesar sighed, more heavily. “The trouble is, Gaius Marius, that I feel none of the liking for Lucius Cornelius that I do for you. He’s a very strange man—there are things in him that set my teeth on edge, and yet I have no idea in the world what those things are. And one must always strive to be fair, to be impartial in judgments.”

“Cheer up, Gaius Julius, it will all turn out well in the end,” said Marius. “Now what can I do for you?”

“Help Lucius Cornelius get elected quaestor,” said Caesar, speech crispening now he had a man’s problem to deal with. “The trouble is that no one knows him. Oh, everyone knows his name! Everyone knows he’s a genuine patrician Cornelius. But the cognomen Sulla isn’t one we hear of these days, and he never had the opportunity to expose himself in the Forum and the law courts when he was a very young man, nor did he ever do military service. In fact, if some malicious noble chose to make a fuss about it, the very fact that he’s never done military service could keep him out of office—and out of the Senate. What we’re hoping is that no one will ask too closely, and in that respect this pair of censors are ideal. It didn’t occur to either of them that Lucius Cornelius was not able to train on the Campus Martius or join the legions as a junior military tribune. And luckily it was Scaurus and Drusus who enrolled Lucius Cornelius as a knight, so our new censors simply assume the old censors went into everything a great deal more thoroughly than they actually did. Scaurus and Drusus were understanding men, they felt Lucius Cornelius should be given his chance. And besides, the Senate wasn’t in question at the time.”

“Do you want me to bribe Lucius Cornelius into office?’’ Marius asked.

Caesar was old-fashioned enough to look shocked. “Most definitely not! I can see where bribing might be excusable if the consulship was the prize, but quaestor! Never! Also, it would be too risky. Eburnus has his eye on Lucius Cornelius, he’ll be watching for any opportunity to disqualify him—and prosecute him. No, the favor I want is far different and less comfortable for you if he turns out to be hopeless. I want you to ask for Lucius Cornelius as your personal quaestor—give him the accolade of a personal appointment. As you well know, once the electorate realizes a candidate for the quaestorship has already been asked for by a consul-elect, he is certain to be voted in.”

Marius didn’t answer immediately; he was busy digesting the implications. No matter really whether Sulla was innocent of any complicity in the deaths of his mistress and his stepmother, his testamentary benefactresses. It was bound to be said later on that he had murdered them if he made sufficient political mark to be consular material; someone would unearth the story, and a whispering campaign that he had murdered to get his hands on enough money to espouse the public career his father’s poverty had denied him would be a gift from the gods in the hands of his political rivals. Having a daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar to wive would help, but nothing would scotch the slur entirely. And in the end there would be many who believed it, just as there were many who believed Gaius Marius had no Greek. That was the first objection. The second lay in the fact that Gaius Julius Caesar couldn’t quite bring himself to like Sulla, though he had no concrete grounds for the way he felt. Was it a matter of Smell rather than Thought? Animal instincts? And the third objection was the personality of Julilla. His Julia, he knew now, would never have married a man she considered unworthy, no matter how desperate the Julius Caesar financial plight. Where Julilla had shown that she was flighty, thoughtless, selfish—the kind of girl who couldn’t pick a worthy mate if her life depended upon it. Yet she had picked Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Then he let his mind go far from the Caesars, cast it back to that early drizzly morning on the Capitol when he had covertly watched Sulla watching the bulls bleed to death. And then he knew what was the right thing to do, what he was going to answer. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was important. Under no circumstances must he be allowed to slide back into obscurity. He must inherit his birthright.

“Very well, Gaius Julius,” he said without the slightest hesitation in his voice, “tomorrow I shall request the Senate to give me Lucius Cornelius Sulla for my quaestor.’’

Caesar beamed. “Thank you, Gaius Marius! Thank you!”

“Can you marry them before the Assembly of the People meets to vote for the quaestors?” he asked.

“It shall be done,” said Caesar.

*

And so, less than eight days later Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Julia Minor, younger daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar, were married in the old-style confarreatio ceremony, two patricians bound together for life. Sulla’s career was off with a bound; personally requested by the consul-elect Gaius Marius as his quaestor, and united in wedlock to a family whose dignitas and integrity were above reproach, it seemed he couldn’t lose.

In which jubilant spirit he approached his wedding night, he who had never really fancied being tied down to a wife and family responsibilities. Metrobius had been dismissed before Sulla applied to the censors for enrollment as a senator, and though the parting had been more fraught with emotion than he could cope with easily—for the boy loved him dearly, and was heartbroken—Sulla was firm in his resolution to put all such activities behind him forever. Nothing was going to jeopardize his rise to fame.

Besides which, he knew enough about his emotional state to understand that Julilla was very precious to him, and not merely because she symbolized his luck, though in his thoughts he classified his feelings for her around that luck. Simply, Sulla was incapable of defining his feelings for any human being as love. Love to Sulla was something other, lesser people felt. As defined by these other, lesser people, it seemed a very odd business, filled with illusions and delusions, at times noble to the point of imbecility and at other times base to the point of amorality. That Sulla could not recognize it in himself was due to his conviction that love negated common sense, self-preservation, enlightenment of the mind. In the years to come he did not ever see that his patience and forbearance in the matter of his flighty, labile wife were all the evidence of love he actually needed. Instead, he put the patience and forbearance down as virtues intrinsic to his own character, and so failed to understand himself or love, and so failed to grow.

