It was an arena quite as stormy as any theater of war that spring, for Aulus Sempronius Asellio ran foul of the moneylenders. The finances of Rome, both .public and private, were in a worse condition even than during the second Punic war, when Hannibal had occupied Italy and isolated Rome. Money was hiding throughout the business community, the Treasury was virtually empty, and little was coming in. Even the parts of Campania still in Roman hands were too chaotic to permit the orderly collecting of rents; the quaestors were finding it hard to make anyone pay customs duties and port dues, while one of the two biggest ports, Brundisium, was completely cut off; the Italians were now nonpaying insurgents; pleading King Mithridates as an excuse, Asia Province was proving dilatory in returning its contracted incomes to Rome; Bithynia was paying nothing at all; and the incomes from Africa and Sicily were eaten up in extra purchases of wheat before they left Africa or Sicily. To make matters worse, Rome was actually in debt to one of her own provinces, Italian Gaul, from which area most of her weapons and armaments were coming. The one-in-eight plated silver denarius issue of Marcus Livius Drusus had given everyone an extreme mistrust of coined money, and too many sesterces were minted in an attempt to get around this difficulty. Borrowing was rife among those of middle and upper income, and the lending interest rate was higher than in history.
Having a good business head, Aulus Sempronius Asellio decided that the best way to improve matters was to act to relieve debt. His technique was attractive and legal; he invoked an ancient statute which forbade charging a fee for lending money. In other words, said Asellio, it was illegal to levy interest on loans. That the antique law had been ignored for centuries and that usury was a thriving business among a large group of knight-financiers was just too bad. The fact was, announced Asellio, that far more knight-financiers were in the business of borrowing money than lending it. Until their distress was relieved, no one in Rome could begin to recover. The number of unrepaid loans was escalating daily, debtors were at their wits’ end, and—as the bankruptcy courts were closed along with all the other courts—creditors were resorting to violent means in order to collect their debts.
Before Asellio could enforce his revival of that old law, the moneylenders heard of his intention and petitioned him to reopen the bankruptcy courts.
“Tat?” he cried. “What? Here is Rome devastated by the most serious crisis since Hannibal, and the men I see in front of my tribunal are actually petitioning me to make matters worse? As far as I’m concerned, you are a small number of repellently avaricious men, and so I take leave to tell you! Go away! If you don’t, you’ll get a court reopened, all right! A court specially convened to prosecute you for lending money with interest!”
From this stand Asellio refused to be budged. If he could do no more for Rome’s debtors than to insist that interest was illegal, he was nonetheless lightening the burden of debt enormously, and in a perfectly legal way. Let the capital be repaid, by all means. But not the interest. The Sempronii, Asellio’s family, had a tradition of protecting the distressed; burning to follow in his family’s tradition, Asellio espoused his mission with all the fervor of a fanatic, dismissing his enemies as impotent in the face of the law.
What he failed to take into account was that not all his enemies were knights. There were also senators in the money lending business, despite the fact that membership in the Senate forbade any purely commercial activity—especially one as unspeakably sordid as usury. Included among the senatorial moneylenders was Lucius Cassius, a tribune of the plebs. At the outbreak of war he had gone into the business because his senatorial census income was barely enough; but as Rome’s chances of winning deteriorated, Cassius found himself with everything he had lent outstanding, no payments coming in, and the prospect of scrutiny by the new censors looming ever closer. Though Lucius Cassius was by no means the biggest moneylender in the Senate, he was the youngest, he was desperate to the point of panic, and by nature he was a rather lawless individual. Cassius acted, not only on his own behalf; he engaged himself to act for all the usurers.
Asellio was an augur. As he was also the urban praetor, he inspected the omens on behalf of the city regularly from the podium of the temple of Castor and Pollux. A few days after his confrontation with the moneylenders he was already taking the auspices when he noticed that the crowd in the Forum below him was much larger than the usual gathering to witness an augury.
As he lifted a bowl to pour out a libation, someone threw a stone at him. It struck him just above the left brow, spinning him around, and the bowl flew from his hands to bounce down the temple steps in a series of ringing clatters, sacred water splashing everywhere. Then came more stones, storms of them; crouching low and pulling his particolored toga further over his head, Asellio ran down the steps and headed instinctively for the temple of Vesta. But the good elements in the crowd fled the moment they realized what was afoot, and the irate moneylenders who were his assailants positioned themselves between Asellio and sanctuary at Vesta’s holy hearth.
There was only one way left for him to go, through the narrow passage called the Clivus Vestae and up the Vestal Steps onto the Via Nova, scant feet above the floor of the Forum. With the usurers in full cry after him, Asellio ran for his life into the Via Nova, a street of taverns serving Forum Romanum and Palatine both. Screaming for help, he burst into the establishment belonging to Publius Cloatius.
No help was forthcoming. While two men held Cloatius and two more his assistant, the rest of the crowd picked Asellio up bodily and stretched him out across a table in much the same way as an augur’s acolytes dealt with the sacrificial victim. Someone cut his throat with such gusto that the knife scraped on the column of bones behind it, and there across the table Asellio died in a fountain of blood, while Publius Cloatius wept and vowed, shrieking, that he knew no one in that crowd, no one!
Nor, it appeared, did anyone else in Rome. Appalled by the sacrilegious aspects of the deed as much as by the murder itself, the Senate offered a reward of ten thousand denarii for information leading to the apprehension of the assassins, publicly deploring the killing of an augur clad in full regalia and in the midst of an official ceremony. When not a whisper surfaced during the ensuing eight days, the Senate added more incentives to its reward—pardon for an accomplice, manumission for a slave of either sex, promotion to a rural tribe for a freedman or freedwoman. Still not a whisper.
*
“What can you expect?” asked Gaius Marius of Young Caesar as they shuffled round the peristyle-garden. “The moneylenders covered it up, of course.”
“So Lucius Decumius says.”
Marius stopped. “How much congress do you have with that arch-villain, Young Caesar?” he demanded.
“A lot, Gaius Marius. He’s a thousand paces deep in all sorts of information.”
“Not fit for your ears, most of it, I’ll bet.”
Young Caesar grinned. “My ears grew, along with the rest of me, in the Subura. I doubt there’s much can mortify them.”
“Cheeky!” The massive right hand came out in a gentle cuff to the boy’s head.
“This garden is too small for us, Gaius Marius. If you want to get any real use back in your left side, we’re going to have to walk farther and faster.’’ It was said with firmness and authority, in a tone which brooked no argument.
He got it anyway. “I am not permitting Rome to see me like this!” roared Gaius Marius.
Young Caesar deliberately relinquished his grasp of Marius’s left arm and let the Great Man totter unsupported. When the prospect of a fall seemed inevitable, the boy moved back and propped Marius up with deceptive ease. It never failed to amaze Marius how much strength that slight frame contained, nor had it failed to register upon Marius that Young Caesar used his strength with an uncanny instinct as to where and how it would prove of maximum effect.
“Gaius Marius, I stopped calling you Uncle when I came to you after your stroke because I thought your stroke put us on much the same level. Your dignitas is diminished, mine is enhanced. We are equals. But in some things I am definitely your superior,” said the boy fearlessly. “As a favor to my mother—and because I thought I could be of help to a great man—I gave up my free time to keep you company and get you walking again. You declined to lie on your couch and have me read to you, and the mine of stories you had to tell me are all told. I know every flower and every shrub and every weed in this whole garden! And I say to you straight, it has outlived its purpose. Tomorrow we’re going out the door into the Clivus Argentarius. I don’t care whether we go up it and onto the Campus Martius, or whether we go down it through the Porta Fontinalis. But tomorrow we go out!”
Fierce brown eyes glared down into rather chilly blue ones; no matter how Marius disciplined himself to ignore it, Young Caesar’s eyes always reminded him of Sulla’s. Like encountering some huge cat on a hunting expedition, and discovering that the orbs which ought to be yellow were instead a pale blue ringed round with midnight. Such cats were considered visitors from the Underworld; perhaps too were such men?
The duel of gazes continued unabated.
“I won’t go,” said Marius.
“You will go.”
“The gods rot you, Young Caesar! I cannot give in to a boy! Haven’t you some more diplomatic way of putting things?”
