The Grass Crown

  What I would ask of you ahead of providing a home for me in your own house, Father (if in the midst of your own troubles you have time to think of me), is that you find me another husband. There are still seven months of my mourning period left. If you will give your consent I would like to spend them in your house under the protection and chaperonage of your wife. But I do not want to impose upon Dalmatica any longer than that. I must have my own home.

  I am not like Aurelia, I do not want to live on my own. Nor can I face the kind of life Aelia seems genuinely to enjoy, Marcia's tyrannies notwithstanding. Please, Father, if you can find me a husband I would so much appreciate it! Marriage to the worst of men is infinitely preferable to invading the house of another woman. I say it with feeling.

  In myself I am quite well, though plagued by a cough due to the coldness of my room. As are the children. It has not escaped me that there would be little grief in this house if something were to happen to my son.

  Considered dispassionately, Cornelia Sulla's plaint was the smallest particle of aggravation; yet it was the particle which tipped the balance in Sulla's unsettled mind. Until he received it he hadn't known which was his best course. Now he knew. That course had nothing to do with Cornelia Sulla. But he had an idea about her poor little life too. How dare some jumped-up Picentine lout imperil the health and happiness of his daughter! And her son!

  He sent off two letters, one to Metellus Pius the Piglet ordering him to come to Capua from Aesemia and bring Mamercus with him, the other to Pompey Strabo. The Piglet's letter consisted of two bald sentences. Pompey Strabo received more.

  No doubt, Gnaeus Pompeius, you are aware of the goings-on in Rome—the imprudent actions of Lucius Cinna, not to mention his tamed pack of tribunes of the plebs. I think, my friend and colleague in the north, that you and I know each other well enough, at least by reputation—and I regret that our careers have not permitted us a closer friendship—to understand that our aims and intentions are of like kind. I find in you a conservatism and respect for the old ways similar to my own, and I know you bear Gaius Marius no affection. Or Cinna, I strongly suspect.

  If you truly feel that Rome would be better served by sending Gaius Marius and his legions to fight King Mithridates, then tear this up as of now. But if you prefer to see me and my legions go to fight King Mithridates, read on.

  As things stand in Rome at the present time, I am helpless to commence the venture I ought to have commenced last year well before my consulship expired. Instead of setting off for the East, I am obliged to remain in Capua with three of my legions to ensure that I am not stripped of my imperium, arrested, and made to stand trial for no worse crime than strengthening the mos maiorum. Cinna, Sertorius, Vergilius, Magius, and the rest talk of treason and murder, of course.

  Leaving aside my legions here in Capua and the two before Aesernia plus the one before Nola, yours are the only legions left in Italy. I can rely upon Quintus Caecilius at Aesernia and Appius Claudius at Nola to uphold me and my deeds while consul; what I am writing to ask is whether I can also rely upon you and your legions. It may be that after I leave Italy nothing will stop Cinna and his friends. I am happy to face the consequences of that eventuality when the time comes. I can assure you that if I return from the East victorious, I will make my enemies pay.

  What concerns me is my present position. I need to be guaranteed sufficient time to depart from Italy, and (as you well know) that could mean as long as four or five more months. Winds across the Adriatic and the Ionian at this season are notoriously capricious, and storms frequent. I cannot afford to take any risks with troops Rome will need desperately.

  Gnaeus Pompeius, would you undertake on my behalf the task of informing Cinna and his confederates that I am legally commissioned to go to this eastern war? That if they attempt to hinder my departure, it will go ill with them? That for the moment, at least, they must cease and desist this badgering?

  Please consider me your friend and colleague in every regard if you feel you can answer me in the affirmative. I await your reply most anxiously.

  Pompey Strabo's reply actually reached Sulla before his legates arrived from Aesernia. It was written in his own atrocious hand, and consisted of one brief, laconic sentence:

  "Don't worry, I'll fix everything."

  So when the Piglet and Mamercus finally presented themselves at Sulla's rented house in Capua, they found Sulla more genial and relaxed than their own informants in Rome had led them to believe remotely possible.

  "Don't worry, everything's fixed," said Sulla, grinning.

