Fortune's Favorites (75 page)

At the end of it Caesar walked fearlessly into the densely packed mass of Greek Lampsacans, all weeping with shock, beyond anger now. No other Roman went near them; escorted by Fimbriani, Claudius Nero and Dolabella were already shifting their belongings down to the quay. But Caesar had a purpose. It had not taken him long to decide who in the crowd were the influential ones, and these men he sought out.

“Lampsacus isn't big enough to stage a revolt,” he said to them, “but revenge is possible. Don't judge all Romans by this sorry lot, and hold your tempers. I give you my word that when I return to Rome, I will prosecute the governor Dolabella and make sure that Verres is never elected a praetor. Not for gifts or for honors. Just for my own satisfaction.”

After that he went to the house of Ianitor, for he wanted to see Gaius Verres before the man quit Lampsacus.

“Well, if it isn't the war hero!” cried Verres cheerfully when Caesar walked in.

He was overseeing his packing.

“Do you intend to take possession of the daughter?” Caesar asked, disposing himself comfortably in a chair.

“Naturally,” said Verres, nodding at a slave who brought in a little statue for him to inspect. “Yes, I like it. Crate it.” His attention returned to Caesar. “Anxious to set eyes on the cause of all this fuss, are you?”

“Consumed with curiosity. She ought to outdo Helen.”

“So I think.”

“Is she blonde, I wonder? I've always thought Helen must have been blonde. Yellow hair has the edge.”

Verres eyed Caesar's thatch appreciatively, lifted a hand to pat his own. “You and I ought to know!”

“Where do you intend to go from Lampsacus, Gaius Verres?”

The tawny brows rose. “To Nicomedia, of course.”

“I wouldn't,” said Caesar gently.

“Really? And why not?” asked Verres, deceptively casual.

Caesar bent his gaze to study his own nails. “Dolabella will bite the dust as soon as I return to Rome, which will be in the spring of this year or the next. I will prosecute him myself. And I will prosecute you. Unless, that is, you return to Cilicia now.”

Caesar's blue eyes lifted; the honeyed eyes of Verres met them. For a long moment neither man moved.

Then Verres said, “I know who you remind me of. Sulla.”

“Do I?”

“It's your eyes. Not as washed out as Sulla's, but they have the same look. I wonder will you go as far as Sulla?”

“That is on the laps of the gods. I would rather say, I hope no one forces me to go as far as Sulla.”

Verres shrugged. “Well, Caesar, I am no Gaius Marius, so it won't be me.”

“You are certainly no Gaius Marius,” Caesar agreed calmly. “He was a great man until his mind gave way. Where are you going from Lampsacus, have you decided?”

“To Cilicia with Dolabella,” said Verres with another shrug.

“Oh, very wise! Would you like me to send someone down to the port to inform Dolabella? I'd hate to see him sail off and leave you behind.”

“If you wish,” said Verres indifferently.

Off went Caesar to find Burgundus and instruct him what to tell Dolabella. As he returned to the room through an inner door, Ianitor brought in a muffled form through the door onto the street.

“This is Stratonice?” asked Verres eagerly.

Ianitor brushed the tears from his cheeks. “Yes.”

“Leave us alone with her, Greek.”

Ianitor fled.

“Shall I unveil her for you while you stand at a suitably remote distance to take all of her in at once?'' asked Caesar.

“I prefer to do it myself,” said Verres, moving to the girl's side; she had made no sound, no attempt to run away.

The hood of her heavy cloak fell forward over her face, impossible to see. Like Myron anxious to check the result of a bronze casting, Verres twitched the cloak from her with a trembling hand. And stared, and stared.

It was Caesar broke the silence; he threw back his head and laughed until he cried. “I had a feeling!” he said when he was able, groping for a handkerchief.

The body she owned was shapeless, poor Stratonice. Her eyes were slits, her snub nose spread across her face, the reddish hair atop her flat-backed skull was sparse to the point of semi-baldness, her ears were vestigial and she had a badly split harelip. Of reasoning mentality she had very little, poor Stratonice.

Face scarlet, Verres turned on his heel.

“Don't miss your ship!” Caesar called after him. “I'd hate to have to spread the end of this story all over Rome, Verres!”

