The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  "Yes, I understand that," said Cinna, patting the boy paternally on his shoulder; he was too tall to pat on the head. "Now I had better take Gaius Marius to see his son." He took a spitting torch from its stand and walked out toward Marius's looming bulk. "Your son is this way, Gaius Marius. For the sake of appearances I have confined him to a tent on his own until the hearing. He is under guard and is allowed to have congress with nobody."

  "You realize, of course, that your hearing is not a final one," said Marius as they passed between two rows of tents. "If its outcome is unfavorable toward my son, I will insist, that he be tried by his peers in Rome."

  "Quite so," said Cinna colorlessly.

  When father and son confronted each other, Young Marius stared at Marius a little wildly, but looked to be in control of himself. Until he took in Lucius Decumius and Young Caesar.

  "What have you got this sorry lot along for?" he demanded.

  "Because I couldn't make the journey alone," said Marius, nodded a brusque dismissal to Cinna, and allowed himself to be lowered into the small tent's only chair. "So, my son, your temper has got you into boiling water at last," he said, not sounding very sympathetic or interested in hearing what his son had to say.

  Young Marius gazed at him in apparent bewilderment, seeming to search for some signal his father was not semaphoring. Then he heaved a sobbing sigh and said, "I didn't do it!"

  "Good," said Marius cordially. "Stick to that, Young Marius, and all will be well."

  "Will it, Father? How can it? Publius Claudius will swear I did do it."

  Marius rose suddenly, a bitterly disappointed man. "If you maintain your innocence, my son, I can promise you that nothing will happen to you. Nothing at all."

  Relief spread over Young Marius's face; he thought he was receiving the signal. "You're going to fix it, aren't you?"

  "I can fix many things, Gaius Marius Junior, but not an official army hearing conducted by a man of honor," said Marius wearily. "Any fixing will have to be for your trial in Rome. Now follow my example, and sleep. I'll see you late tomorrow afternoon."

  "Not until then? Isn't the hearing tomorrow?"

  "Not until then. The hearing is postponed a day because I have to have my proper exercise—otherwise I'll never be fit enough to stand for consul a seventh time." He turned in the tent entrance to smile at his son with grotesque mockery. "I have to ride, this sorry lot tell me. And I will be presented to your accuser. But not to persuade him to change his story, my son. I have been forbidden any private congress with him." He caught his breath. "I, Gaius Marius, to be instructed by a mere praetor as to the proper way to conduct myself! I can forgive you for killing a military bungler about to permit his army to be annihilated, Young Marius, but I cannot forgive you for putting me in the position of a potential panderer!"

  When the riding party assembled the following afternoon, Gaius Marius was punctiliously correct in his manner toward Publius Claudius Pulcher, a dark and rather hangdog-looking young man who obviously wished he was anywhere but where he was. As the men moved out Marius fell in alongside Cinna, with Cinna's legate Marcus Caecilius Cornutus riding behind them with Young Caesar, and the cadets bringing up the rear. After he established the fact that none of the others knew the area very well, Lucius Decumius took the lead.

  "There's a magnificent view of Rome about a mile away," he said, "just the right distance for Gaius Marius to ride."

  "How do you know Tibur so well?" asked Marius.

  "My mother's father came from Tibur," said the leader of the expedition as its members strung themselves out along a narrow path winding steadily and steeply upward.

  "I wouldn't have thought you had a rural bone in your whole disreputable body, Lucius Decumius."

  "Actually I don't, Gaius Marius," said Decumius cheerfully over his shoulder. "But you knows what women are like! My mother used to drag us up here every summer."

  The day was fine and the sun hot, but a cool breeze blew in the riders' faces and they could hear the tumbling Anio in its gorge, now louder, now dying to a whisper. Lucius Decumius set a slow pace and the time went by almost imperceptibly, only Marius's evident enjoyment making the rest of the party feel this activity was at all worthwhile. Deeming the ordeal of meeting Young Marius's father intolerable before it had actually happened, Publius Claudius Pulcher gradually relaxed enough to converse with the other two cadets, while Cinna, escorting Marius, wondered if Marius would try to make overtures to his son's accuser. For that, Cinna was convinced, was the true purpose of this ride. A father himself, he knew he would have tried every ploy he could think of if his son ever got into such trouble.

