Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  Scipio Asiagenus was camped between Teanum Sidicinum and Cales, where a small tributary of the Volturnus, fed by springs, provided a great deal of slightly effervescent water; even in summer its mild warmth was delightful.

  "This," said Sulla, "will be an excellent winter camp!" And sat himself and his army down on the opposite bank of the streamlet from his adversary. The cavalry were sent back to Beneventum under the charge of Cethegus, while Sulla himself gave a new party of envoys explicit instructions on how to proceed in negotiating a truce with Scipio Asiagenus.

  "He's not an old client of Gaius Marius's, so he'll be much easier to deal with than Norbanus," said Sulla to Metellus Pius and Pompey. His face was still in remission and his intake of wine was somewhat less than on the journey from Beneventum, which meant that his mood was cheerful and his mind very clear.

  "Maybe," said the Piglet, looking doubtful. "If it were only Scipio, I'd agree wholeheartedly. But he has Quintus Sertorius with him, and you know what that means, Lucius Cornelius."

  "Trouble," said Sulla, sounding unworried.

  "Ought you not be thinking how to render Sertorius impotent?"

  "I won't need to do that, Piglet dear. Scipio will do it for me." He pointed with a stick toward the place where a sharp bend in the little river drew his camp's boundary very close to the boundary of Scipio's camp on the far shore. "Can your veterans dig, Gnaeus Pompeius?"

  Pompey blinked. "With the best!"

  "Good. Then while the rest are finishing off the winter fortifications, your fellows can excavate the bank outside our wall, and make a great big swimming pool," said Sulla blandly.

  "What a terrific idea!" said Pompey with equal sangfroid, and smiled. "I'll get them onto it straightaway." He paused, took the stick from Sulla and pointed it at the far bank. "If it's all right with you, General, I'll break down the bank and concentrate on widening the river, rather than make a separate swimming hole. And I think it would be very nice for our chaps if I roofed at least a part of it over-less chilly later on."

  "Good thinking! Do that," said Sulla cordially, and stood watching Pompey stride purposefully away.

  “What was all that about?'' asked Metellus Pius, frowning; he hated to see Sulla so affable to that conceited young prig!

  "He knew," said Sulla cryptically.

  "Well, I don't!" said the Piglet crossly. "Enlighten me!"

  "Fraternization, Piglet dear! Do you think Scipio's men are going to be able to resist Pompeius's winter spa? Even in summer? After all, our men are Roman soldiers too. There is nothing like a truly pleasurable activity shared in common to breed friendship. The moment Pompeius's pool is finished, there will be as many of Scipio's men enjoying it as ours. And they'll all get chatty in no time-same jokes, same complaints, same sort of life. It's my bet we won't have to fight a battle."

  "And he understood that from the little you said?"

  "Absolutely."

  "I'm surprised he agreed to help! He's after a battle."

  "True. But he's got my measure, Pius, and he knows he will not get a battle this side of spring. It's no part of Pompeius's strategy to annoy me, you know. He needs me just as much as I need him," said Sulla, and laughed softly without moving his face.

  “He strikes me as the sort who might prematurely decide that he doesn't need you."

  "Then you mistake him."

  Three days later, Sulla and Scipio Asiagenus parleyed on the road between Teanum and Cales, and agreed to an armistice. About this moment Pompey finished his swimming hole, and-typically methodical-after publishing a roster for its use that allowed sufficient space for invaders from across the river, threw it open for troop recreation. Within two more days the coming and going between the two camps was so great that,

  "We may as well abandon any pretense that we're on opposite sides," said Quintus Sertorius to his commander.

  Scipio Asiagenus looked surprised. "What harm does it do?" he asked gently.

  The one eye Sertorius was left with rolled toward the sky. Always a big man, his physique had set with the coming of his middle thirties into its final mold-thick-necked, bull-like, formidable. And in some ways this was a pity, for it endowed Sertorius with a bovine look entirely at variance with the power and quality of his mind. He was Gaius Marius's cousin, and had inherited far more of Marius's personal and military brilliance than had, for instance, Marius's son. The eye had been obliterated in a skirmish just before the Siege of Rome, but as it was his left one and he was right-handed, its loss had not slowed him down as a fighter. Scar tissue had turned his pleasant face into something of a caricature, in that its right side was still most pleasant while its left leered a horrible contradiction.

