Fortune's Favorites (127 page)

“But he wouldn't shift, and nothing they could do or say would make him shift. He set up camp right there beneath the offending obstacle, and harangued them unmercifully while ever there was someone present to harangue. On and on and on, in a voice which, says Plautius-and I agree with him, having heard it for myself-could shear a bronze statue in half.”

Aurelia now looked as interested as Julia, and snorted. “What rubbish!” she said. “I hope they vetoed him!”

“They tried. He refused to accept the veto. He was a full member of the Plebs and his great-grandfather built the place, they would disturb it over his dead body. I give him this-he hung on like a dog to a rat! His reasons were endless, but mostly all revolved around the fact that his great-grandfather had built the Basilica Porcia in a certain way, and that certain way was sacred, hallowed, a part of the mos maiorum.”

Julia chuckled. “Who won?” she asked.

“Young Cato did, of course. The tribunes of the plebs just couldn't stand that voice anymore.”

“Didn't they try force? Couldn't they throw him off the Tarpeian Rock?” asked Aurelia, looking scandalized.

“I think they would have loved to, but the trouble was that by the time they might have been driven to use force, word had got around, and so many people had gathered every day to watch the struggle that Plautius felt it would do the tribunes of the plebs more harm in the eyes of the populace to use real force than any good removal of the column might have brought them. Oh, they threw him out of the building a dozen times, but he just came back! And it became clear that he would never give up. So Plautius held a meeting and all ten members of the college agreed to suffer the continued presence of the pillar,” said Caesar.

“What does this Cato look like?'' asked Julia.

Caesar wrinkled his brow. “Difficult to describe. He's as ugly as he is pretty. Perhaps the closest description is to say that he reminds me of a highly bred horse trying to eat an apple through a latticework trellis.”

“All teeth and nose,” said Julia instantly.

“Exactly.”

“I can tell you another story about him,” said Aurelia.

“Go ahead!” said Caesar, noting Julia's interest.

“It happened before young Cato turned twenty. He had always been madly in love with his cousin Aemilia Lepida-Vlamercus's daughter. She was already engaged to Metellus Scipio when Metellus Scipio went out to Spain to serve with his father, but when he came back some years before his father, he and Aemilia Lepida fell out badly. She broke off the engagement and announced that she was going to marry Cato instead. Mamercus was furious! Especially, it seems, because my friend Servilia-she's Cato's half sister-had warned him about Cato and Aemilia Lepida. Anyway, it all turned out fine in the end, because Aemilia Lepida had no intention of marrying Cato. She just used him to make Metellus Scipio jealous. And when Metellus Scipio came to her and begged to be forgiven, Cato was out, Metellus Scipio was in again. Shortly afterward they were married. Cato, however, took his rejection so badly that he tried to kill both Metellus Scipio and Aemilia Lepida, and when that was frustrated, he tried to sue Metellus Scipio for alienating Aemilia Lepida's affections! His half brother Servilius Caepio-a nice young man, just married to Hortensius's daughter-persuaded Cato that he was making a fool of himself, and Cato desisted. Except, apparently, that for the next year he wrote endless poetry I am assured was all very bad.”

“It's funny,” said Caesar, shoulders shaking.

“It wasn't at the time, believe me! Whatever young Cato may turn out to be like later on, his career to date indicates that he will always have the ability to irritate people intensely,” said Aurelia. “Mamercus and Cornelia Sulla-not to mention Servilia!-detest him. So these days, I believe, does Aemilia.”

“He's married to someone else now, isn't he?” asked Caesar.

“Yes, to an Attilia. Not a terribly good match, but then, he doesn't have a great deal of money. His wife bore a little girl last year.”

And that, decided Caesar, studying his aunt, was as much diverting company as she could tolerate for the moment.

“I don't want to believe it, but you're right, Mater. Aunt Julia is going to die,” he said to Aurelia as soon as they left Julia's house.

“Eventually, but not yet, my son. She'll last well into the new year, perhaps longer.”

“Oh, I hope she lasts until after I leave for Spain!”

“Caesar! That's a coward's hope,” said his remorseless mother. “You don't usually shirk unpleasant events.”

