4

Gaius Marius entered Rome at last on New Year’s Day as her lawfully elected consul, riding a pure white horse, clad in a purple-bordered toga, and wearing an oak-leaf crown. At his side rode the hulking Cimbric slave Burgundus in beautiful golden armor, girt with a sword, and mounted upon a Bastamian horse so big its hooves were the size of buckets. And behind him walked five thousand slaves and ex-slaves, all clad in reinforced leather, and wearing swords—not quite soldiers, but not civilians either.

Consul seven times! The prophecy was fulfilled. Nothing else lived inside Gaius Marius’s head but those words as he rode between walls of cheering, weeping people; what did it really matter whether he was the senior or the junior consul, when the people welcomed their hero so passionately, so blindly? Did they care that he rode instead of walked? Did they care that he came from across the Tiber rather than from his house? Did they care that he hadn’t stood the night watch for omens in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus? Not one iota! He was Gaius Marius. What was required for other, lesser men was not required for Gaius Marius.

Moving inexorably toward his fate, he arrived in the lower Forum Romanum and there found Lucius Cornelius Cinna waiting for him at the head of a procession comprising senators and a very few senior knights. Burgundus got Marius down from the pure white horse with a minimum of fuss, adjusted the folds of his master’s toga—and, when Marius took the place in front of Cinna, stood beside him.

“Come on, Lucius Cinna, let’s get it over!” snapped Marius in loud tones, starting to walk. “I’ve done this six times before and you’ve done it once, so let’s not turn it into a triumphal parade!”

“Just a moment!” shouted the ex-praetor Quintus Ancharius, stepping out of his place among the men in purple-bordered togas who followed Cinna, and moving quickly to plant himself firmly in front of Gaius Marius. “You are in the wrong order, consuls. Gaius Marius, you are junior consul. You go after Lucius Cinna, not ahead of him. I also demand that you get rid of this great barbarian brute from our solemn deputation to the Great God, and order your bodyguard to leave the city or remove their swords.”

For a moment Marius looked as if he would strike Ancharius, or perhaps order his German giant to set the ex-praetor aside; then the old man shrugged, repositioned himself behind Cinna. But the slave Burgundus remained alongside him, and he had spoken no word commanding his bodyguard to leave.

“On the first issue, Quintus Ancharius, you have a point of law,” said Marius fiercely, “but on the second and third issues I will not yield. My life has been imperiled enough of late years. And I am infirm. ‘Therefore my slave will remain by my side. My Bardyaei will remain in the Forum and wait to escort me after the ceremonies are over.”

Quintus Ancharius looked mutinous, but finally nodded and went back to his place; a praetor in the same year Sulla had been consul, he was an inveterate Marius-hater, and proud of it. Not unless he had been tied down would he have allowed Marius to get away with walking ahead of Cinna in the procession, especially after it dawned upon him that Cinna was going to accept this monumental insult. That he went back to his place was in reaction to the look of piteous appeal Cinna gave him; his gorge rose. Why should he fight a weak man’s battles? Oh, prayed Quintus Ancharius, finish that war and come home soon, Lucius Sulla!

The hundred-odd knights who led the procession had moved off the moment Marius commanded Cinna to walk, and had reached the temple of Saturn before realizing the two consuls and the Senate were still halted, apparently in argument. Thus the start of that pilgrimage to the home of the Great God on the Capitol was as ill-concerted as it was ill-omened. No one, including Cinna, had had the courage to point out that Gaius Marius had not kept watch through the night, as the new consuls were obliged to do; and Cinna said nothing to anyone about the dense black shape of some webbed and taloned creature he had seen fly across the wan sky as he stood his watch.

Never had a New Year’s Day consular inauguration been so quickly completed as that one, either, even the famous one when Marius had wanted to commence the consular ceremonies still garbed as a triumphing general. Less than four shortish daylight hours later, everything was over— sacrifices, the meeting of the Senate within the temple of the Great God, the feast which followed. Nor had any group of men in the past ever been so anxious to escape afterward. As the procession came down off the Capitol, every man saw the head of Gnaeus Octavius Ruso still rotting on its spear at the edge of the rostra, bird-tattered face turned to gaze up at the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus with empty sockets. A terrible omen. Terrible!

Emerging from the alleyway between the temple of Saturn and the Capitol hillside, Gaius Marius spied Quintus Ancharius ahead of him, and hastened to catch up. When he put his hand upon Ancharius’s arm the ex-praetor looked around, his startled surprise changing to revulsion when he saw who accosted him.

“Burgundus, your sword,” said Marius calmly.

The sword was in his right hand even as he finished speaking; his right hand flashed up, and down. Quintus Ancharius fell dead, his face cloven from hairline to chin.

No one tried to protest. As their shock dissipated, senators and knights scattered, running. Marius’s legion of slaves and ex-slaves—still standing in the lower Forum—went in hot pursuit the moment the old man snapped his fingers.

“Do what you like with the cunni, boys!” roared Marius, beaming. “Only do try to distinguish between my friends and my enemies!”

Horrified, Cinna stood watching his world disintegrate, utterly powerless to intervene. His soldiers were either on their way home or still in their camp on the Vatican plain; Marius’s “Bardyaei”—as he called his slave followers because so many of them were from this Dalmatian tribe of Illyrians—now owned the city of Rome. And, owning it, treated it more pitilessly than a crazed drunkard the wife he hates. Men were cut down for no reason, houses invaded and robbed, women defiled, children murdered. A lot of it was senseless, causeless; but there were other instances too—men whom Marius hungered to see dead, or perhaps merely fancied he would like to see dead—the Bardyaei were not clever at distinguishing between Marius’s various moods.

For the rest of the day and far into the night, Rome screamed and howled, and many died or wished they could die. In some places huge flames leaped skyward, screams turned to high and maddened shrieks.

Publius Annius, who loathed Antonius Orator above all others, led a troop of cavalry to Tusculum, where the Antonii had an estate, and took great pleasure in hunting down Antonius Orator and killing him. The head was brought back to Rome amid great jubilation, and planted on the rostra.

Fimbria chose to take his squadron of horsemen up onto the Palatine, looking first for the censor Publius Licinius Crassus and his son Lucius. It was the son Fimbria spied as he sped up the narrow street toward the safety of home; spurring his horse, Fimbria came alongside him and, bending in the saddle, ran his sword through Lucius Crassus’s back. Seeing it happen and powerless to prevent the same fate happening to him, the father drew a dagger from the recesses of his toga and killed himself. Luckily Fimbria had no idea which door in that alleyway of windowless walls belonged to the Licinii Crassi, so the third son, Marcus— not yet of an age to be a senator—was spared.

Leaving his men to decapitate Publius and Lucius Crassus, Fimbria took a few troopers and went looking for the Brothers Caesar. Two of them he found in the one house, Lucius Julius and his younger brother, Caesar Strabo. The heads of course were kept for the rostra, but Fimbria dragged the trunk and limbs of Caesar Strabo out to the tomb of Quintus Varius, and there “killed” him all over again as an offering for the man Caesar Strabo had prosecuted, and who had taken his own life so slowly, so painfully. After that he went looking for the oldest brother, Catulus Caesar, but was found by a messenger from Marius before he found his quarry; Catulus Caesar was to be spared to stand his trial.

In the next morning’s light the rostra bristled with heads on spears—Ancharius, Antonius Orator, Publius and Lucius Crassus, Lucius Caesar, Caesar Strabo, the ancient Scaevola Augur, Gaius Atilius Serranus, Publius Cornelius Lentulus, Gaius Nemetorius, Gaius Baebius, and Octavius. Bodies littered the streets, a pile of unimportant heads lay against the angle where the tiny temple of Venus Cloacina tucked itself into the Basilica Aemilia, and Rome stank of coagulating blood.

Indifferent to all save the pursuit of his revenge, Marius walked to the well of the Comitia to hear his own newly elected tribune of the plebs, Publius Popillius Laenas, convene the Plebeian Assembly. Of course no one came to attend, but the meeting went ahead anyway after the Bardyaei chose rural tribes for themselves as part of their new citizenship package. Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar and Lucius Cornelius Merula flamen Dialis were immediately indicted for treason.

“But I shall not wait for the verdict,” said Catulus Caesar, eyes red from weeping at the fate of his brothers and so many of his friends.

He said this to Mamercus, whom he had summoned urgently to his house. “Take Lucius Cornelius Sulla’s wife and daughter and flee at once, Mamercus, I beg of you!

The next to be indicted will be Lucius Sulla, and everyone even remotely attached to him will die—or worse, in Dalmatica’s case—and in the case of your own wife, Cornelia Sulla.”

“I had thought to remain,” said Mamercus, looking exhausted. “Rome will need men untouched by this horror, Quintus Lutatius.”

“Yes, Rome will. But she won’t find them among those who stay, Mamercus. I do not intend to live a moment longer than I have to. Promise me you’ll bundle up Dalmatica, Cornelia Sulla, all the various children, and send them to safety in Greece. With yourself as their escort. Then I can get on and do what I have to do.”

