There was no need for Sulla to ask further questions about Censorinus, for the next day Censorinus struck. He appeared at the tribunal of the urban praetor, the Picentine Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and demanded to prosecute Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the treason court for accepting a bribe from the Parthians to betray Rome.
“Do you have proof?” asked Pompeius Rufus sternly.
“I have proof.”
“Then give me the gist of it.”
“I will not, Quintus Pompeius. In the court I will do all that is necessary. This is a capital charge. I am not appealing for the lodgment of a fine, nor am I obliged under the law to divulge my case to you,” said Censorinus, fingering the gem inside his toga, too precious to be left at home, but too noticeable to be displayed in public.
“Very well,” said Pompeius Rufus stiffly, “I will tell the President of the quaestio de maiestate to assemble his court by the Pool of Curtius, three days hence.”
Pompeius Rufus watched Censorinus almost skip across the lower Forum toward the Argiletum, then snapped his fingers to his assistant, a junior senator of the Fannius family. “Mind the shop,” he said, getting to his feet. “I have an errand to run.”
He located Lucius Cornelius Sulla in a tavern on the Via Nova, not such an arduous task as it might have seemed; he knew whom to ask, as any good urban praetor did. Sulla’s drinking companion was none other than Scaurus Princeps Senatus, one of the few in the Senate who was interested in what Sulla had accomplished in the East. They were at a small table at the back of the tavern, which was a popular meeting place for those august enough to belong to the Senate, yet the proprietor’s eyes bulged when a third toga praetexta walked in—the Princeps Senatus and two urban praetors, no less! Wait until his friends heard about this!
“Wine and water, Cloatius,” said Pompeius Rufus briefly as he passed the counter, “and make it a good vintage!”
“The wine or the water?” asked Publius Cloatius innocently.
“Both, you pile of rubbish, or I’ll hale you into court,” said Pompeius Rufus with a grin as he joined the other two.
“Censorinus,” said Sulla to Pompeius Rufus.
“Right in one,” said the urban praetor. “You must have better sources than I do, for I swear it came as a complete surprise to me.”
“I do have good sources,” said Sulla, smiling; he liked the man from Picenum. “Treason, is it?”
“Treason. He says he has proof.”
“So did those who convicted Publius Rutilius Rufus.”
“Well, I for one will believe it when the streets of Barduli are paved with gold,” said Scaurus, picking the poorest town in all of Italy as his example.
“So will I,” said Sulla.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” asked Pompeius Rufus, taking an empty cup from the tavern keeper and splashing wine and water into it. He grimaced, looked up. “They’re both terrible vintages!” he cried. “Worm!”
“Try and find better anywhere else on the Via Nova,” said Publius Cloatius without umbrage, and slid off regretfully to a spot where he couldn’t hear what was said.
“I can deal with it,” said Sulla, who didn’t seem disturbed.
“I’ve set the hearing for three days hence, by the Pool of Curtius. Luckily we’re now under the lex Livia, so you’ll have half a jury of senators—which is very much better than a jury composed entirely of knights. How they hate the idea of a senator getting rich at other people’s expense! All right for them to do it, however,” said Pompeius Rufus, disgusted.
“Why the treason court rather than the bribery court?” asked Scaurus. “If he alleges you took a bribe, then it’s bribery.”
“Censorinus alleges that the bribe was taken as payment for betrayal of our intentions and movements in the East,” said the urban praetor.
“I brought back a treaty,” said Sulla to Pompeius Rufus.
“That he did! An enormously impressive feat,” said Scaurus with great warmth.
“Is the Senate ever going to acknowledge it?” asked Sulla.
“The Senate will, Lucius Cornelius, you have the word of an Aemilius Scaurus on it.”
“I heard you forced both the Parthians and the King of Armenia to sit lower than you did,” chuckled the urban praetor. “Good for you, Lucius Cornelius! Those eastern potentates need putting down!”
“Oh, I believe Lucius Cornelius intends to follow in the footsteps of Popillius Laenas,” said Scaurus, smiling. “The next thing, he’ll be drawing circles round their feet too.” He frowned. “What I want to know is, where could Censorinus have obtained information about anything that happened on the Euphrates?”
Sulla shifted uneasily, not quite sure whether Scaurus was still of the opinion that Mithridates of Pontus was harmless. “I think he’s acting as an agent for one of the eastern kings.”
“Mithridates of Pontus,” said Scaurus immediately.
“What, are you disillusioned?” asked Sulla, grinning.
“I like to believe the best of everybody, Lucius Cornelius. But a fool I am not,” said Scaurus, getting up. He threw a denarius at the proprietor, who fielded it deftly. “Give them some more of your brilliant vintages, Cloatius!”
“If it’s all that bad, why aren’t you at home drinking your Chian and your Falernian?” yelled Publius Cloatius after Scaurus’s vanishing back, his humor unimpaired.
His only answer was Scaurus’s finger poking holes in the air, which made Cloatius laugh hilariously. “Awful old geezer!” he said, bringing more wine to the table. “What would we do without him?”
Sulla and Pompeius Rufus settled deeper into their chairs.
“Aren’t you on your tribunal today?” asked Sulla.
“I’ve left young Fannius in charge; it will do him good to battle the litigious-minded populace of Rome,’’ said Pompeius Rufus.
They sipped their wine (which really was not poor quality, as everyone knew) in silence for a few moments, not feeling awkward—more that when Scaurus left any group, it suffered.
Finally Pompeius Rufus said, “Are you hoping to stand for the consulship at the end of this year, Lucius Cornelius?”
“I don’t think so,” said Sulla, looking serious. “I had hoped to, in the belief that the presentation to Rome of a formal treaty binding the King of the Parthians in an agreement of great benefit to Rome would create quite a stir here! Instead—not a ripple on the Forum puddle, let alone the Senate cesspool! I may as well have stayed in Rome and taken lessons in lascivious dancing—it would have created more talk about me! So it has become a decision as to whether I think I stand a chance to get in if I bribe the electorate. I’m inclined to think I’d be wasting my money. People like Rutilius Lupus can offer ten times as much to our wonderful little lot of voters.”