A typical Julius Caesar wedding, it was more dignified by far than it was bawdy, though the weddings Sulla had attended were bawdier by far than they were dignified, so he endured the business rather than enjoyed it. However, when the time came there were no drunken guests outside his bedroom door, no wasting of his time having to forcibly eject them from his house. When the short journey from one front door to the next was over, and he picked Julilla up—how airy she felt, how ephemeral!—to carry her over the threshold, the guests who had accompanied them melted away.

As immature virgins had never formed a part of his life, Sulla experienced no misgivings about how events ought to go, and so saved himself a lot of unnecessary worry. For whatever the clinical status of her hymen, Julilla was as ripe, as easy to peel, as a peach caught dropping of its own volition from the tree. She watched him shed his wedding tunic and pull off the wreath of flowers on his head, as fascinated as she was excited. And pulled off her own layers upon layers without being asked, cream and flame and saffron bridal layers, the seven-tiered tiara of wool upon her head, all the special knots and girdles.

They gazed at each other then in complete satisfaction, Sulla beautifully put together, Julilla too thin, yet retaining a willowy grace of line which did much to soften what in someone else would have been angular and ugly. And it was she who moved to him, put her hands on his shoulders and with exquisitely natural and spontaneous voluptuousness inched her body against his, sighing in delight as his arms slid round her and began to stroke her back in long, hard sweeps of both hands.

He adored her lightness, the acrobatic suppleness with which she responded as he lifted her high above his head, let her twine herself about him. Nothing he did alarmed or offended her, and everything he did to her which she could in reciprocation do to him, she did. Teaching her to kiss took seconds; and yet through all their years together, she never stopped learning how to kiss. A wonderful, beautiful, ardent woman, anxious to please him, but greedy for him to please her. All his. Only his. And which of them that night could ever imagine that things might change, be less perfect, less wanted, less welcome?

“If you ever so much as look at anyone else, I’ll kill you,” he said as they lay on his bed, resting between their bouts of activity.

“1 believe you,” she said, remembering her father’s bitter lesson on the rights of the paterfamilias; for now she had moved out from under her father’s authority, replaced his with Sulla’s. A patrician, she was not and never could be her own mistress. The likes of Nicopolis and Clitumna were infinitely better off.

There was very little difference in their heights, for Julilla was quite tall for a woman, and Sulla almost exactly average for a man. So her legs were somewhat longer than his, and she could twist them through his knees, marveling at the whiteness of his skin compared to the deep gold of hers.

“You make me look like a Syrian,” she said, holding her arm along his, both in the air so she could see the contrast, increased by the lamplight.

“I’m not normal,” he said abruptly.

“That’s good,” she laughed, leaning over to kiss him.

After which it was his turn to study her, the contrast and slenderness of her, scarcely escaping boyishness. With one hand he flipped her over quickly, pushed her face into the pillow and studied the lines of back and buttocks and thighs. Lovely.

“You’re as beautiful as a boy,” he said.

She tried to bounce up indignantly, was held where she lay. “I like that! Don’t make it sound as if you prefer boys to girls, Lucius Cornelius!” It was said in all innocence, amid giggles muffled by the soft pillow beneath her mouth.

“Well, until I met you, I think I did,” he said.

“Fool!” she laughed, taking his remark as a joke, then breaking free of him and clambering on top of him to straddle his chest and kneel on his arms. “For saying that, you can take a very close look at my little piggle-wiggle and tell me if it’s anything like a hard old spear!”

“Only a look?” he asked, pulling her up round his neck.

“A boy!” The idea still amused her. “You are a fool, Lucius Cornelius!” And then she forgot all about it in the delirious discovery of fresh pleasures.

*

The Assembly of the People duly elected Sulla a quaestor, and even though his year of office was not due to commence until the fifth day of December (though, as with all the personal quaestors, he would not be required until the New Year, when his superior would enter office), Sulla presented himself the day after the elections at the house of Marius.

November was under way, so dawn was growing later, a fact for which Sulla was profoundly thankful; his nightly excesses with Julilla made early rising more difficult than of yore. But he knew he had to present himself before the sun rose, for Marius’s requesting him as personal quaestor had subtly changed Sulla’s status.

Though it was not a traditional clientship lasting for life, Sulla was now technically Marius’s client for the duration of his quaestorship, which ran as long as Marius kept his imperium, rather than for the normal year. And a client did not lie abed with his new wife into the daylight hours; a client presented himself as the first light infused the sky at the house of his patron, and there offered his services to his patron in whatever manner his patron wished. He might find himself courteously dismissed; he might be asked to go with his patron into the Forum Romanum or one of the basilicae to conduct a day’s public or private business; he might be deputed to perform some task for his patron.

Though he was not untimely enough to deserve rebuke, the vast atrium of Marius’s house was packed with clients more timely than Sulla; some, Sulla decided, must actually have slept in the street outside Marius’s door, for normally they were seen in the order in which they had arrived. Sighing, Sulla made for an inconspicuous corner and prepared for a long wait.

