Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  The secret rides also endowed his life with an element of risk that he didn't yet understand he craved; he merely thought it tremendous fun to hoodwink Rome and imperil his flaminate. While he honored and respected the Great God whom he served, he knew that he had a unique relationship with Jupiter Best and Greatest; his ancestor Aeneas had been the love child of the goddess of love, Venus, and Venus's father was Jupiter Optimus Maximus. So Jupiter understood, Jupiter gave his sanction, Jupiter knew his earthly servant had a drop of divine ichor in his veins. In all else he obeyed the tenets of his flaminate to the best of his ability; but his price was Bucephalus, a communion with another living creature more precious to him by far than all the women in the Subura. On them, the sum was less than himself. On Bucephalus, the sum was more.

  Not long after nightfall he was ready to leave. Lucius Decumius and his sons had trundled the seventy-six thousand sesterces Aurelia had managed to scrape up in a handcart to the Quirinal Gate, while two other loyal Brethren of the college had gone to the stables on the Campus Lanatarius where Caesar kept his horses and brought them the long way round, outside the Servian Walls.

  "I do wish," said Aurelia without displaying a sign of her terrible inward anxiety, "that you'd chosen to ride a less showy animal than that chestnut you gallop all over Latium."

  He gasped, choked, fell about laughing; when he could, he said, wiping his eyes, "I don't believe it! Mater, how long have you known about Bucephalus?"

  "Is that what you call it?" She snorted. "My son, you have delusions of grandeur not in keeping with your priestly calling." A spark of amusement glittered. "I've always known. I even know the disgracefully long price you paid for it-fifty thousand sesterces! You are an incorrigible spendthrift, Caesar, and I don't understand where you get that from. It is certainly not from me."

  He hugged her, kissed her wide and uncreased brow. "Well, Mater, I promise that no one but you will ever keep my accounts. I'd still like to know how you found out about Bucephalus."

  "I have many sources of information," she said, smiling. "One cannot but, after twenty-three years in the Subura." Her smile dying, she looked up at him searchingly. "You haven't seen little Cinnilla yet, and she's fretting. She knows something is amiss, even though I sent her to her room."

  A sigh, a frown, a look of appeal. "What do I tell her, Mater? How much, if anything?"

  "Tell her the truth, Caesar. She's twelve."

  Cinnilla occupied what used to be Cardixa's room, under the stairs which ascended to the upper storeys on the Vicus Patricius side of the building; Cardixa now lived with Burgundus and their sons in a special room it had amused Caesar to design and build with his own hands above the servants' quarters.

  When Caesar entered on the echo of his knock, his wife was at her loom diligently weaving a drab-colored and rather hairy piece of cloth destined to form a part of her wardrobe as flaminica Dialis, and for some reason the sight of it, so unappealing and unflattering, smote at Caesar's heart.

  "Oh, it isn't fair!" he cried, swept her off her stool into his arms and sat with her on his lap in the one place available, her little bed.

  He thought her exquisitely beautiful, though he was too young himself to find her burgeoning womanhood attractive in itself; he liked females considerably older than he was. But to those who have been surrounded all their lives by tall, slender, fair people, a slightly plump mite of night-dark coloring held an irresistible fascination. His feelings about her were confused, for she had lived inside his house for five years as his sister, yet he had always known she was his wife, and that when Aurelia gave her permission he would take her out of this room and into his bed. There was nothing moral in this confusion, which might almost have been called a matter of logistics; one moment she was his sister, the next moment she would be his wife. Of course all the eastern kings did it- married their sisters-but he had heard that the family nurseries of the Ptolemies and the Mithridatidae resounded with the noises of war, that brothers fought sisters like animals. Whereas he had never fought with Cinnilla, any more than he had ever fought with his real sisters; Aurelia would not have let that kind of attitude develop.

  "Are you going away, Caesar?" asked Cinnilla.

  There was a strand of hair drifting across her brow; he smoothed it back into place and continued to stroke her head as if she were a pet, rhythmic, soothing, sensuous. Her eyes closed, she settled into the crook of his arm.

  "Now, now, don't go to sleep!" he said sharply, giving her a shake. "I know it's past your bedtime, but I have to talk to you. I'm going away, that's true."

