The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  Sulla rolled a skeptical eye at the young man, but said nothing of his feelings; they were not a very practical lot, these Moorish royals. Fretting too at the painful slowness of the disembarkation—for Icosium possessed no more than twenty lighters all told, and he could see that it would be this time tomorrow before the process was complete—he sighed, shrugged. No point in worrying; either Jugurtha knew, or did not know.

  “Whereabouts is Jugurtha located?” he asked.

  “About thirty miles from the sea, on a small plain in the midst of the mountains, due south of here. On the only direct path between Icosium and the King my father’s camp,” said Volux.

  “Oh, that’s delightful! And how am I to get through to the King your father without fighting Jugurtha first?”

  “I can lead you around him in such a way that he’ll never know,” said Volux eagerly. “Truly I can, Lucius Cornelius! The King my father trusts me—I beg that you will too!” He thought for a moment, and added, “However, I think it would be better if you left your men here. We stand a much better chance if our party is very small.”

  “Why should I trust you, Prince Volux?” Sulla asked. “I don’t know you. For that matter, I don’t really know Prince Bogud—or the King your father, either! You might have decided to go back on your word and betray me to Jugurtha—I’m quite a prize! My capture would be a grave embarrassment for Gaius Marius, as you well know.”

  Bogud had said nothing, only looked grimmer and grimmer, but the young Volux was not about to give up.

  “Then give me a task which will prove to you that I and the King my father are trustworthy!” he cried.

  Sulla thought about that, smiling wolfishly. “All right,” he said with sudden decision. “You’ve got me by the balls anyway, so what have I got to lose?” And he stared at the Moor, his strange light eyes dancing like two fine jewels under the brim of his wide straw hat—an odd piece of headgear for a Roman soldier, but one famous these days clear from Tingis to Cyrenaica, anywhere the deeds of the Romans were told over by campfires and hearths: the albino Roman hero in his hat.

  I must trust to my luck, he was thinking to himself, for I feel nothing inside me that warns me my luck will not hold. This is a test, a trial of my confidence in myself, a way of showing everyone from King Bocchus and his son to the man in Cirta that I am equal to—no, superior to!— anything Fortune can toss in my way. A man cannot find out what he’s made of by running away. No, I go forward. I have the luck. For I have made my luck, and made it well.

  “As soon as darkness falls this night,” he said to Volux, “you and I and a very small cavalry escort are going to ride for the King your father’s camp. My own men will stay here, which means that if Jugurtha does discover a Roman presence, he’ll naturally assume it is limited to Icosium, and that the King your father will be coming here to see us.”

  “But there’s no moon tonight!” said Volux, dismayed.

  “I know,” said Sulla, smiling in his nastiest manner. “That is the test, Prince Volux. We will have the light of the stars, none other. And you are going to lead me straight through the middle of Jugurtha’s camp.”

  Bogud’s eyes bulged. “That’s insanity!” he gasped.

  Volux’s eyes danced. “Now that’s a real challenge,” he said, and smiled with genuine pleasure.

  “Are you game?” Sulla asked. “Right through the middle of Jugurtha’s camp—in one side without the Watch seeing us or hearing us—down the middle on the via praetoria without disturbing one sleeping man or one dozing horse—and out the other side without the Watch seeing us or hearing us. You do that, Prince Volux, and I will know I can trust you! And in turn trust the King your father.”

  “I’m game,” said Volux.

  “You’re both mad,” said Bogud.

  *

  Sulla decided to leave Bogud behind in Icosium, not sure that this member of the Moorish royal family was to be trusted. His detention was courteous enough, but he had been left in the charge of two military tribunes who were under orders not to let him out of their sight.

  Volux found the four best and surest-footed horses in Icosium, and Sulla produced his mule, still of the opinion that a mule was a better beast by far than any horse. He also packed his hat. The party had been fixed at Sulla, Volux, and three Moorish nobles, so all save Sulla were used to riding without saddles or bridles.

  “Nothing metal to jingle and betray us,” said Volux.

