1. First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  The interview with Clitumna didn't go well; Stichus had done his work with cunning, and Sulla couldn't make himself humble his pride to plead, as Nicopolis had wanted. "It's all your fault, Lucius Cornelius," said Clitumna fretfully, twisting the expensive fringe of her shawl between beringed fingers. "You won't make the slightest effort to be nice to my poor boy, where he always tries to meet you more than halfway!" "He's a grubby little "would-be-if-he-could-be," said Sulla between his teeth. At which moment Nicopolis, listening outside the door, drifted gracefully through it and curled herself up on the couch beside Clitumna; she stared up at Sulla in resignation. "What's the matter?" she asked, all innocence. "It's both my Luciuses," said Clitumna. "They won't get on together, and I want them to so much!" Nicopolis disentangled fringe from fingers, then unhooked a few threads which had caught on the roughnesses of gem settings, and lifted Clitumna's hand to rest its back against her cheek. "Oh, my poor girl!" she crooned. "Your Luciuses are a couple of roosters, that's the trouble." "Well, they're going to have to learn to get on," said Clitumna, "because my darling Lucius Gavius is giving up his apartment and moving in with us next week." "Then I'm moving out," said Sulla. Both women began to squeal, Clitumna shrilly, Nicopolis like a small trapped kitten. "Oh, be your age!" Sulla whispered, thrusting his face down until it was only inches from Clitumna's. "He knows the situation here more or less, but how do you think he's going to stomach living in the same house with a man who sleeps between two women, and one of them his aunt?" Clitumna began to weep. "But he wants to come! How can I say no to my nephew?" "Don't bother! I'll remove the cause of all his complaints by moving out," said Sulla. As he began to withdraw Nicopolis stretched out her hand and clutched his arm. "Sulla, darling Sulla, don't!" she cried. "Look, you can sleep with me, and then whenever Stichus is out, Clitumna can come down and join us." "Oh, very crafty!" said Clitumna, stiffening. "You want him all to yourself, you greedy sow!" Nicopolis went white. "Well, what else do you suggest? It's your stupidity's got us into this mess!" "Shut up, both of you!" snarled Sulla in the whisper all who knew him well had learned to dread more than any other man's shout. "You've been going to mimes so long you're beginning to live them. Grow up, don't be so vulgarly crass! I detest the whole wretched situation, I'm tired of being half a man!" "Well, you're not half a man! You're two halves half mine, and half Nicky's!" said Clitumna nastily. There was no telling which hurt worse, the rage or the grief; perfectly poised on the very edge of madness, Sulla glared at his tormentors, unable to think, unable to see. "I can't go on!" he said, wonder in his voice. "Nonsense! Of course you can," said Nicopolis with the smugness of one who knew beyond any shadow of doubt that she had her man right where she wanted him under her foot. "Now run away and do something constructive. You'll feel better tomorrow. You always do."

  Out of the house, off to anywhere anywhere constructive. Sulla's feet blundered up the alley rather than down, took him unaware across from the Germalus to the Palatium, that part of the Palatine which looked down toward the end of the Circus Maximus and the Capena Gate. The houses were thinner here and there were many park-like spaces; the Palatium wasn't terribly fashionable, it lay too far from the Forum Romanum. Uncaring that it was very cold and he clad only in his house tunic, he sat upon a stone and looked at the view; not at the vacant bleachers of the Circus Maximus nor the lovely temples of the Aventine, but at the vista of himself stretched endlessly into a terrible future, a warped roadway of skin and bone that had absolutely no purpose. The pain was like a colic without the release of purgation; he shook with it until he could hear the grinding of his teeth, and did not know he groaned aloud. "Are you ill?" asked the voice, small and timid. At first when he looked up he saw nothing, his agony took the power from his eyes, but then they cleared, and so she swam slowly into focus from pointed chin to golden hairline, a heart-shaped face that was all eyes, huge and honey-colored, very afraid for him. She knelt in front of him, wrapped in her homespun cocoon, just as he had seen her at the site of Flaccus's house. "Julia," he said with a shudder. "No, Julia's my older sister. They call me Julilla," she said, smiling at him. "Are you ill, Lucius Cornelius?" "Not with anything a physician can heal." Sanity and memory were returning; he understood the galling truth of Nicopolis's last remark, he would feel better tomorrow. And hated that more than anything. "I would like so much so very, very much! to go mad," he said, "but it seems I can't." Julilla remained where she was. "If you can't, then the Furies don't want you yet." "Are you here on your own?" he asked, disapproving. "What