2

It was religion, however, which chiefly occupied Sulla’s mind. Like most Romans, he didn’t think of the name of a god, close his eyes and immediately visualize a human person—that was to be a Greek. These days it was a sign of culture and sophistication to show Bellona as an armed goddess, Ceres as a beautiful matron carrying a sheaf of wheat, Mercury with winged hat and winged sandals, because a Hellenized society was superior, because a Hellenized society despised more numinous gods as primitive, unintellectual, incapable of behavior as complex as human behavior. To the Greeks, their gods were essentially human beings owning superhuman powers; they could not conceive a being more complex than a man. So Zeus, who was king of their pantheon, functioned like a Roman censor—powerful but not omnipotent—and handed out jobs to the other gods, who took delight in tricking him, blackmailing him, and behaving a bit like tribunes of the plebs.

But Sulla, a Roman, knew the gods were far less tangible than the Greeks would have them: they weren’t humanoid and they didn’t have eyes in their heads or hold conversations, nor did they wield superhuman powers, nor go through the integration and differentiation of thought processes akin to a man’s. Sulla, a Roman, knew that the gods were specific forces which moved specific events or controlled other forces inferior to themselves. They fed on life—forces, so they liked to be offered living sacrifices; they needed order and method in the living world as much as they did in their own, because order and method in the living world helped maintain order and method in the world of forces.

There were forces pervaded storage cupboards and barns and silos and cellars, liked to see them full—they were called Penates. There were forces kept ships sailing and crossroads together and a sense of purpose among inanimate objects—they were called Lares. There were forces kept the trees right—thinking, obliged them to grow their branches and leaves up into the air and their roots down into the earth. There were forces kept water sweet and rivers going from on high all the way down to the sea. There was a force gave a few men luck and good fortune, but gave most men less, and a few men nothing—it was called Fortuna. And the force called Jupiter Optimus Maximus was the sum total of all other forces, the connective tissue which bound them all together in a way logical to forces, if mysterious to men.

It was clear to Sulla that Rome was losing contact with her gods, her forces. Why else had the Great Temple burned down? Why else had the precious records gone up in smoke? The prophetic books? Men were forgetting the secrets, the strict formulae and patterns which channeled godly forces. To have the priests and augurs elected disturbed the balances within the priestly colleges, obviated the delicate adjustments only possible when the same families filled the same religious positions time out of mind, forever and ever.

So before he turned his energies toward rectifying Rome’s creaky institutions and laws, he must first purify Rome’s aether, stabilize her godly forces and allow them to flow properly. How could Rome expect good fortune when a man could be so lost as to what was fitting that he could stand and holler out her secret name? How could Rome expect to prosper when men plundered her temples and murdered her priests? Of course he didn’t remember that he himself had once wanted to plunder her temples; he only remembered that he had not, though he was going to fight a true enemy. Nor did he remember quite how he had felt about the gods in those days before illness and wine had made a shambles of his life.

In the burning of the Great Temple there was an implicit message, so much he knew in his bones. And it had been given to him to halt the chaos, correct the present drift toward utter disorder. If he did not, then doors supposed to be shut would fly open, and doors supposed to be open would slam shut.

He summoned the priests and augurs to him inside Rome’s oldest temple, Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitol. So ancient that it had been dedicated by Romulus and was built of tufa blocks without plaster or decoration, it had only two square columns to support its portico, and it contained no image. On a plain square pedestal of equal age there rested a straight electrum rod as long as a man’s hand and arm to the elbow, and a silica flint brooding black and glassy. The only light admitted to its interior came through the door, and it smelled of incredible age—mouse droppings, mildew, damp, dust. Its one room was a mere ten feet by seven feet, so Sulla was grateful for the fact that neither the College of Pontifices nor the College of Augurs was anywhere near full membership.

Sulla himself was an augur. So too were Marcus Antonius, the younger Dolabella and Catilina. Of priests, Gaius Aurelius Cotta had been in the college the longest; Metellus Pius was not far behind, nor Flaccus the Master of the Horse and Princeps Senatus, who was also the flamen Martialis. Catulus, Mamercus, the Rex Sacrorum Lucius Claudius of the only branch of the Claudii with the first name of Lucius—and a very uneasy pontifex, Brutus the son of Old Brutus, who clearly wondered if and when he was going to be proscribed.

“We have no Pontifex Maximus,” Sulla began, “and our company is thin. I could have found a more comfortable place for us to meet, but I suspect a little discomfort may not be displeasing to our gods! For some time now we have thought of ourselves ahead of our gods, and our gods are unhappy. Dedicated in the same year as our Republic was born, our temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus did not burn down by accident. I am sure it burned down because Jupiter Best and Greatest feels the Roman Senate and People have cheated him of his due. We are not so callow and credulous that we subscribe to barbarian beliefs in godly wrath—bolts of lightning that strike us dead or pillars that squash us flat are natural events—they merely indicate a man’s personal ill luck. But portents do indicate unhappy gods, and the burning of our Great Temple is a terrible portent. If we still had the Sibylline Books we might discover more about it. But the Sibylline Books burned, along with our fasti of the consuls, the original Twelve Tables, and much else.”

There were fifteen men present, and not enough room to allow a proper arrangement of speaker and audience; Sulla just stood in their midst and spoke in normal tones. “It is my task as Dictator to return Rome’s religion to its old form, and to make all of you work toward that end. Now I can enact the laws, but it is up to all of you to implement them. On one point I am adamant, for I have had dreams, I am an augur, and I know I am right. Namely, I will invalidate the lex Domitia de sacerdotiis which our Pontifex Maximus of some years ago, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, took so much pleasure in foisting upon us. Why did he? Because he felt his family had been insulted and himself overlooked. Those are reasons founded in personal pride, not in a true religious spirit. I believe Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus displeased the gods, especially Jupiter Best and Greatest. So there will be no more elections for Religious. Not even for the office of Pontifex Maximus.”

“But the Pontifex Maximus has always been elected!” cried Lucius Claudius the Rex Sacrorum, astonished. “He is the High Priest of the Republic! His appointment must be democratic!”

“I say, no. From now on, he too will be chosen by his fellow members of the College of Pontifices,” said Sulla in a tone which brooked no argument. “I am right about this.”

“I don’t know….” Flaccus began, then trailed off when he met Sulla’s awful eyes.

“I do know, so that will be the end of it!” Sulla’s gaze traveled from one distressed face to another, and quelled all further protest. “I also think it is displeasing to our gods that there are not enough of us to go around, so I intend to give each priestly college—most of the minor as well as the major—fifteen members each instead of the old ten or twelve. No more of this squeezing two jobs in for every one man! Besides, fifteen is a lucky number, the fulcrum upon which thirteen and seventeen—the unlucky ones—turn. Magic is important. Magic creates pathways for the godly forces to travel. I believe that numbers have great magic. So we will work magic for Rome’s benefit, as is our sacred duty.”

“Perhaps,” ventured Metellus Pius, “wuh—wuh—we could set up only wuh—wuh—one candidate for Pontifex Maximus? That wuh—wuh—way, we could at least have an election process.”

“There will be no election process!” Sulla spat.

Silence fell. No one so much as shifted a foot.

After some time had passed Sulla began to speak again. “There is one priest who sits ill with me, for a number of good reasons. I refer to our flamen Dialis, the young man Gaius Julius Caesar. Upon the death of Lucius Cornelius Merula he was chosen to be Jupiter’s special priest by Gaius Marius and his bought—and—paid—for minion, Cinna. The men who chose him alone are ominous enough! They contravened the usual selection process, which ought to involve the entire gamut of colleges. Another reason for my disquiet concerns my own ancestors, for the first Cornelius to be cognominated Sulla was flamen Dialis. But the burning of the Great Temple is by far the most ominous reason. So I began to make enquiries about this young man, and have learned that he flatly refused to observe the regulations surrounding his flaminate until he assumed the toga virilis. His behavior since has been orthodox, as far as I can find out. Now all this could well have been a symptom of his youth. But what I think is not important. What does Jupiter Optimus Maximus think? That is important! For, my fellow priests and augurs, I have learned that Jupiter’s temple fire finally went out two days before the Ides of Quinctilis. On that exact same day of the year, the flamen Dialis was born. An omen!”

“It could be a good omen,” said Cotta, who cared about the fate of this particular flamen Dialis.

“Indeed it could,” said Sulla, “but that is not for me to say. As Dictator, I feel free to determine the method whereby our priests and augurs are appointed, I feel free to abolish the elections. But the flamen Dialis is different. All of you must decide his fate. All of you! Fetials, pontifices, augurs, the priests of the sacred books, even the epulones and the salii. Cotta, I am putting you in charge of the investigation, as you are the longest—serving pontifex. You have until the Ides of December, when we will meet again in this temple to discuss the religious position of the present flamen Dialis.” He looked at Cotta sternly. “No word of this must get round, especially to young Caesar himself.”

Home he went, chuckling and rubbing his hands together in transports of delight. For Sulla had thought of the most wonderful joke! The kind of joke Jupiter Optimus Maximus would find a terrific boost to his force pathways. An offering! A living sacrificial victim for Rome—for the Republic, whose High Priest he was! He had been invented to supplant the Rex Sacrorum, ensure that the Republic outranked the Kings, all of whom had been Rex Sacrorum as well as King. Oh, a superb joke! he cried to himself, literally crying—with laughter. I will offer the Great God a victim who will go consenting to the sacrifice, and continue to sacrifice himself until his death! I will dower the Republic and the Great God with the best segment of one man’s life—I will offer up his suffering, his distress, his pain. And all with his consent. Because he will never refuse to be sacrificed.

*

The next day Sulla published the first of his laws aimed at regulating the State religion by fixing them to the rostra and the wall of the Regia. At first the rostra perusers presumed it was a new proscription list, so the professional bounty hunters clustered quickly, only to turn away with exclamations of disgust: it turned out to be a list of the men who were now members of the various priestly colleges, major and minor. Fifteen of each, somewhat haphazardly divided between patricians and plebeians (with the plebeians in the majority), and beautifully balanced between the Famous Families. No unworthy names on this list! No Pompeius or Tullius or Didius! Julii, Servilii, Junii, Aemilii, Cornelii, Claudii, Sulpicii, Valerii, Domitii, Mucii, Licinii, Antonii, Manlii, Caecilii, Terentii. It was also noted that Sulla had given himself a priesthood to complement the augurship he held already—and that he was the only man to hold both.

“I ought to have a foot in both camps,” he had said to himself when contemplating doing this. “I am the Dictator.”

The day after, he published an addendum containing only one name. The name of the new Pontifex Maximus. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius the Piglet. Stammerer extraordinary.

The people of Rome were beside themselves with horror when they saw that frightful name upon the rostra and the Regia—the new Pontifex Maximus was Metellus Pius1? How could that be? What was wrong with Sulla? Had he gone quite mad?

A shivering deputation came to see him at Ahenobarbus’s house, its members consisting of priests and augurs, including Metellus Pius himself. For obvious reasons he was not the deputation’s Spokesman; his tongue stumbled so these days that no one was willing to stand there shifting from one foot to the other while the Piglet strove to articulate his thoughts. The spokesman was Catulus.

“Lucius Cornelius, why?” wailed Catulus. “Are we to have no say about this?”

“I duh—duh—duh—don’t wuh—wuh—wuh—wan? the juh—juh—job!” the Piglet stuttered painfully, eyes rolling, hands working.

“Lucius Cornelius, you can’t!” Vatia cried.

“It’s impossible!” shouted son-in-law Mamercus.

Sulla let them run down before he answered, no flicker of emotion on his face or in his eyes; it was no part of his joke ever to let them see that it was a joke. They must always think him earnest, serious. For he was. He was! Jupiter had come to him in a dream last night and told him how much he appreciated this wonderful, perfect joke.

They ran down. An apprehensive silence fell, save for the soft sound of the Piglet’s weeping.

“Actually,” said Lucius Cornelius Sulla in conversational tones, “as the Dictator I can do anything I want. But that is not the point. The point is that I dreamed Jupiter Optimus Maximus came to me and asked specifically for Quintus Caecilius as his Pontifex Maximus. When I woke I took the omens, and they were very propitious. On the way to the Forum to pin my two pieces of parchment up on the rostra and the Regia, I saw fifteen eagles flying from left to right across the Capitol. No owl hooted, no lightning flashed.”

The deputation looked into Sulla’s face, then at the floor. He was serious. So, it seemed, was Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

“But no ritual can contain a mistake!” said Vatia. “No gesture, no action, no word can be wrong! The moment something is performed or said wrongly, the whole ceremony has to start all over again!”

“I am aware of that,” said Sulla gently.

“Lucius Cornelius, surely you can see!” cried Catulus. “Pius stutters and stammers his way through every statement he makes! So whenever he acts as Pontifex Maximus, we are going to be there forever!’’

“I see it with crystal clarity,” said Sulla with great seriousness. “Remember, I too will be there forever.” He shrugged. “What can I say, except that perhaps this is some extra sacrifice the Great God requires of us because we haven’t acquitted ourselves as we ought in matters pertaining to our gods?” He turned to Metellus Pius to take one of the spasming hands in both his own. “Of course, Piglet dear, you can refuse. There is nothing in our religious laws to say you can’t.”

The Piglet used his free hand to pick up a fold of toga and employ it to wipe his eyes and nose. He drew in a breath and said, “I will do it, Lucius Cornelius, if the Great God requires it of muh—muh—me.”

“There, you see?’’ asked Sulla, patting the hand he held. “You almost got it out! Practice, Piglet dear! Practice!”

The first paroxysm of laughter was welling dangerously close to eruption; Sulla got rid of the deputation in a hurry and bolted to his study, where he shut himself in. His knees gave way; he collapsed onto a couch, wrapped his arms round his body and howled, the tears of mirth pouring down his face.

When he couldn’t breathe properly he rolled onto the floor and lay there shrieking and gasping with his legs kicking in the air, hurting so much he thought he might die. But still he laughed, secure in the knowledge that the omens had indeed been propitious. And for the rest of that day, whenever the Piglet’s expression of noble self-sacrifice flashed before his mind’s eye, he doubled over in a fresh paroxysm; so too did he laugh again whenever he remembered the look on Catulus’s face, and Vatia’s, and his son-in-law’s. Wonderful, wonderful! Perfect justice, this Jupiterian joke. Everyone had received exactly what everyone deserved. Including Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

*

On the Ides of December some sixty men—members of the minor as well as the major priestly colleges—tried to squash into the temple of Jupiter Feretrius.

“We have paid our respects to the god,” said Sulla. “I do not think he will mind if we seek the open air.”

He sat himself on the low wall which fenced off the old Asylum from the parklike areas of ground swelling easily up on either side to the twin humps of Capitol and Arx, and gestured to the rest to sit on the grass.

That, thought the desperately unhappy Piglet, was one of the oddest things about Sulla: he could invest small things with huge dignity, then—as now—reduce huge things to complete informality. To the Capitoline visitors and tourists—to the men and women who arrived panting at the top of the Asylum steps or the Gemonian steps, taking a shortcut between Forum Romanum and Campus Martius—they must look like a strolling philosopher and his pupils, or an old country daddy with all his brothers, nephews, sons, cousins,

“What have you to report, Gaius Aurelius?” asked Sulla of Cotta, who sat in the middle of the front row.

“First of all, that this task was very difficult for me, Lucius Cornelius,” Cotta replied. “You are aware, I suppose, that young Caesar the flamen Dialis is my nephew?’’

“As indeed he is also my nephew, though by marriage rather than blood,” said the Dictator steadily.

“Then I must ask you another question. Do you intend to proscribe the Caesars?’’

Without volition Sulla thought of Aurelia, and shook his head emphatically. “No, Cotta, I do not. The Caesars who were my brothers-in-law so many years ago are both dead. They never really committed any crimes against the State, for all they were Marius’s men. There were reasons for that. Marius had helped the family financially, the tie was an obligatory gratitude. The widow of old Gaius Marius is the boy’s blood aunt, and her sister was my first wife.”

“But you have proscribed both Marius’s and Cinna’s families.”

“That I have.”

“Thank you,” said Cotta, looking relieved. He cleared his throat. “Young Caesar was but thirteen years old when he was solemnly and properly consecrated as the priest of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. He fulfilled all the criteria save one: he was a patrician with both parents still living, but he was not married to a patrician woman with both parents still living. However, Marius found him a bride, to whom he was married before the ceremonies of inauguration and consecration. The bride was Cinna’s younger daughter.”

“How old was she?” Sulla asked, snapping his fingers at his servant, who promptly handed him a peasant’s wide—brimmed straw hat. Having adjusted it comfortably, he looked out slyly from under it, truly an old country daddy.

“She was seven.”

“I see. A literal marriage of children. Faugh! Cinna was hungry, wasn’t he?”

“Quite so,” said Cotta uncomfortably. “Anyway, the boy did not take kindly to his flaminate. He insisted that until he put on the toga of manhood he would pursue the customary activities of a noble Roman youth. So he went to the Campus Martius and there did his military exercises. He fenced, shot arrows, cast spears—and revealed a talent for whatever he was called upon to do. I am told he used to do something remarkable—he would ride a very fleet horse at the full gallop with both hands behind his back—and no saddle! The old fellows of the Campus Martius remember him well and deem his flaminate a shame in view of his natural aptitude for soldiering. For his other behavior, my source is his mother—my half sister, Aurelia. According to her, he did not adhere to the stipulated diet, he pared his nails with an iron knife, had his hair cut with an iron razor, and wore knots and buckles.”

“What happened when he donned the toga virilis?”’

“He changed radically,” said Cotta, considerable surprise in his voice. “The rebellion – if indeed it had been rebellion – ceased. He had always performed his religious duties with scrupulous care, but then he put on his apex and laena permanently, and adhered to all the prohibitions. His mother says he liked his role no better, but had become reconciled.”

“I see.” Sulla kicked his heels softly against the wall, then said, “It begins to sound quite satisfactory, Cotta. What conclusion have you come to about him and his flaminate?”

Cotta frowned. “There is one difficulty. Did we have the full set of prophetic books available to us, we might have been able to elucidate the matter. But we do not, of course. So we have found it impossible to form a conclusive opinion. There appears to be no doubt that the boy is legally the flamen Dialis, but we are not so sure from the religious viewpoint.”

“Why?”

“It all hinges upon the civic status of Caesar’s wife. Cinnilla, they call her. Now twelve years of age. Of one thing we are absolutely positive – the flaminate Dialis is a dual entity which involves wife as much as it does husband. She has her religious title of flaminica Dialis, she is under the same taboos, and she has her own religious duties. If she does not fulfill the religious criteria, then the whole flaminate is in doubt. And we have come to the conclusion that she does not fulfill the religious criteria, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Really? How have you reached that conclusion, Cotta?” Sulla kicked the wall harder, thought of something else. “Has the marriage been consummated?”

“No, it has not. The child Cinnilla has lived with my sister and my sister’s family since she married young Caesar. And my sister is a very proper Roman noblewoman,” said Cotta.

Sulla smiled briefly. “I know she’s proper,” he said.

“Yes, well …” Cotta shifted uneasily, remembering the debates which had raged in the Cotta household about the nature of the friendship between Aurelia and Sulla; he was also aware that he was about to criticize one of Sulla’s new proscription laws. But in he plunged bravely, determined to get it over and done with. “We think Caesar is the flamen Dialis, but that his wife is not the flaminica. At least, that is how we have interpreted your laws of proscription, which, in the matter of under—age children of the proscribed, do not make it clear whether these children are subject to the lex Minicia. Cinna’s son was of age when his father was proscribed, therefore his citizenship was not in question. But what about the citizen status of under—age children, especially girls? Does your law intend judgment under the lex Minicia, or—as with conviction and exile by a court—does the father’s loss of citizenship extend only to himself? That is what we had to decide. And given the severity of your laws of proscription in relation to the rights of children and other heirs, we came to the conclusion that the lex Minicia de liberis does apply.”

“Piglet dear, what do you have to say?” asked the Dictator demurely, entirely ignoring the implication of a legislative cloudiness. “Take your time, take your time! I have nothing else to do today.”

Metellus Pius flushed. “As Gaius Cotta says, the law of a child’s citizen status does apply. When one parent is not a Roman citizen, the child cannot be a Roman citizen. So Caesar’s wife is not a Roman citizen and cannot therefore be the flaminica Dialis under religious law.”

“Brilliant, brilliant! You got that out without a single mistake, Piglet!” Drum, drum went Sulla’s heels. “So it is all my fault, eh? I left a law up to interpretation instead of spelling every detail out.”

Cotta drew a deep breath. “Yes,” he said heroically.

“That is all very true, Lucius Cornelius,” said Vatia, adding his mite. “However, we are fully aware that our interpretation may be wrong. We respectfully ask for your direction.”

