2. The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  2

  But the days of Asculum Picentum were numbered. Riding his Public Horse, Pompey Strabo brought his army to join that of Publius Sulpicius Rufus in October, and spread a wall of Roman soldiers all the way around the city; not even a rope let down from the ramparts could now go undetected. His next move was to sever the city from its water supply an enormous undertaking, since the water was led off the gravel beneath the bed of the Truentius River at hundreds of different points. But Pompey Strabo displayed considerable engineering skill, and took pleasure in supervising the work himself. In attendance upon the consul Strabo was his most despised cadet, Marcus Tullius Cicero; as Cicero could draw quite well and took a self-invented shorthand with extreme accuracy and rapidity, the consul Strabo found him very useful in situations like the one gradually depriving Asculum Picentum of water. As terrified of his commander as he was appalled at his commander's utter indifference to the plight of those within the city, Cicero did as he was told and remained dumb. In November the magistrates of Asculum Picentum opened the main gates and crept out to tender the city's submission to Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. "Our home is now yours," said the chief magistrate with great dignity. "All we ask is that you give us back our water." Pompey Strabo threw back his grizzled yellowish head and roared with laughter. "What for?" he asked ingenuously. "There won't be anyone left to drink it!" "We are thirsty, Gnaeus Pompeius!" "Then stay thirsty," said Pompey Strabo. He rode into Asculum Picentum on his Public Horse at the head of a party comprising his legates Lucius Gellius Poplicola, Gnaeus Octavius Ruso, and Lucius Junius Brutus Damasippus plus his tribunes of the soldiers, his cadets, and a picked contingent of troops five cohorts strong. While the soldiers immediately spread out through the town with smooth discipline to round up every inhabitant and inspect every house, the consul Strabo proceeded to the forum-marketplace. It still bore the scars of the time when Gaius Vidacilius had occupied it; where the magistrates' tribunal had once stood there now lay a tumbledown pile of charred log fragments, the remains of the pyre Vidacilius had climbed upon to burn himself to death. Chewing the vicious little switch he used to chastise his Public Horse, the consul Strabo looked about him carefully, then jerked his head at Brutus Damasippus. “Put a platform on top of that pyre and make it quick,'' he said to Damasippus curtly. Within a very short time a group of soldiers had torn down doors and beams from the buildings closest by and Pompey Strabo had his platform, complete with a set of steps. Upon it was placed his ivory curule chair and a stool for his scribe. "You, come with me," he said to Cicero, mounted the steps and seated himself on his curule chair, still wearing his general's cuirass and helm, but with a purple cloak depending from his shoulders instead of his red general's cloak. Hands full of wax tablets, Cicero hastily put them on the deck next to his stool and huddled himself upon it, one tablet open on his lap, his bone stylus ready. This was, he presumed, to be an official hearing. "Poplicola, Ruso, Damasippus, Gnaeus Pompeius Junior join me," said the consul with his customary abruptness. His heart slowing a little, Cicero's fright evaporated sufficiently for him to take in the scene while he waited to write his first official words down. Obviously the town had taken some precautions before opening its gates, for a great mound of swords, mail-shirts, spears, daggers, and any other objects which might be deemed weapons reared itself outside the city meeting hall. The magistrates were brought forward and made to stand just beneath the makeshift tribunal. Pompey Strabo began his hearing, which consisted of his saying, "You are all guilty of treason and murder. You are not Roman citizens. You will be flogged and beheaded. Think yourselves lucky I do not give you a slaves' fate, and crucify you." Every sentence was carried out then and there at the foot of the tribunal, while the horrified Cicero, controlling his rising gorge by fixing his eyes rigidly on the tablet in his lap, made meaningless squiggles in the wax. The magistrates disposed of, the consul Strabo proceeded to pronounce the same sentence upon every male between eighty and thirteen his soldiers could find. To expedite matters he set fifty soldiers to flog and fifty soldiers to decapitate. Other men were set to comb the mound of weaponry outside the meeting hall in search of suitable axes, but in the meantime the executioners were directed to use their swords; with practice they became so good at beheading their maimed and exhausted victims with swords that they refused the axes. However, at the end of