Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

"Ask what you will," said Metrobius.

  Sulla stopped. "Stand here in front of me, Metrobius, and see what time and illness have done. The position hasn't changed. But even if it had, I am no use to you or to anyone else except these poor silly women who persist in-oh, who knows? Pitying me, in all probability. I don't think it can be love."

  "Of course it's love!" He was close now, close enough for Sulla to see that the eyes still held love, still looked at him with tenderness. And with a dynamic kind of interest unspoiled by disgust or revulsion. A softer, more personal version of the way Aurelia had looked at him in Teanum Sidicinum. "Sulla, those of us who have once fallen under your spell can never be free of you! Women or men, there is no difference. You are unique. After you, all others pale. It's not a matter of virtue or goodness." Metrobius smiled. "You have neither! Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness. I have forgotten all my Plato, so I am not sure what he and Socrates have to say about it."

  Out of the corner of his eye Sulla noticed Dalmatica turn back to stare in his direction, but what her face displayed he could not tell at the distance. Then she went round the corner, and was gone.

  "Does what you say mean," asked the Dictator, "that if I am allowed to put down this present burden, you would consider living with me until I die? My time grows short, but I hope at least some of it will be mine alone to spend without consideration of Rome. If you would go with me into retirement, I promise you would not suffer in any way-least of all financially."

  A laugh, a shake of the curly dark head. "Oh, Sulla! How can you buy what you have owned for thirty years?"

  The tears welled, were blinked away. "Then when I retire, you will come with me?"

  "I will."

  "When the time comes I'll send for you."

  "Tomorrow? Next year?"

  "Not for a long while. Perhaps two years. You'll wait?"

  "I'll wait."

  Sulla heaved a sigh of almost perfect happiness: too short, too short! For he remembered that each time he had seen Metrobius on those last occasions, someone he loved had died. Julilla. His son. Who would it be this time? But, he thought, I do not care. Because Metrobius matters more. Except for my son, and he is gone. Only let it be Cornelia Sulla. Or the twins. Let it not be Dalmatica! He nodded curtly to Metrobius as if this had been the most trivial of encounters, and walked away.

  Metrobius stood watching his retreating back, filled with happiness. It was true then what the little local gods of his half-remembered home in Arcadia said: if a man wanted something badly enough, he would get it in the end. And the dearer the price, the greater the reward. Only when Sulla had disappeared did he turn back toward the dressing rooms.

  Sulla walked slowly, completely alone; that in itself was a seldom experienced luxury. How could he find the strength to wait for Metrobius? Not a boy any longer, but always his boy.

  He could hear voices in the distance and slowed even more, unwilling that anyone should see his face just yet. For though his heart hoped and acknowledged a premonitory joy, there was anger in him because of this joyless task he still must finish, and fear in him that it might be Dalmatica to die.

  The two voices were louder now, and one of them floated high above the other. He knew it well. Odd, how distinctive a man's voice was! No two alike, once one got past superficial similarities of pitch and accent. This speaker could be no one save Manius Acilius Glabrio, who was his stepdaughter Aemilia Scaura's husband.

  “He really is the outside of enough,'' said Glabrio now, in tones both forceful and aristocratically languid. "Thirteen thousand talents his proscriptions have put into the Treasury, and he boasts of it! The truth is, he ought to hang his head in shame! The sum should have been ten times as much! Properties worth millions knocked down for a few thousands, his own wife the proud owner of fifty millions in big estates bought for fifty thousands-it's a disgrace!"

  "I hear you've profited yourself, Glabrio," said another familiar voice-that belonging to Catilina.

  "A trifle only, and not more than my due. Frightful old villain! How dared he have the audacity to say the proscriptions would end on the Kalends of last month-the names are still going up on the rostra every time one of his minions or his relatives covets another luscious slice of Campania or the seashore! Did you notice him remain behind to have a chat to the fellow played the vainglorious soldier? He can't resist the stage-or the riffraff who strut across it! That goes back to his youth, of course, when he was no better than the most vulgar strumpet who ever hawked her fork outside Venus Erucina's! I suppose he's worth a laugh or two among the pansies when they get together to see who is on which end today. Have you ever seen a daisy chain of pansies? Sulla's seen plenty!"