  "There!" said Lucius Decumius proudly, reining his steed back out of the way so that the rest of the party could precede him. "A view worth the ride, isn't it?"

  It was indeed. The riders found themselves on a small shelf in the side of a mountain, at a place where some massive cataclysm had pared a great slice of the flank away and a cliff fell sheer to the plains far below. They could trace the hurrying, white-flecked waters of the Anio all the way to its confluence with the Tiber, a blue and snaky stream coming down from the north. And there beyond the point where the two rivers joined lay Rome, a vivid sprawl of colored paints and brick-red roofs, the statues atop her temples glittering, and the clear air permitting even a glimpse of the Tuscan Sea on the knifelike edge of the horizon.

  "We're much higher than Tibur here," said Lucius Decumius from behind them; he slid off his horse.

  "How minute the city is from so far away!" said Cinna in wonder.

  Everyone was pressing forward to see except Lucius Decumius, and the riders intermingled. Determined Marius was not going to get a chance to talk to Publius Claudius, Cinna pushed both of their mounts away as the cadets approached.

  "Oh, look!" cried Young Caesar, kicking his horse hard when it balked. "There's the Anio aqueduct! Isn't it like a toy? And isn't it beautiful?" He directed his questions at Publius Claudius, who seemed quite as entranced by the view as Young Caesar, and just as eager to sample its delights.

  The two of them edged as close to the brink as their horses were prepared to take them and gazed out to Rome, smiling at each other after their eyes were sated.

  Since it truly was a magnificent view, the whole party save for Lucius Decumius directed all their attention forward. Thus no one noticed Lucius Decumius withdraw a small, Y-shaped object from the purse tethered to the belt of his tunic, nor saw him slip a wicked little metal spike into a slot in the middle of a band of soft, stretchy kid connected between the open ends of the Y-shaped piece of wood. As casually and openly as he might have yawned or scratched himself, he raised the wooden object to eye level, stretched the kid to its utmost, sighted carefully, and let the leather go.

  Publius Claudius's horse screamed, reared up, its front legs flailing; Publius Claudius clutched instinctively at its mane to stay on its back. Oblivious to his own danger, Young Caesar came forward of his saddle onto his horse's neck and grabbed for the other animal's bridle. It all happened so quickly that no one afterward could be sure of more than one glaring fact—that Young Caesar acted with a cool bravery far beyond his years. His mount panicked and reared too, cannoned broadside into Publius Claudius, and found its front legs coming down on nothing. Both horses and both riders went over the cliff, but somehow Young Caesar, even in the act of falling, had balanced upright on the tilting edge of his saddle and leaped for the shelf. He landed more on it than off it and scrabbled like a cat to safety.

  Everyone was clustered on the ground at the brink of the precipice, faces white, eyes goggling, only concerned at first to see that Young Caesar was all right. Then, Young Caesar in the lead (breathing more easily than any of the rest), they looked over the edge. There far below lay the disjointed heaps of two horses. And Publius Claudius Pulcher. A silence fell. Straining to hear a cry for help, they heard only the sighing of the wind. Nothing moved, even a hawk in midair.

  "Here, you come away!" said
a new voice. Lucius Decumius took Young Caesar by the shoulder and yanked him further away from the cliff. On his knees, he shakily patted the boy all over to make sure there were no broken bones. "Why did you have to do that?" he whispered too softly for anyone but Young Caesar to hear.

  "I had to make it look convincing," came an answering whisper. "For a moment I didn't think his horse was going to go. It was best to be sure. I knew I'd be safe."

  "How did you know what I was going to do? You weren't even looking my way!"

  Young Caesar heaved a sigh of exasperation. "Oh, Lucius Decumius! I know you! And I knew why Gaius Marius sent for you the instant he did. Personally I don't care much what happens to my cousin, but I won't have Gaius Marius and our own family disgraced. Rumor is one thing. A witness is quite another.''

  Cheek against the bright gold hair, Lucius Decumius let his eyes close in an exasperation easily the equal of Young Caesar's. "But you risked your life!"