are your parents about, to let you wander abroad at this hour?" "My girl is with me," she said tranquilly, sinking back on her heels. A sudden light of mischief darted through her eyes, turned up the delicious corners of her mouth. "She's a good girl. The most loyal and discreet person." "You mean she lets you go wherever you like and doesn't tell on you. But one day," said the man who was perpetually caught, "you'll be caught." "Until I am, what's the use of worrying?" Lapsing into silence, she studied his face with unself-conscious curiosity, clearly enjoying what she saw. "Go home, Julilla," he said, sighing. "If you must get caught, don't let it be with me." "Because you're a bad lot?" she asked. That brought a faint smile. "If you like." "I don't think you are!" Oh, what god had sent her? Thank you, unknown god! His muscles were untwining themselves; he felt suddenly light, as if indeed some god had brushed by him, benign and good. A strange feeling for one who knew no good. "I am a bad lot, Julilla," he said. "Nonsense!" Her voice was firm and positive. No novice, he recognized the symptoms of a girlish crush, and knew an impulse to dispel it by some coarse or frightening action. But he couldn't. Not to her, she didn't deserve it. For her, he would reach into his grab bag of tricks and produce the best Lucius Cornelius Sulla of them all, free from artifice, innocent of smut and smirch and smarm. "Well, I thank you for your faith, young Julilla," he said a little lamely, unsure what she wanted to hear, anxious that it should reflect the best in him. "I have some time," she said gravely. "Might we talk?" He moved over on his rock. "All right. But sit here, the ground's too damp." "They say," she said, "that you're a disgrace to your name. But I don't see how that's possible, when you haven't had a chance to prove different." "I daresay your father's the author of that remark." "Which remark?" "That I'm a disgrace to my name." She was shocked. "Oh, no! Not tata! He's the wisest man in the world." "Where mine was the most foolish. We're at the opposite ends of Rome's spectrum, young Julilla." She was plucking at the long grass around the base of the rock, pulling it out in long rhizomes, then wove with her nimble fingers until she had made a wreath of it. "Here," she said, and held it out to him. His breath caught; the future spasmed, opened up to show him something, closed again with the glimpse too painfully short. "A crown of grass!" he said, wondering. "No! Not for me!" "Of course it's for you," she insisted, and when he still made no move to take it, she leaned forward and put it on his head. "It should be flowers, but not at this time of year." She didn't understand! Well, he wouldn't tell her. "You give a wreath of flowers only to a loved one," he said instead. "You are my loved one," she said softly. "Only for a little while, girl. It will pass." "Never!" He got up, laughed down at her. "Go on! You can't be more than fifteen," he said. "Sixteen!" she said quickly. “Fifteen, sixteen, what's the difference? You're a baby." Flushed with indignation, her face grew set, sharp. "I am not a baby!" she cried. "Of course you are." He laughed again. "Look at you, all swaddled up, a little roly-poly puppy." There! That was better! That ought to put her in her place. It did, but more than that She was blighted, withered, killed. The light died in her. "I'm not pretty?" she said. "I always thought I was." "Growing up is a cruel business," said Sulla harshly. "I suppose almost all families tell their girl-children they're pretty. But the world judges by different standards. You'll be passable when you're older, you won't lack a husband." "I only want you," she whispered. "That's now. Anyway, disabuse yourself, my fat puppy. Run away before I pull your tail. Go on, shoo!" She ran, her servant girl left far behind, calling after her vainly
. Sulla stood watching until they both disappeared over the brow of the slope behind. The grass crown was still on his head, its tawny color a subtle contrast to his fiery curls; he reached up and plucked it off, but didn't throw it away, stood holding it between his hands and staring at it. Then he tucked it in his tunic, and turned to go. Poor little thing. He had hurt her after all. Still, she had to be discouraged; the last complication he needed in his life was Clitumna's next-door neighbor's daughter mooning over the wall, and she a senator's daughter. With every step he took as he walked away the grass crown tickled his skin, reminding him. Corona Graminea. Grass crown. Given to him here on the Palatine, where hundreds of years before the original city of Romulus had stood, a bevy of oval thatched huts like the one still lovingly cared for near the Steps of Cacus. A grass crown given to him by a personification of Venus truly one of Venus's girls, a Julia. An omen. "If it comes to pass, I will build you a temple, Venus Victorious," he said aloud. For he saw his way clear at last. Dangerous. Desperate. But for one with nothing to lose and everything to gain, possible nonetheless.