“Well,” said Sulla, sliding off the wall, “it seems to me that the best way out of this dilemma is to have Caesar find a new flaminica. Though he must have been married confarreatio, in the eyes of both civil and religious law a divorce is possible. It is my opinion that Caesar must divorce Cinna’s daughter, who is not acceptable to the Great God as his flaminica.”

“An annulment, surely!” said Cotta.

“A divorce,” said Sulla firmly. “Though all and sundry may swear that the marriage is not consummated—and though we could have the Vestals examine the girl’s hymen—we are dealing with Jupiter Best and Greatest. You have pointed out to me that my laws are open to interpretation. In fact, you have gone so far as to interpret them—without coming to consult with me before making your decision. Therein lies your mistake. You should have consulted me. But since you did not, you must now live with the consequences. A diffarreatio divorce.”

Cotta winced. “Diffarreatio is a dreadful business!”

“I weep to see your pain, Cotta.”

“Then I shall inform the boy,” said Cotta, mouth set.

Sulla put out his hand. “No!” he said, quite sharply. “Say nothing to the boy, nothing at all! Just tell him to come to my house tomorrow before the dinner hour. I prefer to tell him myself, is that clear?”

*

“And so,” said Cotta to Caesar and Aurelia a short time later, “you must see Sulla, nephew.”

Both Caesar and his mother were looking strained, but saw the visitor to the door without comment. After her brother had gone Aurelia followed her son into his study.

“Do sit, Mater,” he said to her gently.

She sat, but on the edge of the chair. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Why should he want to see you in person?’’

“You heard Uncle Gaius. He’s starting to reform the religious orders, “and he wants to see me as flamen Dialis.’’

“I do not believe that,” said Aurelia stubbornly.

Worried, Caesar put his chin on his right hand and looked at his mother searchingly. His concern was not for himself; he could cope with whatever was to come, he knew that. No, it was for her, and for all the other women of his family.

The tragedy had marched on inexorably from the time of the conference Young Marius had called to discuss his seeking the consulship, through the season of artificially induced joy and confidence, through the downslide of the terrible winter, to the yawning pit which had been the defeat at Sacriportus. Of Young Marius they had seen practically nothing once he had become consul, and that included his mother and his wife. A mistress had come on the scene, a beautiful Roman woman of knightly forebears named Praecia, and she monopolized every spare moment Young Marius could find. Rich enough to be financially independent, she was at the time she caught Young Marius in her toils already thirty-seven years old, and not of a mind for marriage. There had been a marriage in her eighteenth year, but only to obey her father, who had died shortly thereafter; Praecia had promptly embarked upon a series of lovers, and her husband had divorced her. Which suited her very well. She settled to the kind of life she most liked, mistress of her own establishment as well as mistress to some interesting nobleman who brought his friends, his problems and his political intrigues to her dining couch and bed, and thus enabled her to combine politics with passion—an irresistible combination to one of Praecia’s leanings.

Young Marius had been her biggest fish and she had grown quite fond of him, amused at his youthful posturings, fascinated by the power inherent in the name Gaius Marius, and pleased at the fact that the young senior consul preferred her to his mother, a Julia, and his wife, a Mucia. So she had thrown her large and tastefully decorated house open to all Young Marius’s friends, and her bed to a small, select group who formed Young Marius’s inner circle. Once Carbo (whom she loathed) had left for Ariminum, she became her paramour’s chief adviser in all things, and fancied that it was she, not Young Marius, who actually ran Rome.

So when the news came that Sulla was about to depart from Teanum Sidicinum, and Young Marius announced that it was more than time he left to join his troops at Ad Pictas, Praecia had toyed with the idea of becoming a camp follower, accompanying the young senior consul to the war. It had not come to pass; Young Marius found a typical solution to the problem she was becoming by leaving Rome after dark without telling her he was going. However, not to repine! Praecia shrugged, and looked about for other game.

All this had meant that neither his mother nor his wife had been given the opportunity to bid him farewell, to wish him the luck he would certainly need. He was gone. And he was never to come back. The news of Sacriportus had not spread through Rome before Brutus Damasippus (too much Carbo’s man to esteem Praecia) had embarked upon his bloodbath. Among those who died was Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, the father of Young Marius’s wife, and a good friend to Young Marius’s mother.

“My son did this,” Julia had said to Aurelia when she came to see if there was anything she could do.

“Nonsense!” Aurelia had answered warmly. “It was Brutus Damasippus, no one else.”

“I have seen the letter my son sent in his own writing from Sacriportus,” Julia had said, drawing in her breath on something far worse than a sob. “He couldn’t accept defeat without this paltry retaliation, and how can I expect my daughter-in-law to speak to me again?”

Caesar had huddled himself in a far corner of the room and watched the faces of the women with stony concentration. How could her son have done this to Aunt Julia? Especially after what his mad old father had done at the end? She was caught inside a mass of sorrow like a fly in a chunk of amber, her beauty the greater because she was static, her pain all within and quite invisible. It didn’t even show in her eyes.

Then Mucia came in; Julia shrank away, averted her gaze.

Aurelia had sat bolt upright, the planes of her face sharp and flinty. “Mucia Tertia, do you blame Julia for your father’s murder?” she demanded.

“Of course not,” said Young Marius’s wife, and pulled a chair over so that she could sit close enough to Julia to take her hands. “Please, Julia, look at me!”

“I cannot!”

“You must! I do not intend to move back to my father’s house and live with my stepmother. Nor do I intend to seek a place in my own mother’s house, with those frightful boys of hers. I want to stay here with my dear kind mother-in-law.”

So that had been all right. Some kind of life had gone on for Julia and Mucia Tertia, though they heard nothing from Young Marius walled up in Praeneste, and the news from various battlefields was always in Sulla’s favor. Had he been Aurelia’s son, reflected Aurelia’s son, Young Marius would have drawn little comfort from dwelling upon his mother while the days in Praeneste dragged on interminably. Aurelia was not as soft, not as loving, not as forgiving as Julia—but then, decided Caesar with a smile, if she had been, he might have turned out more like Young Marius! Caesar owned his mother’s detachment. And her hardness too.

Bad news piled on top of bad news: Carbo had stolen away in the night; Sulla had turned the Samnites back; Pompey and Crassus had defeated the men Carbo had deserted in Clusium; the Piglet and Varro Lucullus were in control of Italian Gaul; Sulla had entered Rome for a period of hours only to set up a provisional government—and left Torquatus behind with Thracian cavalry to ensure his provisional government remained a functioning government.

But Sulla had not come to visit Aurelia, which fascinated her son sufficiently to try a little fishing. Of that meeting his mother had found thrust upon her outside Teanum Sidicinum she had said just about nothing; now here she was with her calm unimpaired and a tradition broken.

“He ought to have come to see you!” Caesar had said.

“He will never come to see me again,” said Aurelia.

“Why not?”

“Those visits belong to a different time.”

“A time when he was handsome enough to fancy?” the son snapped, that rigidly suppressed temper suddenly flashing out.

But she froze, gave him a look which crushed him. “You are stupid as well as insulting! Leave me!” she said.

He left her. And left the subject severely alone thereafter. Whatever Sulla meant to her was her business.

They had heard of the siege tower Young Marius built and of its miserable end, of the other attempts he made to break through Ofella’s wall. And then on the last day of October there came the shocking news that ninety thousand Samnites were sitting in Pompey Strabo’s camp outside the Colline Gate.

The next two days were the worst of Caesar’s life. Choking inside his priestly garb, unable to touch a sword or look on death at the moment it happened, he locked himself in his study and commenced work on a new epic poem—in Latin, not in Greek—choosing the dactylic hexameter to make his task more difficult. The noise of battle came clearly to his ears, but he shut it out and struggled on with his maddening spondees and empty phrases, aching to be there and in it, admitting that he would not have cared which side he fought on, as long as he fought….

And after the sounds died away during the night he came charging out of his study to find his mother in her office bent over her accounts, and stood in her doorway convulsed with rage.

“How can I write what I cannot do?” he demanded. “What is the greatest literature about, if not war and warriors? Did Homer waste his time on flowery claptrap? Did Thucydides deem the art of beekeeping a suitable subject for his pen?”

She knew exactly how to deflate him, so she said in cool ledgerish tones, “Probably not,” and returned to her work.

And that night was the end of peace. Julia’s son was dead—all of them were dead, and Rome belonged to Sulla. Who did not come to see them, or send any message.

That the Senate and the Centuriate Assembly had voted him the position of Dictator everyone knew, and talked about endlessly. But it was Lucius Decumius who told Caesar and young Gaius Matius from the other ground—floor apartment about the mystery of the disappearing knights.

“All men who got rich under Marius or Cinna or Carbo, and that be no accident. You’re lucky your tata has been dead for enough years, Pimple,” Lucius Decumius said to Gaius Matius, who had borne the unflattering nickname of Pustula—Pimple—since he had been a toddler. “And your tata too, probably, young Peacock,” he said to Caesar.

“What do you mean?” asked Matius, frowning.

“I means there’s some awful discreet-looking fellows walking round Rome pinching rich knights,” the caretaker of the crossroads college said. “Freedmen mostly, but not your average gossipy Greek with boyfriend troubles. They’re all called Lucius Cornelius something—or—other. My Brethren and I, we calls them the Sullani. Because they belongs to him. Mark my words, young Peacock and Pimple, they do not bode no good! And I safely predicts that they are going to pinch a lot more rich knights.”

“Sulla can’t do that!” said Matius, lips compressed.

“Sulla can do anything he likes,” said Caesar. “He’s been made Dictator. That’s better than being King. His edicts have the force of law, he’s not tied to the lex Caecilia Didia of seventeen days between promulgation and ratification, he doesn’t even have to discuss his laws in Senate or Assemblies. And he cannot be made to answer for a single thing he does—or for anything he’s done in the past, for that matter. Mind you,” he added thoughtfully, “I think that if Rome isn’t taken into a very strong hand, she’s finished. So I hope all goes well for him. And I hope he has the vision and the courage to do what must be done.”

“That man,” said Lucius Decumius, “has the gall to do anything! Anything at all.”

Living as they did in the heart of the Subura—which was the poorest and the most polyglot district in Rome—they found that Sulla’s proscriptions had not the profound effect on life that they did in places like the Carinae, the Palatine, the upper Quirinal and Viminal. Though there were knights of the First Class aplenty between the far poorer Suburanites, few of them held a status above tribunus aerarius, and few the kind of political contacts which imperiled their lives now that Sulla was in power.

When the first list had displayed Young Marius’s name second from the top, Julia and Mucia Tertia had come to see Aurelia; as these visits were usually the other way around, their advent was a surprise. So was news of the list, which had not yet spread as far as the Subura; Sulla had not kept Julia waiting for her fate.

“I have had a notice served on me by the urban praetor—elect, the younger Dolabella.” Julia shivered. “Not a pleasant man! My poor son’s estate is confiscate. Nothing can be saved.”

“Your house too?’’ Aurelia asked, white—faced.

“Everything. He had a list of everything. All the mining interests in Spain, the lands in Etruria, our villa at Cumae, the house here in Rome, other lands Gaius Marius had acquired in Lucania and Umbria, the wheat latifundia on the Bagradas River in Africa Province, the dye works for wool in Hierapolis, the glassworks in Sidon. Even the farm in Arpinum. It all belongs now to Rome and will, I was informed, be put up for auction.”

“Oh, Julia!”

Being Julia, she found a smile and actually made it reach her eyes. “Oh, it isn’t all bad news! I was given a letter from Sulla which authorizes payment out of the estate of one hundred silver talents. That is what he assesses my dowry at, had Gaius Marius ever got round to giving me one. For, as all the gods know, I came to him penniless! But I am to have the hundred talents because, Sulla informs me, I am the sister of Julilla. For her sake, as she was his wife, he will not see me want. The letter was actually quite gracefully phrased.”

“It sounds a lot of money—but after what you’ve had, it’s nothing,” said Aurelia, tight—lipped.

“It will buy me a nice house on the Vicus Longus or the Alta Semita, and yield me an adequate income besides. The slaves of course are to go with the estate, but Sulla has allowed me to keep Strophantes—I am so glad about that! The poor old man is quite crazed with grief.” She stopped, her grey eyes full of tears—not for herself, but for Strophantes. “Anyway,” she continued, “I will manage very comfortably. Which is more than the wives or mothers of other men on the list can say. They will get absolutely nothing.”

“And what about you, Mucia Tertia?” asked Caesar. “Are you classified as Marian or Mucian?’’ She displayed no sign of grief for her husband, he noted, or even self-pity at her widow’s status. One knew Aunt Julia grieved, though she never showed it. But Mucia Tertia?

“I am classified as Marian,” she said, “so I lose my dowry. My father’s estate is heavily encumbered. There was nothing for me in his will. Had there been something, my stepmother would try to keep it from me anyway. My own mother is all right—Metellus Nepos is safe, he is for Sulla. But their two boys must be thought of ahead of me. Julia and I have talked it over on the way here. I am to go with her. Sulla has forbidden me to remarry, as I was the wife of a Marius. Not that I wish to take another husband. I do not.”

“It’s a nightmare!” cried Aurelia. She looked down at her hands, inky—fingered and a little swollen in their joints. “It may be that we too will be put on the list. My husband was Gaius Marius’s man to the end. And Cinna’s at the time he died.”

“But this insula is in your name, Mater. As all the Cottae stand for Sulla, it should remain yours,” Caesar said. “I may lose my land. But at least as flamen Dialis I will have my salary from the State and a State house in the Forum. I suppose Cinnilla will lose her dowry, such as it is.”

“I gather Cinna’s relatives will lose everything,” Julia said, and sighed. “Sulla means to see an end to opposition.”

“What of Annia? And the older daughter, Cornelia Cinna?” asked Aurelia. “I have always disliked Annia. She was a poor mother to my little Cinnilla, and she remarried with indecent haste after Cinna died. So I daresay she’ll survive.”

“You’re right, she will. She’s been married to Pupius Piso Frugi long enough to be classified as Pupian,” said Julia. “I found out a lot from Dolabella, he was only too anxious to tell me who was going to suffer! Poor Cornelia Cinna is classified with Gnaeus Ahenobarbus. Of course she lost her house to Sulla when he first arrived, and Annia wouldn’t take her in then. I believe she’s living with an old Vestal aunt out on the Via Recta.”

“Oh, I am so glad both my girls are married to relative nobodies!’’ Aurelia exclaimed.

“I have a piece of news,” said Caesar, to draw the women’s attention away from their own troubles.

“What?” asked Mucia Tertia.

“Lepidus must have had a premonition of this. Yesterday he divorced his wife. Saturninus’s daughter, Appuleia.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” cried Julia. “I can bear the fact that the ones who fought against Sulla must be punished, but why must their children and their children’s children suffer too? All the fuss about Saturninus was so long ago! Sulla won’t care about Saturninus, so why should Lepidus do that to her? She’s borne him three splendid sons!”

“She won’t bear him any more,” Caesar said. “She took a nice hot bath and opened her veins. So now Lepidus is running around sobbing rivers of grief. Pah!”

“Oh, but he was always that sort of man,” said Aurelia with scorn. “I do not deny that there must be a place in the world for flimsy men, but the trouble with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus is that he genuinely believes he has substance.”

“Poor Lepidus!” sighed Julia.

“Poor Appuleia,” said Mucia Tertia rather dryly.

*

But now, after what Cotta had told them, it seemed that the Caesars were not to be proscribed. The six hundred iugera at Bovillae were safe, Caesar would have a senatorial census. Not, he reflected wryly as he watched the snow pouring down the light well like a powdery waterfall, that he needed to worry about a senatorial census! The flamen Dialis was automatically a member of the Senate.

As he watched this sudden appearance of real winter, his mother watched him.

Such a nice person, she thought—and that is my doing, no one else’s. For though he has many excellent qualities, he is far from perfect. Not as sympathetic or forgiving or tender as his father, for all that he has a look of his father about him. A look of me too. He is so brilliant in so many different ways. Send him anywhere in this building and he can fix whatever is wrong—pipes, tiles, plaster, shutters, drains, paint, wood. And the improvements he has made to our elderly inventor’s brakes and cranes! He can actually write in Hebrew and Median! And speak a dozen languages, thanks to our amazing variety of tenants. Before he became a man he was a legend on the Campus Martius, so Lucius Decumius swears to me. He swims, he rides, he runs, all like the wind. The poems and plays he writes—as good as Plautus and Ennius, though I am his mother and should not say so. And his grasp of rhetoric, so Marcus Antonius Gnipho tells me, is without peer. How did Gnipho put it? My son can move stones to tears and mountains to rage. He understands legislation. And he can read anything at a single glance, no matter how bad the writing. In all of Rome there is no one else who can do that, even the prodigy Marcus Tullius Cicero. As for the women—how they pursue him! Up and down the Subura. He thinks I do not know, of course. He thinks I believe him chaste, waiting for his dear little wife. Well, that is better so. Men are strange creatures when it comes to the part of them makes them men. But my son is not perfect. Just superlatively gifted. He has a shocking temper, though he guards it well. He is self-centered in some ways and not always sensitive to the feelings and wants of others. As for this obsession he has about cleanliness—it pleases me to see him so fastidious, yet the extent of it he never got from me or anyone else. He won’t look at a woman unless she’s come straight from a bath, and I believe he actually inspects her from the top of her head to the spaces between her toes. In the Subura! However, he is greatly desired, so the standard of cleanliness among the local women has risen hugely since he turned fourteen. Precocious little beast! I always used to hope my husband availed himself of the local women during those many years he was away, but he always told me he didn’t, he waited for me. If I disliked anything in him, it was that. Such a burden of guilt he shifted to me by keeping himself for me, whom he rarely saw. My son will never do that to his wife. I hope she appreciates her luck. Sulla. He has been summoned to see Sulla. I wish I knew why. I wish—

She came out of herself with a start to find Caesar leaning across his desk snapping his fingers at her, and laughing.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“All over the place,” she answered as she got up, feeling the chill. “I’ll have Burgundus give you a brazier, Caesar. It is too cold in this room.”

“Fusspot!” he said lovingly to her back.

“I don’t want you confronting Sulla with a sniffle and a thousand sneezes,” she said.

But the morrow brought no sniffles, no sneezes. The young man presented himself at the house of Gnaeus Ahenobarbus a good summer hour before the winter dinnertime, prepared to kick his heels in the atrium rather than run the risk of arriving too late. Sure enough, the steward—an exquisitely oily Greek who subjected him to subtle come—hither glances—informed him that he was too early, would he mind waiting? Conscious of crawling skin, Caesar nodded curtly and turned his back on the man who would soon be famous, whom all Rome would know as Chrysogonus.

But Chrysogonus wouldn’t go; clearly he found the visitor attractive enough to pursue, and Caesar had the good sense not to do what he longed to do—knock the fellow’s teeth down his throat. Then inspiration struck. Caesar walked briskly out onto the loggia, and the steward disliked the cold too much to follow him. This house had two loggias, and the one where Caesar stood making crescent patterns in the snow with the toe of his clog looked not down onto the Forum Romanum, but back up the Palatine cliff in the direction of the Clivus Victoriae. Right above him was the loggia of another house literally overhung the house of Ahenobarbus.

Whose house? Caesar wrinkled his brow, remembered. Marcus Livius Drusus, assassinated in its atrium ten years ago. So this was where all those orphaned children lived under the arid supervision of… Who? That’s right, the daughter of that Servilius Caepio who had drowned coming back from his province! Gnaea? Yes, Gnaea. And her dreaded mother, the ghastly Porcia Liciniana! Lots of little Servilii Caepiones and Porcii Catones. The wrong Porcii Catones, of the branch Salonius. Descendants of a slave—there was one now! He was leaning over the marble balustrade, a painfully thin boy with a neck long enough to give him a resemblance to a stork, and a nose large enough to show even at this distance. A lot of lank, reddish hair. No mistaking Cato the Censor’s brood!

All of these thoughts indicated one thing about Caesar his mother had not catalogued during her reverie: he adored gossip and forgot none of it.

“Honored priest, my master is ready to see you.” Caesar turned away with a grin and a cheerful wave up to the boy on Drusus’s balcony, hugely amused when the wave was not returned. Young Cato was probably too amazed to wave back; there would be few in Sulla’s temporary dwelling with the time to make overtures of friendship to a poor little storky boy who was the descendant of a Tusculan squire and a Celtiberian slave.

*

Though he was prepared for the sight of Sulla the Dictator, Caesar still found himself shocked. No wonder he hadn’t sought Mater out! Nor would I if I were he, thought Caesar, and walked forward as quietly as his wooden-soled clogs permitted.

Sulla’s initial reaction was that he looked upon a total stranger; but this was due to the ugly red-and-purple cape and the peculiar effect the creamy ivory helmet created, of someone with a shaven skull.

