Fortune's Favorites (57 page)

Byzantine resentment of Romans was due, of course, to the occupation of the city by Fimbria and Flaccus four years earlier, when they-appointed by the government of Cinna-had decided to head for Asia and a war with Mithridates rather than for Greece and a war with Sulla. It made little difference to the Byzantines that Fimbria had murdered Flaccus, and Sulla had put paid to Fimbria; the fact remained that their city had suffered. And here was their suzerain fawning all over another Roman.

Thus, having arrived at what decisions he could, Caesar set out to make his own individual impression on the Byzantines, intending to salvage what pride he could. His intelligence and education were a great help, but he was not so sure about that element of his nature that his mother so deplored- his charm. It did win over the leading citizens of the city and it did much to mollify their feelings after the singular boorishness and brutishness of Flaccus and Fimbria, but he was forced in the end to conclude that it probably strengthened their impressions of his sexual leanings-male men weren't supposed to be charming.

So Caesar embarked upon a frontal attack. The first phase of this consisted in crudely rebuffing all the overtures made to him by men, and the second phase in finding out the name of Byzantium's most famous courtesan, then making love to her until she cried enough.

“He's as big as a donkey and as randy as a goat,” she said to all her friends and regular lovers, looking exhausted. Then she smiled and sighed, and stretched her arms voluptuously. “Oh, but he's wonderful! I haven't had a boy like him in years!”

And that did the trick. Without hurting King Nicomedes, whose devotion to the Roman youth was now seen for what it was. A hopeless passion.

Back to Nicomedia, to Queen Oradaltis, to Sulla the dog, to that crazy palace with its surplus of pages and its squabbling, intriguing staff.

“I'm sorry to have to go,” he said to the King and Queen at their last dinner together.

“Not as sorry as we are to see you go,” said Queen Oradaltis gruffly, and stirred the dog with her foot.

“Will you come back after Mitylene is subdued?'' asked the King. “We would so much like that.”

“I'll be back. You have my word on it,” said Caesar.

“Good!” Nicomedes looked satisfied. “Now, please enlighten me about a Latin puzzle I have never found the answer to: why is cunnus masculine gender, and mentula feminine gender?”

Caesar blinked. “I don't know!”

“There must surely be a reason.”

“Quite honestly, I've never thought about it. But now that you've drawn it to my attention, it is peculiar, isn't it?”

“Cunnus should be cunna–it's the female genitalia, after all. And mentula should be mentulus–it's a man's penis, after all. Below so much masculine bluster, how hopelessly confused you Romans are! Your women are men, and your men, women.” And the King sat back, beaming.

“You didn't choose the politest words for our private parts,” said Caesar gravely. “Cunnus and mentula are obscenities.” He kept his face straight as he went on. “The answer is obvious, I would have thought. The gender of the equipment indicates the sex it is intended to mate with-the penis is meant to find a female home, and a vagina is meant to welcome a male home.”

“Rubbish!” said the King, lips quivering.

“Sophistry!” said the Queen, shoulders shaking.

“What do you have to say about it, Sulla?” asked Nicomedes of the dog, with which he was getting on much better since the advent of Caesar-or perhaps it was that Oradaltis didn't use the dog to tease the old man so remorselessly these days.

Caesar burst out laughing. “When I get home, I will most certainly ask him!”

The palace was utterly empty after Caesar left; its two aged denizens crept around bewildered, and even the dog mourned.

“He is the son we never had,” said Nicomedes. “No!” said Oradaltis strongly. “He is the son we could never have had. Never.”

“Because of my family's predisposition?”

“Of course not! Because we aren't Romans. He is Roman.”

“Perhaps it would be better to say, he is himself.”

“Do you think he will come back, Nicomedes?'' A question which seemed to cheer the King up. He said very firmly, “Yes, I believe he will.”

When Caesar arrived in Abydus on the Ides of October, he found the promised fleet riding at anchor-two massive Pontic sixteeners, eight quinqueremes, ten triremes, and twenty well-built but not particularly warlike galleys.