“I want to be consul,” said Pompeius Rufus, equally seriously, “but I doubt my chances, being a Picentine.”
Sulla opened his eyes wide. “They voted you in at the top of the praetors’ poll, Quintus Pompeius! That usually counts for something, you know!”
“You were voted in at the top of the same poll two years ago,” said Pompeius Rufus, “yet you don’t consider your chances good, do you? And if a patrician Cornelius who has been praetor urbanus rates his chances nonexistent, what do you think are the chances of—well, not a New Man, precisely—a man from Picenum?”
“True, I am a patrician Cornelius. But my last name isn’t Scipio, and Aemilius Paullus wasn’t my granddad. I was never a great speaker, and until I became urban praetor, the Forum frequenters didn’t know me from a Magna Mater eunuch. I pinned all my hopes on that historic treaty with the Parthians and the fact that I led Rome’s first army ever to cross the Euphrates. Only to find the whole Forum far more fascinated with the doings of Drusus.”
“He’ll be consul when he decides to run.”
“He couldn’t miss if they set Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus up against him. Mind you, Quintus Pompeius, I find myself fascinated with what he’s doing.”
“So am I, Lucius Cornelius.”
“Do you think he’s right?”
“Yes.”
“Good! So do I.”
Another silence fell, broken only by the noise of Publius Cloatius serving four newcomers, who eyed the purple-bordered togas in the far corner with awe.
“How about,” began Pompeius Rufus, turning his pewter cup slowly between his hands, and looking down into it, “your waiting a couple more years, and running in tandem with me? We’re both urban praetors, we both have good army records, we’re both senior in years, we’re both able to do a little bribing, at least... The voters like a pair standing together, it bodes well for consular relations during the year. Together, I think we stand a better chance than either of us does alone. What do you say, Lucius Cornelius?”
Sulla’s eyes rested upon Pompeius Rufus’s ruddy face, his bright blue eyes, his regular and slightly Celtic features, his shock of curling red hair. “I say,” he said deliberately, “that we’d make a prime pair! Two red-heads from opposite ends of the senatorial array, impressive to look at—a matching pair! You know, we’d appeal to those whimsical, cantankerous mentulae! They love a good joke, and what better joke than two red-haired consuls of the same height and the same build, yet out of totally different stables?” He held out his hand. “We’ll do it, my friend! Luckily neither of us has a grey hair to spoil the effect, nor is either of us balding!”
Eager to show his pleasure, Pompeius Rufus squeezed Sulla’s hand, beaming. “It’s a deal, Lucius Cornelius!”
“It’s a deal, Quintus Pompeius!” Sulla blinked, visited with an inspiration evoked by Pompeius Rufus’s enormous wealth. “Do you have a son?” he asked.
“I do.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-one this year.”
“Contracted to a marriage?”
“No, not yet.”
“I have a daughter. Patrician on both sides. She’ll be eighteen the June after we stand for our joint consulships. Would you consent to a marriage between my daughter and your son in Quinctilis, three years from now?”
“I would indeed, Lucius Cornelius!”
“She’s well dowered. Her grandfather transferred her mother’s fortune to her before he died, some forty talents of silver. A bit over a million sesterces. Is that satisfactory?”
Pompeius Rufus nodded, well pleased. “We’ll start talking in the Forum about our joint candidature now, shall we?”
“An excellent idea! Best to get the electors so used to us that when the time comes they’ll vote for us automatically.”
“Ahah!” rumbled a voice from the door.
In walked Gaius Marius, sweeping past the gaping drinkers at a table near the counter without acknowledging their existence.
“Our revered Princeps Senatus said I’d find you here, Lucius Cornelius,” Marius said, sitting down. He turned his head toward Cloatius, hovering nearby. “Your usual vinegar will do, Cloatius.”
“So I should think,” said Publius Cloatius, discovering that the wine jug on the table was almost empty. “What do Italians know about wine, anyway?”
Marius grinned. “I piss on you, Cloatius! Mind your manners—and your tongue.”
The pleasantries disposed of, Marius settled to business, rather glad Pompeius Rufus was there.
“I want to find out how each of you stands on Marcus Livius’s new batch of laws,” he said.
“We’re both of the same opinion,” said Sulla, who had called to see Marius several times since his return, only to find the Great Man unavailable. He had no reason to suppose this treatment was purposive—indeed, common sense said it was not, that he had simply chosen his times badly. Yet he had gone away on the last occasion vowing he would not call again. Thus he had not told Marius what had happened in the East.
“And that opinion is?” asked Marius, apparently unaware he had offended Sulla.
“He’s right.”
“Good.” Marius leaned back to permit Publius Cloatius access to the table. “He needs every iota of support he can get for the land bill, and I’ve pledged myself to canvass on his behalf.”
“You’ll help,” said Sulla, and could find nothing else to say.
Marius now turned to Pompeius Rufus. “You’re a good urban praetor, Quintus Pompeius. When are you going to stand for consul?”
Pompeius Rufus looked excited. “That’s what Lucius Cornelius and I have just been talking about!” he cried. “We intend to stand together three years from now.”
“Clever!” said Marius appreciatively, seeing the point at once. “A perfect pair!” He laughed. “Keep that resolution, don’t dissolve your partnership. You’ll both get in easily.”
“We believe so,” said Pompeius Rufus contentedly. “In fact, we’ve sealed it with a marriage contract.”
Up went Marius’s right eyebrow. “Oh?”
“My daughter, his son,” said Sulla, a little defensively; why was it that Marius could unsettle him, when no one else had that power? Was it the man’s character, or his own insecurities?
Out came a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, splendid! Oh, well done!” Marius roared. “That solves the family dilemma superbly! From Julia through Aelia to Aurelia, they’ll be pleased.”
