“They say Clodius is going to distribute the freedmen across the thirty-five tribes,” he said.
“I’ve heard the rumor, yes.”
“He’d own Rome.”
“True.”
“What if he didn’t stand for election as a praetor?”
“Better for Rome, definitely.”
“A pestilence on Rome! Would it be better for me?”
Pompey smiled sweetly, got up. “It couldn’t help but be a great deal better for you, Milo, now could it?” he asked, walking to the door.
Milo took the hint and moved doorward too. “Could that be construed as a promise, Magnus?” he asked.
“You might be pardoned for thinking so,” said Pompey, and clapped for the steward.
But no sooner had Milo gone than the steward announced yet another visitor.
“My, my, I am popular!” cried Pompey, shaking Metellus Scipio warmly by the hand and tenderly depositing him in the best chair. This time he didn’t retreat behind his desk; one wouldn’t treat Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica like that! Instead, Pompey drew up the second-best chair and seated himself only after pouring wine from the flagon containing a Chian vintage so fine that Hortensius had wept in frustration when Pompey beat him to it.
Unfortunately the man with the grandest name in Rome did not have a mind to match its breathtaking sweep, though he looked what he was: a patrician Cornelius Scipio adopted into the powerful plebeian house of Caecilius Metellus. Haughty, cool, arrogant. Very plain, which was true of every Cornelius Scipio. His adopted father, Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus, had had no sons; sadly, Metellus Scipio had no sons either. His only child was a daughter whom he had married to Crassus’s son Publius three years before. Though properly a Caecilia Metella, she was always known as Cornelia Metella, and Pompey remembered her vividly because he and Julia had attended the reception following her wedding. The most disdainful-looking female he had ever seen, he had remarked to Julia, who had giggled and said Cornelia Metella always reminded her of a camel, and that she ought really to have married Brutus, who had the same sort of pedantic, intellectually pretentious mind.
The trouble was, however, that Pompey never quite knew what someone like Metellus Scipio wanted to hear—should he be jovial, distantly courteous, or crisp? Well, he had started out jovial, so it might as well be jovial.
“Not a bad drop of wine, eh?” he asked, smacking his lips.
Metellus Scipio produced a faint moue, of pleasure or pain was impossible to tell. “Very good,” he said.
“What brings you all the way out here?”
“Publius Clodius,” Metellus Scipio said.
Pompey nodded. “A bad business, if it’s true.”
“Oh, it’s true enough. Young Curio heard it from Clodius’s own lips, and went home to tell his father.”
“Not well, old Curio, they tell me,” said Pompey.
“Cancer,” said Metellus Scipio briefly.
“Tch!” clucked Pompey, and waited.
Metellus Scipio waited too.
“Why come to see me?” Pompey asked in the end, tired of so little progress.
“The others didn’t want me to” from Metellus Scipio.
“What others?”
“Bibulus, Cato, Ahenobarbus.”
“That’s because they don’t know who’s the First Man in Rome.”
The aristocratic nose managed to turn up a trifle. “Nor do I, Pompeius.”
Pompey winced. Oh, if only one of them would accord him an occasional “Magnus”! It was so wonderful to hear himself addressed as “Great” by his peers! Caesar called him Magnus. But would Cato or Bibulus or Ahenobarbus or this stiff-rumped dullard? No! It was always plain Pompeius.
“We’re not getting anywhere yet, Metellus,” he said.
“I’ve had an idea.”
“They’re excellent things, Metellus.” Plebeian name again.
Metellus Scipio cast him a suspicious glance, but Pompey was sitting back in his chair, sipping soberly at his translucent rock-crystal goblet.
“I’m a very wealthy man,” he said, “and so are you, Pompeius. It occurred to me that between the two of us we might be able to buy Clodius off.”