The moment Verres had gone Caesar sobered. He came across to the mute and immobile creature, picked up her cloak from the floor and draped it about her tenderly.

“Don't worry, my poor girl,” he said, not sure she could even hear him. “You're quite safe.” He called then for Ianitor, who came in immediately. “You knew, ethnarch, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why in the name of Great Zeus didn't you speak out if they wouldn't? They died for nothing!”

“They died because they elected death as the preferable alternative,” said Ianitor.

“And what will become of the wretched creature now?”

“She will be well looked after.”

“How many of you knew?”

“Just the city's elders.”

Unable to find anything to say in answer to that, Caesar left Ianitor's house, and left Lampsacus.

Gaius Verres hurried down to the port, stumbling. How dared they, those stupid, stupid Greeks? Hiding her away as if she was Helen of Troy, when all the time she was a gorgon.

Dolabella was not pleased at having to delay his departure while various crates and trunks belonging to Verres were loaded; Claudius Nero had already gone, and the Fimbriani with him.

“Quin taces!” snarled Verres when his superior asked where was the beauteous Stratonice. “I left her behind in Lampsacus. They deserve each other.”

His superior was feeling the pinch of some time without the stimulating sexual sessions he had grown to rely upon; Verres soon found himself back in Dolabella's good graces, and spent the voyage from Lampsacus to Pergamum planning. He would return Dolabella to his usual condition and spend the rest of his term in Tarsus using up the gubernatorial stipend. So Caesar thought he'd prosecute, did he? Well, he wouldn't get the chance. He, Verres, would get in first! The moment Dolabella returned to Rome, he, Verres, would find a prosecutor with a prestigious name and testify Dolabella into permanent exile. Then there would be no one to contest the set of account books Verres intended to present to the Treasury. A pity that he hadn't managed to get to Bithynia and Thrace, but he had really done very nicely.

“I believe,” he said to Dolabella after they left Pergamum behind, “that Miletus has some of the finest wool in the world, not to mention rugs and tapestries of rare quality. Let's stop in at Miletus and look at what's available.”

“I can't get over the fact that those two socii died for nothing,” said Caesar to Nicomedes and Oradaltis. “Why? Tell me why they just didn't produce the girl and show Verres what she was? That would have been the end of the affair! Why did they insist upon turning what ought to have been a comedy with Verres the butt into a tragedy as great as anything Sophocles dreamed of?”

“Pride, mostly,” said Oradaltis, tears in her eyes. “And perhaps a sense of honor.”

“It might have been understandable if the girl had looked presentable when she was a baby, but from the moment of her birth they would have known what she was. Why didn't they expose her? No one would have condemned them for it.”

“The only person who might have been able to enlighten you, Caesar, died in the marketplace of Lampsacus,” said Nicomedes. “There must have been a good reason, at least inside the mind of Philodamus. A vow to some god-a wife and mother determined to keep the child-a self-inflicted pain- who can tell? If we knew all the answers, life would hold no mysteries. And no tragedies.”

“I could have wept when I saw her. Instead I laughed myself sick. She couldn't tell the difference, but Verres could. So I laughed. He'll hear it inside his head for years, and fear me.”

“I'm surprised we haven't seen the man,” said the King.

“You won't see him,” said Caesar with some satisfaction. “Gaius Verres has folded his tents and slunk back to Cilicia.”

“Why?”

“I asked him to.”

The King decided not to probe this remark. Instead he said, “You wish you could have done something to avert the tragedy.”

“Of course. It's an actual agony to have to stand back and watch idiots wreak havoc in Rome's name. But I swear to you, Nicomedes, that I will never behave so myself when I have the age and the authority!”

“You don't need to swear. I believe you.”

This report had been given before Caesar went to his rooms to remove the ravages of his journey, these being unusually trying. Each of the three nights he had spent in the harborside inn he had woken to find a naked whore astride him and the traitor inside the gates of his body so lacking in discernment that, freed by sleep from his mind's control, it enjoyed itself immensely. With the result that he had picked up an infestation of pubic lice. The discovery of his crop of tiny vermin had induced a horror and disgust so great that he had been able to keep no food down since, and only a sensible sensitivity about the effects of questionable substances upon his genitalia had prevented his seizing anything offered to kill the things. So far they had defied him by living through a dip in every freezing body of water he had encountered between Lampsacus and Nicomedia, and all through his talk with the old King he had been aware of the dreadful creatures prowling through the thickets of his body hair.