an hour only three hundred Asculans had been dispatched, their heads fixed on spears and nailed to the battlements, their bodies tossed into a pile at one side of the forum. "You'll have to improve your performance," said Pompey Strabo to his officers and men. "I want this done today, not eight days from now! Set two hundred men to flogging and two hundred more to beheading. And be quick about it. You have no teamwork and very little system. If you don't develop both, you might find yourselves on the receiving end." "It would be much easier to starve them to death," said the consul's son, observing the carnage dispassionately. "Easier by far. But not legal," said his father. Over five thousand Asculan males perished that day, a slaughter which was to live on in the memory of every Roman present, though none voiced disapproval, and none said a word against it afterward. The square was literally awash with blood; the peculiar stench of it warm, sweetish, foetid, ferrous rose like a mist into the sunny mountain air. At sunset the consul rose, stretching, from his curule chair. "Back to camp, everyone," he said laconically. "We'll deal with the women and children tomorrow. There's no need to set a guard inside. Just lock the gates and patrol outside." He gave no orders as to disposal of the bodies or cleaning the blood away, so both were left to lie undisturbed. On the morrow the consul returned to his tribunal, unmoved by the prospect he viewed, while his soldiers held those still alive in groups just outside the perimeter of the forum. His sentence was the same for all: "Leave this place immediately, taking only what you wear with you. No food, no money, no valuables, no keepsakes." Two years of siege had left Asculum Picentum a pitifully poor place; of money there was little, of valuables less. But before the banished were allowed to leave the city they were searched, and none was permitted to return to her home from whence she had been shepherded; each group of women and children was simply driven through the gates like sheep and pushed then through the lines of Pompey Strabo's army into lands stripped completely bare by occupying legions. No cry for help, no weeping crone or howling child was succored; Pompey Strabo's troops knew better than that. Those women of beauty went to the officers and centurions, those women with any kind of appeal went to the soldiers; and when they were finished with, those who still lived were driven out into the devastated countryside a day or two behind their mothers and children. "There's nothing worth taking to Rome for my triumph," said the consul when it was all done and he could get up from his curule chair. "Give what there is to my men." Cicero followed his general down off the tribunal and gazed gape-mouthed at what seemed the world's vastest slaughteryard, beyond nausea now, beyond compassion, beyond all feeling. If this is war, he thought, may I never know another one. And yet his friend Pompey, whom he adored and knew to be so kind, could toss his beautiful mane of yellow hair unconcernedly back from his temples and whistle happily through his teeth as he picked his way between the deep congealed pools of flyblown blood in the square, his beautiful blue eyes containing nothing save approval as they roamed across the literal hills of headless bodies all around him. "I had Poplicola save two very delectable women for us cadets," said Pompey as he fell behind to make sure Cicero didn't trip into a bath of blood. "Oh, we'll have a good time! Have you ever watched anyone do it? Well, if you haven't, tonight's the night!" Cicero drew in a sobbing breath. "Gnaeus Pompeius, I do not lack backbone," he said heroically, "but I have neither the stomach nor the heart for war. After witnessing what's happened here during the past two days, I couldn't become excited if I watched Paris doing it to Helen! As for Asculan women just leave me out of the whole thing, please! I'll sleep in a tree." Pompey laughed, threw his arm about his friend's thin bent shoulders. "Oh, Marcus Tullius, you are the most desiccated old
Vestal I've ever met!" he said, still chuckling. "The enemy is the enemy! You can't possibly feel sorry for people who not only defied Rome, but murdered a Roman praetor and hundreds of other Roman men and women and children by tearing them apart! Literally! However, go and sleep in your tree if you must. I'll take your poke myself." They passed out of the square and walked down a short wide street to the main gates. And there it all was again. A row of grisly trophies with tattered necks and bird-pecked faces that marched across the battlements as far as the eye could see in either direction. Cicero gagged, but had acquired so much experience in keeping from disgracing himself forever in the eyes of the consul Strabo that he did not now disgrace himself in front of his friend, who rattled on, oblivious. "There