Fortune's Favorites (32 page)

She came out of herself with a start to find Caesar leaning across his desk snapping his fingers at her, and laughing.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“All over the place,” she answered as she got up, feeling the chill. “I'll have Burgundus give you a brazier, Caesar. It is too cold in this room.”

“Fusspot!” he said lovingly to her back.

“I don't want you confronting Sulla with a sniffle and a thousand sneezes,” she said.

But the morrow brought no sniffles, no sneezes. The young man presented himself at the house of Gnaeus Ahenobarbus a good summer hour before the winter dinnertime, prepared to kick his heels in the atrium rather than run the risk of arriving too late. Sure enough, the steward-an exquisitely oily Greek who subjected him to subtle come-hither glances-informed him that he was too early, would he mind waiting? Conscious of crawling skin, Caesar nodded curtly and turned his back on the man who would soon be famous, whom all Rome would know as Chrysogonus.

But Chrysogonus wouldn't go; clearly he found the visitor attractive enough to pursue, and Caesar had the good sense not to do what he longed to do-knock the fellow's teeth down his throat. Then inspiration struck. Caesar walked briskly out onto the loggia, and the steward disliked the cold too much to follow him. This house had two loggias, and the one where Caesar stood making crescent patterns in the snow with the toe of his clog looked not down onto the Forum Romanum, but back up the Palatine cliff in the direction of the Clivus Victoriae. Right above him was the loggia of another house literally overhung the house of Ahenobarbus.

Whose house? Caesar wrinkled his brow, remembered. Marcus Livius Drusus, assassinated in its atrium ten years ago. So this was where all those orphaned children lived under the arid supervision of... Who? That's right, the daughter of that Servilius Caepio who had drowned coming back from his province! Gnaea? Yes, Gnaea. And her dreaded mother, the ghastly Porcia Liciniana! Lots of little Servilii Caepiones and Porcii Catones. The wrong Porcii Catones, of the branch Salonius. Descendants of a slave-there was one now! He was leaning over the marble balustrade, a painfully thin boy with a neck long enough to give him a resemblance to a stork, and a nose large enough to show even at this distance. A lot of lank, reddish hair. No mistaking Cato the Censor's brood!

All of these thoughts indicated one thing about Caesar his mother had not catalogued during her reverie: he adored gossip and forgot none of it.

“Honored priest, my master is ready to see you.” Caesar turned away with a grin and a cheerful wave up to the boy on Drusus's balcony, hugely amused when the wave was not returned. Young Cato was probably too amazed to wave back; there would be few in Sulla's temporary dwelling with the time to make overtures of friendship to a poor little storky boy who was the descendant of a Tusculan squire and a Celtiberian slave.

Though he was prepared for the sight of Sulla the Dictator, Caesar still found himself shocked. No wonder he hadn't sought Mater out! Nor would I if I were he, thought Caesar, and walked forward as quietly as his wooden-soled clogs permitted.

Sulla's initial reaction was that he looked upon a total stranger; but this was due to the ugly red-and-purple cape and the peculiar effect the creamy ivory helmet created, of someone with a shaven skull.

“Take all that stuff off,” said Sulla, and returned his gaze to the mass of papers on his desk.

When he looked up again the priestling was gone. In his place there stood his son. The hairs bristled on Sulla's arms, and on the back of his neck; he emitted a sound like air oozing out of a bladder and stumbled to his feet. The golden hair, the wide blue eyes, the long Caesar face, all that height... And then Sulla's tear-clouded vision assimilated the differences; Aurelia's high sharp cheekbones with the hollows beneath and Aurelia's exquisite mouth with the creases in the corners. Older than Young Sulla had been when he died, more man than boy. Oh, Lucius Cornelius, my son, why did you have to die?

He dashed the tears away. “I thought you were my son for a moment,” he said harshly, and shivered.

“He was my first cousin.”

“I remember you said you liked him.”

“I did.”

“Better than Young Marius, you said.”

“I did.”

“And you wrote a poem about him after he died, but you said it wasn't good enough to show me.”

“Yes, that's true.”

Sulla sank back into his chair, his hands trembling. “Sit, boy. There, where the light is best and I can see you. My eyes are not what they used to be.” Drink him in! He is sent from the Great God, whose priest he is. “Your uncle Gaius Cotta told you what?”

