Though the steward held his five—flamed lamp high enough to illuminate the two recumbent figures in the bed, he knew its light had not the power to waken Pompey. For this, he would need Pompey’s wife. She stirred, frowned, turned her head away in an effort to remain asleep, but the vast house was murmuring beyond the open door, and the steward was calling her.
“Domina! Domina!
Even in confusion modest—servants did not make a habit of invading Pompey’s bedchamber—Antistia made sure she was decently covered before she sat up.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“An urgent message for the master. Wake him and tell him to come to the atrium,” barked the steward rudely. The lamp flames dipped and smoked as he swung on his heel and left; the door closed, plunging her into darkness.
Oh, that vile man! He had done it deliberately! But she knew where her shift lay across the foot of the bed, drew it on, and shouted for a light.
Nothing woke Pompey. Provided with a lamp and a warm wrap, Antistia finally turned back to the bed to discover him slumbering still. Nor did he seem to feel the cold, lying on his back uncovered to the waist.
She had tried on other occasions—and for other reasons—to kiss him awake, but never could. Shakes and pummels it would have to be.
“What?” he asked, sitting up and running his hands through his thick yellow thatch; the quiff above his peaked hairline stood up alertly. So too were the blue eyes surveying her alert. That was Pompey: apparently dead one moment, wide awake the next. Both soldiers’ habits. “What?” he asked again.
“There’s an urgent message for you in the atrium.”
But she hadn’t managed to finish the sentence before he was on his feet and his feet were shoved into backless slippers and a tunic was falling carelessly off one freckled shoulder. Then he was gone, the door gaping behind him.
For a moment Antistia stood where she was, undecided. Her husband hadn’t taken the lamp—he could see in the dark as well as any cat—so there was nothing to stop her following save her own knowledge that probably he wouldn’t like it. Well, bother that! Wives were surely entitled to share news important enough to invade the master’s sleep! So off she went with her little lamp barely showing her the way down that huge corridor flagged and walled with bare stone blocks. A turn here—a flight of steps there—and suddenly she was out of the forbidding Gallic fortress and into the civilized Roman villa, all pretty paint and plaster.
Lights blazed everywhere; the servants had busied themselves to some effect. And there was Pompey clad in no more than a tunic yet looking like the personification of Mars—oh, he was wonderful!
He might even have confided in her, for his eyes did take her presence in. But at the same moment Varro arrived in startled haste, and Antistia’s chance to share personally in whatever was causing the excitement vanished.
“Varro, Varro!” Pompey shouted. Then he whooped, a shrill and eldritch sound with nothing Roman in it; just so had long—dead Gauls whooped as they spilled over the Alps and took whole chunks of Italy for their own, including Pompey’s Picenum.
Antistia jumped, shivered. So, she noticed, did Varro.
“What is it?”
“Sulla has landed in Brundisium!”
“Brundisium! How do you know?”
“What does that matter?” demanded Pompey, crossing the mosaic floor to seize little Varro by both shoulders and shake him. “It’s here, Varro! The adventure has begun!”
“Adventure?” Varro gaped. “Oh, Magnus, grow up! It’s not an adventure, it’s a civil war—and on Italian soil yet again!”
“I don’t care!” cried Pompey. “To me, it’s an adventure. If you only knew how much I’ve longed for this news, Varro! Since Sulla left, Italy has been as tame as a Vestal Virgin’s lapdog!”
“What about the Siege of Rome?’’ asked Varro through a yawn.
The happy excitement fled from Pompey’s face, his hands fell; he stepped back and looked at Varro darkly. “I would prefer to forget the Siege of Rome!” he snapped. “They dragged my father’s naked body tied to an ass through their wretched streets!”
Poor Varro flushed so deeply the color flooded into his balding pate. “Oh, Magnus, I do beg your pardon! I did not—I would not—I am your guest—please forgive me!”
But the mood was gone. Pompey laughed, clapped Varro on the back. “Oh, it wasn’t your doing, I know that!”
The huge room was piercingly cold; Varro clasped his arms about his body. “I had better start for Rome at once.”
Pompey stared. “Rome? You’re not going to Rome, you’re coming with me! What do you think will happen in Rome? A lot of sheep running around bleating, the old women in the Senate arguing for days—come with me, it will be much more fun!”
“And where do you think you’re going?”