“Since you wish to blockade rather than pursue at sea,” said part of the King's letter to Caesar, “I have given you as your minor vessels broad-beamed, decked, converted merchantmen rather than the twenty undecked war galleys you asked for. If you wish to keep the men of Mitylene from having access to their harbor during the winter, you will need sturdier vessels than lightweight galleys, which have to be drawn up on shore the moment a storm threatens. The converted merchantmen will ride out all but gales so terrible no one will be on the sea. The two Pontic sixteeners I thought might come in handy, if for no other reason than they look so fearsome and daunting. They will break any harbor chain known, so will be useful when you attack. Also, the harbor master at Sinope was willing to throw them in for nothing beyond food and wages for their crews (five hundred men apiece), as he says the King of Pontus can find absolutely no work for them to do at the moment. I enclose the bill on a separate sheet.”

The distance from Abydus on the Hellespont to the Anatolian shore of the island of Lesbos just to the north of Mitylene was about a hundred miles, which, said the chief pilot when Caesar applied to him for the information, would take between five and ten days if the weather held and every ship was genuinely seaworthy.

“Then we'd better make sure they all are,” said Caesar.

Not used to working for an admiral (for such, Caesar supposed, was his status until he reached Lesbos) who insisted that his ships be gone over thoroughly before the expedition started, the chief pilot assembled Abydus's three shipwrights and inspected each vessel closely, with Caesar hanging over their shoulders badgering them with ceaseless questions.

“Do you get seasick?'' asked the chief pilot hopefully.

“Not as far as I know,” said Caesar, eyes twinkling.

Ten days before the Kalends of November the fleet of forty ships sailed out into the Hellespont, where the current- which always flowed from the Euxine into the Aegean-bore them at a steady rate toward the southern mouth of the strait at the Mastusia promontory on the Thracian side, and the estuary of the Scamander River on the Asian side. Not far down the Scamander lay Troy-fabled Ilium, from the burning ruins of which his ancestor Aeneas had fled before Agamemnon could capture him. A pity that he hadn't had a chance to visit this awesome site, Caesar thought, then shrugged; there would be other chances.

The weather held, with the result that the fleet-still keeping well together-arrived off the northern tip of Lesbos six days early. Since it was no part of Caesar's plan to get to his destination on any other day than the Kalends of November, he consulted the chief pilot again and put the fleet snugly into harbor within the curling palm of the Cydonian peninsula, where it could not be seen from Lesbos. The enemy on Lesbos did not concern him: he wanted to surprise the besieging Roman army. And cock a snook at Thermus.

“You have phenomenal luck,” said the chief pilot when the fleet put out again the day before the Kalends of November.

“In what way?”

“I've never seen better sailing conditions for this time of the year-and they'll hold for several days yet.”

“Then at nightfall we'll put in to whatever sheltering bay we can find on Lesbos. At dawn tomorrow I'll take a fast lighter to find the army,” said Caesar. “There's no point in bringing the whole fleet down until I find out whereabouts the commander wants to base it.”

Caesar found his army shortly after the sun had risen on the following day, and went ashore to find Thermus or Lucullus, whoever was in command. Lucullus, as it turned out. Thermus was still in Pergamum.

They met below the spot where Lucullus was supervising the construction of a wall and ditch across the narrow, hilly spit of land on which stood the city of Mitylene.

It was Caesar of course who was curious; Lucullus was just testy, told no more than that a strange tribune wanted to see him, and deeming all unknown junior officers pure nuisances. His reputation in Rome had grown over the years since he had been Sulla's faithful quaestor, the only legate who had agreed to the march on Rome that first time, when Sulla had been consul. And he had remained Sulla's man ever since, so much so that Sulla had entrusted him with commissions not usually given to men who had not been praetor; he had waged war against King Mithridates and he had stayed in Asia Province after Sulla went home, holding it for Sulla while the governor, Murena, had busied himself conducting an unauthorized war against Mithridates in the land of Cappadocia.

Caesar saw a slim, fit-looking man of slightly more than average height, a man who walked a little stiffly-not, it seemed, because there was anything wrong with his bones, but rather because the stiffness was in his mind. Not a handsome man-but definitely an interesting-looking one-he had a long, pale face surmounted by a thatch of wiry, waving hair of that indeterminate color called mouse-brown. When he came close enough to see his eyes, Caesar discovered they were a clear, light, frigid grey.

The commander's brows were knitted into a frown. “Yes?”

“I am Gaius Julius Caesar, junior military tribune.”

“Sent from the governor, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“So? Why did you have to ask for. me? I'm busy.”

“I have your fleet, Lucius Licinius.”

“My fleet?”