He stopped in the middle of the Alta Semita, both hands out and clenched into fists. “Oh, leave me alone!” he cried, so loudly that two passersby glanced at the handsome pair curiously. “It's always duty, duty, duty! Well, Mater, to be in Rome to bury Aunt Julia is one duty I don't want!” And only custom and courtesy kept him at his mother's side for the rest of that uncomfortable walk home; he would have given almost anything to have left her to find her own way back to the Subura.

Home wasn't the happiest of places either. Now into her sixth month of pregnancy, Cinnilla wasn't very well. The “all day and all night sickness” as Caesar phrased it, trying to make a joke, had disappeared, only to be succeeded by a degree of swelling in the feet and legs which both distressed and alarmed the prospective mother. Who was obliged to spend most of her time in bed, feet and legs elevated. Not only was Cinnilla uncomfortable and afraid; she was cross too. An attitude of mind the whole household found difficult to cope with, as it did not belong in Cinnilla's nature.

Thus it was that for the first time during his periods of residence in Rome, Caesar elected to spend his nights as well as his days elsewhere than the apartment in the Subura. To stay with Crassus was not possible; Crassus could only think of the cost of feeding an extra mouth, especially toward the end of the most expensive year of his life. And Gaius Matius had recently married, so the other ground-floor apartment of Aurelia's insula (which would have been the most convenient place to stay) was also not available. Nor was he in the mood for dalliance; the affair with Caecilia Metella Little Goat had been abruptly terminated when Verres decamped to Massilia, and no one had yet appealed to him as a replacement. Truth to tell, the frail state of physical well-being in both his aunt and his wife did not encourage dalliance. So he ended in renting a small four-roomed apartment down the Vicus Patricius from his home, and spent most of his time there with Lucius Decumius for company. As the neighborhood was quite as unfashionable as his mother's insula, his political acquaintances would not have cared to visit him there, and the secretive side of him liked that anyway. The forethought in him also saw its possibilities when the mood for dalliance returned; he began to take an interest in the place (it was in a good building) and acquire a few nice pieces of furniture and art. Not to mention a good bed.

At the beginning of December he effected a most touching reconciliation. The two consuls were standing together on the rostra waiting for the urban praetor Lucius Cotta to convene the Assembly of the People; it was the day upon which Cotta's law reforming the jury system was to be ratified. Though Crassus held the fasces for December and was obliged to attend, Pompey was not about to permit a public occasion of such moment to pass without his presence. And as the consuls could not very well stand one to either end of the rostra without provoking much comment from the crowd, they stood together. In silence, admittedly, but at least in apparent amity.

Along to attend the meeting came Caesar's first cousin, young Gaius Cotta, the son of the late consul Gaius Cotta. Though he was not yet a member of the Senate, nothing could have prevented his casting his vote in the tribes; the law belonged to his Uncle Lucius. But when he saw Pompey and Crassus looking more like a team than they had done in months, he cried out so loudly that the noise and movement around him stilled. Everyone looked his way.

“Oh!” he cried again, more loudly still. “My dream! My dream has come true!”

And he bounded onto the rostra so suddenly that Pompey and Crassus automatically stepped apart. Young Gaius Cotta planted himself between them, one arm around each, and gazed at the throng in the well of the Comitia with tears streaming down his face.

“Quirites!” he shouted, “last night I had a dream! Jupiter Optimus Maximus spoke to me out of cloud and fire, soaked me and burned me! Far below where I stood I could see the two figures of our consuls, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus. But they were not as I saw them today, standing together. Instead they stood one to the east and one to the west, stubbornly looking in opposite directions. And the voice of the Great God said to me out of the cloud and the fire, 'They must not leave their consular office disliking each other! They must leave as friends!' ”

An utter silence had fallen; a thousand faces looked up at the three men. Gaius Cotta let his arms fall from about the consuls and stepped forward, then turned to face them.

“Gnaeus Pompeius, Marcus Licinius, will you not be friends?” the young man asked in a ringing voice.

For a long moment no one moved. Pompey's expression was stern, so was Crassus's.

“Come, shake hands! Be friends!” shouted Gaius Cotta.

Neither consul moved. Then Crassus rotated toward Pompey and held out one massive hand.

