The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  So too did Lucius Decumius definitely know. But, more sensitive than Young Caesar's parents, Lucius Decumius understood that it was vital to give Young Caesar hope. Otherwise he was just as likely to fall on the sword he was now forbidden to touch. As Gaius Marius surely knew, Young Caesar was not the type suited to holding a flaminate. The boy was inordinately superstitious, but religion bored him. To be so confined, to be so hedged around with rules and regulations, would kill him. Even if he had to kill himself to escape.

  "I am to be married tomorrow morning before I am inaugurated," said Young Caesar, pulling a face.

  "What, to Cossutia?"

  "No, not her. She's not good enough to be flaminica Dialis, Lucius Decumius. I was only marrying her for her money. As flamen Dialis I have to marry a patrician. So they're going to give me Lucius Cinna's daughter. She's seven."

  "Well, that don't matter either then, do it? Better seven than eighteen, little peacock."

  “I suppose so." The boy folded his lips together, nodded. "You are right, Lucius Decumius. I will find a way!"

  But the events of the next day made that vow seem hollow, as Young Caesar came to understand how brilliantly Gaius Marius had trapped him. Everyone had dreaded the walk from the Subura to the Palatine, but during the previous eighteen hours a massive cleanup had taken place, as Lucius Decumius was able to inform the anxious Caesar when he debated how far around the city's center they ought to walk, not so much for the sake of Young Caesar—who had been exposed to the worst of it already—but for the sake of his mother and his two sisters.

  "Your boy's is not the only wedding this morning, the Bardyaei tell me," said Lucius Decumius. "Gaius Marius brought Young Marius back to Rome last night for his wedding. He don't mind who sees the mess. Except for Young Marius. We can walk across the Forum. The heads is all gone. Blood's washed away. Bodies dumped. As if the poor young fellow don't know what his father's gone and done!"

  Caesar eyed the little man with awe. "Do you actually stand on speaking terms with those terrible men?" he asked.

  "Course I does!" said Lucius Decumius scornfully. "Six of them was—well, is, I suppose—members of my own brotherhood."

  "I see," said Caesar dryly. "Well, let us go, then."

  The wedding ceremony at the house of Lucius Cornelius Cinna was confarreatio, and therefore a union for life. The tiny bride—tiny even for her age—was neither bright nor precocious. Incongruously tricked out in flame and saffron, hung about with wool and talismans, she went through the ceremonies with the animation and enthusiasm of a doll. When the veil was lifted from her face, Young Caesar found it dimpled, flowerlike, and endowed with an enormous pair of soft dark eyes. So, feeling sorry for her, he smiled at her with that conscious charm of his, and was rewarded with a display of the dimples and a gleam of adoration.

  Married at an age when most noble Roman parents had done no more than toy with possible candidates for betrothal, the child newlyweds were then escorted by both families up onto the Capitol and into the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, whose statue smiled down on them fatuously.

  There were other newlyweds present. Cinnilla's older sister, who was properly Cornelia Cinna, had been hastily married the day before to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. The haste was not due to the usual reason. Rather, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus thought it prudent to safeguard his head by marrying Gaius Marius's colleague's daughter, to whom he was promised anyway. Young Marius, arriving after dark the day before, at dawn had married Scaevola Pontifex Maximus's daughter, called Mucia Tertia to distinguish her from her two elderly cousins. Neither couple looked in the least happy, but particularly was this true of Young Marius and Mucia Tertia, who had never met and would not have an opportunity to consummate their union, as Young Marius had been ordered back to duty the moment the last of the day's formalities was over.

  Of course Young Marius knew of his father's atrocities, and had expected to know their extent when he reached Rome. Marius saw him at his camp in the Forum, a very brief interview.

  "Report to the house of Quintus Mucius Scaevola at dawn for your wedding," he was told. "Sorry I won't be there, too busy. You and your wife will attend the inauguration of the new flamen Dialis—that's a very big occasion, they tell me—and then go to the feast at the house of the new flamen Dialis afterward. The moment that's finished, you go back to duty in Etruria."

  "What, don't I get an opportunity to consummate my marriage?" asked Young Marius, trying to be light.