Pompey nodded. “Yes, I’ve had the same idea,” he said, and sighed lugubriously. “Unfortunately Clodius isn’t short of money. His wife is one of the wealthiest women in Rome, and when her mother dies she’ll come into a great deal more. He also profited hugely from his embassage to Galatia. Right at this moment he’s building the most expensive villa the world has ever seen, and it’s going ahead in leaps and bounds. Near my little place in the Alban Hills, that’s how I know. Built on hundred-foot-high columns at its front, jutting over the edge of a hundred-foot cliff. The most stunning view across Lake Nemi and the Latin Plain all the way to the sea. He got the land for next to nothing because everyone thought the site unbuildable, then he commissioned Cyrus and now it’s almost finished.” Pompey shook his head emphatically. “No, Scipio, it won’t work.”
“Then what can we do?” asked Metellus Scipio, crushed.
“Make a lot of offerings to every God we can think of” was Pompey’s advice. Then he grinned. “As a matter of fact, I sent an anonymous donation of half a million to the Vestals for Bona Dea. That’s one lady doesn’t like Clodius.”
Metellus Scipio looked scandalized. “Pompeius, the Bona Dea is not in the province of men! A man can’t give Bona Dea gifts!”
“A man didn’t,” said Pompey cheerfully. “I sent it in the name of my late mother-in-law, Aurelia.”
Metellus Scipio drained his rock-crystal goblet and got up. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “I could send a donation in the name of my poor daughter.”
Concern being called for, Pompey displayed it. “How is she? A terrible thing, Scipio, just terrible! To be widowed so young!”
“She’s as well as can be expected,” he said, walking to the door, where he waited for Pompey to open it for him. “You’re recently widowed too, Pompeius,” he went on as Pompey ushered him through to the front door. “Perhaps you should come and dine with us one afternoon. Just the three of us.”
Pompey’s face lit up. An invitation to dine with Metellus Scipio! Oh, he’d been to formal dinners there in that rather awful and too-small house, but never with the family! “Delighted any time, Scipio,” he said, and opened the front door himself.
But Metellus Scipio didn’t go home. Instead, he went to the small and drab house wherein lived Marcus Porcius Cato, who was the enemy of all ostentation. Bibulus was keeping Cato company.
“Well, I did it,” Metellus Scipio said, sitting down heavily.
The other two exchanged glances.
“Did he believe you’d come to discuss Clodius?” asked Bibulus.
“Yes.”
“Did he take the bait on your real purpose?”
“I think so.”
Stifling a sigh, Bibulus studied Metellus Scipio for a moment, then leaned forward and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Scipio,” he said.
“It’s a right act,” said Cato, draining his plain pottery cup at a gulp. Since he kept the plain pottery flagon close by his elbow on the desk, it was an easy matter to refill it. “Little though any one of us loves the man, we’ve got to nail Pompeius to us as firmly as Caesar did to himself.”
“Must it be through my daughter?” asked Metellus Scipio.
“Well, he wouldn’t have my daughter!” said Cato, neighing with laughter. “Pompeius likes patricians, make him feel terribly important. Look at Caesar.”
“She’ll hate it,” said Metellus Scipio miserably. “Publius Crassus was of the noblest stock; she liked that. And she quite liked Publius Crassus, though she didn’t know him for very long. Off to Caesar almost straight after the wedding, then off to Syria with his father.” He shivered. “I don’t even know how to break the news to her that I want her to marry a Pompeius from Picenum. Strabo’s son!”
“Be
honest, tell her the truth,” advised Bibulus. “She’s needed for the cause.”
“I don’t really see why, Bibulus,” said Metellus Scipio.
“Then I’ll go through it again for you, Scipio. We have to swing Pompeius onto our side. You do see that, don’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“All right, I’ll explain that too. It goes back to Luca and the conference Caesar held there with Pompeius and Marcus Crassus. Almost four years ago. April. Because Caesar’s daughter held Pompeius in thrall, Caesar was able to persuade Pompeius to help legislate a second five-year command in Gaul for him. If Pompeius hadn’t done that, Caesar would now be in permanent exile, stripped of everything he owns. And you’d be Pontifex Maximus, Scipio. Do remember that. He also persuaded Pompeius—and Crassus, though that was never as hard—to bring in a law which forbids the Senate to discuss Caesar’s second five-year command before March of two years’ time, let alone remove his command from him! Caesar bribed Pompeius and Crassus with their second consulship, but he couldn’t have done that without Julia to help things along. What was to stop Pompeius’s running for a second consulship anyway?”