Some great men employed secretaries and nomenclatores to sort the morning’s catch of clients, dismissing the sprats needful only of being noted as present, and sending none but big or interesting fish in to see the great man himself. But Gaius Marius, Sulla noted with approval, acted as his own culler of the catch; there was not an aide to be seen. This particular great man, consul-elect and therefore of enormous importance to many in Rome, did his own dirty work with calm expedition, separating the needful from the dutiful more efficiently than any secretary Sulla knew of. Within twenty minutes the four hundred men clustered in the atrium and spilling onto the peristyle colonnade had been sorted out and tidied up; over half were happily departing, each freedman client or freeman client of lowly status clutching a donative pressed into his hand by a Marius all smiles and deprecating gestures.

Well, thought Sulla, he may be a New Man and he may be more an Italian than a Roman, but he knows how to behave, all right. No Fabius or Aemilius could have performed the role of patron better. It wasn’t necessary to bestow largesse upon clients unless they specifically asked for it, and even then it lay within the discretion of the patron to refuse; but Sulla knew from the attitude of those waiting their turns as Marius moved from man to man that Marius made a habit of bestowing largesse, while giving out a subtle message in his manner that woe betide any man being plain greedy.

“Lucius Cornelius, you’ve no need to wait out here!” said Marius when he arrived in Sulla’s corner. “Go into my study, sit down, and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be with you shortly, and we can talk.”

“Not at all, Gaius Marius,” Sulla said, and smiled with his mouth shut. “I am here to offer you my services as your new quaestor, and I’m happy to wait my turn.”

“Then you can wait your turn seated in my study. If you are to function properly as my quaestor, you’d better see how I conduct my affairs,” said Marius, put a hand on Sulla’s shoulder, and escorted him into the tablinum.

Within three hours the throng of clients was dealt with, patiently yet swiftly; their petitions ranged from some sort of assistance to requests to be considered among the first when Numidia was reopened to Roman and Italian businessmen. Nothing was ever asked of them in return, but the implication was nonetheless patent—have yourself ready to do whatever your patron wishes at any time, be it tomorrow or twenty years from tomorrow.

“Gaius Marius,’’ said Sulla when the last client was gone, “since Quintus Caecilius Metellus has already had his command in Africa prorogued for next year, how can you hope to help your clients into businesses when Numidia is reopened?”

Marius looked pensive. “Why, that’s true, Quintus Caecilius does have Africa next year, doesn’t he?”

As this was clearly a rhetorical question, Sulla didn’t attempt to answer it, just sat fascinated with the way Marius’s mind worked. No wonder he’d got as far as consul!

“Well, Lucius Cornelius, I’ve been thinking about the problem of Quintus Caecilius in Africa, and it’s not insoluble.”

“But the Senate will never replace Quintus Caecilius with you,” Sulla ventured. “I’m not deeply acquainted with the political nuances inside the Senate as yet, but I have certainly experienced your unpopularity among the leading senators, and it seems far too strong to permit you to swim against it.”

“Very true,” said Marius, still smiling pleasantly. “I am an Italian hayseed with no Greek—to quote Metellus, whom I had better inform you I always call Piggle-wiggle—and unworthy of the consulship. Not to mention that I’m fifty years old, which is far too late into office, an age thought beyond great military commands. The dice are loaded against me in the Senate. But then, they always have been, you know. And yet—here I am, consul at fifty! A bit of a mystery, isn’t it, Lucius Cornelius?”

Sulla grinned, which meant he looked a little feral; Marius did not seem perturbed. “Yes, Gaius Marius, it is.”

Marius leaned forward in his chair and folded his beautiful hands together on the fabulous green stone of his desk top. “Lucius Cornelius, many years ago I discovered how very many different ways there are to skin a cat. While others proceeded up the cursus honorum without a hiccough, I marked time. But it was not time wasted. I spent it cataloguing all the ways of skinning that cat. Among other equally rewarding things. You see, when one is kept waiting beyond one’s proper turn, one watches, assesses, puts pieces together. I was never a great lawyer, never an expert on our unwritten Constitution. While Metellus Piggle-wiggle was trailing around the courts behind Cassius Ravilla and learning how to secure condemnations of Vestal Virgins— well, I mean it in an apocryphal sense only, the time frame is quite wrong—I was soldiering. And I continued to soldier. It’s what I do best. Yet, I would not be wrong if I made the boast that I have come to know more about the law and the Constitution than half a hundred Metellus Piggle-wiggles. I look at things from the outside, my brain hasn’t been channeled into a rut by training. So I say to you now, I am going to tumble Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle from the high horse of his African command, and I myself am going to replace him there.”

“I believe you,” said Sulla, drawing a breath. “But how?”

“They’re all legal simpletons,” said Marius scornfully, “that’s how. Because by custom the Senate has always doled out the governorships, it never occurs to anyone that senatorial decrees do not, strictly speaking, have any weight at law. Oh, they all know that fact if you get them to rattle it off, but it’s never sunk in, even after the lessons the Brothers Gracchi tried to teach them. Senatorial decrees only have the force of custom, of tradition. Not of law! It’s the Plebeian Assembly makes the law these days, Lucius Cornelius. And I wield a great deal more power in the Plebeian Assembly than any Caecilius Metellus.”