  "Sorry, my son, that will have to wait until things are tidier," said Marius. "Straight back to work!"

  Something in the old man's face made him hesitate to ask the question he had to ask; Young Marius drew in a breath and asked it. "Father, may I go now to see my mother? May I sleep there?"

  Grief, pain, anguish; all three flared in Gaius Marius's eyes. His lips quivered. Then he said, "Yes," and turned away.

  The moment in which he met his mother was the most awful of all Young Marius's life. Her eyes! How old she looked! How beaten. How sad. She was completely closed in upon herself, and reluctant to discuss what had happened.

  "I want to know, Mama! What did he do?"

  "What no man does in his right mind, little Gaius."

  "I have known he was mad since Africa, but I didn't know how bad it was. Oh, Mama, how can we repair the damage?"

  "We cannot." She lifted one hand to her head, frowned. "My son, let us not speak of it!" She wet her lips. "How does he look?"

  "You mean it's true?"

  "What is true?"

  "That you haven't seen him at all?"

  "I haven't seen him at all, little Gaius. I never will again."

  And the way she said it, Young Marius didn't know whether she meant it from her own side, or divined it from a presentiment of the future, or thought that was how his father wanted it.

  "He looks unwell, Mama. Not himself. He says he won't be at my wedding. Will you come?"

  "Yes, little Gaius, I'll come."

  After the wedding—what an interesting-looking girl Mucia Tertia was!—Julia accompanied the party to Young Caesar's ceremonies in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus because Gaius Marius was not present. They had found the city scrubbed and polished, so Young Marius still did not know the extent of his father's atrocities. And being the Great Man's son, could not ask a soul.

  The rituals in the temple were enormously long and unbelievably boring. Stripped to his ungirt tunic, Young Caesar was invested with the garments of his new office—the hideously uncomfortable and stuffy circular cape made of two layers of heavy wool widely striped in red and purple, the close-fitting spiked ivory helmet with its impaled disc of wool, the special shoes without knot or buckle. How could he possibly endure to wear all this every single day of his life? Used to feeling his waist cinched with a neat leather belt Lucius Decumius had given him together with a beautiful little dagger in a sheath attached to the belt, Young Caesar's midriff felt peculiar without it, and the ivory helmet—made for a man with a much smaller head—did not come down to encircle his ears as it should, but sat perched ridiculously atop his ivory-colored hair. That was all right, Scaevola Pontifex Maximus assured him; Gaius Marius was donating him a new apex, and the maker would come round to his mother's apartment to measure his head for it on the morrow.

  When the boy set eyes on his Aunt Julia, his heart smote him. Now, while the various priests droned on and on and on, he watched her fixedly, willing her to look at him. She could feel that will, of course, but she would not look. Suddenly she was so much older than her forty years; all her beauty retreated before a wall of worry she couldn't see over or around. But at the end of the ceremonies, when everybody clustered round to greet the new flamen Dialis and his doll like flaminica, Young Caesar saw Julia's eyes at last, and wished he had not. She kissed him on the lips as she always did, and leaned her head onto his shoulder to weep a little.

  "I am so sorry, Young Caesar," she whispered. "An unkinder thing he could not have done. He
is so busy hurting everyone, even those he ought not to hurt. But he isn't himself, please see that!"

  "I do see that, Aunt Julia," the boy said too softly for anyone else to hear. "Don't worry about me. I will deal with everything."

  Finally, it being sunset, the departures were permitted. The new flamen Dialis—carrying his too-small apex but clad in his suffocating laena, his shoes slopping because they could not be made to fit well by laces or straps—walked home with his parents, his unusually solemn sisters, his Aunt Julia, and Young Marius and his bride. Cinnilla the new flaminica Dialis—now also robed without knot or buckle in stifling heavy wool—went home with her parents, her brother, her sister Cornelia Cinna, and Gnaeus Ahenobarbus.

  "So Cinnilla will remain with her own family until she's eighteen," said Aurelia brightly to Julia, intentionally making small talk as she got everyone settled in the dining room to enjoy a late and festive dinner. "Eleven years into the future! At that age it seems such a long time. At my age, it is too short."

