The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  "Lycian?"

  "We have a Lycian family on the third floor these days, you see. The children go wherever they like, not to mention that they pick up languages the way you or I might pick up pebbles on a beach. I didn't realize the Lycians had a language of their own, and incredibly antique too. It's akin to Pisidian."

  "Did you have a very bad argument with Gaius Julius?"

  She shrugged, pulled her mouth down. "Bad enough."

  "Made worse by the fact that you stood up for yourself in a most unladylike, un-Roman-woman way," said Sulla tenderly, fresh from assaulting his own daughter for doing exactly that. But Aurelia was Aurelia, she couldn't be measured by any standards save her own—as many people said, with admiration rather than condemnation, so strong was her spell.

  "I'm afraid I did stand up for myself," she said, not seeming very sorry. "In fact, I stood up for myself so well that my husband lost." Her eyes were suddenly sorrowful. "And that, as I'm sure you will appreciate, Lucius Cornelius, was the worst part about our difference of opinion. No man of his status likes losing a fight with his wife. So he retreated into a kind of aloof disinterest and wouldn't even consider a re-match, for all my prodding. Oh, dear!"

  "Has he fallen out of love with you?"

  "I don't think so. I wish he had! It would make life a great deal easier for him when he's here," she said.

  "So you wear the toga these days."

  "I am afraid so. Purple border and all."

  His lips thinned, he nodded wisely. "You should have been a man, Aurelia. I never saw it until now, but it's a truth."

  "You're right, Lucius Cornelius."

  "So he was glad to go away to Asia Province, and you were glad to see him go, eh?"

  "You're right again, Lucius Cornelius."

  He passed then to his trip to the East, and gained one more auditor; Young Caesar scrambled up beside his mother on her couch, and listened avidly as Sulla recounted the story of his meetings with Mithridates, Tigranes, and the Parthian envoys.

  The boy was almost nine years old. And more beautiful than ever, Sulla noted, unable to take his eyes off that fair face. So like Young Sulla! Yet not like Young Sulla at all. He had emerged from his questioning phase and passed into his listening phase, and sat leaning against Aurelia, eyes shining, lips parted, his face a constantly changing panorama reflecting his mind, his body still.

  At the end he had questions to ask, asking them with more intelligence than Scaurus, more education than Marius, more interest than either. How does he know all this? asked Sulla of himself, finding himself speaking with an eight-year-old on precisely the same level as he had with Scaurus and Marius.

  "What do you think will happen?" Sulla asked, not because he patronized, but because he was intrigued.

  "War with Mithridates and Tigranes," said Young Caesar.

  "Not war with the Parthians?"

  "Not for a long time to come. But if we win a war against Mithridates and Tigranes, it brings Pontus and Armenia within our fold, and then the Parthians will start to worry about Rome the way Mithridates and Tigrane's do at the moment."

  Sulla nodded. "Quite right, Young Caesar."

  For a further hour they talked, then Sulla rose to go, ruffling Young Caesar's hair in farewell. Aurelia walked with him to the door, shaking her head slightly to the hovering Eutychus, who began to shepherd children bedward.

  "How is everyone?" Aurelia asked, allowing Sulla to open the door onto the Vicus Patricius, still thronged with people, even though darkness had long fallen.

  "Young Sulla has a bad cold, and Cornelia Sulla a very sore face," he said, unconcerned.

  "Young Sulla I understand, but what happened to your girl?"

  "I walloped her."

  "Oh, I see! For what crime, Lucius Cornelius?"

  "It appears she and Young Marius had decided they would marry when the time came. But I've just promised her to the son of Quintus Pompeius Rufus. She decided to show her independence by starving herself to death."

  "Ecastor! I suppose the poor child didn't even know about her mother's efforts in that direction?"

  "No."

  "But she knows now."

  "She certainly does."

  "Well, I know the young man slightly, and I'm sure she'll be a lot happier with him than she would with Young Marius!"

  Sulla laughed. "My thoughts exactly."

  "What about Gaius Marius?"

  "Oh, he didn't want the match either." Sulla's top lip curled up to show his teeth. "He's after Scaevola's daughter."

  "He'll get her without too much trouble—ave, Turpillia." This last was said to a passing crone, who promptly stopped walking and stood looking as if she wanted to talk.