So Mamercus promised, heavyhearted, and did much that day to safeguard the mobile and monetary property of Sulla, Scaurus, Drusus, the Servilii Caepiones, Dalmatica, Cornelia Sulla, and himself. By nightfall he and the women and children were through the Porta Sanqualis, least popular of Rome’s gates, and heading for the Via Salaria; it seemed a safer way to go than south to Brundisium.

As for Catulus Caesar, he sent little notes to Merula the flamen Dialis, and to Scaevola Pontifex Maximus. Then he had his slaves light every brazier his house possessed and put them in his principal guest suite, so newly plastered its walls exuded the pungent odor of fresh lime. Having sealed every crack and opening with rags, Catulus Caesar sat himself down in a comfortable chair and opened a scroll which contained the last books of the Iliad, his favorite literature. When Marius’s men broke down the door, they found him still sitting upright and naturally in his chair, the scroll tidily in his lap; the room was choked with noxious fumes, and the corpse of Catulus Caesar was quite cold.

Lucius Cornelius Merula never saw his note from Catulus Caesar, as it found him already dead. After reverently placing his apex and his laena in a tidily folded bundle beneath the statue of the Great God in his temple, Merula went home, got into a hot bath, and opened his veins with a bone knife.

Scaevola Pontifex Maximus read his note.

I know, Quintus Mucius, that you have elected to throw in your lot with Lucius Cinna and Gaius Marius.

I can even begin to understand why. Your girl is pledged to Young Marius, and that is a tidy fortune to toss away. But you are wrong. Gaius Marius is diseased of mind, and the men who follow him are little better than barbarians. I do not mean his slaves. I mean men like Fimbria, Annius, and Censorinus. Cinna is a good enough fellow in many ways, but he cannot possibly control Gaius Marius. Nor can you.

By the time you get this, I will be dead. It seems to me infinitely preferable to die than to live out the rest of my life as an exile—or, briefly, as one of Gaius Marius’s many victims. My poor, poor brothers! It pleases me to choose my own time, place and method of dying. Did I wait until tomorrow, none of those would be mine.

I have finished my memoirs, and I freely admit that it pains me not to be present to hear the comments when they are published. However, they will live, though I do not. To safeguard them—they are anything but complimentary to Gaius Marius!—I have sent them with Mamercus to Lucius Cornelius Sulla in Greece. When Mamercus comes back in better days, he has undertaken to publish them. And to send a copy to Publius Rutilius Rufus in Smyrna, to pay him back for being so venomous about me in his own writings.

Look after yourself, Quintus Mucius. It would be most interesting to see how you manage to reconcile your principles with necessity. I could not. But then, my children are safely married.

Tears in his eyes, Scaevola screwed the small sheet of paper up into a ball and thrust it into the middle of a brazier, for it was cold and he was old enough now to feel the cold. Fancy killing his old uncle the Augur! Harmless. They could talk until they were black in the face that it was all a terrible mistake. Nothing that had happened in Rome since New Year’s Day was a mistake. Warming his hands and sniffling his tears away, Scaevola stared at the glowing coals contained within the bronze tripod, having no idea that Catulus Caesar’s last impressions of life were much the same.

The heads of Catulus Caesar and Merula flamen Dialis were added to the rostra’s mounting collection before dawn of the third day of Gaius Marius’s seventh consulship; Marius himself spent long moments contemplating Catulus Caesar’s head—still handsome and haughty—before allowing Popillius Laenas to convene another Plebeian Assembly.

This meeting directed its spleen at Sulla, who was condemned and voted a public enemy; all his property was confiscated, but not for the greater good of Rome. Marius let his Bardyaei loot Sulla’s magnificent new house overlooking the Circus Maximus, then let them burn it to the ground. The property of Antonius Orator suffered a similar fate. However, neither man left any indication as to where his money was secreted, and none ever turned up in a Roman bank, at least recognizably. Thus the slave legion did very well out of Sulla and Antonius Orator, whereas Rome did no good at all. So angry was Popillius Laenas that he sent a party of public slaves to sift through the ashes of Sulla’s house after they cooled, looking for hidden treasure. The image cupboards containing Sulla and his ancestors had not been in the house when the Bardyaei plundered it; nor had the priceless citrus-wood table. Mamercus was very efficient. So was Sulla’s new steward, Chrysogonus. Between the two of them and a small army of slaves under strict instructions not to appear either furtive or guilty, they stripped the best out of half a dozen of Rome’s most beautiful houses in less than a day and put the best into hiding in places no one would dream of looking.

*

During the first days of Marius’s seventh consulship he never went home to his house, nor set eyes upon Julia; even Young Marius had been sent out of the city before New Year’s Day and put to work discharging the men Marius felt he would no longer need. At the beginning he seemed to fear that Julia would seek him out, and hedged himself behind his Bardyaei, under strict orders to escort his wife home should she appear in the Forum. But when three days went by without a sign of her, he relaxed somewhat, the only evidence of his state of mind the endless letters he kept writing to his son adjuring him to stay where he was, not to come to Rome.

“He’s quite mad, but he’s also quite sane—he knows he could never look Julia in the face after that bloodbath,” said Cinna to his friend Gaius Julius Caesar, that moment returned to Rome from Ariminum, where he had been helping Marius Gratidianus keep Servilius Vatia inside Italian Gaul.

“Where is he living, then?” asked Marius’s ashen brother-in-law, maintaining a steady voice by sheer willpower.

“In a tent, if you’d believe that. There it is, see? Pitched alongside the Pool of Curtius, in which he has his bath. But he never seems to sleep anyway. When he isn’t carousing with the worst of his slaves and that monster Fimbria, he’s walking, walking, walking, nosing into this and that for all the world like one of those little old grannies who poke their walking sticks through everything they see. Nothing is sacred!” Cinna shivered. “I can’t control him. I have no idea what’s in his mind—or what he’s likely to do next. I doubt he knows himself.”

The rumors of insanities within Rome had started to impinge upon Caesar’s journey when he reached Veii, but so strange and muddled were the stories that he took no credence in them beyond altering his route. Instead of proceeding across the Campus Martius and calling in to say hello to his cousin-by-marriage Sertorius, Caesar took a diverticulum the moment he crossed the Mulvian Bridge and headed for the Colline Gate; his information about recent events in Rome was current enough for him to know that Pompey Strabo’s army was no longer encamped there, and he knew Pompey Strabo was dead. At Veii he had discovered Marius and Cinna were consuls, one reason why he paid little attention to the rumors of unbelievable violence in the city. But when he reached the Colline Gate he found it occupied by a century of soldiers.

“Gaius Julius Caesar?” asked the centurion, who knew the legates of Gaius Marius quite well.

“Yes,” said Caesar, growing anxious.

“I have a message from the consul Lucius Cinna that you are to go straight to his offices in the temple of Castor.’’

Caesar frowned. “I will be happy to do that, centurion, but I would prefer to go home first.”

“The message is, at once, Lucius Julius,” said the centurion, managing to make it sound both courteous and an order.

Stifling his anxiety, Caesar rode straight down the Vicus Longus heading for the Forum.

The smoke which had marred the perfect blue of a cloudless sky from as far away as the Mulvian Bridge was now a pall, and cinders floated on the air; in growing horror his eyes took in the sight of dead bodies—men, women, children—sprawled here and there on the sides of this wide straight thoroughfare. By the time he reached the Fauces Suburae his heart was thudding, and every part of him wanted to turn uphill, ride at the gallop to his home to make sure his family was unharmed. But instinct said he would do better by his family to go where he had been ordered to go. Clearly there had been war in the streets of Rome, and in the far distance toward the jumbled insulae of the Esquiline he could hear shouts, screams, howls. Not a single living person could he see looking down the Argiletum; he turned instead into the Vicus Sandalarius and came into the Forum at its middle, where he could skirt the buildings and arrive at the temple of Castor and Pollux without entering the lower Forum.

Cinna he found at the foot of the temple steps, and from him learned what had happened.

“What do you want of me, Lucius Cinna?” he asked, having seen the big tent sprawled by the Pool of Curtius.

“I don’t want any thing of you, Gaius Julius,” said Cinna.

“Then let me go home! There are fires everywhere, I must see that my family is all right!”

“I didn’t send for you, Gaius Julius. Gaius Marius himself did. I simply told the gate guards to make sure you came to me first because I thought you’d be in ignorance of what’s happening.”

“What does Gaius Marius want me for?” asked Caesar, trembling.

“Let’s ask him,” said Cinna, starting to walk.

The bodies now were headless; almost fainting, Caesar saw the rostra and its decorations.

“Oh, they’re friends!” he cried, tears springing to his eyes. “My cousins! My colleagues!”

“Keep your manner calm, Lucius Julius,” said Cinna tonelessly. “If you value your life, don’t cry, don’t pass out. His brother-in-law you may be, but since New Year’s Day I wouldn’t put it past him to order the execution of his wife or his son.”