  Winter twilight lay heavy when he was admitted back into Clitumna's house and asked where the ladies were. In the dining room, heads together, waiting for him before summoning the meal. That he had been the subject of their talk was obvious; they sprang apart on the couch, tried to look idly innocent. "I want some money," he said baldly. "Now, Lucius Cornelius " Clitumna began, looking wary. "Shut up, you pathetic old drab! I want money." "But Lucius Cornelius!" "I'm going away for a holiday," he said, making no move to join them. "It's up to you. If you want me back if you want more of what I've got then give me a thousand denarii. Otherwise, I'm quitting Rome forever." "We'll give you half each," said Nicopolis unexpectedly, dark eyes fixed on his face. "Now," he said. "There may not be so much in the house," Nicopolis said. "You'd better hope there is, because I'm not waiting." When Nicopolis went to his room fifteen minutes later, she found him packing. Perching herself on his bed, she watched in silence until he should deign to notice her. But it was she who broke down first. "You'll have your money, Clitumna's sent the steward to her banker's house," she said. "Where are you going?" "I don't know, and I don't care. Just so long as it's away from here." He folded socks together, thrust them into closed-toe boots, every movement as economical as it was efficient. "You pack like a soldier." "How would you know?" "Oh, I was the mistress of a military tribune once. I followed the drum, would you believe it? The things one does for love when one is young! I adored him. So I went with him to Spain, and then to Asia." She sighed. "What happened?" he asked, rolling his second-best tunic around a pair of leather knee breeches. "He was killed in Macedonia, and I came home." Pity stirred her heart, but not for her dead lover. Pity for Lucius Cornelius, trapped, a beautiful lion destined for some sordid arena. Why did one love at all? It hurt so much. So she smiled, not a pretty smile. "He left everything he had to me in his will, and I became quite rich. There was plenty of booty in those days." "My heart bleeds," he said, wrapping his razors inside their linen sheath and sliding it down the side of a saddlebag. Her face twisted. "This is a nasty house," she said. "Oh, I do hate it! All of us bitter and unhappy. How many truly pleasant things do we say to each other? Precious few. Insults and indignities, spite and malice. Why am I here?" "Because, my dear, you're getting a bit frayed around the edges," he said, reinforcing her observation. "You're not the girl you used to be when you trudged all over Spain and Asia." "And you hate us all," she said. "Is that where the atmosphere originates? In you? I swear it's getting worse." "I agree, it is. That's why I'm going away for a while." He strapped the two bags, hefted them easily. "I want to be free. I want to spend big in some country town where no one knows my wretched face, eat and drink until I spew, get at least half a dozen girls pregnant, pick fifty fights with men who think they can take me with one arm tied behind their backs, find every pretty-boy between here and wherever I end up and give them sore arses." He smiled evilly. "And then, my dear, I promise I'll come tamely home to you and Sticky Stichy and Auntie Clittie, and we'll all live happily ever after." What he didn't tell her was that he was taking Metrobius with him; and he wouldn't tell old Scylax, either. Nor did he tell anyone, even Metrobius, just what he was up to. For it wasn't a holiday. It was an investigative mission. Sulla was going to make inquiries into subjects like pharmacology, chemistry, and botany.