  "Yes, I agree," said Julia colorlessly, sitting down between Mucia Tertia and Aurelia.

  "What a lot of weddings!" said Caesar cheerfully, terribly aware of his sister's blighted face. He was reclining on the lectus medius in the host's normal place, and had given the place of honor alongside him to the new flamen Dialis, who had never been allowed to recline in his life, and now found it as strange and uncomfortable as everything else was on this tumultuous day.

  "Why didn't Gaius Marius come?" asked Aurelia tactlessly.

  Julia flushed, shrugged. "He's too busy."

  Wishing she could bite off her tongue, Aurelia subsided without commenting, and looked rather wildly toward her husband for rescue. But rescue didn't come; instead, Young Caesar made things worse.

  "Rubbish! Gaius Marius didn't come because he didn't dare come," said the new flamen Dialis, suddenly sitting bolt upright on the couch and removing his laena, which was dumped unceremoniously on the floor beside the special shoes. "There, that's better. The wretched thing! I hate it, I hate it!"

  Seizing upon this as a way out of her own dilemma, Aurelia frowned at her son. "Don't be impious," she said.

  "Even if I speak the truth?" asked Young Caesar, subsiding onto his left elbow and looking defiant.

  At that moment the first course came in—crusty white bread, olives, eggs, celery, several lettuce salads.

  Finding himself very hungry—the rituals had permitted him no food—the new flamen Dialis reached out for the bread.

  "Don't!" said Aurelia sharply, color fading in fear.

  The lad froze, staring at her. "Why not?" he asked.

  "You are forbidden to touch wheaten or leavened bread," said his mother. "Here is your bread now."

  And in came a platter which was set in front of the new flamen Dialis; a platter containing some thin, flat, utterly unappetizing slabs of a grey-hued substance.

  "What is it?" Young Caesar asked, gazing at it with loathing. "Mola salsa ?''

  "Mola salsa is made from spelt, which is wheat," said Aurelia, knowing very well that he knew it. "This is barley."

  "Unleavened barley bread," said Young Caesar tonelessly. "Even Egyptian peasants live better than this! I think I will eat ordinary bread. This stuff would make me sick."

  "Young Caesar, this is the day of your inauguration," said the father. "The omens were auspicious. You are now the flamen Dialis. On this day above all other days, everything must be scrupulously observed. You are Rome's direct link to the Great God. Whatever you do affects Rome's relations with the Great God. You're hungry, I know. And it is pretty awful stuff, I agree. But you cannot think of self ahead of Rome from this day forward. Eat your own bread.''

  The boy's eyes traveled from face to face. He drew a breath, and said what had to be said. No adult could say it, they had too many years and too many fears for this and that and everything.

  "This is not a time for rejoicing. How can any of us feel glad? How can I feel glad?" He reached out for the fresh crisp white bread, took a piece, broke it, dipped it in olive oil, and thrust some into his mouth. "No one bothered to ask me seriously whether I wanted this unmanly job," he said, chewing with relish. "Oh yes, Gaius Marius asked me three times, I know! But what choice did I have, tell me that? The answer is, none. Gaius Marius is mad. We all know that, though we don't say it openly among ourselves as dinnertime conversation. He did this to me deliberately, and his reasons were not pious, not concerned with the welfare of Rome, religious or otherwise.'' He swallowed the bread. "I am not yet a man. Until I am, I will not wear that frightful gear. I will put on my belt and my toga praetexta and decently comfortable footwear. I will eat whatever I like. I will go to the Campus Martius to perform my drills, practise my swordplay, ride my horse, handle my shield, throw my pilum. When I am a man and my bride is my wife, we shall see. Until then, I will not act as flamen Dialis inside the bosom of my family or when it interferes with the normal duties of a noble Roman boy."