Pure amusement flooded into those unsettling eyes, gave them a life and attractiveness quite alien to Sulla’s. “When dealing with you, Gaius Marius, there is no such thing as diplomacy,” said Young Caesar. “Diplomatic language is the prerogative of diplomats. You are not a diplomat, which is a mercy. One always knows where one stands with Gaius Marius. And that I like as much as I like you.”
“You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you, boy?” Marius asked, feeling his will crumble. First the steel, then the fur mitten. What a technique!
“You’re right, I will not take no for an answer.”
“Well then, sit me down over there, boy. If we are to go out tomorrow, I’m going to need a rest now.” A rumble came up through his throat. “How about we go outside with me in a litter, all the way to the Via Recta? Then I could hop out and we could walk to your heart’s content.”
“When we get as far as the Via Recta, Gaius Marius, it will be as the result of our own efforts.”
For a while they sat in silence, Young Caesar keeping himself perfectly still; it had not taken him long to realize that Marius detested fidgeting, and when he had said so to his mother, she had simply observed that if such was the case, learning not to fidget would be very good training. He might have discovered how to get the best of Gaius Marius, but he couldn’t get the best of his mother!
What had been required of him was, of course, not what any lad of ten wanted to do, or liked doing. Every single day after lessons with Marcus Antonius Gnipho finished, he had to abandon all his ideas of wandering off with his friend Gaius Matius from the other ground-floor apartment, and go instead to Marius’s house to keep him company. There was no time left for himself because his mother refused to allow him to skip a day, an hour, a moment.
“It is your duty,” she would say upon the rare occasions when he would beg to be permitted to go with Gaius Matius to the Campus Martius to witness some very special event— the choosing of the war-horses to run in the October race, or a team of gladiators hired for a funeral on the following day strutting through their paces.
“But I will never not have duty of some kind!” he would say. “Is there to be no moment when I can forget it?”
And she would answer, “No, Gaius Julius. Duty is with you in every moment of your life, in every breath you draw, and duty cannot be ignored to pander to yourself.’’
So off he would go to the house of Gaius Marius, no falter in his step, no slowing of his pace, remembering to smile and say hello to this one and that as he hurried through the busy Suburan streets, forcing himself to go a little faster as he passed by the bookshops of the Argiletum in case he succumbed to the lure of going inside. All the product of his mother’s cool yet remorseless teaching—never dawdle, never look as if you have time to spare, never indulge yourself even when it comes to books, always smile and say hello to anyone who knows you, and many who don’t.
Sometimes before he knocked on Gaius Marius’s door he would run up the steps of the Fontinalis tower and stand atop it to gaze down on the Campus Martius, longing to be there with the other boys—to cut and thrust and parry with a wooden sword, to pound some idiot bully’s head into the grass, to steal radishes from the fields along the Via Recta, to be a part of the rough-and-tumble. But then—long before his eyes could grow tired of the scene—he would turn away, lope down the tower steps and be at Gaius Marius’s door before anyone could realize he was a few moments late.
He loved his Aunt Julia, who usually answered the door to him in person; she always had a special smile for him, and a kiss too. How wonderful to be kissed! His mother did not approve of the habit, she said it had a corrupting influence, it was too Greek to be moral. Luckily his Aunt Julia didn’t feel the same. When she leaned forward to plant that kiss upon his lips—she never, never turned her head aside to aim for cheek or chin—he would lower his lids and breathe in as deeply as he could, just to catch every last morsel of her essence in his nostrils. For years after she had passed from the world, the aging Gaius Julius Caesar would scent a faint tendril of her perfume stealing off some woman’s skin, and the tears would spring to his eyes before he could control them.
She always gave him the day’s report then and there: “He’s very cross today,” or, “He’s had a visit from a friend and it’s put him in an excellent mood,” or, “He thinks the paralysis is becoming worse, so he’s very down.’’
The routine was that she fed him his dinner in the midafternoon, sending him off to snatch a respite from his duties with Gaius Marius while she fed Gaius Marius his dinner herself. He would curl up on the couch in her workroom and read a book as he ate—something he would never have been allowed to do at home—and bury himself in the doings of heroes, or the verses of a poet. Words enchanted him. They could make his heart soar or stumble or gallop; there were times when, as with Homer, they painted for him a world more real than the one he lived in.
“Death can find nothing to expose in him that is not beautiful,” he would say over and over to himself, picturing the young warrior dead—so brave, so noble, so perfect that, be he Achilles or Hector or Patroclus, he triumphed even over his own passing.
But then he would hear his aunt calling, or a servant would come to knock on the workroom door and tell him he was wanted again, and down would go the book immediately, his burden shouldered once more. Without resentment or frustration.
Gaius Marius was a heavy burden. Old—thin and fat and then thin again—his skin hanging in sloppy folds and wattles—that frightful fleshly landslide down the left side of his face—and the look in those terrible eyes. He drooled from the left side of his mouth without seeming to know he drooled, so that the gobbet hung until it made contact with his tunic and soaked into a permanently wet patch. Sometimes he ranted, mostly at his hapless watch-pup, the only person who was tethered to him for long enough to use as a verbal vent for all that ire; sometimes he would weep until tears joined the spittle, and his nose ran disgustingly too; sometimes he would laugh at some private joke until the very rafters shook and Aunt Julia would come drifting in with her smile plastered in place, and gently shoo Young Caesar home.
At first the child felt helpless, not knowing what to do or how to do it. But he was a creature of infinite resource, so in time he found out how to handle Gaius Marius. It was either that, or fail in the task his mother had given him—a thought so unthinkable he could not begin to imagine the consequences. He also discovered the flaws in his own nature. He lacked patience, for one thing, though his mother’s training enabled him to conceal this shortcoming under mountains of what genuinely seemed like patience, and in the end he came not to know the difference between real patience and assumed patience. Being of strong stomach he came not to notice the drooling, and being of strong mind he came to know what must be done. No one ever told him, for no one ever understood save he; even the physicians. Gaius Marius must be made to move. Gaius Marius must be made to exercise. Gaius Marius must be made to see that he would live again as a normal man.
“And what else have you learned from Lucius Decumius, or some other Suburan ruffian?” Marius asked.
The lad jumped, so sudden was the question, so aimless and faraway his own thoughts. “Well, I’ve pieced something together—if I’m right. I think I am.”
“What?”
“The reason behind Cato the Consul’s decision to leave Samnium and Campania to Lucius Cornelius and transfer himself to your old command against the Marsi.”
“Oho! Tell me your theory, Young Caesar.”
“It’s about the kind of man I think Lucius Cornelius has to be,” said Young Caesar seriously.
“What kind of man is that?”
“A man who can make other men very afraid.”
“He can that!”
“He must have known he would never be given the southern command. It belongs to the consul. So he didn’t bother to argue. He just waited for Lucius Cato the Consul to arrive in Capua, and then he cast a spell that frightened Cato the Consul so badly that Cato the Consul decided to put as big a distance between himself and Campania as he possibly could.”
“How did you piece that hypothesis together?”
“From Lucius Decumius. And from my mother.”
“She’d know,” said Marius cryptically.
Frowning, Young Caesar glanced sideways at him, then shrugged. “Once Lucius Cornelius has the top command and no one stupid to hamper him, he has to do well. I think he’s a very good general.”
“Not as good as me.” Marius sighed, half a sob.
The boy pounced immediately. “Now don’t you start to feel sorry for yourself, Gaius Marius! You’ll be fit to command again, especially once we get out of this silly garden.’’
Not up to this attack, Marius changed the subject. “And has your Suburan grapevine told you how Cato the Consul is doing against the Marsi?” he asked, and snorted. “No one ever tells me what’s going on—they think it might upset me! What upsets me, however, is not knowing what goes on. If I didn’t hear from you, I’d explode!”
Young Caesar grinned. “My grapevine has it that the consul got into trouble the moment he arrived in Tibur. Pompey Strabo took your old troops—he’s very good at that!—so Lucius Cato the Consul is left with none save raw recruits—farm boys newly enfranchised, from Umbria and Etruria. Not only is he at a loss how to train them, but his legates don’t know either. So he commenced his training program by calling an assembly of the whole army. He harangued them without pity. You know the sort of thing— they were idiots and yokels, cretins and barbarians, a miserable lot of worms, he was used to far better, they’d all be dead if they didn’t smarten up, and so forth.”
