The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  Caesar had removed his clothes, and Aurelia saw with faint alarm that he had lost weight; his ribs and hipbones were showing, his thighs were farther apart.

  "Gaius Julius, are you well?" she asked abruptly.

  He looked surprised. "I think so! A little tired, perhaps, but not ill. It's probably that sojourn in Ariminum. After three years of Pompey Strabo's marching up and down, there's very little left to feed legions with anywhere in Umbria or Picenum. So we had short commons, Marcus Gratidianus and I, and if one cannot feed the men well, one cannot eat well oneself. I seemed to spend most of my time riding all over the place looking for supplies."

  "Then I shall feed you nothing but the very best food," she said, one of her rare smiles lighting up her drawn face. "Oh, I wish I thought things were going to get better! But I have a horrible feeling they're going to get worse." She stood up and began to divest herself of her gown.

  "I share your feeling, meum mel," he said, sitting on his side of the bed and swinging his legs onto it. Sighing luxuriously, he tucked his hands behind his head on the pillow, and smiled. "However, while we live at all, this is one thing cannot be taken from us."

  She crawled in beside him and snuggled her face into his shoulder; his left arm came down and encircled her. "A very nice thing," she said gruffly. "I love you, Gaius Julius."

  * * *

  When the sixth day of Gaius Marius's seventh consulship dawned, he had his tribune of the plebs Publius Popillius Laenas convene yet another Plebeian Assembly. Only Marius's Bardyaei were present in the well of the Comitia to hear the proceedings. For almost two days they had been under orders to behave, had had to clean the city and disappear from sight. But Young Marius was gone to Etruria, and the rostra was bristling again with all those heads. Only three people stood on the rostra—Marius himself, Popillius Laenas, and a prisoner cast in chains.

  "This man," shouted Marius, "tried to procure my death! When I—old and infirm!—was fleeing from Italy, the town of Minturnae gave me solace. Until a troop of hired assassins forced the magistrates of Minturnae to order my execution. Do you see my good friend Burgundus? It was Burgundus deputed to strangle me as I lay in a cell beneath the Minturnaean capitol! All alone and covered in mud. Naked! I, Gaius Marius! The greatest man in the history of Rome! The greatest man Rome will ever produce! A greater man than Alexander of Macedon! Great, great, great!" He ran down, looked bewildered, sought for memory, then grinned. "Burgundus refused to strangle me. And, taking their example from a simple German slave, the whole town of Minturnae refused to see me killed. But before the hired assassins—a paltry lot, they wouldn't even do the deed themselves!—left Minturnae, I asked their leader who had hired them. 'Sextus Lucilius,' he said."

  Marius grinned again, spread his feet and stamped them in what apparently he fancied was a little dance. "When I became consul for the seventh time—what other man has been consul of Rome seven times?—it pleased me to allow Sextus Lucilius to think no one knew he hired those men. For five days he was foolish enough to remain in Rome, deeming himself safe. But this morning before it was light and he was out of his bed, I sent my lictors to arrest him. The charge is treason. He tried to procure the death of Gaius Marius!"

  No trial was ever shorter, no vote was ever taken more cavalierly; without counsel, without witnesses, without due form and procedure, the Bardyaei in the well of the Comitia pronounced Sextus Lucilius guilty of treason. Then they voted to have him cast down from the Tarpeian Rock.

  "Burgundus, I give the task of casting this man from the rock to you," said Marius to his hulking servant.

  "I will do so gladly, Gaius Marius," rumbled Burgundus.

  The whole assemblage then moved to a better place from which to view the execution; Marius himself, however, remained on the rostra with Popillius Laenas, its height affording it a superb outlook toward the Velabrum. Sextus Lucilius, who had said nothing in his defense nor allowed any expression on his face save contempt, went to his death gallantly. When Burgundus, a great golden glitter in the distance, led Lucilius to the end of the Tarpeian overhang, he didn't wait to be picked up and tossed away; instead, he leaped of his own accord and almost brought the German down as well, for Burgundus had not let go of his chains.

  This defiant independence and the risk to Burgundus angered Marius terribly; dark red in the face, he choked and spluttered, began to roar his outrage at the dismayed Popillius Laenas.