  "Be careful what you say, Glabrio," said Catilina, sounding a little uneasy. "You too could wind up proscribed."

  But Glabrio laughed heartily. "Not I!" he cried gleefully. "I'm part of the family, I'm Dalmatica's son-in-law! Even Sulla can't proscribe a member of the family, you know."

  The voices faded as the two men moved off, but Sulla stayed where he was, just around the corner. All movement had stilled in him, and the ice-cold eyes glowed eerily. So that was what they said, was it? After all these years too... Of course Glabrio was privy to much Rome was not-but clearly Rome would soon be privy to everything Glabrio imagined or knew. How much was idle gossip, how much the opportunity to read documents and papers filed away year by year? Sulla was in the throes of collecting all his written evidence against the day of his retirement, for he intended to author his memoirs, as Catulus Caesar had done ten years earlier. So there were plenty of bits and pieces lying around, it wouldn't have taken any great talent to unearth them. Glabrio! Why hadn't he thought of Glabrio, always in and out of his house? Not every member of that privileged visiting circle was a Cornelia Sulla or a Mamercus! Glabrio! And who else?

  The ashes of his anger at having to continue to hold Metrobius at arm's length tumbled onto a fresh conflagration within Sulla's mind and fueled it sourly, relentlessly. So, he thought as he picked up his feet and began to walk again, I cannot proscribe a member of my own family, eh? I cannot, he's right about that. Yet-need it be proscription? Might there not be a better way?

  Round the corner he came, straight into the arms of Pompey. Both men stepped back, reeling a little.

  "What, Magnus, on your own?" asked Sulla.

  "Sometimes," said Pompey, falling into step alongside the Dictator, "it's a pleasure to be alone."

  "I heartily concur. But don't tell me you tire of Varro!"

  “Too much Varro can be a pain in the podex, especially when he starts prating on about Cato the Censor and the old ways and when money had real value. Though I'd rather hear Varro on those topics than on invisible fingers of power," grinned Pompey.

  "That's right, I'd forgotten he was a friend of poor old Appius Claudius's," said Sulla, rather glad that if in his present mood he had to collide with anyone, it had turned out to be Pompey. "I wonder why we all think of Appius Claudius as so old?"

  Pompey chuckled. "Because he was born old! But you are out of touch, Sulla! Appius Claudius is quite eclipsed these days. There's a new man in town-name of Publius Nigidius Figulus. A proper sophist. Or do I mean Pythagorean?" He shrugged casually. “No use, I never can keep one sort of philosopher distinct from all the others."

  "Publius Nigidius Figulus! It's an old and hallowed name, but I hadn't heard of the genuine article raising his head in Rome. Is he a bucolic gentleman, perhaps?"

  "Not a hayseed, if that's what you're asking. More a gourd half-full of peas-rattle, rattle ... He's a great expert on Etruscan soothsaying, from lightning to livers. Knows more lobes in that organ than I know figures of speech."

  "How many figures of speech do you know, Magnus?" asked Sulla, highly diverted.

  "Two, I think. Or is it three?"

  "Name them."

  "Color and description

  "Two."
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br />   "Two."

  They walked on in silence for a moment, both smiling, but at different thoughts entirely.

  "So how does it feel to be a knight when they don't have special seats at the theater anymore?" demanded Sulla.

  "I'm not complaining," said Pompey blithely. "I never go to the theater."

  "Oh. Where have you been today, then?"

  "Out to the Via Recta. Just for a good walk, you know. I get very hamstrung in Rome. Don't like the place."

  “On your own here?''

  "More or less. Left the wife behind in Picenum." He pulled a sour face.

  "Not to your liking, Magnus?"

  "Oh, she'll do until something better comes along. Adores me! Just not good enough, is all."

  "Well, well! It's an aedilician family."

  "I come from a consular family. So ought my wife."

  "Then divorce her and find a consular wife."

  "Hate making small talk, to women or their fathers."

  At that precise moment a blinding inspiration came to Sulla, who stopped dead in the middle of the lane leading from the Velabrum to the Vicus Tuscus just below the Palatine.” Ye gods!" he gasped. "Ye gods!"

