Fortune's Favorites (20 page)

Even the news that the paralyzed Samnite leader Gaius Papius Mutilus had assembled forty thousand men in Aesernia and was going to send them to relieve Praeneste had no power now to lift Carbo's spirits; his depression deepened every day. Nor did his attitude of mind improve when Mutilus sent him a letter saying his force would be seventy thousand, not forty thousand, as Lucania and Marcus Lamponius were sending him twenty thousand men, and Capua and Tiberius Gutta another ten thousand.

There was only one man Carbo really trusted, old Marcus Junius Brutus, his proquaestor. And so to Old Brutus he went as June turned into Quinctilis, and still no decision had come to him capable of easing his mind.

“If Albinovanus would stoop to murdering men he'd laughed and eaten with for months, how can I possibly be sure of any of my own legates?'' he asked.

They were strolling down the three-mile length of the Via Principalis, one of the two main avenues within the camp, and wide enough to ensure their conversation was private.

Blinking slowly in the sunlight, the old man with the blued lips made no quick, reassuring answer; instead, he turned the question over in his mind, and when he did reply, said very soberly, “I do not think you can be sure, Gnaeus Papirius.”

Carbo's breath hissed between his teeth; he trembled. “Ye gods, Marcus, what am I to do?”

“For the moment, nothing. But I think you must abandon this sad business before murder becomes a desirable alternative to one or more of your legates.”

“Abandon ?”

“Yes, abandon,” said Old Brutus steadily.

“They wouldn't let me leave!” Carbo cried, shaking now.

“Probably not. But they don't need to know. I'll start making our preparations, while you look as if the only thing worrying you is the fate of the Samnite army.” Old Brutus put his hand on Carbo's arm, patted it. “Don't despair. All will be well in the end.”

By the middle of Quinctilis, Old Brutus had finished his preparations. Very quietly in the middle of the night he and Carbo stole away without baggage or attendants save for a mule loaded down with gold ingots innocently sheathed in a layer of lead, and a large purse of denarii for traveling expenses. Looking like a tired pair of merchants, they made their way to the Etrurian coast at Telamon, and there took ship for Africa. No one molested them, no one was the slightest bit interested in the laboring mule or in what it had in its panniers. Fortune, thought Carbo as the ship slipped anchor, was favoring him!

Because he was paralyzed from the waist down, Gaius Papius Mutilus could not lead the Samnite/Lucanian/Capuan host himself, though he did travel with the Samnite segment of it from its training ground at Aesernia as far as Teanum Sidicinum, where the whole host occupied Sulla's and Scipio's old camps, and Mutilus went to stay in his own house.

His fortunes had prospered since the Italian War; now he owned villas in half a dozen places throughout Samnium and Campania, and was wealthier than he had ever been: an ironic compensation, he sometimes thought, for the loss of all power and feeling below the waist.

Aesernia and Bovianum were his two favorite towns, but his wife, Bastia, preferred to live in Teanum-she was from the district. That Mutilus had not objected to this almost constant separation was due to his injury; as a husband he was of little use, and if understandably his wife needed to avail herself of physical solace, better she did so where he was not. However, no scandalous tidbits about her behavior had percolated back to him in Aesernia, which meant either she was voluntarily as continent as his injury obliged him to be, or her discretion was exemplary. So when Mutilus arrived at his house in Teanum, he found himself quite looking forward to Bastia's company.

“I didn't expect to see you,” she said with perfect ease.

“There's no reason why you should have expected me, since I didn't write,” he said in an agreeable way. “You look well.”

“I feel well.”

“Given my limitations, I'm in pretty good health myself,” he went on, finding the reunion more awkward than he had hoped; she was distant, too courteous.

“What brings you to Teanum?” she asked.

“I've an army outside town. We're going to war against Sulla. Or at least, my army is. I shall stay here with you.”

“For how long?” she enquired politely.

“Until the business is over one way or the other.”

“I see.” She leaned back in her chair, a magnificent woman of some thirty summers, and looked at him without an atom of the blazing desire he used to see in her eyes when they were first married-and he had been all a man. “How may I see to your comfort, husband? Is there any special thing you'll need?”

“I have my body servant. He knows what to do.”