  He didn't return to Rome until the end of April. Dropping Metrobius off at Scylax's elegant ground-floor apartment on the Caelian Hill outside the Servian Walls, he then drove down into the Vallis Camenarum to surrender the gig and mules he had hired from a stable there. Having paid the bill, he slung his saddlebags over his left shoulder and set out to walk into Rome. No servant had traveled with him; he and Metrobius had made do with the staff of the various inns and posting houses they had stayed in up and down the peninsula. As he trudged up the Via Appia to where the Capena Gate interrupted the twenty-foot-high masonry of Rome's ramparts, the city looked very good to him. Legend had it that Rome's Servian Walls had been erected by King Servius Tullus before the Republic was established, but like most noblemen, Sulla knew these fortifications, at least, had not existed until three hundred years ago when the Gauls had sacked the city. The Gauls had poured down in teeming hordes from the western Alps, spreading across the huge valley of the Padus River in the far north, gradually working their way down peninsular Italy on both east and west. Many settled where they fetched up, especially in Umbria and Picenum, but those who came down the Via Cassia through Etruria headed purposely toward Rome and having reached Rome, almost wrested the city permanently off her rightful owners. It was only after that the Servian Walls went up, while the Italian peoples of the Padus Valley, all Umbria, and northern Picenum mingled their blood with the Gauls, became despised half-castes. Never again had Rome suffered its walls to lapse into disrepair; the lesson had been a hard one, and the fear of barbarian invaders could still provoke horrified chills in every Roman. Though there were a few expensive insula apartment towers on the Caelian Hill, the scene in the main was pastoral until Sulla reached the Capena Gate; the Vallis Camenarum outside it was given over to stockyards, slaughterhouses, smokehouses, and grazing fields for the animals sent to this greatest market in all Italy. Inside the Capena Gate lay the real city. Not the congested jumble of the Subura and the Esquiline, yet urban nonetheless. He strolled up along the Circus Maximus and took the Steps of Cacus onto the Germalus of the Palatine, after which it was only a short distance to the house of Clitumna. Outside its door he took a deep breath, then sounded the knocker. And entered a world of shrieking women. That Nicopolis and Clitumna were delighted to see him was very plain. They wept and whinnied, draped themselves about his neck until he pushed them off, after which they kept circling close about him and would not leave him in peace. "Where do I sleep these days?" he asked, refusing to hand his saddlebags to the servant itching to take them. "With me," said Nicopolis, glittering triumphantly at the suddenly downcast Clitumna. The door to the study was tightly shut, Sulla noted as he followed Nicopolis out onto the colonnade, leaving his stepmother standing in the atrium wringing her hands. "I take it Sticky Stichy's well ensconced by now?" he asked Nicopolis as they reached her suite of rooms. "Here," she said, ignoring his question, so bursting was she to show him his new quarters. What she had done was to yield up her very spacious sitting room to him, leaving herself with a bedroom and a much smaller chamber. Gratitude filled him; he looked at her a little sadly, liking her in that moment more than he ever had. "All mine?" he asked. "All yours," she said, smiling. He threw the saddlebags down on his bed. "Stichus?" he asked, impatient to know the worst. Of course she wanted him to kiss her, make love to her, but she knew him well enough to understand that he was in no need of sexual solace simply because he had been away from her and Clitumna. The lovemaking would have to wait; sighing, Nicopolis reconciled herself to the role of informant. "Stichus is very well entrenched indeed," she said, and went over to the saddlebags to unpack
for him. He put her aside firmly, dropped the saddlebags down behind one of the clothes chests, and moved to his favorite chair, which stood behind a new desk. Nicopolis sat on his bed. "I want all the news," he said. "Well, Stichy's here, sleeping in the master's cubicle and using the study, of course. It's been better than expected in one way, really, because Stichy at close quarters every day is hard to take, even for Clitumna. A few more months, and I predict she'll throw him out. It was clever of you to go away, you know." Her hand smoothed the stack of pillows beside her absently. "I didn't think so at the time, I admit, but you were right and I was wrong. Stichy entered the place like a triumphing general, and you weren't here to dim his