“But Julia’s dead,” objected Metellus Scipio.
“Yes, but Caesar still holds Pompeius! And as long as Caesar does hold Pompeius, there’s the chance that he’ll manage to prolong his Gallic command beyond its present end. Until, in fact, he steps straight into a second consulship. Which he can do legally in less than four years.”
“But why do you always harp on Caesar?” asked Metellus Scipio. “Isn’t it Clodius who’s the danger at the moment?”
Cato banged his empty cup down on the desk so suddenly that Metellus Scipio jumped. “Clodius!” he said contemptuously. “It isn’t Clodius who will bring the Republic down, for all his fine plans! Someone will stop Clodius. But only we boni can stop the real enemy of the boni, Caesar.”
Bibulus tried again. “Scipio,” he said, “if Caesar manages to survive unprosecuted until he’s consul for the second time, we will never bring him down! He’ll force laws through the Assemblies that will make it impossible for us to arraign him in any court! Because now Caesar is a hero. A fabulously wealthy hero! When he was consul the first time, he had the name and little else. Ten years later, he’ll be let do whatever he likes, because the whole of Rome is full of his creatures and the whole of Rome deems him the greatest Roman who ever lived. He’ll get away with everything he’s done—even the Gods will hear him laughing at us!”
“Yes, I do see all of that, Bibulus, but I also remember how hard we worked to stop him when he was consul the first time,” said Metellus Scipio stubbornly. “We’d hatch a plot, it usually cost us a lot of money, and every time you’d say the same thing—it would be the end of Caesar. But it never was the end of Caesar!”
“That’s because,” said Bibulus, hanging on to his patience grimly, “we didn’t have quite enough clout. Why? Because we despised Pompeius too much to make him our ally. But Caesar didn’t make that mistake. I don’t say he doesn’t despise Pompeius to this day—who with Caesar’s ancestry wouldn’t?—but he uses Pompeius. Who has a huge amount of clout. Who even presumes to call himself the First Man in Rome, if you please! Pah! Caesar presented him with his daughter, a girl who could have married anyone, she was so highborn. A Cornelian and a Julian combined. Who was betrothed to Brutus, quite the richest and best-connected nobleman in Rome. Caesar broke that engagement. Enraged Servilia. Horrified everyone who mattered. But did he care? No! He caught Pompeius in his toils, he became unbeatable. Well, if we catch Pompeius in our toils, we’ll become unbeatable! That’s why you’re going to offer him Cornelia Metella.”
Cato listened, eyes fixed on Bibulus’s face. The best, the most enduring of friends. A very tiny fellow, so silver of hair, brows and lashes that he seemed peculiarly bald. Silver eyes too. Sharp-faced, sharp-minded. Though he could thank Caesar for honing the razor edge on his mind.
“All right,” said Metellus Scipio with a sigh, “I’ll go home and talk to Cornelia Metella. I won’t promise, but if she says she’s willing, then I’ll offer her to Pompeius.”
“And that,” said Bibulus when Cato returned from escorting Metellus Scipio off the premises, “is that.” Cato lifted the plain pottery cup to his lips and drank again; Bibulus looked dismayed.
“Cato, must you?” he asked. “I used to think the wine never went to your head, but that isn’t true anymore. You drink far too much. It will kill you.”
Indeed Cato never looked well these days, though he was one of those men whose figure hadn’t suffered; he was as tall, as straight, as beautifully built as ever. But his face, which used to be so bright, so innocent, had sunk to ashen planes and fine wrinkles, despite the fact that he was only forty-one years old. The nose, so large that it was famous in a city of large noses, dominated the face completely; in the old days his eyes had done that, for they were widely opened, luminously grey.
And the short-cut, slightly waving hair was no longer auburn—more a speckled beige.
He drank and he drank. Especially since he had given Marcia to Hortensius. Bibulus knew why, of course, though Cato had never discussed it. Love was not an emotion Cato could cope with, particularly a love as ardent and passionate as the love he still felt for Marcia. It tormented him, it ate at him. Every day he worried about her; every day he wondered how he could live were she to die, as his beloved brother Caepio had died. So when the addled Hortensius had asked, he saw a way out. Be strong, belong to himself again! Give her away. Get rid of her.