Disposing the clouds of expensive gauze about her splendid body more artistically, she continued to gaze at him out of those orbs large and dark enough to have earned her an Homeric compliment: Lady Ox-eyes. “Just you to dinner?” she asked.

“No, three others. My legates. Is that a problem?”

“Certainly not. The menu will do you honor, Gaius Papius.”

The menu did. Bastia was an excellent housekeeper. She knew two of the three men who came to eat with their stricken commander, Pontius Telesinus and Marcus Lamponius. Telesinus was a Samnite of very old family who had been a little too young to be numbered among the Samnite greats of the Italian War. Now thirty-two, he was a fine-looking man, and bold enough to eye his hostess with an appreciation only she divined. That she ignored it was good sense; Telesinus was a Samnite, and that meant he hated Romans more than he could possibly admire women.

Marcus Lamponius was the paramount chieftain from Lucania, and had been a formidable enemy to Rome during the Italian War. Now into his fifties, he was still warlike, still thirsted to let Roman blood flow. They never change, these non-Roman Italians, she thought; destroying Rome means more to them than life or prosperity or peace. More even than children.

The one among the three Bastia had never met before was a Campanian like herself, the chief citizen of Capua. His name was Tiberius Gutta, and he was fat, brutish, egotistical, as fanatically dedicated to shedding Roman blood as the others.

She absented herself from the triclinium as soon as her husband gave her permission to retire, burning with an anger she had most carefully concealed. It wasn't fair! Things were just beginning to run so smoothly that the Italian War might not have happened, when here it was, starting all over again. She had wanted to cry out that nothing would change, that Rome would grind their faces and their fortunes into the dust yet again; but self-control had kept her tongue still. Even if they had been brought to believe her, patriotism and pride would dictate that they go ahead anyway.

The anger ate at her, refused to die away. Up and down the marble floor of her sitting room she paced, wanting to strike out at them, those stupid, pigheaded men. Especially her own husband, leader of his nation, the one to whom all other Samnites looked for guidance. And what .sort of guidance was he giving them? War against Rome. Ruination. Did he care that when he fell, everyone attached to him would also fall? Of course he did not! He was all a man, with all a man's idiocies of nationalism and revenge. All a man, yet only half a man. And the half of him left was no use to her, no use for procreating or recreating.

She stopped, feeling the heat at the core of her all this anger had caused to boil up. Her lips were bitten, she could taste a little bead of blood. On fire. On fire.

There was a slave.... One of those Greeks from Samothrace with hair so black it shone blue in the light, brows which met across the bridge of his nose in unashamed luxuriance, and eyes the color of a mountain lake ... Skin so fine it begged to be kissed ... Bastia clapped her hands.

When the steward came, she looked at him with her chin up and her bitten lips as plump and red as strawberries. “Are the gentlemen in the dining room content?”

“Yes, domina.”

“Good. Continue to look after them, please. And send Hippolytus to me here. I've thought of something he can do for me,” she said.

The steward's face remained expressionless; as his master Mutilus did not care to live in Teanum Sidicinum, whereas his mistress Bastia did, his mistress Bastia mattered more to him. She must be kept happy. He bowed. “I will send Hippolytus to you at once, domina,” he said, and did many obeisances as he extricated himself carefully from her room.

In the triclinium Bastia had been forgotten the moment she departed for her own quarters.

“Carbo assures me that he has Sulla tied down at Clusium,” Mutilus said to his legates.

“Do you believe that?” asked Lamponius.

Mutilus frowned. “I have no reason to think otherwise, but I can't be absolutely sure, of course. Do you have any reason to think otherwise?”

“No, except that Carbo's a Roman.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Pontius Telesinus.

“Fortunes change,” said Tiberius Gutta of Capua, face shining from the grease of a capon roasted with chestnut stuffing and a skin-crisping glaze of oil. “For the moment, we fight on Carbo's side. After Sulla is defeated, we can turn on Carbo and every other Roman and rend them.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Mutilus, smiling.

“We should move on Praeneste at once,” said Lamponius.

“Tomorrow, in fact,” said Telesinus quickly.

But Mutilus shook his head emphatically. “No. We rest the men here for five more days. They've had a hard march, and they still have to cover the length of the Via Latina. When they get to Ofella's siegeworks, they must be fresh.”