And there he stood about halfway between the tent and the rostra, talking to his German giant, Burgundus. And to Caesar’s thirteen-year-old son.

“Gaius Julius, how good to see you!” rumbled Marius, clasping Caesar in his arms and kissing him with ostentatious affection; the boy, Cinna noticed, winced.

“Gaius Marius,” said Caesar, croaking.

“You were always efficient, Gaius Julius. Your letter said you’d be here today, and here you are. Home in Rome. Ho ro, ho ro!” Marius said. He nodded to Burgundus, who stepped away quickly.

But Caesar’s eyes were on his son, who stood amid the bloody shambles as if he didn’t see any of it, his color normal, his face composed, his eyelids down.

“Does your mother know you’re here?” Caesar blurted, looking for Lucius Decumius and finding him lurking in the lee of the tent.

“Yes, Father, she knows,” said Young Caesar, voice deep.

“Your boy’s really growing up, isn’t he?” asked Marius.

“Yes,” said Caesar, trying to appear collected. “Yes, he is.”

“His balls are dropping, wouldn’t you say?”

Caesar reddened. His son, however, displayed no embarrassment, merely glanced at Marius as if deploring his crassness. Not an atom of fear in him, Caesar noted, proud in spite of his own fear.

“Well now, I have a few things to discuss with both of you,” Marius said affably, including Cinna in his statement. “Young Caesar, wait with Burgundus and Lucius Decumius while I talk to your tata.” He watched until he was sure the lad was out of hearing distance, then turned to Cinna and Caesar with a gleeful look on his face. “I suppose you’re all agog, wondering what business I could have that concerns you both?”

“Indeed,” said Caesar.

“Well now,” he said—this phrase had become one of his favorites, and was uttered regularly—”I probably know Young Caesar better than you do, Gaius Julius. I’ve certainly seen more of him these last few years. A remarkable boy,” said Marius, voice becoming thoughtful, eyes now holding something slyly malicious. “Yes indeed, a truly extraordinary boy! Brilliant, you know. More intelligent than any fellow I’ve ever met. Writes poetry and plays, you know. But just as good at mathematics. Brilliant. Brilliant. Strong-willed too. Got quite a temper when he’s provoked. And he’s not afraid of trouble—or making trouble, for that matter.”

The malicious gleam increased, the right corner of Marius’s mouth turned up a little. “Well now, I said to myself after I became consul for the seventh time and fulfilled that old woman’s prophecy about me—I am very fond of this lad! Fond enough of him to want to see him lead a more tranquil and even kind of life than I for one have led. He’s a terrific scholar, you know. So, I asked myself, why not ensure him the position he will need in order to study? Why subject the dear little fellow to the ordeals of—oh, war— the Forum—politics?”

Feeling as if they trod on the crumbling lip of a volcano, Cinna and Caesar stood listening, having no idea where Gaius Marius was leading them.

“Well now,” Marius went on, “our flamen Dialis is dead. But Rome can’t do without the special priest of the Great God, now can she, eh? And here we have this perfect child, Gaius Julius Caesar Junior. Patrician. Both parents still living. Therefore the ideal candidate for flamen Dialis. Except that he isn’t married, of course. However, Lucius Cinna, you have an unbetrothed girl-child who is a patrician and has both parents still living. If you married her to Young Caesar, every criterion would be met. What a wonderfully ideal flamen and flaminica Dialis they would make! No need to worry about finding the money to see your boy climb the cursus honorum, Gaius Julius, and no need to worry about finding the money to dower your girl, Lucius Cinna. Their income is provided by the State, they are housed at the expense of the State, and their future is as august as it is assured.” He stopped, beamed upon the two transfixed fathers, held out his right hand. “What do you say?”

“But my daughter is only seven!” said Cinna, aghast.

“That’s no impediment,” said Marius. “She’ll grow up. They can continue to live in their own homes until they’re old enough to set up house together in their State House.

Naturally the marriage can’t be consummated until little Cornelia Cinna Minor is older. But there is nothing in the law to stop their marrying, you know.” He jigged a little. “So what do you say?”

“Well, it’s certainly all right by me,” said Cinna, enormously relieved that this was all Marius had wanted to see him about. “I admit I’ll find it difficult to dower a second daughter after my older girl cost me so much.”

“Gaius Julius, what do you say?”

Caesar looked sidelong at Cinna, receiving his unspoken message clearly; agree, or things will not go well for you and yours. “It’s all right by me too, Gaius Marius.”

“Splendid!” cried Marius, and did a little dance of joy. He turned toward Young Caesar and snapped his fingers— yet another recent habit. “Here, boy!”

What a striking lad he is! thought Cinna, who remembered him vividly from the time when Young Marius had been accused of murdering Cato the Consul. So handsome! But why don’t I like his eyes? They unsettle me, they remind me ... He couldn’t remember.

“Yes, Gaius Marius?” asked Young Caesar, whose gaze came to rest a little warily upon Marius’s face; he had known, of course, that he was the subject of the conversation he had not been allowed to listen to.

“We have your future all mapped out for you,” said Marius with bland contentment. “You are to marry Lucius Cinna’s younger daughter at once, and become our new flamen Dialis.”

Nothing did Young Caesar say. Not a muscle of his face did he move. Yet as he heard Marius say it, he changed profoundly, though none watching could guess in what way.

“Well now, Young Caesar, what do you say?” asked Marius.

A question greeted with silence; the boy’s eyes had fallen away from Marius the moment the announcement was made, and now rested firmly on his own feet.

“What do you say?” Marius repeated, beginning to look angry.

The pale eyes, quite expressionless, lifted to rest upon his father’s face. “I thought, Father, that I was committed to marry the daughter of the rich Gaius Cossutius?”

Caesar flushed, tightened his lips. “A marriage with Cossutia was discussed, yes. But no permanent arrangements have been made, and I much prefer this marriage for you. And this future for you.”

“Let me see,” said Young Caesar in a musing voice, “as flamen Dialis I can see no human corpse. I can touch nothing made of iron or steel, from a pair of scissors and a razor to a sword and a spear. I can have no knot upon my person. I can touch no goat, no horse, no dog, no ivy. I can eat no raw meat, no wheat, no leavened bread, no beans. I can touch no leather taken from a beast specially killed to provide it. I have many interesting and important duties. For instance, I announce the vintage at the Vinalia. I lead the sheep in a suovetaurilia procession. I sweep out the temple of the Great God Jupiter. I arrange for the purification of a house after someone has died in it. Yes, many interesting, important things!”

The three men listened, unable to tell from Young Caesar’s tone whether he was being sarcastic or naive.

“What do you say?’’ demanded Marius for the third time.

The blue eyes lifted to his face, so like Sulla’s that for an uncanny moment Marius fancied it was Sulla stood there, and groped instinctively for his sword.

“I say .. . Thank you, Gaius Marius! How thoughtful and how considerate of you to take the time to arrange my future so neatly,” said the boy, voice devoid of any feeling, yet not in an offensive way. “I understand exactly why you have visited such care upon my humble fate, Uncle. Nothing is hidden from the flamen Dialis! But I tell you also, Uncle, that nothing can alter any man’s fate, or prevent his being what he is meant to be.”

“Ah, but you can’t get around the provisions of the priest of Jupiter!” cried Marius, growing angrier; he had wanted desperately to see the boy flinch, beg, weep, throw himself down.

“I should hope not!” said Young Caesar, shocked. “You quite mistake my meaning, Uncle. I thank you most sincerely for this new and truly Herculean task you have given me.” He looked at his father. “I am going home now,” he said. “Do you want to walk with me? Or do you have further business here?”

“No, I’ll come,” said Caesar, startled, then lifted a brow at Gaius Marius. “Is that all right, consul?”

“Certainly,” said Marius, accompanying father and son as they started to walk across the lower Forum.

“Lucius Cinna, we will meet later,” said Caesar, lifting a hand in farewell. “My thanks for everything. The horse— it belongs to Gratidianus’s legion, and I have no stable for it.”

“Don’t worry, Gaius Julius, I’ll have one of my men take care of it,” said Cinna, heading for the temple of Castor and Pollux in a far better mood than he had suffered as he went to see Marius.

“I think,” said Marius when these civilities were concluded, “that we will tie our children up tomorrow. The marriage can be celebrated at the house of Lucius Cinna at dawn. The Pontifex Maximus, the College of Pontifices, the College of Augurs and all the minor priestly colleges will gather afterward in the temple of the Great God to inaugurate our new flamen and flaminica Dialis. Consecration will have to wait until after you don the toga of manhood, Young Caesar, but inauguration fulfills all the legal obligations anyway.”

“I thank you again, Uncle,” Young Caesar said.

They were passing the rostra. Marius stopped to throw his arm toward the dozens of grisly trophies ringing the speaker’s platform around. “Look at that!” he cried happily. “Isn’t that a sight?”

“Yes,” said Caesar. “It certainly is.”