“Shades of Lupus and Caepio!” cried Marius incredulously.
“Anyway, one of the men assembled at Tibur to hear all this rubbish is a friend of Lucius Decumius’s. Name of Titus Titinius. By profession Titus Titinius is a retired veteran centurion whom you gave a bit of your Etrurian land to after Vercellae. He says he did you a good turn once.”
“Yes, I remember him very well,” said Marius, trying to smile and dribbling copiously.
Out came Young Caesar’s “Marius handkerchief” as he called it; the saliva was wiped neatly away. “He comes to Rome to stay with Lucius Decumius regularly because he likes to hear the goings-on in the Forum. But when the war broke out he enlisted as a training centurion. He was based in Capua for a long time, but he was sent to help Cato the Consul at the beginning of this year.’’
“I presume Titus Titinius and the other training centurions hadn’t had a chance to begin to train when Cato the Consul delivered his harangue at Tibur?”
“Exactly. But he didn’t exclude them from the harangue.
And that was how he got into trouble. Titus Titinius became so angry as he listened to Cato the Consul abuse everybody that he finally bent down and picked up a big clod of earth. And he threw it at Cato the Consul! The next thing, everyone was bombarding Cato the Consul with clods of earth! He ended knee-deep in them, with his army on the verge of mutiny.” Finding inspiration, the boy chuckled. “Marred, mired, muzzled!”
“Stop fiddling around with words and get on with it!”
“Sorry, Gaius Marius.”
“So?”
“He wasn’t hurt at all, but Cato the Consul felt that his dignitas and auctoritas had suffered intolerably. Instead of just forgetting the incident, he clapped Titus Titinius in chains and sent him to Rome with a letter asking that the Senate try him for inciting a mutiny. He arrived this morning, and he’s sitting in the Lautumiae cells.”
Marius began to struggle to his feet. “Well, that settles our destination tomorrow morning, Young Caesar!” he said, sounding quite lighthearted.
“We’re going to see what will happen to Titus Titinius?”
“If it’s in the Senate, boy, I am, anyway. You can wait in the vestibule.”
Young Caesar hauled Marius up and moved automatically to his left side to take the weight of the useless limbs. “I won’t need to do that, Gaius Marius. He’s being brought before the Plebeian Assembly. The Senate wants nothing to do with it.”
“You’re a patrician, you can’t stand in the Comitia when the Plebs are meeting. But in my state, I can’t either. So we will find a good spot on top of the Senate steps and watch the circus from there,” said Marius. “Oh, I needed this! A Forum circus is far better than anything the aediles can ever think to put in the games!”
*
If Gaius Marius had ever doubted the depth of the love the people of Rome bore him, those fears would have been laid to rest the following morning when he emerged from his house and turned to negotiate the steep slope of the Clivus Argentarius as it plunged down through the Fontinalis Gate to end in the lower Forum. In his right hand he had a stick, on his left side he had the boy Gaius Julius Caesar—and soon, to right and to left of him, in front and behind him, he had every man and woman in the vicinity. He was cheered, he was wept over; with every grotesque step, the out-thrust of his right leg and the terrible dragging of his left leg twisting his hip, those who clustered around urged him on. Soon the word was going on ahead of him, so glad, so uplifted:
“Gaius Marius! Gaius Marius!”
When he entered the lower Forum the cheers were deafening. Sweat standing on his brow, leaning more heavily on Young Caesar than anyone there knew save he and Young Caesar, he hauled himself around the lip of the Comitia. Two dozen senators rushed to lift him to the top of the Curia Hostilia podium, but he held them at bay and struggled, step by dreadful step, all the way up. A curule chair was brought, he got himself down onto it with no help from anyone except the boy.
“Left leg,” he said, chest heaving.
Young Caesar understood at once, got down on his knees and pulled the useless member forward until it rested ahead of the right in the classic pose, then took the inanimate left arm and laid it across Marius’s lap, hiding the stiff clumped fingers of the hand beneath a fold of toga.
Gaius Marius sat then more regally than any king, bowing his head to acknowledge the cheers while the sweat rolled down his face and his chest labored like a gigantic bellows. The Plebs were already convoked, but every last man in the well of the Comitia turned to face the Senate steps and cheered, after which the ten tribunes of the plebs on the rostra called for three vast hurrahs.
The boy stood beside the curule chair and looked down at the crowd, this his first experience of the extraordinary euphoria so many united people could generate, feeling the adulation brush his cheek because he stood so close to its source, and understanding what it must be like to be the First Man in Rome. And as the cheers eventually died down his sharp ears caught the murmured whispers,
“Who is that beautiful child?”
He was well aware of his beauty, and aware too of the effect it had on others; since he liked to be liked, he also liked being beautiful. If he forgot what he was there for, however, his mother would be angry, and he hated vexing her. A bead of drool was forming in the flaccid corner of Marius’s mouth, it must be wiped away. He took the Marius handkerchief from the sinus of his purple-bordered child’s toga, and while the whole crowd sighed in tender admiration, he dabbed the sweat from Marius’s face and at the same time whisked the gobbet away before anyone could notice it.
“Conduct your meeting, tribunes!” Marius cried loudly when he could find the breath.
“Bring the prisoner Titus Titinius!” ordered Piso Frugi, the President of the College. “Members of the Plebs gathered here in your tribes, we meet to decide the fate of one Titus Titinius, pilus prior centurion in the legions of the consul Lucius Porcius Cato Licinianus. His case has been referred to us, his peers, by the Senate of Rome after due consideration. The consul Lucius Porcius Cato Licinianus alleges that Titus Titinius did strive to incite a mutiny, and demands that we deal with him as severely as the law allows. As mutiny is treason, we are here to decide if Titus Titinius should live or die.”
Piso Frugi paused while the prisoner, a big man in his early fifties clad only in a tunic, chains attached to manacles about his wrists and ankles, was led onto the rostra and made to stand at the front, to one side of Piso Frugi.
“Members of the Plebs, the consul Lucius Porcius Cato Licinianus states in a letter that he did call an assembly of all the legions of his army, and that while he was addressing this legally convoked assembly, Titus Titinius, the prisoner here on display, did strike him with a missile thrown from the shoulder, and that Titus Titinius did then incite all the men around him to do the same. The letter bears the consul’s seal.”
Piso Frugi turned to the prisoner. “Titus Titinius, how answer you?”
“That it’s true, tribune. I did indeed strike the consul with a missile thrown from the shoulder.” The centurion paused, then said, “A clod of soft earth, tribune, that was my missile. And when I threw it, everyone around me did the same.”
“A clod of soft earth,” said Piso Frugi slowly. “What made you hurl such a missile at your commander?”
“He called us yokels, miserable worms, stupid upcountry fools, impossible material to work with, and more besides!” shouted Titus Titinius in his parade voice. “Now I wouldn’t have minded if he’d called us mentulae and cunni, tribune— that’s good talk between a general and his men.” He drew in a breath and thundered, “If there had been rotten eggs to hand, I’d rather have thrown rotten eggs! But a ball of soft earth is the next best thing, and there was plenty of that to hand! I don’t care if you strangle me, I don’t care if you throw me off the Tarpeian Rock! Because if I ever see Lucius Cato again, he’ll get more of the same from me, and that’s a fact!”
Titinius turned to face the Senate steps and pointed at Gaius Marius, chains clanking. “Now there’s a general! I served Gaius Marius as a legionary in Numidia and I served him again in Gaul—but as a centurion! When I retired he gave me a bit of land in Etruria off his own estates. And I tell you, members of the Plebs, that Gaius Marius wouldn’t have got himself buried by clods of earth! Gaius Marius loved his soldiers! He didn’t hold them in contempt like Lucius Cato! Nor would Gaius Marius have clapped a man in chains and sent him to be judged by a lot of civilians in Rome just because that man lobbed anything at him! The general would have rubbed that man’s face in whatever it was he threw! I tell you, Lucius Cato is no general and Rome will get no victories from him! A general cleans up his own messes. He doesn’t give that job to the tribes in a gathering!”
A profound silence had fallen. When Titus Titinius ceased to speak, not one voice broke it.
Piso Frugi sighed. “Gaius Marius, what would you do with this man?” he asked.