Sulla’s fine brows knitted. “What on earth do you mean?”
“My son and your daughter,” said Marius, tactless as ever. “It appears they like each other too much. But old dead Caesar said none of the cousins should marry—and I must say I agree with him. Which hasn’t stopped my son and your daughter making all sorts of absurd promises to each other.”
This was a shock to Sulla, who had never dreamed of such a union, and associated so little with his daughter that she had found no opportunity to talk to him about Young Marius. “Oho! I am away too much, Gaius Marius, I’ve been saying it for years.”
Pompeius Rufus listened to this exchange in some dismay, and now cleared his throat. “If there’s any difficulty, Lucius Cornelius, don’t worry about my son,” he said diffidently.
“No difficulty at all, Quintus Pompeius,” said Sulla firmly, “They’re first cousins and they’ve grown up together, no more than that. As you may have gathered from Gaius Marius, it was never our intention to see that particular match. The agreement I’ve made with you today scotches it nicely. Don’t you concur, Gaius Marius?”
“Indeed, Lucius Cornelius. Too much patrician blood, and first cousins into the bargain. Old dead Caesar said no.”
“Do you have a wife in mind for Young Marius?” asked Sulla curiously.
“I think so. Quintus Mucius Scaevola has a daughter who will come of age in four or five years. I’ve made overtures, and he isn’t averse.” Marius laughed irrepressibly. “I may be an Italian hayseed with no Greek, Lucius Cornelius, but it’s a rare Roman aristocrat who can resist the size of the fortune Young Marius will inherit one day!”
“Too true!” said Sulla, laughing just as hard. “So it only remains for me to find a wife for Young Sulla—and not one of Aurelia’s daughters!”
“How about one of Caepio’s daughters?” asked Marius, full of mischief. “Think of all that gold!”
“It’s a thought, Gaius Marius. There are two of them, aren’t there? Living with Marcus Livius?”
“That’s right. Julia was rather keen on the elder one for Young Marius, but I’m of the opinion that a Mucia will be much better for him politically.’’ For once in his life, Marius dredged up a morsel of diplomacy. “You’re differently situated, Lucius Cornelius. A Servilia Caepionis would be ideal.”
“I agree, she would. I’ll see to it.”
*
But the question of a wife for Young Sulla did not remain in Sulla’s mind beyond the moment in which he informed his daughter that she was to be betrothed to the son of Quintus Pompeius Rufus. Cornelia Sulla demonstrated only too clearly that she was Julilla’s child by opening her mouth and screaming, and going on screaming.
“Screech all you like,” said Sulla coldly, “it won’t make any difference, my girl. You’ll do as you’re told and marry whomsoever I say you’ll marry.”
“Go away, Lucius Cornelius!” cried Aelia, wringing her hands. “Your son is asking to see you. Leave me to deal with Cornelia Sulla, please!”
So Sulla went to see his son, still angry.
Young Sulla’s cold had not improved; the boy was still in bed, still plagued by aches and pains, still coughing up muck.
“This has got to stop, lad,” said Sulla lightly, sitting on the edge of the bed and kissing his son’s hot brow. “I know the weather is cold, but this room isn’t.”
“Who’s screaming?” asked Young Sulla, breath rasping.
“Your sister, Mormolyce take her!”
“Why?” asked Young Sulla, who was very fond of Cornelia Sulla.
“I’ve just told her that she’s to marry the son of Quintus Pompeius Rufus. But it appears she thought she was going to marry her cousin Young Marius.”
“Oh! We all thought she was going to marry Young Marius!” exclaimed Sulla’s son, shocked.
“No one ever suggested it, no one ever wanted it. Your avus Caesar was against marriage between any of you. Gaius Marius agrees. And so do I agree.” Sulla frowned. “Does this mean you have ideas of marrying one of the Julias?’’
“What, Lia or Ju-ju?” Young Sulla laughed merrily until the activity provoked a bout of coughing only assuaged when he brought up a mass of foul-smelling sputum. “No, tata,” he said when he could, “I can’t think of anything worse! Whom am I to marry?”
“I don’t know, my son. One thing I promise you, how-ever. I will ask you first if you like her,” said Sulla.
“You didn’t ask Cornelia.”
Sulla shrugged. “She’s a girl. Girls don’t get offered choices or favors. They just do as they’re told. The only reason a paterfamilias puts up with the expense of girls is so that he can use them to advance his own career, or his son’s. Otherwise, why feed and clothe them for eighteen years? They have to be well dowered, yet nothing comes back to the father’s family. No, my son, a girl’s only use is for advantage. Though, listening to your sister scream, I’m not sure we didn’t do things better in the old days, when we just chucked girl-babies in the Tiber.”
“It doesn’t seem fair, tata.”
“Why?” asked tata, surprised at his son’s continuing obtuseness. “Females are inferiors, young Lucius Cornelius. They weave their patterns in fabrics, not on the loom of time. They don’t have any importance in the world. They don’t make history. They don’t govern. We look after them because it is our duty. We shield them from worry, from poverty, from responsibility—that’s why, provided they don’t die in childbirth, they all live longer than we men do. In return, we demand obedience and respect from them.”
“I see,” said Young Sulla, accepting this explanation in the light it was tendered—a simple statement of pure fact.
“And now I must go. I have something to do,” said Sulla, getting up. “Are you eating?”
“A little, but it’s hard to keep food down.”
“I’ll be back later.”
“Don’t forget, tata. I won’t be asleep.”
First he had to behave normally, go off with Aelia to dinner at the house of Quintus Pompeius Rufus, very eager to commence friendly relations. Luckily Sulla had not indicated he would bring Cornelia Sulla along to meet the son; she had ceased her screaming, but, said Aelia, looking flustered, she had retired to her bed and announced she wouldn’t eat.
Nothing else poor Cornelia Sulla might have thought to do in protest could have affected Sulla the way that news did; the eyes he turned on Aelia were like bitter stars, blazing ice.