glory. Oh, things sailed around, I can tell you! Your books went into the rubbish bin it's all right, the servants rescued them and whatever else you left in the way of clothing and personal stuff went into the rubbish bin after the books. Since the staff like you and loathe him, nothing of yours was lost it's all here in this room somewhere." His pale eyes traveled around the walls, across the lovely mosaic floor. "This is nice," he said. And then, "Continue." "Clitumna was devastated. She hadn't counted on Stichy's throwing your things out. In fact, I don't think she ever really wanted him to move in, but when he said he wanted to, she couldn't find a way to refuse. Blood and the last of her line and all the rest of it. Clitumna's not very bright, but she knew perfectly well his only reason for demanding to move in here was to get you moving in the direction of the street. Stichy's not hard up. But when you weren't even here to see your stuff being thrown out, it rather took the edge off Stichy's pleasure. No quarrels, no opposition, no presence. Just a passively surly staff, a very weepy Auntie Clittie, and me well, I just look through him as if he isn't there." The little servant girl Bithy came sidling through the door bearing a plate of assorted buns, pasties, pies, and cakes, put it down on the corner of the desk with a shy smile for Sulla, and spied the leather band connecting the two saddlebags, poking up from behind the clothes chest. Off she went across the room to unpack. Sulla moved so quickly Nicopolis didn't see him intercept the girl; one moment he was leaning back comfortably in his chair, the next the girl was being moved gently away from the clothes chest. Smiling at her, Sulla pinched Bithy gently on the cheek and thrust her out the door. Nicopolis stared. "My, you are worried about those bags!" she said. "What's in them? You're like a dog guarding a bone." "Pour me some wine," he said, sitting down again, and selecting a meat pasty from the plate. She did as he asked, but she was not about to let go of the subject. "Come, Lucius Cornelius, what's in those bags that you don't want anyone to see?" A cup of unwatered wine was put in front of him. Down went both corners of his mouth; he threw out his hands in a gesture indicating growing exasperation. "What do you think? I've been away from both my girls for almost four months! I admit I didn't think of you all the time, but I did think of you! Especially when I saw some little thing I thought might please one or the other of you." Her face softened, glowed; Sulla was not a gift giver. In fact, Nicopolis could never remember his presenting her or Clitumna with a single gift, even of the cheapest kind, and she was a wise enough student of human nature to know this was evidence of parsimony, not of poverty; the generous will give, even when they have nothing to give. "Oh, Lucius Cornelius!" she exclaimed, beaming. "Truly? When may I see?" "When I'm good and ready," he said, turning his chair to glance through the big window behind him. "What's the time?" "I don't know about the eighth hour, I think. Dinner isn't due yet, anyway," she said. He got up, went across to the clothes chest, and hooked the saddlebags out from behind it, slinging them over his shoulder. "I'll be back in time for dinner," he said. Jaw dropped, she watched him go to the door. "Sulla! You are the most annoying creature in the entire world. I swear it! Just arrived home, and you're off somewhere! Well, I doubt you need to visit Metrobius, since you took him with you!" That arrested his progress. Grinning, he stared at her. "Oh, I see! Scylax came a-calling to complain, did he?" "You might say. He arrived like a tragedian playing Antigone, and left like a comedian playing the eunuch. Clitumna certainly put a squeak in his voice!" She laughed at the memory. "Serves him right, the old whore. Do you know he'd deliberately prevented the boy's learning to read and write?" But the saddlebags were gnawing again. "Don't trust us enough to leave them behind while you go out?" she asked. "I'm not a fool," he said, and departed. Female curiosity. He was a fool, to have overlooked it. So down to the Great Market he took himself and his saddlebags, and in the course of the next hour went on a concentrated shopping spree with the last of his thousand silver denarii, that remnant he had thought to save for the future. Women! Nosy, interfering sows! Why hadn't he thought of it? The saddlebags weighed down with scarves and bangles, frivolous Eastern slippers and gewgaws for the hair, he was let back into Clitumna's house by a servant who informed him the ladies and Master Stichus were in the dining room, but had elected to wait a while before eating. "Tell them I'll be there shortly," he said, and went to Nicopolis's suite.