“He’s a centurion, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi. And I do know him, as he says. Too good a man to waste. But he buried his general in clods of earth, and that is a military offense no matter what the provocation. He can’t go back to the consul Lucius Porcius Cato. That would be to insult the consul, who dismissed this man from his service by sending him to us. I think we can best serve the interests of Rome by sending Titus Titinius to some other general. Might I suggest he return to Capua and take up his old duties there?”
“How say my fellow tribunes?” asked Piso Frugi.
“I say, let it be as Gaius Marius suggests,” said Silvanus.
“And I,” said Carbo.
The other seven followed suit.
“How says the concilium plebis! Do I need to call for a formal vote, or will you show your hands?”
Every hand shot up.
“Titus Titinius, this Assembly orders you to report to Quintus Lutatius Catulus in Capua,” said Piso Frugi, allowing no smile to appear on his face. “Lictors, strike off his chains. He is free.”
But he refused to go until he had been brought to Gaius Marius, whereupon he fell to his knees and wept.
“Train your Capuan recruits well, Titus Titinius,” said Marius, his shoulders sagging in exhaustion. “And now, if I may be excused, I think it’s time I walked home.”
Lucius Decumius popped out from behind a pillar, face creased into smiles, his hand extended to Titus Titinius, but his gaze upon Gaius Marius. ‘ ‘There’s a litter for you, Gaius Marius.”
“I am not riding home in a litter when my feet got me this far!” said Gaius Marius. “Boy, help me up.” His huge right hand ate into Young Caesar’s thin arm until the flesh below its vise glowed dark red, but no expression save concern crossed Young Caesar’s face. He bent to the task of getting the Great Man to his feet as if it were no trouble. Once standing, Marius took his stick, the boy moved to support his left side, and down the steps they went like two conjoined crabs. Half of Rome, it seemed, escorted them up the hill, cheering Marius’s every effort.
The servants fought for the honor of escorting the grey-hued Marius to his room; no one noticed Young Caesar lag behind. When he thought himself alone he sank to a huddle in the passageway between door and atrium and lay motionless, eyes closed. Julia found him there some time later. Fear twisting her heart, she knelt beside him, oddly reluctant to call for help.
“Gaius Julius, Gaius Julius! What is it?”
As she took him into her arms he fell against her, his skin drained of color, his chest hardly moving. She drew his hand into hers to feel for a pulse and saw the livid bruise in the shape of Marius’s fingers upon the child’s upper arm.
“Gaius Julius, Gaius Julius!”
The eyes opened, he sighed and smiled, and the color came stealing back into his face. “Did I get him home?”
“Oh yes, Gaius Julius, you got him home magnificently,” said Julia, close to tears. “It’s worn you out more than it has him! These outside walks are going to be too much for you.”
“No, Aunt Julia, I can manage, truly. He won’t go with anyone else, you know that,” he said, getting to his feet.
“Yes, unfortunately I do. Thank you, Gaius Julius! Thank you more than I can say.” She studied the bruise. “He’s hurt you. I shall put something on it to make it feel better.’’
The eyes filled with life and light, the mouth curved into the smile which melted Julia’s heart. “I know what will make it better, Aunt Julia.”
“What?”
“A kiss. One of your kisses, please.”
Kisses he got aplenty, and every kind of food he liked, and a book, and the couch in her workroom to rest upon; she would not let him go home until Lucius Decumius came to fetch him.
*
As the seasons wore on in that year which saw the course of the war turn in Rome’s favor at last, Gaius Marius and Young Caesar became one of Rome’s fixtures, the boy helping the man, the man slowly becoming more able to help himself. After that first day they turned their feet toward the Campus Martius, where the crowds were far less and their progress eventually provoked scant interest. As Marius grew stronger they walked further, culminating in the triumphant day they reached the Tiber at the end of the Via Recta; after a long rest, Gaius Marius swam in the Trigarium.
Once he began to swim regularly his progress accelerated. So did his fascination with the martial and equine exercises they encountered along their way; Marius had decided that it was high time Young Caesar started his military education. At last! At last Gaius Julius Caesar received the rudiments of skills he had longed to acquire. He was tossed into the saddle of a rather mettlesome pony and demonstrated that he was a born rider; he and Marius dueled with wooden swords until even Marius couldn’t fault the boy, and graduated him to the real thing; he was shown how to throw the pilum, and plugged the target every time; he learned to swim once Marius felt confident enough in the water to keep him out of trouble; and he listened to a new kind of story from Marius—the reminiscences of a general on the subject of generaling.
“Most commanders lose the battle before they ever get onto the field to fight,” said Marius to Young Caesar as they sat side by side on the river bank, wrapped in linen shrouds.
“How, Gaius Marius?”
“In one of two ways, mostly. Some understand the art of command so little that they actually think all they have to do is point the enemy out to the legions, then stand back to watch the legions do their stuff. But others have their heads so full of manuals and hints from the generals of their cadet days that they go by the book when to go by the book is to beg for defeat. Every enemy—every campaign—every battle, Gaius Julius!—is unique. It must be approached with the respect due to the unique. By all means plan what you’re going to do the night before on a sheet of parchment in the command tent, but don’t regard that plan as cut-and-dried. You wait to form the true plan until you see the enemy, the lay of the land on the morning of the engagement, how the enemy is drawn up, and where his weaknesses are. Then you decide! Preconceptions are almost always fatal to your chances. And things can change even as the battle progresses, because every moment is unique! Your men’s mood might change—or the site mud up faster than you thought it would—or dust might rise to obscure every sector of the field—or the enemy general spring a real surprise—or flaws and weaknesses show up in your own plans or the plans of the enemy,” said Marius, quite carried away.
“Is it never possible for a battle to go exactly as it was planned the night before?” asked Young Caesar, eyes shining.
“It has happened! But about as frequently as hens grow teeth, Young Caesar. Always remember—whatever you’ve planned and no matter how complex your plan might be— be prepared to alter it in the twinkling of an eye! And here’s another pearl of wisdom, boy. Keep your plan as simple as possible. Simple plans always work better than tactical monstrosities, if for no other reason than you, the general, cannot implement your plan without using the chain of command. And the chain of command gets vaguer the lower down and the farther away from the general it gets.”
“It would seem that a general must have a very well-trained staff and an army drilled to perfection,” said the boy pensively.
“Absolutely!” cried Marius. “That’s why a good general always makes sure he addresses his troops before the battle. Not to boost morale, Young Caesar. But to let the rankers know what he plans to do. If they know what he plans to do, they can interpret the orders they get from the bottom of the chain of command.”
“It pays to know your soldiers, doesn’t it?”
“Indeed it does. It also pays to make sure they know you. And make sure they like you. If men like their general, they’ll work harder and take bigger risks for him. Don’t ever forget what Titus Titinius said from the rostra. Call the men every name under the sun, but never give them reason to suppose you despise them. If you know your ranker soldiers and they know you, twenty thousand Roman legionaries can beat a hundred thousand barbarians.”
“You were a soldier before you were a general.”
“I was. An advantage you’ll never really have, Young Caesar, because you’re a patrician Roman nobleman. And yet I say that if you’re not a soldier before you’re a general, you can never be a general in the true sense.’’ Marius leaned forward, eyes looking at something far beyond the Trigarium and the neat sward of the Vatican plain. “The best generals were always soldiers first. Look at Cato the Censor. When you’re old enough to be a cadet, don’t skulk behind the lines making yourself useful to your commander—get out in the front line and fight! Ignore your nobility. Every time there’s a battle, turn yourself into a ranker. If your general objects and wants you to ride around the field bearing messages, tell him you’d rather fight. He’ll let you because he doesn’t hear it very often from his own kind. You must fight as an ordinary soldier, Young Caesar. How else when you come to command can you understand what your soldiers in the front line are going through? How can you know what frightens them—what puts them off—what cheers them up—what makes them charge like bulls? And I’ll tell you something else too, boy!”
“What?” asked Young Caesar eagerly, drinking in every word with bated breath.
“It’s time we went home!” said Marius, laughing. Until he saw the look on Young Caesar’s face. “Now don’t get on your high horse with me, boy!” he barked, annoyed because his joke had fallen flat and Young Caesar was furious.
“Don’t you dare tease me about something so important!” the child said, his voice as soft and gentle as Sulla’s could be in a like moment. “This is serious, Gaius Marius! You’re not here to entertain me! I want to know everything you know before I’m old enough to be a cadet—then I can go on learning from a more solid base than anyone else. I will never stop learning! So cut out your unfunny jokes and treat me like a man!”