  However, Sulla elected to saddle his mule, and put a rope halter around nose and ears. “They may creak, but if I fall, I’ll make a lot more noise,” he said.

  And at full darkness the five of them rode out into the stunning blackness of a moonless night. But the sky glowed with light, for no wind had come up to stir the African dust into the air; what at first glance seemed misty straggling clouds were actually vast conglomerations of stars, and the riders had no difficulty in seeing. All the animals were unshod, and pattered rather than clattered over the stony track which traversed a series of ravines in the range of hills around Icosium Bay.

  “We’ll have to trust to our luck that none of our mounts goes lame,” said Volux after his horse stumbled, righted itself.

  “You may trust to my luck at least,” said Sulla.

  “Don’t talk,” said one of the three escorts. “On windless nights like this, your voices can be heard for miles.”

  Thence they rode in silence, the remarkable devices of their eyes adjusted to pick up the smallest particle of light, the miles going by. So when the orange glow of dying campfires from the little basin where Jugurtha lay began to appear over the crest before them, they knew where they were. And when they looked down upon the basin, it seemed as brilliant as a city, its layout manifest.

  Down from their mounts slid the five; Volux put Sulla aside, and set to work. Waiting patiently, Sulla watched as the Moors proceeded to fit specially adapted hippo shoes over every hoof; normally these had wooden soles and were used on loose ground to keep the tender underside of the hoof around the frog clear of stones, but Volux’s hippo shoes had been soled with thick felt. They were held on with two supple leather straps fixed to their fronts; these crossed over, looped under a hinged metal hook at the back, and were brought forward again to buckle over the front of the hoof.

  Everyone rode his mount around for a while to get it used to the hippo shoes, then Volux headed off on the last half mile between them and Jugurtha’s camp. Presumably there were sentries and a mounted patrol, but the five riders saw no one wakeful, no one moving. Roman trained, naturally Jugurtha had based the construction of his camp upon the Roman pattern, but—an aspect of foreigners which fascinated Gaius Marius, Sulla knew—had not been able to summon up the patience or the willingness to reproduce the original properly. Thus Jugurtha, well aware Marius and his army were in Cirta and Bocchus not strong enough to attempt aggression, had not bothered to entrench himself; he had merely raised a low earthen wall so easy to ride a horse up and over that Sulla suspected it was more to keep animals in than humans out. But had Jugurtha been a Roman, rather than Roman trained, his camp would have had its full complement of trenches, stakes, palisades, and walls no matter how safe he felt himself.

  The five riders came to the earthen wall some two hundred paces east of the main gate, which was really just a wide gap, and urged their mounts up and over it easily. On the inside, each rider turned his steed abruptly to walk parallel with the wall and hugging it; in the freshly dug soil, not a sound did they make as they headed for the main gate. Here they could discern guards, but the men faced outward and were far enough in front of the gap not to hear the five riders wheel onto the broad avenue running down the center of the camp, from the front gate to the back gate. Sulla and Volux and the three Moorish nobles rode all the way down the half-mile-long via praetoria at a walk, turned off it to hug the inside of the wall when they reached its far end, and then crossed to the outside of the camp and freedom as soon as they judged themselves far enough away from th
e back gate guard.

  A mile further on, they removed the hippo shoes.

  “We did it!” whispered Volux fiercely, teeth flashing at Sulla in a triumphant grin. “Do you trust me now, Lucius Cornelius?’’

  “I trust you, Prince Volux,” said Sulla, grinning back.

  They rode on at a pace between a walk and a trot, careful not to lame or exhaust their unshod beasts, and shortly after dawn found a Berber camp. The four tired horses Volux offered to trade for fresh ones were superior to any the Berbers owned, and the mule was a bit of a novelty, so five horses were forthcoming, and the ride continued remorselessly through the day. Since he had brought along his shady hat, Sulla hid beneath its brim and sweated.

  Just after dark they reached the camp of King Bocchus, not unlike Jugurtha’s in construction, but bigger. And here Sulla balked, reining in on his awkward halter well out of sentry distance.

