Fortune's Favorites (120 page)

“No one,” said Aurelia. She heaved a sigh of pure pleasure. “Oh, I did enjoy watching you dispose of them! My hand had been itching to administer a good spanking ever since they arrived.”

Caesar's eyes were resting on Mucia Tertia, who looked, he thought, marvelously attractive; marriage to Pompey obviously agreed with her. Mentally he added her name to his list of future conquests-Pompey had more than asked for it! But not yet. Let the abominable Kid Butcher first climb even higher. Caesar had no doubt he could succeed with Mucia Tertia; he had caught her staring at him several times. No, not yet. She needed more time to ripen on Pompey's vine before he snipped her off. At the moment he had enough on his plate dealing with Metella Little Goat, who was the wife of Gaius Verres. Now ploughing her furrow was one exercise in horticulture he found enormously gratifying!

His sweet little wife was watching him, so he removed his eyes from Mucia Tertia and focused them on her instead. When he dropped one lid in a wink Cinnilla had to suppress a giggle, and demonstrated that she had inherited one characteristic from her father; she blushed scarlet. A dear lady. Never jealous, though of course she heard the rumors-and probably believed them. After all these years she must surely know her Caesar! But she was too shaped by Aurelia ever to bring up the subject of his philanderings, and naturally he did not. They had nothing to do with her.

With his mother he was not so circumspect-it had been her idea in the first place to seduce the wives of his peers. Nor was he above asking her advice from time to time, when some woman proved difficult. Women were a mystery he suspected would always remain a mystery, and Aurelia's opinions were worth hearing. Now that she mixed with her peers from Palatine and Carinae she heard all the gossip and faithfully reported it to him free of embellishments. What he liked of course was to drive his women out of their minds for love of him before dropping them; it rendered them useless to their cuckolded husbands ever after.

“I suppose all of you gathered to console Julia Antonia,” he said, wondering if his mother would have the gall to offer him sweet watered wine and little cakes.

“She arrived at my house trailing trinkets and those awful boys,” said Aunt Julia, “and I knew I couldn't cope with all four of them. So I brought them here.”

“And you were visiting Aunt Julia?” asked Caesar of Mucia Tertia, his smile devastating.

She drew a breath, caught it, coughed. “I visit Julia a lot, Gaius Julius. The Quirinal is very close to the Pincian.”

“Yes, of course.” He gave much the same smile to Aunt Julia, who was by no means impervious to it, but naturally saw it in a different way.

“I suspect I'll see a great deal more of Julia Antonia in the future, alas,” said Aunt Julia, sighing. “I wish I had your technique with her sons!”

“Her visits won't go on for long, Aunt Julia, and I'll make it my business to have a little word with the boys, don't worry. Julia Antonia will be married again in no time.”

“No one would have her!” said Aurelia, snorting.

“There are always men peculiarly susceptible to the charms of utterly helpless women,” said Caesar. “Unfortunately she's a bad picker. So whoever she marries will prove no more satisfactory a husband than did Marcus Antonius the Man of Chalk."”

“In that, my son, you are definitely right.”

He turned his attention to his sister Ju-Ju, who had said not one word so far; she had always been the silent member of the family, despite owning a lively disposition. “I used to accuse Lia of being a bad picker,” he said, “but I didn't give you a chance to show me what sort of picker you were, did I?”

She gave him back his own smile. “I am very well content with the husband you picked for me, Caesar. However, I'm quite prepared to admit that the young men I used to fancy before I married have all turned out rather disappointing.”

“Then you'd better let Atius and me pick your daughter's husband when the time comes. Atia is going to be very beautiful. And intelligent, which means she won't appeal to everyone.”

“Isn't that a pity?” asked Ju-Ju.

“That she's intelligent, or that men don't appreciate it?”

“The latter.”

“I like intelligent women,” said Caesar, “but they're few and far between. Don't worry, we'll find Atia someone who does appreciate her qualities.”

Aunt Julia rose. “It will be dark soon, Caesar-I know you prefer to be called that, even by your mother. But it still comes hard to me! I must go.”

“I'll ask Lucius Decumius's boys to find you a litter and escort you,” said Caesar.

“I have a litter,” said Aunt Julia. “Mucia isn't allowed to go out on foot, so we traveled between the Quirinal and the Subura in extreme comfort-or we would have had we not shared the conveyance with Julia Antonia, who nearly washed us away. We also have some stout fellows to escort us.”