“You’re not a man,’’ said Marius feebly, staggered at the storm he had raised and not sure how to deal with it.
“When it comes to learning I’m more a man than any man I know, including you!” Young Caesar’s voice was growing louder; several nearby wet and shivering faces turned his way. Even in the midst of this towering rage, however, there was still presence of mind; he glanced at their neighbors and got abruptly to his feet, nostrils pinched, lips set hard. “I don’t mind being a child when Aunt Julia treats me like a child,” he said, quietly now, “but when you treat me like a child, Gaius Marius, I—am—mortally insulted! I tell you, I won’t have it!” Out went one hand to pull Marius up. “Come on, let’s go home. I’m out of patience with you today.”
Marius grasped the hand and went home without a murmur.
*
Which was just as well, as things turned out. When they came through the door they found Julia waiting for them anxiously, the marks of tears on her face.
“Oh, Gaius Marius, something dreadful!” she cried, quite forgetting he ought not to be upset; even now in his illness, when disaster struck Julia turned to Marius as to a savior.
“What is it, meum mel?”
“Young Marius!” Seeing her husband’s look of stunned shock, she blundered on frantically. “No, no, he’s not dead, my love! He isn’t injured either! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be giving you such frights—but I don’t know where I am, or what to do!”
“Then sit down over there, Julia, and compose yourself. I will sit on one side of you and Gaius Julius will sit on the other side, and you can tell both of us—calmly, clearly, and without gushing like a fountain.”
Julia sat down. Marius and Young Caesar ranged themselves on either side of her. Each took one of her hands and patted it.
“Now begin,” said Marius.
“There’s been a great battle against Quintus Poppaedius Silo and the Marsi. Somewhere near Alba Fucentia, I think. The Marsi won. But our army managed to retreat without losing a huge number of men,” said Julia.
“Well, I suppose that’s an improvement,” said Marius heavily. “Go on. I presume there’s more.”
“Lucius Cato the Consul was killed shortly before our son ordered the retreat.’’
“Our son ordered the retreat?”
“Yes.” Tears threatened, were resolutely suppressed.
“How do you know all this, Julia?”
“Quintus Lutatius called to see you earlier today. He’s been on some sort of official visit to the Marsic theater, I gather to do with Lucius Cato’s chronic troop troubles. I don’t know—I’m not honestly sure,” said Julia, taking the hand Young Caesar held from him and lifting it to her head.
“We won’t worry about why Quintus Lutatius was visiting the Marsic theater,” said Marius sternly. “I take it he was an observer of this battle Cato lost?”
“No, he was at Tibur. That’s where our army retreated to after the battle. It was a debacle, apparently. The soldiers weren’t led at all. The only one who preserved his reason was our son, it seems. That’s why it was he sounded the retreat. On the way to Tibur he tried to restore order among the soldiers, but he didn’t get anywhere. The poor fellows were quite demented.”
“Then why—what is so wrong, Julia?”
“There was a praetor waiting at Tibur. A new legate posted to Lucius Cato. Lucius Cornelius Cinna ... I’m sure that’s the name Quintus Lutatius said. So when the army reached Tibur, Lucius Cinna took over from Young Marius, and everything seemed all right. Lucius Cinna even commended our son for his good sense.” Julia plucked both hands from their keepers and wrung them together.
“Seemed all right. What happened then?”
“Lucius Cinna called a meeting to find out what went wrong. There were only a few tribunes and cadets to question—all the legates apparently were killed, for there were none got back to Tibur,” said Julia, trying desperately to be lucid. “Then when Lucius Cinna came to the circumstances surrounding the death of Lucius Cato the Consul— one of the other cadets accused our son of murdering him!”
“I see,” said Marius calmly, looking unperturbed. “Well, Julia, you know the story, I don’t. Continue.”
“This other cadet said Young Marius tried to persuade Lucius Cato to order the retreat. But Lucius Cato rounded on him and called him the son of an Italian traitor. He refused to order the retreat, he said it was better every Roman man on the field died than to live in dishonor. He turned his back on Young Marius in contempt. And the other cadet says our son stuck his sword up to the hilt in Lucius Cato’s back! Then our son took over the command, and ordered the retreat.” Julia was weeping.
“Couldn’t Quintus Lutatius have waited to tell me rather than burdening you with this news?” asked Marius harshly.
“He truly didn’t have the time, Gaius Marius.” She wiped her eyes, tried to compose herself. “He is sent for urgently from Capua, he had to travel on at once. In fact he said he ought not have delayed to visit Rome and see us, so we must be grateful to him. He said you would know what to do. And when Quintus Lutatius said that, I knew he believed our son did kill Lucius Cato! Oh, Gaius Marius, what will you do? What can you do? What did Quintus Lutatius mean, you would know?”
“I must journey to Tibur with my friend Gaius Julius here,” said Marius, getting to his feet.
“You can’t!” gasped Julia.
“Indeed I can. Now calm yourself, wife, and tell Strophantes to send to Aurelia and ask for Lucius Decumius. He can look after me during the journey, and save the boy’s energy.” As he spoke Marius held on to Young Caesar’s shoulder tightly—not as if he needed support, more as if he was signaling the boy to silence.
“Let Lucius Decumius take you alone, Gaius Marius,” said Julia. “Gaius Julius should go home to his mother.”
“Yes, you’re right,” said Marius. “Home you go, Young Caesar.”
Young Caesar spoke up. “My mother placed me at your side to use, Gaius Marius,” he said sternly. “If I were to desert you in this, my mother would be very angry.”
Marius would have insisted; it was Julia, knowing Aurelia, who backed down. “He is right, Gaius Marius. Take him.”
Thus it was that one long summer hour later a four-mule gig carried Gaius Marius, Young Caesar, and Lucius Decumius out of Rome through the Esquiline Gate. A good driver, Lucius Decumius kept his team to a brisk trot, a pace the mules could sustain all the way to Tibur without becoming exhausted.
Squeezed between Marius and Decumius, a delighted Young Caesar watched the countryside pass by until darkness fell, never called upon before to take a journey in such urgent circumstances, but secretly harboring a passion for swift travel.
Though they were nine years apart in age, Young Caesar knew his first cousin well, for he carried many more memories out of infancy and early childhood with him than other children, and he had no cause to love or like Young Marius. Not that Young Marius had ever mistreated him, or even derided him. No, it was the others whom Young Marius had mistreated and derided had turned Young Caesar against him. During the perpetual rivalry between Young Marius and Young Sulla, it was always the younger boy he had felt was in the right. And Young Marius had worn two faces for Cornelia Sulla—the charming one when she was present, the spiteful one when she was not—nor did he confine his mockery of her to his cousins, he aired it to his friends as well. Therefore the prospect of Young Marius’s disgrace did not worry Young Caesar on a personal level at all. But because of Gaius Marius and Aunt Julia it worried him sick.
When darkness came down the road was lit by a half-moon overhead, though Lucius Decumius cut the mules back to a walk. The boy promptly fell asleep with his head pillowed in Marius’s lap, his body disposed in that limp abandonment seen only in children and animals.
“Well, Lucius Decumius, we had better talk,” said Mar-ius.
“Good idea,” said Lucius Decumius cheerfully.
“My son is in grave trouble.”
“Tch, tch!” said Lucius Decumius, clicking his tongue. “Now we can’t possibly have that, Gaius Marius.”
“He’s charged with the murder of Cato the Consul.”
“From what I’ve heard about Cato the Consul, they ought to award Young Marius the Grass Crown for saving an army.”
Marius shook with laughter. “I couldn’t agree more. If I can believe my wife, such indeed are the circumstances. That fool Cato engineered a defeat for himself! I imagine his two legates were dead by then, and I can only assume that his tribunes were off carrying messages around the field—the wrong messages, probably. Certainly the only staff Cato the Consul had with him were cadets. And it was left to my son the cadet to advise the general that he must retreat. Cato said no, and called Young Marius the son of an Italian traitor. Whereupon—according to another cadet— Young Marius put two feet of good Roman sword into the consul’s backhand ordered the retreat.”
“Oh, well done, Gaius Marius!”