“That will stop!” he snapped, and was gone before Aelia could prevent him, down to Cornelia Sulla’s sleeping cubicle.
He came through the door and hauled the weeping girl out of her narrow bed in the same stride, heedless of her fear, dragging her up from the floor onto her toes with his fingers locked in her hair. Again and again his hand cracked across her face. She didn’t scream, she emitted shrieks so high-pitched they were scarcely audible, more terrified by the look on her father’s face than by his physical abuse.
Perhaps twelve times he struck her, then threw her away like a stuffed doll, so angry he didn’t care if the violence of his thrust killed her.
“Don’t do it, girl,” he said then, very softly. “Don’t you try to bluff me with starvation! As far as I’m concerned, it would be good riddance! Your mother almost died because she wouldn’t eat. But let me tell you, you won’t do it to me! Starve yourself to death, or choke on the food I’ll have forced down your throat with a lot less consideration than a farmer gives to his goose! You will marry young Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and you’ll do it with a smile on your face and a song on your lips, or I’ll kill you. Do you hear me? I will kill you, Cornelia.”
Her face was on fire, her eyes blackened, her lips swollen and split, her nose running blood, but the pain in her heart was far, far worse. In all her life she hadn’t known this kind of rage existed, or feared her father, or worried for her own safety. “I hear you, Father,” she whispered.
Aelia was waiting outside the door, tears running down her cheeks, but when she went to enter Sulla grabbed her cruelly by one arm, and pulled her away.
“Please, Lucius Cornelius, please!” Aelia moaned, the wife in her terrified, the mother in her anguished.
“Leave her alone,” he said.
“I must go to her! She needs me!”
“She’ll stay where she is, and no one will go to her.”
“Then let me stay home, please!” Try though she did to stem her tears, she was weeping harder.
Sulla’s towering rage toppled, he could hear his heart beating, tears were close to the surface in him too—tears of reaction, not tears of grief. “All right, then stay home,” he said harshly, and drew a quivering breath. “I shall represent the family joy at the prospect of this marriage. But don’t go to her, Aelia, or I’ll deal with you as I’ve dealt with her.”
Thus he went alone to the house of Quintus Pompeius Rufus, on the Palatine, but overlooking the Forum Romanum; and made a good impression upon the delighted Pompeius Rufus family, including its women, who were tickled at the thought that young Quintus would be marrying a patrician Julio-Cornelian. Young Quintus was a handsome fellow, green-eyed and auburn-haired, tall and graceful, but it didn’t take Sulla long to estimate his intelligence at about half that of his father. Which was all to the good; he would fill the consulship because his father had, he would breed red-haired children with Cornelia Sulla, and he would be a good husband, as faithful as considerate. In fact, thought Sulla, smiling in private amusement, little though his daughter would admit it did she know, young Quintus Pompeius Rufus would be far pleasanter and more tractable to live with than that spoiled and arrogant pup Gaius Marius had spawned.
Since the Pompeii Rufi were still at heart country folk, the dinner was well over before darkness fell, even though Rome was in the depths of seasonal winter. Knowing he had one more task to perform before he went home, Sulla stood atop the Ringmakers’ Steps leading down to the Via Nova and the Forum Romanum, and looked into the distance frowningly. Too far to walk out to see Metrobius, and too dangerous too. Where else might he fill in an hour or so?
The answer came the moment his eyes rested upon the smoky declivity of the Subura—Aurelia, of course. Gaius Julius Caesar was off again governing Asia Province. Provided he made sure Aurelia was adequately chaperoned, why shouldn’t he pay her a visit? He ran down the steps with the ease and suppleness of a man far junior to himself in years, and strode off toward the Clivus Orbius, the quickest way to the Subura Minor and that triangular insula of Aurelia’s.
Eutychus admitted him, but a little reluctantly; Aurelia’s manner was much the same.
“Are your children up?” Sulla asked.
She smiled wryly. “Unfortunately, yes. I seem to have bred owls, not larks. They hate to go to bed, and they hate to get up.”
“Then give them a treat,” he said, sitting down on a well-padded and comfortable couch. “Invite them to join us, Aurelia. There are no better chaperones than one’s children.”
Her face lightened. “You are quite right, Lucius Cornelius.”
So their mother settled the children in a far corner of the room, the two girls grown tall because they were nearing puberty, and the boy grown tall because that was his fate, always to be much taller than the rest.
“It’s good to see you,” Sulla said, ignoring the wine the steward put at his elbow.
“And good to see you.”
“Better than last time, eh?”
She laughed. “Oh, that! I was in serious trouble with my husband, Lucius Cornelius.”
“I understood that! Why? No loyaler or chaster wife ever lived than you, as I have good cause to know.”
“Oh, he didn’t think I had been disloyal, any more than he believed I had been unchaste. The trouble between Gaius Julius and me is more—theoretical,” said Aurelia.
“Theoretical?” asked Sulla, smiling broadly.
“He doesn’t like the neighborhood. He doesn’t like my acting as a landlady. He doesn’t like Lucius Decumius. And he doesn’t like the way I’m raising our children, who can all speak the local cant as well as they can speak Palatine Latin. They also speak about three different kinds of Greek, plus Aramaic, Hebrew, Arvernian Gallic, Aeduan Gallic, Tolosan Gallic, and Lycian.”
“Lycian?”
“We have a Lycian family on the third floor these days, you see. The children go wherever they like, not to mention that they pick up languages the way you or I might pick up pebbles on a beach. I didn’t realize the Lycians had a language of their own, and incredibly antique too. It’s akin to Pisidian.”
“Did you have a very bad argument with Gaius Julius?”
She shrugged, pulled her mouth down. “Bad enough.”
“Made worse by the fact that you stood up for yourself in a most unladylike, un-Roman-woman way,” said Sulla tenderly, fresh from assaulting his own daughter for doing exactly that. But Aurelia was Aurelia, she couldn’t be measured by any standards save her own—as many people said, with admiration rather than condemnation, so strong was her spell.