“And I came by litter too,” said Ju-Ju.

“Degenerate!” sniffed Aurelia. “You'd all do better to walk.”

“I'd love to walk,” said Mucia Tertia softly, “but husbands don't see things the way you do, Aurelia. Gnaeus Pompeius thinks it unseemly for me to walk.”

Caesar's ears pricked. Aha! Some faint discontent! She was feeling constricted, too hedged about. But he said nothing, simply waited and chatted to everyone while a servant ran up to the crossroads square to summon the litters.

“You don't look well, Aunt Julia" was the last subject he broached, and leaving it until he was handing her into her side of the roomy conveyance Pompey had provided for Mucia Tertia.

“I'm growing old, Caesar,” she said in a whisper, giving his hand a squeeze. “Fifty-seven. But there's nothing the matter except that my bones ache when the weather's cold. I'm beginning to dread winters.”

“Are you warm enough up there on the outer Quirinal?” he asked sharply. “Your house is exposed to the north wind. Shall I have your cellar fitted with a hypocausis?”

“Save your money, Caesar. If I need it, I can afford to install a furnace myself,” she said, and shut the curtains.

“She isn't well, you know,” he said to his mother as they went back into the apartment.

Aurelia thought about that, then gave measured judgement. “She'd be well enough, Caesar, if she had more to live for. But husband and son are both dead. She has no one except us and Mucia Tertia. And we are not enough.”

The reception room was ablaze with the little flames of lamps and the shutters had been closed against the chill wind percolating down the light well. It looked warm and cheery, and there on the floor with Cinnilla was Caesar's daughter, almost six years old. An exquisite child, fine-boned and graceful, so fair she had a silver look.

When she saw her father her great blue eyes sparkled; she held out her arms. “Tata, tata!” she cried. “Pick me up!”

He picked her up, pressed his lips against her pale pink cheek. “And how's my princess today?”

And while he listened with every sign of fascination to a litany of small and girlish doings, Aurelia and Cinnilla watched them both. Cinnilla's thoughts got no further than the fact that she loved them, but Aurelia's dwelt upon that word, princess. She is exactly that, a princess. Caesar will go far, and one day he will be very rich. The suitors will be unnumbered. But he won't be as kind to her as my mother and stepfather/uncle were to me. He will give her to the man he needs the most no matter how she feels about it. So I must train her to accept her fate, to go to it gracefully and in good spirits.

On the twenty-fourth day of December, Marcus Crassus finally celebrated his ovation. Since there had been an undeniable Samnite element in Spartacus's army, he had won two concessions from the Senate: instead of going afoot he was allowed to ride a horse; and instead of wearing the lesser crown of myrtle he was allowed to wear the triumphator's crown of laurel. A good crowd turned out to cheer him and his army, marched up from Capua for the occasion, though there were broad winks and many digs in the ribs at sight of the spoils, a poor collection. The whole of Rome knew Marcus Crassus's besetting sin.

The numbers who attended Pompey's triumph on the last day of December were much greater, however. Somehow Pompey had managed to endear himself to the people of Rome, perhaps because of his relative youth, his golden beauty, that fancied resemblance to Alexander the Great, and a certain happy cast to his features. For the love they felt for Pompey was not of the same kind as the love they had used to feel for Gaius Marius, who continued (despite all Sulla's efforts) to remain the favorite person in living memory.

At about the same time that the curule elections were being held in Rome early in December, Metellus Pius finally crossed the Alps into Italian Gaul with his army, which he proceeded to disband before settling its troops in the wide rich lands to the north of the Padus River. Whether because he had sensed something in Pompey toward the end of their period together in Spain that had caused him to suspect that Pompey would not be content with a return to obscurity, the Piglet had remained obdurately aloof from the troubles in Rome. When written to in appeal by Catulus, Hortensius and the other prestigious Caecilii Metelli, he had refused to discuss matters which, he maintained, his long absence in Spain disqualified him from commenting upon. And when he did reach Rome at the end of January he celebrated a modest triumph with those troops who had accompanied him to Rome for the occasion, and took his seat in a Senate supervised by Pompey and Crassus as if nothing whatsoever was amiss. It was an attitude which spared him much pain, though it also meant he never did receive as much credit for the defeat of Quintus Sertorius as he deserved.