“So I think—in one way. In another, I’m sorry that he did it while Cato’s back was turned. But I know my son. Temper, not lack of a sense of honor. I wasn’t home enough when he was little to drub the temper out of him. Besides, he was too smart to show me his temper. Or show his mother.’’
“How many witnesses, Gaius Marius?”
“Only the one, as far as I can gather. But I won’t know until I see Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who is now in command. Naturally Young Marius must answer charges. If the witness sticks to his story, then my son will face flogging and beheading. To kill the consul is not merely murder. It’s sacrilege too.”
“Tch, tch,” said Lucius Decumius, and said no more.
Of course he knew why he had been asked along on this journey to sort out a hideous confusion. What fascinated him was that Gaius Marius had sent for him. Gaius Marius! The straightest, the most honorable man Lucius Decumius knew. What had Lucius Sulla said years ago? That even when he took a crooked path, Gaius Marius trod it straightly. Yet tonight it looked very much as if Gaius Marius had elected to walk a crooked path crookedly. Not in character. There were other ways. Ways he would have thought Gaius Marius would at least try first.
Then Lucius Decumius shrugged. Gaius Marius was a father, after all. Only had one chick. Very precious. Not a bad boy either, once one got beneath the cocksure arrogance. It must be hard to be the son of a Great Man. Especially for one who didn’t have the sinews. Oh, he was brave enough. Had a mind too. But he’d never be a truly Great Man. That needed a hard life. Harder than the one Young Marius had experienced. Such a lovely mother! Now if he’d had a mother like Young Caesar’s mother—it might be different. She’d made absolutely sure Young Caesar had a hard life. Never allowed him a whisker of latitude. Nor was there much money in that family.
Flat until now, the land began suddenly to rise steeply, and the tired mules wanted to halt. Lucius Decumius touched them with his whip, called them a few frightful names and forced them onward, his wrists steel.
Fifteen years ago Lucius Decumius had appointed himself the protector of Young Caesar’s mother, Aurelia. At about the same time he had also found himself an additional source of income. By birth he was a true Roman, by tribe a member of urban Palatina, by census a member of the Fourth Class, and by profession the caretaker of a crossroads college located within Aurelia’s apartment building. A smallish man of indeterminate coloring and anonymous features, his unprepossessing exterior and lack of erudition hid an unshakable faith in his own intelligence and strength of mind; he ran his sodality like a general.
Officially sanctioned by the urban praetor, the duties of the college involved care of the crossroads outside its premises, from sweeping and cleaning the area, through making sure the shrine to the Lares of the Crossroads was duly honored and the huge fountain supplying water to the district flowed constantly into a pristine basin, to supervising the festivities of the annual Compitalia. Membership in the college ran the full gamut of the local male residents, from Second Class to Head Count among the Romans, and from foreigners like Jews and Syrians to Greek freedmen and slaves; the Second and Third Classes, however, made no contribution to the college beyond donatives generous enough to avoid attendance. Those who patronized the surprisingly clean premises of the college were workingmen who spent their day off sitting talking and drinking cheap wine. Every workingman—free or slave—had each eighth day off work, though not all on the same day; a man’s day off was the eighth day after he had commenced his job. Thus the men inside the college on any particular day would be a different lot from those present on other days. Whenever Lucius Decumius announced there was something to be done, every man present would down his wine and obey the orders of the college caretaker.
The brotherhood under the aegis of Lucius Decumius had activities quite divorced from care of the crossroads. When Aurelia’s uncle and stepfather, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, had bought her an insula as a means of fruitfully investing her dowry, that redoubtable young woman had soon discovered that she housed a group of men who preyed upon the local shopkeepers and businessfolk by selling them protection from vandalism and violence. She had soon put a stop to that—or rather, Lucius Decumius and his brothers had shifted their protection agency further afield to areas where Aurelia neither knew the victims nor traversed the neighborhood.
At about the same time as Aurelia had acquired her insula, Lucius Decumius had found an avocation which suited his nature as much as it did his purse: he became an assassin. Though his deeds were rumored rather than recounted, those who knew him believed implicitly that he had been responsible for many political and commercial deaths, foreign and domestic. That no one ever bothered him—let alone apprehended him—was due to his skill and daring. There was never any evidence. Yet the nature of this lucrative avocation was common knowledge in the Subura; as Lucius Decumius said himself, if no one knew you were an assassin no one ever offered you any jobs. Some deeds he disclaimed, and again he was implicitly believed. The murder of Asellio, he had been heard to say, was the work of a bungling amateur who had put Rome in peril by killing an augur in the midst of his duties and while wearing his sacerdotal regalia. And though it was his considered opinion that Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle had been poisoned, Lucius Decumius announced to all and sundry that poison was a woman’s tool, beneath his notice.
He had fallen in love with Aurelia on first meeting—not in a romantic or fleshly way, he insisted—more the instinctive recognition of a kindred spirit, as determined and courageous and intelligent as he was himself. Aurelia became his to cherish and protect. As her children came along they too were gathered under Lucius Decumius’s vulturine wing. He idolized Young Caesar, loving him, if the truth were known, far more than he did his own two sons, both almost men now and already being trained in the ways of the crossroads college. For years he had guarded the boy, spent hours in his company, filled him with an oddly honest appraisal of the boy’s world and its people, shown him how the protection agency worked, and how a good assassin worked. There was nothing about Lucius Decumius that Young Caesar did not know. And nothing Young Caesar did not understand; the behavior appropriate for a patrician Roman nobleman was not at all appropriate for a Roman of the Fourth Class who was the caretaker of a crossroads college. Each to his own. But that did not negate their being friends. Or loving each other.
“We’re villains, us Roman lowly,” Lucius Decumius had explained to Young Caesar. “Can’t not be if we’re to eat and drink well, have three or four nice slaves and one of them with a cunnus worth lifting a skirt for. Even if we was clever in business—which we mostly isn’t—where would we find the capital, I asks you? No, a man cuts his tunic to suit its cloth, I always says, and that’s that.” He laid his right forefinger against the side of his nose and grinned to display dirty teeth. “But not a word, Gaius Julius! Not a word to anyone! Especially your dear mother.”
The secrets were kept and were to go on being kept, including from Aurelia. Young Caesar’s education was broader by far than she remotely suspected.
*
By midnight the gig and its sweating mules had reached the army camp just beyond the small village of Tibur. Gaius Marius roused the ex-praetor Lucius Cornelius Cinna from his bed without the slightest compunction.
They knew each other only slightly, for there were almost thirty years of age between them, but Cinna was known from his speeches in the House to be an admirer of Marius’s. He had been a good praetor urbanus—the first of Rome’s wartime governors because of the absence of both consuls— but the confrontation with Italia had ruined his chances of swelling his private fortune during a term governing one of the provinces.
Now two years later he found himself without the means to dower either of his daughters, and was even in some doubt as to whether he could assure his son’s senatorial career beyond the back benches. A letter from the Senate promoting him to the full command in the Marsic theater following upon the death of Cato the Consul had no power to thrill him; all it really meant was a great deal of work shoring up a structure rendered shaky by a man who had been as incompetent as he was arrogant. Oh, where was that fruitful province?
A stocky man with a weatherbeaten face and a maloccluded jaw, his looks had not prevented his making a notable marriage to an heiress, Annia from a rich plebeian family which had been consular for two hundred years. Cinna and Annia had three children—a girl now fifteen, a boy of seven, and a second girl, aged five. Though not a beauty, Annia was nevertheless a striking woman, red-haired and green-eyed; the older daughter had inherited her coloring, whereas the two younger children were as dark as their father. None of this had been important until Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus had visited Cinna and asked for the hand of the older daughter on behalf of his older son, Gnaeus.
“We like red-haired wives, we Domitii Ahenobarbi,” the Pontifex Maximus had said bluntly. “Your girl, Cornelia Cinna, fulfills all the criteria I want in my son’s wife— she’s the right age, she’s a patrician, and she’s red-haired. Originally I had my eye on Lucius Sulla’s girl. But she’s to marry Quintus Pompeius Rufus’s son, which is a shame. However, your girl will do just as well. Same gens—and, I imagine, a bigger dowry?”
Cinna had swallowed, offered up a silent prayer to Juno Sospita and to Ops, and put his faith in his future as the governor of a fruitful province. “By the time my daughter is old enough to marry, Gnaeus Domitius, she will be dowered with fifty talents. I cannot make it more. Is that satisfactory?”
