But Varro had the last word. “You must be important! Why else would you have the gall—good pun, that!—to call yourself Magnus?” He snorted. “The Great! At twenty-two, The Great! The best your father could do was to call himself after his cross-eyes!”
A sally Pompey ignored, busy now with steward and armorer, issuing a stream of instructions.
And then finally the vividly painted and gilded atrium was empty save for Pompey. And Antistia. He came across to her.
“Silly little kitten, you’ll catch a chill,” he scolded, and kissed her fondly. “Back to bed, my honey cake.”
“Can’t I help you pack?” she asked, sounding desolate.
“My men will do that for me, but you can watch.”
This time the way was lit by a servant bearing a massive chandelier; fitting herself into Pompey’s side, Antistia (still clutching her own little lamp) walked with him to the room where all his war gear was stored. An imposing collection. Fully ten different cuirasses hung from T—shaped poles—gold, silver, steel, leather strapped with phalerae—and swords and helmets hung from pegs on the walls, as did kilts of leather straps and various kinds of padded underpinnings.
“Now stay there and be an absolutely darling little mouse,” Pompey said as he lifted his wife like a feather and put her atop a couple of big chests, her feet dangling clear of the floor.
Where she was forgotten. Pompey and his menservants went through every item one by one—would it be useful, was it going to be necessary? Then when Pompey had ransacked the other trunks scattered around the room, he carelessly transferred his wife to a different perch in order to ransack her original seat, tossing this and that to the waiting slaves, talking away to himself so happily that Antistia could cherish no illusions he was going to miss his wife, his home, or civilian life. Of course she had always known that he regarded himself first and foremost as a soldier, that he despised the more customary pursuits of his peers—rhetoric, law, government, assemblies, the plots and ploys of politics. How many times had she heard him say he would vault himself into the consul’s ivory chair on his spear, not on fine words and empty phrases? Now here he was putting his boast into practice, the soldier son of a soldier father going off to war.
The moment the last of the slaves had staggered away under armloads of equipment, Antistia slid off her trunk and went to stand in front of her husband.
“Before you go, Magnus, I must speak to you,” she said.
Clearly this he regarded as a waste of his precious time, but he did pause. “Well, what is it?”
“How long are you going to be away?”
“Haven’t the slightest idea,” he said cheerfully.
“Months? A year?”
“Months, probably. Sulla will eat Carbo.”
“Then I would like to return to Rome and live in my father’s house while you’re gone.”
But he shook his head, clearly astonished at her proposal. “Not a chance!” he said. “I’m not having my wife running round Carbo’s Rome while I’m with Sulla in the field against the selfsame Carbo. You’ll stay here.”
“Your servants and other people don’t like me. If you’re not here, it will go hard for me.”
“Rubbish!” he said, turning away.
She detained him by stepping in front of him once more. “Oh, please, husband, spare me just a few moments of your time! I know it’s a valuable commodity, but I am your wife.”
He sighed. “All right, all right! But quickly, Antistia!”
“I can’t stay here!”
“You can and you will.” He moved from one foot to the other.
“When you’re absent, Magnus—even for a few hours—your people are not kind to me. I have never complained because you are always kind to me, and you’ve been here except for the time you went to Ancona to see Cinna. But now—there is no other woman in your house, I will be utterly alone. It would be better if I returned to my father’s house until the war is over, truly.”
“Out of the question. Your father is Carbo’s man.”
“No, he is not. He is his own man.”
Never before had she opposed him, or even stood up to him; Pompey’s patience began to fray. “Look, Antistia, I have better things to do than stay here arguing with you. You’re my wife, and that means you’ll stay in my house.”
“Where your steward sneers at me and leaves me in the dark, where I have no servants of my own and no one to keep me company,” she said, trying to appear calm and reasonable, but beginning to panic underneath.
“That’s absolute rubbish!”
“It is not, Magnus. It is not! I don’t know why everyone looks down on me, but everyone does.”