“To join Sulla, of course.”
“You don’t need me for that, Magnus. Climb on your horse and ride off. Sulla will be glad to find you a place among his junior military tribunes, I’m sure. You’ve seen a lot of action.”
“Oh, Varro!” Flapping hands betrayed Pompey’s exasperation. “I’m not going to join Sulla as a junior military tribune! I’m going to bring him three more legions! I, Sulla’s lackey! Never! I intend to be his full partner in this enterprise.”
This astounding announcement broke upon Pompey’s wife as upon Pompey’s friend and houseguest; aware that she had gasped, almost voiced her shock aloud, Antistia moved quickly to a place where Pompey’s eyes would not encounter her. He had quite forgotten her presence and she wanted to hear. Needed to hear.
*
In the two and a half years she had been his wife, Pompey had left her side for more than a day on only one occasion. Oh, the loveliness of that! To enjoy his undivided attention! Tickled, chided, rumpled, ruffled, hugged, bitten, bruised, tumbled … Like a dream. Who could ever have imagined it? She, the daughter of a senator of mere middle rank and barely sufficient fortune, to find herself given in marriage to Gnaeus Pompeius who called himself Magnus! Rich enough to marry anyone, the lord of half Umbria and Picenum, so fair and handsome everyone thought he looked like a reincarnation of Alexander the Great—what a husband her father had found for her! And after several years of despairing that she would never find a suitable husband, so small was her dowry.
Naturally she had known why Pompey had married her; he had needed a great service from her father. Who happened to be the judge at Pompey’s trial. That had been a trumped—up affair, of course—all of Rome had known it. But Cinna had desperately needed vast sums to fund his recruitment campaign, and young Pompey’s wealth was going to provide those vast sums. For which reason had young Pompey been indicted upon charges more correctly directed at his dead father, Pompey Strabo—that he had illegally appropriated some of the spoils from the city of Asculum Picentum. Namely, one hunting net and some buckets of books. Trifling. The catch lay not in the magnitude of the offense, but in the fine; were Pompey to be convicted, Cinna’s minions empaneled to decide the size of the penalty were at perfect liberty to fine him his entire fortune.
A more Roman man would have settled to fight the case in court and if necessary bribe the jury; but Pompey—whose very face proclaimed the Gaul in him—had preferred to marry the judge’s daughter. The time of year had been October, so while November and December wore themselves away, Antistia’s father had conducted his court with masterly inaction. The trial of his new son-in-law never really eventuated, delayed by inauspicious omens, accusations of corrupt jurors, meetings of the Senate, agues and plagues. With the result that in January, the consul Carbo had persuaded Cinna to look elsewhere for the money they so desperately needed. The threat to Pompey’s fortune was no more.
Barely eighteen, Antistia had accompanied her dazzling marital prize to his estates in the northeast of the Italian peninsula, and there in the daunting black stone pile of the Pompey stronghold had plunged wholeheartedly into the delights of being Pompey’s bride. Luckily she was a pretty little girl stuffed with dimples and curves, and just ripe for bed, so her happiness had been undiluted for quite a long time. And when the twinges of disquiet began to intrude, they came not from her adored Magnus but from his faithful retainers, servants and minor squires who not only looked down on her, but actually seemed to feel free to let her know they looked down on her. Not a great burden—as long as Pompey was close enough to come home at night. But now he was talking of going off to war, of raising legions and enlisting in Sulla’s cause! Oh, what would she do without her adored Magnus to shield her from the slights of his people?
*
He was still trying to convince Varro that the only proper alternative was to go with him to join Sulla, but that prim and pedantic little fellow—so elderly in mind for one who had not been in the Senate more than two years!—was still resisting.
“How many troops has Sulla got?” Varro was asking.
“Five veteran legions, six thousand cavalry, a few volunteers from Macedonia and the Peloponnese, and five cohorts of Spaniards belonging to that dirty swindler, Marcus Crassus. About thirty-nine thousand altogether.”
An answer which had Varro clawing at the air. “I say again, Magnus, grow up!” he cried. “I’ve just come from Ariminum, where Carbo is sitting with eight legions and a huge force of cavalry—and that is just the beginning! In Campania alone there are sixteen other legions! For three years Cinna and Carbo gathered troops—there are one hundred and fifty thousand men under arms in Italy and Italian Gaul! How can Sulla cope with such numbers?”