“Oh, quite!” said Ahenobarbus. “Gnaeus is my principal heir, so your girl will be doing very well indeed. I believe I am among the five or six richest men in Rome, and I have thousands of clients. Could we go ahead and conduct the betrothal ceremony?”
All this had happened the year before Cinna was praetor, and at a time when he could be pardoned for assuming he would find the money to dower his older daughter at the time she would be given in marriage to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Junior. If Annia’s fortune were not so wretchedly tied up matters would have been easier, but Annia’s father kept control of her money, and at her death it could not pass to her children.
When Gaius Marius roused him from sleep as the half-moon was sinking into the western sky, Cinna had no idea of the eventual consequences of this visit; rather, he pulled on a tunic and shoes with a heavy heart and prepared himself to say unpleasant things to the father of one who had seemed a most promising boy.
The Great Man entered the command tent with a peculiar escort in tow—a very common-looking man of perhaps a little under fifty years, and a very beautiful boy. The boy it was who did most of the work, and in a manner suggesting he was well accustomed to the task. Cinna would have deemed him a slave except that he wore the bulla around his neck and comported himself like a patrician of a better family than Cornelius. When Marius was seated the boy stood on his left side and the middle-aged man behind him.
“Lucius Cornelius Cinna, this is my nephew Gaius Julius Caesar Junior, and my friend Lucius Decumius. You may be absolutely frank in front of them.” Marius used his right hand to dispose his left hand in his lap, seeming less tired than Cinna had expected, and more in command of his faculties than news from Rome—old news, come to think of it—had implied. Obviously still a formidable man. But hopefully not a formidable opponent, thought Cinna.
“A tragic business, Gaius Marius.”
The wide-awake eyes roamed around the tent to ascertain who might be about, and when they found no one, swung to Cinna.
“Are we alone, Lucius Cinna?”
“Completely.”
“Good.” Marius settled more comfortably into his chair. “My source of information was secondhand. Quintus Lutatius called to see me and found me not at home. He gave the story to my wife, who in turn reported it to me. I take it that my son is charged with the murder of Lucius Cato the Consul during a battle, and that there is a witness—or some witnesses. Is this the correct story?”
“I am afraid so, yes.”
“How many witnesses?”
“Just the one.”
“And who is he? A man of integrity?”
“Beyond reproach, Gaius Marius. A contubernalis named Publius Claudius Pulcher,” said Cinna.
Marius grunted. “Oh, that family! It’s one notorious for harboring grudges and being difficult to get on with. It’s also as poor as an Apulian shepherd. How therefore can you state unequivocally that the witness is beyond reproach?”
“Because this particular Claudius is not typical of that family,” said Cinna, determined to depress Marius’s hopes. “His reputation within the contubernalis tent and throughout the late Lucius Cato’s staff is superlative. You will understand better when you meet him. He has a high degree of loyalty toward his fellow cadets—he is the oldest of them—and much genuine affection for your son. Also much sympathy for your son’s action, I add. Lucius Cato was not popular with any of his staff, let alone his army.”
“Yet Publius Claudius has accused my son.”
“He felt it his duty.”
“Oh, I see! A sanctimonious prig.”
But Cinna disputed this. “No, Gaius Marius, he is not! Think for a moment as a commander, I beg you, not as a father! The young man Pulcher is the finest kind of Roman, as conscious of his duty as of his family. He did his duty, little though he liked it. And that is the simple truth.”
When Marius struggled to rise it was more apparent that he was tired; clearly he had become accustomed to performing this deed unaided, yet now he could not move without Young Caesar. The commoner Lucius Decumius slid round to stand at Marius’s right shoulder, and cleared his throat. The eyes staring at Cinna were trying to speak volumes, some sort of message.
“You wish to say something?” asked Cinna.
“Lucius Cinna, begging your pardon and all, must the hearing of the case against young Gaius Marius be tomorrow?”
Cinna blinked, surprised. “No. It can be the day after.”
“Then if you don’t mind, let it be the day after. When Gaius Marius gets up tomorrow—and that isn’t going to be early—he will need exercise. He’s just spent far too long sitting cramped up in a gig, you see.” Decumius spoke slowly, concentrating on his grammar. “At the moment his exercise is riding, three hours a day. Tomorrow he has to ride, you see. He also has to be given the opportunity to inspect this Publius Claudius cadet for himself. Young Gaius Marius stands accused of a capital crime, and a man of Gaius Marius’s importance has to satisfy himself, do he not? Now it might be a good idea if Gaius Marius was to meet this Publius Claudius cadet in a—a—a more informal way than in this tent. None of us wants—want—things to be more horrible than they need—needs—to be. So I think it would be a good idea if you organized a riding party for tomorrow afternoon and have all the cadets along on it. Including Publius Claudius.”
Cinna was frowning, suspecting that he was being maneuvered into something he would regret. The boy to Marius’s left gave Cinna a bewitching smile, and winked at him.
“Please forgive Lucius Decumius,” said Young Caesar. “He is my uncle’s most devoted client. And he’s a tyrant too! The only way to keep him happy is to humor him.”
“I cannot permit Gaius Marius to have private speech with Publius Claudius before the hearing,” said Cinna miserably.
Marius had stood looking utterly outraged throughout this exchange; he now turned in such a patently genuine temper upon Lucius Decumius and Young Caesar that Cinna feared he would push himself into a fresh apoplexy.
“What is all this nonsense?” Marius roared. “I don’t need to meet this paragon of youth and duty Publius Claudius under any circumstances! All I want to do is see my son and be present at his hearing!”
“Now, now, Gaius Marius, don’t work yourself into a twitter,” said Lucius Decumius in an oily voice. “After a nice little ride tomorrow afternoon, you’ll feel more up to the hearing.”
“Oh, preserve me from coddling idiots!” cried Marius, stumping out of the tent without assistance. “Where is my son?”
Young Caesar lingered while Lucius Decumius chased after the irate Marius.
“Don’t take any notice, Lucius Cinna,” he said, producing that wonderful smile again. “They squabble incessantly, but Lucius Decumius is right. Tomorrow Gaius Marius needs to rest and take his proper exercise. This is a very worrying business for him. All we are really concerned about is that it not affect Gaius Marius’s recovery process too severely.”
“Yes, I understand that,” said Cinna, patting the boy paternally on his shoulder; he was too tall to pat on the head. “Now I had better take Gaius Marius to see his son.” He took a spitting torch from its stand and walked out toward Marius’s looming bulk. “Your son is this way, Gaius Marius. For the sake of appearances I have confined him to a tent on his own until the hearing. He is under guard and is allowed to have congress with nobody.”
“You realize, of course, that your hearing is not a final one,” said Marius as they passed between two rows of tents. “If its outcome is unfavorable toward my son, I will insist, that he be tried by his peers in Rome.”
“Quite so,” said Cinna colorlessly.
When father and son confronted each other, Young Marius stared at Marius a little wildly, but looked to be in control of himself. Until he took in Lucius Decumius and Young Caesar.
“What have you got this sorry lot along for?” he demanded.
“Because I couldn’t make the journey alone,” said Marius, nodded a brusque dismissal to Cinna, and allowed himself to be lowered into the small tent’s only chair. “So, my son, your temper has got you into boiling water at last,” he said, not sounding very sympathetic or interested in hearing what his son had to say.
Young Marius gazed at him in apparent bewilderment, seeming to search for some signal his father was not semaphoring. Then he heaved a sobbing sigh and said, “I didn’t do it!”
“Good,” said Marius cordially. “Stick to that, Young Marius, and all will be well.”
“Will it, Father? How can it? Publius Claudius will swear I did do it.”
Marius rose suddenly, a bitterly disappointed man. “If you maintain your innocence, my son, I can promise you that nothing will happen to you. Nothing at all.”
Relief spread over Young Marius’s face; he thought he was receiving the signal. “You’re going to fix it, aren’t you?”
“I can fix many things, Gaius Marius Junior, but not an official army hearing conducted by a man of honor,” said Marius wearily. “Any fixing will have to be for your trial in Rome. Now follow my example, and sleep. I’ll see you late tomorrow afternoon.”
“Not until then? Isn’t the hearing tomorrow?”