  Sulla took his leave, while Aurelia leaned against the doorframe and looked attentive as Turpillia started to speak.

  It never worried Sulla to traverse the Subura after dark, any more than it worried Aurelia to see him disappear into the night. No one molested Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The moment he entered them, he had the stews of Rome written all over him. If anything about his conduct might have puzzled Aurelia, it was the fact that he walked off up the Vicus Patricius instead of down it toward the Forum Romanum and the Palatine.

  He was going to see Censorinus, who lived on the upper Viminal in the street which led to the Punic apple tree. A respectable knightly neighborhood, but not nearly imposing enough to house one who sported an emerald quizzing-glass.

  At first it seemed as if Censorinus 's steward was going to deny him entry, but Sulla could always deal with that; he simply looked nasty, and something in the steward's mind clattered a warning so strong that he automatically held the door wide open. Still smiling nastily, Sulla walked through the narrow passage which led from the front door to the reception room of the ground-floor insula apartment, and stood looking about him while the steward pattered off to find his master.

  Oh, yes, very nice! The frescoes on the walls were newly done, and in the latest style, rich red panels depicting the events which led to the yielding up of Briseis to Agamemnon by the Prince of Phthia, Achilles; they were framed in beautifully painted artificial agate-stones which merged into a splendid dark green dado, also painted rather than the real thing. The floor was a colored mosaic, the drapes were a purple so black it was definitely Tyrian, and the couches were covered with gold and purple tapestry of the best workmanship. Not bad for a middling member of the Ordo Equester, thought Sulla.

  An angry Censorinus emerged from the passage to his inner rooms, baffled by the conduct of his steward, who did not appear.

  "Well, what do you want?" Censorinus demanded.

  "Your emerald quizzing-glass," said Sulla gently.

  "My what?"

  "You know, Censorinus, the one given to you by the agents of King Mithridates."

  "King Mithridates? I don't know what you mean! I have no such object as an emerald quizzing-glass."

  "Nonsense, of course you do. Give it to me."

  Censorinus choked, face purple, then pallid.

  "Do give me your emerald quizzing-glass, Censorinus!"

  "I'll give you nothing except conviction and exile!"

  Before Censorinus could move, Sulla was standing so close to him that it might have passed to an onlooker as a farcical embrace; and then Sulla's hands were on his shoulders, but not like a lover's. They bit, they hurt, they were iron claws.

  "Listen, you contemptible maggot, I've killed better men by far than you," said Sulla very softly, his tones actually amorous. "Stay out of court, or you'll be dead. I mean it! Abandon this ridiculous prosecution of me, or you'll be dead. As dead as a legendary strongman named Hercules Atlas. As dead as a woman with a broken neck below the cliffs of Circei. As dead as a thousand Germans. As dead as anyone is who threatens me and mine. As dead as Mithridates will be, if I decide he must die. You can tell him that when you see him. He'll believe you! He clipped his tail between his legs and fled Cappadocia when I told him to go. Because he knew. Now you know, do
n't you?"

  There was no reply, nor did Censorinus attempt to struggle free of that cruel hold. Still and quiet save for his breathing, he gazed at Sulla's too-close face as if he had never seen this man before, and did not know what to do.

  One of Sulla's hands left Censorinus's shoulder to slip inside his tunic, its fingers reaching for what was on the end of a stout leather cord; the other of Sulla's hands slipped from Censorinus's other shoulder and clamped around his scrotum, and crushed it. While Censorinus screamed as shrilly as a dog when the wheels of a wagon pass over it, Sulla ripped the leather thong apart with the fingers of one hand as easily as if it had been made of wool, then put the flashing green thing dangling from it inside his toga. No one came running to see who screamed. Sulla turned on his heel and walked out without hurrying.

  "Oh, I feel better!" he cried as he opened the door, and laughed so long that only its closing shut the sound from out of Censorinus's ears.

  Rage and frustration at the conduct of Cornelia Sulla vanished, home Sulla went with footsteps as light as a child's, face a picture of happiness. Happiness wiped away in the thinnest sliver of time when he opened his own front door and discovered, instead of the hushed, dimly lit peace of sleeping tenants, a blaze of light from every lamp, a huddle of strange young men, a steward wiping tears from his streaming eyes.