“Sulla will eat them,” said Pompey, unimpressed. “Besides, I’m going to bring him three legions of my father’s hardened veterans. Carbo’s soldiers are milk—smeared recruits.”
“You really are going to raise your own army?”
“I really am.”
“Magnus, you’re only twenty-two years old! You can’t expect your father’s veterans to enlist for you!”
“Why not?” asked Pompey, genuinely puzzled.
“For one thing, you’re eight years too young to qualify for the Senate. You’re twenty years away from the consulship. And even if your father’s men would enlist under you, to ask them to do so is absolutely illegal. You’re a private citizen, and private citizens don’t raise armies.”
“For over three years Rome’s government has been illegal,” Pompey countered. “Cinna consul four times, Carbo twice, Marcus Gratidianus twice the urban praetor, almost half the Senate outlawed, Appius Claudius banished with his imperium intact, Fimbria running round Asia Minor making deals with King Mithridates—the whole thing is a joke!”
Varro managed to look like a pompous mule—not so very difficult for a Sabine of the rosea rura, where mules abounded. “The matter must be solved constitutionally,” he said.
That provoked Pompey to outright laughter. “Oh, Varro! I do indeed like you, but you are hopelessly unrealistic! If this matter could be solved constitutionally, why are there one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Italy and Italian Gaul?”
Again Varro clawed the air, but this time in defeat. “Oh, very well, then! I’ll come with you.”
Pompey beamed, threw his arm around Varro’s shoulders and guided him in the direction of the corridor which led to his rooms. “Splendid, splendid! You’ll be able to write the history of my first campaigns—you’re a better stylist than your friend Sisenna. I am the most important man of our age, I deserve to have my own historian at my side.”
But Varro had the last word. “You must be important! Why else would you have the gall—good pun, that!—to call yourself Magnus?” He snorted. “The Great! At twenty-two, The Great! The best your father could do was to call himself after his cross-eyes!”
A sally Pompey ignored, busy now with steward and armorer, issuing a stream of instructions.
And then finally the vividly painted and gilded atrium was empty save for Pompey. And Antistia. He came across to her.
“Silly little kitten, you’ll catch a chill,” he scolded, and kissed her fondly. “Back to bed, my honey cake.”
“Can’t I help you pack?” she asked, sounding desolate.
“My men will do that for me, but you can watch.”
This time the way was lit by a servant bearing a massive chandelier; fitting herself into Pompey’s side, Antistia (still clutching her own little lamp) walked with him to the room where all his war gear was stored. An imposing collection. Fully ten different cuirasses hung from T—shaped poles—gold, silver, steel, leather strapped with phalerae—and swords and helmets hung from pegs on the walls, as did kilts of leather straps and various kinds of padded underpinnings.
“Now stay there and be an absolutely darling little mouse,” Pompey said as he lifted his wife like a feather and put her atop a couple of big chests, her feet dangling clear of the floor.
Where she was forgotten. Pompey and his menservants went through every item one by one—would it be useful, was it going to be necessary? Then when Pompey had ransacked the other trunks scattered around the room, he carelessly transferred his wife to a different perch in order to ransack her original seat, tossing this and that to the waiting slaves, talking away to himself so happily that Antistia could cherish no illusions he was going to miss his wife, his home, or civilian life. Of course she had always known that he regarded himself first and foremost as a soldier, that he despised the more customary pursuits of his peers—rhetoric, law, government, assemblies, the plots and ploys of politics. How many times had she heard him say he would vault himself into the consul’s ivory chair on his spear, not on fine words and empty phrases? Now here he was putting his boast into practice, the soldier son of a soldier father going off to war.
The moment the last of the slaves had staggered away under armloads of equipment, Antistia slid off her trunk and went to stand in front of her husband.
“Before you go, Magnus, I must speak to you,” she said.
Clearly this he regarded as a waste of his precious time, but he did pause. “Well, what is it?”
“How long are you going to be away?”
“Haven’t the slightest idea,” he said cheerfully.
“Months? A year?”
“Months, probably. Sulla will eat Carbo.”
“Then I would like to return to Rome and live in my father’s house while you’re gone.”
But he shook his head, clearly astonished at her proposal. “Not a chance!” he said. “I’m not having my wife running round Carbo’s Rome while I’m with Sulla in the field against the selfsame Carbo. You’ll stay here.”