  "How can that be?" gasped Metellus Pius. "I hear there are charges looming—murder, treason!"

  "I wrote to my very good friend Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and poured out my troubles to him. He says he'll fix everything."

  "He will too," said Mamercus, a slow smile dawning.

  "Oh, Lucius Cornelius, I'm so glad!" cried the Piglet. "It isn't fair, the way they're treating you! They were far kinder to Saturninus! The way they're carrying on at the moment, anyone would think Sulpicius was a demigod, not a demagogue!" He paused, struck by his own inadvertent verbal cleverness. "I say, that was quite well put, wasn't it?"

  "Save it for the Forum when you run for consul," said Sulla. "It's wasted on me. My schooling never went beyond the elementary."

  Remarks like that puzzled Mamercus, who now resolved to sit the Piglet down and make him tell everything he knew or suspected about the life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Oh, there were always Forum stories circulating about anyone unusual or excessively talented or notorious in some way, but Mamercus didn't listen to Forum stories, deeming them the exaggerations and embellishments of idle minds.

  "They'll kill your laws as soon as you leave Italy. What are you going to do when you come home again?" asked Mamercus.

  "Deal with it when it arrives, not a whisker before."

  "Can you deal with it, Lucius Cornelius? I would think it will be an impossible situation."

  “There are always ways, Mamercus, but you may believe me when I say that I won't be spending my leisure during this campaign on wine and women!" laughed Sulla, who did not appear anxious. "I am one of Fortune's beloved, you see. Fortune always looks after me."

  They settled down then to discuss the remnants of the war in Italy, and the doggedness with which the Samnites hung on; they still controlled most of the territory between Aesernia and Corfinium, as well as the cities of Aesernia and Nola.

  "They've hated Rome for centuries, and they're the best haters in the world," said Sulla, and sighed. "I had hoped that by the time I left for Greece, Aesernia and Nola would have capitulated. As it is, they may well be waiting for me when I come home."

  "Not if we can help it," said the Piglet.

  A servant scratched, murmured that dinner was ready if Lucius Cornelius was.

  Lucius Cornelius was. He got to his feet and led the way into the dining room. While the food was on the table and the servants scurried in and out, Sulla kept the conversation light and inconsequential; they enjoyed the luxury permitted only to old friends, of each having a couch to himself.

  "Do you never entertain women, Lucius Cornelius?" asked Mamercus when the servants had been dismissed.

  Sulla shrugged, grimaced. "On campaign, away from the wife, all that, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "Women are too much trouble, Mamercus, so the answer is no." Sulla laughed. "If that was asked because of your custodial duty toward Dalmatica, then you've got an honest answer.''

  "As a matter of fact, it wasn't asked for any reason outside of sheer vulgar curiosity," said Mamercus, unabashed.

  Sulla put his cup down and stared across at the couch opposite his own, where Mamercus reclined; he now studied this guest more carefully than he had in the past. No Paris or Adonis or Memmius, certainly. Dark hair very closely cropped, an indication it had no curl and his barber despaired of it; a bumpy face with a broken, rather flattened nose; dark eyes deeply set; good brown skin with a
sheen to it, his best feature. A healthy man, Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus. Fit enough to have killed Silo in single combat—he had been awarded the corona civica for that. Therefore he was brave. Not so brilliant that he'd ever be a danger to the State, but no fool, either. According to the Piglet, he was steady and reliable in every emergency, and confident in command situations. Scaurus had loved him dearly, made him executor of his will.

  Of course Mamercus knew perfectly well that he was suddenly being subjected to a minute examination; why did he feel as if he was being assessed by a prospective lover?

  "Mamercus, you're married, aren't you?" Sulla asked.

  That jolted him into blinking. "Yes, Lucius Cornelius."

  "Any children?"

  "A girl, now aged four."

  "Attached to your wife?"

  "No. She's an awful woman."

  "Ever think of divorce?"

  "Constantly while ever I'm in Rome. Out of Rome, I try not to think of her for any reason."

  "What's her name? Her family?"

  "Claudia. She's one of the sisters of the Appius Claudius Pulcher at present besieging Nola.''