  "What is it?" Sulla asked, gasping.

  "Your son, Lucius Cornelius!" cried the steward.

  Sulla waited to hear no more, but ran to the room off the peristyle-garden where Aelia had put the boy to get over his cold. She was standing outside its door, wrapped in a shawl.

  "What is it?" Sulla asked again, grabbing at her.

  "Young Sulla is very ill," she whispered. "I called the doctors two hours ago."

  Pushing the doctors aside, Sulla appeared beside his son's bed looking benevolent and relaxed.

  "What is this, Young Sulla, giving everybody such a fright?"

  "Father!" Young Sulla cried, smiling.

  "What's the matter?"

  "So cold, Father! Do you mind if I call you tata in front of strangers?"

  "Of course not."

  "The pain, it's terrible!"

  "Whereabouts, my son?"

  "Behind my breast-bone, tata. So cold!"

  He breathed shallowly, loudly, with obvious distress; to Sulla it seemed a parody of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle's death scene, which perhaps was why Sulla could not believe in this as a death scene. Yet Young Sulla looked as if he were dying. Impossible!

  "Don't talk, my son. Can you lie down?" This, because the doctors had propped him into a sitting position.

  "Can't breathe, lying down." The eyes, ringed with what looked like black bruises, looked up at him piteously. "Tata, please don't go away, will you?"

  "I'm here, Lucius. I won't go away for a moment."

  But as soon as possible Sulla did draw Apollodorus Siculus out of earshot to ask him what the matter was.

  "An inflammation of the lungs, Lucius Cornelius, difficult to deal with at any time, but more difficult in your son's case."

  "Why more difficult?"

  "The heart is involved, I fear. We do not quite know what is the significance of the heart, though I believe that it assists the liver. Young Lucius Cornelius's lungs are swollen, and have transmitted some of their fluids to the envelope wrapping up the heart. It is being squashed." Apollodorus Siculus looked frightened; the price he paid for his fame was paid on occasions like this, when he had to tell some august Roman that the patient was beyond the skills of any physician. "The prognosis is grave, Lucius Cornelius. I fear there is nothing I or any other doctor can do."

  Sulla took it well outwardly, and had besides a reasonable streak which told him the physician was completely sincere—that, if he could, he would cure. A good physician, though most were quacks—look at the way he had investigated the death of Piggle-wiggle. But every body was subject to storms of such magnitude the doctors were rendered helpless, despite their lancets, their clysters, their poultices, their potions, their magical herbs. It was luck. And Sulla saw now that his beloved son did not have luck. The goddess Fortune did not care for him.

  Back he went to the bed, pushed the heaped pillows aside and took their place, holding his son within his arms.

  "Oh, tata, that does feel better! Don't leave me!"

  "I won't budge, my son. I love you more than the world."

  For many hours he sat holding his lad up, his cheek on the dulled wet hair, listening to the labored breathing, the staccato gasps which were evidence of that remorseless pain. The boy could not be persuaded to cough anymore, the agony of it was too much to bear, nor could he be persuaded to drink, his lips encrusted with fever sores, his tongue furred and dark. Occasionally he spoke, always to his father, in a voice growing gradually weaker, more mumbling, the words he said ever less lucid, less sensible, until he wandered without logic or reason in a world too strange to comprehend.

  Thirty hours later he died in his father's numbed arms. Not once had Sulla moved, except at the boy's request; he had not eaten or drunk, had not relieved bladder or bowels, yet knew no discomfort whatsoever, so important was it that he be there for his son. It might have been a comfort for the father had Young Sulla acknowledged him at the moment of death, but Young Sulla had moved far from the room where he lay, the arms in which he lay, and died unknowing.

  Everyone feared Lucius Cornelius Sulla. So it was in breathless fear that four physicians loosened Sulla's arms from about his breathless son, helped Sulla to his feet and held him on them, laid the boy out on his bed. But Sulla said or did nothing to inspire this fear; he behaved like the sanest, most admirable man. When he regained the use of his spasmed muscles, he helped them wash the boy and clothe him in the purple-bordered toga of childhood; in December of this year, on the feast of Juventas, he would have become a man. To allow weeping slaves to change the bed, he picked up his son's limp grey form and held it in his arms, then laid him down on the fresh clean sheets, tucked his arms along his sides, put the coins on his eyelids to keep them closed, and slipped the coin into his mouth to pay Charon the price of that last lonely voyage.