The son strode out at a great pace; hardly conscious, thought the father, that anyone strode alongside him. Turning his head to look back, the father noted that Lucius Decumius was following at a discreet distance. Young Caesar hadn’t needed to come alone to that frightful place; for all Caesar himself disliked Lucius Decumius, it was a comfort to know he was there.

“How long has he been consul?” the boy suddenly demanded. “A whole four days? Oh, it seems like an eternity! I have never seen my mother cry before. Dead men everywhere—children sobbing—half of the Esquiline burning— heads fencing the rostra round—blood everywhere—his Bardyaei as he calls them hard put to choose between pinching at women’s breasts and guzzling wine! What a glorious seventh consulship is this! Homer must be wandering the ditch along the edge of the Elysian Fields craving a huge drink of blood so he can hymn the deeds of Gaius Marius’s seventh consulship! Well, Rome can certainly spare Homer the blood!”

How did one answer a diatribe like that? Never home, having no real understanding of his son, Caesar didn’t know, so said nothing.

When the boy erupted into his own home, his father trying to keep up with him, he stood in the middle of the reception room and bellowed, “Mother!”

Caesar heard the clatter of a reed pen being dropped, then she came hurrying out of her workroom, face terrified. Of her normal beauty there was scarcely a relic left; she was thin, there were black crescents beneath her eyes, her face was puffy, her lips bitten to shreds.

Her attention was focused on Young Caesar; as soon as she saw him apparently unharmed her whole body sagged. Then she saw who was with him, and her knees gave way. “Gaius Julius!”

He caught her before she could fall, holding her very closely.

“Oh, I am so glad you’re back!” she said into the horsey folds of his riding cloak. “It is a nightmare!”

“When you’ve quite finished!” snapped Young Caesar.

His parents turned to look at him.

“I have something to tell you, Mother,” he said, not concerned with anything save his own monumental trouble.

“What is it?’’ she asked distractedly, still recovering from the double shock of seeing her son unharmed and her husband home.

“Do you know what he’s done to me?”

“Who? Your father?”

Young Caesar dismissed his father with a lavish gesture. “No, not him! No! He just fell in with it, and I expected that. I mean dear, kind, thoughtful Uncle Gaius Marius!”

“What has Gaius Marius done?” she asked calmly, quaking inside.

“He’s appointed me flamen Dialis! I am to marry the seven-year-old daughter of Lucius Cinna at dawn tomorrow, and then be inaugurated as flamen Dialis straight afterward,” said Young Caesar through clenched teeth.

Aurelia gasped, could find no words to say; her immediate reaction was of profound relief, so afraid had she been when the summons came that Gaius Marius wanted Young Caesar in the lower Forum. All the time he had been away she had worked upon the same column of figures in her ledger without arriving at the same total twice, her mind filled with visions of what she had only heard described and her son must now see—the heads on the rostra, the dead bodies. The crazy old man.

Young Caesar grew tired of waiting for an answer, and launched into his own answer. “I am never to go to war and rival him there. I am never to stand for the consulship and rival him there. I am never to have the opportunity to be called the Fourth Founder of Rome. Instead, I am to spend the rest of my days muttering prayers in a language none of us understands anymore—sweeping out the temple—making myself available to every Lucius Tiddlypuss in need of having his house purified—wearing ridiculous clothes!” Square of palm and long of finger, beautiful in a masculine way, the hands were lifted to grope at the air, clench upon it impotently. “That old man has stripped me of my birthright, all to safeguard his own wretched status in the history books!”

Neither of them had much insight into how Young Caesar’s mind worked, nor had either of them been privileged to listen to his dreams for his own future; as they stood listening to this passionate speech, both of them searched for a way to make Young Caesar understand that what had happened, what had been decided, was now inevitable. He must be made to see that the best thing he could do in the circumstances was to accept his fate with a good grace.

His father chose to be stern, disapproving. “Don’t be so ridiculous!” he said.

His mother followed suit because this was how she always handled the boy—duty, obedience, humility, self-effacement—all the Roman virtues he did not possess. So she too said, “Don’t be ridiculous!” But she added, “Do you seriously think you could ever rival Gaius Marius? No man can!”

“Rival Gaius Marius?” asked their son, rearing back. “I will outstrip him in brilliance as the sun does the moon!”

“If that is how you see this great privilege, Gaius Junior,” she said, “then Gaius Marius was right to give you this task. It is an anchor you badly need. Your position in Rome is assured.”

“I don’t want an assured position!” cried the boy. “I want to fight for my position! I want my position to be the consequence of my own efforts! What satisfaction is there in a position older than Rome herself, a position visited upon me by someone who dowers me with it to save his own reputation?”

Caesar looked forbidding.’’ You are ungrateful,” he said.

“Oh, Father! How can you be so obtuse? It isn’t I at fault, it’s Gaius Marius! I am what I have always been! Not ungrateful! In giving me this burden I shall have to find a way to rid myself of, Gaius Marius has done not one thing to earn gratitude from me! His motives are as impure as they are selfish.”

“Will you stop overrating your own importance?” cried Aurelia in despairing tones. “My son, I have been telling you since you were so small I had to carry you that your ideas are too grand, your ambitions too overweening!”

“What does that matter?” asked the boy, his tones more despairing still. “Mother, I am the only one who can make that judgment! And it is one I can make only at the end of my life—not before it has begun! Now it cannot begin at all!”

Caesar thought it time to try a different tack. “Gaius Junior, we have no choice in the matter,” he said. “You’ve been in the Forum, you know what’s happened. If Lucius Cinna, who is the senior consul, thinks it prudent to agree to whatever Gaius Marius says, I cannot stand against him! I have not only to think about you, but to think about your mother and the girls. Gaius Marius is not his old self. His mind is diseased. But he has the power.”

“Yes, I see that,” said Young Caesar, calming a little. “In that one respect I have no desire to surpass him—or even to emulate him. I will never cause blood to flow in the streets of Rome.”

As insensitive as she was practical, Aurelia deemed the crisis over. She nodded. “There, that’s better, my son. Like it or not, you are going to be flamen Dialis.”

Lips hard, eyes bleak, Young Caesar looked from his mother’s haggardly beautiful face to his father’s tiredly handsome one and saw no true sympathy; worse by far, he thought he saw no true understanding. What he didn’t realize was that he himself lacked understanding of his parents’ predicament.

“May I please go?” he asked.

“Provided you avoid any Bardyaei and don’t go further than Lucius Decumius’s,” Aurelia said.

“I’m only going to find Gaius Matius.”

He walked off to the door which led into the garden at the bottom of the insula’s light-well, taller than his mother now and slim rather than thin, with shoulders seeming too broad for his width.

“Poor boy,” said Caesar, who did understand some of it.

“He’s permanently anchored now,” said Aurelia tightly. “I fear for him, Gaius Julius. He has no brakes.”

*

Gaius Matius was the son of the knight Gaius Matius, and was almost exactly the same age as Young Caesar; they had been born on opposite sides of the courtyard separating the apartments of their parents, and had grown up together. Their futures had always been different, just as their childish hopes were, but they knew each other as well as brothers did, and liked each other very much more than brothers usually did.

A smaller child than Young Caesar, Gaius Matius was fairish in coloring, with hazel eyes; he had a pleasantly good-looking face and a gentle mouth, and was his father’s son in every way—he was already attracted to commerce and commercial law, and most happy that his manhood would be spent in them; he also loved to garden, and had eight green fingers and two green thumbs.

Digging happily in “his” corner of the courtyard, he saw his friend come through the door and knew immediately that something serious was wrong. So he put his trowel down and got to his feet, flicking soil from his tunic because his mother didn’t like his bringing dirt inside, then ruining the effect by wiping his grubby paws on its front.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked placidly.

“Congratulate me, Pustula!” said Young Caesar in ringing tones. “I am the new flamen Dialisl”

“Oh, dear,’’ said Matius, whom Young Caesar had called Pimple since early childhood because he was always much smaller. He squatted down again, resumed his digging. “That is a shame, Pavo,” he said, putting just enough sympathy into his voice. He had called Young Caesar a peacock for as long as he had been called a pimple; their mothers had taken them and their sisters on a picnic treat out to the Pincian hill, where peacocks strutted and fanned out their tails to complement the froth of almond blossoms and the carpet of narcissus. Just so did the toddler Caesar strut, just so did he plume himself. And Pavo the peacock it had been ever since.

Young Caesar squatted beside Gaius Matius and concentrated upon keeping his tears at bay, for he was losing his anger and discovering grief instead. “I was going to win the Grass Crown even younger than Quintus Sertorius,” he said now. “I was going to be the greatest general in the history of the world—greater even than Alexander! I was going to be consul more times than Gaius Marius. My dignitas was going to be enormous!”

“You’ll have great dignitas as flamen Dialis.”

“Not for myself, I won’t. People respect the position, not the holder of it.”

Matius sighed, put his trowel down again. “Let’s go and see Lucius Decumius,” he said.

That being exactly the right suggestion, Young Caesar rose with alacrity. “Yes, let’s,” he said.