  So it was that Scipio underestimated him, did not respect or understand him. And looked at him now in surprise.

  Sertorius tried. "Asiagenus, think! How well do you feel our men will fight for us if they're allowed to get too friendly with the enemy?"

  "They'll fight because they're ordered to fight."

  "I don't agree. Why do you think Sulla built his swimming hole, if not to suborn our troops? He didn't do it for the sake of his own men! It's a trap, and you're falling into it!"

  "We are under a truce, and the other side is as Roman as we are," said Scipio Asiagenus stubbornly.

  "The other side is led by a man you ought to fear as if he and his army had been sown from the dragon's teeth! You can't give him one single little inch, Asiagenus. If you do, he will end in taking all the miles between here and Rome."

  "You exaggerate," said Scipio stiffly.

  "You're a fool!" snarled Sertorius, unable not to say it.

  But Scipio was not impressed by the display of temper either. He yawned, scratched his chin, looked down at his beautifully manicured nails. Then he looked up at Sertorius looming over him, and smiled sweetly. "Do go away!" he said.

  "I will that! Right away!" Sertorius snapped. "Maybe Gaius Norbanus can make you see sense!"

  "Give him my regards," Scipio called after him, then went back to studying his nails.

  So Quintus Sertorius rode for Capua at the gallop, and there found a man more to his taste than Scipio Asiagenus. The loyalest of Marians, Norbanus was no fanatical adherent of Carbo's; after the death of Cinna, he had only persisted in his allegiance because he loathed Sulla far more than he did Carbo.

  “You mean that chinless wonder of an aristocrat actually has concluded an armistice with Sulla?” asked Norbanus, voice squeaking as it uttered that detested name.

  "He certainly has. And he's permitting his men to fraternize with the enemy," said Sertorius steadily.

  "Why did I have to be saddled with a colleague as stupid as Asiagenus?" wailed Norbanus, then shrugged. "Well, that is what our Rome is reduced to, Quintus Sertorius. I'll send him a nasty message which he will ignore, but I suggest you don't return to him. I hate to think of you as a captive of Sulla's-he'd find a way to murder you. Find something to do that will annoy Sulla."

  "Eminent good sense," said Sertorius, sighing. "I'll stir up trouble for Sulla among the towns of Campania. The townspeople all declared for Sulla, but there are plenty of men who aren't happy about it." He looked disgusted. "Women, Gaius Norbanus! Women! They only have to hear Sulla's name and they go limp with ecstasy. It's the women decided which side these Campanian towns chose, not the men."

  "Then they ought to set eyes on him," said Norbanus, and grimaced. "I believe he looks like nothing human."

  "Worse than me?"

  "A lot worse, so they say."

  Sertorius frowned. "I'd heard something of it, but Scipio wouldn't include me in the treating party, so I didn't see him, and Scipio made no reference to his appearance." He laughed grimly. "Oh, I'll bet that hurts him, the pretty mentula! He was so vain! Like a woman."

  Norbanus grinned. "Don't like the sex much, do you?" "They're all right for a poke. But I'll have none to wife! My mother is the only woman I have any time for at all. Now she is what a woman ought to be! Doesn't st
ick her nose into men's affairs, doesn't try to rule the roost, doesn't use her cunnus like a weapon." He picked up his helmet and clapped it on his head. "I'll be off, Gaius. Good luck convincing Scipio that he is wrong. Verpa!"

  After some thought, Sertorius decided to ride from Capua toward the Campanian coast, where the pretty little town of Sinuessa Aurunca might just be ripe for a declaration against Sulla. The roads everywhere in Campania were free enough from trouble; Sulla had not attempted any blockades aside from a formal investment of Neapolis. No doubt he would shortly put a force outside Capua to keep Norbanus in, but there had been no sign of it when Sertorius visited. Even so, Sertorius felt it advisable to stay off the main roads. He liked the sensation of a fugitive existence; it carried an extra dimension of real life with it, and reminded him slightly of the days when he had posed as a Celtiberian warrior of some outlandish tribe in order to go spying among the Germans. Ah, that had been the life! No chinless wonders of Roman aristocrats to placate and defer to! Constant action, women who knew their place. He had even had a German wife, sired a son by her without once ever feeling that she or the boy hampered him. They lived in Nearer Spain now, up in the mountain stronghold of Osca, and the boy would be-how time flew!-almost a man. Not that Quintus Sertorius missed them, or hankered to set eyes upon this only child. What he missed was the life. The freedom, the sole ruling excellence, which was how a man acquitted himself as a warrior. Yes, those were the days....