“Only that I had to see you, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Call me Sulla, it's what everybody calls me.”

“And I am called Caesar, even by my mother.”

“You are the flamen Dialis.”

Something flashed through the disquietingly familiar eyes-why were they so familiar, when his son's had been much bluer and sprightlier? A look of anger. Pain? No, not pain. Anger.

“Yes, I am the flamen Dialis,” Caesar answered.

“The men who appointed you were enemies of Rome.”

“At the time they appointed me they were not.”

“That's fair enough.” Sulla picked up his reed pen, which was encased in gold, then put it down again. “You have a wife.”

“I do.”

“She's Cinna's daughter.”

“She is.”

“Have you consummated your marriage?”

“No.”

Up from behind his desk Sulla got to walk over to the window, which gaped wide open despite the freezing cold. Caesar smiled inwardly, wondering that his mother would have said-here was another who didn't care about the elements.

“I have undertaken the restitution of the Republic,” said Sulla, looking out the window straight at the statue of Scipio Africanus atop his tall column; at this altitude, he and tubby old Scipio Africanus were on the same level. “For reasons I imagine you will understand, I have chosen to begin with religion. We have lost the old values, and must return to them. I have abolished the election of priests and augurs, including the Pontifex Maximus. Politics and religion in Rome are inextricably intertwined, but I will not see religion made the servant of politics when it ought to be the other way round.”

“I do understand,” said Caesar from his chair. “However, I believe the Pontifex Maximus must be elected.”

“What you believe, boy, does not interest me!”

“Then why am I here?”

“Certainly not to make smart remarks at my expense!”

“I apologize.”

Sulla swung round, glared at the flamen Dialis fiercely. “You're not a scrap afraid of me, boy, are you?”

Came the smile-the same smile!-the smile which caught at heart and mind together. “I used to hide in the false ceiling above our dining room and watch you talking to my mother. Times have changed, and so have all our circumstances. But it's hard to be afraid of someone you suddenly loved in the moment you found out he was not your mother's paramour.”

That provoked a roar of laughter, laughter to drive away a fresh spring of tears. “True enough! I wasn't. I did try once, but she was far too wise to have me. Thinks like a man, your mother. I bring no luck to women, I never have.” The pale unsettling eyes looked Caesar up and down. “You won't bring any luck to women either, though there'll be plenty of women.”

“Why did you summon me, if not to seek my advice?”

“It's to do with regulating religious malpractices. They say you were born on the same day of the year that Jupiter's fire finally went out.”

“Yes.”

“And how did you interpret that?”

“As a good omen.”

“Unfortunately the College of Pontifices and the College of Augurs do not agree with you, young Caesar. They have made you and your flaminate their most important business for some time now. And have concluded that a certain irregularity in your flaminate was responsible for the destruction of the Great God's temple.”

The joy flooded into Caesar's face. “Oh, how glad I am to hear you say that!”

“Eh? Say what?”

“That I am not the flamen Dialis.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You did! You did!”

“You've misinterpreted me, boy. You are definitely the flamen Dialis. Fifteen priests and fifteen augurs have arrived at that conclusion beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

The joy had died out of Caesar's face completely. “I'd rather be a soldier,” he said gruffly. “I'm more suited for it.”

“What you'd rather be doesn't matter. It's what you are that does. And what your wife is.”

Caesar frowned, looked at Sulla searchingly. “That's the second time you've mentioned my wife.”

“You must divorce her,” said Sulla baldly.

“Divorce her? But I can't!”

“Why not?”

“We're married confarreatio.”

“There is such a thing as diffarreatio.”

“Why must I divorce her?”

“Because she's Cinna's brat. It turns out that my laws pertaining to proscribed men and their families contain a minor flaw in regard to the citizen status of children under age. The priests and augurs have decided that the lex Minicia applies. Which means your wife-who is flaminica Dialis-is not Roman or patrician. Therefore she cannot be flaminica Dialis. As this flaminate is a dual one, the legality of her position is quite as important as yours. You must divorce her.”

“I won't do that,” said Caesar, beginning to see a way out of this hated priesthood.

“You'll do anything I say you must, boy!”

“I will do nothing I think I must not.”

The puckered lips peeled back slowly. “I am the Dictator,” said Sulla levelly. “You will divorce your wife.”

“I refuse,” said Caesar.

“I can force you to it if I have to.”