Sulla sat absolutely still, awed and a little afraid, two odd sensations in him. Awesome though Marius’s brainpower might be, Marius’s brainpower was not what awed Sulla; no, what awed Sulla was the novel experience of being drawn into a vulnerable man’s complete confidence. How did Marius know he, Sulla, was to be trusted? Trust had never been a part of his reputation, and Marius would have made it his business to explore Sulla’s reputation thoroughly. Yet here was Marius baring his future intentions and actions for Sulla’s inspection! And putting all his trust in his unknown quaestor, just as if that trust had already been earned.

“Gaius Marius,” he said, unable not to say it, “what’s to stop me from turning into the house of any Caecilius Metellus after I leave here this morning, and telling that Caecilius Metellus everything you’re telling me?”

“Why, nothing, Lucius Cornelius,” said Marius, undismayed by the question.

“Then why are you making me privy to all this?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Marius. “Because, Lucius Cornelius, you strike me as a superbly able and intelligent man. And any superbly able and intelligent man is superbly able to use his intelligence to work out for himself that it’s not at all intelligent to throw in his lot with a Caecilius Metellus when a Gaius Marius is offering him the stimulation and the excitement of a few years of interesting and rewarding work.” He drew a huge breath. “There! I got that out quite well.”

Sulla began to laugh. “Your secrets are safe with me, Gaius Marius.”

“I know that.”

“Still and all, I would like you to know that I appreciate your confidence in me.”

“We’re brothers-in-law, Lucius Cornelius. We’re linked, and by more than the Julius Caesars. You see, we share another commonality. Luck.”

“Ah! Luck.”

“Luck is a sign, Lucius Cornelius. To have luck is to be beloved of the gods. To have luck is to be chosen.” And Marius looked at his new quaestor in perfect contentment. “I am chosen. And I chose you because I think you too are chosen. We are important to Rome, Lucius Cornelius. We will both make our mark on Rome.”

“I believe that too,” said Sulla.

“Yes, well… In another month, there will be a new College of Tribunes of the Plebs in office. Once the college is in, I’ll make my move regarding Africa.”

“You’re going to use the Plebeian Assembly to pass a law to topple the senatorial decree giving Metellus Piggle-wiggle another year in Africa,” said Sulla certainly.

“I am indeed,” said Marius.

“But is it really legal? Will such a law be allowed to stand?” asked Sulla; and to himself he began to appreciate how a very intelligent New Man, emancipated from custom, could turn the whole system upside down.

“There’s nothing on the tablets to say it isn’t legal, and therefore nothing to say that it can’t be done. I have a burning desire to emasculate the Senate, and the most effective way to do that is to undermine its traditional authority. How? By legislating its traditional authority out of existence. By creating a precedent.”

“Why is it so important that you get the African command?” Sulla asked. “The Germans have reached as far as Tolosa, and the Germans are far more important than Jugurtha. Someone is going to have to go to Gaul to deal with them next year, and I’d far rather it was you than Lucius Cassius.”

“I won’t get the chance,” said Marius positively. “Our esteemed colleague Lucius Cassius is the senior consul, and he wants the Gallic command against the Germans. Anyway, the command against Jugurtha is vital for my political survival. I’ve undertaken to represent the interests of the knights, both in Africa Province and in Numidia. Which means I must be in Africa when the war ends to make sure my clients get all the concessions I’ve promised them. Not only will there be a vast amount of superb grain-growing land to partition up in Numidia, but there have been recent discoveries of a unique first-quality marble, and large deposits of copper as well. Added to which, Numidia yields two rare gemstones and a lot of gold. And since Jugurtha became king, Rome has had no share in any of it.”

“All right, Africa it is,” said Sulla. “What can I do to help?”

“Learn, Lucius Cornelius, learn! I am going to need a corps of officers who are something more than merely loyal. I want men who can act on their own initiative without ruining my grand design—men who will add to my own ability and efficiency, rather than drain me. I don’t care about sharing the credit, there’s plenty of credit and glory to go around when things are well run and the legions are given a chance to show what they can do.”

“But I’m as green as grass, Gaius Marius.”

“I know that,” said Marius. “But, as I’ve already told you, I think you have great potential. Stick with me, give me loyalty and hard work, and I’ll give you every opportunity to develop that potential. Like me, you’re late starting. But it’s never too late. I’m consul at last, eight years beyond the proper age. You’re in the Senate at last, three years beyond the proper age. Like me, you’re going to have to concentrate upon the army as a way to the top. I’ll help you in every way I can. In return, I expect you to help me.”

“That sounds fair, Gaius Marius.” Sulla cleared his throat. “I’m very grateful.”

“You shouldn’t be. If I didn’t think I’d get a good return from you, Lucius Cornelius, you wouldn’t be sitting here now.” And Marius held out his hand. “Come, let’s agree that there’ll be no gratitude between us! Just loyalty and the comradeship of the legions.”

*

Gaius Marius had bought himself a tribune of the plebs, and picked himself a good man at that. For Titus Manlius Mancinus didn’t sell his tribunician favors entirely for money. Mancinus was out to make a splash as a tribune of the plebs, and needed a cause better than the only one which mattered to him—the casting of every impediment he could think of in the path of the patrician Manlius family, of which he was not a member. His hatred of the Manliuses, he found, easily spread to encompass all the great aristocratic and noble families, including the Caecilius Metelluses. So he was able to accept Marius’s money with a clear conscience, and espouse Marius’s plans with premonitory glee.