“Well, of course they do!” he said, surprised at her denseness.
Her eyes widened. “Of course they look down on me? What do you mean, of course?”
He shrugged. “My mother was a Lucilia. So was my grandmother. And what are you?”
“That is a very good question. What am I?”
He could see she was angry, and it angered him. Women! Here he was with his first big war on his hands, and this creature of no significance was determined to stage her own drama! Did women have no sense at all? “You’re my first wife,” he said.
“First wife?”
“A temporary measure.”
“Oh, I see!” She looked thoughtful. “A temporary measure. The judge’s daughter, I suppose you mean.”
“Well, you’ve always known that.”
“But it was a long time ago, I thought it had passed, I thought you loved me. My family is senatorial, I’m not inappropriate.”
“For an ordinary man, no. But you’re not good enough for me.’’
“Oh, Magnus, where do you get your conceit from? Is that why you have never once finished yourself inside me? Because I’m not good enough to bear your children?”
“Yes!” he shouted, starting to leave the room.
She followed him with her little lamp, too angry now to care who heard. “I was good enough to get you off when Cinna was after your money!”
“We’ve already established that,” he said, hurrying.
“How convenient for you then, that Cinna is dead!”
“Convenient for Rome and all good Romans.”
“You had Cinna murdered!”
The words echoed down the stone corridor that was big enough to allow the passage of an army; Pompey stopped.
“Cinna died in a drunken brawl with some reluctant recruits.”
“In Ancona—your town, Magnus! Your town! And right after you had been there to see him!” she cried.
One moment she was standing in possession of herself, the next she was pinned against the wall with Pompey’s hands about her throat. Not squeezing. Just about her throat.
“Never say that again, woman,” he said softly.
“It’s what my father says!” she managed, mouth dry.
The hands tightened ever so slightly. “Your father didn’t like Cinna much. But he doesn’t mind Carbo in the least, which is why it would give me great pleasure to kill him. But it won’t give me any pleasure to kill you. I don’t kill women. Keep your tongue behind your teeth, Antistia. Cinna’s death had nothing to do with me, it was a simple accident.”
“I want to go to my father and mother in Rome!”
Pompey released her, gave her a shove. “The answer is no. Now leave me alone!”
He was gone, calling for the steward; in the distance she could hear him telling that abominable man that she was not to be allowed to leave the precincts of the Pompey fortress once he was off to his war. Trembling, Antistia returned slowly to the bedroom she had shared with Pompey for two and a half years as his first wife—a temporary expedient. Not good enough to bear his children. Why hadn’t she guessed that, when she had wondered many times why he always withdrew, always left a slimy puddle for her to clean off her belly?
The tears were beginning to gather. Soon they would fall, and once they did she wo
uld not be able to stop them for hours. Disillusionment before love has lost its keenest edge is terrible.
There came another of those chilling barbarian whoops, and faintly Pompey’s voice: “I’m off to war, I’m off to war! Sulla has landed in Italy, and it’s war!”
2
Dawn had scarcely broken when Pompey, clad in glittering silver armor and flanked by his eighteen-year-old brother and by Varro, led a little party of clerks and scribes into the marketplace of Auximum. There he planted his father’s standard in the middle of its open space and waited with ill—concealed impatience until his secretariat had assembled itself behind a series of trestle tables, sheets of paper at the ready, reed pens sharpened, cakes of ink dissolved in heavy stone wells.
By the time all this was done, the crowd had gathered so thickly that it spilled out of the square into the streets and lanes converging upon it. Light and lithe, Pompey leaped onto a makeshift podium beneath Pompey Strabo’s woodpecker standard.