These things decided-and given the prospect of relative leisure for the next five days-the dinner party broke up far earlier than Mutilus's steward had anticipated. Busy among the kitchen servants, he saw nothing, heard nothing. And was not there when the master of the house ordered his massive German attendant to carry him to the mistress's room.

She was kneeling naked upon the pillows of her couch, legs spread wide apart, and between her glistening thighs a blue-black head of hair was buried; the compact and muscular body which belonged to the head was stretched across the couch in an abandonment so complete it looked as if it belonged to a sleeping cat. In no other place than where the head was buried did the two bodies touch; Bastia's arms were extended behind her, their hands kneading the pillows, and his arms lolled alongside the rest of him.

The door had opened quietly; the German slave stood with his master in his hold like a bride being carried across the threshold of her new home, and waited for his next instructions with all the dumb endurance of such fellows, far from home, almost devoid of Latin or Greek, permanently transfixed with the pain of loss, unable to express that pain.

The eyes of husband and wife met. In hers there flashed a shout of triumph, of jubilation; in his an amazement without the dulling anodyne of shock. Of its own volition his gaze fell to rest upon her glorious breasts, the sleekness of her belly, and was blurred by a sudden rush of tears.

The young Greek's utter absorption in what he was doing now caught a change, a tension in the woman having nothing to do with him; he began to lift his head. Like two striking snakes her hands locked in the blue-black hair, pressed the head down and held it there.

“Don't stop!'' she cried.

Unable to look away, Mutilus watched the blood-gorged tissue in her nipples begin to swell them to bursting; her hips were moving, the head riding upon them. And then, beneath her husband's eyes, Bastia screeched and moaned the power of her massive orgasm. It seemed to Mutilus to last an eternity.

Done, she released the head and slapped the young Greek, who rolled over and lay faceup; his terror was so profound that he seemed not to breathe.

“You can't do anything with that,” said Bastia, pointing to the slave's diminishing erection, “but there's nothing wrong with your tongue, Mutilus.”

“You're right, there isn't,” he said, every last tear dried. “It can still taste and feel. But it isn't interested in carrion.”

The German got him out of the room, carried him to his own sleeping cubicle, and deposited him with care upon his bed. Then after he had completed his various duties he left Gaius Papius Mutilus alone. No comment, no sympathy, no acknowledgment. And that, reflected Mutilus as he turned his face into his pillow, was a greater mercy than all else. Still in his mind's eye the image of his wife's body burned, the breasts with their nipples popping out, and that head-that head! That head ... Below his waist nothing stirred, could never stir again. But the rest of him knew torments and dreams, and longed for every aspect of love. Every aspect!

“I am not dead,” he said into the pillow, and felt the tears come. “I am not dead! But oh, by all the gods, I wish I were!”

At the end of June, Sulla left Clusium. With him he took his own five legions and three of Scipio's; he left Pompey in command, a decision which hadn't impressed his other legates at all. But, since Sulla was Sulla and no one actively argued with him, Pompey it was.

“Clean this lot up,” he said to Pompey. “They outnumber you, but they're demoralized. However, when they discover that I'm gone for good, they'll offer battle. Watch Damasippus, he is the most competent among them. Crassus will cope with Marcus Censorinus, and Torquatus ought to manage against Carrinas.”

“What about Carbo?'' asked Pompey.

“Carbo is a cipher. He lets his legates do his generaling. But don't fiddle, Pompeius! I have other work for you.”

No surprise then that Sulla took the more senior of his legates with him; neither Vatia nor the elder Dolabella could have stomached the humiliation of having to ask a twenty-three-year-old for orders. His departure came on the heels of news about the Samnites, and made Sulla's need to reach the general area around Praeneste urgent; dispositions would have to be finished before the Samnite host drew too near.

Having scouted the whole region on that side of Rome with extreme thoroughness, Sulla knew exactly what he intended to do. The Via Praenestina and the Via Labicana were now unnegotiable thanks to Ofella's wall and ditch, but the Via Latina and the Via Appia were still open, still connected Rome and the north with Campania and the south. If the war was to be won, it was vital that all military access between Rome and the south belong to Sulla; Etruria was exhausted, but Samnium and Lucania had scarcely been tapped of manpower or food resources.