But it hadn’t worked. He just buried himself with his pair of live-in philosophers, Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus, and the three of them spent each night plundering the wine flagons. Weeping over the pompous, priggish words of Cato the Censor as if Homer had written them. Falling into a stuporous sleep when other men were getting out of bed. Not a sensitive man, Bibulus had no idea of the depth of Cato’s pain, but he did love Cato, chiefly for that unswerving strength in the face of all adversity, from Caesar to Marcia. Cato never gave up, never gave in.
“Porcia will be eighteen soon,” said Cato abruptly.
“I know,” said Bibulus, blinking.
“I haven’t got a husband for her.”
“Well, you had hoped for her cousin Brutus….”
“He’ll be home from Cilicia by the end of the month.”
“Do you intend to try for him again? He doesn’t need Appius Claudius, so he could divorce Claudia.”
Came that neighing laugh. “Not I, Bibulus! Brutus had his chance. He married Claudia and he can stay married to Claudia.”
“How about Ahenobarbus’s son?”
The flagon tipped; a thin stream of red wine trickled into the plain pottery cup. The permanently haemorrhage-pinkened eyes looked at Bibulus over the rim of the cup. “How about you, old friend?” he asked.
Bibulus gasped. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Domitia’s dead, so why not?”
“I—I—I never thought—ye Gods, Cato! Me?”
“Don’t you want her, Bibulus? I admit Porcia doesn’t have a hundred-talent dowry, but she’s not poor. She’s well enough born and very highly educated. And I can vouch for her loyalty.” Down went some of the wine. “Pity, in fact, that she’s the girl and not the boy. She’s worth a thousand of him.”
Eyes filling with tears, Bibulus reached out a hand across the desk. “Marcus, of course I’ll have her! I’m honored.”
But Cato ignored the hand. “Good,” he said, and drank until the cup was empty.
2
On the seventeenth day of that January, Publius Clodius donned riding gear, strapped on a sword, and went to see his wife in her sitting room. Fulvia was lying listlessly on a couch, her hair undressed, delicious body still clad in a filmy saffron bed robe. But when she saw what Clodius was wearing, she sat up.
“Clodius, what is it?”
He grimaced, sat on the edge of her couch and kissed her brow. “Meum mel, Cyrus is dy
ing.”
“Oh, no!” Fulvia turned her face into Clodius’s linen shirt, rather like the underpinnings of a military man’s cuirass save that it was not padded. Then she lifted her head and stared at him in bewilderment. “But you’re going out of Rome, dressed like that! Why? Isn’t Cyrus here?”
“Yes, he’s here,” said Clodius, genuinely upset at the prospect of Cyrus’s death, and not because he would then lose the services of Rome’s best architect. “That’s why I’m off to the building site. Cyrus has got it into his head that he made an error in his calculations, and he won’t trust anyone but me to check for him. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Clodius, don’t leave me behind!”
“I have to,” said Clodius unhappily. “You’re not well, and I’m in a tearing hurry. The doctors say Cyrus won’t last longer than another two or three days, and I have to put the poor old fellow’s mind at rest.” He kissed her mouth hard, got up.
“Take care!” she cried.
Clodius grinned. “Always, you know that. I’ve got Schola, Pomponius and my freedman Gaius Clodius for company. And I have thirty armed slaves as escort.”
The horses, all good ones, had been brought in from the stables outside the Servian Walls at the Vallis Camenarum, and had drawn quite a crowd of onlookers in the narrow lane into which Clodius’s front door opened; so many mounts within Rome were most unusual. In these turbulent times it was customary for contentious men to go everywhere with a bodyguard of slaves or hired toughs, and Clodius was no exception. But this was a lightning trip, it had not been planned, and Clodius expected to be back before he had been missed. The thirty slaves were, besides, all young and trained in the use of the swords they wore, even if they were not equipped with cuirasses or helmets.
“Where are you off to, Soldiers’ Friend?” called a man from the crowd, grinning widely.
Clodius paused. “Tigranocerta? Lucullus?” he asked.
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