“Well, it’s come!” he shouted. “Lucius Cornelius Sulla has landed in Brundisium to claim what is rightfully his—an uninterrupted imperium, a triumph, the privilege of depositing his laurels at the feet of Jupiter Optimus Maximus inside the Capitol of Rome! At just about this time last year, the other Lucius Cornelius—he cognominated Cinna—was not far away from here trying to enlist my father’s veterans in his cause. He did not succeed. Instead, he died. Today you see me. And today I see many of my father’s veterans standing before me. I am my father’s heir! His men are my men. His past is my future. I am going to Brundisium to fight for Sulla, for he is in the right of it. How many of you will come with me?’’
Short and simple, thought Varro, lost in admiration. Maybe the young man was correct about vaulting into the consul’s curule chair on his spear rather than on a wave of words. Certainly no face he could discern in that crowd seemed to find Pompey’s speech lacking. No sooner had he finished than the women began to drift away clucking about the imminent absence of husbands and sons, some wringing their hands at the thought, some already engrossed in the practicalities of filling kit bags with spare tunics and socks, some looking studiously at the ground to hide sly smiles. Pushing excited children out of the way with mock slaps and kicks, the men shoved forward to cluster about those trestle tables. Within moments, Pompey’s clerks were scribbling strenuously.
From a nice vantage spot high on the steps of Auximum’s old temple of Picus, Varro sat and watched the activity. Had they ever volunteered so lightheartedly for cross-eyed Pompey Strabo’s campaigns? he wondered. Probably not. That one had been the lord, a hard man but a fine commander; they would have served him with goodwill but sober faces. For the son, it was clearly different. I am looking at a phenomenon, Varro thought. The Myrmidons could not have gone more happily to fight for Achilles, nor the Macedonians for Alexander the Great. They love him! He’s their darling, their mascot, their child as much as their father.
A vast bulk deposited itself on the step next to him, and Varro turned his head to see a red face topped by red hair; a pair of intelligent blue eyes were busy assessing him, the only stranger present.
“And who might you be?” asked the ruddy giant.
“My name is Marcus Terentius Varro, and I’m a Sabine.”
“Like us, eh? Well, a long time ago, at any rate.” A horny paw waved in the direction of Pompey. “Look at him, will you? Oh, we’ve been waiting for this day, Marcus Terentius Varro the Sabine! Be he not the Goddess’s honeypot?”
Varro smiled. “I’m not sure I’d choose that way of putting it, but I do see what you mean.”
“Ah! You’re not only a gentleman with three names, you’re a learned gentleman! A friend of his, might you be?”
“I might be.”
“And what might you do for a crust, eh?”
“In Rome, I’m a senator. But in Reate, I breed mares.”
“What, not mules?”
“It’s better to breed the mares than their mule offspring. I have a little bit of the rosea rura, and a few stud donkeys too.’’
“How old might you be?’’
“Thirty-two,” said Varro, enjoying himself immensely.
But suddenly the questions ceased; Varro’s interlocutor disposed himself more comfortably by resting one elbow on the step above him and stretching out a Herculean pair of legs to cross his ankles. Fascinated, the diminutive Varro eyed grubby toes almost as large as his own fingers.
“And what might your name be?” he asked, falling into the local vernacular quite naturally.
“Quintus Scaptius.”
“Might you have enlisted?”
“All Hannibal’s elephants couldn’t stop me!”
“Might you be a veteran?”
“Joined his daddy’s army when I was seventeen. That was eight years ago, but I’ve already served in twelve campaigns, so I don’t have to join up anymore unless I might want to,” said Quintus Scaptius.
“But you did want to.”
“Hannibal’s elephants, Marcus Terentius, Hannibal’s elephants!”
“Might you be of centurion rank?’’
“I might be for this campaign.”
While they talked, Varro and Scaptius kept their eyes on Pompey, who stood just in front of the middle table joyfully hailing this man or that among the throng.
“He says he’ll march before this moon has run her course,” Varro observed, “but I fail to see how. I admit none of these men here today will need much if any training, but where’s he going to get enough arms and armor? Or pack animals? Or wagons and oxen? Or food? And what will he do for money to keep his great enterprise going?’’