“I am delighted to yield first place to a man who was called Magnus before he so much as had a beard, and celebrated not one but two triumphs before he was a senator!” Crassus yelled.

Pompey emitted a sound somewhere between a squeal and a yelp, grabbed at Crassus's paw and wrung both it and his forearm, face transfigured. They stepped toward each other and fell on each other's necks. And the crowd went wild. Soon the news of the reconciliation was speeding into the Velabrum, into the Subura, into the manufactories beyond the swamp of the Palus Ceroliae; people came running from everywhere to see if it was true that the consuls were friends again. For the rest of that day the two of them walked around Rome together, shaking hands, allowing themselves to be touched, accepting congratulations.

“There are triumphs, and then again, there are triumphs,” said Caesar to his uncle Lucius and his cousin Gaius. 'Today was the better kind of triumph. I thank you for your help.”

“Was it hard to convince them that they had to do it?” asked the young Gaius Cotta.

“Not really. If that pair understand nothing else, they always understand the importance of popularity. Neither of them is an adept at the art of compromise, but I split the credit equally between them, and that satisfied them. Crassus had to swallow his pride and say all those nauseating things about dear Pompeius. But on the other hand he reaped the accolades for being the one to hold out his hand first and make the concessions. So, as in the duel about pleasing the people, it was Crassus won. Luckily Pompeius doesn't see that. He thinks he won because he stood aloof and forced his colleague to admit his superiority.”

“Then you had better hope,” said Lucius Cotta, “that Magnus doesn't find out who really won until after the year is over.”

“I'm afraid it disrupted your meeting, Uncle. You'll never keep a crowd still enough to vote now.”

“Tomorrow will do just as well.”

The two Cottae and Caesar left the Forum Romanum via the Vestal Stairs onto the Palatine, but halfway up Caesar stopped and turned to look back. There they were, Pompey and Crassus, surrounded by hordes of happy Romans. And happy themselves, the breach forgotten.

“This year has been a watershed,” said Caesar, beginning to ascend the rest of the steps. “All of us have crossed some kind of barrier. I have the oddest feeling that none of us will enjoy the same life again.”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” said Lucius Cotta. “My stab at the history books happened this year, with my jury law. If I ever decide to run for consul, I suspect it will be an anticlimax.”

“I wasn't thinking along the lines of anticlimax,” said Caesar, laughing.

“What will Pompeius and Crassus do when the year is ended?” asked young Gaius Cotta. “They say neither of them wants to go out to govern a province.”

“That's true enough,” said Lucius Cotta. “Both of them are returning to private life. Why not? They've each had great campaigns recently-they're both so rich they don't need to stuff provincial profits in their purses-and they crowned their dual consulship with laws to exonerate them from any suspicion of treason and laws to grant their veterans all the land they want. I wouldn't go to govern a province if I were in their boots!”

“You'd find their boots more uncomfortable than they're worth,” said Caesar. “Where can they go from here? Pompeius says he's returning to his beloved Picenum and will never darken the doors of the Senate again. And Crassus is absolutely driven to earn back the thousand talents he spent this year.” He heaved a huge and happy sigh. “And I am going to Further Spain as its quaestor, under a governor I happen to like.”

“Pompeius's ex-brother-in-law, Gaius Antistius Vetus,” said young Cotta with a grin.

Caesar didn't mention his most devout wish: that he leave for Spain before Aunt Julia died.

But that was not to be. He was summoned to her bedside on a blustery night midway through February; his mother had been staying in Julia's house for some days.

She was conscious, and could still see; when he entered the room her eyes lit up a little. “I waited for you,” she said.

His chest ached with the effort of keeping his emotions under control, but he managed to smile as he kissed her, then sat upon the edge of her bed, as he always did. “I wouldn't have let you go,” he said lightly.

“I wanted to see you,” she said; her voice was quite strong and distinct.

“You see me, Aunt Julia. What can I do for you?”

“What would you do for me, Gaius Julius?”

“Anything in the world,” he said, and meant it.

“Oh, that relieves me! It means you will forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” he asked, astonished. “There's nothing to forgive, absolutely nothing!”

“Forgive me for not preventing Gaius Marius from making you the flamen Dialis,” she said.