  Complete silence followed this declaration of independence. The mature members of the family tried to find the right response, feeling for the first time some of the helplessness the crippled, incapacitated Gaius Marius had felt when he came up against that will of iron. What could one do? wondered the father, who shrank from locking the boy in his sleeping cubicle until he changed his mind, for he did not think the treatment would work. More determined by far, Aurelia seriously contemplated the same course of action, but knew much better than her husband that it would not work. The wife and son of the man who had generated all this unhappiness were too aware of the truth to be angry, too aware of their own inability to change things to be righteous. Mucia Tertia, awed at the size and good looks of her new husband, unused to a family circle which spoke frankly, gazed at her knees. And Young Caesar's sisters, older than he and therefore used to him since his infancy, looked at each other ruefully.

  Julia broke the silence by saying peacefully, "I think you are quite right, Young Caesar. At half past thirteen, the most sensible things you can do are to eat good food and keep exercising vigorously. After all, Rome may need your health and skills one day, even if you are the flamen Dialis. Look at poor old Lucius Merula. I'm sure he never expected to have to act as consul. But when he had to, he did. No one deemed him less the priest of Jupiter, or impious."

  The senior in age among the women, Julia was allowed to have her way—if for no other reason that it presented the boy's parents with an attitude which prevented a permanent breach between them and their difficult son.

  Young Caesar ate wheaten leavened bread and eggs and olives and chicken until his hunger pangs vanished, then patted his belly, replete. He was not a poor eater, but food interested him little, and he knew perfectly well that he could have gone without the crusty white bread, could have satisfied himself with the other. But it was better that his family understood from the beginning how he felt about his new career, and how he intended to approach it. If Aunt Julia and Young Marius were rendered unhappy and guilty by his words, that was too bad. Vital to the well-being of Rome the priest of Jupiter might be, yet the appointment was not of his choosing, and Young Caesar knew in his heart that the Great God had other things for him to do than sweep out the temple.

  Dietary crisis aside, declaration of independence aside, it was a bitter meal. So much unsaid, so much which had to remain unsaid. For everybody's sake. Perhaps Young Caesar's candidness had saved the dinner; it drew the focus of everyone's thoughts away from the atrocities of Gaius Marius, the madness of Gaius Marius.

  "I'm glad today is over," said Aurelia to Caesar as they went to their bedroom.

  "I never want another such," said Caesar with feeling.

  Before she removed her clothes Aurelia sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at her husband. He seemed fatigued—but then, he always did. How old was he? Almost forty-five. The consulship was passing him by, and he was no Marius, no Sulla. Gazing at him now, Aurelia knew suddenly that he would never be consul. A great deal of
the blame for that, she thought, must be laid at my feet. If he had a less busy and independent wife, he would have spent more time at home this last decade, and made more of a reputation for himself in the Forum. He's not a fighter, my husband. And how can he go to a madman to ask for the funds to mount a serious campaign to be elected consul? He won't do it. Not from fear. From pride. The money is sticky with blood now. No decent man would want to use it. And he is the most decent of men, my husband.

  "Gaius Julius," she said, "what can we do about our son and his flaminate? He hates it so!"

  "Understandably. However," he said with a sigh, "I will never be consul now. And that means he would have a very difficult time of it becoming consul himself. With this war in Italy, our money has dwindled. You may as well say I've lost the thousand iugera of land I bought in Lucania because it was so cheap. It's too far from a town ever to be safe, I suspect. After Gaius Norbanus turned the Lucanians back from Sicily last year, the insurgents have gone to earth in places like my land. And Rome will not have the time, the men or the money to chase them out, even in our son's lifetime. So all that remains is my original endowment, the six hundred iugera Gaius Marius bought for me near Bovillae. Enough for the back benches of the Senate, not the cursus honorum. You might say Gaius Marius took the land back again. His troops have ruined it in these last months while they roamed Latium.''

  "I know," said Aurelia sadly. "Our poor son will have to be content with his flaminate, won't he?"

  "I fear so."

  "He's so convinced Gaius Marius did it on purpose!"

  "Oh, I think he did," said Caesar. "I was there in the Forum. He was—indecently pleased with himself."

  "Then my son has received scant thanks for all the time he gave Gaius Marius after his second stroke."

  "Gaius Marius has no gratitude left. What frightened me was the fear in Lucius Cinna. He told me that no one was safe, even Julia and Young Marius. After seeing Gaius Marius, I believe him."