“Take all that stuff off,” said Sulla, and returned his gaze to the mass of papers on his desk.

When he looked up again the priestling was gone. In his place there stood his son. The hairs bristled on Sulla’s arms, and on the back of his neck; he emitted a sound like air oozing out of a bladder and stumbled to his feet. The golden hair, the wide blue eyes, the long Caesar face, all that height… And then Sulla’s tear-clouded vision assimilated the differences; Aurelia’s high sharp cheekbones with the hollows beneath and Aurelia’s exquisite mouth with the creases in the corners. Older than Young Sulla had been when he died, more man than boy. Oh, Lucius Cornelius, my son, why did you have to die?

He dashed the tears away. “I thought you were my son for a moment,” he said harshly, and shivered.

“He was my first cousin.”

“I remember you said you liked him.”

“I did.”

“Better than Young Marius, you said.”

“I did.”

“And you wrote a poem about him after he died, but you said it wasn’t good enough to show me.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

Sulla sank back into his chair, his hands trembling. “Sit, boy. There, where the light is best and I can see you. My eyes are not what they used to be.” Drink him in! He is sent from the Great God, whose priest he is. “Your uncle Gaius Cotta told you what?”

“Only that I had to see you, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Call me Sulla, it’s what everybody calls me.”

“And I am called Caesar, even by my mother.”

“You are the flamen Dialis.”

Something flashed through the disquietingly familiar eyes—why were they so familiar, when his son’s had been much bluer and sprightlier? A look of anger. Pain? No, not pain. Anger.

“Yes, I am the flamen Dialis,” Caesar answered.

“The men who appointed you were enemies of Rome.”

“At the time they appointed me they were not.”

“That’s fair enough.” Sulla picked up his reed pen, which was encased in gold, then put it down again. “You have a wife.”

“I do.”

“She’s Cinna’s daughter.”

“She is.”

“Have you consummated your marriage?’’

“No.”

Up from behind his desk Sulla got to walk over to the window, which gaped wide open despite the freezing cold. Caesar smiled inwardly, wondering that his mother would have said—here was another who didn’t care about the elements.

“I have undertaken the restitution of the Republic,” said Sulla, looking out the window straight at the statue of Scipio Africanus atop his tall column; at this altitude, he and tubby old Scipio Africanus were on the same level. “For reasons I imagine you will understand, I have chosen to begin with religion. We have lost the old values, and must return to them. I have abolished the election of priests and augurs, including the Pontifex Maximus. Politics and religion in Rome are inextricably intertwined, but I will not see religion made the servant of politics when it ought to be the other way round.”

“I do understand,” said Caesar from his chair. “However, I believe the Pontifex Maximus must be elected.”

“What you believe, boy, does not interest me!”

“Then why am I here?”

“Certainly not to make smart remarks at my expense!”

“I apologize.”

Sulla swung round, glared at the flamen Dialis fiercely. “You’re not a scrap afraid of me, boy, are you?”

Came the smile—the same smile!—the smile which caught at heart and mind together. “I used to hide in the false ceiling above our dining room and watch you talking to my mother. Times have changed, and so have all our circumstances. But it’s hard to be afraid of someone you suddenly loved in the moment you found out he was not your mother’s paramour.”

That provoked a roar of laughter, laughter to drive away a fresh spring of tears. “True enough! I wasn’t. I did try once, but she was far too wise to have me. Thinks like a man, your mother. I bring no luck to women, I never have.” The pale unsettling eyes looked Caesar up and down. “You won’t bring any luck to women either, though there’ll be plenty of women.”

“Why did you summon me, if not to seek my advice?”

“It’s to do with regulating religious malpractices. They say you were born on the same day of the year that Jupiter’s fire finally went out.”

“Yes.”

“And how did you interpret that?”

“As a good omen.”

“Unfortunately the College of Pontifices and the College of Augurs do not agree with you, young Caesar. They have made you and your flaminate their most important business for some time now. And have concluded that a certain irregularity in your flaminate was responsible for the destruction of the Great God’s temple.”

The joy flooded into Caesar’s face. “Oh, how glad I am to hear you say that!”

“Eh? Say what?”

“That I am not the flamen Dialis.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did! You did!”

“You’ve misinterpreted me, boy. You are definitely the flamen Dialis. Fifteen priests and fifteen augurs have arrived at that conclusion beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

The joy had died out of Caesar’s face completely. “I’d rather be a soldier,” he said gruffly. “I’m more suited for it.”

“What you’d rather be doesn’t matter. It’s what you are that does. And what your wife is.”

Caesar frowned, looked at Sulla searchingly. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned my wife.”

“You must divorce her,” said Sulla baldly.

“Divorce her? But I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“We’re married confarreatio.”

“There is such a thing as diffarreatio.”

“Why must I divorce her?’’

“Because she’s Cinna’s brat. It turns out that my laws pertaining to proscribed men and their families contain a minor flaw in regard to the citizen status of children under age. The priests and augurs have decided that the lex Minicia applies. Which means your wife—who is flaminica Dialis—is not Roman or patrician. Therefore she cannot be flaminica Dialis. As this flaminate is a dual one, the legality of her position is quite as important as yours. You must divorce her.”

“I won’t do that,” said Caesar, beginning to see a way out of this hated priesthood.

“You’ll do anything I say you must, boy!”

“I will do nothing I think I must not.”

The puckered lips peeled back slowly. “I am the Dictator,” said Sulla levelly. “You will divorce your wife.”

“I refuse,” said Caesar.

“I can force you to it if I have to.”

“How?’’ asked Caesar scornfully. ‘ The rites of diffarreatio require my complete consent and co-operation.”

Time to reduce this young pest to a quivering jellyfish: Sulla let Caesar see the naked clawed creature which lived inside him, a thing fit only to screech at the moon. But even as the creature leaped forth, Sulla realized why Caesar’s eyes were so familiar. They were like his own! Staring back at him with the cold and emotionless fixity of a snake. And the naked clawed creature slunk away, impotent. For the first time in his life Sulla was left without the means to bend another man to his will. The rage which ought by now to possess him could not come; forced to contemplate the image of himself in someone else’s face, Lucius Cornelius Sulla was powerless.

He had to fight with mere words. “I have vowed to restore the proper religious ethics of the mos maiorum,” he said. “Rome will honor and care for her gods in the way she did at the dawn of the Republic. Jupiter Optimus Maximus is displeased. With you—or rather, with your wife. You are his special priest, but your wife is an inseparable part of your priesthood. You must separate yourself from this present unacceptable wife, take another one. You must divorce Cinna’s non—Roman brat.”

“I will not,” said Caesar.

“Then I must find another solution.”

“I have—one ready to hand,” said Caesar instantly. “Let Jupiter Best and Greatest divorce me. Cancel my flaminate.”

“I might have been able to do that as Dictator had I not brought the priestly colleges into the business. As it is, I am bound by their findings.”

“Then it begins to look,” said Caesar calmly, “as if we have reached an impasse, doesn’t it?”

“No, it does not. There is another way out.”

“To have me killed.”

“Exactly.”

“That would put the blood of the flamen Dialis on your hands, Sulla.”

“Not if someone else has your blood on his hands. I do not subscribe to the Greek metaphor, Gaius Julius Caesar. Nor do our Roman gods. Guilt cannot be transferred.”

Caesar considered this. “Yes, I believe you’re right. If you have someone else kill me, the guilt must fall on him.”

He rose to his feet, which gave him some inches over Sulla. “Then our interview is at an end.”

“It is. Unless you will reconsider.”

“I will not divorce my wife.”

“Then I will have you killed.”

“If you can,” said Caesar, and walked out.

Sulla called after him. “You have forgotten your laena and apex, priest!”

“Keep them for the next flamen Dialis.”

*

He forced himself to stroll home, not certain how quickly Sulla would regain his equilibrium. That the Dictator had been thrown off balance he had seen at once; it was evident that not too many people defied Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

The air was freezing, too cold for snow. And that childish gesture had cost him protection from the weather. Not important, really. He wouldn’t die of exposure walking from the Palatine to the Subura. More important by far was his next course of action. For Sulla would have him killed, of that he had absolutely no doubt. He sighed. It would have to be flight. Though he knew he could look after himself, he had no illusions as to which of them would win did he remain in Rome. Sulla. However, he had at least a day’s grace; the Dictator was as hampered by the slowly grinding machinery of bureaucracy as anyone else, and would have to squeeze an interview with one of those groups of quite ordinary-looking men into his crowded schedule; his foyer, as Caesar had quickly assessed, was filled with clients, not paid assassins. Life in Rome was not a bit like a Greek tragedy, no impassioned instructions were roared out to men straining like hounds at the leash. When Sulla found the time he would issue his orders. But not yet.

When he let himself into his mother’s apartment he was blue with cold.

“Where are your clothes?” asked Aurelia, gaping.

“With Sulla,” he managed to say. “I donated them to the next flamen Dialis. Mater, he showed me how to be free of it!”

“Tell me,” she said, and got him to sit over a brazier.

He told her.

“Oh, Caesar, why?” she cried at the end.

“Come, Mater, you know why. I love my wife. That’s first of all. All these years she’s lived with us and looked to me for the kind of care neither father nor mother was willing to give her, and thought me the most wonderful aspect of her little life. How can I abandon her? She’s Cinna’s daughter! A pauper! Not even Roman anymore! Mater, I don’t want to die. To live as the flamen Dialis is infinitely preferable to death. But there are some things worth dying for. Principles. The duties of a Roman nobleman you instilled in me with such uncompromising care. Cinnilla is my responsibility. I can’t abandon her!” He shrugged, looked triumphant. “Besides, this is my way out. As long as I refuse to divorce Cinnilla, I am unacceptable to the Great God as his priest. So I just have to keep on refusing to divorce her.”

“Until Sulla succeeds in having you killed.”

“That’s on the lap of the Great God, Mater, you know it is. I believe that Fortune has offered me this chance, and that I must take it. What I have to do is stay alive until after Sulla dies. Once he’s dead, no one else will have the courage to kill the flamen Dialis, and the colleges will be forced to break my priestly chains. Mater, I do not believe Jupiter Optimus Maximus intends me as his special flamen! I believe he has other work for me. Work of better use to Rome.”

She argued no more. “Money. You’ll need money, Caesar.” And she ran her hands through her hair, as she always did when she was trying to find mislaid funds. “You will need more than two talents of silver, because that’s the price of a proscribed man. If you’re discovered in hiding, you’ll need to pay considerably more than two talents to make it worth an informer’s while to let you go. Three talents ought to give you a purchase price plus enough to live on. Now can I find three talents without talking to bankers? Seventy—five thousand sesterces … I have ten thousand in my room. And the rents are due, I can collect them tonight. When my tenants hear why I need it, they’ll pay up. They love you, though why they should I don’t know—you’re very difficult and obstinate! Gaius Matius might know how to get more. And I imagine Lucius Decumius keeps his ill—gotten gains in jars under his bed….”

And off she went, still talking. Caesar sighed, got to his feet. Time to organize his flight. And he would have to talk to Cinnilla before he left, explain.

He sent the steward, Eutychus, to fetch Lucius Decumius, and summoned Burgundus.

Old Gaius Marius had bequeathed Burgundus to Caesar in his will; at the time Caesar had strongly suspected that he had done so as a last link in the chain of flamen Dialis with which he had bound Caesar hands and feet. If by any chance Caesar should not continue to be Jupiter’s special priest, Burgundus was to kill him. But of course Caesar—who owned a great deal of charm—had soon made Burgundus his man, helped by the fact that his mother’s gigantic Arvernian maidservant, Cardixa, had fastened her teeth into him. A German of the Cimbri, he had been eighteen when he was captured after the battle of Vercellae, and was now thirty-seven to Cardixa’s forty-five. How much longer she could go on bearing a boy a year was one of the family jokes; their total at the moment was five. They had both been manumitted on the day Caesar put on his toga of manhood, but this formal rite of being freed had changed nothing save their citizen status, which was now Roman (though of course they had been enrolled in the urban tribe Suburana, and therefore owned worthless votes). Aurelia, who was both frugal and scrupulously fair, had always given Cardixa a reasonable wage, and thought Burgundus was worthy of good money too. They were believed to be saving this for their sons, as their living was provided for them.

“But you must take our savings now, Caesar,” Burgundus said in his thickly accented Latin. “You will need them.”

His master was tall for a Roman, two inches over six feet, but Burgundus was four inches taller and twice as wide. His fair face, homely by Roman standards because its nose was far too short and straight and its mouth too wide, looked its normal solemn self when he said this, but his light blue eyes betrayed his love—and his respect.

Caesar smiled at Burgundus, shook his head. “I thank you for the offer, but my mother will manage. If she doesn’t—why, then I will accept, and pay you back with interest.”

Lucius Decumius came in accompanied by a swirl of snow; Caesar hastened to finish with Burgundus.

“Pack for both of us, Burgundus. Warm stuff. You can carry a club. I will carry my father’s sword.” Oh, how good to be able to say that! I will carry my father’s sword! There were worse things than being a fugitive from the Dictator’s wrath.

“I knew that man meant trouble for us!” said Lucius Decumius grimly, though he didn’t mention the time when Sulla had frightened him almost witless with a look. “I’ve sent my boys home for money, you’ll have enough.” A glare buried itself in Burgundus’s back. “Listen, Caesar, you can’t go off in this sort of weather with only that big clod! The boys and I will come too.”

Expecting this, Caesar gave Lucius Decumius a look which silenced protest. “No, dad, I can’t allow that. The more of us there are, the more likely I am to attract attention.”

“Attract attention?” Lucius Decumius gaped. “How can you not attract attention with that great dolt shambling along behind you? Leave him at home, take me instead, eh? No one ever sees old Lucius Decumius, he’s a part of the plaster.”

“Inside Rome, yes,” Caesar said, smiling at Decumius with great affection, “but in Sabine country, dad, you’d stick out like dog’s balls. Burgundus and I will manage. And if I know you’re here to look after the women, I’ll have a lot less to worry about while I’m away.”

As this was the truth, Lucius Decumius subsided, muttering.

“The proscriptions have made it more important than ever that someone be here to guard the women. Aunt Julia and Mucia Tertia have no one except us. I don’t think they’ll come to any harm up there on the Quirinal, everyone in Rome loves Aunt Julia. But Sulla doesn’t, so you’ll have to keep watch on them. My mother”—he shrugged—“my mother is herself, and that’s as bad as it is good when it comes to dealing with Sulla. If things should change—if, for instance, Sulla should decide to proscribe me, and because of me, my mother—then I leave it to you to get my household out.” He grinned. “We’ve put too much money into feeding Cardixa’s boys to see Sulla’s State end up making a profit on them!”

“Nothing will happen to any of them, little Peacock.”

“Thanks, dad.” Caesar bethought himself of another matter. “I must ask you to hire us a couple of mules and get the horses from the stables.”

This was Caesar’s secret, the one aspect of his life he kept from everyone save Burgundus and Lucius Decumius. As flamen Dialis he couldn’t touch a horse, but from the time when old Gaius Marius had taught him to ride he had fallen in love with the sensation of speed, and with the feel of a horse’s powerful body between his knees. Though he wasn’t rich in any way except his precious land, he did have a certain amount of money which was his, and which his mother would not have dreamed of managing. It had come to him in his father’s will, and it enabled him to buy whatever he needed without having to apply to Aurelia. So he had bought a horse. A very special horse.

In all ways but this one Caesar had found the strength and self-denial to obey the dictates of his flaminate; as he tended to be indifferent to what he ate the monotonous diet did not cost him a pang, though many a time he had longed to take his father’s sword out of the trunk in which it reposed and swing it around his head. The one thing he had not been able to give up was his love of horses and riding. Why? Because of the association between two different living creatures and the perfection of the result. So he had bought a beautifully made chestnut gelding as fleet as Boreas and called it Bucephalus, after the legendary horse of Alexander the Great. This animal was the greatest joy in his life. Whenever he could sneak away he would walk to the Capena Gate, outside which Burgundus or Lucius Decumius waited with Bucephalus. And he would ride, streaking down the towpath along the Tiber without regard for life or limb, swerving around the patient oxen which drew the barges upriver—and then, when that ceased to be interesting, he would head off across the fields taking stone walls in his stride, he and his beloved Bucephalus as one. Many knew the horse, nobody knew the rider; for he trousered himself like a mad Galatian and wore a Median scarf wound round head and face.

The secret rides also endowed his life with an element of risk that he didn’t yet understand he craved; he merely thought it tremendous fun to hoodwink Rome and imperil his flaminate. While he honored and respected the Great God whom he served, he knew that he had a unique relationship with Jupiter Best and Greatest; his ancestor Aeneas had been the love child of the goddess of love, Venus, and Venus’s father was Jupiter Optimus Maximus. So Jupiter understood, Jupiter gave his sanction, Jupiter knew his earthly servant had a drop of divine ichor in his veins. In all else he obeyed the tenets of his flaminate to the best of his ability; but his price was Bucephalus, a communion with another living creature more precious to him by far than all the women in the Subura. On them, the sum was less than himself. On Bucephalus, the sum was more.

*

Not long after nightfall he was ready to leave. Lucius Decumius and his sons had trundled the seventy—six thousand sesterces Aurelia had managed to scrape up in a handcart to the Quirinal Gate, while two other loyal Brethren of the college had gone to the stables on the Campus Lanatarius where Caesar kept his horses and brought them the long way round, outside the Servian Walls.

“I do wish,” said Aurelia without displaying a sign of her terrible inward anxiety, “that you’d chosen to ride a less showy animal than that chestnut you gallop all over Latium.”

He gasped, choked, fell about laughing; when he could, he said, wiping his eyes, “I don’t believe it! Mater, how long have you known about Bucephalus?”

“Is that what you call it?” She snorted. “My son, you have delusions of grandeur not in keeping with your priestly calling.” A spark of amusement glittered. “I’ve always known. I even know the disgracefully long price you paid for it—fifty thousand sesterces! You are an incorrigible spendthrift, Caesar, and I don’t understand where you get that from. It is certainly not from me.”

He hugged her, kissed her wide and uncreased brow. “Well, Mater, I promise that no one but you will ever keep my accounts. I’d still like to know how you found out about Bucephalus.”

“I have many sources of information,” she said, smiling. “One cannot but, after twenty-three years in the Subura.” Her smile dying, she looked up at him searchingly. “You haven’t seen little Cinnilla yet, and she’s fretting. She knows something is amiss, even though I sent her to her room.”

A sigh, a frown, a look of appeal. “What do I tell her, Mater? How much, if anything?”

“Tell her the truth, Caesar. She’s twelve.”

Cinnilla occupied what used to be Cardixa’s room, under the stairs which ascended to the upper storeys on the Vicus Patricius side of the building; Cardixa now lived with Burgundus and their sons in a special room it had amused Caesar to design and build with his own hands above the servants’ quarters.

When Caesar entered on the echo of his knock, his wife was at her loom diligently weaving a drab—colored and rather hairy piece of cloth destined to form a part of her wardrobe as flaminica Dialis, and for some reason the sight of it, so unappealing and unflattering, smote at Caesar’s heart.

“Oh, it isn’t fair!” he cried, swept her off her stool into his arms and sat with her on his lap in the one place available, her little bed.

He thought her exquisitely beautiful, though he was too young himself to find her burgeoning womanhood attractive in itself; he liked females considerably older than he was. But to those who have been surrounded all their lives by tall, slender, fair people, a slightly plump mite of night—dark coloring held an irresistible fascination. His feelings about her were confused, for she had lived inside his house for five years as his sister, yet he had always known she was his wife, and that when Aurelia gave her permission he would take her out of this room and into his bed. There was nothing moral in this confusion, which might almost have been called a matter of logistics; one moment she was his sister, the next moment she would be his wife. Of course all the eastern kings did it—married their sisters—but he had heard that the family nurseries of the Ptolemies and the Mithridatidae resounded with the noises of war, that brothers fought sisters like animals. Whereas he had never fought with Cinnilla, any more than he had ever fought with his real sisters; Aurelia would not have let that kind of attitude develop.

“Are you going away, Caesar?” asked Cinnilla.

There was a strand of hair drifting across her brow; he smoothed it back into place and continued to stroke her head as if she were a pet, rhythmic, soothing, sensuous. Her eyes closed, she settled into the crook of his arm.

“Now, now, don’t go to sleep!” he said sharply, giving her a shake. “I know it’s past your bedtime, but I have to talk to you. I’m going away, that’s true.”

“What is the matter these days? Is it all to do with the proscriptions? Aurelia says my brother has fled to Spain.”

“It has a little to do with the proscriptions, Cinnilla, but only because they stem from Sulla too. I have to go away because Sulla says there is a doubt about my priesthood.”