  The weak little light still illuminating his mind was snuffed out in a torrent of blood. Gaius Marius fell to the floor of the rostra as if poleaxed, lictors clustering about him, Popillius Laenas calling frantically for a stretcher or a litter. And all those heads of old rivals, old enemies, ringed Marius's inert body round, teeth beginning to show in the skull's grin because the birds had feasted.

  Cinna, Carbo, Marcus Gratidianus, Magius, and Vergilius came down from the Senate steps at a run, displacing the lictors as they gathered about the fallen form of Gaius Marius.

  "He's still breathing," said his adopted nephew, Gratidianus.

  "Too bad," said Carbo under his breath.

  "Get him home," said Cinna.

  By this time the members of Marius's slave bodyguard had learned of the disaster and had crowded round the base of the rostra, all weeping, some wailing outlandishly.

  Cinna turned to his own chief lictor. "Send to the Campus Martius and summon Quintus Sertorius here to me urgently," he said. "You may tell him what has happened."

  While Marius's lictors carried him off on a stretcher and the Bardyaei followed up the hill, still wailing, Cinna, Carbo, Marius Gratidianus, Magius, Vergilius and Popillius Laenas came down off the rostra and waited at its base for Quintus Sertorius; they sat on the top tier of the Comitia well, trying to regain their senses.

  "I can't believe he's still alive!" said Cinna in wonder.

  "I think he'd get up and walk if someone stuck two feet of good Roman sword under his ribs," said Vergilius, scowling.

  "What do you intend to do, Lucius Cinna?" asked Marius's adopted nephew, who agreed with everyone's attitude but could not admit it, and so preferred to change the subject.

  "I'm not sure," said Cinna, frowning. "That's why I'm waiting for Quintus Sertorius. I value his counsel."

  An hour later Sertorius arrived.

  "It's the best thing could have happened," he said to all of them, but particularly to Marius Gratidianus. "Don't feel disloyal, Marcus Marius. You're adopted, you have less Marian blood in you than I do. But, Marian though my mother is, I can say it without fear or guilt. His exile drove him mad. He is not the Gaius Marius we used to know."

  "What should we do, Quintus Sertorius?" asked Cinna.

  Sertorius looked astonished. "About what? You are the consul, Lucius Cinna! It's up to you to say, not to me."

  Flushing scarlet, Cinna waved his hand. "About the duties of the consul, Quintus Sertorius, I am in no doubt!" he snapped. "What I called you here for was to ask you how best we can rid ourselves of the Bardyaei."

  "Oh, I see," said Sertorius slowly. He was still wearing a bandage about his left eye, but the discharge seemed to have dried up, and he looked comfortable enough with his handicap.

  "Until the Bardyaei are disbanded, Rome still belongs to Marius," said Cinna. "The thing is, I doubt they'll want to be disbanded. They've had a taste of terrorizing a great city. Why should they stop because Gaius Marius is incapacitated?"

  "They can be stopped," said Sertorius, smiling nastily. "I can kill them."

  Carbo looked overjoyed. "Good!" he said. "I'll go and fetch whatever men are left across the river."

  "No, no!" cried Cinna, horrified. "Another battle in the streets of Rome? We don't dare after the past six days!"

  "I know what to do!" said Sertorius, impatient at these silly interruptions. "Lucius Cinna, tomorrow at dawn you must summon the leaders of the Bardyaei to you here at the rostra. You must tell them that even in extremis Gaius Marius thought of them, and gave you the money to pay them. That wi
ll mean you must be seen to enter Gaius Marius's house today, and stay there long enough to make it look as if you could have talked to him."

  "Why do I need to go to his house?" asked Cinna, shrinking at the thought.

  “Because the Bardyaei will spend the whole of today and tonight in the street outside Gaius Marius's door, waiting for news."

  "Yes, of course they will," said Cinna. "I'm sorry, Quintus Sertorius, I'm not thinking very well. What then?"

  "Tell the leaders that you have arranged for the whole of the Bardyaei to receive their pay at the Villa Publica on the Campus Martius at the second hour of day," said Sertorius, showing his teeth. "I'll be waiting with my men. And that will truly be the end of Gaius Marius's reign of terror."

  When Gaius Marius was carried into his house Julia looked down at him with terrible grief, infinite compassion. He lay with eyes closed, breathing stertorously.