“Not until then. The hearing is postponed a day because I have to have my proper exercise—otherwise I’ll never be fit enough to stand for consul a seventh time.” He turned in the tent entrance to smile at his son with grotesque mockery. “I have to ride, this sorry lot tell me. And I will be presented to your accuser. But not to persuade him to change his story, my son. I have been forbidden any private congress with him.” He caught his breath. “I, Gaius Marius, to be instructed by a mere praetor as to the proper way to conduct myself! I can forgive you for killing a military bungler about to permit his army to be annihilated, Young Marius, but I cannot forgive you for putting me in the position of a potential panderer!”
*
When the riding party assembled the following afternoon, Gaius Marius was punctiliously correct in his manner toward Publius Claudius Pulcher, a dark and rather hangdog-looking young man who obviously wished he was anywhere but where he was. As the men moved out Marius fell in alongside Cinna, with Cinna’s legate Marcus Caecilius Cornutus riding behind them with Young Caesar, and the cadets bringing up the rear. After he established the fact that none of the others knew the area very well, Lucius Decumius took the lead.
“There’s a magnificent view of Rome about a mile away,” he said, “just the right distance for Gaius Marius to ride.”
“How do you know Tibur so well?” asked Marius.
“My mother’s father came from Tibur,” said the leader of the expedition as its members strung themselves out along a narrow path winding steadily and steeply upward.
“I wouldn’t have thought you had a rural bone in your whole disreputable body, Lucius Decumius.”
“Actually I don’t, Gaius Marius,” said Decumius cheerfully over his shoulder. “But you knows what women are like! My mother used to drag us up here every summer.”
The day was fine and the sun hot, but a cool breeze blew in the riders’ faces and they could hear the tumbling Anio in its gorge, now louder, now dying to a whisper. Lucius Decumius set a slow pace and the time went by almost imperceptibly, only Marius’s evident enjoyment making the rest of the party feel this activity was at all worthwhile. Deeming the ordeal of meeting Young Marius’s father intolerable before it had actually happened, Publius Claudius Pulcher gradually relaxed enough to converse with the other two cadets, while Cinna, escorting Marius, wondered if Marius would try to make overtures to his son’s accuser. For that, Cinna was convinced, was the true purpose of this ride. A father himself, he knew he would have tried every ploy he could think of if his son ever got into such trouble.
“There!” said Lucius Decumius proudly, reining his steed back out of the way so that the rest of the party could precede him. “A view worth the ride, isn’t it?”
It was indeed. The riders found themselves on a small shelf in the side of a mountain, at a place where some massive cataclysm had pared a great slice of the flank away and a cliff fell sheer to the plains far below. They could trace the hurrying, white-flecked waters of the Anio all the way to its confluence with the Tiber, a blue and snaky stream coming down from the north. And there beyond the point where the two rivers joined lay Rome, a vivid sprawl of colored paints and brick-red roofs, the statues atop her temples glittering, and the clear air permitting even a glimpse of the Tuscan Sea on the knifelike edge of the horizon.
“We’re much higher than Tibur here,” said Lucius Decumius from behind them; he slid off his horse.
“How minute the city is from so far away!” said Cinna in wonder.
Everyone was pressing forward to see except Lucius Decumius, and the riders intermingled. Determined Marius was not going to get a chance to talk to Publius Claudius, Cinna pushed both of their mounts away as the cadets approached.
“Oh, look!” cried Young Caesar, kicking his horse hard when it balked. “There’s the Anio aqueduct! Isn’t it like a toy? And isn’t it beautiful?” He directed his questions at Publius Claudius, who seemed quite as entranced by the view as Young Caesar, and just as eager to sample its delights.
The two of them edged as close to the brink as their horses were prepared to take them and gazed out to Rome, smiling at each other after their eyes were sated.
Since it truly was a magnificent view, the whole party save for Lucius Decumius directed all their attention forward. Thus no one noticed Lucius Decumius withdraw a small, Y-shaped object from the purse tethered to the belt of his tunic, nor saw him slip a wicked little metal spike into a slot in the middle of a band of soft, stretchy kid connected between the open ends of the Y-shaped piece of wood. As casually and openly as he might have yawned or scratched himself, he raised the wooden object to eye level, stretched the kid to its utmost, sighted carefully, and let the leather go.
Publius Claudius’s horse screamed, reared up, its front legs flailing; Publius Claudius clutched instinctively at its mane to stay on its back. Oblivious to his own danger, Young Caesar came forward of his saddle onto his horse’s neck and grabbed for the other animal’s bridle. It all happened so quickly that no one afterward could be sure of more than one glaring fact—that Young Caesar acted with a cool bravery far beyond his years. His mount panicked and reared too, cannoned broadside into Publius Claudius, and found its front legs coming down on nothing. Both horses and both riders went over the cliff, but somehow Young Caesar, even in the act of falling, had balanced upright on the tilting edge of his saddle and leaped for the shelf. He landed more on it than off it and scrabbled like a cat to safety.
Everyone was clustered on the ground at the brink of the precipice, faces white, eyes goggling, only concerned at first to see that Young Caesar was all right. Then, Young Caesar in the lead (breathing more easily than any of the rest), they looked over the edge. There far below lay the disjointed heaps of two horses. And Publius Claudius Pulcher. A silence fell. Straining to hear a cry for help, they heard only the sighing of the wind. Nothing moved, even a hawk in midair.
“Here, you come away!” said a new voice. Lucius Decumius took Young Caesar by the shoulder and yanked him further away from the cliff. On his knees, he shakily patted the boy all over to make sure there were no broken bones. “Why did you have to do that?” he whispered too softly for anyone but Young Caesar to hear.
“I had to make it look convincing,” came an answering whisper. “For a moment I didn’t think his horse was going to go. It was best to be sure. I knew I’d be safe.”
“How did you know what I was going to do? You weren’t even looking my way!”
Young Caesar heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Oh, Lucius Decumius! I know you! And I knew why Gaius Marius sent for you the instant he did. Personally I don’t care much what happens to my cousin, but I won’t have Gaius Marius and our own family disgraced. Rumor is one thing. A witness is quite another.’’
Cheek against the bright gold hair, Lucius Decumius let his eyes close in an exasperation easily the equal of Young Caesar’s. “But you risked your life!”
“Don’t worry about my life. I can look after it. When I let it go, it will be because I have no further use for it.” The boy extricated himself from Lucius Decumius’s embrace and went to make sure that Gaius Marius was all right.
Shaken and confused, Lucius Cornelius Cinna poured wine for himself and Gaius Marius the moment they reached his tent. Lucius Decumius had taken Young Caesar off to fish in the Anio cascades, and the rest of the party was regrouping to form another party—one deputed to bring the remains of the cadet Publius Claudius Pulcher back for his own funeral.
“I must say that as far as my son and I are concerned, that was a very timely accident,” said Marius bluntly, taking a deep draft of his wine. “Without Publius Claudius you have no case, my friend.”
“It was an accident,” said Cinna in the tones of a man most preoccupied with convincing himself. “It couldn’t have been anything except an accident!”
“Quite right. It couldn’t have been anything else. I nearly lost a better boy than my son.”
“I didn’t think the lad had a hope.”
“I think that particular lad is hope personified,” said Marius with a purr in his voice. “I’ll have to keep my eye on him in the future. Or he’ll be eclipsing me.”
“Oh, what a mess!” sighed Cinna.
“Not an auspicious omen for a man just promoted to the general’s tent, I agree,” said Marius affably.
“I shall acquit myself better than Lucius Cato did!”
Marius grinned. “It would be hard to do worse. However, I do sincerely think you will acquit yourself well, Lucius Cinna. And I am very grateful for your forbearance. Very grateful!”
Somewhere in the back of his mind Cinna could hear the tinkling cascade of coins—or was it the Anio, where that extraordinary boy was happily fishing as if nothing ever banished his composure?
“What is one’s first duty, Gaius Marius?” Cinna asked suddenly.
“One’s first duty, Lucius Cinna, is to one’s family.”
“Not to Rome?”
“What else is our Rome, than her families?”
“Yes .. . Yes, I suppose that’s true. And those of us who are born to it—or have risen to find our children born to it—must strive to ensure that our families remain in a position to rule.”
“Quite so,” said Gaius Marius.