She smiled, her full top lip creasing to reveal a fold of its inside surface, a characteristic all who knew Cinnilla agreed was enchanting. “That should make you happy. You’d much rather not be the flamen Dialis.”

“Oh, I’m still the flamen Dialis,” said Caesar with a sigh. “According to the priests, it’s you who are wrong.” He shifted her, made her sit upright on the edge of his knees so he could look into her face. “You know your family’s present situation, but what you may not have realized is that when your father was pronounced sacer—an outcast—he ceased to be a Roman citizen.”

“Well, I do understand why Sulla can take away all of our property, but my father died a long time before ever Sulla came back,” said Cinnilla, who was not very clever, and needed to have things explained. “How can he have lost his citizenship?”

“Because Sulla’s laws of proscription automatically take away a man’s citizenship, and because some men were already dead when Sulla put their names on his proscription lists. Young Marius—your father—the praetors Carrinas and Damasippus—and lots of others—were dead when they were proscribed. But that fact didn’t stop their losing their citizen rights.”

“I don’t think that’s very fair.”

“I agree, Cinnilla.” He ploughed on, hoping that he had been dowered with the gift of simplifying. “Your brother was of age when your father was proscribed, so he retains his Roman status. He just can’t inherit any of the family property or money, nor stand as a curule magistrate. However, with you, it’s quite different.”

“Why? Because I’m a girl?”

“No, because you are under age. Your sex is immaterial. The lex Minicia de liberis says children of a Roman and a non—Roman must take the citizenship of the non—Roman parent. That means—at least according to the priests—that you now have the status of a foreigner.”

She began to shiver, though not to weep, her enormous dark eyes staring into Caesar’s face with painful apprehension.

“Oh! Does that mean I am no longer your wife?”

“No, Cinnilla, it does not. You are my wife until the day one of us dies, for we are married in the old form. No law forbids a Roman to marry a non—Roman, so our marriage is not in doubt. What is in doubt is your citizen status—and the citizen status of all the other children of a proscribed man who were under age at the time of proscription. Is that clear?’’

“I think so.” The expression of frowning concentration did not lighten. “Does that mean that if I give you children, they will not be Roman citizens?”

“Under the lex Minicia, yes.”

“Oh, Caesar, how terrible!”

“Yes.”

“But I am a patrician!”

“Not any longer, Cinnilla.”

“What can I do?”

“For the moment, nothing. But Sulla knows that he has to clarify his laws in this respect, so we will just have to hope that he does so in a way which allows our children to be Roman, even if you are not.” His hold tightened a little. “Today Sulla summoned me and ordered me to divorce you.”

Now the tears came, silently, tragically. Even at eighteen Caesar had experienced women’s tears with what had become boring regularity, usually turned on when he tired of someone, or someone discovered he was intriguing elsewhere. Such tears annoyed him, tried his sudden and very hot temper. Though he had learned to control it rigidly, it always flashed out when women produced tears, and the results were shattering—for the weeper. Whereas Cinnilla’s tears were pure grief and Caesar’s temper was only for Sulla, who had made Cinnilla cry.

“It’s all right, my little love,” he said, gathering her closer. “I wouldn’t divorce you if Jupiter Optimus Maximus came down in person and ordered it! Not if I lived to be a thousand would I divorce you!”

She giggled and snuffled, let him dry her face with his handkerchief. “Blow!” he commanded. She blew. “Now that’s quite enough. There’s no need to cry. You are my wife, and you will stay my wife no matter what.”

One arm stole round his neck, she put her face into his shoulder and sighed happily. “Oh, Caesar, I do love you! It’s so hard to wait to grow up!”

That shocked him. So did the feel of her budding breasts, for he was wearing only a tunic. He put his cheek against her hair but delicately loosened his hold on her, unwilling to start something his honor wouldn’t let him finish.

“Jupiter Optimus Maximus doesn’t have a person to come down in,” she said, good Roman child who knew her theology. “He is everywhere that Rome is—that’s why Rome is Best and Greatest.”

“What a good flaminica Dialis you would have made!”

“I would have tried. For you.” She lifted her head to look at him. “If Sulla ordered you to divorce me and you said no, does that mean he will try to kill you? Is that why you’re going away, Caesar?”

“He will certainly try to kill me, and that is why I’m going away. If I stayed in Rome, he would be able to kill me easily. There are too many of his creatures, and no one knows their names or faces. But in the country I stand a better chance.” He jogged her up and down on his knee as he had when she had come first to live with them. “You mustn’t worry about me, Cinnilla. My life strand is tough—too tough for Sulla’s shears, I’ll bet! Your job is to keep Mater from worrying.”

“I’ll try,” she said, and kissed him on his cheek, too unsure of herself to do what she wanted to do, kiss him on his mouth and say she was old enough.

“Good!” he said. He pushed her off his lap and got to his feet. “I’ll be back after Sulla dies,” he said, and left.

*

When Caesar arrived at the Quirinal Gate he found Lucius Decumius and his sons waiting. The two mules were panniered with the money evenly divided between them, which meant neither was carrying anything like a full load. There were no leather moneybags in evidence; instead, Lucius Decumius had put the cash in false compartments lining what looked like—and were!—book buckets stuffed with scrolls.

“You didn’t make these in a few hours today,” Caesar said, grinning. “Is this how you shift your own loot around?”

“Go and talk to your horse—but first, a word in your ear. Let Burgundus lift the money,” Lucius Decumius lectured, and turned to the German with such a fierce look upon his face that Burgundus took an involuntary step backward.

“Now see here, lout, you make sure when you lifts those buckets that you makes it seem like you was lifting feathers, hear me?”

Burgundus nodded. “I hear, Lucius Decumius. Feathers.”

“Now put all your other baggage on top of them books—and if the boy takes off like the wind, you hang on to them mules no matter what!”

Caesar was standing at his horse’s head, cheek against cheek, murmuring endearments. Only when the rest of the baggage had been tied onto the mules did he move, and then it was to allow Burgundus to toss him into the saddle.

“You look after yourself, Pavo!” shrilled Lucius Decumius into the wind, eyes tearing. He reached up his grubby hand.

Caesar the cleanliness fanatic leaned down, took it, and kissed it. “Yes, dad!”

And then they were gone into the wall of snow.

Burgundus’s mount was the Caesar family steed, and almost as expensive as Bucephalus. A Nesaean from Median bloodstock, it was much bigger than the horses of the peoples around the Middle Sea. Nesaeans were few and far between in Italy, as they could be used for nothing else than bearing oversized riders. Many farmers and traders had eyed them longingly, wishing they could be employed as beasts of burden or attached to heavy wagons and ploughs because they were both speedier and more intelligent than oxen. But, alas, when yoked to pull a load they strangled; the forward movement pressed the harness against their windpipes. As pack animals they were useless too; they ate too much to pay their way. An ordinary horse, however, could not have taken Burgundus’s weight, and though a good mule might have, on a mule Burgundus’s feet literally skimmed the ground.

Caesar led the way toward Crustumerium, hunched down in the lee of Bucephalus’s head—oh, it was a cold winter!

They pressed on through the night to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Rome, and paused only when the next night threatened. By then they had reached Trebula, not far from the crest of the first range of mountains. It was a small place, but boasted an accommodation house which also served as the local tavern, and was therefore noisy, overcrowded, and very hot. The general atmosphere of dirt and neglect did not please Caesar in the least.

“Still, it’s a roof and a sort of a bed,” he said to Burgundus after inspecting a room upstairs where they were to sleep—along with several shepherd dogs and six hens.

Of course they attracted a considerable amount of attention from their fellow patrons, who were all locals there to drink wine; most would be fit to stagger home again through the snow, but some (so Mine Host confided) would spend the night wherever they happened to be lying when they fell over.

“There’s sausages and bread,” said Mine Host.

“We’ll have both,” said Caesar.

“Wine?”

“Water,” said Caesar firmly.

“Too young to drink?” Mine Host demanded, not pleased. His profit was in the wine.

“My mother would kill me if I took a single sip.”

“What’s wrong with your friend, then? He’s old enough.”

“Yes, but he’s mentally retarded, and you wouldn’t want to see him with a bit of wine in him—he pulls Hyrcanian bears apart with his hands, and did in two lions some praetor in Rome thought he was going to show at the games,” said Caesar with a straight face; Burgundus just looked vacant.

“Oooer!” said Mine Host, and retreated quickly.

No one ever tried to bother Caesar when he had Burgundus for company, so they were able to sit in the most peaceful part of that turbulent room and watch the local sport, which mostly seemed to consist in plying the drunkest youngster there with more wine and speculating upon how much longer he would manage to keep it down.

“Country life!” said Caesar, slapping at his bare arm. “You’d never think Rome was close enough for these yokels to vote every year, would you? Not to mention that their votes count because they belong to rural tribes, whereas canny fellows up to every political trick but unfortunate enough to own Rome as their birthplace have votes that are worthless. Not right!”

“They can’t even read,” said Burgundus, who could these days because Caesar and Gnipho had taught him. His slow smile dawned. “That’s good, Caesar. Our book buckets are safe.”

“Quite so.” Caesar slapped at his arm again. “The place is full of mosquitoes, wretched things!”

“Come in for the winter,” said Burgundus. “Hot enough to boil eggs in here.”

An exaggeration, but the room was certainly unbearably hot, a combination of the bodies jammed into a confined space and a huge fire which roared away inside a thick stone box let into the side of the room; though the box was open at the top to let the smoke out, no cold could compete with several logs as big around as a man’s waist sending great tongues of flame into the smoke hole; clearly the men of Trebula, literally with timber to burn, disliked being cold.

If the dark corners were full of mosquitoes, the beds were full of fleas and bugs; Caesar spent the night on a hard chair and quit the place thankfully at dawn to ride on. Behind him he left much speculation as to why he and his giant servant were abroad in such weather—and what class of man he was.

“Very uppish!” said Mine Host.

“Proscriptions,” suggested Mine Host’s wife.

“Too young,” said a rather urban-looking fellow who had arrived just as Caesar and Burgundus were departing. “Besides, they’d have looked a lot more frightened if Sulla was after them!”

“Then he’s on his way to visit someone,” said the wife.

“Very likely,” said the stranger, looking suddenly unsure. “Might bear investigating, though. Can’t mistake the pair of them, can you? Achilles and Ajax,” he ended, displaying a morsel of education. “The thing that struck me was the horses. Worth a fortune! There’s money there.”

“Probably owns a bit of the rosea rura at Reate,” said Mine Host. “It’s where the horses come from, I’ll bet.”

“He has a look of the Palatine about him,” said the newcomer, whose thoughts were now definitely suspicious. “One of the Famous Families, in fact. Yes, there’s money there.”

“Well, if there is it’s not with him,” said Mine Host, disgruntled. “Know what they had on those mules? Books! A dozen great buckets of books! I ask you—books!”

*

Having battled worsening weather as they climbed higher into the ranges around the Mons Fiscellus, Caesar and Burgundus finally arrived in Nersae a full day later.

The mother of Quintus Sertorius had been a widow for over thirty years, and looked as if she had never had a husband. She always reminded Caesar of the late, much-lamented Scaurus Princeps Senatus, for she was little and slight, incredibly wrinkled, very bald for a woman, and owned one remarkable focus of beauty, a pair of vivid green eyes; that she could ever have borne a child as massive as Quintus Sertorius was hard to imagine.

“He’s all right,” she said to Caesar as she loaded her old and well-scrubbed table with goodies from her smokehouse and her larder; this was country living, everyone sat on chairs at a table to eat. “Didn’t have any trouble setting himself up as governor of Nearer Spain, but he’s expecting big trouble now that Sulla has made himself Dictator.” She chuckled gleefully. “Never mind, never mind, he’ll make life harder for Sulla than that poor boy of my cousin Marius’s. Brought up too soft, of course. Lovely lady, Julia. But too soft, and my cousin Marius was too much away when the boy was growing up. That was true of you too, Caesar, but your mother wasn’t soft, was she?”

“No, Ria,” said Caesar, smiling into her eyes.

“Anyway, Quintus Sertorius likes Spain. He always did. He and Sulla were there when they went poking about among the Germans years ago. He’s got a German wife and son in Osca, he tells me. I’m glad for that. Otherwise there’ll be no one after he goes.”

“He ought to marry a Roman woman,” said Caesar austerely.

Ria emitted a cracked laugh. “Not him! Not my Quintus Sertorius! Doesn’t like women. The German one got him because he had to have a wife to get inside the tribe. No, doesn’t like women”—she pursed her lips and shook her head—“but doesn’t like men either.”

The conversation revolved around Quintus Sertorius and his deeds for some time, but eventually Ria talked herself out on the subject of her son, and got down to what Caesar must do.

“I’d gladly have you myself, but the connection is too well known, and you’re not the first refugee I’ve had—my cousin Marius sent me the king of the Volcae Tectosages, no less—name was Copillus. Very nice man! Quite civilized for a barbarian. They strangled him in the Carcer after my cousin Marius triumphed, of course. Still, I was able to make a nice little nest egg out of taking care of him for my cousin Marius all those years. Four, I think it was…. He was always generous, my cousin Marius. Paid me a fortune for that job. I would have done it for nothing. Company, Copillus was…. Quintus Sertorius is not a homebody. Likes to fight.” She shrugged, slapped her knees briskly, got down to business. “There’s a couple I know live in the mountains between here and Amiternum. They’d be glad of some extra money, and you can trust them—I say that in truth. I’ll give you a letter for them, and directions when you’re ready to go.”

“Tomorrow,” said Caesar.

But she shook her head. “Not tomorrow! Not the day after, either. We’re in for a big storm and you won’t be able to find the road or know what’s underneath you. The German there would be under the ice in a river before he even knew there was a river! You’ll have to stay with me until the winter sets.”

“Sets?”

“Gets its first nasty storms over and the freeze sets in. Then it’s safe to travel, everything is solid ice. Hard on the horses, but you’ll get there. Make the German go first, his horse’s hooves are so big the creature won’t slip much and will break the surface for your dainty creature. Fancy bringing a horse like that up here in winter! You have no sense, Caesar.”

He looked rueful. “So my mother told me.”

“She has sense. Sabine country folk are horse folk. That pretty animal is noticed. Just as well where you’re going there’s no one to notice.” Ria grinned, revealing a few black teeth. “But you’re only eighteen, after all. You’ll learn!”

The next day proved Ria right about the weather; the snow continued unabated until it piled up in massive drifts. Had Caesar and Burgundus not got to work and shoveled it away, Ria’s cozy stone house would soon have been snowed in, and even Burgundus would not have been able to open the door. For four more days it snowed, then patches of blue sky began to appear; the air grew much colder.

“I like the winter up here,” said Ria, helping them pile straw warmly in the stables. “In Rome, a cold one is a misery, and we’re going through the cold winter cycle this decade. But up here at least it’s clean and dry, no matter how cold.”

“I must get away soon,” said Caesar, dealing with hay.

“Considering the amounts your German and his nag eat, I will be glad to see you away,” said Sertorius’s mother between grunts. “Not tomorrow. Perhaps the day after. Once it’s possible to travel between Rome and Nersae you won’t be safe here. If Sulla remembers me—and he should, he knew my son very well-then he will send his hirelings here first.”

But Ria’s guests were not destined to leave. On the night before the start was planned, Caesar began to ail. Though it was indeed far below freezing outside, the house was well warmed through in country fashion, braziers against its thick stone walls and good stout shutters to keep out every wind. Yet Caesar was cold, and grew colder.

“I don’t like this,” Ria said to him. “I can hear your teeth. But it’s been going on too long to be a simple ague.” She put her hand upon his forehead and winced. “You’re burning up! Have you a headache?”

“Bad,” he muttered.

“Then you’re not going anywhere tomorrow. Look to it, you German lump! Get your master into his bed.”

In his bed Caesar remained, consumed with fever, racked by a dry cough and a perpetual headache, and unable to keep any food down.

“Caelum grave et pestilens,’’ said the wisewoman when she came to see the patient.

“It isn’t a typical ague,” said Ria stubbornly. “It’s not quartan and it’s not tertian. And he doesn’t sweat.”

“Oh, it’s the ague, Ria. The one without a pattern.”

“Then he’ll die!”

“He’s strong,” said the wisewoman. “Make him drink. I can give you no better advice. Water mixed with snow.”

*

Sulla was preparing to read a letter from Pompey in Africa when the steward Chrysogonus came to him looking flustered.

“What is it? I’m busy, I want to read this!”

“Domine, a lady wishes to see you.”

“Tell her to buzz off.”

“Domine, I cannot!”

That took Sulla’s mind off the letter; he lowered it and stared at Chrysogonus in astonishment. “I didn’t think there was anyone alive could defeat you,” he said, beginning to be amused. “You’re shaking, Chrysogonus. Did she bite you?”

“No, domine,” said the steward, who had absolutely no sense of humor. “However, I thought she might kill me.”

“Oh! I think I have to see this lady. Did she give you a name? Is she mortal?”

“She said, Aurelia.”

Sulla extended his hand and watched it. “No, I’m not in a pother yet!”

“Shall I bring her in?”

. “No. Tell her I don’t want to see her ever again,” Sulla said, but did not pick up Pompey’s letter; his interest in it had waned.

“Domine, she refuses to go until she’s seen you!”

“Then have the servants carry her out.”

“I tried, domine. They wouldn’t lay a finger on her.”

“Yes, that would be right!” Sulla huffed, closed his eyes. “All right, Chrysogonus, send her in.” And when Aurelia marched in he said, “Sit down.”

She sat, the glaring winter light bathing her without mercy, once more showing Sulla’s wreckage how powerless perfect bones could render time. In his general’s quarters at Teanum the light had been so bad he hadn’t really seen her properly, so now he looked his fill. Too thin, and that ought to have made her less beautiful; instead it made her more, and the rosy flush which used to suffuse her lips and cheeks had faded away to leave her skin marmoreal. The hair had not greyed, nor had she yielded to a wish to bring back her youth by softening the style in which she wore it; it was still scraped back from her face into an uncompromising bun on the nape of her neck. And the eyes were so lovely, set in thick black lashes beneath feathered black brows. They gazed at him sternly.

“Come about your boy, I suppose,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

“I have.”

“Then speak! I’m listening.”

“Was it because he looks so like your son?”

Shaken, he could not continue to meet her gaze, stared at Pompey’s letter until the pain of that barb had dissipated. “It was a shock when I first set eyes on him, but no.” His eyes came back to hers, cold and goatish.

“I liked your son, Lucius Cornelius.”

“And this is no way to get what you want, Aurelia. My boy died a long time ago. I’ve learned to live with it, even when people like you try to make capital out of it.”

“So you do know what I want.”

“Certainly.” He tipped the chair back, not easy with the backward—curving legs of a sturdy Roman—designed version. “You want me to spare your son. Even though mine was not spared.”

“You can hardly blame me or my son for that!”

“I can blame anyone I like for anything I like! I am the Dictator!” he shouted, beads of foam at the corners of his lips.

“Rubbish, Sulla! You don’t believe that any more than I do! I am here to ask you to spare my son, who does not deserve to die any more than he deserved to be made flamen Dialis.’’

“I agree, he’s not the right type for the job. But he’s got it. You must have wanted it for him.”

“I did not want him to be flamen Dialis, any more than my husband did. We were told. By Marius himself, in between his atrocities,” Aurelia said, lifting her lip just enough to indicate her disgust. “It was also Marius who told Cinna to give my son his daughter. The last thing Cinna wanted was to see Cinnilla made flaminica Dialis!”

Sulla changed the subject. “You’ve given up wearing those lovely colors you used to like,” he said. “That bone thing you have on doesn’t even begin to do you justice.”

“Oh, rubbish again!” she snapped. “I am not here to please your discriminating eye, I’m here to plead for my son!”

“It would please me very much to spare your son. He knows what he has to do. Divorce Cinna’s brat.”

“He won’t divorce her.”

“Why not?” shouted Sulla, leaping to his feet. “Why not?”

A little color crept into her cheeks, reddened her lips. “Because, you fool, you showed him that she’s his way out of a job he loathes with all his being! Divorce her, and remain the flamen Dialis for the rest of his life? He’d rather be dead!”

Sulla gaped. “What?”

“You’re a fool, Sulla! A fool! He’ll never divorce her!”

“Don’t you criticize me!”

“I’ll say what I like to you, you evil old relic!”

A peculiar silence fell, and Sulla’s rage trickled away as fast as Aurelia’s gathered. He had turned to the window, but now he turned back to stare at her with something more on his mind than anger or the ordeal she had become.

“Let’s start again,” he said. “Tell me why Marius made your son the flamen Dialis if none of you wanted it.”

“It has to do with the prophecy,” she said.

“Yes, I know about that. Consul seven times, Third Founder of Rome—he used to tell everyone.”

“But not all of it. There was a second part he told to no one until his mind was failing. Then he told Young Marius, who told Julia, who told me.”