Now, clenching teeth and fists, he rose abruptly to his feet. “Please excuse me, Nicomedes. I have to rid myself of some unwelcome visitors,” he said, attempting a light tone.

“Crab lice, you mean?” asked the King, who missed very little, and could speak freely because Oradaltis and her dog had departed some time before.

“I'm driven mad! Revolting, sickening things!”

Nicomedes strolled from the room with him.

“There is really only one way to avoid picking up vermin when you travel,” said the King. “It's painful, especially the first time you have it done, but it does work.”

“I don't care if I have to walk on hot coals, tell me and I'll do it!” said Caesar with fervor.

“There are those in your peculiar society who will condemn you as effeminate!” Nicomedes said wickedly.

“No fate could be worse than these pests. Tell me!”

“Have all your body hair plucked, Caesar. Under the arms and in the groin, on the chest if you have hair there. I will send the man who attends to me and Oradaltis to you if you wish.”

“At once, King, at once!” Up went Caesar's hand to his head. “What about my hair hair?”

“Have you visitors there too?”

“I don't think so, but I itch everywhere.”

“They're different visitors, and can't survive in a bed. I wouldn't think you'll ever play host to them because you're so tall. They can't crawl upward, you see, so the people who pick them up from others are always the same height or shorter than the original host.” Nicomedes laughed. “You'd catch them from Burgundus, but from few others. Unless your Lampsacan whores slept with you head to head.”

“My Lampsacan whores attacked me in my sleep, but I can assure you that they got short shrift the moment I woke!”

An extraordinary conversation, but one Caesar was to thank his luck for many times in the years to come. If plucking out his body hair would keep these clinging horrors away, he would pluck, pluck, pluck.

The slave Nicomedes sent to him was an expert; under different circumstances Caesar would have banished him from such an intimate task, for he was a perfect pansy. Under the prevailing circumstances, however, Caesar found himself eager to experience his touch.

“I'll just take a few out every day,” lisped Demetrius.

“You'll take the lot out today,” said Caesar grimly. “I've drowned all I could find in my bath, but I suppose their eggs stick. That seems to be why I haven't managed to get rid of all of them so far. Pah!”

Demetrius squealed, appalled. “That isn't possible!” he cried. “Even when I do it, it's hideously painful!”

“The lot today,” said Caesar.

So Demetrius continued while Caesar lay naked, apparently in no distress. He had self-discipline and great courage, and would have died rather than flinch, moan, weep, or otherwise betray his agony. And when the ordeal was over and sufficient time had passed for the pain to die down, he felt wonderful. He also liked the look of his hairless body in the big silver mirror King Nicomedes had provided for the palace's principal guest suite. Sleek. Unashamed. Amazingly naked. And somehow more masculine rather than less. How odd!

Feeling like a man released from slavery, he went to the dining room that evening with his new pleasure in himself adding a special light to face and eyes; King Nicomedes looked, and gasped. Caesar responded with a wink.

For sixteen months he remained in or around about Bithynia, an idyll he was to remember as the most wonderful period of his life until he reached his fifty-third year and found an even more wonderful one. He visited Troy to do homage to his ancestor Aeneas, he went to Pessinus several times, and back to Byzantium, and anywhere, it seemed, save Pergamum and Tarsus, where Claudius Nero and Dolabella remained an extra year after all.

Leaving aside his relationship with Nicomedes and Oradaltis, which remained an enormously satisfying and rewarding experience for him, the chief joy of that time lay in his visit to a man he hardly remembered: Publius Rutilius Rufus, his great-uncle on his mother's side.

Born in the same year as Gaius Marius, Rutilius Rufus was now seventy-nine years old, and had been living in an honorable exile in Smyrna for many years. He was as active as a fifty-year-old and as cheerful as a boy, mind as sharp as ever, sense of humor as keenly developed as had been that of his friend and colleague, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus.

“I've outlived the lot of them,” Rutilius Rufus said with gleeful satisfaction after his eyes and mind had approved the look of this fine young great-nephew.