The ten new tribunes of the plebs went into office on the third day before the Ides of December, and Titus Manlius Mancinus wasted no time. On that very day he introduced a bill into the Assembly of the Plebs that purported to remove the African command from Quintus Caecilius Metellus, and give it instead to Gaius Marius.

“The People are sovereign!” Mancinus shouted to the crowd. “The Senate is the servant of the People, not the People’s master! If the Senate enacts its duties with proper respect for the People of Rome, then by all means it should be allowed to go on doing so. But when the Senate enacts its duties to protect its own leading members at the expense of the People, it must be stopped. Quintus Caecilius Metellus has proven derelict in his command, he has accomplished precisely nothing! Why then has the Senate extended his command for a second time, into this coming year? Because, People of Rome, the Senate is as usual protecting its own leading lights at the expense of the People. In Gaius Marius, duly elected consul for this coming year, the People of Rome have a leader worthy of that name. But according to the men who run the Senate, Gaius Marius’s name isn’t good enough! Gaius Marius, People of Rome, is a mere New Man—an upstart—a nobody, not a noble!”

The crowd was rapt; Mancinus was a good speaker, and felt passionately about senatorial exclusivity. It was some time since the Plebs had tweaked the Senate’s nose, and many of the unelected but influential leaders of the Plebs were worried that their arm of Rome’s government was losing ground. So on that day at that moment in time, everything ran in Gaius Marius’s favor—public sentiment, knightly disgruntlement, and ten tribunes of the plebs in a mood to tweak the Senate’s nose, not one of them on the Senate’s side.

The Senate fought back, marshaling its best orators of plebeian status to speak in the Assembly, including Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus—ardent in his young brother Piggle-wiggle’s defense—and the senior consul-elect, Lucius Cassius Longinus. But Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, who might have tipped the scales in the Senate’s favor, was a patrician, and therefore could not speak in the Plebeian Assembly. Forced to stand on the steps of the Senate House looking down into the jam-packed tiered circular well of the Comitia, in which the Plebeian Assembly met, Scaurus could only listen impotently.

“They’ll beat us,” he said to the censor Fabius Maximus Eburnus, another patrician. “Piss on Gaius Marius!”

Pissed on or not, Gaius Marius won. The remorseless letter campaign had succeeded brilliantly in turning the knights and the middle classes away from Metellus, smearing his name, quite destroying his political clout. Of course in time he would recover; his family and connections were too powerful. But at the moment the Plebeian Assembly, ably led by Mancinus, took his African command off him, his name in Rome was muddier than the pigsty of Numantia. And take his African command off him the People did, passing a precedent-setting law which replaced him with Gaius Marius by name. And once the law—strictly, a plebiscite—was engraved on the tablets, it lay in an archive under a temple as an example and a recourse for others in the future to try the same thing—others who might perhaps not have either the ability of Gaius Marius, or his excellent reasons.

“However,” said Marius to Sulla as soon as the law was passed, “Metellus will never leave me his soldiers.”

Oh, how many things were there to learn, things he, a patrician Cornelius, ought to know, yet didn’t? Sometimes Sulla despaired of learning enough, but then would contemplate his luck in having Gaius Marius as his commander, and rest easier. For Marius was never too busy to explain things to him, and thought no less of him for his ignorance. So now Sulla increased his knowledge by asking, “But don’t the soldiers belong to the war against King Jugurtha? Oughtn’t they stay in Africa until the war is won?”

“They could stay in Africa—but only if Metellus wanted them to stay. He would have to announce to the army that it had signed on for the duration of the campaign, and therefore his removal from the command did not affect its fate. But there’s nothing to stop him taking the position that he recruited them, and that their term finishes simultaneously with his. Knowing Metellus, that’s the position he’ll take. So he’ll discharge them, and ship them straight back to Italy.”

“Which means you’ll have to recruit a new army,” said Sulla. “I see.” Then he asked, “Couldn’t you wait until he brings his army home, then re-enlist it in your name?”

“I could,” said Marius. “Unfortunately I won’t get the chance. Lucius Cassius is going to Gaul to deal with the Germans at Tolosa. A job which has to be done—we don’t want half a million Germans sitting within a hundred miles of the road to Spain, and right on the borders of our own province. So I would imagine that Cassius has already written to Metellus and asked him to re-enlist his army for the Gallic campaign before it even departs from Africa.’’

“So that’s how it works,” said Sulla.

“That’s how it works. Lucius Cassius is the senior consul, he takes precedence over me. Therefore he has first choice of whatever troops are available. Metellus will bring six highly trained and seasoned legions back to Italy with him. And they will be the troops Cassius takes to Gaul-across-the-Alps, no doubt of it. And that means I am going to have to start from the beginning—recruit raw material, train it, equip it, fill it with enthusiasm for the war against Jugurtha.” Marius pulled a face. “It will mean that in my year as consul I won’t be given enough time to mount the kind of offensive against Jugurtha I could mount if Metellus left his troops behind for me. In turn, that means I’ll have to make sure my own command in Africa is extended into the following year, or I’ll fall flat on my arse and wind up looking worse than Piggle-wiggle.”