Sulla sat down again, frowning. “Go on,” he said curtly.

“The second part of the prophecy concerned my son. Caesar. Old Martha foretold that he would be the greatest Roman of all time. And Gaius Marius believed her about that too. He saddled Caesar with the flaminate Dialis to prevent his going to war and enjoying a political career.” Aurelia sat down, white—faced.

“Because a man who cannot go to war and cannot seek the consulship can never shine,” said Sulla, nodding. He whistled. “Clever Marius! Brilliant! Make your rival the flamen Dialis and you’ve won. I didn’t think the old beast was so subtle.”

“Oh, he was subtle!”

“An interesting story,” Sulla said then, and picked up Pompey’s letter. “You can go, I’ve heard you out.”

“Spare my son!”

“Not unless he divorces Cinna’s daughter.”

“He will never do that.”

“Then there is no more to be said. Go away, Aurelia.”

One more try. One more try for Caesar. “I wept for you once. You loved that. Now I find myself wanting to weep foryou again. But you wouldn’t love these tears. They would be to mourn the passing of a great man. For now I see a man who has diminished inside himself so much that he’s reduced to preying upon children. Cinna’s daughter is twelve years old. My son is eighteen. Children! Yet Cinna’s widow strolls brazenly through Rome because she’s someone else’s wife, and that someone else belongs to you. Cinna’s son is left penniless, with no alternative than to leave his country. Another child. While Cinna’s widow thrives. Not a child.” She sneered at him, made a derisory sound. “Annia is a redhead, of course. Is that some of her hair on your naked old pate?’’

After which sally she swung on her heel and walked out.

Chrysogonus came bustling in.

“I want someone found,” said Sulla, looking his nastiest. “Found, Chrysogonus, not proscribed and not killed.”

Dying to know what had transpired between his master and that extraordinary woman—they had a past together, nothing was surer!—the steward heaved an inward sigh; he would never know. So he said very smoothly, “A private transaction, is it?”

“That’s as good a way of putting it as any! Yes, a private transaction. Two talents reward for the fellow who locates one Gaius Julius Caesar, the flamen Dialis. Who is to be brought to me with not so much as one hair of his head disturbed! Make sure they all know, Chrysogonus. No man kills the flamen Dialis. I just want him here. Understand?’’

“Of course, domine.” But the steward made no move to go. Instead he coughed delicately.

Sulla’s eyes had drifted back to Pompey’s letter, but he lifted his head at this. “Yes?”

“I have prepared the outline you wanted, domine, at the time I first asked you if I might be appointed the bureaucrat in charge of administering the proscriptions. I have also found a deputy steward for you to interview, in the event that you should agree to allow me to administer the proscriptions.”

The smile was not nice. “You really believe you can cope with two jobs, do you? If I give you a deputy steward.”

“It is best if I do both jobs, domine, truly. Read my outline. It will show you conclusively that I do understand the nature of this particular administrative task. Why put some Treasury professional in the job when he’d prove too timid to seek clarification of his problems from you personally, and would be too mired in Treasury methods to take advantage of the more commercial aspects of the job?’’

“I’ll think about it and let you know,” said Sulla, picking up Pompey’s hapless letter yet again. Impassively he watched the steward bow his way out of the room, then grinned sourly. Abominable creature! Toad! Yet that, he reflected, was what administration of the proscriptions required—someone absolutely abominable. But trustworthy. If the administrator were Chrysogonus, Sulla could be sure that disastrous liberties would not take place. No doubt Chrysogonus would make a fat profit for himself somewhere, but no one was in a better position than Chrysogonus to know that it would go very ill with him if he made his profit in any way which would reflect personally on Sulla. The business end of the proscriptions had to be conducted in a positive cloud of respectability—sale of properties, disposal of cash assets, jewelry, furniture, works of art, stocks and shares. It was impossible for Sulla to administrate all of this himself, so someone would have to do it. Chrysogonus was right. Better him than a Treasury bureaucrat! Put one of those fellows on the job and nothing would ever get done. The work had to proceed expeditiously. But no one could be given the opportunity to say that Sulla himself had profited at the State’s expense. Though Chrysogonus was a freedman now, that made him no less Sulla’s creature; and Chrysogonus knew his master would have no qualms about killing him if he erred.

Satisfied that he had solved the chief dilemma of the proscriptions, Sulla returned to pore over Pompey’s letter.

Africa Province and Numidia are both pacified and quiet. The task took me forty days. I left Lilybaeum at the end of October with six legions and two thousand of my horse, leaving Gaius Memmius in charge of Sicily. I did not consider there was any need to garrison Sicily. I had already begun to assemble ships when I first arrived in Sicily, and by the end of October there were more than eight hundred transports on hand. I always like to be well organized, it saves so much time. Just before I sailed, I sent a messenger to King Bogud of Mauretania, who keeps his army these days in Iol, not so far away as Tingis. Bogud is now ruling from Iol, and has put a minor king, Ascalis, in Tingis. All these changes are because of the strife in Numidia, where Prince Iarbas has usurped King Hiempsal’s throne. My messenger instructed King Bogud to mount an invasion of Numidia from the west immediately, no excuses for delay. My strategy was to have King Bogud push Iarbas eastward until he encountered me and I could roll him up.

I landed my men in two divisions, one half at Old Carthage, the second half at Utica. I commanded the second division myself. The moment I stepped ashore, I received the submission of seven thousand of Gnaeus Ahenobarbus’s men, which I took as a good omen. Ahenobarbus decided to give battle at once. He was afraid that if he did not, more of his men would desert to me. He deployed his army on the far side of a ravine, thinking to ambush me as I marched through. But I went up on a high crag and saw his army. So I did not fall into his trap. It began to rain (winter is the rainy season in Africa Province) and I took advantage of the fact that the rain was beating into the eyes of Ahenobarbus’s soldiers. I won a great battle and my men hailed me imperator on the field. But Ahenobarbus and three thousand of his men escaped unharmed. My men were still hailing me imperator on the field, but I stopped them by saying they could do that later. My men saw the truth of this and stopped hailing me imperator on the field. We all rushed to Ahenobarbus’s camp and killed him and all his men. I then allowed my men to hail me imperator on the field.

I then marched into Numidia, Africa Province having surrendered all insurgents still at large. I executed them in Utica. Iarbas the usurper went to earth in Bulla Regis—a town on the upper Bagradas River—having heard that I was approaching from the east and Bogud from the west. Of course I got to Bulla Regis ahead of King Bogud. Bulla Regis opened its gates the moment I arrived, and surrendered Iarbas to me. I executed Iarbas at once, and also another baron called Masinissa. I reinstated King Hiempsal on his throne in Cirta. I myself found sufficient time to hunt wild animals. This country abounds in wild game of every description, from elephants to very large cattle-looking things. I write this from camp on the Numidian plain.

I intend to return soon to Utica, having subdued the whole of North Africa in forty days, as I have already stated. It is not necessary to garrison our province there. You may send a governor without fear. I am going to put my six legions and two thousand horse on board my ships and sail for Tarentum. I will then march up the Via Appia to Rome, where I would like a triumph. My men have hailed me imperator on the field, therefore I am entitled to a triumph. I have pacified Sicily and Africa in one hundred days and executed all your enemies. I also have some good spoil to parade in my triumph.

*

By the time Sulla had worked out what Pompey said, he was weeping with laughter, not sure whether the missive’s artless confidences amused him more than its arrogance, or the imparting of information like winter being the rainy season and Bulla Regis being on the upper Bagradas—surely Pompey knew that Sulla had spent years in Africa and had single—handedly captured King Jugurtha? At the end of a mere forty days Pompey knew everything. How many times had he managed to say that his troops had hailed him imperator on the field? Oh, what a hoot!

He pulled forward some paper and wrote to Pompey; this was one letter he didn’t intend to dictate to a secretary.

What a pleasure to get your letter, and thank you for the interesting facts you impart about Africa. I must try to visit it someday, if for no other reason than to see for myself those very large cattle-looking things. Like you, I do know an elephant when I see one.

Congratulations. What a speedy young chap you are! Forty days. That, I think, is the length of time Mesopotamia was inundated a thousand years ago.

I know I can take your word for it that neither Africa nor Sicily needs to be garrisoned, but, my dear Pompeius, the niceties must be observed. I therefore command you to leave five of your legions in Utica and sail home with only one. I do not mind which one, if you have a favorite among them. Speaking of favorites, you are certainly one of Fortune’s favorites yourself!

Unfortunately I cannot allow you to celebrate a triumph. Though your troops hailed you imperator on the field many times, triumphs are reserved for members of the Senate who have attained the status of praetor. You will win more wars in years to come, Pompeius, so you will have your triumph later, if not sooner.

I must thank you too for the speedy dispatch of Carbo’s eating, seeing, hearing and smelling apparatus. There is nothing quite like a head to convince a man that another man has bitten the dust, to use a phrase of Homer’s. The force of my contention that Carbo was dead and Rome had no consuls was immediately apparent. How clever of you to pop it in vinegar! Thank you too for Soranus. And the elder Brutus.

There is just one small thing, my dear Pompeius. I would have preferred that you had chosen a less public way to dispose of Carbo, if you were determined to do it in such barbaric fashion. I am beginning to believe what people say—scratch a man from Picenum, and reveal the Gaul. Once you elected to set yourself upon a tribunal with toga praetexta and curule chair and lictors, you became Rome. But you did not behave like a Roman. Having tormented poor Carbo for hours in the hot sun, you then announced in lordly tones that he did not deserve a trial, and was to be executed on the spot. Since you had housed and fed him atrociously for some days prior to this distressingly public hearing, he was ill. Yet when he begged you to allow him to retire and relieve his bowels in private before he died, you denied him! He died, so I am told, in his own shit but very well.

How do I know all this? I have my sources. Did I not, I doubt I would now be Dictator of Rome. You are very young and you made the mistake of assuming that because I wanted Carbo dead, I had no time for him. True enough in one way. But I have all the time in the world for the consulship of Rome. And the fact remains that Carbo was an elected consul at the time he died. You would do well to remember in future, young Pompeius, that all honor is due to the consul, even if his name is Gnaeus Papirius Carbo.

On the subject of names, I hear that this barbaric episode in the agora of Lilybaeum has earned you a new name. A great benefit for one of those unfortunates with no third name to add a little luster, eh, Pompeius No Third Name? Adulescentulus carnifex. Kid Butcher. I think that is a wonderful third name for you, Kid Butcher! Like your father before you, you are a butcher.

To repeat: five of your legions will remain in Utica to await the pleasure of the new governor when I find time to send one. You yourself are at liberty to come home. I look forward to seeing you. We can have a nice chat about elephants and you can educate me further on the subject of Africa and things African.

I ought too to convey my condolences upon the death of Publius Antistius Vetus and his wife, your parents-in-law. It is hard to know why Brutus Damasippus included Antistius among his victims. But of course Brutus Damasippus is dead. I had him executed. Yet in private, Pompeius Kid Butcher. In private.

And that, thought Sulla as he finished, is one letter I really did enjoy writing! But then he began to frown, and he sat thinking about what he ought to do with Kid Butcher for some time. This was one young man who would not easily let go of something once he had it in the center of his gaze. As he did this triumph. And anyone who could set himself up in all state in the public square of a non—Roman town, complete with lictors and curule chair, then behave like a complete barbarian, was not going to appreciate the nuances of triumphal protocol. Perhaps even then in the back of his mind he knew that Kid Butcher was cunning enough to go after his triumph in ways which might make it hard to go on refusing the triumph; for Sulla started plotting. His smile grew again, and when his secretary came in, the man breathed an involuntary sigh of relief to see it; he was in a good mood!

“Ah, Flosculus! In good time. Sit yourself down and take out your tablets. I am in a mood to behave with extraordinary generosity to all sorts of people, including that splendid fellow Lucius Licinius Murena, my governor of Asia Province. Yes, I have decided to forgive him all his aggressions against King Mithridates and his transgressions against me when he disobeyed my orders. I think I may need the unworthy Murena, so write and tell him that I have decided he is to come home as soon as possible and celebrate a triumph. You will also write to whichever Flaccus it is in Gaul-across-the-Alps, and order him to come home at once so as to celebrate a triumph. Make sure to instruct each man to have at least two legions with him....”

He was launched, and the secretary labored to keep up. All recollection of Aurelia and that uncomfortable interview had vanished; Sulla didn’t even remember that Rome had a recalcitrant flamen Dialis. Another and far more dangerous young man had to be dealt with in a way almost too subtle—almost, but not quite. For Kid Butcher was very clever when it came to himself.

*

The weather in Nersae had, as Ria predicted, set into real winter amid days of clear blue skies and low temperatures; but the Via Salaria to Rome was open, as was the road from Reate to Nersae, and the way over the ridge into the Aternus River valley.

None of which mattered to Caesar, who had slowly worsened day by day. In the earlier, more lucid phase of his illness he had tried to get up and leave, only to discover that the moment he stood upright he was assailed by an uncontrollable wave of faintness which felled him like a child learning to walk. On the seventh day he developed a sleepy tendency which gradually sank to a light coma.

And then at Ria’s front door there arrived Lucius Cornelius Phagites, accompanied by the stranger who had seen Caesar and Burgundus in the accommodation house at Trebula. Caught without Burgundus (whom she had ordered to cut wood), Ria was powerless to prevent the men entering.

“You’re the mother of Quintus Sertorius, and this fellow asleep in bed here is Gaius Julius Caesar, the flamen Dialis,” said Phagites in great satisfaction.

“He’s not asleep. He can’t be woken,” said Ria.

“He’s asleep.”

“There is a difference. I can’t wake him, nor can anyone else. He’s got the ague without a pattern, and that means he is going to die.”

Not good news for Phagites, aware that the price on Caesar’s head was not payable if that head was not attached to its owner’s breathing body.

Like the rest of Sulla’s minions who were also his freed—men, Lucius Cornelius Phagites had few scruples and less ethics. A slender Greek in his early forties—and one of those who had sold himself into slavery as preferable to eking out a living in his devastated homeland—Phagites had attached himself to Sulla like a leech, and had been rewarded by being appointed one of the chiefs of the proscription gangs; at the time he arrived to take custody of Caesar he had made a total of fourteen talents from killing men on the lists. Presentation of this one to Sulla still alive would have brought that total to sixteen talents, and he didn’t like the feeling that he was being cheated.

He did not, however, enlighten Ria as to the nature of his commission, but paid his informer as he stood beside Caesar’s bed and then made sure the man departed. Dead was no good for his income in Rome—but perhaps the boy had some money with him. If he was clever enough, thought Phagites, he might be able to prise that money out of the old woman by pitching her a tale.

“Oh well,” he said, taking out his huge knife, “I can cut off his head anyway. Then I’ll get my two talents.”

“You’d better beware, citocacia!” shrilled Ria, standing up to him fiercely. “There’s a man coming back soon who’ll kill you before you can jump if you touch his master!”

“Oh, the German hulk? Then I tell you what, mother, you go and get him. I’ll just sit here on the edge of the bed and keep the young master company.” And he sat down beside the inanimate figure in the bed with his knife pressed against Caesar’s defenseless throat.

The moment Ria had gone scuttling out into the icy world crying for Burgundus, Phagites walked to the front door and opened it; outside in the lane there waited his henchmen, the members of his decury of ten.

“The German giant’s here. We’ll kill him if we must, but some of us will have broken bones before we do, so no fighting him unless we can’t avoid it. The boy is dying, he’s no use to us,” Phagites explained. “What I’m going to try to do is get whatever money there is out of them. But the moment I do, I’ll need you to protect me from the German. Understood?”

Back inside he went, and was sitting with his knife held to Caesar’s throat when Ria returned with Burgundus. A growl came rumbling up from Burgundus’s chest, but he made no move toward the bed, just stood in the doorway clenching and unclenching his massive hands.

“Oh, good!” said Phagites in the most friendly way, and without fear. “Now I tell you what, old woman. If you’ve got enough money, I might be prepared to leave this young fellow here with his head still on his shoulders. I’ve got nine handy henchmen in the lane outside, so I can go ahead and cut this lovely young neck and be out in the lane quicker than your German could get as far as this bed. Is that clear?’’

“Not to him, it isn’t, if you’re trying to tell Burgundus. He speaks not one word of Greek.”

“What an animal! Then I’ll negotiate through you, mother, if that’s all right. Got any money?”

She stood for a short while with her eyes closed, debating what was the best thing to do. And being as practical as her son, she decided to deal with Phagites first, get rid of him. Caesar would die before Burgundus could reach the bed—and then Burgundus would die—and she too would die. So she opened her eyes and pointed to the book buckets stacked in the corner.

“There. Three talents,” she said.

Phagites moved his soft brown eyes to the book buckets, and whistled. “Three talents! Oh, very nice!”

“Take it and go. Let the boy die peacefully.”

“Oh, I will, mother, I will!” He put his fingers between his lips, blew piercingly.

His men came tumbling in with swords drawn expecting to have to kill Burgundus, only to find the scene a static one and their quarry one dozen buckets of books.

“Ye gods, what weighty subjects!” said Phagites when the books proved difficult to lift. “He’s a very intelligent young fellow, our flamen Dialis.”

Three trips, and the book buckets were gone. On the third time his men entered the room Phagites got up from the bed and inserted himself quickly among them. “Bye—bye!” he said, and vanished. There was a sound of activity from the lane, then the rattle of shod hooves on the cobblestones, and after that, silence.

“You should have let me kill them,’’ said Burgundus.

“I would have, except that your master would have been the first to die,” said the old woman, sighing. “Well, they won’t be back until they’ve spent it, but they’ll be back. You’re going to have to take Caesar over the mountains.”

“He’ll die!” said Burgundus, beginning to weep.

“So he may. But if he stays here he will surely die.”

Caesar’s coma was a peaceful one, undisturbed by delirium or restlessness; he looked, Ria thought, very thin and wasted, and there were fever sores around his mouth, but even in this strange sleeping state he would drink whenever it was offered to him, and he had not yet been lying immobile for long enough to start the noises which indicated his chest was clogging up.

“It’s a pity we had to give up the money, because I don’t have a sled, and that’s how you’ll have to move him. I know of a man who would sell me one, but I don’t have any money now that Quintus Sertorius is proscribed. I wouldn’t even have this house except that it was my dowry.”

Burgundus listened to this impassively, then revealed that he could think. “Sell his horse,” he said, and began to weep. “Oh, it will break his heart! But there’s nothing else.”

“Good boy, Burgundus!” said Ria briskly. “We’ll be able to sell the horse easily. Not for what it’s worth, but for enough to buy the sled, some oxen, and payment to Priscus and Gratidia for your lodging—even at the rate you eat.”

It was done, and done quickly. Bucephalus was led off down the lane by its delighted new owner, who couldn’t believe his luck at getting an animal like this for nine thousand sesterces, and wasn’t about to linger in case old Ria changed her mind.

The sled—which was actually a wagon complete with wheels over which polished planks with upcurving ends had been fixed—cost four thousand sesterces and the two oxen which pulled it a further thousand each, though the owner indicated that he would be willing to buy the equipage back in the summer for four thousand sesterces complete, leaving him with a profit of two thousand.

“You may get it back before then,” said Ria grimly.

She and Burgundus did their best to make Caesar comfortable in the sled, piling him round with wraps.

“Now make sure you turn him over every so often! Otherwise his bones will come through his flesh—he hasn’t enough of it left, poor young man. In this weather your food will stay fresh far longer, that’s a help, and you must try to give him milk from my ewe as well as water,” she lectured crabbily. “Oh, I wish I could come with you! But I’m too old.”

She stood looking over the white and rolling meadow behind her house until Burgundus and the sled finally disappeared; the ewe she had donated in the hope that Caesar would gain sufficient sustenance to survive. Then, when she could see them no more, she went into her house and prepared to offer up one of her doves to his family’s goddess, Venus, and a dozen eggs to Tellus and Sol Indiges, who were the mother and father of all Italian things.

*

The journey to Priscus and Gratidia took eight days, for the oxen were painfully slow. A bonus for Caesar, who was hardly disturbed by the motion of his peculiar conveyance as it slid along the frozen surface of the snow very smoothly, thanks to many applications of beeswax to its runners. They climbed from the valley of the Himella where Nersae lay beside that swift stream along a road which traversed the steep ascent back and forth, each turn seeing them a little higher, and then on the other side did the same thing as they descended to the Aternus valley.

The odd thing was that Caesar began to improve almost as soon as he began to chill a little after that warm house. He drank some milk (Burgundus’s hands were so big that he found it agony milking the ewe, luckily an old and patient animal) each time Burgundus turned him, and even chewed slowly upon a piece of hard cheese the German gave him to suck. But the languor persisted, and he couldn’t speak. They encountered no one along the way so there was no possibility of shelter at night, but the hard freeze continued, giving them days of cloudless blue skies and nights of a heaven whitened by stars in cloudy tangles.