  "It is the end," she said to his lictors. "Go home, good servants of the People. I will see to him now."

  She bathed him herself, shaved a six-day stubble from his cheeks and chin, clothed him in a fresh white tunic with the help of Strophantes, and had him put into his bed. She didn't weep.

  "Send for my son and for the whole family," she said to the steward when Marius was ready. "He will not die for some time, but he will die." Sitting in a chair beside the Great Man's bed, she gave Strophantes further instructions against the background horror of that snoring, bubbling respiration—the guest chambers were to be readied, sufficient food was to be prepared, the house must look its best. And Strophantes should send for the best undertaker. "I do not know a single name!" she said, finding that strange. "In all the time I have been married to Gaius Marius, the only death in this house was that of our little second son, and Grandfather Caesar was still alive, so he looked after things."

  "Perhaps he will recover, domina," said the weeping steward, grown middle-aged in Gaius Marius's service.

  Julia shook her head. "No, Strophantes, he will not."

  Her brother Gaius Julius Caesar, his wife, Aurelia, their son, Young Caesar, and their daughters Lia and Ju-ju arrived at noon; having much further to travel, Young Marius did not arrive until after nightfall. Claudia, the widow of Julia's other brother, declined to come, but sent her young son— another Sextus Caesar—to represent his branch of the family. Marius's brother, Marcus, had been dead for some years, but his adopted son, Gratidianus, was present. As was Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex Maximus and his second wife, a second Licinia; his daughter, Mucia Tertia, was of course already in Marius's house.

  Of visitors there were many, but not nearly as many as there would have been a month earlier. Catulus Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Antonius Orator, Caesar Strabo, Crassus the censor—their tongues could no longer speak, their eyes no longer see. Lucius Cinna came to call several times, the first time tendering the apologies of Quintus Sertorius.

  "He can't leave his legion at the moment."

  Julia glanced at him shrewdly, but said only, "Tell dear Quintus Sertorius that I understand completely—and agree with him."

  This woman understands everything! thought Cinna, flesh creeping. He took his leave as quickly as he could, given that he had to stay long enough to make it look as if he might have spoken to Marius.

  The vigil was continuous, each member of the family taking a turn to sit with the dying man, Julia in her chair beside him. But when his turn came, Young Caesar refused to enter that room.

  "I may not be in the presence of death," he said, face smooth, eyes innocent.

  "But Gaius Marius is not dead," said Aurelia, glancing at Scaevola and his wife.

  "He might die while I was there. I couldn't allow that," said the boy firmly. "After he is dead and his body removed, I will sweep out his room in the purification rites."

  The trace of derision in his blue gaze was so slight only his mother saw it. Saw it and felt a numbness crawling through her jaw, for in it she recognized a perfect hate— not too hot, not too cold, not at all devoid of cerebration.

  When Julia finally emerged to rest—Young Marius having removed her physically from her husband's side—it was Young Caesar who went to her and took her away to her sitting room. On the point of getting up, Aurelia read a different message in her son's eyes, and subsided immediately. She had lost all her control of him, he was free.

  ' 'You must eat," said the boy to his beloved aunt, settling her full length on her couch. "Strophantes is coming."

  "Truly, I am not hungry!" she said in a whisper, face as white as the bleached linen cover the steward had spread on the couch for her to rest upon; her own bed was the one she shared with Gaius Marius, she had no other in that house.

  "Hungry or not, I intend to feed you a little hot soup," Young Caesar said in that voice even Marius had not argued against. "It's necessary, Aunt Julia. This could go on for many days. He won't leave go of life easily."

  The soup came, together with some cubes of stale bread; Young Caesar made her drink soup and sippets, sitting on the edge of the couch and coaxing softly, gently, inexorably. Only when the bowl was empty did he desist, and then took most of the pillows away, covered her, smoothed back the hair from her brow tenderly.

  "How good you are to me, little Gaius Julius," she said, eyes clouding with sleep.

  "Only to those I love," he said, paused, and added, "Only to those I love. You. My mother. No one else." He bent over and kissed her on the lips.