  "Don't worry about my life. I can look after it. When I let it go, it will be because I have no further use for it." The boy extricated himself from Lucius Decumius's embrace and went to make sure that Gaius Marius was all right.

  Shaken and confused, Lucius Cornelius Cinna poured wine for himself and Gaius Marius the moment they reached his tent. Lucius Decumius had taken Young Caesar off to fish in the Anio cascades, and the rest of the party was regrouping to form another party—one deputed to bring the remains of the cadet Publius Claudius Pulcher back for his own funeral.

  "I must say that as far as my son and I are concerned, that was a very timely accident," said Marius bluntly, taking a deep draft of his wine. "Without Publius Claudius you have no case, my friend."

  "It was an accident," said Cinna in the tones of a man most preoccupied with convincing himself. "It couldn't have been anything except an accident!"

  “Quite right. It couldn't have been anything else. I nearly lost a better boy than my son."

  "I didn't think the lad had a hope."

  "I think that particular lad is hope personified," said Marius with a purr in his voice. "I'll have to keep my eye on him in the future. Or he'll be eclipsing me."

  "Oh, what a mess!" sighed Cinna.

  "Not an auspicious omen for a man just promoted to the general's tent, I agree," said Marius affably.

  "I shall acquit myself better than Lucius Cato did!"

  Marius grinned. "It would be hard to do worse. However, I do sincerely think you will acquit yourself well, Lucius Cinna. And I am very grateful for your forbearance. Very grateful!"

  Somewhere in the back of his mind Cinna could hear the tinkling cascade of coins—or was it the Anio, where that extraordinary boy was happily fishing as if nothing ever banished his composure?

  "What is one's first duty, Gaius Marius?" Cinna asked suddenly.

  "One's first duty, Lucius Cinna, is to one's family."

  "Not to Rome?"

  "What else is our Rome, than her families?"

  "Yes .. . Yes, I suppose that's true. And those of us who are born to it—or have risen to find our children born to it—must strive to ensure that our families remain in a position to rule."

  "Quite so," said Gaius Marius.

  VII (89-88 B.C.)

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  1

  Once Lucius Cornelius Sulla had cast his spell (as Young Caesar had put it) upon Cato the Consul and banished him to fight the Marsi, Sulla proceeded to take steps to recover all Rome's territories from the Italians. Though officially he still ranked as a legate, he was now in effect the commander-in-chief of the southern theater, and he knew there would be no interference from Senate or consuls—provided, that is, he produced results. Italia was tired; one of its two leaders, the Marsian Silo, might even have contemplated surrender were it not for the other one; Gaius Papius Mutilus the Samnite, Sulla knew, would never give up; therefore he had to be shown that his cause was lost.

  Sulla's initial move was as secret as it was extraordinary, but he had the right man for a job he couldn't do himself. If his scheme succeeded, it would spell the beginning of the end for the Samnites and their allies of the south. Without telling Catulus Caesar in Capua why he was detaching the two best legions from Campanian service, Sulla loaded then at night aboard a fleet of transports moored in Puteoli harbor.

  Their commander was his legate Gaius Cosconius, whose orders were explicit. He was to sail with these two legions right around the foot of the peninsula and land on the eastern coast somewhere near Apenestae, in Apulia. The first third of the voyage—down the west coast—didn't need to be out of sight of land, as any observer in Lucania might suppose the fleet to be going to Sicily, where there were rumors of uprisings. During the middle third the fleet could hug the coast and put in to revictual in places like Croton and Tarentum and Brundisium, where the tale would be that they were going to put down trouble in Asia Minor—a tale the troops themselves had been given to believe. And when the fleet sailed out of Brundisium on the last third of the voyage—the shortest third—all Brundisium had to be convinced it was on its way across the Adriatic to Apollonia in western Macedonia.

  "Beyond Brundisium," said Sulla to Cosconius, "you dare not make a landfall until you reach your final destination. The decision as to exactly where you come ashore I leave to you. Just pick a quiet place, and don't strike until you're absolutely ready. Your task is to free up the Via Minucia south of Larinum and the Via Appia south of Ausculum Apulium. After that, concentrate on eastern Samnium. By the time you're doing that, I should be driving east to meet you,"

  Excited because he had been singled out for this vital mission and confident he and his men were formed of the right stuff to make a success of it, Cosconius concealed his elation and listened gravely.