The coma lifted; the sleepiness which had preceded it came back, and gradually that too lifted. In one way, reasoned the slow alien mind of Burgundus, that seemed to be an improvement. But Caesar looked as if some awful underworld creature had drained him of all his blood, and could hardly lift his hand. He did speak once, having noticed a terrible omission.

“Where is Bucephalus?” he asked. “I can’t see Bucephalus!”

“We had to leave Bucephalus behind in Nersae, Caesar. You can see for yourself what this road is like. Bucephalus couldn’t have managed. But you mustn’t worry. He’s safe with Ria.” There. That seemed better to Burgundus than the truth, especially when he saw that Caesar believed him.

Priscus and Gratidia lived on a small farm some miles from Amiternum. They were about Ria’s age, and had little money; both the sons who would have contributed to a greater prosperity had been killed during the Italian War, and there were no girls. So when they had read Ria’s letter and Burgundus handed them the three thousand sesterces which were all now remaining, they took in the fugitives gladly.

“Only if his fever goes up I’m nursing him outside,” said Burgundus, “because as soon as he left Ria’s house and got a bit cold, he started to get better.” He indicated the sled and oxen. “You can have this too. If Caesar lives, he won’t want it.”

Would Caesar live? The three who looked after him had no idea, for the days passed and he changed but little. Sometimes the wind blew and it snowed for what seemed like forever, then the weather would break and snap colder again, but Caesar seemed not to notice. The fever had diminished and the coma with it, yet marked improvement never came, nor did he cease to have that bloodless look.

Toward the end of April a thaw set in and promised to turn into spring. It had been, so those in that part of Italy said, the hardest winter in living memory. For Caesar, it was to be the hardest of his life.

“I think,” said Gratidia, who was a cousin of Ria’s, “that Caesar will die after all unless he can be moved to a place like Rome, where there are doctors and medicines and foods that we in the mountains cannot hope to produce. His blood has no life in it. That’s why he gets no better. I do not know how to remedy him, and you forbid me to fetch someone from Amiternum to see him. So it is high time, Burgundus, that you rode to Rome to tell his mother.”

Without a word the German walked out of the house and began to saddle the Nesaean horse; Gratidia had scarcely the time to press a parcel of food on him before he was away.

*

“I wondered why I hadn’t heard a word,” said Aurelia, white—faced. She bit her lip, began to worry at it with her teeth, as if the stimulus of some tiny pain would help her think. “I must thank you more than I can say, Burgundus. Without you, my son would certainly be dead. And we must get him back to Rome before he does die. Now go and see Cardixa. She and your boys have missed you very much.”

It would not do to approach Sulla again by herself, she knew. If that avenue hadn’t worked before the New Year, it would never work now, four months into the New Year. The proscriptions still raged—but with less point these days, it seemed, and the laws were beginning to come; great laws or terrible laws, depending upon whom one spoke to. Sulla was fully occupied.

When Aurelia had learned that Sulla had sent for Marcus Pupius Piso Frugi several days after their interview, and learned too that he had ordered Piso Frugi to divorce Annia because she was Cinna’s widow, she had dared to hope for Caesar. But though Piso Frugi had obeyed, had divorced Annia with alacrity, nothing further happened. Ria had written to tell her that the money had been swallowed by one who was named for the size of what he could swallow, and that Caesar and Burgundus were gone; but Ria had not mentioned Caesar’s illness, and Aurelia had allowed herself to think all must be well if she heard nothing at all.

“I will go to see Dalmatica,” she decided. “Perhaps another woman can show me how to approach Sulla.”

Of Sulla’s wife, who had arrived from Brundisium in December of last year, Rome had seen very little. Some whispered that she was ill, others that Sulla had no time for a private life, and neglected her; though no one whispered that he had replaced her with anyone else. So Aurelia wrote her a short note asking for an interview, preferably at a time when Sulla himself would not be at home. This latter request, she was careful to explain, was only because she did not wish to irritate the Dictator. She also asked if it was possible for Cornelia Sulla to be there, as she wished to pay her respects to someone she had once known very well; perhaps Cornelia Sulla would be able to advise her in her trouble too. For, she ended, what she wished to discuss was a trouble.

Sulla was now living in his rebuilt house overlooking the Circus Maximus; ushered into a place which reeked of fresh, limey plaster and all kinds of paints and had that vulgar look only time erases, Aurelia was conducted through a vast atrium to an even vaster peristyle garden, and finally to Dalmatica’s own quarters, which were as large as Aurelia’s whole apartment. The two women had met but had never become friends; Aurelia did not move in the Palatine circle to which belonged the wives of Rome’s greatest men, for she was the busy landlady of a Suburan insula, and not interested in tittle—tattle over sweet watered wine and little cakes.

Nor, to do her justice, had Dalmatica belonged to that circle. For too many years she had been locked up by her then husband, Scaurus Princeps Senatus, and in consequence had lost her youthful appetite for tittle—tattle over sweet watered wine and little cakes. There had come the exile in Greece—an idyll with Sulla in Ephesus, Smyrna and Pergamum—the twins—and Sulla’s awful illness. Too much worry, unhappiness, homesickness, pain. Never again would Caecilia Metella Dalmatica find it in her to cultivate an interest in shopping, comedic actors, petty feuds, scandal and idleness. Besides which, her return to Rome had been something in the nature of a triumph when she found a Sulla who had missed her into loving her more than ever.

However, Sulla did not confide in her, so she knew nothing of the fate of the flamen Dialis; indeed, she didn’t know Aurelia was the mother of the flamen Dialis. And Cornelia Sulla only knew that Aurelia had been a part of her childhood, a link to the vague memory of a mother who had drunk too much before she killed herself, and to the vivid memory of her beloved stepmother, Aelia. Her first marriage—to the son of Sulla’s colleague in his consulship—had ended in tragedy when her husband died during Forum riots at the time of Sulpicius’s tribunate of the plebs—and her second marriage—to Drusus’s younger brother, Mamercus—had brought her great contentment.

Each of the women was pleased at how the others looked, and as each was held one of Rome’s great beauties, it was fair to deduce that they all felt they had weathered the corroding storms of time better than most. At forty-two, Aurelia was the oldest; Dalmatica was thirty-seven, and Cornelia Sulla a mere twenty-six.

“You have more of a look of your father these days,” said Aurelia to Cornelia Sulla.

The eyes too blue and sparkling to be Sulla’s filled with mirth, and their owner burst out laughing. “Oh, don’t say that, Aurelia! My skin is perfect, and I do not wear a wig!”

“Poor man,” said Aurelia, “it’s very hard for him.”

“It is,” agreed Dalmatica, whose brown beauty was softer than Aurelia remembered, and whose grey eyes were much sadder.

The conversation passed to mundanities for a little while, Dalmatica tactfully steering it away from the more uncomfortable topics her stepdaughter would have chosen. Not a natural talker, Aurelia was content to contribute an occasional mite.

Dalmatica, who had a boy and a girl by her first husband, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, as well as the twins, was preoccupied with her eldest, Aemilia Scaura.

“The prettiest girl!” she said warmly, and looked happy. “We think she’s pregnant, but it’s a little early to be sure.”

“Whom did she marry?” Aurelia asked; she never kept up with who married whom.

“Manius Acilius Glabrio. They’d been betrothed for years, Scaurus insisted. Traditional ties between the families.”

“He’s a nice fellow, Glabrio,” said Aurelia in carefully neutral tones; privately she considered him a loudmouthed and conceited son of a far better father.

“He’s a conceited loudmouth,” said Cornelia Sulla flatly.

“Now, now, he wouldn’t suit you, but he does suit Aemilia Scaura,” said Dalmatica.

“And how is dear little Pompeia?” asked Aurelia quickly.

Cornelia Sulla beamed. “Absolutely ravishing! She’s eight now, and at school.” Because she was Sulla’s daughter and had much of his detachment, she went on to say, “Of course she is abysmally stupid! I’ll count myself fortunate if she learns enough Latin to write a thank—you note—she’ll certainly never manage to learn any Greek! So I’m very glad she’s going to be a beauty. It’s better that a girl’s beautiful than brilliant.”

“It certainly is when it comes to finding a husband, but a decent dowry helps,” said Aurelia dryly.

“Oh, she’ll have a decent dowry!” said Pompeia’s mother. “Tata has grown to be enormously rich, and she’ll inherit a bit from him as well as from the Pompeii Rufi—who have quite changed their tune since I was a widow living in their house! Then they made my life a misery, but now I bask in reflected light from tata. Besides, they’re afraid he might proscribe them.”

“Then we’ll have to hope that Pompeia finds a very nice husband,” said Dalmatica, and looked at Aurelia in a more serious way. “It is delightful to see you and I hope I can now count on you as a much-needed friend, but I know you didn’t come merely to pay your respects—you’re too renowned as a sensible woman who minds her own business. What is this trouble, Aurelia? How may I help you?”

The story came out, told in that unsensational and unvarnished style Aurelia had made her own. She could not fault her audience, who listened in complete silence.

“We must do something,” said Dalmatica when the tale was told. She sighed. “Lucius Cornelius has too many things on his mind, and I’m afraid he’s not a very warm person.” She shifted, looked uncomfortable. “You were his friend for many years,” she said awkwardly. “I can’t help thinking that if you could not influence him, I stand little chance.”

“I trust that isn’t true,” said Aurelia stiffly. “He did come to see me from time to time, but I do assure you there was nothing untoward between us. It was not my so—called beauty that drew him. Unromantic though it may sound, what drew him was my common sense.”

“I believe that,” said Dalmatica, smiling.

Cornelia Sulla assumed control. “Well, it’s all a long way down the river,” she said briskly, “and it can’t influence what we need today. You’re quite right, Aurelia, when you say you can’t try to see tata on your own again. But you must try to see him—and the sooner, the better. He’s between laws at the moment. It will have to be a formal delegation. Priests, male relatives, Vestal Virgins, you. Mamercus will help, I’ll talk to him. Who are Caesar’s closest relatives not on the proscription lists?”

“The Cottae—my three half brothers.”

“Good, they’ll add luster to the delegation! Gaius Cotta is a pontifex and Lucius Cotta is an augur, which gives them a religious importance too. Mamercus will plead for you, I know. And we’ll need four Vestal Virgins. Fonteia, because she is the Chief Vestal. Fabia. Licinia. And Caesar Strabo’s daughter, Julia, of Caesar’s own family. Do you know any of the Vestals?”

“Not even Julia Strabo,” said Aurelia.

“Never mind, I know them all. Leave it to me.”

“What can I do to help?” asked Dalmatica, a little overawed at so much Sullan efficiency.

“Your job is to get the delegation an appointment to see tata tomorrow afternoon,” said Cornelia Sulla.

“That may be easier said than done. He’s so busy!”

“Nonsense! You’re too humble, Dalmatica. Tata will do anything for you if you ask him. The trouble is that you hardly ever ask, so you have no idea how much he loves to do things for you. Ask him at dinner, and don’t be afraid,” said Sulla’s daughter. To Aurelia she said, “I’ll get everyone here early. You can have some time with them before you go in.”

“What should I wear?” asked Aurelia, preparing to go.

Cornelia Sulla blinked. So did Dalmatica.

“I only ask,” said Aurelia apologetically, “because he commented on my clothes last time I saw him. He disliked them.”

“Why?” demanded Cornelia Sulla.

“I think he found them too drab.”

“Then wear something colorful.”

So out of the chest came dresses Aurelia had put away years ago as too undignified and skittish for an aristocratic Roman matron. Blues? Greens? Reds? Pinks? Lilacs? Yellows? In the end she decided upon layers of pink, darkest underneath, and shading through to a gauzy overlay of palest rose.

Cardixa shook her head. “All giddied up like that, you look just as you did when Caesar’s father came to dinner at your uncle Rutilius Rufus’s. And not a day older!”

“Giddied up, Cardixa?”

“You know, like one of those Public Horses on parade.”

“I think I’ll change.”

“No you won’t! You don’t have time. Off you go at once. Lucius Decumius will take you,” said Cardixa firmly, pushing her out the door onto the street, where, sure enough, Lucius Decumius waited with his two sons.

Since Lucius Decumius had enough sense to hold his tongue about Aurelia’s appearance and his sons no tongues at all, the long walk to the far side of the Palatine proceeded in silence. Every moment Aurelia waited for word to come from Priscus and Gratidia that it was too late, that Caesar was dead, and every moment that this word did not come was one more blessing.

Somehow the news had got round the insula that Caesar was at death’s door; little gifts kept arriving, everything from bunches of flowers from the Cuppedenis Markets to peculiar amulets from the Lycians on the fifth floor and the mournful sounds of special prayers from the Jewish floor. Most of Aurelia’s tenants had been with her for years, and had known Caesar since he was a baby. Always an alert, insatiably curious, chatty child, he had wandered from floor to floor experimenting with that dubious (his mother thought it very dubious) quality he possessed in abundance, charm. Many of the women had wet—nursed him, fed him tidbits from their national dishes, crooned to him in their own languages until he learned what the crooning meant, then sang their songs with them—he was extremely musical—and taught himself to pick away at peculiar stringed instruments, or blow through all kinds of pipes and flutes. As he grew older, he and his best friend, Gaius Matius from the other ground—floor flat, extended their contacts beyond the insula and into the Subura at large; and now the news of his illness was getting around the Subura too, so the little gifts kept arriving from further and further afield.

How do I explain to Sulla that Caesar means different things to different people? That he has the most intense Romanness about him, yet is also a dozen different nationalities? It is not the priest business matters most to me, it is what he is to everyone he knows. Caesar belongs to Rome, but not to Rome of the Palatine. Caesar belongs to Rome of the Subura and the Esquiline, and when he is a great man he will bring a dimension to his office no other man could, simply because of the breadth of his experience, of his life. Jupiter only knows how many girls—and women as old as I am!—he’s slept with, how many forays he’s gone on with Lucius Decumius and those ruffians from the crossroads college, how many lives he touches because he is never still, never too busy to listen, never uninterested. My son is only eighteen. But I believe in the prophecy too, Gaius Marius! At forty my son will be formidable. And I hereby vow to every god there is that if I have to journey to the Underworld to bring back the three—headed dog of Hades, I will, to see that my son lives.

But of course when she got to Sulla’s house and was ushered into a room stuffed with important people, she did not have all that eloquence at her command, and her face was closed upon her thoughts; she simply looked austere, severe. Daunting.

As Cornelia Sulla had promised, there were four Vestals, all of them younger than she was; having entered at seven or eight, a Vestal left the Order after thirty years, and none of these, including the Chief Vestal, was yet due to retire. They wore white robes with long sleeves gathered in fine folds by a longitudinal rib, more white drapes over that, the chain and medal of a Vestal’s bulla, and on their heads crowns made of seven tiers of rolled wool, over which there floated fine white veils. The life, which was female—oriented and virginal—though not sequestered—endowed even the youngest of Vestals with a massive presence; no one knew better than they that their chastity was Rome’s good luck, and they radiated consciousness of their special status. Few of them contemplated breaking their vows, as most of them grew into the role from a most malleable age, and took enormous pride in it.

The men were togate, Mamercus with the purple border he could now wear thanks to his position as praetor peregrinus, and the Cottae, too young yet for purple-bordered togas, in plain white. Which meant that Aurelia in her gradations of pink was by far the most colorful of them all! Mortified, she felt herself stiffen into stone, and knew that she would not do well.

“You look magnificent!” breathed Cornelia Sulla in her ear. “I had quite forgotten how absolutely beautiful you are when you decide to bring the beauty out. You do, you know. You shut it up as if it didn’t exist, and then suddenly—there it is!”

“Do the others understand? Do they agree with me?” Aurelia whispered back, wishing she had worn bone or beige.

“Of course they do. For one thing, he is the flamen Dialis. And they think he’s terrifically brave, to stand up to the Dictator. No one does. Even Mamercus. I do, sometimes. He likes it, you know. Tata, I mean. Most tyrants do. They despise weaklings, even though they surround themselves with weaklings. So you go in at the head of the delegation. And stand up to him!”

“I always have,” Caesar’s mother said.

Chrysogonus was there, smarming with exactly the correct amount of oil to the various members of the delegation; he was beginning to get a reputation as one of the chief profiteers of the proscriptions, and had become enormously rich. A servant came to whisper in his ear, and he bowed his way to the great double doors opening into Sulla’s atrium, then stood back to let the delegation enter.

*

Sulla waited for them in a sour mood rooted in the fact that he knew he had been tricked by a parcel of women, and angry because he hadn’t been able to find the steel to resist them. It wasn’t fair! Wife and daughter pleaded, cajoled, looked sad, made him aware that if he did this futile thing for them, they would be eternally in his debt—and if he did not, they would be very put out. Dalmatica wasn’t so bad, she had a touch of the whipped cur in her that Scaurus no doubt had instilled during those long years of imprisonment, but Cornelia Sulla was his blood, and it showed. Termagant! How did Mamercus cope with her and look so happy? Probably because he never stood up to her. Wise man. What we do for domestic harmony! Including what I am about to do.

However, it was at least a change, a diversion in the long and dreary round of dictatorial duties. Oh, he was bored! Bored, bored, bored … Rome always did that to him. Whispered the forbidden blandishments, conjured up pictures of parties he couldn’t go to, circles he couldn’t move in…. Metrobius. It always, always came back to Metrobius. Whom he hadn’t seen in—how long? Was that the last time, in the crowd at his—triumph? Inauguration as consul? Could he not even remember that?

What he could remember was the first time he had seen the young Greek, if not the last. At that party when he had dressed up as Medusa the Gorgon, and wore a wreath of living snakes. How everyone had squealed! But not Metrobius, adorable little Cupid with the saffron dye running down the insides of his creamy thighs and the sweetest arse in the world …

The delegation came in. From where he stood beyond the huge aquamarine rectangle of the pool in the middle of the vast room, Sulla’s gaze was strong enough to absorb the entire picture they made. Perhaps because his mind had been dwelling upon a world of theater (and one particular actor), what Sulla saw was not a prim and proper Roman delegation but a gorgeous pageant led by a gorgeous woman all in shades of pink, his favorite color. And how clever that she had surrounded herself by people in white with the faintest touches of purple!

The world of dictatorial duties rolled away, and so did Sulla’s sour mood. His face lit up, he whooped in delight.

“Oh, this is wonderful! Better than a play or the games! No, no, don’t come an inch closer to me! Stand on that side of the pool! Aurelia, out in front. I want you like a tall, slender rose. The Vestals—to the right, I think, but the youngest can stand behind Aurelia, I want her against a white background. Yes, that’s right, good! Now, fellows, you stand to the left, but I think we’ll have young Lucius Cotta behind Aurelia too, he’s the youngest and I don’t think he’ll have a speaking part. I do like the touches of purple on your tunics, but Mamercus, you spoil the effect. You should have abandoned the praetexta, it’s just a trifle too much purple. So you—off to the far left.” The Dictator put his hand to his chin and studied them closely, then nodded. “Good! I like it! However, I need a bit more glamor, don’t I? Here I am all alone looking just like Mamercus in my praetexta, and just as mournful!”

He clapped his hands; Chrysogonus popped out from behind the delegation, bowed several times.

“Chrysogonus, send my lictors in—crimson tunics, not stodgy old white togas—and get me the Egyptian chair. You know the one—crocodiles for arms and asps rearing up the back. And a small podium. Yes, I must have a small podium! Covered in—purple. Tyrian purple, none of your imitations. Well, go on, man, hurry!”

The delegation—which had not said a word—reconciled itself to a long wait while all these stage directions were seen to, but Chrysogonus was not chief administrator of the proscriptions and steward to the Dictator for nothing. In filed twenty-four lictors clad in crimson tunics, the axes inserted in their fasces, their faces studiously expressionless. On their heels came the small podium held between four sturdy slaves, who placed it in the exact center at the back of the pool and proceeded to cover it neatly with a tapestry cloth in the stipulated Tyrian purple, so dark it was almost black. The chair arrived next, a splendid thing of polished ebony and gilt, with ruby eyes in the hooded snakes and emerald eyes in the crocodiles, and a magnificent multihued scarab in the center of the chair back.

Once the stage was set, Sulla attended to his lictors. “I like the axes in the bundles of rods, so I’m glad I’m Dictator and have the power to execute within the pomerium! Now let me see…. Twelve to the left of me and twelve to the right of me—in a line, boys, but close together. Fan yourselves away so that you’re nearest to me next to me, and dribble off a bit into the distance at your far ends…. Good, good!” He swung back to stare at the delegation, frowning. “That’s what’s wrong! I can’t see Aurelia’s feet, Chrysogonus! Bring in that little golden stool I filched from Mithridates. I want her to stand on it. Go on, man, hurry! Hurry!”