  "What is the matter these days? Is it all to do with the proscriptions? Aurelia says my brother has fled to Spain."

  "It has a little to do with the proscriptions, Cinnilla, but only because they stem from Sulla too. I have to go away because Sulla says there is a doubt about my priesthood."

  She smiled, her full top lip creasing to reveal a fold of its inside surface, a characteristic all who knew Cinnilla agreed was enchanting. "That should make you happy. You'd much rather not be the flamen Dialis."

  "Oh, I'm still the flamen Dialis," said Caesar with a sigh. "According to the priests, it's you who are wrong." He shifted her, made her sit upright on the edge of his knees so he could look into her face. "You know your family's present situation, but what you may not have realized is that when your father was pronounced sacer–an outcast–he ceased to be a Roman citizen."

  "Well, I do understand why Sulla can take away all of our property, but my father died a long time before ever Sulla came back," said Cinnilla, who was not very clever, and needed to have things explained. "How can he have lost his citizenship?"

  "Because Sulla's laws of proscription automatically take away a man's citizenship, and because some men were already dead when Sulla put their names on his proscription lists. Young Marius-your father-the praetors Carrinas and Damasippus-and lots of others-were dead when they were proscribed. But that fact didn't stop their losing their citizen rights."

  "I don't think that's very fair."

  "I agree, Cinnilla." He ploughed on, hoping that he had been dowered with the gift of simplifying. "Your brother was of age when your father was proscribed, so he retains his Roman status. He just can't inherit any of the family property or money, nor stand as a curule magistrate. However, with you, it's quite different."

  "Why? Because I'm a girl?"

  "No, because you are under age. Your sex is immaterial. The lex Minicia de liberis says children of a Roman and a non-Roman must take the citizenship of the non-Roman parent. That means-at least according to the priests-that you now have the status of a foreigner."

  She began to shiver, though not to weep, her enormous dark eyes staring into Caesar's face with painful apprehension.

  "Oh! Does that mean I am no longer your wife?"

  “No, Cinnilla, it does not. You are my wife until the day one of us dies, for we are married in the old form. No law forbids a Roman to marry a non-Roman, so our marriage is not in doubt. What is in doubt is your citizen status-and the citizen status of all the other children of a proscribed man who were under age at the time of proscription. Is that clear?''

  "I think so." The expression of frowning concentration did not lighten. “Does that mean that if I give you children, they will not be Roman citizens?"

  "Under the lex Minicia, yes."

  "Oh, Caesar, how terrible!"

  "Yes."

  "But I am a patrician!"

  "Not any longer, Cinnilla."

  "What can I do?"

  "For the moment, nothing. But Sulla knows that he has to clarify his laws in this respect, so we will just have to hope that he does so in a way which allows our children to be Roman, even if you are not." His hold tightened a little. "Today Sulla summoned me and ordered me to divorce you."

  Now the tears came, silently, tragically. Even at eighteen Caesar had experienced women's tears with what had become boring regularity, usually turned on when he tired of someone, or so
meone discovered he was intriguing elsewhere. Such tears annoyed him, tried his sudden and very hot temper. Though he had learned to control it rigidly, it always flashed out when women produced tears, and the results were shattering-for the weeper. Whereas Cinnilla's tears were pure grief and Caesar's temper was only for Sulla, who had made Cinnilla cry.

  "It's all right, my little love," he said, gathering her closer. "I wouldn't divorce you if Jupiter Optimus Maximus came down in person and ordered it! Not if I lived to be a thousand would I divorce you!"

  She giggled and snuffled, let him dry her face with his handkerchief. "Blow!" he commanded. She blew. "Now that's quite enough. There's no need to cry. You are my wife, and you will stay my wife no matter what."

  One arm stole round his neck, she put her face into his shoulder and sighed happily. "Oh, Caesar, I do love you! It's so hard to wait to grow up!"

  That shocked him. So did the feel of her budding breasts, for he was wearing only a tunic. He put his cheek against her hair but delicately loosened his hold on her, unwilling to start something his honor wouldn't let him finish.