  Pompey stopped too. "Yes?" he asked politely.

  "My dear young knight, I have had a brilliant idea!"

  "That's nice."

  "Oh, stop mouthing platitudes! I'm thinking!"

  Pompey obediently said nothing further, while Sulla's lips worked in and out upon his toothless gums like a swimming jellyfish. Then out came Sulla's hand, fixed itself on Pompey's arm.

  "Magnus," come and see me tomorrow morning at the third hour," he said, gave a gleeful skip, and departed at a run.

  Pompey remained where he was, brow furrowed. Then he too began to walk, not toward the Palatine but toward the Forum; his house was on the Carinae.

  Home went Sulla as if pursued by the Furies; here was a task he was really going to enjoy performing!

  "Chrysogonus, Chrysogonus!" he bellowed in the doorway as his toga fell behind him like a collapsing tent.

  In came the steward, looking anxious-something he did quite often of late, had Sulla only noticed. Which he didn't.

  "Chrysogonus, take a litter and go to Glabrio's house. I want Aemilia Scaura here at once."

  "Lucius Cornelius, you came home without your lictors!"

  "Oh, I dismissed them before the play began-sometimes they're a wretched nuisance," said the Dictator impenitently. "Now go and pick up my stepdaughter!"

  "Aemilia? What do you want her for?" asked Dalmatica as she came into the room.

  "You'll find out," said Sulla, grinning.

  His wife paused, stared at him searchingly. "You know, Lucius Cornelius, ever since your interview with Aurelia and her delegation, you've been different."

  "In what way?"

  This she found difficult to answer, perhaps because she was reluctant to provoke displeasure in him, but finally she said, "In your mood, I think."

  "For better or for worse, Dalmatica?"

  "Oh, better. You're-happy."

  "I am that," he said in a happy voice. "I had lost sight of a private future, but she gave it back to me. Oh, what a time I'm going to have after I retire!"

  "The actor fellow today-Metrobius. He's a friend."

  Something in her eyes gave him pause; his carefree feeling vanished immediately, and an image of Julilla lying with his sword in her belly swam into his mind, actually blotted Dalmatica's face from his gaze. Not another wife who wouldn't share him, surely! How did she know? What could she know? Did they smell it?

  "I've known Metrobius since he was a boy," he said curtly, his tone not inviting her to enquire further.

  "Then why did you pretend you didn't know him before he came down from the stage?" she asked, frowning.

  "He was wearing a mask until the end of the play!" Sulla snapped. "It's been a good many years, I wasn't sure." Fatal! She had maneuvered him to the defensive, and he didn't like it.

  "Yes, of course," she said slowly. "Yes, of course."

  "Go away, Dalmatica, do! I've frittered away too much of my time since the games began, I have work waiting."

  She turned to go, looking less perturbed.

  "One more thing," he said to her back.

  "Yes?"

  "I shall need you when your daughter arrives, so don't go out or otherwise make yourself unavailable."

  How peculiar he was of late! she thought, walking through the vast atrium toward the peristyle garden and her own suite of rooms. Touchy, happy, labile. Up one moment, down the next. As if he had made some decision he couldn't implement at once, he who loathed procrastination. And that fine-looking actor ... What sort of place did he occupy in Sulla's scheme of things? He mattered; though how, she didn't know. Had there been even a superficial resemblance, she would have concluded that he was Sulla's son-such were the emotions she had sensed in her husband, whom she knew by now very well.

  Thus it was that when Chrysogonus came to inform her that Aemilia Scaura had arrived, Dalmatica had not even begun to think further about why Sulla had summoned the girl.

  Aemilia Scaura was in her fourth month of pregnancy, and had developed the sheen of skin and clearness of eye which some women did-no bouts of sickness here! A pity perhaps that she had taken after her father, and in consequence was short of stature and a little dumpy of figure, but there were saving echoes of her mother in her face, and she had inherited Scaurus's beautiful, vividly green eyes.

  Not an intelligent girl, she had never managed to reconcile herself to her mother's marriage to Sulla, whom she both feared and disliked. It had been bad enough during the early years, when her brief glimpses of him had shown someone at least attractive enough to make her mother's passion for him understandable; but after his illness had so changed him for the worse she couldn't even begin to see why her mother apparently felt no less passionately about him. How could any woman continue to love such an ugly, horrible old man? She remembered her own father, of course, and he too had been old and ugly. But not with Sulla's internal rot; though she had neither the perception nor the wit thus to describe it.