And finally it was all done to his satisfaction. Sulla sat down in his crocodile and snake chair on the Tyrian purple small podium, apparently oblivious to the fact that he should have been seated in a plain ivory curule chair. Not that anyone in the room was moved to criticize; the important thing was that the Dictator was enjoying himself immensely. And that meant a greater chance for a favorable verdict.

“Speak!” he said in sonorous tones.

“Lucius Cornelius, my son is dying—”

“Louder, Aurelia! Play to the back of the cavea!”

“Lucius Cornelius, my son is dying! I have come with my friends to beseech you to pardon him!”

“Your friends? Are all these people your friends?” he asked, his amazement a little overdone.

“They are all my friends. They join with me in beseeching you to allow my son to come home before he dies,” Aurelia enunciated clearly, playing to the back row of the cavea, and getting into her stride. If he wanted a Greek tragedy, he would get a Greek tragedy! She extended her arms to him, the rose—colored draperies falling away from her ivory skin. “Lucius Cornelius, my son is but eighteen years old! He is my only son!” A throb in the voice there, it would go over well-yes, it was going over well, if his expression was anything to go by! “You have seen my son. A god! A Roman god! A descendant of Venus worthy of Venus! And with such courage! Did he not have the courage to defy you, the greatest man in all the world? And did he show fear? No!”

“Oh, this is wonderful!” Sulla exclaimed. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Aurelia! Keep it coming, keep it coming!”

“Lucius Cornelius, I beseech you! Spare my son!” She managed to turn on the tiny golden stool and stretched out her hands to Fonteia, praying that stately lady would understand her part. “I ask Fonteia, Rome’s Chief Vestal, to beg for the life of my son!”

Luckily by this the rest were beginning to recover from their stupefaction, could at least try. Fonteia thrust out her hands and achieved a distressed facial expression she hadn’t used since she was four years old.

“Spare him, Lucius Cornelius!” she cried. “Spare him!”

“Spare him!” whispered Fabia.

“Spare him!” shouted Licinia.

Whereupon the seventeen-year-old Julia Strabo upstaged everyone by bursting into tears.

“For Rome, Lucius Cornelius! Spare him for Rome!” thundered Gaius Cotta in the stentorian voice his father had made famous. “We beg you, spare him!”

“For Rome, Lucius Cornelius!” shouted Marcus Cotta.

“For Rome, Lucius Cornelius!” blared Lucius Cotta.

Which left Mamercus, who produced a bleat. “Spare him!”

Silence. Each side gazed at the other.

Sulla sat straight in his chair, right foot forward and left foot back in the classical pose of the Roman great. His chin was tucked in, his brow beetled. He waited. Then: “No!”

So it began all over again.

And again he said: “No!”

Feeling as limp and wrung out as a piece of washing—but actually improving in leaps and bounds—Aurelia pleaded for the life of her son a third time with heartbroken voice and trembling hands. Julia Strabo was howling lustily, Licinia looked as if she might join in. The beseeching chorus swelled, and died away with a third bleat from Mamercus.

Silence fell. Sulla waited and waited, apparently having adopted what he thought was a Zeus—like aspect, thunderous, regal, portentous. Finally he got to his feet and stepped to the edge of his small Tyrian purple podium, where he stood with immense dignity, frowning direfully.

Then he sighed a sigh which could easily have been heard in the back row of the cavea, clenched his fists and raised them toward the gilded ceiling’s splendiferous stars. “Very well, have it your own way!” he cried. “I will spare him! But be warned! In this young man I see many Mariuses!”

After which he bounced like a baby goat from his perch to the floor, and skipped gleefully along the side of the pool. “Oh, I needed that! Wonderful, wonderful! I haven’t had so much fun since I slept between my stepmother and my mistress! Being the Dictator is no kind of life! I don’t even have time to go to the play! But this was better than any play I’ve ever seen, and I was in the lead! You all did very well. Except for you, Mamercus, spoiling things in your praetexta and emitting those peculiar sounds. You’re stiff, man, too stiff! You must try to get into the part!”

Reaching Aurelia, he helped her down from her (solid) gold stool and hugged her over and over again. “Splendid, splendid! You looked like Iphigenia at Aulis, my dear.”

“I felt like the fishwife in a mime.”

He had forgotten the lictors, who still stood to either side of the empty crocodile throne with wooden faces; nothing about this job would ever surprise them again!

“Come on, let’s go to the dining room and have a party!” the Dictator said, shooing everybody in the chorus before him, one arm about the terrified Julia Strabo. “Don’t cry, silly girl, it’s all right! This was just my little joke,” he said, rolled his eyes at Mamercus and gave Julia Strabo a push between her shoulder blades. “Here, Mamercus, find your handkerchief and clean her up.” The arm went round Aurelia. “Magnificent! Truly magnificent! You should always wear pink, you know.”

So relieved her knees were shaking, Aurelia put on a fierce frown and said, her voice in her boots, ‘“In him I see many Mariuses!’ You ought to have said, ‘In him I see many Sullas!’ It would have been closer to the point. He’s not at all like Marius, but sometimes he’s awfully like you.”

Dalmatica and Cornelia Sulla were waiting outside, utterly bewildered; when the lictors went in they hadn’t been very surprised, but then they had seen the small podium go in, and the Tyrian purple cloth, and the Egyptian chair, and finally the gold stool. Now everyone was spilling out laughing—why was Julia Strabo crying?—and Sulla had his arm around Aurelia, who was smiling as if she would never stop.

“A party!” shouted Sulla, pranced over to his wife, took her face between his hands and kissed her. “We’re going to have a party, and I am going to get very, very drunk!”

It was some time later before Aurelia realized that not one of the players in that incredible scene had found anything demeaning in Sulla’s impromptu drama, nor made the mistake of deeming Sulla a lesser man because he had staged it. If anything, its effect had been the opposite; how could one not fear a man who didn’t care about appearances?

No one who participated ever recounted the story, made capital out of it and Sulla at dinner parties, or tittle—tattled it over sweet watered wine and little cakes. Not from fear of their lives. Mostly because no one thought Rome would ever, ever believe it.

*

When Caesar arrived home he experienced the end results of his mother’s one—act play at once; Sulla sent his own doctor, Lucius Tuccius, to see the patient.

“Frankly, I don’t consider Sulla much of a recommendation,” Aurelia said to Lucius Decumius, “so I can only hope that without Lucius Tuccius, Sulla would be a lot worse.”

“He’s a Roman,” said Lucius Decumius, “and that’s something. I don’t trust them Greeks.” ,

“Greek physicians are very clever.”

“In a theory—etical way. They treats their patients with new ideas, not old standbys. Old standbys are the best. I’ll take pounded grey spiders and powdered dormice any day!”

“Well, Lucius Decumius, as you say, this one is a Roman.”

As Sulla’s doctor emerged at that moment from the direction of Caesar’s room, conversation ceased. Tuccius was a small man, very round and smooth and clean-looking; he had been Sulla’s chief army surgeon, and it had been he who sent Sulla to Aedepsus when Sulla had become so ill in Greece.

“I think the wisewoman of Nersae was right, and your son suffered the ague without a pattern,” he said cheerfully. “He’s lucky. Few men recover from it.”

“Then he will recover?” asked Aurelia anxiously.

“Oh, yes. The crisis has long passed. But the disease has left his blood enervated. That’s why he has no color, and why he is so weak.”

“So what does we do?” demanded Lucius Decumius pugnaciously.

“Well, men who have lost a lot of blood from a wound show much the same symptoms as Caesar,” said Tuccius, unconcerned. “In such cases, if they didn’t die they gradually got better of their own accord. But I always found it a help to feed them the liver of a sheep once a day. The younger the sheep, the quicker the recovery. I recommend that Caesar eat the liver of a lamb and drink three hen’s eggs beaten into goat’s milk every day.”

“What, no medicine?” asked Lucius Decumius suspiciously.

“Medicine won’t cure Caesar’s ailment. Like the Greek physicians of Aedepsus, I believe in diet over medicine in most situations,” said Lucius Tuccius firmly.

“See? He’s a Greek after all!” said Lucius Decumius after the doctor had departed.

“Never mind that,” said Aurelia briskly. “I shall adhere to his recommendations for at least a market interval. Then we shall see. But it seems sensible advice to me.”

“I’d better start for the Campus Lanatarius,” said the little man who loved Caesar more than he did his sons. “I’ll buy the lamb and see it slaughtered on the spot.”

The real hitch turned out to be the patient, who flatly refused to eat the lamb’s liver, and drank his first mixture of egg—and—goat’s—milk with such loathing that he brought it up.

The staff held a conference with Aurelia.

“Must the liver be raw?’’ asked Murgus the cook.

Aurelia blinked. “I don’t know. I just assumed it.”

“Then could we send to Lucius Tuccius and ask?” from the steward, Eutychus. “Caesar is not an eater—by that I mean that the sheer taste of food does not send him into ecstasies. He is conservative but not fussy. However, one of the things I have always noticed is that he will not eat things with a strong smell of their own. Like eggs. As for that raw liver—pew! It stinks!”

“Let me cook the liver and put plenty of sweet wine in the egg—and—milk,” pleaded Murgus.

“How would you cook the liver?” Aurelia asked.

“I’d slice it thin, roll each slice in a little salt and spelt, and fry it lightly on a very hot fire.”

“All right, Murgus, I’ll send to Lucius Tuccius and describe what you want to do,” said the patient’s mother.

Back came the message: “Put what you like in the egg—and—milk, and of course cook the liver!”

After that the patient tolerated his regimen, though not with any degree of affection.

“Say what you like about the food, Caesar, I think it is working was his mother’s verdict.

“I know it’s working! Why else do you think I’m eating the stuff?” was the patient’s disgruntled response.

Light broke; Aurelia sat down beside Caesar’s couch with a look on her face that said she was going to stay there until she got some answers. “All right, what’s the real matter?”

Lips pressed together, he stared out the open window of the reception room into the garden Gaius Matius had made in the bottom of the light well. “I have made the most wretched business out of my first venture on my own,” he said at last. “While everybody else behaved with amazing courage and daring, I lay like a log with nothing to say and no part in the action. The hero was Burgundus, and the heroines you and Ria, Mater.”

She hid her smile. “Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned, Caesar. Perhaps the Great God—whose servant you still are!—felt you had to be taught a lesson you’ve never been willing to learn—that a man cannot fight the gods, and that the Greeks were right about hubris. A man with hubris is an abomination.”

“Am I really so proud you think I own hubris?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. You have plenty of false pride.”

“I see absolutely no relevance between hubris and what happened at Nersae,” said Caesar stubbornly.

“It’s what the Greeks would call hypothetical.”

“I think you mean philosophical.”

Since there was nothing wrong with her education, she did not acknowledge this quibble, simply swept on. “The fact that you own an overweening degree of pride is a grave temptation to the gods. Hubris presumes to direct the gods and says that a man is above the status of men. And—as we Romans know!—the gods do not choose to show a man he is above himself with what I might call a personal intervention. Jupiter Optimus Maximus doesn’t speak to men with a human voice, and I am never convinced that the Jupiter Optimus Maximus who appears to men in dreams is anything more than a figment of dreams. The gods intervene in a natural way, they punish with natural things. You were punished with a natural thing—you became ill. And I believe that the seriousness of your illness is a direct indication of the degree of your pride. It almost killed you!”

“You impute a divine vector,” he said, “for a disgustingly animal event. I believe the vector was as mundanely animal as the event. And neither of us can prove our contention, so what does it matter? What matters is that I failed in my first attempt to govern my life. I was a passive object surrounded by heroism, none of which was mine.”

“Oh, Caesar, will you never learn?”

The beautiful smile came. “Probably not, Mater.”

“Sulla wants to see you.”

“When?”

“As soon as you’re well enough, I am to send to him for an appointment.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“No, after the next nundinae.”

“Tomorrow.”

Aurelia sighed. “Tomorrow.”

He insisted upon walking without an attendant, and when he discovered Lucius Decumius lurking some paces behind him, sent his watchdog home with a firmness Lucius Decumius dared not defy. “I am tired of being cosseted and clucked over!” he said in the voice which frightened people. “Leave me alone!”

The walk was demanding, but he arrived at Sulla’s house far from exhausted; now definitely on the mend, he was mending rapidly.

“I see you’re in a toga,” said Sulla, who was sitting behind his desk. He indicated the laena and apex disposed neatly on a nearby couch. “I’ve saved them for you. Don’t you have spares?”

“Not a second apex, anyway. That one was a gift from my wonderful benefactor, Gaius Marius.”

“Didn’t Merula’s fit?”

“I have an enormous head,” said Caesar, straight—faced.

Sulla chuckled. “I believe you!” He had sent to Aurelia to ask if Caesar knew of the second part of the prophecy, and having received a negative answer, had decided Caesar wouldn’t hear it from him. But he fully intended to discuss Marius. His thinking had swung completely around, thanks to two factors. The first was Aurelia’s information about the circumstances behind Caesar’s being dowered with the flaminate Dialis, and the second was his one—act play, which he had enjoyed (and the party which had followed) with huge gusto; it had refreshed him so thoroughly that though it was now a month in the past, he still found himself remembering bits and pieces at the most inappropriate moments, and had been able to apply himself to his laws with renewed energy.

Yes, the moment that magnificent-looking delegation had walked into his atrium so solemnly and theatrically he had been lifted out of himself—out of his dreary appalling shell, out of a life devoid of enjoyment and lightness. For a short space of time reality had utterly vanished and he had immersed himself inside a sparkling and gorgeous pageant. And since that day he had found hope again; he knew it would end. He knew he would be released to do what he longed to do, bury himself and his hideousness in a world of hilarity, glamor, idleness, artificiality, entertainments, grotesques and travesties. He would get through the present grind into a very different and infinitely more desirable future.

“You made a thousand mistakes when you fled, Caesar,” said Sulla in a rather friendly way.

“I don’t need to be told. I’m well aware of it.”

“You’re far too pretty to disappear into the furniture, and you have a natural sense of the dramatic,” Sulla explained, ticking his points off on his fingers. “The German, the horse, your pretty face, your natural arrogance—need I go on?”

“No,” said Caesar, looking rueful. “I’ve already heard it all from my mother—and several other people.”

“Good. However, I’d be willing to bet they didn’t give you the advice I intend to. Which is, Caesar, to accept your fate. If you are outstanding—if you can’t blend into the background—then don’t hare off on wild excursions which demand you can. Unless, as I once did, you have a chance to masquerade as a rather terrific-looking Gaul. I came back wearing a torc around my neck, and I thought the thing was my luck. But Gaius Marius was right. The thing was noticeable in a way I didn’t want to be noticed. So I gave up wearing it. I was a Roman, not a Gaul—and Fortune favored me, not an inanimate hunk of gold, no matter how lovely. Wherever you go, you will be noticed. Just like me. So learn to work within the confines of your nature and your appearance.” Sulla grunted, looked a little astonished. “How well-meaning I am! I hardly ever give well-meaning advice.”

“I am grateful for it,” said Caesar sincerely.

The Dictator brushed this aside. “I want to know why you think Gaius Marius made you the flamen Dialis.’’

Caesar paused to choose his words, understanding that his answer must be logical and unemotional.

“Gaius Marius saw a lot of me during the months after he had his second stroke,” he began.

Sulla interrupted. “How old were you?”

“Ten when it started. Almost twelve when it finished.”

“Go on.”

“I was interested in what he had to say about soldiering. I listened very intently. He taught me to ride, use a sword, throw a spear, swim.” Caesar smiled wryly. “I used to have gigantic military ambitions in those days.”

“So you listened very intently.”

“Yes, indeed. And I think that Gaius Marius gained the impression that I wanted to surpass him.”

“Why should he?”

Another rueful look. “I told him I did!”

“All right, now to the flaminate. Expound.”

“I can’t give you a logical answer to that, I really can’t. Except that I believe he made me flamen Dialis to prevent my having a military or a political career,” said Caesar, very uncomfortably. “That answer isn’t all founded in my conceit. Gaius Marius was sick in his mind. He may have imagined it.”

“Well,” said Sulla, face inscrutable, “since he’s dead, we’ll never know the real answer, will we? However, given that his mind was diseased, your theory fits his character. He was always afraid of being outshone by men who had the birthright. Old and great names. His own name was a new one, and he felt he had been unfairly discriminated against because he was a New Man. Take, for example, my capture of King Jugurtha. He grabbed all the credit for that, you know! My work, my skill! If I had not captured Jugurtha, the war in Africa could never have been ended so expeditiously and finally. Your father’s cousin, Catulus Caesar, tried to give me the credit in his memoirs, but he was howled down.”

Not if his life depended upon it would Caesar have betrayed by word or look what he thought of this astonishing version of the capture of King Jugurtha. Sulla had been Marius’s legate! No matter how brilliant the actual capture had been, the credit had to go to Marius! It was Marius had sent Sulla off on the mission, and Marius who was the commander of the war. And the general couldn’t do everything himself—that was why he had legates in the first place. I think, thought Caesar, that I am hearing one of the early versions of what will become the official story! Marius has lost, Sulla has won. For only one reason. Because Sulla has outlived Marius.

“I see,” said Caesar, and left it at that.

Scuffling a little, Sulla got out of his chair and walked across to the couch where the garb of the flamen Dialis lay. He picked up the ivory helmet with its spike and disc of wool, and tossed it between his hands. “You’ve lined it well,” he said.

“It’s very hot, Lucius Cornelius, and I dislike the feel of sweating,” said Caesar.

“Do you change the lining often?” Sulla asked, and actually lifted the apex to sniff its interior. “It smells sweet. Ye gods, how a military helmet can stink! I’ve seen horses turn up their noses at the prospect of drinking from a military helmet.”

A faint distaste crossed Caesar’s face, but he shrugged, tried to pass it off. “The exigencies of war,” he said lightly.

Sulla grinned. “It will be interesting to see how you cope with those, boy! You’re a trifle precious, aren’t you?”

“In some ways, perhaps,” said Caesar levelly.

The ivory apex bounced onto the couch. “So you hate the job, eh?” Sulla asked.

“I hate it.”

“Yet Gaius Marius was afraid enough of a boy to hedge him round with it.”

“It would seem so.”

“I remember they used to say in the family that you were very clever—could read at a glance. Can you?’’

“Yes.”

Back to the desk: Sulla shuffled his papers and found a single sheet which he tossed at Caesar. “Read that,” he said.

One glance told Caesar why. It was execrably written, with such a squeezing together of the letters and absence of columns that it really did look like a continuous, meaningless squiggle.

“You don’t know me Sulla but do I have something to tell you and it is that there is a man from Lucania named Marcus Aponius which has a rich property in Rome and I just want you to know that Marcus Crassus had this man Aponius put on the proscription list so he could buy the property real cheap at auction and that is what he did for two thousand sesterces—A Friend.’’

Caesar finished his effortless translation and looked at Sulla, eyes twinkling.

Sulla threw back his head and laughed. “I thought that’s what it said! So did my secretary. I thank you, Caesar. But you haven’t seen it and you couldn’t possibly have read it even if you had seen it.’’

“Absolutely!”

“It causes endless trouble when one cannot do everything oneself,” Sulla said, sobering. “That is the worst feature about being Dictator. I have to use agents—the task is too Herculean. The man mentioned in there is someone I trusted. Oh, I knew he was greedy, but I didn’t think he’d be so blatant.”

“Everyone in the Subura knows Marcus Licinius Crassus.”

“What, because of his little arsons—the burning insulae?”

“Yes—and his fire brigades which arrive the moment he’s bought the property cheaply, and put the fire out. He’s becoming the Subura’s biggest landlord. As well as the most unpopular. But he won’t get his hands on my mother’s insula!” vowed Caesar.

“Nor will he get his hands on any more proscription property,” said Sulla harshly. “He impugned my name. I warned him! He did not listen. So I will never see him again. He can rot.”

It was awkward listening to this: what did Caesar care about the troubles a dictator had with his agents? Rome would never see another dictator! But he waited, hoping Sulla would eventually get to the point, and sensing that this roundabout route was Sulla’s way of testing his patience—and probably tormenting him too.

“Your mother doesn’t know it and nor do you, but I didn’t order you killed,” the Dictator said.

Caesar’s eyes opened wide. “You didn’t? That’s not what one Lucius Cornelius Phagites led Ria to believe! He got off with three talents of my mother’s money pretending to spare me when I was ill. You’ve just finished telling me how awful it is to have to use agents because they get greedy. Well, that’s as true of the bottom as it is of the top.”

“I’ll remember the name, and your mother will get her money back,” said Sulla, obviously angry, “but that is not the point. The point is that I did not order you killed! I ordered you brought before me alive so I could ask you exactly the questions I have asked you.”

“And then kill me.”