  "Jupiter Optimus Maximus doesn't have a person to come down in," she said, good Roman child who knew her theology. "He is everywhere that Rome is-that's why Rome is Best and Greatest."

  "What a good flaminica Dialis you would have made!"

  "I would have tried. For you." She lifted her head to look at him. “If Sulla ordered you to divorce me and you said no, does that mean he will try to kill you? Is that why you're going away, Caesar?"

  "He will certainly try to kill me, and that is why I'm going away. If I stayed in Rome, he would be able to kill me easily. There are too many of his creatures, and no one knows their names or faces. But in the country I stand a better chance." He jogged her up and down on his knee as he had when she had come first to live with them. "You mustn't worry about me, Cinnilla. My life strand is tough-too tough for Sulla's shears, I'll bet! Your job is to keep Mater from worrying."

  "I'll try," she said, and kissed him on his cheek, too unsure of herself to do what she wanted to do, kiss him on his mouth and say she was old enough.

  "Good!" he said. He pushed her off his lap and got to his feet. "I'll be back after Sulla dies," he said, and left.

  When Caesar arrived at the Quirinal Gate he found Lucius Decumius and his sons waiting. The two mules were panniered with the money evenly divided between them, which meant neither was carrying anything like a full load. There were no leather moneybags in evidence; instead, Lucius Decumius had put the cash in false compartments lining what looked like-and were!-book buckets stuffed with scrolls.

  "You didn't make these in a few hours today," Caesar said, grinning. "Is this how you shift your own loot around?"

  "Go and talk to your horse-but first, a word in your ear. Let Burgundus lift the money," Lucius Decumius lectured, and turned to the German with such a fierce look upon his face that Burgundus took an involuntary step backward.

  "Now see here, lout, you make sure when you lifts those buckets that you makes it seem like you was lifting feathers, hear me?"

  Burgundus nodded. "I hear, Lucius Decumius. Feathers."

  “Now put all your other baggage on top of them books- and if the boy takes off like the wind, you hang on to them mules no matter what!"

  Caesar was standing at his horse's head, cheek against cheek, murmuring endearments. Only when the rest of the baggage had been tied onto the mules did he move, and then it was to allow Burgundus to toss him into the saddle.

  "You look after yourself, Pavo!" shrilled Lucius Decumius into the wind, eyes tearing. He reached up his grubby hand.

  Caesar the cleanliness fanatic leaned down, took it, and kissed it. "Yes, dad!"

  And then they were gone into the wall of snow.

  Burgundus's mount was the Caesar family steed, and almost as expensive as Bucephalus. A Nesaean from Median bloodstock, it was much bigger than the horses of the peoples around the Middle Sea. Nesaeans were few and far between in Italy, as they could be used for nothing else than bearing oversized riders. Many farmers and traders had eyed them longingly, wishing they could be employed as beasts of burden or attached to heavy wagons and ploughs because they were both speedier and more intelligent than oxen. But, alas, when yoked to pull a load they strangled; the forward movement pressed the harness against their windpipes. As pack animals they were useless too; they ate too much to pay their way. An ordinary horse, however, could not have taken Burgundus's weight, and though a good mule might have, on a mule Burgundus's feet literally skimmed the ground.

  Caesar led the way toward Crustumerium, hunched down in the lee of Bucephalus's head-oh, it was a cold winter!

  They pressed on through the night to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Rome, and paused only when the next night threatened. By then they had reached Trebula, not far from the crest of the first range of mountains. It was a small place, but boasted an accommodation house which also served as the local tavern, and was therefore noisy, overcrowded, and very hot. The general atmosphere of dirt and neglect did not please Caesar in the least.

  "Still, it's a roof and a sort of a bed," he said to Burgundus after inspecting a room upstairs where they were to sleep-along with several shepherd dogs and six hens.

  Of course they attracted a considerable amount of attention from their fellow patrons, who were all locals there to drink wine; most would be fit to stagger home again through the snow, but some (so Mine Host confided) would spend the night wherever they happened to be lying when they fell over.

  "There's sausages and bread," said Mine Host.

  "We'll have both," said Caesar.

  "Wine?"

  "Water," said Caesar firmly.