They emerged into the Subura Minor through the Matius apartment and walked up the side of the building to the big crossroads junction between the Subura Minor and the Vicus Patricius. Here in the apex of Aurelia’s triangular insula was located the premises of the local crossroads college, and here inside the crossroads college had Lucius Decumius reigned for over twenty years.

He was there, of course. Since New Year’s Day he hadn’t gone anywhere unless to guard Aurelia or her children.

“Well, if it isn’t the peacock and the pimple!” he said cheerfully from his table at the back. “A little wine in your water, eh?”

But neither Young Caesar nor Matius had a taste for wine, so they shook their heads and slid onto the bench opposite Lucius Decumius as he filled two cups with water.

“You look glum. I wondered what was going on with Gaius Marius. What’s the matter?” Lucius Decumius asked

Young Caesar, shrewd eyes filled with love.

“Gaius Marius has appointed me flamen Dialis.”

And at last the boy got the reaction he had wanted so badly; Lucius Decumius looked stunned, then angry.

“The vindictive old shit!”

“Yes, isn’t he?”

“When you looked after him all those months, Pavo, he got to know you too well. Give him this—he’s no fool, even if his head is cracked from the inside out.”

“What am I going to do, Lucius Decumius?”

For a long moment the caretaker of the crossroads college did not reply, chewing his lip thoughtfully. Then his bright gaze rested upon Young Caesar’s face, and he smiled. “You don’t know that now, Pavo, but you will!” he said chirpily. “What’s all this down in the dumps for? Nobody can plot and scheme better than you when you needs to. You’re farsighted about your future—but you isn’t afraid of your future! Why so frightened now? Shock, boy, that’s all. I knows you better than Gaius Marius do. And I thinks you’ll find a way around it. After all, Young Caesar, this is Rome, not Alexandria. There’s always a legal loophole in Rome.”

Gaius Matius Pustula sat listening, but said nothing. His father was in the business of drawing up contracts and deeds, so no one knew better than he how accurate that statement was. And yet... That was all very well for contracts and laws. Whereas the priesthood of Jupiter was beyond all legal loopholes because it was older even than the Twelve Tables, as Pavo Caesar was certainly intelligent and well-read enough to know.

So too did Lucius Decumius definitely know. But, more sensitive than Young Caesar’s parents, Lucius Decumius understood that it was vital to give Young Caesar hope. Otherwise he was just as likely to fall on the sword he was now forbidden to touch. As Gaius Marius surely knew, Young Caesar was not the type suited to holding a flaminate. The boy was inordinately superstitious, but religion bored him. To be so confined, to be so hedged around with rules and regulations, would kill him. Even if he had to kill himself to escape.

“I am to be married tomorrow morning before I am inaugurated,” said Young Caesar, pulling a face.

“What, to Cossutia?”

“No, not her. She’s not good enough to be flaminica Dialis, Lucius Decumius. I was only marrying her for her money. As flamen Dialis I have to marry a patrician. So they’re going to give me Lucius Cinna’s daughter. She’s seven.”

“Well, that don’t matter either then, do it? Better seven than eighteen, little peacock.”

“I suppose so.” The boy folded his lips together, nodded. “You are right, Lucius Decumius. I will find a way!”

But the events of the next day made that vow seem hollow, as Young Caesar came to understand how brilliantly Gaius Marius had trapped him. Everyone had dreaded the walk from the Subura to the Palatine, but during the previous eighteen hours a massive cleanup had taken place, as Lucius Decumius was able to inform the anxious Caesar when he debated how far around the city’s center they ought to walk, not so much for the sake of Young Caesar—who had been exposed to the worst of it already—but for the sake of his mother and his two sisters.

“Your boy’s is not the only wedding this morning, the Bardyaei tell me,” said Lucius Decumius. “Gaius Marius brought Young Marius back to Rome last night for his wedding. He don’t mind who sees the mess. Except for Young Marius. We can walk across the Forum. The heads is all gone. Blood’s washed away. Bodies dumped. As if the poor young fellow don’t know what his father’s gone and done!”

Caesar eyed the little man with awe. “Do you actually stand on speaking terms with those terrible men?” he asked.

“Course I does!” said Lucius Decumius scornfully. “Six of them was—well, is, I suppose—members of my own brotherhood.”

“I see,” said Caesar dryly. “Well, let us go, then.”

The wedding ceremony at the house of Lucius Cornelius Cinna was confarreatio, and therefore a union for life. The tiny bride—tiny even for her age—was neither bright nor precocious. Incongruously tricked out in flame and saffron, hung about with wool and talismans, she went through the ceremonies with the animation and enthusiasm of a doll. When the veil was lifted from her face, Young Caesar found it dimpled, flowerlike, and endowed with an enormous pair of soft dark eyes. So, feeling sorry for her, he smiled at her with that conscious charm of his, and was rewarded with a display of the dimples and a gleam of adoration.

Married at an age when most noble Roman parents had done no more than toy with possible candidates for betrothal, the child newlyweds were then escorted by both families up onto the Capitol and into the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, whose statue smiled down on them fatuously.

There were other newlyweds present. Cinnilla’s older sister, who was properly Cornelia Cinna, had been hastily married the day before to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. The haste was not due to the usual reason. Rather, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus thought it prudent to safeguard his head by marrying Gaius Marius’s colleague’s daughter, to whom he was promised anyway. Young Marius, arriving after dark the day before, at dawn had married Scaevola Pontifex Maximus’s daughter, called Mucia Tertia to distinguish her from her two elderly cousins. Neither couple looked in the least happy, but particularly was this true of Young Marius and Mucia Tertia, who had never met and would not have an opportunity to consummate their union, as Young Marius had been ordered back to duty the moment the last of the day’s formalities was over.

Of course Young Marius knew of his father’s atrocities, and had expected to know their extent when he reached Rome. Marius saw him at his camp in the Forum, a very brief interview.

“Report to the house of Quintus Mucius Scaevola at dawn for your wedding,” he was told. “Sorry I won’t be there, too busy. You and your wife will attend the inauguration of the new flamen Dialis—that’s a very big occasion, they tell me—and then go to the feast at the house of the new flamen Dialis afterward. The moment that’s finished, you go back to duty in Etruria.”

“What, don’t I get an opportunity to consummate my marriage?” asked Young Marius, trying to be light.

“Sorry, my son, that will have to wait until things are tidier,” said Marius. “Straight back to work!”

Something in the old man’s face made him hesitate to ask the question he had to ask; Young Marius drew in a breath and asked it. “Father, may I go now to see my mother? May I sleep there?”

Grief, pain, anguish; all three flared in Gaius Marius’s eyes. His lips quivered. Then he said, “Yes,” and turned away.

The moment in which he met his mother was the most awful of all Young Marius’s life. Her eyes! How old she looked! How beaten. How sad. She was completely closed in upon herself, and reluctant to discuss what had happened.

“I want to know, Mama! What did he do?”

“What no man does in his right mind, little Gaius.”

“I have known he was mad since Africa, but I didn’t know how bad it was. Oh, Mama, how can we repair the damage?”

“We cannot.” She lifted one hand to her head, frowned. “My son, let us not speak of it!” She wet her lips. “How does he look?”

“You mean it’s true?”

“What is true?”

“That you haven’t seen him at all?”

“I haven’t seen him at all, little Gaius. I never will again.”

And the way she said it, Young Marius didn’t know whether she meant it from her own side, or divined it from a presentiment of the future, or thought that was how his father wanted it.

“He looks unwell, Mama. Not himself. He says he won’t be at my wedding. Will you come?”

“Yes, little Gaius, I’ll come.”

After the wedding—what an interesting-looking girl Mucia Tertia was!—Julia accompanied the party to Young Caesar’s ceremonies in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus because Gaius Marius was not present. They had found the city scrubbed and polished, so Young Marius still did not know the extent of his father’s atrocities. And being the Great Man’s son, could not ask a soul.

The rituals in the temple were enormously long and unbelievably boring. Stripped to his ungirt tunic, Young Caesar was invested with the garments of his new office—the hideously uncomfortable and stuffy circular cape made of two layers of heavy wool widely striped in red and purple, the close-fitting spiked ivory helmet with its impaled disc of wool, the special shoes without knot or buckle. How could he possibly endure to wear all this every single day of his life? Used to feeling his waist cinched with a neat leather belt Lucius Decumius had given him together with a beautiful little dagger in a sheath attached to the belt, Young Caesar’s midriff felt peculiar without it, and the ivory helmet—made for a man with a much smaller head—did not come down to encircle his ears as it should, but sat perched ridiculously atop his ivory-colored hair. That was all right, Scaevola Pontifex Maximus assured him; Gaius Marius was donating him a new apex, and the maker would come round to his mother’s apartment to measure his head for it on the morrow.