  As was his invariable habit, he traveled without any kind of escort, even a slave; like his cousin, dear old Gaius Marius, he believed that a soldier ought to be able to care for himself completely. Of course his kit was back in Scipio Asiagenus's camp and he would not go back for it-or would he? Come to think of it, there were a few items he would sorely miss: the sword he normally used, a shirt of chain mail he had picked up in Further Gaul of a lightness and workmanship no smith in Italy could match, his winter boots from Liguria. Yes, he would go back. Some days would elapse before Scipio would fall.

  So he turned his horse around and headed back toward the northeast, intending to swing beyond Sulla's camp on its far side. And discovered that some distance in his rear a small party was proceeding along the rutted track. Four men and three women. Oh, women! Almost he reversed direction once more, then resolved to pick up speed and hasten by them. After all, they were heading seaward, he was now going back toward the mountains.

  But as they loomed larger he frowned. Surely the man in their lead was familiar? A veritable giant, flaxen-haired and massive of thews, just like thousands more German men he had known-Burgundus! Ye gods, it was! Burgundus! And behind him rode Lucius Decumius and his two sons!

  Burgundus had recognized him; each man kicked his horse in the ribs and rode to a meeting, with little Lucius Decumius flogging his beast to catch up. Trust Lucius Decumius not to miss a word of any conversation!

  "What on earth are you doing here?" Sertorius asked after the handshakes and the backslappings were over.

  "We're lost, that's what we're doing here," said Lucius Decumius, glaring at Burgundus balefully. "That heap of German rubbish swore he knew the way! But do he? No, he do not!"

  Years of exposure to Lucius Decumius's never-ending spate of (quite well meant) insults had inured Burgundus to them, so he bore them now with his usual patience, merely eyeing the small Roman the way a bull eyed a gnat.

  "We're trying to find the lands of Quintus Pedius," said Burgundus in his slow Latin, smiling at Sertorius with a liking he felt for few men. "The lady Aurelia is going to fetch her daughter to Rome."

  And there she was, plodding along upon a stout mule and sitting absolutely straight, not a hair out of place nor a single smear of dust upon her fawn traveling robe. With her was her huge Gallic serving maid, Cardixa, and another female servant Sertorius did not know.

  "Quintus Sertorius," she said, joining them and somehow assuming command.

  Now she was a woman! Sertorius had said to Norbanus that he prized only one of the breed, his mother, but he had quite forgotten Aurelia. How she managed to be beautiful as well as sensible he didn't know; what he did know was that she was the only woman in the entire world who was both. Added to which, she was as honorable as any man, she didn't lie, she didn't moan or complain, she worked hard, and she minded her own business. They were almost exactly the same age-forty-and had known each other since Aurelia had married Gaius Julius Caesar over twenty years earlier.

  "Have you seen my mother?" Sertorius asked as she prodded her mule to lead them slightly apart from the rest of her party.

  "Not since last year's ludi Romani, so you would have seen her yourself since I have. But she'll be down to stay with us again this year for the games. It's become a regular habit."

  "Old horror, she never will stay in my house," he said.

  "She's lonely, Quintus Sertorius, and your house is such a lonely place. If she stays with us she's in the midst of a bustle, and she likes that. I don't say she'd like it for longer than the games last, but it's good for her once a year."

  Satisfied on the subject of his mother, whom he loved very much, he turned his mind to the present predicament.

  "Are you really lost?" he asked.

  Aurelia nodded, sighed. "I fear we are. Wait until my son hears about it! He'll never let me live it down. But he cannot leave Rome, being flamen Dialis, so I had to trust in Burgundus." She looked rueful. "Cardixa says he can lose himself between the Forum and the Subura, but I confess I thought she was being pessimistic. Now I see she didn't exaggerate in the slightest!"

