Caesar's Women

by Colleen McCullough

  "Precisely. He's the junior consul next year, but it's handy to have at least one consul in thrall."

  Gabinius chuckled. "Pompeius has something in mind for our dear Glabrio."

  "Good. If you can divide the consuls of the year, Gabinius, you can go a lot further, a lot faster."

  Caesar and Servilia resumed their liaison after she returned from Cumae at the end of October, no less absorbed in it and in each other. Though Aurelia tried to fish from time to time, Caesar confined his information about the progress of the affair to a minimum, and gave his mother no real indication how serious a business it was, nor how intense. He still disliked Servilia, but that couldn't affect their relationship because liking wasn't necessary. Or perhaps, he thought, liking would have taken something vital away from it.

  “Do you like me?'' he asked Servilia the day before the new tribunes of the plebs assumed office.

  She fed him one breast at a time, and delayed her answer until both nipples had popped up and she could feel the heat start to move downward through her belly.

  "I like no one," she said then, climbing on top of him. "I love or I hate."

  "Is that comfortable?"

  Because she lacked a sense of humor, she did not mistake his question for a reference to their present juxtaposition, but went straight to its real meaning. “Far more comfortable than liking, I'd say. I've noticed that when people like each other, they become incapable of acting as they ought. They delay telling each other home truths, for example, it seems out of fear that home truths will wound. Love and hate permit home truths."

  "Would you care to hear a home truth?" he asked, smiling as he kept absolutely still; that drove her to distraction when her blood was afire and she needed him to move inside her.

  "Why don't you just shut up and get on with it, Caesar?"

  "Because I want to tell you a home truth."

  "All right, then, tell it!" she snapped, kneading her own breasts when he would not. "Oh, how you love to torment!"

  "You like being on top a great deal more than being underneath, or sideways, or any other way," he said.

  "That's true, I do. Now are you happy? Can we get on with it?"

  "Not yet. Why do you like being on top best?"

  "Because I'm on top, of course," she said blankly.

  "Aha!" he said, and rolled her over. "Now I'm on top."

  "I wish you weren't."

  "I am happy to gratify you, Servilia, but not when it means I also gratify your sense of power."

  "What other outlet do I have to gratify my sense of power?" she asked, wriggling. "You're too big and too heavy this way!"

  "You're quite right about comfort," he said, pinning her down. "Not liking someone means one is not tempted to relent."

  "Cruel," she said, eyes glazing.

  "Love and hate are cruel. Only liking is kind."

  But Servilia, who did not like anyone, had her own method of revenge; she raked her carefully tended nails from his left buttock to his left shoulder, and drew five parallel lines with his blood.

  Though she wished she hadn't, for he took both her wrists and ground their bones, then made her lie beneath him for what seemed an eternity ramming himself home deeper and deeper, harder and harder; when she cried and screamed at the end, she scarcely knew whether agony or ecstasy provoked her, and for some time was sure her love had turned to hate.

  The worst of that encounter did not occur until after Caesar went home. Those five crimson tracks were very sore, and his tunic when he peeled it away showed that he was still bleeding. The cuts and scratches he had sustained in the field from time to time told him that he would have to ask for someone to wash and dress the damage or run the risk of festering. If Burgundus had been in Rome it would have been easy, but these days Burgundus lived in the Caesar villa at Bovillae with Cardixa and their eight sons, caring for the horses and sheep Caesar bred. Lucius Decumius wouldn't do; he was not clean enough. And Eutychus would blab the story to his boyfriend, his boyfriend' s boyfriends and half the members of the crossroads college. His mother, then. It would have to be his mother.

  Who looked and said, "Ye immortal Gods!"

  "I wish I was one, then it wouldn't hurt."

  Off she went to bring two bowls, one half-full of water and the other half-full of fortified but sour wine, together with wads of clean Egyptian linen.

  “Better linen than wool, wool leaves fluff behind in the depths of the wounds," she said, beginning with the strong wine. Her touch wasn't tender, but it was thorough enough to make his eyes water; he lay on his belly, as much of him covered as her sense of decency dictated, and endured her ministrations without a sound. Anything capable of festering after Aurelia got through with it, he consoled himself, would kill a man from gangrene.