“I’m afraid I did stand up for myself,” she said, not seeming very sorry. “In fact, I stood up for myself so well that my husband lost.” Her eyes were suddenly sorrowful. “And that, as I’m sure you will appreciate, Lucius Cornelius, was the worst part about our difference of opinion. No man of his status likes losing a fight with his wife. So he retreated into a kind of aloof disinterest and wouldn’t even consider a re-match, for all my prodding. Oh, dear!”
“Has he fallen out of love with you?”
“I don’t think so. I wish he had! It would make life a great deal easier for him when he’s here,” she said.
“So you wear the toga these days.”
“I am afraid so. Purple border and all.”
His lips thinned, he nodded wisely. “You should have been a man, Aurelia. I never saw it until now, but it’s a truth.”
“You’re right, Lucius Cornelius.”
“So he was glad to go away to Asia Province, and you were glad to see him go, eh?”
“You’re right again, Lucius Cornelius.”
He passed then to his trip to the East, and gained one more auditor; Young Caesar scrambled up beside his mother on her couch, and listened avidly as Sulla recounted the story of his meetings with Mithridates, Tigranes, and the Parthian envoys.
The boy was almost nine years old. And more beautiful than ever, Sulla noted, unable to take his eyes off that fair face. So like Young Sulla! Yet not like Young Sulla at all. He had emerged from his questioning phase and passed into his listening phase, and sat leaning against Aurelia, eyes shining, lips parted, his face a constantly changing panorama reflecting his mind, his body still.
At the end he had questions to ask, asking them with more intelligence than Scaurus, more education than Marius, more interest than either. How does he know all this? asked Sulla of himself, finding himself speaking with an eight-year-old on precisely the same level as he had with Scaurus and Marius.
“What do you think will happen?” Sulla asked, not because he patronized, but because he was intrigued.
“War with Mithridates and Tigranes,” said Young Caesar.
“Not war with the Parthians?”
“Not for a long time to come. But if we win a war against Mithridates and Tigranes, it brings Pontus and Armenia within our fold, and then the Parthians will start to worry about Rome the way Mithridates and Tigrane’s do at the moment.”
Sulla nodded. “Quite right, Young Caesar.”
For a further hour they talked, then Sulla rose to go, ruffling Young Caesar’s hair in farewell. Aurelia walked with him to the door, shaking her head slightly to the hovering Eutychus, who began to shepherd children bedward.
“How is everyone?” Aurelia asked, allowing Sulla to open the door onto the Vicus Patricius, still thronged with people, even though darkness had long fallen.
“Young Sulla has a bad cold, and Cornelia Sulla a very sore face,” he said, unconcerned.
“Young Sulla I understand, but what happened to your girl?”
“I walloped her.”
“Oh, I see! For what crime, Lucius Cornelius?”
“It appears she and Young Marius had decided they would marry when the time came. But I’ve just promised her to the son of Quintus Pompeius Rufus. She decided to show her independence by starving herself to death.”
“Ecastor! I suppose the poor child didn’t even know about her mother’s efforts in that direction?”
“No.”
“But she knows now.”
“She certainly does.”
“Well, I know the young man slightly, and I’m sure she’ll be a lot happier with him than she would with Young Marius!”
Sulla laughed. “My thoughts exactly.”
“What about Gaius Marius?”
“Oh, he didn’t want the match either.” Sulla’s top lip curled up to show his teeth. “He’s after Scaevola’s daughter.”
“He’ll get her without too much trouble—ave, Turpillia.” This last was said to a passing crone, who promptly stopped walking and stood looking as if she wanted to talk.
Sulla took his leave, while Aurelia leaned against the doorframe and looked attentive as Turpillia started to speak.
It never worried Sulla to traverse the Subura after dark, any more than it worried Aurelia to see him disappear into the night. No one molested Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The moment he entered them, he had the stews of Rome written all over him. If anything about his conduct might have puzzled Aurelia, it was the fact that he walked off up the Vicus Patricius instead of down it toward the Forum Romanum and the Palatine.
He was going to see Censorinus, who lived on the upper Viminal in the street which led to the Punic apple tree. A respectable knightly neighborhood, but not nearly imposing enough to house one who sported an emerald quizzing-glass.
At first it seemed as if Censorinus ‘s steward was going to deny him entry, but Sulla could always deal with that; he simply looked nasty, and something in the steward’s mind clattered a warning so strong that he automatically held the door wide open. Still smiling nastily, Sulla walked through the narrow passage which led from the front door to the reception room of the ground-floor insula apartment, and stood looking about him while the steward pattered off to find his master.
Oh, yes, very nice! The frescoes on the walls were newly done, and in the latest style, rich red panels depicting the events which led to the yielding up of Briseis to Agamemnon by the Prince of Phthia, Achilles; they were framed in beautifully painted artificial agate-stones which merged into a splendid dark green dado, also painted rather than the real thing. The floor was a colored mosaic, the drapes were a purple so black it was definitely Tyrian, and the couches were covered with gold and purple tapestry of the best workmanship. Not bad for a middling member of the Ordo Equester, thought Sulla.
An angry Censorinus emerged from the passage to his inner rooms, baffled by the conduct of his steward, who did not appear.
“Well, what do you want?” Censorinus demanded.
“Your emerald quizzing-glass,” said Sulla gently.
“My what?”
“You know, Censorinus, the one given to you by the agents of King Mithridates.”
“King Mithridates? I don’t know what you mean! I have no such object as an emerald quizzing-glass.”
“Nonsense, of course you do. Give it to me.”
Censorinus choked, face purple, then pallid.
“Do give me your emerald quizzing-glass, Censorinus!”
“I’ll give you nothing except conviction and exile!”
Before Censorinus could move, Sulla was standing so close to him that it might have passed to an onlooker as a farcical embrace; and then Sulla’s hands were on his shoulders, but not like a lover’s. They bit, they hurt, they were iron claws.