“And now there’s a law on the tablets that creates a precedent for someone to take your command off you exactly as you took the command off Metellus.” Sulla sighed. “It isn’t easy, is it? I never dreamed of the difficulties a man could face just ensuring his own survival, let alone advancing the majesty of Rome.”

That amused Marius; he laughed delightedly, and clapped Sulla on the back. “No, Lucius Cornelius, it isn’t ever easy. But that’s what makes it so worth doing! What man of true excellence and worth honestly wants a smooth path? The rougher the path, the more obstacles in the way, the more satisfaction there is.”

This constituted an answer on a personal plane, perhaps, but it didn’t solve Sulla’s main problem. “Yesterday you told me Italy is completely exhausted,” he said. “So many men have died that the levies can’t be filled among the citizens of Rome, and Italian resistance to the levies is hardening day by day. Where then can you possibly find enough raw material to form into four good legions? Because—as you’ve said yourself—you can’t defeat Jugurtha with fewer than four legions.”

“Wait until I’m consul, Lucius Cornelius, and you’ll see,” was all Sulla could get out of him.

*

It was the feast of the Saturnalia undid Sulla’s resolutions. In the days when Clitumna and Nicopolis had shared the house with him, this time of holiday and merrymaking had been a wonderful end to the old year. The slaves had lain around snapping their fingers while the two women had run giggling to obey their wishes, everyone had drunk too much, and Sulla had yielded up his place in the communal bed to whichever slaves fancied Clitumna and Nicopolis—on condition that he enjoyed the same privileges elsewhere in the house. And after the Saturnalia was over, things went back to normal as if nothing untoward had ever happened.

But this first year of his marriage to Julilla saw Sulla experience a very different Saturnalia: he was required to spend the waking hours of it next door, in the midst of the family of Gaius Julius Caesar. There too for the three days the festival lasted, everything was upside down—the slaves were waited on by their owners, little gifts changed hands, and a special effort was exerted to provide food and wine as delectable as plentiful. But nothing really changed. The poor servants lay as stiff as statues on the dining couches and smiled shyly at Marcia and Caesar as they hurried back and forth between triclinium and kitchen, no one would have dreamed of getting drunk, and certainly no one would have dreamed of doing or saying anything which might have led to embarrassment when the household reverted to normal.

Gaius Marius and Julia attended also, and seemed to find the proceedings perfectly satisfactory; but then, thought Sulla resentfully, Gaius Marius was too anxious to be one of them to contemplate putting a foot wrong.

“What a treat it’s been,” said Sulla as he and Julilla said their farewells at the door on the last evening, and so careful had he become that no one, even Julilla, realized he was being heavily sarcastic.

“It wasn’t too bad at all,” said Julilla as she followed Sulla into their own house, where—in lieu of the master and mistress’s presence—the slaves had simply been given a three-day rest.

“I’m glad you think so,” said Sulla, bolting the gate.

Julilla sighed and stretched. “And tomorrow is the dinner for Crassus Orator. I must say I’m looking forward to that.”

Sulla stopped halfway across the atrium and turned to stare at her. “You’re not coming,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.” .

“But—but—I thought wives were invited too!” she cried, face puckering.

“Some wives,” said Sulla. “Not you.”

“I want to go! Everyone’s talking about it, all my friends are so envious—I told them I was going!”

“Too bad. You’re not going, Julilla.”

One of the house slaves met them at the study door, a little drunk. “Oh, good, you’re home!” he said, staggering. “Fetch me some wine, and be quick about it!”

“The Saturnalia is over,” said Sulla very softly. “Get out, you fool.”

The slave went, suddenly sober.

“Why are you in such a beastly mood?” Julilla demanded as they entered the master’s sleeping cubicle.

“I’m not in a beastly mood,” he said, and went to stand behind her, slip his arms about her.

She pulled away. “Leave me alone!”

“Now what’s the matter?”

“I want to go to Crassus Orator’s dinner!”

“Well, you can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because, Julilla,” he said patiently, “it isn’t the kind of party your father would approve of, and the few wives who are going are not women your father approves of.”

“I’m not in my father’s hand anymore, I can do anything I like,” she said.

“That’s not true, and you know it. You passed from your father’s hand to my hand. And I say you’re not going.”

Without a word Julilla picked up her clothes from the floor, and flung a robe about her thin body. Then she turned and left the room.

“Please yourself!” Sulla called after her.

In the morning she was cold to him, a tactic he ignored, and when he left for Crassus Orator’s dinner, she was nowhere to be found.

“Spoiled little baggage,” he said to himself.

The tiff ought to have been amusing; that it wasn’t had nothing to do with the tiff, but came from somewhere much deeper within Sulla than the space Julilla occupied. He wasn’t the slightest bit excited at the prospect of dining at the opulent mansion of the auctioneer Quintus Granius, who was giving the dinner party. When he had first received the invitation, he had been quite absurdly pleased, interpreting it as an overture of friendship from an important young senatorial circle; then he heard the gossip about the party, and understood that he had been invited because he had a shady past, would add a touch of the exotic to liven the aristocratic male guest list.