  "Servilia?" she asked some time later, finally satisfied that she had got enough wine into the tracks to cow any festering thing lurking there, and beginning afresh with water.

  "Servilia."

  "What sort of relationship is this?" she demanded.

  "Not," he said, and shook with laughter, "a comfortable one."

  "So much I see. She might end in murdering you."

  "I trust I preserve sufficient vigilance to prevent that."

  "Bored you're not."

  "Definitely not bored, Mater."

  "I do not think," she finally pronounced as she patted the water dry, "that this relationship is a healthy one. It might be wise to end it, Caesar. Her son is betrothed to your daughter, which means the two of you will have to preserve the proprieties for many years to come. Please, Caesar, end it."

  "I'll end it when I'm ready, not before."

  "No, don't get up yet!" Aurelia said sharply. "Let it dry properly first, then put on a clean tunic." She left him and began to hunt through his chest of clothes until she found one which satisfied her sniffing nose. "It's plain to see Cardixa isn't here, the laundry girl isn't doing her job as she ought. I shall have something to say about that tomorrow morning." Back to the bed she came, and tossed the tunic down beside him. "No good will come of this relationship, it isn't healthy," she said.

  To which he answered nothing. By the time he had swung his legs off the bed and plunged his arms into the tunic, his mother was gone. And that, he told himself, was a mercy.

  On the tenth day of December the new tribunes of the plebs entered office, but it was not Aulus Gabinius who dominated the rostra. That privilege belonged to Lucius Roscius Otho of the boni, who told a cheering crowd of senior knights that it was high time they had their old rows at the theater restored for their exclusive use. Until Sulla's dictatorship they had enjoyed sole possession of the fourteen rows just behind the two front rows of seats still reserved for senators. But Sulla, who loathed knights of all kinds, had taken this perquisite away from them together with sixteen hundred knight lives, estates and cash fortunes. Otho's measure was so popular it was carried at once, no surprise to Caesar, watching from the Senate steps. The boni were brilliant at currying favor with the knights; it was one of the pillars of their continuing success.

  The next meeting of the Plebeian Assembly interested Caesar far more than Otho's equestrian honeycomb: Aulus Gabinius and Gaius Cornelius, Pompey's men, took over. The first order of business was to reduce the consuls of the coming year from two to one, and the way Gabinius did it was deliciously clever. He asked the Plebs to give the junior consul, Glabrio, governance of a new province in the East to be called Bithynia-Pontus, then followed this up by asking the Plebs to send Glabrio out to govern it the day after he was sworn into office. That would leave Gaius Piso on his own to deal with Rome and Italia. Hatred of Lucullus predisposed the knights who dominated the Plebs to favor the bill because it stripped Lucullus of power—and of his four remaining legions. Still commissioned to fight the two kings Mithridates and Tigranes, he now had nothing save an empty title.

  Caesar's own feelings about it were ambivalent. Personally he detested Lucullus, who was such a stickler for the co
rrect way to do things that he deliberately elected incompetence in others if the alternative was to ignore proper protocols. Yet the fact remained that he had refused to allow the knights of Rome complete freedom to fleece the local peoples of his provinces. Which of course was why the knights hated him so passionately. And why they were in favor of any law which disadvantaged Lucullus. A pity, thought Caesar, sighing inwardly. That part of himself longing for better conditions for the local peoples of Rome's provinces wanted Lucullus to survive, whereas the monumental injury Lucullus had offered his dignitas by implying that he had prostituted himself to King Nicomedes demanded that Lucullus fall.

  Gaius Cornelius was not quite as tied to Pompey as Gabinius was; he was one of those occasional tribunes of the plebs who genuinely believed in righting some of Rome's most glaring wrongs, and that Caesar liked. Therefore Caesar found himself silently willing Cornelius not to give up after his first little reform was defeated. What he had asked the Plebs to do was to forbid foreign communities to borrow money from Roman usurers. His reasons were sensible and patriotic. Though the moneylenders were not Roman officials, they employed Roman officials to collect when debts became delinquent. With the result that many foreigners thought the State itself was in the moneylending business. Rome's prestige suffered. But of course desperate or gullible foreign communities were a valuable source of knight income; little wonder Cornelius failed, thought Caesar sadly.