  "Remember, Gaius Cosconius, take your time while you're at sea," Sulla cautioned. "I want no more than twenty-five miles a day from you on most days. It's now the end of March. You must land somewhere to the south of Apenestae fifty days hence. Land too soon, and I won't have time to complete my half of the pincer. I need these fifty days to take back all the ports on Crater Bay and drive Mutilus out of western Campania. Then I can move east— but not until then."

  "Since successful passage around the foot of Italy is very rare, Lucius Cornelius, I'm glad to have fifty days," said Cosconius.

  "If you have to row, then row," said Sulla.

  "I will be where I am supposed to be in fifty days. You can count on it, Lucius Cornelius."

  "Without the loss of a man, let alone a ship."

  "Every ship has a fine captain and an even finer pilot, and the logistics of the voyage encompass every possibility any of us can think of. I won't let you down. We'll get to Brundisium as quickly as we can and we'll wait there as long as we have to—not one day more, nor one day less," said Cosconius.

  "Good! And remember one thing, Gaius Cosconius— your most reliable ally is Fortune. Offer to her every single day. If she loves you as much as she loves me, all will go well."

  The fleet bearing Cosconius and his two crack legions left Puteoli the next day to brave the elements and lean most heavily upon one particular element—luck. No sooner had it gone than Sulla returned to Capua and marched then for Pompeii. This was to be a combined land and sea attack, as Pompeii had superb port facilities on the Sarnus near its mouth; Sulla intended to bombard the city with flaming missiles launched from his ships anchored in the river.

  One doubt huddled in the back of his mind, though it was nothing he could rectify; his flotilla was under the command of a man he neither liked nor trusted to follow orders—none other than Aulus Postumius Albinus. Twenty years before, it had been the same Aulus Postumius Albinus who had provoked the war against King Jugurtha of Numidia. And he hadn't changed.

  Sent orders from Sulla to bring up his ships from Neapolis to Pompeii, Aulus Albinus decided he should first let his crews and his marines know who was in charge—and what would happen to them if they didn't jump smartly to attention whenever he snap
ped his fingers. But the crews and the marines were all of Campanian Greek descent, and found the things Aulus Albinus said to them intolerable insults. Like Cato the Consul, he was buried under a storm of missiles—but these were stones, not clods of earth. Aulus Postumius Albinus died.

  Fortunately Sulla wasn't far down the road when news of the murder was brought to him; leaving his troops to continue their march under the command of Titus Didius, Sulla rode on his mule to Neapolis, there to meet the leaders of the mutiny. With him he took Metellus Pius the Piglet, his other legate. Calm unimpaired, he listened to passionate reasons and excuses from the mutineers, then said coldly,

  "I am afraid you are going to have to be the best sailors and marines in the history of Roman naval warfare. Otherwise, how can I forget you murdered Aulus Albinus?"

  He then appointed Publius Gabinius admiral of the fleet, and that was the end of the mutiny.

  Metellus Pius the Piglet held his tongue until he and Sulla were on their way to rejoin the army, at which time his burning question found voice: "Lucius Cornelius, do you not intend to give them any kind of punishment?"

  Sulla deliberately tipped the brim of his hat back from his brow to show the Piglet a pair of coolly amused eyes. "No, Quintus Caecilius, I do not."

  "You should have stripped them of their citizenship and then flogged them!"

  "Yes, that is what most commanders would have done— more fool they. However, since you are undoubtedly one such foolish commander, I shall explain why I acted as I did. You ought to be able to see it for yourself, you know."

  Holding up his right hand, Sulla told off the points one by one. "First of all, we can't afford to lose those men. They trained under Otacilius, and they're experienced. Secondly, I admire their eminent good sense in getting rid of a man who would have led them very poorly—and perhaps would have led them to their deaths. Three, I didn't want Aulus Albinus! But he's a consular and he couldn't be passed over or ignored."