was nothing here worth displaying in a triumph," Pompey was saying, "but I found a really splendid net for trapping wild game birds. And my father gave me several buckets of books an edition of my great-uncle Lucilius neither of us has ever seen. We think it must be the work of a local copyist, which makes it well worth having. Quite beautiful." "They have no food and no warm clothes," said Cicero. "Who?" "The women and children banished from this place." "I should hope not!" "And what happens to that mess inside?" "The bodies, you mean?" " Yes, I mean the bodies. And the blood. And the heads.'' "They'll rot away in time." "And bring disease." "Disease to whom? When my father has the gates nailed shut forever, there won't be a single living person left inside Asculum Picentum. If any of the women and children sneak back after we leave, they won't be able to get in. Asculum Picentum is finished. No one will ever live in it again," said Pompey. "I see why they call your father The Butcher," said Cicero, beyond caring whether what he said offended. Pompey actually took it as a compliment; he had odd gaps in his intelligence where his personal beliefs were too strong to tickle, let alone undermine. "Good name, isn't it?" he said gruffly, afraid that the strength of his love for his father was becoming a weakness. He picked up his pace. "Please, Marcus Tullius, do get a move on! I don't want those other cunni starting without me when it was I had the clout to get us the women in the first place." Cicero hurried. But hadn't finished. "Gnaeus Pompeius, I have something to tell you," he said, beginning to pant. "Oh, yes?" asked Pompey, mind clearly elsewhere. "I applied for a transfer to Capua, where I think my talents will prove of better use in the winding up of this war. I wrote to Quintus Lutatius, and I've had an answer. He says he will be very glad of my services. Or Lucius Cornelius Sulla will." Pompey had stopped, staring at Cicero in amazement. "What did you want to do that for?" he demanded. "The staff of Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo is soldierly, Gnaeus Pompeius. I am not soldierly." His brown eyes gazed with great earnestness and softness into the face of his puzzled mentor, who was not quite sure whether to laugh or lose his temper. "Please, let me go! I shall always be grateful to you, and I shall never forget how much you've helped me. But you're not a fool, Gnaeus Pompeius. The staff of your father isn't the right place for me." The storm clouds cleared, Pompey's blue eyes glittered happily. "Have it your own way, Marcus Tullius!" he said. Then sighed. "Do you know, I shall miss you?"

  3

  Sulla arrived in Rome early in December, having no idea when the elections would be held; after the death of Asellio Rome had no urban praetor, and people were saying that the sole consul, Pompey Strabo, would come when he felt like coming, not a moment before. Under normal circumstances this would have driven Sulla to despair. But there could be no doubt in anyone's mind who was going to be the next senior consul. Sulla had attained true fame overnight. Men he didn't know greeted him like a brother, women smiled and issued invitations out of the corners of their eyes, the rabble cheered him and he had been elected an augur in absentia to replace the dead Asellio. All of Rome firmly believed that he, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, had won the war against the Italians. Not Gaius Marius. Not Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. Sulla. Sulla, Sulla! The Senate had never got around to formally appointing him commander-in-chief of the southern theater after Cato the Consul died; everything he had done, he had done as the legate of a dead man. However, he would shortly be the new senior consul and then the Senate would have to give him whatever command he asked for. The embarrassment of certain senatorial leaders like Lucius Marcius Philippus at this legatal oversight quite amused Sulla when he met them. Clearly they had considered him a lightweight, incapable of performing miracles. Now he was everybody's hero. One of the first visits he paid after returning to Rome was to Gaius Marius, whom he found so much improved he was astonished. With the old man was the eleven-year-old Gaius Julius Caesar Junior, now very nearly Sulla's height, though not yet pronouncedly pubescent. Just as striking, just as intelligent, and more of everything else than the boy had been during those past visits Sulla had paid Aurelia. He had been looking after Marius for a year, and he had listened with the keen ears of a wild creature to every word the Master had said. Heard it all, forgotten nothing. Sulla learned from Marius of the near-downfall of Young Marius, still on duty with Cinna and Comutus against the Marsi, a quieter and more responsible Young Marius than of yore. Sulla also learned of the near-fall