  His second measure almost failed, and showed Caesar that this Picentine fellow was capable of compromise, not usual in the breed. Cornelius's intention was to stop the Senate's owning the power to issue decrees exempting an individual from some law. Naturally only the very rich or the very aristocratic were able to procure an exemption, usually granted when the senatorial mouthpiece had a meeting specially convened, then made sure it was filled with his creatures. Always jealous of its prerogatives, the Senate opposed Cornelius so violently that he saw he would lose. So he amended his bill to leave the power to exempt with the Senate—but only on condition that a quorum of two hundred senators was present to issue a decree. It passed.

  By now Caesar's interest in Gaius Cornelius was growing at a great rate. The praetors earned his attention next. Since Sulla's dictatorship their duties had been confined to the law, both civil and criminal. And the law said that when a praetor entered office he had to publish his edicta, the rules and regulations whereby he personally would administer justice. The trouble was that the law didn't say a praetor had to abide by his edicta, and the moment a friend needed a favor or there was some money to be made, the edicta were ignored. Cornelius simply asked the Plebs to stop up the gap, compel praetors to adhere to their edicta as published. This time the Plebs saw the sense of the measure as clearly as Caesar did, and voted it into law.

  Unfortunately all Caesar could do was watch. No patrician might participate in the affairs of the Plebs. So he couldn't stand in the Well of the Comitia, or vote in the Plebeian Assembly, or speak in it, or form a part of a trial process in it. Or run for election as a tribune of the plebs. Thus Caesar stood with his fellow patricians on the Curia Hostilia steps, as close to the Plebs in session as he was permitted to go.

  Cornelius's activities presented an intriguing aspect of Pompey, whom Caesar had never thought the slightest bit interested in righting wrongs. But perhaps after all he was, given Gaius Cornelius's dogged persistence in matters which couldn't affect Pompey's plans either way. More likely, however, Caesar concluded, that Pompey was merely indulging Cornelius in order to throw sand in the eyes of men like Catulus and Hortensius, leaders of the boni. For the boni were adamantly opposed to special military commands, and Pompey was once again after a special command.

  The Great Man's hand was more evident—at least to Caesar—in Cornelius's next proposal. Gaius Piso, doomed to govern alone now that Glabrio was going to the East, was a choleric, mediocre and vindictive man who belonged completely to Catulus and the boni. He would rant against any special military command for Pompey until the Senate House rafters shook, with Catulus, Hortensius, Bibulus and the rest of the pack baying behind. Owning little attractive apart from his name, Calpurnius Piso, and his eminently respectable ancestry, Piso had needed to bribe heavily to secure election. Now Cornelius put forward a new bribery law; Piso and the boni felt a cold wind blowing on their necks, particularly when the Plebs made its approval plain enough to indicate that it would pass the bill. Of course a boni tribune of the plebs could interpose his veto, but Otho, Trebellius and Globulus were not sure enough of their influence to veto. Instead the boni shifted themselves mightily to manipulate the Plebs—and Cornelius—into agreeing that Gaius Piso himself should draft the new bribery law. Which, thought Caesar with a sigh, would produce a law endangering no one, least of all Gaius Piso. Poor Cornelius had been outmaneuvered.

  When Aulus Gabinius took over, he said not one word about the pirates or a special command for Pompey the Great. He preferred to concentrate on minor matters, for he was far subtler and more intelligent than Cornelius. Less altruistic, certainly. The little plebiscite he succeeded in passing that forbade foreign envoys in Rome to borrow money in Rome was obviously a less sweeping version of Cornelius's measure to forbid the lending of money to foreign communities. But what was Gabinius after when he legislated to compel the Senate to deal with nothing save foreign delegations during the month of February? When Caesar understood, he laughed silently. Clever Pompey! How much the Great Man had changed since he entered the Senate as consul carrying Varro's manual of behavior in his hand so he wouldn't make embarrassing mistakes! For this particular lex Gabinia informed Caesar that Pompey planned to be consul a second time, and was ensuring his dominance when that second year arrived. No one would poll more votes, so he would be senior consul. That meant he would have the fasces—and the authority— in January. February was the junior consul's turn, and March saw the fasces back with the senior consul. April went to the junior consul. But if February saw the Senate confined to foreign affairs, then the junior consul would have no chance to make his presence felt until April. Brilliant!