Now as he plodded along he was in better case to gauge what kind of trap had closed about him when he married Julilla and entered the ranks of his natural peers. For it was a trap. And there was no relief from its jaws while he was forced to live in Rome. All very well for Crassus Orator, so entrenched he could be party to a party deliberately designed to defy the sumptuary edict of his own father, so secure in his tenure of Senate and a new tribunate of the plebs that he could afford even the luxury of pretending to be vulgar and underbred, accept the blatant favor currying of a mushroom like Quintus Granius the auctioneer.

When he entered Quintus Granius’s vast dining room, he saw Colubra smiling at him from over the top of a jeweled golden beaker, saw her pat the couch beside her invitingly. I was right, I’m here as a freak, he said silently, gave Colubra a brilliant smile, and yielded up his person to the attentions of a crowd of obsequious slaves. No intimate function, this! The dining room was filled with couches— sixty guests would recline to celebrate Crassus Orator’s entry upon the tribunate of the plebs. But, thought Sulla as he climbed up beside Colubra, Quintus Granius doesn’t have the slightest idea how to throw a real party.

When he left six hours later—which meant he left well ahead of any other guest—he was drunk, and his mood had plummeted from acceptance of his lot to the kind of black depression he had thought he would never experience again once he entered his rightful sphere. He was frustrated, powerless—and, he realized suddenly, intolerably lonely. From his heart to his head to his fingers and toes he ached for congenial and loving company, someone to laugh with, someone free from ulterior motives, someone entirely his. Someone with black eyes and black curls and the sweetest arse in the world.

And he walked, gifted with wings on his feet, all the way out to the apartment of Scylax the actor without once allowing himself to remember how fraught with peril this course was, how imprudent, how foolish, how—it didn’t matter! For Scylax would be there; all he’d be able to do was sit and drink a cup of watered wine, and mouth inanities with Scylax, and let his eyes feast upon his boy. No one would be in a position to say a thing. An innocent visit, nothing more.

But Fortune still smiled. Metrobius was there alone, left behind as punishment when Scylax departed to visit friends in Antium. Metrobius was there alone. So glad to see him! So filled with love, with hunger, with passion, with grief. And Sulla, the passion and hunger sated, put the boy on his knees and hugged him, and almost wept.

“I spent too long in this world,” he said. “Ye gods, how I miss it!”

“How I miss you!” said the boy, snuggling down.

A silence fell; Metrobius could feel Sulla’s convulsive swallows against his cheek, and yearned to feel Sulla’s tears. But them, he knew, he would not feel. “What’s the matter, dear Lucius Cornelius?” he asked.

“I’m bored,” said Sulla’s voice, very detached. “These people at the top are such hypocrites, so deadly dull! Good form and good manners on every public occasion, then furtively dirty pleasures whenever they think no one’s watching—I’m finding it hard tonight to disguise my contempt.”

“I thought you’d be happy,” said Metrobius, not displeased.

“So did I,” said Sulla wryly, and fell silent again.

“Why come tonight?”

“Oh, I went to a party.”

“No good?”

“Not by your or my lights, lovely lad. By theirs, it was a brilliant success. All I wanted to do was laugh. And then, on the way home, I realized I had no one to share the joke with. No one!”

“Except me,” said Metrobius, and sat up straight. “Well then, aren’t you going to tell me?”

“You know who the Licinius Crassuses are, don’t you?”

Metrobius studied his nails. “I’m a child star of the comedy theater,” he said. “What do I know about the Famous Families?”

“The family Licinius Crassus has been supplying Rome with consuls and the occasional Pontifex Maximus for—oh, centuries! It’s a fabulously rich family, and it produces men of two sorts—the frugal sort, and the sybaritic sort. Now this Crassus Orator’s father was one of the frugal sort, and put that ridiculous sumptuary law on the tablets—you know the one,” said Sulla.

“No gold plate, no purple cloths, no oysters, no imported wine—is that the one?”

“It is. But Crassus Orator—who it seems didn’t get on with his father—adores to be surrounded by every conceivable luxury. And Quintus Granius the auctioneer needs a political favor from Crassus Orator now that he’s a tribune of the plebs, so Quintus Granius the auctioneer threw a party tonight in honor of Crassus Orator. The theme,” said Sulla, a little expression creeping into his voice, “was ‘Let’s ignore the lex Licinia sumptuaria!’”

“Was that why you were invited?” asked Metrobius.

“I was invited because it appears in the highest circles— the circles of Crassus Orator, that is, even if not of Quintus Granius the auctioneer—I am regarded as a fascinating fellow—life as low as birth was high. I think they thought I’d strip off all my clothes and sing a few dirty ditties while I humped the daylights out of Colubra.”

“Colubra?”

“Colubra.”

Metrobius whistled. “You are moving in exalted circles! I hear she charges a silver talent for irrumatio.”

“She might, but she offered it to me for nothing,” said Sulla, grinning. “I declined.”

Metrobius shivered. “Oh, Lucius Cornelius, don’t go making enemies now that you’re in your rightful world! Women like Colubra wield enormous power.”

An expression of distaste settled upon Sulla’s face. “Tchah! I piss on them!”

“They’d probably like that,” said Metrobius thoughtfully.

It did the trick; Sulla laughed, and settled down to tell his story more happily.

“There were a few wives there—the more adventurous kind, with husbands pecked almost to death—two Claudias, and a lady in a mask who insisted on being called Aspasia, but who I know very well is Crassus Orator’s cousin Licinia—you remember, I used to sleep with her occasionally?”