Scaptius grunted, apparently an indication of amusement. “He does not need to worry about any of that! His daddy gave each of us our arms and armor at the start of the war against the Italians; then after his daddy died, the boy told us to hang on to them. We each got a mule, and the centurions got the carts and oxen. So we’d be ready against the day. You’ll never catch the Pompeii napping! There’s wheat enough in our granaries and lots of other food in our storehouses. Our women and children won’t go hungry because we’re eating well on campaign.”
“And what about money?” asked Varro gently.
“Money?” Scaptius dismissed this necessity with a sniff of contempt. “We served his daddy without seeing much of it, and that’s the truth. Wasn’t any to be had in those days. When he’s got it, he’ll give it to us. When he hasn’t got it, we’ll do without. He’s a good master.”
“So I see.”
Lapsing into silence, Varro studied Pompey with fresh interest. Everyone told tales about the legendary independence of Pompey Strabo during the Italian War: how he had kept his legions together long after he was ordered to disband them, and how he had directly altered the course of events in Rome because he had not disbanded them. No massive wage bills had ever turned up on the Treasury’s books when Cinna had them audited after the death of Gaius Marius; now Varro knew why. Pompey Strabo hadn’t bothered to pay his troops. Why should he, when he virtually owned them?
At this moment Pompey left his post to stroll across to Picus’s temple steps.
“I’m off to find a campsite,” he said to Varro, then gave the Hercules sitting next to Varro a huge grin. “Got in early, I see, Scaptius.”
Scaptius lumbered to his feet. “Yes, Magnus. I’d best be getting home to dig out my gear, eh?”
So everyone called him Magnus! Varro too rose. “I’ll ride with you, Magnus.”
The crowd was dwindling, and women were beginning to come back into the marketplace; a few merchants, hitherto thwarted, were busy putting up their booths, slaves rushing to stock them. Loads of dirty washing were dropped on the paving around the big fountain in front of the local shrine to the Lares, and one or two girls hitched up their skirts to climb into the shallow water. How typical this town is, thought Varro, walking a little behind Pompey: sunshine and dust, a few good shady trees, the purr of insects, a sense of
timeless purpose, wrinkled winter apples, busy folk who all know far too much about each other. There are no secrets here in Auximum!
“These men are a fierce lot,” he said to Pompey as they left the marketplace to find their horses.
“They’re Sabines, Varro, just like you,” said Pompey, “even if they did come east of the Apennines centuries ago.”
“Not quite like me!” Varro allowed himself to be tossed into the saddle by one of Pompey’s grooms. “I may be a Sabine, but I’m not by nature or training a soldier.”
“You did your stint in the Italian War, surely.”
“Yes, of course. And served in my ten campaigns. How quickly they mounted up during that conflagration! But I haven’t thought of a sword or a suit of chain mail since it ended.’’
Pompey laughed. “You sound like my friend Cicero.”
“Marcus Tullius Cicero? The legal prodigy?”
“That’s him, yes. Hated war. Didn’t have the stomach for it, which my father didn’t understand. But he was a good fellow all the same, liked to do what I didn’t like to do. So between us we kept my father mighty pleased without telling him too much.” Pompey sighed. “After Asculum Picentum fell he insisted on going off to serve under Sulla in Campania. I missed him!”
*
In two market intervals of eight days each Pompey had his three legions of veteran volunteers camped inside well-fortified ramparts some five miles from Auximum on the banks of a tributary of the Aesis River. His sanitary dispositions within his camp were faultless, and care of them rigidly policed. Pompey Strabo had been a more typical product of his rural origins, had known only one way to deal with wells, cesspits, latrines, rubbish disposal, drainage: when the stink became unbearable, move on. Which was why he had died of fever outside Rome’s Colline Gate, and why the people of the Quirinal and Viminal, their springs polluted from his wastes, had done such insult to his body.
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