The lex Pompeia Licinia de tribunicia potestate was tabled in the House early in January under the aegis of Pompey, who held the fasces as senior consul. The popularity of this law, restoring as it did full powers to the tribunate of the plebs, flattened senatorial opposition. All those whom Pompey and Crassus had thought to hear roaring against it in the House contented themselves with a few bleats; the senatus consultum recommending to the Assembly of the People that the law be passed was obtained by a near unanimous vote. Some had quibbled that it should by rights have gone to the Centuriate Assembly for ratification, but Caesar, Hortensius and Cicero all asserted firmly that only a tribal assembly could ratify measures involving the tribes. Within the three stipulated market days, the lex Pompeia Licinia passed into law. Once more the tribunes of the plebs could veto laws and magistrates, bring forward plebiscites having the force of law in their Plebeian Assembly without the senatorial blessing of a senatus consultum, and even prosecute for treason, extortion and other gubernatorial transgressions.

Caesar was speaking in the House on a regular basis now; since he was always worth listening to-witty, interesting, brief, pungent-he soon gathered a following, and was asked with ever increasing frequency to publish his speeches, considered every bit as good as Cicero's. Even Cicero had been heard to say that Caesar was the best orator in Rome-after himself, that is.

Anxious to utilize some of his newly restored powers, the tribune of the plebs Plautius announced in the Senate that he was going to legislate in the Plebeian Assembly to give back their citizenships and rights to those condemned with Lepidus and with Quintus Sertorius. Caesar rose at once to speak in favor of the law, and pleaded with very moving eloquence to extend this measure to include all those proscribed by Sulla. Yet when the Senate refused to grant the extension and endorsed the Plautian law only in respect of those outlawed for following Lepidus and Sertorius, Caesar looked strangely cheerful, not at all put out.

“The House turned you down, Caesar,” said Marcus Crassus, puzzled, “yet here I find you positively purring!”

“My dear Crassus, I knew perfectly well they'd never sanction a pardon for Sulla's proscribed!” said Caesar, smiling. “It would mean too many important men who got fat off the proscriptions must give everything back. No, no! However, it looked very much as if the Catulus rump was going to succeed in blocking pardons for the Lepidans and Sertorians, so I made that measure look modest enough to seem inviting by harping on Sulla's proscribed. If you want something done and you think it's going to be opposed, Marcus Crassus, always go much further than what you want. The opposition becomes so incensed by the additions that it quite loses sight of the fact that it originally opposed the lesser measure.”

Crassus grinned. “You're a politician to the core, Caesar. I hope some of your opponents don't study your methods too closely, or you'll find life harder than it is.”

“I love politics,” said Caesar simply.

“You love everything you do, so you jump in boots and all. That's your secret. Well, that and the size of your mind.”

“Don't flatter me, Crassus, my head is quite large enough,” said Caesar, who loved to pun on the fact that “head” meant what resided on a man's shoulders-and also meant what resided between a man's legs.

“Too big, if you ask me,” said Crassus, laughing. “You'd better be a little more discreet in your dealings with other men's wives, at least for the time being. I hear our new censors are going to examine the sentorial rolls the way a sedulous nursemaid looks for nits.”

There were censors for the first time since Sulla had cut that office from the list of magistracies; an unlikely, peculiar pair in Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius Poplicola. Everyone knew they were Pompey's hirelings, but when Pompey had mooted their names in the House, the more appropriate men who had planned to run for censor- Catulus and Metellus Pius, Vatia Isauricus and Curio-all withdrew, leaving the field clear for Clodianus and Gellius.

Crassus's prediction was right. It was normal censorial practice to let all the State contracts first, but after letting the sacred contracts for feeding the Capitoline geese and chickens and other religious matters, Clodianus and Gellius proceeded to the senatorial rolls. Their findings were read out at a special contio they called from the rostra in the lower Forum Romanum, and created a huge stir. No less than sixty-four senators were expelled, most of them for being under suspicion of having taken bribes (or given out bribes) when on jury duty. Many of the jurors at the trial of Statius Albius Oppianicus were expelled, and the successful prosecutor of Oppianicus, his stepson Cluentius, was demoted by being transferred from his rural tribe to urban Esquilina. But more sensational by far were the expulsions of one of last year's quaestors, Quintus Curius, last year's senior consul, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, and Gaius Antonius Hybrida, the Monster of Lake Orchomenus.