“Listen, you contemptible maggot, I’ve killed better men by far than you,” said Sulla very softly, his tones actually amorous. “Stay out of court, or you’ll be dead. I mean it! Abandon this ridiculous prosecution of me, or you’ll be dead. As dead as a legendary strongman named Hercules Atlas. As dead as a woman with a broken neck below the cliffs of Circei. As dead as a thousand Germans. As dead as anyone is who threatens me and mine. As dead as Mithridates will be, if I decide he must die. You can tell him that when you see him. He’ll believe you! He clipped his tail between his legs and fled Cappadocia when I told him to go. Because he knew. Now you know, don’t you?”
There was no reply, nor did Censorinus attempt to struggle free of that cruel hold. Still and quiet save for his breathing, he gazed at Sulla’s too-close face as if he had never seen this man before, and did not know what to do.
One of Sulla’s hands left Censorinus’s shoulder to slip inside his tunic, its fingers reaching for what was on the end of a stout leather cord; the other of Sulla’s hands slipped from Censorinus’s other shoulder and clamped around his scrotum, and crushed it. While Censorinus screamed as shrilly as a dog when the wheels of a wagon pass over it, Sulla ripped the leather thong apart with the fingers of one hand as easily as if it had been made of wool, then put the flashing green thing dangling from it inside his toga. No one came running to see who screamed. Sulla turned on his heel and walked out without hurrying.
“Oh, I feel better!” he cried as he opened the door, and laughed so long that only its closing shut the sound from out of Censorinus’s ears.
*
Rage and frustration at the conduct of Cornelia Sulla vanished, home Sulla went with footsteps as light as a child’s, face a picture of happiness. Happiness wiped away in the thinnest sliver of time when he opened his own front door and discovered, instead of the hushed, dimly lit peace of sleeping tenants, a blaze of light from every lamp, a huddle of strange young men, a steward wiping tears from his streaming eyes.
“What is it?” Sulla asked, gasping.
“Your son, Lucius Cornelius!” cried the steward.
Sulla waited to hear no more, but ran to the room off the peristyle-garden where Aelia had put the boy to get over his cold. She was standing outside its door, wrapped in a shawl.
“What is it?” Sulla asked again, grabbing at her.
“Young Sulla is very ill,” she whispered. “I called the doctors two hours ago.”
Pushing the doctors aside, Sulla appeared beside his son’s bed looking benevolent and relaxed.
“What is this, Young Sulla, giving everybody such a fright?”
“Father!” Young Sulla cried, smiling.
“What’s the matter?”
“So cold, Father! Do you mind if I call you tata in front of strangers?”
“Of course not.”
“The pain, it’s terrible!”
“Whereabouts, my son?”
“Behind my breast-bone, tata. So cold!”
He breathed shallowly, loudly, with obvious distress; to Sulla it seemed a parody of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle’s death scene, which perhaps was why Sulla could not believe in this as a death scene. Yet Young Sulla looked as if he were dying. Impossible!
“Don’t talk, my son. Can you lie down?” This, because the doctors had propped him into a sitting position.
“Can’t breathe, lying down.” The eyes, ringed with what looked like black bruises, looked up at him piteously. “Tata, please don’t go away, will you?”
“I’m here, Lucius. I won’t go away for a moment.”
But as soon as possible Sulla did draw Apollodorus Siculus out of earshot to ask him what the matter was.
“An inflammation of the lungs, Lucius Cornelius, difficult to deal with at any time, but more difficult in your son’s case.”
“Why more difficult?”
“The heart is involved, I fear. We do not quite know what is the significance of the heart, though I believe that it assists the liver. Young Lucius Cornelius’s lungs are swollen, and have transmitted some of their fluids to the envelope wrapping up the heart. It is being squashed.” Apollodorus Siculus looked frightened; the price he paid for his fame was paid on occasions like this, when he had to tell some august Roman that the patient was beyond the skills of any physician. “The prognosis is grave, Lucius Cornelius. I fear there is nothing I or any other doctor can do.”
Sulla took it well outwardly, and had besides a reasonable streak which told him the physician was completely sincere—that, if he could, he would cure. A good physician, though most were quacks—look at the way he had investigated the death of Piggle-wiggle. But every body was subject to storms of such magnitude the doctors were rendered helpless, despite their lancets, their clysters, their poultices, their potions, their magical herbs. It was luck. And Sulla saw now that his beloved son did not have luck. The goddess Fortune did not care for him.
Back he went to the bed, pushed the heaped pillows aside and took their place, holding his son within his arms.
“Oh, tata, that does feel better! Don’t leave me!”
“I won’t budge, my son. I love you more than the world.”
For many hours he sat holding his lad up, his cheek on the dulled wet hair, listening to the labored breathing, the staccato gasps which were evidence of that remorseless pain. The boy could not be persuaded to cough anymore, the agony of it was too much to bear, nor could he be persuaded to drink, his lips encrusted with fever sores, his tongue furred and dark. Occasionally he spoke, always to his father, in a voice growing gradually weaker, more mumbling, the words he said ever less lucid, less sensible, until he wandered without logic or reason in a world too strange to comprehend.
Thirty hours later he died in his father’s numbed arms. Not once had Sulla moved, except at the boy’s request; he had not eaten or drunk, had not relieved bladder or bowels, yet knew no discomfort whatsoever, so important was it that he be there for his son. It might have been a comfort for the father had Young Sulla acknowledged him at the moment of death, but Young Sulla had moved far from the room where he lay, the arms in which he lay, and died unknowing.
Everyone feared Lucius Cornelius Sulla. So it was in breathless fear that four physicians loosened Sulla’s arms from about his breathless son, helped Sulla to his feet and held him on them, laid the boy out on his bed. But Sulla said or did nothing to inspire this fear; he behaved like the sanest, most admirable man. When he regained the use of his spasmed muscles, he helped them wash the boy and clothe him in the purple-bordered toga of childhood; in December of this year, on the feast of Juventas, he would have become a man. To allow weeping slaves to change the bed, he picked up his son’s limp grey form and held it in his arms, then laid him down on the fresh clean sheets, tucked his arms along his sides, put the coins on his eyelids to keep them closed, and slipped the coin into his mouth to pay Charon the price of that last lonely voyage.