“That was my original idea.”

“And now you’ve given your word that you won’t kill me.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about divorcing Cinna’s daughter?”

“No. I will never divorce her.”

“So that leaves Rome with a difficult problem. I can’t have you killed, you don’t want the job, you won’t divorce Cinna’s daughter because she’s your way out of the job—and don’t bother trying to give me high—flown explanations about honor and ethics and principles!” Suddenly a look of incredible old age came into the ruined face, the unsupported lips folded and flapped, worked on themselves; he was Cronus contemplating eating his next child whole. “Did your mother tell you what transpired?”

“Only that you spared me. You know her.”

“Extraordinary person, Aurelia. Ought to have been a man.”

Caesar’s most charming smile dawned. “So you keep saying! I must admit I’m rather glad she wasn’t a man.”

“So am I, so am I! Were she a man, I’d have to look to my laurels.” Sulla slapped his thighs and leaned forward. “So, my dear Caesar, you continue to be a trouble to all of us in the priestly colleges. What are we going to do with you?”

“Free me from my flaminate, Lucius Cornelius. You can do nothing else save kill me, and that would mean going back on your word. I don’t believe you would do that.”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t break my word?”

Caesar raised his brows. “I am a patrician, one of your own kind! But more than that, I am a Julian. You’d never break your word to one as highborn as I.”

“That is so.” The Dictator leaned back in his chair. “We of the priestly colleges have decided, Gaius Julius Caesar, to free you from your flaminate, just as you have surmised. I can’t speak for the others, but I can tell you why I want you freed. I think Jupiter Optimus Maximus does not want you for his special flamen. I think he has other things in mind for you. It is very possible that all of the business about his temple was his way of freeing you. I do not know for sure. I only feel it in my bones—but a man can do far worse than to follow such instincts. Gaius Marius was the longest trial of my life. Like a Greek Nemesis. One way or another, he managed to spoil my greatest days. And for reasons I do not intend to go into, Gaius Marius exerted himself mightily to chain you. I tell you this, Caesar! If he wanted you chained, then I want you freed. I insist upon having the last laugh. And you are the last laugh.”

Never had Caesar conceived of salvation from this unlikely quarter. Because it had been Gaius Marius who chained him, Sulla would see him freed. As he sat there looking at Sulla, Caesar became unshakably convinced that for no other reason was he being released. Sulla wanted the last laugh. So in the end Gaius Marius had defeated himself.

“I and my colleagues of the priestly colleges are now of the opinion that there may have been a flaw in the rituals of your consecration as flamen Dialis. Several of us—not I, but enough others—were present at that ceremony, and none of them can be absolutely certain that there was not a flaw. The doubt is sufficient given the blood—soaked horror of those days, so we have agreed that you must be released. However, we cannot appoint another flamen Dialis while you live, just in case we are mistaken and there was no flaw.” Sulla put both palms down on his desk. “It is best to have an escape clause. To be without a flamen Dialis is a grave inconvenience, but Jupiter Optimus Maximus is Rome, and he likes things to be legal. Therefore while you live, Gaius Julius Caesar, the other flamines will share Jupiter’s duties among them.”

He must speak now. Caesar moistened his lips. “This seems a just and prudent course,” he said.

“So we think. It means, however, that your membership in the Senate ceases as of the moment the Great God signifies his consent. In order to obtain his consent, you will give Jupiter Optimus Maximus his own animal, a white bull. If the sacrifice goes well, your flaminate is over. If it should not go well-why, we will have to think again. The Pontifex Maximus and the Rex Sacrorum will preside”—a flicker of antic mirth came and went in the pale cold eyes—“but you will conduct the sacrifice yourself. You will provide a feast for all the priestly colleges afterward, to be held in the temple of Jupiter Stator in the upper Forum Romanum. This offering and feast are in the nature of a piaculum, to atone for the inconveniences the Great God must suffer because he will have no special priest of his own.”

“I am happy to obey,” said Caesar formally.

“If all goes well, you are a free man. You may be married to whomsoever you choose. Even Cinna’s brat.”

“I take it then that there has been no change in Cinnilla’s citizen status?” asked Caesar coolly.

“Of course there hasn’t! If there had been, you’d wear the laena and apex for the rest of your life! I’m disappointed in you, boy, that you even bothered to ask.”

“I asked, Lucius Cornelius, because the lex Minicia will automatically extend to apply to my children by my wife. And that is quite unacceptable. I have not been proscribed. Why should my children suffer?”

“Yes, I see that,” said the Dictator, not at all offended at this straight speaking. “For that reason, I will amend my law to protect men like you. The lex Minicia de liberis will apply only to the children of the proscribed. If any of them are lucky enough to marry a Roman, then their children will be Roman.” He frowned. “It should have been foreseen. It was not. One of the penalties of producing so much legislation so quickly. But the way in which it was drawn to my attention put me publicly in a ridiculous position. All your fault, boy! And your silly uncle, Cotta. The priestly interpretation of my laws anent the other laws of Rome already on the tablets must stand for the children of the proscribed.”

“I’m glad for it,” said Caesar, grinning. “It’s got me out of Gaius Marius’s clutches.”

“That it has.” Sulla looked brisk and businesslike, and changed the subject. “Mitylene has revolted from Roman tribute. At the moment my proquaestor Lucullus is in the chair, but I have sent my praetor Thermus to govern Asia Province.

His first task will be to put down the revolt of Mitylene. You have indicated a preference for military duty, so I am sending you to Pergamum to join Thermus’s staff. I expect you to distinguish yourself, Caesar,” said Sulla, looking his most forbidding. “On your conduct as a junior military tribune rests the final verdict about this whole business. No man in Roman history is more revered than the military hero. I intend to exalt all such men. They will receive privileges and honors not given to others. If you win accolades for bravery in the field, I will exalt you too. But if you do not do well, I will push you down harder and further than Gaius Marius ever could have.”

“That’s fair,” said Caesar, delighted at this posting.

“One more thing,” said Sulla, something sly in his gaze. “Your horse. The animal you rode while flamen Dialis, against all the laws of the Great God.”

Caesar stiffened. “Yes?”

“I hear you intend to buy the creature back. You will not. It is my dictate that you will ride a mule. A mule has always been good enough for me. It must also be good enough for you.”

The like eyes looked a like murder. But—oh no! said Gaius Julius Caesar to himself, you won’t trap me this way, Sulla! “Do you think, Lucius Cornelius, that I deem myself too good for a mule?” he asked aloud.

“I have no idea what you deem yourself too good for.”

“I am a better rider than any other man I have ever seen,” said Caesar calmly, “while you, according to reports, are just about the worst rider ever seen. But if a mule is good enough for you, it is certainly more than good enough for me. And I thank you sincerely for your understanding. Also your discretion.”

“Then you can go now,” said Sulla, unimpressed. “On your way out, send in my secretary, would you?”

His little flash of temper sent Caesar home less grateful for his freedom than he would otherwise have been; and then he found himself wondering if such had not been Sulla’s purpose in stipulating that final rather picayune condition about a mule. Sulla didn’t want his gratitude, didn’t want Aurelia’s son in any kind of cliental bondage to him. A Julian beholden to a Cornelian? That was to make a mockery of the Patriciate.

And, realizing this, Caesar ended in thinking better of Lucius Cornelius Sulla than he had when he left that man’s presence. He has truly set me free! He has given me my life to do with what I will. Or what I can. I will never like him. But there have been times when I have found it in me to love him.

He thought of the horse Bucephalus. And wept.

“Sulla is wise, Caesar,” said Aurelia, nodding her full approval. ‘ The drains on your purse are going to be considerable. You must buy a white bull without flaw or blemish, and you won’t find such for less than fifty thousand. The feast you have to provide for all of Rome’s priests and augurs will cost you twice that. After which, you have to equip yourself for Asia. And support yourself in what I fear will be a punishingly expensive environment. I remember your father saying that the junior military tribunes despise those among them who cannot afford every luxury and extravagance. You’re not rich. The income from your land has accumulated since your father died, you’ve not had any need to spend it. That is going to change. To buy back your horse would be an unwelcome extra. After all, you won’t be here to ride the beast. You must ride a mule until Sulla says otherwise. And you can find a splendid mule for under ten thousand.”

The look he gave his mother was not filial, but he said no word, and if he dreamed of his horse and mourned its permanent passing, he kept those things to himself.

*

The piacular sacrifice took place several days later, by which time Caesar had readied himself for his journey to take up duty under Marcus Minucius Thermus, governor of Asia Province. Though the feast was to be held in the temple of Jupiter Stator, the ritual of atonement was to take place at the altar erected below the steps which used to lead up to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol.

Togate (his laena and apex had been given to the priests for storage until they could be laid to rest in Jupiter’s unbuilt new temple), Caesar himself led his perfect white bull from his house down the Fauces Suburae and the Argiletum. Though he could have got away with tying ribbons around its splendid horns, Caesar now demonstrated his disregard for economy by having the animal’s horns covered in thick gold foil; around its neck garlands of the most exotic and costly flowers were thrown, and a wreath of perfect white roses sat between its horns. Its hooves too were gilded, its tail wound round with cloth—of—gold ribbons intertwined with flowers. With him walked his guests—his uncles the Cottae, and Gaius Matius, and Lucius Decumius and his sons, and most of the Brethren of the crossroads college. All were togate. Aurelia was not present; her sex forbade her attending any sacrifice to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, who was a god for Roman men.

The various colleges of priests were clustered waiting near the altar, and the professionals who would do the actual killing were there too—popa, cultarius, slaves. Though it was the custom to drug the sacrificial animal beforehand, Caesar had refused; Jupiter had to be given every opportunity to indicate pleasure or displeasure. This fact was immediately apparent to everyone; the pure white bull, not a mark or blemish on it, was brisk of eye and step, and swished its tail importantly—obviously it liked being the center of attention.

“You’re mad, boy!” whispered Gaius Aurelius Cotta as the waiting crowd grew larger and the steeply sloping Clivus Capitolinus began to level out. “Every eye is going to be on this animal, and you haven’t drugged him! What are you going to do if he refuses to behave? It will be too late by then!”

“He won’t misbehave,” said Caesar serenely. “He knows he carries my fate. Everyone must see that I bow unreservedly to the will of the Great God.’’ There came a faint chuckle. “Besides, I’m one of Fortune’s favorites, I have luck!”

Everyone gathered around. Caesar turned aside to the bronze tripod holding a bowl of water and washed his hands; so did the Pontifex Maximus (Metellus Pius the Piglet), the Rex Sacrorum (Lucius Claudius), and the other two major flamines, Martialis (the Princeps Senatus, Lucius Valerius Flaccus) and Quirinalis (a new appointee, Mamercus). Bodies and clothing now ceremonially pure, the participating priests lifted the folds of toga lying across their shoulders and draped them over their heads. Once they had done so, everyone else followed.

The Pontifex Maximus moved to stand at the altar. “O mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus—if you wish to be addressed by this name, otherwise I hail you by whatever name it is you wish to hear—receive your servant, Gaius Julius Caesar, who was your flamen and now wishes to atone for his wrongful appointment, which he wishes to point out to you was not of his doing!” cried the Piglet without a single stammer, and stepped back with a glare of fury aimed at Sulla, who was managing to keep a straight face; this flawless performance had cost the Piglet days of remorseless practice more grueling than military drills.

The professional priestlings were stripping the bull of its flowers and gold foil, patting the latter carefully into a rough ball, and paid no attention to Caesar, who now stepped forward and placed his hand upon the moist pink nose of his offering. The ruby—dark eyes surrounded by long thick lashes as colorless as crystal watched him as he did so, and Caesar felt no tremor of outrage in the white bull at his touch.

He prayed in a voice pitched much higher than his natural one, so that every word would travel. “O mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus—if you wish to be addressed by this name, otherwise I hail you by whatever name it is you wish to hear—you who are of whichever sex you prefer—you who are the spirit of Rome—accept, I pray, this gift of your own sacred animal which I offer you as an atonement for my wrongful appointment as your flamen. It is my prayer that you release me from my vows and grant me the opportunity to serve you in some other capacity. I submit myself to your will, but offer you this best and greatest and strongest living thing in the knowledge that you will grant me what I ask because I have offered you exactly what I ought.”

He smiled at the bull, gazing at him, it seemed, with insight.

The priestlings stepped forward; Caesar and the Pontifex Maximus turned to one side and each took a golden chalice from a tripod, while the Rex Sacrorum took up a golden bowl of spelt.

“I cry for silence!” thundered Caesar.

Silence fell, so complete that the distant noises of busy activity in the Forum arcades of shops floated clearly on the warm and gentle breeze.

The flautist put his instrument made from the shinbone of an enemy to his lips, and began to blow a mournful tune intended to drown out these sounds of Forum business.

As soon as the flute began the Rex Sacrorum sprinkled the bull’s face and head with spelt, a thistledown shower which the beast seemed to take as rain; its pink tongue came out and sopped up the granules of fine flour on its nose.

The popa moved to stand in front of the bull, his stunning hammer held loosely by his side. “Agone? Do I strike?” he asked Caesar loudly.

“Strike!” cried Caesar.

Up flashed the hammer, down to land with perfect precision between the bull’s mild and unsuspecting eyes. It collapsed on its front knees with an impact heavy enough to feel through the ground, its head outstretched; slowly the hindquarters subsided to the right, a good omen.

Like the popa stripped naked to the waist, the cultarius took the horns in both his hands and lifted the bull’s limp head toward the sky, the muscles in his arms standing out ribbed and sinewy, for the bull’s head weighed more than fifty pounds. Then he lowered his burden to touch the cobbles with its muzzle.

“The victim consents,” he said to Caesar.

“Then make the sacrifice!” cried Caesar.

Out came the big razor—sharp knife from its scabbard, and while the popa hauled the bull’s head into the air, the cultarius cut its throat with one huge deep slice of his knife. The blood gushed but did not spurt—this fellow knew his job. No one—even he—was spattered. As the popa released the head to lie turned to the right, Caesar handed the cultarius his chalice, and the cultarius caught some of the blood so accurately that not a drop spilled down the side of the vessel. Metellus Pius gave his chalice to be filled in turn.

Avoiding the steady turgid crimson stream which flowed away downhill, Caesar and the Pontifex Maximus walked to the bare stone altar. There Caesar trickled the contents of his cup, and said, “O mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus—if you wish to be addressed by this name, otherwise I hail you by whatever name it is you wish to hear—you who are of whichever sex you prefer—you who are the spirit of Rome—accept this offering made to you as an atonement, and accept too the gold from the horns and hooves of your victim, and keep it to adorn your new temple.”

Now Metellus Pius emptied his cup. “O mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus—if you wish to be addressed by this name, otherwise I hail you by whatever name it is you wish to hear—I ask that you accept the atonement of Gaius Julius Caesar, who was your flamen and is still your servant.”

The moment Metellus Pius had clearly enunciated the last syllable of his prayer, a collective sigh of relief went up, loud enough to be heard above the sad tweetling of the tibicen.

Last to offer was the Rex Sacrorum, who sprinkled the remnant of his spelt into the starred splashes of blood on the altar. “O mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus—if you wish to be addressed by this name, otherwise I hail you by whatever name it is you wish to hear—I bear witness that you have been offered the life—force of this best and greatest and strongest victim, and that all has been done in accordance with the prescribed ritual, and that no error has been made. Under the terms of our contractual agreements with you, I therefore conclude that you are well pleased with your offering and its donor, Gaius Julius Caesar. Furthermore, Gaius Julius Caesar wishes to burn his offering whole for your delectation, and does not wish to take any of it for himself. May Rome and all who live in her prosper as a result.”

And it was over. Over without a single mistake. While the priests and augurs unveiled their heads and began to walk down the slope of the Clivus Capitolinus toward the Forum, the priestlings who were professional sacrificers began to clean up. They used a hoist and cradle to winch the huge carcass off the ground and deposit it upon the pyre, then set a torch to it amid their own prayers. While their slaves worked with buckets of water to wash away the last traces of blood upon the ground, a peculiar aroma arose, a mixture of delicious roasting beef and the costly incenses Caesar had bought to stuff among the brands in the pyre. The blood on the altar would be left until after the bull had burned away to bony ashes, then it too would be scrubbed. And the ball of gold was already on its way to the Treasury, where it would be marked with the name of its donor and the nature and date of the occasion.

The feast which followed in the temple of Jupiter Stator on the Velia at the top of the Forum Romanum was at least as successful as the sacrifice; as Caesar passed among his guests exhorting them to enjoy themselves and exchanging pleasantries, many eyes assessed him that had never so much as noticed him before. He was now by virtue of rank and birth a contender in the political arena, and his manner, his carriage, the expression on his handsome face, all suggested that he bore watching.

“He has a look of your father about him,” said Metellus Pius to Catulus, still flushed with the well-being which stemmed from a ceremony executed without one improperly pronounced word.

“He should,” said Catulus, eyeing Caesar with an instinctive dislike. “My father was a Caesar. Such a pretty fellow, isn’t he? I could suffer that. But I’m not sure I can suffer his awful conceit. Look at him! Younger by far than Pompeius! Yet he struts as if he owned the world.”

The Piglet was disposed to find reasons. “Well, how would you feel in his shoes? He’s free of that terrible flaminate.”

“We may rue the day we let Sulla instruct us to free him,” said Catulus. “See him over there with Sulla? Two of a kind!”

The Piglet was staring at him, mildly astonished; Catulus could have bitten off his tongue. For an indiscreet moment he had forgotten his auditor was not Quintus Hortensius, so used was he to having his brother-in-law’s ear permanently ready to listen. But Hortensius was not present, because when Sulla had informed the priestly colleges who were the new members, he had excluded the name of Quintus Hortensius. And Catulus considered Sulla’s omission quite unforgivable. So did Quintus Hortensius.

Unaware that he had offended Catulus, Sulla was busy getting some information from Caesar.

“You didn’t drug your animal. That was taking a colossal chance,” he said.

“I’m one of Fortune’s favorites,” said Caesar.

“What leads you to that conclusion?’’

“Only consider! I have been released from my flaminate—before that I survived an illness men usually die from—I evaded your killing me—and I am teaching my mule to emulate a very aristocratic horse with marked success.”

“Does your mule have a name?” asked Sulla, grinning.

“Of course. I call it Flop Ears.”

“And what did you call your very aristocratic horse?”

“Bucephalus.”

Sulla shook with laughter, but made no further comment, his eyes roaming everywhere. Then he extended an arm. “You do this sort of thing remarkably well for an eighteen-year-old.”

“I’m taking your advice,” said Caesar. “Since I am unable to blend into the background, I decided that even this first banquet in my name should not be unworthy of it.”

“Oh, arrogant! You really are! Never fear, Caesar, it is a memorable feast. Oysters, dug—mullets, licker—fish of the Tiber, baby quail—the menu must have cost you a fortune.”

“Certainly more than I can afford,” said Caesar calmly.

“Then you’re a spendthrift,” said Sulla, anything but.

Caesar shrugged. “Money is a tool, Lucius Cornelius. I don’t care whether I have it or not, if counting up a hoard is what you believe to be the purpose of money. I believe money must be passed on. Otherwise it stagnates. So does the economy. What money comes my way from now on, I will use to further my public career.”

“That’s a good way to go bankrupt.”

“I’ll always manage,” said Caesar, unconcerned.

“How can you know that?”

“Because I have Fortune’s favor. I have luck.”

Sulla shivered. “I have Fortune’s favor! I have luck! But remember—there is a price to pay. Fortune is a jealous and demanding mistress.”

“They’re the best kind!” said Caesar, and laughed so infectiously that the room went quiet. Many of the men present took that memory of a laughing Caesar into the future with them—not because they suffered any premonitions, but because he had two qualities they envied him—youth and beauty.

Of course he couldn’t leave until after the last guest was gone, and that was not until many hours later; by then he had every last one of them assessed and filed away because he had that kind of mind, always storing up whatever it encountered. Yes, an interesting company, was his verdict.

“Though I found none I was tempted to make a friend of,” he said to Gaius Matius at dawn the next day. “Sure you don’t want to come with me, Pustula? You have to serve in your ten campaigns, you know.”

“No, thank you. I have no wish to be so far from Rome. I will wait for a posting, and hope it’s Italian Gaul.”

The farewells were genuinely exhausting. Wishing he might have dispensed with them, Caesar endured them with what patience he could muster. The worst feature of it was the many who had clamored to go with him, though he had steadfastly refused to take anyone save Burgundus. His two body servants were new purchases—a fresh start, men with no knowledge of his mother.

Finally the goodbyes were over—Lucius Decumius, his sons and the Brethren of the crossroads college, Gaius Matius, his mother’s servants, Cardixa and her sons, his sister Ju—Ju, his wife, and his mother. Caesar was able to climb on his inglorious mule and ride away.