  In the midst of all this pleasurable turbulence, a different tribune of the plebs inserted himself into Caesar's life far less enjoyably. This man was Gaius Papirius Carbo, who presented a bill to the Plebeian Assembly asking that it arraign Caesar's middle uncle, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, on charges of stealing the spoils from the Bithynian city of Heracleia. Unfortunately Marcus Cotta's colleague in the consulship that year had been none other than Lucullus, and they were well known to be friends. Knight hatred of Lucullus inevitably prejudiced the Plebs against any close friend or ally, so the Plebs allowed Carbo to have his way. Caesar's beloved uncle would stand trial for extortion, but not in the excellent standing court Sulla had established. Marcus Cotta's jury would be several thousand men who all hungered to tear Lucullus and his cronies down.

  "There was nothing to steal!" Marcus Cotta said to Caesar. "Mithridates had used Heracleia as his base for months, then the place withstood siege for several months more—when I entered it, Caesar, it was as bare as a newborn rat! Which everybody knew! What do you think three hundred thousand soldiers and sailors belonging to Mithridates left? They looted Heracleia far more thoroughly than Gaius Verres looted Sicily!"

  "You don't need to protest your innocence to me, Uncle," said Caesar, looking grim. "I can't even defend you because it's trial by the Plebs and I'm a patrician."

  "That goes without saying. However, Cicero will do it."

  "He won't, Uncle. Didn't you hear?"

  "Hear what?"

  "He's overwhelmed by grief. First his cousin Lucius died, then his father died only the other day. Not to mention that Terentia has some sort of rheumatic trouble which Rome at this season makes worse, and she rules that particular roost! Cicero has fled to Arpinum."

  “Then it will have to be Hortensius, my brother Lucius, and Marcus Crassus," said Cotta.

  "Not as effective, but it will suffice, Uncle."

  "I do
ubt it, I really do. The Plebs are after my blood."

  "Well, anyone who is a known friend of poor Lucullus's is a target for the knights."

  Marcus Cotta looked ironically at his nephew. “Poor Lucullus?" he asked. "He's no friend of yours!"

  "True," said Caesar. "However, Uncle Marcus, I can't help but approve of his financial arrangements in the East. Sulla showed him the way, but Lucullus went even further. Instead of allowing the knight publicani to bleed Rome's eastern provinces dry, Lucullus has made sure Rome's taxes and tributes are not only fair, but also popular with the local communities. The old way, with the publicani permitted to squeeze mercilessly, might mean bigger profits for the knights, but it also means a great deal of animosity for Rome. I loathe the man, yes. Lucullus not only insulted me unpardonably, he denied me the military credit I was entitled to as well. Yet as an administrator he's superb, and I'm sorry for him."

  "A pity the pair of you didn't get on, Caesar. In many ways you're as like as twins."

  Startled, Caesar stared at his mother's half brother. Most of the time he never saw much of a family resemblance between Aurelia and any of her three half brothers, but that dry remark of Marcus Cotta's was Aurelia! She was there too in Marcus Cotta's large, purplish-grey eyes. Time to go, when Uncle Marcus turned into Mater. Besides, he had an assignation with Servilia to keep.

  But that too turned out to be an unhappy business.

  If Servilia arrived first, she was always undressed and in the bed waiting for him. But not today. Today she sat on a chair in his study, and wore every layer of clothing.

  "I have something to discuss," she said.

  “Trouble?'' he asked, sitting down opposite her.

  "Of the most basic and, thinking about it, inevitable kind. I am pregnant."

  No identifiable emotion entered his cool gaze; Caesar said, "I see," then looked at her searchingly. "This is a difficulty?"

  "In many ways." She wet her lips, an indication of nervousness unusual in her. "How do you feel about it?"