“The one the governor told me to obtain from Bithynia.”

The cold regard became fixed. “Ye gods!”

Caesar stood waiting.

“Well, that is good news! I didn't realize Thermus had sent two tribunes to Bithynia,” said Lucullus. “When did he send you? In April?”

“As far as I know, I'm the only one he sent.”

“Caesar-Caesar ... You can't be the one he sent at the end of Quinctilis, surely!”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you have a fleet already?”

“Yes.”

“Then you'll have to go back, tribune. King Nicomedes has palmed you off with rubbish.”

“This fleet contains no rubbish. I have forty ships I have personally inspected for seaworthiness-two sixteeners, eight quinqueremes, ten triremes, and twenty converted merchantmen the King said would be better for a winter blockade than light undecked war galleys,” said Caesar, hugging his delight inside himself so secretly not a scrap of it showed.

“Ye gods!” Lucullus now inspected this junior military tribune as minutely as he would a freak in a sideshow at the circus. A faint turn began to work at tugging the left corner of his mouth upward, and the eyes melted a little. “How did you manage that?”

“I'm a persuasive talker.”

“I'd like to know what you said! Nicomedes is as tight as a miser's clutch on his last sestertius.”

“Don't worry, Lucius Licinius, I have his bill.”

“Call me Lucullus, there are at least six Lucius Liciniuses here.” The general turned to walk toward the seashore. “I'll bet you have the bill! What is he charging us for sixteeners?”

“Only the food and wages of their crews.”

“Ye gods! Where is this magical fleet?”

“About a mile upshore toward the Hellespont, riding at anchor. I thought it would be better to come ahead myself and ask you whether you want it moored here, or whether you'd rather it went straight on to blockade the Mitylene harbors.”

Some of the stiffness had gone from Lucullus's gait. “I think we'll put it straight to work, tribune.” He rubbed his hands together. “What a shock for Mitylene! Its men thought they'd have all winter to bring in extra provisions.”

When the two men reached the lighter and Lucullus stepped nimbly on board, Caesar hung back.

“Well, tribune? Aren't you coming?”

“If you wish. I'm a little new to military etiquette, so I don't want to make any mistakes,” said Caesar frankly.

“Get in, man, get in!”

It was not until the twenty oarsmen, ten to a side, had turned the open boat into the north and commenced the long, easy strokes which ate up distance that Lucullus spoke again.

“New to military etiquette? You're well past seventeen, tribune, are you not? You didn't say you were a contubernalis.”

Stifling a sigh (he could see that he would be tired of explaining long before explanations were no longer necessary), Caesar said in matter-of-fact tones, “I am nineteen, but this is my first campaign. Until June I was the flamen Dialis.”

But Lucullus never wanted lavish details; he was too busy and too intelligent. So he nodded, taking for granted all the things most men wanted elaborated. “Caesar ... Was your aunt Sulla's first wife?”

“Yes.”

“So he favors you.”

“At the moment.”

“Well answered! I am his loyalest follower, tribune, and I say that as a warning I owe to you, considering your relationship to him. I do not permit anyone to criticize him.”

“You'll hear no criticisms from me, Lucullus.”

“Good.”

A silence fell, broken only by the uniform grunt of twenty oarsmen dipping simultaneously into the water. Then Lucullus spoke again, with some amusement.

“I would still like to know how you prised such a mighty fleet out of King Nicomedes.”

And that secret delight suddenly popped to the surface in a manner Caesar had not yet learned to discipline; he said something indiscreet to someone he didn't know. “Suffice it to say that the governor annoyed me. He refused to believe that I could produce forty ships, half of them decked, by the Kalends of November. I was injured in my pride, and undertook to produce them. And I have produced them! The governor's lack of faith in my ability to live up to my word demanded it.”

This answer irritated Lucullus intensely; he loathed having cocksure men in his army at any level, and he found the statement detestably arrogant. He therefore set out to put this cocksure child in his place. “I know that painted old trollop Nicomedes extremely well,” he said in a freezing voice. “Of course you are very pretty, and he is very notorious. Did he fancy you?'' But, as he had no intention of permitting Caesar to reply, he went on immediately. “Yes, of course he fancied you! Oh, well done for you, Caesar! It isn't every Roman who has the nobility of purpose to put Rome ahead of his chastity. I think we'll have to call you the face that launched forty ships. Or should that be arse?”