  Now here she was summoned into his presence, and with no more notice than to leave a hasty message for Glabrio in her wake. Her stepfather greeted her with pats of her hand and a solicitous settling on a comfortable chair-actions which set her teeth on edge and made her fear many things. Just what was he up to? He was jam-full of glee and as pregnant with mischief as she was with child.

  When her mother came in the whole business of hand pats and solicitous settlings began all over again, until, it seemed to the girl, he had arranged some sort of mood and anticipation in them that would make whatever he intended to do more enjoyable to him. For this was not unimportant. This was going to matter.

  "And how's the little Glabrio on the way?" he asked his stepdaughter, nicely enough.

  "Very well, Lucius Cornelius."

  "When is the momentous event?"

  "Near the end of the year, Lucius Cornelius."

  "Hmmm! Awkward! That's still a good way off."

  "Yes, Lucius Cornelius, it is still a good way off."

  He sat down and drummed his fingers upon the solid oaken back of his chair, lips pursed, looking into the distance. Then the eyes which frightened her so much became fixed upon her; Aemilia Scaura shivered.

  "Are you happy with Glabrio?" he asked suddenly.

  She jumped. "Yes, Lucius Cornelius."

  "The truth, girl! I want the truth!"

  "I am happy, Lucius Cornelius, I am truly happy!"

  "Would you have picked somebody else had you been able?"

  A blush welled up beneath her skin, her gaze dropped. "I had formed no other attachment, Lucius Cornelius, if that's what you mean. Manius Acilius was acceptable to me."

  "Is he still acceptable?"

  "Yes, yes!" Her voice held an edge of desperation. "Why do you keep asking? I am happy! I am happy!"

  "That's a pity," said Luc
ius Cornelius Sulla.

  Dalmatica sat up straight. "Husband, what is all this?" she demanded. "What are you getting at with these questions?”

  “I am indicating, wife, that I am not pleased at the union between your daughter and Manius Acilius Glabrio. He deems it safe to criticize me because he is a member of my family," said Sulla, his anger showing. "A sign, of course, that I cannot possibly permit him to continue being a member of my family. I am divorcing him from your daughter. Immediately."

  Both women gasped; Aemilia Scaura's eyes filled with tears.

  "Lucius Cornelius, I am expecting his child! I cannot divorce him!" she cried.

  "You can, you know," the Dictator said in conversational tones. "You can do anything I tell you to do. And I am telling you that you will divorce Glabrio at once." He clapped his hands to summon the secretary called Flosculus, who entered with a paper in his hand. Sulla took it, nodded dismissal. "Come over here, girl. Sign it."

  Aemilia Scaura sprang to her feet. "No!"

  Dalmatica also rose. "Sulla, you are unjust!" she said, lips thin. "My daughter doesn't want to divorce her husband."

  The monster showed. "It is absolutely immaterial to me what your daughter wants," he said. "Over here, girl! And sign."

  "No! I won't, I won't!"

  He was out of his chair so quickly neither woman actually saw him move. The fingers of his right hand locked in a vise around Aemilia Scaura's mouth and literally dragged her to her feet, squealing in pain, weeping frantically.

  "Stop, stop!" shouted Dalmatica, struggling to prise those fingers away. "Please, I beg of you! Leave her be! She's with child, you can't hurt her!"

  His fingers squeezed harder and harder. "Sign," he said.

  She couldn't answer, and her mother had passed beyond speech.

  "Sign," said Sulla again, softly. "Sign or I'll kill you, girl, with as little concern as I felt when I killed Carbo's legates. What do I care that you're stuffed full with Glabrio's brat? It would suit me if you lost it! Sign the bill of divorcement, Aemilia, or I'll lop off your breasts and carve the womb right out of you!"

  She signed, still screaming. Then Sulla threw her away in contempt. "There, that's better," he said, wiping her saliva from his hand. "Don't ever make me angry again, Aemilia. It is not wise. Now go."