  "And Lucius Decumius and his boys are useless too."

  "Outside the city walls, completely. However," she said loyally, "I could not ask for more caring and protective escorts, and now that we've met you, I'm sure we'll arrive at Quintus Pedius's in no time."

  "Not quite in no time, but certainly I can put you on your way." His one good eye studied her thoughtfully. "Come to fetch your chick home, Aurelia?"

  She flushed. "Not exactly. Quintus Pedius wrote to me and asked me to come. Apparently both Scipio and Sulla are camped on the borders of his land, and he felt Lia would be safer elsewhere. But she refused to leave!"

  "A typical Caesar," said Sertorius, smiling. "Stubborn."

  "How right you are! It really ought to have been her brother come-when he tells them to do this or do that, both his sisters jump! But Quintus Pedius seems to think I will do. My job is not so much to fetch my chick home, as to persuade my chick to come home."

  "You'll succeed. The Caesars may be stubborn, but it isn't from the Caesars that your son gets his air of command. That he gets from you, Aurelia," said Sertorius. He looked suddenly brisk. "You'll understand when I tell you that I'm in a bit of a hurry. I'm going your way for a part of your journey, but I won't be able to escort you to Quintus Pedius's door, unfortunately. For that you'll have to apply to Sulla. He's camped squarely between where we are at the moment and Quintus Pedius's door."

  "Whereas you are on your way to Scipio," she said, nodding.

  "I wasn't," he said frankly, "until I realized I had too much gear back in his camp that I didn't want to part with."

  The large purple eyes surveyed him tranquilly. "Oh, I see! Scipio doesn't meet the test."

  "Did you think he could?"

  "No, never."

  A small silence fell; they were riding now back the way both had come, and the rest of Aurelia's party had fallen in behind them without a word.

  "What will you do, Quintus Sertorius?"

  "Make as much trouble for Sulla as I can. In Sinuessa, I think. But after I fetch my gear from Scipio's camp." He cleared his throat. "I can take you all the way to Sulla. He'd never try to detain me if I came on business like this."

  “No, just take us as far as some spot from which we can find his camp without getting lost." Aurelia heaved a small and pleasurable sigh. "How nice it will be to see Lucius Cornelius again! It is four years since he was last in Rome. He always visited me just after he arri
ved, and just before he left. A kind of tradition. Now I have to break it, and all because of one stubborn daughter. Still, it doesn't matter. The important thing is that Lucius Cornelius and I will set eyes upon each other again. I have missed his visits dreadfully."

  Almost Sertorius opened his mouth to warn her, but in the end he didn't. What he knew about Sulla's condition was hearsay, and what he knew about Aurelia was hard fact. She would prefer to make her own discoveries, of that he was sure.

  So when the earth-and-timber ramparts of Sulla's camp began to trace lines across the rolling Campanian horizon, Quintus Sertorius bade his cousin-in-law a grave goodbye, geed up his horse and departed.

  A new road led across the fields toward the ramparts, worn already by a ceaseless progress of supply carts and shod hooves; there could be no excuse for getting lost.

  "We must have passed right by it," said Lucius Decumius, scowling. "Hid from view by the size of your arse, Burgundus!"

  "Now, now," said Aurelia calmly, "stop quarreling, do!"

  And that was the end of the conversation. An hour later the little band of riders paused before the gate while Lucius Decumius demanded to see the general, then entered a world very strange and new to Aurelia, who had never been anywhere near an army camp in her entire life. Many were the glances she received as they paced down the broad high street which led as straight as a spear shaft toward the tiny aperture of another gate in the far distance. Perhaps three miles lay between, she realized, amazed.

  Halfway along the Via Principalis there reared the only piece of raised ground within the camp; an obviously artificial knoll upon which stood a large stone house. The big red general's flag was flying to indicate that the general was in, and the red-haired duty officer seated at his table under an awning stood up awkwardly when he saw that the general's visitor was a woman. Lucius Decumius, his sons, Burgundus, Cardixa and the other female servant remained by the horses as Aurelia walked sedately up the path toward the duty officer and the sentries who flanked him.