When the boy set eyes on his Aunt Julia, his heart smote him. Now, while the various priests droned on and on and on, he watched her fixedly, willing her to look at him. She could feel that will, of course, but she would not look. Suddenly she was so much older than her forty years; all her beauty retreated before a wall of worry she couldn’t see over or around. But at the end of the ceremonies, when everybody clustered round to greet the new flamen Dialis and his doll like flaminica, Young Caesar saw Julia’s eyes at last, and wished he had not. She kissed him on the lips as she always did, and leaned her head onto his shoulder to weep a little.

“I am so sorry, Young Caesar,” she whispered. “An unkinder thing he could not have done. He is so busy hurting everyone, even those he ought not to hurt. But he isn’t himself, please see that!”

“I do see that, Aunt Julia,” the boy said too softly for anyone else to hear. “Don’t worry about me. I will deal with everything.”

Finally, it being sunset, the departures were permitted. The new flamen Dialis—carrying his too-small apex but clad in his suffocating laena, his shoes slopping because they could not be made to fit well by laces or straps—walked home with his parents, his unusually solemn sisters, his Aunt Julia, and Young Marius and his bride. Cinnilla the new flaminica Dialis—now also robed without knot or buckle in stifling heavy wool—went home with her parents, her brother, her sister Cornelia Cinna, and Gnaeus Ahenobarbus.

“So Cinnilla will remain with her own family until she’s eighteen,” said Aurelia brightly to Julia, intentionally making small talk as she got everyone settled in the dining room to enjoy a late and festive dinner. “Eleven years into the future! At that age it seems such a long time. At my age, it is too short.”

“Yes, I agree,” said Julia colorlessly, sitting down between Mucia Tertia and Aurelia.

“What a lot of weddings!” said Caesar cheerfully, terribly aware of his sister’s blighted face. He was reclining on the lectus medius in the host’s normal place, and had given the place of honor alongside him to the new flamen Dialis, who had never been allowed to recline in his life, and now found it as strange and uncomfortable as everything else was on this tumultuous day.

“Why didn’t Gaius Marius come?” asked Aurelia tactlessly.

Julia flushed, shrugged. “He’s too busy.”

Wishing she could bite off her tongue, Aurelia subsided without commenting, and looked rather wildly toward her husband for rescue. But rescue didn’t come; instead, Young Caesar made things worse.

“Rubbish! Gaius Marius didn’t come because he didn’t dare come,” said the new flamen Dialis, suddenly sitting bolt upright on the couch and removing his laena, which was dumped unceremoniously on the floor beside the special shoes. “There, that’s better. The wretched thing! I hate it, I hate it!”

Seizing upon this as a way out of her own dilemma, Aurelia frowned at her son. “Don’t be impious,” she said.

“Even if I speak the truth?” asked Young Caesar, subsiding onto his left elbow and looking defiant.

At that moment the first course came in—crusty white bread, olives, eggs, celery, several lettuce salads.

Finding himself very hungry—the rituals had permitted him no food—the new flamen Dialis reached out for the bread.

“Don’t!” said Aurelia sharply, color fading in fear.

The lad froze, staring at her. “Why not?” he asked.

“You are forbidden to touch wheaten or leavened bread,” said his mother. “Here is your bread now.”

And in came a platter which was set in front of the new flamen Dialis; a platter containing some thin, flat, utterly unappetizing slabs of a grey-hued substance.

“What is it?” Young Caesar asked, gazing at it with loathing. “Mola salsa ?’’

“Mola salsa is made from spelt, which is wheat,” said Aurelia, knowing very well that he knew it. “This is barley.”

“Unleavened barley bread,” said Young Caesar tonelessly. “Even Egyptian peasants live better than this! I think I will eat ordinary bread. This stuff would make me sick.”

“Young Caesar, this is the day of your inauguration,” said the father. “The omens were auspicious. You are now the flamen Dialis. On this day above all other days, everything must be scrupulously observed. You are Rome’s direct link to the Great God. Whatever you do affects Rome’s relations with the Great God. You’re hungry, I know. And it is pretty awful stuff, I agree. But you cannot think of self ahead of Rome from this day forward. Eat your own bread.’’

The boy’s eyes traveled from face to face. He drew a breath, and said what had to be said. No adult could say it, they had too many years and too many fears for this and that and everything.

“This is not a time for rejoicing. How can any of us feel glad? How can I feel glad?” He reached out for the fresh crisp white bread, took a piece, broke it, dipped it in olive oil, and thrust some into his mouth. “No one bothered to ask me seriously whether I wanted this unmanly job,” he said, chewing with relish. “Oh yes, Gaius Marius asked me three times, I know! But what choice did I have, tell me that? The answer is, none. Gaius Marius is mad. We all know that, though we don’t say it openly among ourselves as dinnertime conversation. He did this to me deliberately, and his reasons were not pious, not concerned with the welfare of Rome, religious or otherwise.’’ He swallowed the bread. “I am not yet a man. Until I am, I will not wear that frightful gear. I will put on my belt and my toga praetexta and decently comfortable footwear. I will eat whatever I like. I will go to the Campus Martius to perform my drills, practise my swordplay, ride my horse, handle my shield, throw my pilum. When I am a man and my bride is my wife, we shall see. Until then, I will not act as flamen Dialis inside the bosom of my family or when it interferes with the normal duties of a noble Roman boy.”

Complete silence followed this declaration of independence. The mature members of the family tried to find the right response, feeling for the first time some of the helplessness the crippled, incapacitated Gaius Marius had felt when he came up against that will of iron. What could one do? wondered the father, who shrank from locking the boy in his sleeping cubicle until he changed his mind, for he did not think the treatment would work. More determined by far, Aurelia seriously contemplated the same course of action, but knew much better than her husband that it would not work. The wife and son of the man who had generated all this unhappiness were too aware of the truth to be angry, too aware of their own inability to change things to be righteous. Mucia Tertia, awed at the size and good looks of her new husband, unused to a family circle which spoke frankly, gazed at her knees. And Young Caesar’s sisters, older than he and therefore used to him since his infancy, looked at each other ruefully.

Julia broke the silence by saying peacefully, “I think you are quite right, Young Caesar. At half past thirteen, the most sensible things you can do are to eat good food and keep exercising vigorously. After all, Rome may need your health and skills one day, even if you are the flamen Dialis. Look at poor old Lucius Merula. I’m sure he never expected to have to act as consul. But when he had to, he did. No one deemed him less the priest of Jupiter, or impious.”

The senior in age among the women, Julia was allowed to have her way—if for no other reason that it presented the boy’s parents with an attitude which prevented a permanent breach between them and their difficult son.

Young Caesar ate wheaten leavened bread and eggs and olives and chicken until his hunger pangs vanished, then patted his belly, replete. He was not a poor eater, but food interested him little, and he knew perfectly well that he could have gone without the crusty white bread, could have satisfied himself with the other. But it was better that his family understood from the beginning how he felt about his new career, and how he intended to approach it. If Aunt Julia and Young Marius were rendered unhappy and guilty by his words, that was too bad. Vital to the well-being of Rome the priest of Jupiter might be, yet the appointment was not of his choosing, and Young Caesar knew in his heart that the Great God had other things for him to do than sweep out the temple.

Dietary crisis aside, declaration of independence aside, it was a bitter meal. So much unsaid, so much which had to remain unsaid. For everybody’s sake. Perhaps Young Caesar’s candidness had saved the dinner; it drew the focus of everyone’s thoughts away from the atrocities of Gaius Marius, the madness of Gaius Marius.

“I’m glad today is over,” said Aurelia to Caesar as they went to their bedroom.

“I never want another such,” said Caesar with feeling.

Before she removed her clothes Aurelia sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at her husband. He seemed fatigued—but then, he always did. How old was he? Almost forty-five. The consulship was passing him by, and he was no Marius, no Sulla. Gazing at him now, Aurelia knew suddenly that he would never be consul. A great deal of the blame for that, she thought, must be laid at my feet. If he had a less busy and independent wife, he would have spent more time at home this last decade, and made more of a reputation for himself in the Forum. He’s not a fighter, my husband. And how can he go to a madman to ask for the funds to mount a serious campaign to be elected consul? He won’t do it. Not from fear. From pride. The money is sticky with blood now. No decent man would want to use it. And he is the most decent of men, my husband.

“Gaius Julius,” she said, “what can we do about our son and his flaminate? He hates it so!”

“Understandably. However,” he said with a sigh, “I will never be consul now. And that means he would have a very difficult time of it becoming consul himself. With this war in Italy, our money has dwindled. You may as well say I’ve lost the thousand iugera of land I bought in Lucania because it was so cheap. It’s too far from a town ever to be safe, I suspect. After Gaius Norbanus turned the Lucanians back from Sicily last year, the insurgents have gone to earth in places like my land. And Rome will not have the time, the men or the money to chase them out, even in our son’s lifetime. So all that remains is my original endowment, the six hundred iugera Gaius Marius bought for me near Bovillae. Enough for the back benches of the Senate, not the cursus honorum. You might say Gaius Marius took the land back again. His troops have ruined it in these last months while they roamed Latium.’’

“I know,” said Aurelia sadly. “Our poor son will have to be content with his flaminate, won’t he?”

“I fear so.”