of Young Caesar, who sat as the story was told smiling gently and looking into nothing. The presence of Lucius Decumius as a part of the episode had alerted Sulla immediately and surprised him. Not like Gaius Marius! What was the world coming to when Gaius Marius stooped to hiring a professional assassin? So patently, blatantly accidental had the death of Publius Claudius Pulcher been that Sulla knew it was no accident. Only how had the deed been done? And how did Young Caesar fit into it? Was it really possible that this this child had gambled his own life to push Publius Claudius Pulcher over a cliff? No! Not even a Sulla had so much confidence when it came to murder. Bending his unsettling gaze on the boy while Marius prattled on (clearly he believed the intervention of Lucius Decumius had not been necessary), Sulla concentrated upon putting fear into Young Caesar. But the boy, feeling those sunless rays, simply looked up and across at Sulla, no trace of fear in his eyes. Not even faint apprehension. Nor was there a smile; Young Caesar stared at Sulla with an acute and sober interest. He knows me for what I am! said Sulla to himself but, Young Caesar, I know you for what you are too! And may the Great God preserve Rome from both of us. A generous man, Marius experienced nothing but joy at Sulla's success. Even the winning of the Grass Crown the only military decoration which had escaped Marius's net was applauded without resentment or envy. "What have you to say now about generalship of the learned variety?" asked Sulla provocatively. "I say, Lucius Cornelius, that I was wrong. Oh, not about learned generalship! No, I was wrong to think you don't have it in your bones. You do, you do. To send Gaius Cosconius by water to Apulia was inspired, and your pincer action was handled in a way no man however superbly tutored! could have, were he not a born general from the inside of his very marrow." An answer which should have made Lucius Cornelius Sulla absolutely happy and completely vindicated. Yet it didn't. For Sulla understood that Marius still considered himself the better general, was convinced he could have subdued southern Italy faster and better. What do I have to do to make this stubborn old donkey see that he's met his match? cried Sulla within himself, betraying his thoughts in no external way. And felt his hackles stir, and looked at Young Caesar, and read in his eyes the knowledge of that unvoiced question. "What do you think, Young Caesar?" asked Sulla. "I am consumed with admiration, Lucius Cornelius." "A soft answer." "An honest one." "Come on, young man, I'll take you home." They walked at first in silence, Sulla wearing his stark white candidate's toga, the boy his purple-bordered child's toga, with his bulla-amulet to ward off evil on a thong about his neck. And at first Sulla thought all the smiles and nods were for himself, so famous had he become, until it was borne upon him that a good many of them were actually aimed at the boy. "How does everyone know you, Young Caesar?" "Only reflected glory, Lucius Cornelius. I go everywhere with Gaius Marius, you see." "Not at all for yourself?" "This close to the Forum I am simply Gaius Marius's boy. Once we enter the Subura, I'm known for myself." "Is your father at home?" "No, he's
still with Publius Sulpicius and Gaius Baebius before Asculum Picentum," said the boy. "Then he'll be home very soon. That army's marched." "I suppose he will." "Not looking forward to seeing your father?" "Yes, of course I am," said Young Caesar easily. "Do you remember your cousin my son?" The boy's face lit up; now the enthusiasm was genuine. "How could I ever forget him? He was so nice! When he died I wrote him a poem." "What did it say? Can you recite it to me?" Young Caesar shook his head. "I wasn't very good in those days, so I won't recite it if you don't mind. One day I'll write him a better one and then I'll give you a copy for yourself.'' How stupid, to be led into reopening the wound because he was finding it awkward to make conversation with an eleven-year-old boy! Sulla fell silent, fighting tears. As usual Aurelia was busy at her desk, but she came the moment Eutychus told her who had brought her son home. When they settled in the reception room Young Caesar remained with them, watching his mother closely. Now what gnat is flying round in his mind? wondered Sulla, irked because the boy's presence prevented his quizzing Aurelia about the things he wanted to. Luckily she perceived his irritation and soon dismissed her son, who went with reluctance. "What's the matter with him?" "I suspect Gaius Marius has said something or other to give Gaius Julius an erroneous idea about my friendship with you, Lucius Cornelius," Aurelia said calmly. "Ye gods! the old villain! How dare he!" The beautiful Aurelia laughed merrily. "Oh, I've grown past letting things like that worry me," she said. "I know