Nor had Aelia moved from the doorway during all those terrible hours; now Sulla took her by the shoulders and guided her to a chair beside the bed, sat her down so she could look at the boy she had reared from his nursery days, and thought of as her own. Cornelia Sulla was there, face frightful from punishment; and Julia, and Gaius Marius, and Aurelia.
Sulla greeted them like a sane man, accepted their tearful condolences, even smiled a little, and answered their hesitant questions in a firm clear voice.
“I must bathe and change,” he said then. “It’s dawn of the day I stand my trial in the treason court. Though my son’s death would serve as a legitimate excuse, I will not give Censorinus the satisfaction. Gaius Marius, will you accompany me as soon as I’m ready to go?”
“Gladly, Lucius Cornelius,” said Marius gruffly, wiping the tears from his eyes. He had never admired Sulla more.
But first Sulla went to his house’s modest latrine, and found no one, slave or free, inside it. His bowels loosened at last, he sat alone in that place, with its four shaped seats in the marble bench, listening to the deep sound of running water below, his hands fiddling with the disordered folds of his toga, which he had not thought to remove before settling to that last vigil with his son. His fingers encountered an object, wondering; he drew it forth to look at it in the growing light, only recognizing it from some huge distance, as if it belonged to another life. The emerald quizzing-glass of Censorinus! When he was done and had tidied himself, he turned to face the marble bench, and dropped the priceless thing down into the void. The water ran too loudly to hear its splash.
As he appeared in the atrium to join Gaius Marius, walk down to the Forum Romanum, some strange agency had given him back every atom of the beauty of his youth, so that he shone, and everyone who saw him gasped.
He and Gaius Marius trod in silence all the way to the Pool of Curtius, where several hundred knights had gathered to offer themselves for jury duty, and the court officials were readying the jars to draw the lots; eighty-one would be chosen, but fifteen would be removed at the request of the prosecution, and fifteen at the request of the defense, leaving fifty-one—twenty-six knights, and twenty-five senators. That extra knight was the price the Senate had paid to put the courts under senatorial presidency.
Time wore on. The jurors were chosen. And when Censorinus had not appeared, the defense, led by Crassus Orator and Scaevola, was permitted to remove its fifteen jurors. Still Censorinus did not come. At noon, the entire court restless, and now in possession of the knowledge that the defendant had come straight from his only son’s deathbed, the President sent a messenger to Censorinus’s house to find out where he was. Long moments later, the clerk returned with the news that Censorinus had packed up his portable belongings the day before and left for an unknown destination abroad.
“This court is dismissed,” said the President. “Lucius Cornelius, you have our profound apologies as well as our condolences.”
“I’ll walk with you, Lucius Cornelius,” said Marius. “An odd situation, this! What happened to him?”
“Thank you, Gaius Marius, I would prefer to be alone,” said Sulla calmly. “As for Censorinus, I imagine he’s gone to seek asylum with King Mithridates.” There came a hideous grin. “I had a little word with him, you see.”
From the Forum Romanum, Sulla walked swiftly in the direction of the Esquiline Gate. Almost completely covering the Campus Esquilinus outside the Servian Walls lay Rome’s necropolis, a veritable city of tombs—some humble, some splendid, most in between—housing the ashes of Rome’s inhabitants, citizens and non-citizens, slaves and free, native and foreign.
On the eastern side of a great crossroads some hundreds of paces from the Servian Walls stood the temple of Venus Libitina, she who ruled the extinction of the life force. Surrounded by a large grove of cypresses, it was a beautiful building, painted a rich green with purple columns, their Ionic capitals picked out in gold and red, and a yellow roof to its portico. The many steps were paved with a deep pink terrazzo, and the pediment portrayed the gods and goddesses of the Underworld in vivid colors; atop the peak of the temple roof was a wonderful gilded statue of Venus Libitina herself, riding in a car drawn by mice, harbingers of death.
Here amid the cypress grove the Guild of Undertakers set up their stalls and touted for business, not a doleful or sad or hushed activity. Prospective customers were grabbed at, harangued, coaxed, badgered, cajoled, prodded and pushed and pulled, for undertaking was a business like any other, and this was the marketplace of the servants of death. Sulla passed like a ghost among the booths, his uncanny knack of repelling people keeping even the most importunate at bay until he came to the firm which buried the Cornelii, and made his arrangements.
The actors would be sent to his house for instructions on the following day, and all would be splendidly readied for the funeral, to be held on the third day; a Cornelius, Young Sulla would be inhumed rather than cremated, as was the family tradition. Sulla paid in full with a promissory note for twenty silver talents at his bank, the price of a funeral Rome would talk about for days, and did not count the cost, he who normally squeezed every sestertius so carefully, so ungenerously.
At home again, he sent Aelia and Cornelia Sulla out of the room where Young Sulla lay and sat in Aelia’s chair, staring at his devastated son. He didn’t know what he felt, how he felt. The grief, the loss, the finality of it all sat within him like a huge lead boulder; to carry the burden was as much as he could manage, he had nothing left over with which to explore his feelings. There before him lay the ruin of his house, there lay all that was left of his dearest friend, the companion of his old age, the heir to his name, his fortune, his reputation, his public career. Vanished in the space of thirty hours, a decision of no god, not even a whim of fate. The cold had worsened, the lungs had become inflamed, and the heart squeezed dry of animation. The story of a thousand illnesses. No one’s fault, no one’s design. An accident. For the boy, who could know nothing, feel nothing, it was simply the end of life, suffered to conclusion. For those left behind, knowing all, feeling all, it was the prelude to an emptiness in the midst of life that would not cease until life was over. His son was dead. His friend was gone forever.