“He’s so convinced Gaius Marius did it on purpose!”

“Oh, I think he did,” said Caesar. “I was there in the Forum. He was—indecently pleased with himself.”

“Then my son has received scant thanks for all the time he gave Gaius Marius after his second stroke.”

“Gaius Marius has no gratitude left. What frightened me was the fear in Lucius Cinna. He told me that no one was safe, even Julia and Young Marius. After seeing Gaius Marius, I believe him.”

Caesar had removed his clothes, and Aurelia saw with faint alarm that he had lost weight; his ribs and hipbones were showing, his thighs were farther apart.

“Gaius Julius, are you well?” she asked abruptly.

He looked surprised. “I think so! A little tired, perhaps, but not ill. It’s probably that sojourn in Ariminum. After three years of Pompey Strabo’s marching up and down, there’s very little left to feed legions with anywhere in Umbria or Picenum. So we had short commons, Marcus Gratidianus and I, and if one cannot feed the men well, one cannot eat well oneself. I seemed to spend most of my time riding all over the place looking for supplies.”

“Then I shall feed you nothing but the very best food,” she said, one of her rare smiles lighting up her drawn face. “Oh, I wish I thought things were going to get better! But I have a horrible feeling they’re going to get worse.” She stood up and began to divest herself of her gown.

“I share your feeling, meum mel,” he said, sitting on his side of the bed and swinging his legs onto it. Sighing luxuriously, he tucked his hands behind his head on the pillow, and smiled. “However, while we live at all, this is one thing cannot be taken from us.”

She crawled in beside him and snuggled her face into his shoulder; his left arm came down and encircled her. “A very nice thing,” she said gruffly. “I love you, Gaius Julius.”

*

When the sixth day of Gaius Marius’s seventh consulship dawned, he had his tribune of the plebs Publius Popillius Laenas convene yet another Plebeian Assembly. Only Marius’s Bardyaei were present in the well of the Comitia to hear the proceedings. For almost two days they had been under orders to behave, had had to clean the city and disappear from sight. But Young Marius was gone to Etruria, and the rostra was bristling again with all those heads. Only three people stood on the rostra—Marius himself, Popillius Laenas, and a prisoner cast in chains.

“This man,” shouted Marius, “tried to procure my death! When I—old and infirm!—was fleeing from Italy, the town of Minturnae gave me solace. Until a troop of hired assassins forced the magistrates of Minturnae to order my execution. Do you see my good friend Burgundus? It was Burgundus deputed to strangle me as I lay in a cell beneath the Minturnaean capitol! All alone and covered in mud. Naked! I, Gaius Marius! The greatest man in the history of Rome! The greatest man Rome will ever produce! A greater man than Alexander of Macedon! Great, great, great!” He ran down, looked bewildered, sought for memory, then grinned. “Burgundus refused to strangle me. And, taking their example from a simple German slave, the whole town of Minturnae refused to see me killed. But before the hired assassins—a paltry lot, they wouldn’t even do the deed themselves!—left Minturnae, I asked their leader who had hired them. ‘Sextus Lucilius,’ he said.”

Marius grinned again, spread his feet and stamped them in what apparently he fancied was a little dance. “When I became consul for the seventh time—what other man has been consul of Rome seven times?—it pleased me to allow Sextus Lucilius to think no one knew he hired those men. For five days he was foolish enough to remain in Rome, deeming himself safe. But this morning before it was light and he was out of his bed, I sent my lictors to arrest him. The charge is treason. He tried to procure the death of Gaius Marius!”

No trial was ever shorter, no vote was ever taken more cavalierly; without counsel, without witnesses, without due form and procedure, the Bardyaei in the well of the Comitia pronounced Sextus Lucilius guilty of treason. Then they voted to have him cast down from the Tarpeian Rock.

“Burgundus, I give the task of casting this man from the rock to you,” said Marius to his hulking servant.

“I will do so gladly, Gaius Marius,” rumbled Burgundus.

The whole assemblage then moved to a better place from which to view the execution; Marius himself, however, remained on the rostra with Popillius Laenas, its height affording it a superb outlook toward the Velabrum. Sextus Lucilius, who had said nothing in his defense nor allowed any expression on his face save contempt, went to his death gallantly. When Burgundus, a great golden glitter in the distance, led Lucilius to the end of the Tarpeian overhang, he didn’t wait to be picked up and tossed away; instead, he leaped of his own accord and almost brought the German down as well, for Burgundus had not let go of his chains.

This defiant independence and the risk to Burgundus angered Marius terribly; dark red in the face, he choked and spluttered, began to roar his outrage at the dismayed Popillius Laenas.

The weak little light still illuminating his mind was snuffed out in a torrent of blood. Gaius Marius fell to the floor of the rostra as if poleaxed, lictors clustering about him, Popillius Laenas calling frantically for a stretcher or a litter. And all those heads of old rivals, old enemies, ringed Marius’s inert body round, teeth beginning to show in the skull’s grin because the birds had feasted.

Cinna, Carbo, Marcus Gratidianus, Magius, and Vergilius came down from the Senate steps at a run, displacing the lictors as they gathered about the fallen form of Gaius Marius.

“He’s still breathing,” said his adopted nephew, Gratidianus.

“Too bad,” said Carbo under his breath.

“Get him home,” said Cinna.

By this time the members of Marius’s slave bodyguard had learned of the disaster and had crowded round the base of the rostra, all weeping, some wailing outlandishly.

Cinna turned to his own chief lictor. “Send to the Campus Martius and summon Quintus Sertorius here to me urgently,” he said. “You may tell him what has happened.”

While Marius’s lictors carried him off on a stretcher and the Bardyaei followed up the hill, still wailing, Cinna, Carbo, Marius Gratidianus, Magius, Vergilius and Popillius Laenas came down off the rostra and waited at its base for Quintus Sertorius; they sat on the top tier of the Comitia well, trying to regain their senses.

“I can’t believe he’s still alive!” said Cinna in wonder.

“I think he’d get up and walk if someone stuck two feet of good Roman sword under his ribs,” said Vergilius, scowling.

“What do you intend to do, Lucius Cinna?” asked Marius’s adopted nephew, who agreed with everyone’s attitude but could not admit it, and so preferred to change the subject.

“I’m not sure,” said Cinna, frowning. “That’s why I’m waiting for Quintus Sertorius. I value his counsel.”

An hour later Sertorius arrived.

“It’s the best thing could have happened,” he said to all of them, but particularly to Marius Gratidianus. “Don’t feel disloyal, Marcus Marius. You’re adopted, you have less Marian blood in you than I do. But, Marian though my mother is, I can say it without fear or guilt. His exile drove him mad. He is not the Gaius Marius we used to know.”

“What should we do, Quintus Sertorius?” asked Cinna.

Sertorius looked astonished. “About what? You are the consul, Lucius Cinna! It’s up to you to say, not to me.”

Flushing scarlet, Cinna waved his hand. “About the duties of the consul, Quintus Sertorius, I am in no doubt!” he snapped. “What I called you here for was to ask you how best we can rid ourselves of the Bardyaei.”

“Oh, I see,” said Sertorius slowly. He was still wearing a bandage about his left eye, but the discharge seemed to have dried up, and he looked comfortable enough with his handicap.

“Until the Bardyaei are disbanded, Rome still belongs to Marius,” said Cinna. “The thing is, I doubt they’ll want to be disbanded. They’ve had a taste of terrorizing a great city. Why should they stop because Gaius Marius is incapacitated?”

“They can be stopped,” said Sertorius, smiling nastily. “I can kill them.”

Carbo looked overjoyed. “Good!” he said. “I’ll go and fetch whatever men are left across the river.”

“No, no!” cried Cinna, horrified. “Another battle in the streets of Rome? We don’t dare after the past six days!”

“I know what to do!” said Sertorius, impatient at these silly interruptions. “Lucius Cinna, tomorrow at dawn you must summon the leaders of the Bardyaei to you here at the rostra. You must tell them that even in extremis Gaius Marius thought of them, and gave you the money to pay them. That will mean you must be seen to enter Gaius Marius’s house today, and stay there long enough to make it look as if you could have talked to him.”

“Why do I need to go to his house?” asked Cinna, shrinking at the thought.

“Because the Bardyaei will spend the whole of today and tonight in the street outside Gaius Marius’s door, waiting for news.”

“Yes, of course they will,” said Cinna. “I’m sorry, Quintus Sertorius, I’m not thinking very well. What then?”

“Tell the leaders that you have arranged for the whole of the Bardyaei to receive their pay at the Villa Publica on the Campus Martius at the second hour of day,” said Sertorius, showing his teeth. “I’ll be waiting with my men. And that will truly be the end of Gaius Marius’s reign of terror.”

*

When Gaius Marius was carried into his house Julia looked down at him with terrible grief, infinite compassion. He lay with eyes closed, breathing stertorously.

“It is the end,” she said to his lictors. “Go home, good servants of the People. I will see to him now.”