for a fact that when my uncle Publius Rutilius wrote to Gaius Marius in Asia Minor with the news that his niece had just been divorced by her husband after producing a red-haired son, Julia and Gaius Marius jumped to the conclusion that the niece was me and the baby yours." Now it was Sulla's turn to laugh. "Do they know so little about you? Your defenses are harder to break down than Nola's." "True. Not that you haven't tried." "I'm a man, built like any other." "I disagree. You should have hay tied to that horn!" Listening from his secret hiding place above the study's false ceiling, Young Caesar was conscious of an enormous relief his mother was a virtuous woman after all. But then that emotion was chased out of his mind by another, much harder to deal with why did she never show this side of herself to him! There she sat laughing relaxed engaged in a kind of banter he was old enough to label as adultly worldly. Liking that repellent man! Saying things to him that indicated a very old and enduring friendship. Sulla's lover she might not be, but there was an intimacy between them that Young Caesar knew she did not share with her husband. His father. Dashing his tears away impatiently, he settled stealthily to lie full length and disciplined his mind to the detachment he could summon these days when he tried very hard. Forget she is your mother, Gaius Julius Caesar Junior! Forget how much you detest her friend Sulla! Listen to them and learn. "You will be consul very soon," she was saying. "At fifty-two. Older than Gaius Marius was." "And a grandfather! Have you seen the baby yet?" "Oh, Aurelia, please! Sooner or later I suppose I'll have to go around to Quintus Pompeius's house with Aelia on my arm and have dinner and chuck the child under the chin. But why should I care enough about the birth of a daughter to a daughter to want to rush round and see the sprog at once?" "Little Pompeia is absolutely beautiful." "Then may she wreak as much havoc as Helen of Troy!" "Don't say that! I've always thought poor Helen led a most unhappy life. A chattel. A bed-toy," said Aurelia strongly. "Women are chattels," said Sulla, smiling. "I am not! I have my own property and my own activities." Sulla's tone changed. "The siege of Asculum Picentum is no more. Gaius Julius will be home any day. And then what happens to all this brave talk?" "Don't, Lucius Cornelius! Though I love him dearly, I dread his walking through the door. He will find fault with everything from the children to my role as landlady, and I will try desperately to please him until he issues some order I cannot countenance!" "At which point, my poor Aurelia, you will tell him he's wrong, and the unpleasantness will start," said Sulla tenderly. "Would you put up with me?" she demanded fiercely. "Not if you were the last woman left alive, Aurelia." "Whereas Gaius Julius does put up with me." "Huh! What a world!" "Oh, stop being flippant!" she snapped. "Then I'll change the subject," said Sulla, and leaned back on both hands. "How is Scaurus's widow?" The purple eyes glistened. "Ecastor! Still interested?" "Definitely." "I believe she's under the guardianship of a relatively young man Livius Drusus's brother, Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus." "I know him. He assists Quintus Lutatius in Capua, but he fought with Titus Didius at Herculaneum and he went to Lucania with the Gabinii. A sturdy sort of fellow the kind who is thought the salt of the earth by everybody." He sat up, looking suddenly as alert as a cat sighting prey. "Is that how the wind lies? Is she going to marry Lepidus Livianus?" Aurelia laughed. "I doubt it! He's married to a rather nasty woman who keeps her foot on him all the time. The Claudia who is a sister of Appius Claudius Pulcher you know, his wife made Lucius Julius clean out the temple of Juno Sospita in his toga. She died in childbirth two months later." "She's my Dalmatica's cousin the dead Balearica, I mean," said Sulla with a grin. "Everyone's her cousin," said Aurelia. Sulla looked brisk. "Do you think my Dalmatica would be interested in me these days?" Aurelia shook her head. “I have no idea! That is an honest answer, Lucius Cornelius. I have no contact with my woman peers whatsoever beyond my immediate family." "Then perhaps you should cultivate her acquaintance when your husband comes home. You'll definitely have more spare time," said Sulla slyly. "Enough, Lucius Cornelius! You can go home for that." They walked to the door together. As soon as their forms had disappeared from the scope of Young Caesar's spyhole, he came down from the ceiling and was gone. "Will you cultivate Dalmatica for me?" Sulla asked as his hostess held open the front door. "No, I will not," said Aurelia. "If you're so interested, you cultivate her. Though I can tell you that a divorce from Aelia will make you a very unpopular man." "I've been unpopular before. Vale."