“How?'' asked Caesar scornfully. ' The rites of diffarreatio require my complete consent and co-operation.”

Time to reduce this young pest to a quivering jellyfish: Sulla let Caesar see the naked clawed creature which lived inside him, a thing fit only to screech at the moon. But even as the creature leaped forth, Sulla realized why Caesar's eyes were so familiar. They were like his own! Staring back at him with the cold and emotionless fixity of a snake. And the naked clawed creature slunk away, impotent. For the first time in his life Sulla was left without the means to bend another man to his will. The rage which ought by now to possess him could not come; forced to contemplate the image of himself in someone else's face, Lucius Cornelius Sulla was powerless.

He had to fight with mere words. “I have vowed to restore the proper religious ethics of the mos maiorum,” he said. “Rome will honor and care for her gods in the way she did at the dawn of the Republic. Jupiter Optimus Maximus is displeased. With you-or rather, with your wife. You are his special priest, but your wife is an inseparable part of your priesthood. You must separate yourself from this present unacceptable wife, take another one. You must divorce Cinna's non-Roman brat.”

“I will not,” said Caesar.

“Then I must find another solution.”

“I have-one ready to hand,” said Caesar instantly. “Let Jupiter Best and Greatest divorce me. Cancel my flaminate.”

“I might have been able to do that as Dictator had I not brought the priestly colleges into the business. As it is, I am bound by their findings.”

“Then it begins to look,” said Caesar calmly, “as if we have reached an impasse, doesn't it?”

“No, it does not. There is another way out.”

“To have me killed.”

“Exactly.”

“That would put the blood of the flamen Dialis on your hands, Sulla.”

“Not if someone else has your blood on his hands. I do not subscribe to the Greek metaphor, Gaius Julius Caesar. Nor do our Roman gods. Guilt cannot be transferred.”

Caesar considered this. “Yes, I believe you're right. If you have someone else kill me, the guilt must fall on him.”

He rose to his feet, which gave him some inches over Sulla. “Then our interview is at an end.”

“It is. Unless you will reconsider.”

“I will not divorce my wife.”

“Then I will have you killed.”

“If you can,” said Caesar, and walked out.

Sulla called after him. “You have forgotten your laena and apex, priest!”

“Keep them for the next flamen Dialis.”

He forced himself to stroll home, not certain how quickly Sulla would regain his equilibrium. That the Dictator had been thrown off balance he had seen at once; it was evident that not too many people defied Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

The air was freezing, too cold for snow. And that childish gesture had cost him protection from the weather. Not important, really. He wouldn't die of exposure walking from the Palatine to the Subura. More important by far was his next course of action. For Sulla would have him killed, of that he had absolutely no doubt. He sighed. It would have to be flight. Though he knew he could look after himself, he had no illusions as to which of them would win did he remain in Rome. Sulla. However, he had at least a day's grace; the Dictator was as hampered by the slowly grinding machinery of bureaucracy as anyone else, and would have to squeeze an interview with one of those groups of quite ordinary-looking men into his crowded schedule; his foyer, as Caesar had quickly assessed, was filled with clients, not paid assassins. Life in Rome was not a bit like a Greek tragedy, no impassioned instructions were roared out to men straining like hounds at the leash. When Sulla found the time he would issue his orders. But not yet.

When he let himself into his mother's apartment he was blue with cold.

“Where are your clothes?” asked Aurelia, gaping.

“With Sulla,” he managed to say. “I donated them to the next flamen Dialis. Mater, he showed me how to be free of it!”

“Tell me,” she said, and got him to sit over a brazier.

He told her.

“Oh, Caesar, why?” she cried at the end.

“Come, Mater, you know why. I love my wife. That's first of all. All these years she's lived with us and looked to me for the kind of care neither father nor mother was willing to give her, and thought me the most wonderful aspect of her little life. How can I abandon her? She's Cinna's daughter! A pauper! Not even Roman anymore! Mater, I don't want to die. To live as the flamen Dialis is infinitely preferable to death. But there are some things worth dying for. Principles. The duties of a Roman nobleman you instilled in me with such uncompromising care. Cinnilla is my responsibility. I can't abandon her!” He shrugged, looked triumphant. “Besides, this is my way out. As long as I refuse to divorce Cinnilla, I am unacceptable to the Great God as his priest. So I just have to keep on refusing to divorce her.”