She bathed him herself, shaved a six-day stubble from his cheeks and chin, clothed him in a fresh white tunic with the help of Strophantes, and had him put into his bed. She didn’t weep.

“Send for my son and for the whole family,” she said to the steward when Marius was ready. “He will not die for some time, but he will die.” Sitting in a chair beside the Great Man’s bed, she gave Strophantes further instructions against the background horror of that snoring, bubbling respiration—the guest chambers were to be readied, sufficient food was to be prepared, the house must look its best. And Strophantes should send for the best undertaker. “I do not know a single name!” she said, finding that strange. “In all the time I have been married to Gaius Marius, the only death in this house was that of our little second son, and Grandfather Caesar was still alive, so he looked after things.”

“Perhaps he will recover, domina,” said the weeping steward, grown middle-aged in Gaius Marius’s service.

Julia shook her head. “No, Strophantes, he will not.”

Her brother Gaius Julius Caesar, his wife, Aurelia, their son, Young Caesar, and their daughters Lia and Ju-ju arrived at noon; having much further to travel, Young Marius did not arrive until after nightfall. Claudia, the widow of Julia’s other brother, declined to come, but sent her young son— another Sextus Caesar—to represent his branch of the family. Marius’s brother, Marcus, had been dead for some years, but his adopted son, Gratidianus, was present. As was Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex Maximus and his second wife, a second Licinia; his daughter, Mucia Tertia, was of course already in Marius’s house.

Of visitors there were many, but not nearly as many as there would have been a month earlier. Catulus Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Antonius Orator, Caesar Strabo, Crassus the censor—their tongues could no longer speak, their eyes no longer see. Lucius Cinna came to call several times, the first time tendering the apologies of Quintus Sertorius.

“He can’t leave his legion at the moment.”

Julia glanced at him shrewdly, but said only, “Tell dear Quintus Sertorius that I understand completely—and agree with him.”

This woman understands everything! thought Cinna, flesh creeping. He took his leave as quickly as he could, given that he had to stay long enough to make it look as if he might have spoken to Marius.

The vigil was continuous, each member of the family taking a turn to sit with the dying man, Julia in her chair beside him. But when his turn came, Young Caesar refused to enter that room.

“I may not be in the presence of death,” he said, face smooth, eyes innocent.

“But Gaius Marius is not dead,” said Aurelia, glancing at Scaevola and his wife.

“He might die while I was there. I couldn’t allow that,” said the boy firmly. “After he is dead and his body removed, I will sweep out his room in the purification rites.”

The trace of derision in his blue gaze was so slight only his mother saw it. Saw it and felt a numbness crawling through her jaw, for in it she recognized a perfect hate— not too hot, not too cold, not at all devoid of cerebration.

When Julia finally emerged to rest—Young Marius having removed her physically from her husband’s side—it was Young Caesar who went to her and took her away to her sitting room. On the point of getting up, Aurelia read a different message in her son’s eyes, and subsided immediately. She had lost all her control of him, he was free.

‘ ‘You must eat,” said the boy to his beloved aunt, settling her full length on her couch. “Strophantes is coming.”

“Truly, I am not hungry!” she said in a whisper, face as white as the bleached linen cover the steward had spread on the couch for her to rest upon; her own bed was the one she shared with Gaius Marius, she had no other in that house.

“Hungry or not, I intend to feed you a little hot soup,” Young Caesar said in that voice even Marius had not argued against. “It’s necessary, Aunt Julia. This could go on for many days. He won’t leave go of life easily.”

The soup came, together with some cubes of stale bread; Young Caesar made her drink soup and sippets, sitting on the edge of the couch and coaxing softly, gently, inexorably. Only when the bowl was empty did he desist, and then took most of the pillows away, covered her, smoothed back the hair from her brow tenderly.

“How good you are to me, little Gaius Julius,” she said, eyes clouding with sleep.

“Only to those I love,” he said, paused, and added, “Only to those I love. You. My mother. No one else.” He bent over and kissed her on the lips.

While she slept—which she did for several hours—he sat curled in a chair watching her, his own eyelids heavy, though he would not let them fall. Drinking her in tirelessly, piling up a massive memory; never again would she belong to him in the way she did sleeping there.

Sure enough, her waking dispelled the mood. At first she tried to panic, calming when he assured her Gaius Marius’s condition had not changed in the least.

“Go and have a bath,” her nurse said sternly, “and when you come back, I’ll have some bread and honey for you. Gaius Marius does not know whether you’re with him or not.” Finding herself hungry after sleeping and bathing, she ate the bread and honey; Young Caesar remained curled in his chair, frowning, until she rose to her feet.

“I’ll take you back,” he said, “but I cannot enter.”

“No, of course you can’t. You’re flamen Dialis now. I’m so sorry you hate it!”

“Don’t worry about me, Aunt Julia. I’ll solve it.” She took his face between her hands and kissed him. “I thank you for all your help, Young Caesar. You’re such a comfort.”

“I only do it for you, Aunt Julia. For you, I would give my life.” He smiled. “Perhaps it’s not far from the truth to say I already have.”

Gaius Marius died in the hour before dawn, when life is at its ebbing point and dogs and cockerels cry. It was the seventh day of his coma, and the thirteenth day of his seventh consulship.

“An unlucky number,’’ said Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, shivering and rubbing his hands together.

Unlucky for him but lucky for Rome, was the thought in almost every head when he said it.

“He must have a public funeral,” said Cinna the moment he arrived, this time accompanied by his wife, Annia, and his younger daughter, Cinnilla, who was the wife of the flamen Dialis.

But Julia, dry-eyed and calm, shook her head adamantly. “No, Lucius Cinna, there will be no State funeral,” she said. “Gaius Marius is wealthy enough to pay for his own funeral expenses. Rome is in no condition to argue about finances. Nor do I want a huge affair. Just the family. And that means I want no word of Gaius Marius’s death to leave this house until after his funeral is over.” She shuddered, grimaced. “Is there any way we can get rid of those dreadful slaves he enlisted at the last?” she asked.

“That was all taken care of six days ago,” said Cinna, going red; he never could conceal his discomfort. “Quintus Sertorius paid them off on the Campus Martius and ordered them to leave Rome.”

“Oh, of course! I forgot for the moment,” said the widow. “How kind of Quintus Sertorius to solve our troubles!” No one there knew whether or not she was being ironic. She looked across to her brother, Caesar. “Have you fetched Gaius Marius’s will from the Vestals, Gaius Julius?”

“I have it here,” he said.

“Then let it be read. Quintus Mucius, would you do that for us?” she asked of Scaevola.

It was a short testament, and turned out to be very recent; Marius had made it, apparently, while he lay with his army to the south of the Janiculum. The bulk of his estate went to his son, Young Marius, with the maximum he could allow left to Julia in her own right. A tenth of the estate he bequeathed to his adopted nephew, Marcus Marius Gratidianus, which meant Gratidianus was suddenly a very wealthy man; the estate of Gaius Marius was enormous. And to Young Caesar he left his German slave, Burgundus, as thanks for all the precious time out of his boyhood Young Caesar had given up to help an old man recover the use of his left side.

Now why did you do that, Gaius Marius? asked the boy silently of himself. Not for the reason you say! Perhaps to ensure the cessation of my career should I manage to de-flaminate myself? Is he to kill me when I pursue the public career you do not want me to have? Well, old man, two days from now you’ll be ashes. But I will not do what a prudent man ought to do—kill the Cimbric lump. He loved you, just as once I loved you. It is a poor reward for love to be done to death—be that death of the body or the spirit. So I will keep Burgundus. And make him love me.

The flamen Dialis turned to Lucius Decumius. “I am in the way here,” he said. “Will you walk home with me?”

“You’re going? Good!” said Cinna. “Take Cinnilla home for me, would you? She’s had enough.”

The flamen Dialis looked at his seven-year-old flaminica. “Come, Cinnilla,” he said, giving her the smile he was well aware worked woman-magic. “Does your cook make good cakes?”

Shepherded by Lucius Decumius, the two children emerged into the Clivus Argentarius and walked down the hill toward the Forum Romanum. The sun was risen, but its rays were not yet high enough to illuminate the bottom of the damp gulch wherein lay the whole reason for Rome’s being.

“Well, look at that! The heads are gone again! I wonder, Lucius Decumius,” the flamen Dialis mused as his foot touched the first flagstone at the rim of the Comitia well, “if one sweeps the dead presence out of the place where he died with an ordinary broom, or if one has to use a special broom?” He gave a skip, and reached for his wife’s hand. “There’s nothing for it, I’m afraid! I shall have to find the books and read them. It would be dreadful to get one iota of the ritual wrong for my benefactor Gaius Marius! If I do nothing else, I must rid us of all of Gaius Marius.”

Lucius Decumius was moved to prophesy, not because he had the second sight, but because he loved. “You’ll be a far greater man than Gaius Marius,” he said.

“I know,” said Young Caesar. “I know, Lucius Decumius, I know!”

FINIS

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Glossary

List of Consuls

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Colleen McCullough

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