“Your servants and other people don’t like me. If you’re not here, it will go hard for me.”
“Rubbish!” he said, turning away.
She detained him by stepping in front of him once more. “Oh, please, husband, spare me just a few moments of your time! I know it’s a valuable commodity, but I am your wife.”
He sighed. “All right, all right! But quickly, Antistia!”
“I can’t stay here!”
“You can and you will.” He moved from one foot to the other.
“When you’re absent, Magnus—even for a few hours—your people are not kind to me. I have never complained because you are always kind to me, and you’ve been here except for the time you went to Ancona to see Cinna. But now—there is no other woman in your house, I will be utterly alone. It would be better if I returned to my father’s house until the war is over, truly.”
“Out of the question. Your father is Carbo’s man.”
“No, he is not. He is his own man.”
Never before had she opposed him, or even stood up to him; Pompey’s patience began to fray. “Look, Antistia, I have better things to do than stay here arguing with you. You’re my wife, and that means you’ll stay in my house.”
“Where your steward sneers at me and leaves me in the dark, where I have no servants of my own and no one to keep me company,” she said, trying to appear calm and reasonable, but beginning to panic underneath.
“That’s absolute rubbish!”
“It is not, Magnus. It is not! I don’t know why everyone looks down on me, but everyone does.”
“Well, of course they do!” he said, surprised at her denseness.
Her eyes widened. “Of course they look down on me? What do you mean, of course?”
He shrugged. “My mother was a Lucilia. So was my grandmother. And what are you?”
“That is a very good question. What am I?”
He could see she was angry, and it angered him. Women! Here he was with his first big war on his hands, and this creature of no significance was determined to stage her own drama! Did women have no sense at all? “You’re my first wife,” he said.
“First wife?”
“A temporary measure.”
“Oh, I see!” She looked thoughtful. “A temporary measure. The judge’s daughter, I suppose you mean.”
“Well, you’ve always known that.”
“But it was a long time ago, I thought it had passed, I thought you loved me. My family is senatorial, I’m not inappropriate.”
“For an ordinary man, no. But you’re not good enough for me.’’
“Oh, Magnus, where do you get your conceit from? Is that why you have never once finished yourself inside me? Because I’m not good enough to bear your children?”
“Yes!” he shouted, starting to leave the room.
She followed him with her little lamp, too angry now to care who heard. “I was good enough to get you off when Cinna was after your money!”
“We’ve already established that,” he said, hurrying.
“How convenient for you then, that Cinna is dead!”
“Convenient for Rome and all good Romans.”
“You had Cinna murdered!”
The words echoed down the stone corridor that was big enough to allow the passage of an army; Pompey stopped.
“Cinna died in a drunken brawl with some reluctant recruits.”
“In Ancona—your town, Magnus! Your town! And right after you had been there to see him!” she cried.
One moment she was standing in possession of herself, the next she was pinned against the wall with Pompey’s hands about her throat. Not squeezing. Just about her throat.
“Never say that again, woman,” he said softly.
“It’s what my father says!” she managed, mouth dry.
The hands tightened ever so slightly. “Your father didn’t like Cinna much. But he doesn’t mind Carbo in the least, which is why it would give me great pleasure to kill him. But it won’t give me any pleasure to kill you. I don’t kill women. Keep your tongue behind your teeth, Antistia. Cinna’s death had nothing to do with me, it was a simple accident.”
“I want to go to my father and mother in Rome!”
Pompey released her, gave her a shove. “The answer is no. Now leave me alone!”
He was gone, calling for the steward; in the distance she could hear him telling that abominable man that she was not to be allowed to leave the precincts of the Pompey fortress once he was off to his war. Trembling, Antistia returned slowly to the bedroom she had shared with Pompey for two and a half years as his first wife—a temporary expedient. Not good enough to bear his children. Why hadn’t she guessed that, when she had wondered many times why he always withdrew, always left a slimy puddle for her to clean off her belly?
The tears were beginning to gather. Soon they would fall, and once they did she would not be able to stop them for hours. Disillusionment before love has lost its keenest edge is terrible.
There came another of those chilling barbarian whoops, and faintly Pompey’s voice: “I’m off to war, I’m off to war! Sulla has landed in Italy, and it’s war!”