  “It isn’t lack of trust, Prince Volux,” he said, “it’s more a pricking of my fingers. You’re the King’s son. You can ride in and out any time of day or night without question. Where I am obviously a foreign stranger, an unknown quantity. So I’m going to lie down here in as much comfort as I can manage, and wait until you see your father, make sure all is well, and return to fetch me.”

  “I wouldn’t lie down,” said Volux.

  “Why?”

  “Scorpions.”

  The hair stood up on Sulla’s neck, he had to discipline himself not to leap instinctively; since Italy was free of all venomous insects, not a Roman or an Italian lived who did not abominate spiders and scorpions. Silently he drew breath, ignoring the beads of cold sweat on his brow, and turned a disinterested starlit face to Volux.

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to stand up for however many hours it’s going to take for you to return, and I am not climbing back up on that animal,” he said, “so I’ll take my chances with the scorpions.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Volux, who already admired Sulla to the point of hero worship, and now brimmed over with awe.

  Sulla lay down amid a patch of soft and sandy earth, dug a hollow for his hip, shaped a mound for the back of his neck, said a mental prayer and promised an offering to Fortune to keep the scorpions away, closed his eyes, and fell instantly asleep. When Volux came back four hours later he found Sulla thus, and could have killed him. But Fortune belonged to Sulla in those days; Volux was a genuine friend.

  The night was cold; Sulla hurt everywhere. “Oh, this creeping around like a spy is a younger man’s profession!” he said, extending a hand to Volux for help in getting to his feet. Then he discerned a shadowy form behind Volux, and stiffened.

  “It’s all right, Lucius Cornelius, this is a friend of the King my father’s. His name is Dabar,” said Volux quickly.

  “Another cousin of the King your father, I presume?”

  “Actually no. Dabar is a cousin of Jugurtha’s, and like Jugurtha, he’s the bastard of a Berber woman. That’s how he came to throw in his lot with us—Jugurtha prefers to be the only royal bastard at his court.”

  A flask of rich sweet unwatered wine was passed over; Sulla drained it without pausing to breathe, and felt the pain lessen, the cold vanish in a huge glow. Honey cakes followed, a piece of highly spiced kid’s meat, and another flask of the same wine, which seemed at that moment the best Sulla had ever tasted in all his life.

  “Oh, I feel better!” he said, flexing his muscles and stretching enormously. “What’s the news?”

  “Your pricking fingers cautioned you well, Lucius Cornelius,” said Volux. “Jugurtha got to my father first.”

  “Am I betrayed?”

  “No, no! But the situation has changed nonetheless. I will leave it to Dabar to explain, he was there.”

  Dabar squatted down on his haunches to join Sulla. “It seems Jugurtha heard of a deputation from Gaius Marius to my king,” he said, low-voiced. “Of course he assumed that was why my king had not gone back to Tingis, so he decided to be close by, putting himself between my king and any embassage from Gaius Marius by road or by sea. And he sent one of his greatest barons, Aspar, to sit by my king’s right hand and listen to all congress between my king and the expected Romans.”

  “I see,” said Sulla. “What’s to do, then?”

  “Tomorrow Prince Volux will escort you into my king’s presence as if you have ridden together from Icosium— Aspar did not see the prince come in tonight, fortunately. You will speak to my king as if you had come from Gaius Marius at the order of Gaius Marius, rather than at my king’s behest. You will ask my king to abandon Jugurtha, and my king will refuse, but in a prevaricating way. He will order you to camp nearby for ten days while he thinks about what you have said. You will go to that camp and wait. However, my king will come to see you privately tomorrow night at a different place, and then you can talk together without fear.” Dabar looked at Sulla keenly. “Is that satisfactory, Lucius Cornelius?”

  “Entirely,” said Sulla, yawning mightily. “The only problem is, where can I stay tonight, and where can I find a bath? I stink of horse, and there are things crawling in my crotch.”

  “Volux has had a comfortable camp pitched for you not far away,” said Dabar.

  “Then lead me to it,” said Sulla, getting to his feet.