  "Oh, not a wise choice, Mamercus! That's a queer family."

  "Queer? I'd call them downright strange."

  Metellus Pius had quite forgotten to recline; he was sitting bolt upright, eyes wide, and fixed on Sulla.

  "My daughter is now a widow. She's not quite twenty years old. She has two children, a girl and a boy. Have you ever seen her?"

  "No," said Mamercus calmly, "I don't believe I ever have."

  "I'm her father, so in her case I'm no judge. But they tell me she's lovely," said Sulla, picking up his wine cup.

  "Oh, she is, Lucius Cornelius! Absolutely ravishing!" said the Piglet, beaming fatuously.

  "There you are, there's an outside opinion." Sulla looked into his cup, then flicked the lees expertly onto an empty platter. "Fives!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Fives are lucky for me." The eyes gazed directly at Mamercus. "I am looking for a good husband for my poor girl, whose in-laws are making her very miserable. She has a forty-talent dowry—which is more than most girls have—she has proven her fertility, she has one boy, she is still young, she is a patrician on both sides—her mother was a Julia—and she has what I'd call a nice nature. I don't mean she's the sort who will lie down and let you wipe your boots all over her, but she gets on with most people. Her late husband, the younger Quintus Pompeius Rufus, seemed quite besotted by her. So what do you say? Interested?"

  "It all depends," said Mamercus cautiously. "What color are her eyes?''

  "I don't know," said the father.

  "A beautiful brilliant blue," said the Piglet.

  "What color is her hair?"

  "Red—brown—auburn? I don't know," said the father.

  "It's the color of the sky after the sun has just disappeared," said the Piglet.

  "Is she tall?"

  "I don't know," said the father.

  "She'd come to the tip of your nose," said the Piglet.

  "What sort of skin does she have?"

  "I don't know," said the father.

  "Like a creamy-white flower, with six little gold freckles across her nose," said the Piglet.

  Both Sulla and Mamercus turned to stare at the suddenly scarlet and shrinking occupant of the middle couch.

  "Sounds like you want to marry her, Quintus Caecilius," said the father.

  "No, no!" cried the Piglet. "But a man can look, Lucius Cornelius! She's absolutely adorable."

  "Then I'd better have her," said Mamercus, smiling at his good friend the Piglet. "I admire your taste in women, Quintus Caecilius. So I thank you, Lucius Cornelius. Consider your girl betrothed to me."

  "Her mourning period still has seven months to run, so there's no hurry," said Sulla. "Until it ends, she'll be living with Dalmatica. Go and see her, Mamercus. I'll write to her.''

  Four days later Sulla set off for Brundisium with three very happy legions. They arrived to find Lucullus still encamped outside the city and having no trouble locating grazing for the cavalry's horses and the army's mules, since much of the land was Italian, and the season early winter. It was wet and blustery weather and continued wet and blustery, no ideal conditions for a long sojourn; the men became bored and spent too much of their time gambling. When Sulla arrived in person, however, they settled down. It was Lucullus they couldn't stomach, not Sulla. He had no understanding of the legionary, Lucullus, and was not interested to understand any man so far beneath him on the social scale.

  In calendar March, Lucullus set sail for Corcyra, his two legions and two thousand cavalry taking every ship the busy port could find. Which meant that Sulla had no choice but to wait for the return of the transports before he could sail himself. But at the beginning of May—he had very little left by then out of his two hundred talents of gold—Sulla finally crossed the Adriatic with three legions and a thousand army mules.

  A good sailor, he leaned on the railing of his ship's stern, gazing back across the faint wake at the smudge on the horizon that was Italy. And then Italy was gone. He was free. At fifty-three years of age he was finally going to a war he could win honorably, against a genuinely foreign foe. Glory, booty, battles, blood.

  And so much for you, Gaius Marius! he thought exultantly. This is one war you cannot steal away from me. This war is mine!

  X (87-86 B.C.)