  "Too young to drink?" Mine Host demanded, not pleased. His profit was in the wine.

  "My mother would kill me if I took a single sip."

  "What's wrong with your friend, then? He's old enough."

  "Yes, but he's mentally retarded, and you wouldn't want to see him with a bit of wine in him-he pulls Hyrcanian bears apart with his hands, and did in two lions some praetor in Rome thought he was going to show at the games," said Caesar with a straight face; Burgundus just looked vacant.

  "Oooer!" said Mine Host, and retreated quickly.

  No one ever tried to bother Caesar when he had Burgundus for company, so they were able to sit in the most peaceful part of that turbulent room and watch the local sport, which mostly seemed to consist in plying the drunkest youngster there with more wine and speculating upon how much longer he would manage to keep it down.

  "Country life!" said Caesar, slapping at his bare arm. "You'd never think Rome was close enough for these yokels to vote every year, would you? Not to mention that their votes count because they belong to rural tribes, whereas canny fellows up to every political trick but unfortunate enough to own Rome as their birthplace have votes that are worthless. Not right!"

  "They can't even read," said Burgundus, who could these days because Caesar and Gnipho had taught him. His slow smile dawned. "That's good, Caesar. Our book buckets are safe."

  "Quite so." Caesar slapped at his arm again. "The place is full of mosquitoes, wretched things!"

  "Come in for the winter," said Burgundus. "Hot enough to boil eggs in here."

  An exaggeration, but the room was certainly unbearably hot, a combination of the bodies jammed into a confined space and a huge fire which roared away inside a thick stone box let into the side of the room; though the box was open at the top to let the smoke out, no cold could compete with several logs as big around as a man's waist sending great tongues of flame into the smoke hole; clearly the men of Trebula, literally with timber to burn, disliked being cold.

  If the dark corners were full of mosquitoes, the beds were full of fleas and bugs; Caesar spent the night on a hard chair and quit the place thankfully at dawn to ride on. Behind him he left much speculation as to why he and his giant servant were abroad in such weather-and what class o
f man he was.

  "Very uppish!" said Mine Host.

  "Proscriptions," suggested Mine Host's wife.

  "Too young," said a rather urban-looking fellow who had arrived just as Caesar and Burgundus were departing. "Besides, they'd have looked a lot more frightened if Sulla was after them!"

  "Then he's on his way to visit someone," said the wife.

  "Very likely," said the stranger, looking suddenly unsure. "Might bear investigating, though. Can't mistake the pair of them, can you? Achilles and Ajax," he ended, displaying a morsel of education. "The thing that struck me was the horses. Worth a fortune! There's money there."

  "Probably owns a bit of the rosea rura at Reate," said Mine Host. "It's where the horses come from, I'll bet."

  "He has a look of the Palatine about him," said the newcomer, whose thoughts were now definitely suspicious. "One of the Famous Families, in fact. Yes, there's money there."

  "Well, if there is it's not with him," said Mine Host, disgruntled. "Know what they had on those mules? Books! A dozen great buckets of books! I ask you-books!"

  Having battled worsening weather as they climbed higher into the ranges around the Mons Fiscellus, Caesar and Burgundus finally arrived in Nersae a full day later.

  The mother of Quintus Sertorius had been a widow for over thirty years, and looked as if she had never had a husband. She always reminded Caesar of the late, much-lamented Scaurus Princeps Senatus, for she was little and slight, incredibly wrinkled, very bald for a woman, and owned one remarkable focus of beauty, a pair of vivid green eyes; that she could ever have borne a child as massive as Quintus Sertorius was hard to imagine.

  "He's all right," she said to Caesar as she loaded her old and well-scrubbed table with goodies from her smokehouse and her larder; this was country living, everyone sat on chairs at a table to eat. "Didn't have any trouble setting himself up as governor of Nearer Spain, but he's expecting big trouble now that Sulla has made himself Dictator." She chuckled gleefully. "Never mind, never mind, he'll make life harder for Sulla than that poor boy of my cousin Marius's. Brought up too soft, of course. Lovely lady, Julia. But too soft, and my cousin Marius was too much away when the boy was growing up. That was true of you too, Caesar, but your mother wasn't soft, was she?"