  While she slept—which she did for several hours—he sat curled in a chair watching her, his own eyelids heavy, though he would not let them fall. Drinking her in tirelessly, piling up a massive memory; never again would she belong to him in the way she did sleeping there.

  Sure enough, her waking dispelled the mood. At first she tried to panic, calming when he assured her Gaius Marius's condition had not changed in the least.

  "Go and have a bath," her nurse said sternly, "and when you come back, I'll have some bread and honey for you. Gaius Marius does not know whether you're with him or not." Finding herself hungry after sleeping and bathing, she ate the bread and honey; Young Caesar remained curled in his chair, frowning, until she rose to her feet.

  "I'll take you back," he said, "but I cannot enter."

  "No, of course you can't. You're flamen Dialis now. I'm so sorry you hate it!"

  "Don't worry about me, Aunt Julia. I'll solve it." She took his face between her hands and kissed him. "I thank you for all your help, Young Caesar. You're such a comfort."

  "I only do it for you, Aunt Julia. For you, I would give my life." He smiled. "Perhaps it's not far from the truth to say I already have."

  Gaius Marius died in the hour before dawn, when life is at its ebbing point and dogs and cockerels cry. It was the seventh day of his coma, and the thirteenth day of his seventh consulship.

  “An unlucky number,'' said Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, shivering and rubbing his hands together.

  Unlucky for him but lucky for Rome, was the thought in almost every head when he said it.

  "He must have a public funeral," said Cinna the moment he arrived, this time accompanied by his wife, Annia, and his younger daughter, Cinnilla, who was the wife of the flamen Dialis.

  But Julia, dry-eyed and calm, shook her head adamantly. "No, Lucius Cinna, there will be no State funeral," she said. "Gaius Marius is wealthy enough to pay for his own funeral expenses. Rome is in no condition to argue about finances. Nor do I want a huge affair. Just the family. And that means I want no word of Gaius Marius's death to leave this house until after his funeral is over." She shuddered, grimaced. "Is there any way we can get rid of those dreadful slaves he enlisted at the last?" she asked.

  "That was all taken care of six days ago," said Cinna, going red; he never could conceal his discomfort. "Quintus Sertorius paid them off on the Campus Martius and ordered them to leave Rome."

  "Oh, of course! I forgot for the moment," said the widow. "How kind of Quintus Sertorius to solve our troubles!" No one there knew w
hether or not she was being ironic. She looked across to her brother, Caesar. "Have you fetched Gaius Marius's will from the Vestals, Gaius Julius?"

  "I have it here," he said.

  "Then let it be read. Quintus Mucius, would you do that for us?" she asked of Scaevola.

  It was a short testament, and turned out to be very recent; Marius had made it, apparently, while he lay with his army to the south of the Janiculum. The bulk of his estate went to his son, Young Marius, with the maximum he could allow left to Julia in her own right. A tenth of the estate he bequeathed to his adopted nephew, Marcus Marius Gratidianus, which meant Gratidianus was suddenly a very wealthy man; the estate of Gaius Marius was enormous. And to Young Caesar he left his German slave, Burgundus, as thanks for all the precious time out of his boyhood Young Caesar had given up to help an old man recover the use of his left side.

  Now why did you do that, Gaius Marius? asked the boy silently of himself. Not for the reason you say! Perhaps to ensure the cessation of my career should I manage to de-flaminate myself? Is he to kill me when I pursue the public career you do not want me to have? Well, old man, two days from now you'll be ashes. But I will not do what a prudent man ought to do—kill the Cimbric lump. He loved you, just as once I loved you. It is a poor reward for love to be done to death—be that death of the body or the spirit. So I will keep Burgundus. And make him love me.

  The flamen Dialis turned to Lucius Decumius. "I am in the way here," he said. "Will you walk home with me?"

  "You're going? Good!" said Cinna. "Take Cinnilla home for me, would you? She's had enough."

  The flamen Dialis looked at his seven-year-old flaminica. "Come, Cinnilla," he said, giving her the smile he was well aware worked woman-magic. "Does your cook make good cakes?"

  Shepherded by Lucius Decumius, the two children emerged into the Clivus Argentarius and walked down the hill toward the Forum Romanum. The sun was risen, but its rays were not yet high enough to illuminate the bottom of the damp gulch wherein lay the whole reason for Rome's being.