  *

  The next day Sulla went through his farcical interview with Bocchus. It wasn’t difficult to tell which one of the nobles present was Jugurtha’s spy, Aspar; he stood on the left of Bocchus’s majestic chair—far more majestic than its occupant—and nobody ventured near him nor looked at him with the ease of long familiarity.

  “What am I to do, Lucius Cornelius?” wailed Bocchus that night after dark, meeting Sulla undetected at a distance from both his camp and Sulla’s.

  “A favor for Rome,” said Sulla.

  “Just tell me what favor Rome wants, and it shall be done! Gold—jewels—land—soldiers—cavalry—wheat— only name it, Lucius Cornelius! You’re a Roman, you must know what the Senate’s cryptic message means! For I swear I do not!” Bocchus quivered in fear.

  “Every commodity you have named, Rome can find without being cryptic, King Bocchus,” said Sulla scornfully.

  “Then what! Only tell me what!” pleaded Bocchus.

  “I think you must already have worked it out for yourself, King Bocchus. But you won’t admit that,” said Sulla. “I can understand why. Jugurtha! Rome wants you to hand Jugurtha over to Rome peacefully, bloodlessly. Too much blood has already been shed in Africa, too much land torn up, too many towns and villages burned, too much wealth frittered away. But while ever Jugurtha continues at large, this terrible waste will go on. Crippling Numidia, inconveniencing Rome—and crippling Mauretania too. So give me Jugurtha, King Bocchus!”

  “You ask me to betray my son-in-law, the father of my grandchildren, my kinsman through Masinissa’s blood?”

  “I do indeed,” said Sulla.

  Bocchus began to weep. “I cannot! Lucius Cornelius, I cannot! We are Berber as well as Punic, the law of the tented people binds us both. Anything, Lucius Cornelius, I will do anything to earn that treaty! Anything, that is, except betray my daughter’s husband.”

  “Anything else is unacceptable,” said Sulla coldly.

  “My people would never forgive me!”

  “Rome will never forgive you. And that is worse.”

  “I cannot!” Bocchus wept, genuine tears wetting his face, glistening amid the strands of his elaborately curled beard. “Please, Lucius Cornelius, please! I cannot!”

  Sulla turned his back contemptuously. “Then there will never be a treaty,” he said.

  And each day for the next eight days the farce continued, Aspar and Dabar riding back and forth between Sulla’s pleasant little camp and the King’s pavilion, bearing messages which bore no relation to the real issue. That remained a secret between Sulla and Bocchus, and was discussed only in the nights. However, it was plain Volux knew of the real issue, Sulla decided, for Volux now avoided him as mu
ch as possible, and whenever he did see him looked angry, hurt, baffled.

  Sulla was enjoying himself, discovering that he liked the sensation of power and majesty being Rome’s envoy gave him; and more than that, enjoyed being the relentless drip of water that wore down this so-called royal stone. He, who was no king, yet had dominion over kings. He, a Roman, had the real power. And it was heady, enormously satisfying.

  On the eighth night, Bocchus summoned Sulla to the secret meeting place.

  “All right, Lucius Cornelius, I agree,” said the King, his eyes red from weeping.

  “Excellent!” said Sulla briskly.

  “But how can it be done?”

  “Simple,” said Sulla. “You send Aspar to Jugurtha and offer to betray me to him.” ,

  “He won’t believe me,” said Bocchus desolately.

  “Certainly he will! Take my word for it, he will. If the circumstances were different, it’s precisely what you might be doing, King.”

  “But you’re only a quaestor!”

  Sulla laughed. “What, are you trying to say that you do not think a Roman quaestor is as valuable as a Numidian king?”

  “No! No, of course not!”

  “Let me explain, King Bocchus,” said Sulla gently. “I am a Roman quaestor, and it is true that all the title signifies in Rome is the lowest man on the senatorial ladder. However, I am also a patrician Cornelius—my family is the family of Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus, and my bloodline is far older, far nobler than either yours or Jugurtha’s. If Rome was ruled by kings, those kings would probably be members of the Cornelian family. And—last but by no means least—I happen to be Gaius Marius’s brother-in-law. Our children are first cousins. Does that make it more understandable?”