  Nor had Aelia moved from the doorway during all those terrible hours; now Sulla took her by the shoulders and guided her to a chair beside the bed, sat her down so she could look at the boy she had reared from his nursery days, and thought of as her own. Cornelia Sulla was there, face frightful from punishment; and Julia, and Gaius Marius, and Aurelia.

  Sulla greeted them like a sane man, accepted their tearful condolences, even smiled a little, and answered their hesitant questions in a firm clear voice.

  "I must bathe and change," he said then. "It's dawn of the day I stand my trial in the treason court. Though my son's death would serve as a legitimate excuse, I will not give Censorinus the satisfaction. Gaius Marius, will you accompany me as soon as I'm ready to go?"

  "Gladly, Lucius Cornelius," said Marius gruffly, wiping the tears from his eyes. He had never admired Sulla more.

  But first Sulla went to his house's modest latrine, and found no one, slave or free, inside it. His bowels loosened at last, he sat alone in that place, with its four shaped seats in the marble bench, listening to the deep sound of running water below, his hands fiddling with the disordered folds of his toga, which he had not thought to remove before settling to that last vigil with his son. His fingers encountered an object, wondering; he drew it forth to look at it in the growing light, only recognizing it from some huge distance, as if it belonged to another life. The emerald quizzing-glass of Censorinus! When he was done and had tidied himself, he turned to face the marble bench, and dropped the priceless thing down into the void. The water ran too loudly to hear its splash.

  As he appeared in the atrium to join Gaius Marius, walk down to the Forum Romanum, some strange agency had given him back every atom of the beauty of his youth, so that he shone, and everyone who saw him gasped.

  He and Gaius Marius trod in silence al
l the way to the Pool of Curtius, where several hundred knights had gathered to offer themselves for jury duty, and the court officials were readying the jars to draw the lots; eighty-one would be chosen, but fifteen would be removed at the request of the prosecution, and fifteen at the request of the defense, leaving fifty-one—twenty-six knights, and twenty-five senators. That extra knight was the price the Senate had paid to put the courts under senatorial presidency.

  Time wore on. The jurors were chosen. And when Censorinus had not appeared, the defense, led by Crassus Orator and Scaevola, was permitted to remove its fifteen jurors. Still Censorinus did not come. At noon, the entire court restless, and now in possession of the knowledge that the defendant had come straight from his only son's deathbed, the President sent a messenger to Censorinus's house to find out where he was. Long moments later, the clerk returned with the news that Censorinus had packed up his portable belongings the day before and left for an unknown destination abroad.

  "This court is dismissed," said the President. "Lucius Cornelius, you have our profound apologies as well as our condolences."

  "I'll walk with you, Lucius Cornelius," said Marius. "An odd situation, this! What happened to him?"

  "Thank you, Gaius Marius, I would prefer to be alone," said Sulla calmly. "As for Censorinus, I imagine he's gone to seek asylum with King Mithridates." There came a hideous grin. "I had a little word with him, you see."

  From the Forum Romanum, Sulla walked swiftly in the direction of the Esquiline Gate. Almost completely covering the Campus Esquilinus outside the Servian Walls lay Rome's necropolis, a veritable city of tombs—some humble, some splendid, most in between—housing the ashes of Rome's inhabitants, citizens and non-citizens, slaves and free, native and foreign.

  On the eastern side of a great crossroads some hundreds of paces from the Servian Walls stood the temple of Venus Libitina, she who ruled the extinction of the life force. Surrounded by a large grove of cypresses, it was a beautiful building, painted a rich green with purple columns, their Ionic capitals picked out in gold and red, and a yellow roof to its portico. The many steps were paved with a deep pink terrazzo, and the pediment portrayed the gods and goddesses of the Underworld in vivid colors; atop the peak of the temple roof was a wonderful gilded statue of Venus Libitina herself, riding in a car drawn by mice, harbingers of death.