“I remember,” said Metrobius a little grimly.

“The place absolutely dripped gold and Tyrian purple,” Sulla went on. “Even the dishrags were Tyrian purple oversewn with gold! You should have seen the dining steward waiting until his master wasn’t looking, and then whipping out an ordinary dishrag to mop up someone’s spilled Chian wine—the gold-and-purple rags were useless, of course.”

“You hated it,” said Metrobius.

“I hated it,” said Sulla, sighed, and resumed his story. “The couches were encrusted with pearls. They really were! And the guests fiddled and plucked until they managed to denude the couches of their pearls, popped them into a corner of the gold-and-purple napkins, knotted the corner up carefully—and there wasn’t one among the men at least who couldn’t have bought what he stole without noticing the expense.”

“Except you,” said Metrobius softly, and pushed the hair off Sulla’s white brow. “You didn’t take any pearls.”

“I’d sooner have died,” said Sulla. He shrugged. “They were only little river blisters, anyway.”

Metrobius chuckled. “Don’t spoil it! I like it when you’re insufferably proud and noble.”

Smiling, Sulla kissed him. “That bad, am I?”

“That bad. What was the food like?”

“Catered. Well, not even Granius’s kitchens could have turned out enough food for sixty—ooops, fifty-nine!—of the worst gluttons I’ve ever seen. Every hen egg was a tenth egg, most of them double-yolked. There were swan eggs, goose eggs, duck eggs, seabird eggs, and even some eggs with gilded shells. Stuffed udders of nursing sows—fowls fattened on honey cakes soaked in vintage Falernian wine— snails specially imported from Liguria—oysters driven up from Baiae in a fast gig—the air was so redolent with the most expensive peppers that I had a sneezing fit.”

He needed to talk very badly, Metrobius realized; what a strange world Sulla’s must be now. Not at all as he had imagined it, though how exactly he had imagined it before it happened was something Metrobius did not know. For Sulla was not a talker, never had been a talker. Until tonight. Out of nowhere! The sight of that beloved face was a sight Metrobius had reconciled himself never to see again, save at a distance. Yet there on the doorstep he’d stood, looking—ghastly. And needing love. Needing to talk. Sulla! How lonely he must be, indeed.

“What else was there?” Metrobius prompted, anxious to keep him talking.

Up went one red-gold brow, its darkening of stibium long gone. “The best was yet to come, as it turned out. They bore it in shoulder-high on a Tyrian purple cushion in a gem-studded golden dish, a huge licker-fish of the Tiber with the same look on its face as a flogged mastiff. Round and round the room they paraded it, with more ceremony than the twelve gods are accorded at a lectisternium. A fish!”

Metrobius knitted his brows. “What sort of fish was it?”

Sulla pulled his head back to stare into Metrobius’s face. “You know! A licker-fish.”

“If I do, I don’t remember.”

Sulla considered, relaxed. “I daresay you mightn’t, at that. Licker-fish are a far cry from a comics’ feast. Let me just say, young Metrobius, that every gastronomic fool in Rome’s upper stratum passes into a swoon of ecstasy at the very thought of a licker-fish of the Tiber. Yet—there they cruise between the Wooden Bridge and the Pons Aemilius, laving their scaly sides in the outflow from the sewers, and so full from eating Rome’s shit that they can’t even be bothered nosing a bait. They smell of shit and they taste of shit. Eat them, and, in my opinion, you’re eating shit. But Quintus Granius and Crassus Orator raved and drooled as if a licker-fish of the Tiber was a compound of nectar and ambrosia instead of a shit-eating drone of a freshwater bass!”

Metrobius couldn’t help himself; he gagged.

“Well said!” cried Sulla, and began to laugh. “Oh, if you could only have seen them, all those puffed-up fools! Calling themselves Rome’s best and finest, while Rome’s shit dribbled down their chins—” He stopped, sucked in a hissing breath. “I couldn’t take it another day. Another hour.” He stopped again. “I’m drunk. It was that awful Saturnalia.”

“Awful Saturnalia?”

“Boring—awful—it doesn’t matter. A different upper stratum than Crassus Orator’s party crowd, Metrobius, but just as dreadful. Boring. Boring, boring, boring!” He shrugged. “Never mind. Next year I’ll be in Numidia, with something to sink my teeth into. I can’t wait! Rome without you––without my old friends—I can’t bear it.” A shiver rolled visibly down him. “I’m drunk, Metrobius. I shouldn’t be here. But oh, if you knew how good it is to be here!”

“I only know how good it is to have you here,” said Metrobius loudly.

“Your voice is breaking,” said Sulla, surprised.

“And not before time. I’m seventeen, Lucius Cornelius. Luckily I’m small for my age, and Scylax has trained me to keep my voice high. But sometimes these days I forget. It’s harder to control. I’ll be shaving soon.”

“Seventeen!”

Metrobius slid off Sulla’s lap and stood looking down at him gravely, then held out one hand. “Come! Stay with me a little while longer. You can go home before it’s light.’’

Reluctantly Sulla got up. “I’ll stay,” he said, “this time. But I won’t be back.”

“I know,” said Metrobius, and lifted his visitor’s arm until it lay across his shoulders. “Next year you’ll be in Numidia, and you’ll be happy.”