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  1

  It was Young Marius and Lucius Decumius who got Gaius Marius away from the temple of Tellus and hid him within the cella of the temple of Jupiter Stator on the Velia; it was Young Marius and Lucius Decumius who then searched for Publius Sulpicius, Marcus Laetorius, and the other noblemen who had buckled on a sword to defend Rome against the army of Lucius Cornelius Sulla; and it was Young Marius and Lucius Decumius who shepherded Sulpicius and nine others into the temple of Jupiter Stator not very long afterward.

  "This is all we could find, Father," said Young Marius, sitting down on the floor nearby. "I heard that Marcus Laetorius, Publius Cethegus, and Publius Albinovanus were seen slipping through the Capena Gate not long ago. But of the Brothers Granii I can find no sign. Hopefully that means they left the city even earlier."

  "What an irony," said Marius bitterly to no one in particular, "to go to earth inside an establishment dedicated to the god who halts soldiers in retreat. Mine wouldn't stand and fight, no matter what I promised them."

  "They weren't Roman soldiers," Young Marius pointed out.

  "I know that!"

  "I never thought Sulla would go through with it," said Sulpicius, breathing as if he had been running for hours.

  "I did—after I met him on the Via Latina at Tusculum," said the urban praetor, Marcus Junius Brutus.

  "Well, Sulla owns Rome now," said Young Marius. "Father, what are we going to do?"

  Sulpicius answered, detesting the way everyone deferred to Gaius Marius, who might have been consul six times and been of great help to a tribune of the plebs bent on destroying the Senate, but at this moment was merely a privatus. "We go to our homes and we behave as if nothing has happened," he said firmly.

  Marius turned his head to look at Sulpicius incredulously, more tired than he had ever been in his life, and horribly aware that his left hand, arm and jaw were needled with numbness. "You can if you like," he said, rolling his tongue in his mouth because it felt funny. "I know Sulla. And I know what I'm going to do. Run for my life."

  "I think I agree with you," said Brutus, the blue tinge to his lips darker than usual, his chest laboring to pull in more air. "If we stay, he'll kill us. I saw his face at Tusculum."

  "He cannot kill us!" said Sulpicius positively; a much younger man, he was recovering his wits along with his breath. "No one will be more aware than Sulla that he's nefas. He'll bend over backwards to make sure everything he does from now on is legal."

  "Rubbish!" said Marius scornfully. "What do you think he's going to do, shoo his men back to Campania tomorro
w? Of course he won't! He'll occupy Rome and do whatever he wants."

  "He'd never dare," said Sulpicius, realizing that, in similar case to many others in the Senate, he didn't know Sulla well.

  Marius found it in him to laugh. “Dare? Lucius Cornelius Sulla, dare? Grow up, Publius Sulpicius! Sulla would dare anything. And in the past he has. What's worse, he dares after he thinks. Oh, he won't try us for treason in some trumped-up court! That big a fool he's not. He'll just smuggle us off somewhere secret, kill us, and give out that we died in the battle."

  "That's what I thinks too, Gaius Marius," said Lucius Decumius. "He'd as soon kill his mother, that one." He shivered, held up his right hand clenched into a fist, except that the index and the little fingers stuck up stiffly like two horns—the sign to ward off the Evil Eye. "He isn't like other men."

  The nine lesser lights sat on the temple floor where they could watch the leaders debate, none of them important men in Senate or Ordo Equester, though all were members of one or the other. It had seemed a cause worth fighting for, to keep a Roman army out of Rome, but now that they had failed so miserably, each of them had arrived at that point where he deemed himself a fool for trying. Tomorrow their spines would stiffen again, as they all believed Rome worth dying for; but in the temple of Jupiter Stator, exhausted and disillusioned, they all hoped Marius would prevail over Sulpicius.

  "If you go, Gaius Marius, I cannot stay," said Sulpicius.

  "Better to go, believe me. I certainly am," said Marius.

  "What about you, Lucius Decumius?" asked Young Marius.

  Lucius Decumius shook his head. "No, I can't leave. But—lucky for me!—I isn't important. I have to look after Aurelia and Young Caesar—their tata is with Lucius Cinna at Alba Fucentia these days. I'll keep an eye on Julia for you, Gaius Marius."