When Aelia came back two hours later he went to his study, and sat to write a note to Metrobius.
My son is dead. The last time you came to my house, my wife died. Given your trade, you ought to be precursor of joy, the deus ex machina of the play. Instead, you are the veiled one, precursor of sorrow.
Never come to my house again. I see now that my patroness, Fortuna, does not permit rivals. For I have loved you with that same space inside me she regards as exclusively her own. I have set you up like an idol. To me, you have become the personification of perfect love. But she demands to be that. And she is female, both beginning and end of every man.
If a day should come when Fortune finishes with me, I shall call to you. Until that day, nothing. My son was a good son, a fitting and proper son. A Roman. Now he is dead, and I am alone. I do not want you.
He sealed it carefully, summoned his steward, and instructed him as to whereabouts it was to be sent. Then stared at the wall whereon—how strange life was!—Achilles sat on the edge of a bier, holding Patroclus within his arms. Obviously influenced by the tragic masks of the great plays, the artist had put a look of gape-mouthed agony upon the face of Achilles that seemed to Sulla utterly wrong, a presumptuous incursion into a world of private pain never to be shown to the motley. He clapped his hands, and when his steward returned, said, “Tomorrow, find someone to remove that painting there.”
“Lucius Cornelius, the undertakers have been. The lectus funebris is set up in the atrium ready to receive your son for his lying in state,” said the steward, weeping.
Inspecting the bier, which was beautifully carved and gilded, with black cloth and black pillows upon it, Sulla nodded his approval. He carried his son to it himself, feeling the beginning of the rigor of death; the pillows were piled up and the boy placed in a sitting position, his arms held up by more pillows. Here in the atrium he would remain until eight black-clad bearers picked up the lectus funebris and carried it in the funeral procession. Its head was aligned with the door to the peristyle-garden, its foot with the outside door, on the street side of which cypress branches were fixed.
On the third day, the funeral of Young Sulla took place. As a mark of courtesy toward one who had been praetor urbanus and would in all likelihood be consul, public business in the Forum Romanum had been suspended; those who would have been engaged in it waited instead for the cortege to appear, all clad in the toga pulla, the black toga of mourning. Because of the chariots, the procession originating at Sulla’s house wended its way down the Clivus Victoriae to the Velabrum, turned into the Vicus Tuscus, and entered the Forum Romanum between the temple of Castor and Pollux and the Basilica Sempronia. First came two undertakers in black togas, then came black-clad musicians playing straight military trumpets, curved horns, and flutes made from the shinbones of Roman enemies slain in battle. The dirges were solemn, owning little melody or grace. With the musicians came the black-clad women who earned their livings as proper professional mourners, keening their own dirges and beating their breasts, every last one of them weeping genuine tears. A group of dancers followed, twisting and turning in ritual movements older than Rome herself, waving cypress branches. And after them came the actors wearing the five wax masks of Sulla’s ancestors, each riding in a black chariot drawn by two black horses; then came the bier, held on high by eight black-garbed freedmen who had once belonged to Sulla’s stepmother, Clitumna, and had passed into Sulla’s clientele when she freed them in her will. Sulla walked in the rear of the lectus funebris, his black toga pulled up to veil his head; with him walked his nephew, Lucius Nonius, Gaius Marius, Sextus Julius Caesar, Quintus Lutatius Caesar and his two brothers, Lucius Julius Caesar and Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo, all with their heads veiled; and behind the men walked the women, dressed in black but bareheaded, hair in disarray.
At the rostra the musicians, professional mourners, dancers, and undertakers assembled in the Forum below the back wall, while the actors wearing the wax masks were guided by attendants up the steps to the top of the rostra and seated upon ivory curule chairs. They wore the purple-bordered toga of Sulla’s ancestors’ high rank, that Sulla who had been flamen Dialis robed in his priestly garments. The bier was put upon the rostra, and the mourning relatives—all save Lucius Nonius and Aelia attached in some way to the Julian house—ascended it to stand and hear the eulogy. Sulla delivered it himself, very briefly.
“Today I bury my only son,” he said to the silent crowd which had gathered. “He was a member of the gens Cornelia, of a branch two hundred and more years old, containing consuls and priests, most venerable men. In December he too would have become a Cornelian man. But it was not to be. At the time of his death, he was almost fifteen years old.”
He turned to look at the family mourners, Young Marius in a black toga with his head veiled, for he had put on the toga of manhood; his new status placed him well away from Cornelia Sulla, who gazed at him sorrowfully from out of a torn and swollen face. Aurelia was there, and Julia, but while Julia wept and physically supported Aelia, Aurelia stood erect and tearless, looking more grim than sad.
“My son was a beautiful fellow, well loved and well cared for. His mother died when he was very young, but his stepmother has been all that his real mother might have been. Had he lived, he would have proven a true scion of a noble patrician house, for he was educated, intelligent, interested, courageous. When I traveled to the East to interview the Kings of Pontus and Armenia, he went with me, and survived all the dangers foreign places entail. He saw my meeting with the Parthian envoys, and would have been the logical man of his generation for Rome to send to deal with them. He was my best companion, my loyalest follower. That illness should cut him down inside Rome was his fate. Rome will be the poorer, as I and all my family are the poorer. I bury him now with great love and greater sorrow, and offer you gladiators for his funeral games.”
The ceremonies on the rostra were now concluded; everyone got up, the cortege reassembled to wend its way toward the Capena Gate, for Sulla had procured his son a tomb upon the Via Appia, where most of the Cornelii were buried. At the door of the tomb Young Sulla was lifted by his father from his funeral couch, and placed inside a marble sarcophagus mounted upon skids. The lid was levered into position, it was pushed into the tomb by the freedmen who had carried the boy’s bier, and the skids removed. Sulla closed the great bronze door. And closed a part of himself inside as well. His son was gone. Nothing could ever be the same again.