Fortune's Favorites (8 page)

“I doubt that.”

“But why? Rome's rotting from within!”

Sulla sighed, his lips flapping. “Piglet dear, if I am to help Rome recover, then I have to give Rome a chance to decide in my favor peacefully. Now that is not going to happen by the autumn. So I can't appear too threatening, I can't march at the double up the Via Latina and attack Rome the way Cinna and Marius descended upon her after I left for the east. When I marched on Rome the first time, I had surprise on my side. No one believed I would. So no one opposed me except a few slaves and mercenaries belonging to Gaius Marius. But this time is different. Everyone expects me to march on Rome. If I do that too quickly, I'll never win. Oh, Rome would fall! But every nest of insurgents, every school of opposition would harden. It would take me longer than I have left to live to put resistance down. I can't afford the time or the effort. So I'll go very slowly toward Rome.”

Metellus Pius digested this, and saw the sense of it. With a gladness he couldn't quite conceal from those glacial eyes in their sore sockets. Wisdom was not a quality he associated with any Roman nobleman; Roman noblemen were too political in their thinking to be wise. Everything was of the moment, seen in the short term. Even Scaurus Princeps Senatus, for all his experience and his vast auctoritas, had not been wise. Any more than had the Piglet's own father, Metellus Numidicus. Brave. Fearless. Determined. Unyielding of principle. But never wise. So it cheered the Piglet immensely to know that he rode down the long road to Rome with a wise man, for he was a Caecilius Metellus and he had a foot in both camps, despite his personal choice of Sulla. If there was any aspect of this undertaking from which he shrank, it was the knowledge that-try though he might to avoid it-he would inevitably end in ruining a good proportion of his blood or marital relations. Therefore he appreciated the wisdom of advancing slowly upon Rome; some of the Caecilii Metelli who at the moment supported Carbo might see the error of their ways before it was too late.

Of course Sulla knew exactly how the Piglet's mind was working, and let him finish his thoughts in peace. His own thoughts were upon his task as he stared between the mournful flops of his mule's ears. I am back in Italy and soon Campania, that cornucopia of all the good things from the earth, will loom in the distance-green, rolling, soft of mountain, sweet of water. And if I deliberately exclude Rome from my inner gaze, Rome will not eat at me the way this itching does. Rome will be mine. But, though my crimes have been many and my contrition none, I have never liked so much as the idea of rape. Better by far that Rome comes to me consenting, than that I am forced to rape her....

“You may have noticed that ever since I landed in Brundisium I have been sending written letters to all the leaders of the old Italian Allies, promising them that I will see every last Italian properly enrolled as a citizen of Rome according to the laws and treaties negotiated at the end of the Italian War. I will even see them distributed across the full gamut of the thirty-five tribes. Believe me, Piglet, I will bend like a strand of spider's web in the wind before I attack Rome!”

“What have the Italians to do with Rome?” asked Metellus Pius, who had never been in favor of granting the full Roman citizenship to the Italians, and had secretly applauded Philippus as censor because Philippus and his fellow censor, Perperna, had avoided enrolling the Italians as Roman citizens.

“Between Pompeius and me, we've marched through much of the territory which fought against Rome without encountering anything beyond welcome-and perhaps hope that I will change the situation in Rome concerning their citizenships. Italian support will be a help to me in persuading Rome to yield peacefully.”

“I doubt it,” said Metellus Pius stiffly, “but I daresay you know what you're doing. Let's get back to the subject of Philippus, who is a problem.”

“Certainly!” said Sulla, eyes dancing.

“What has Philippus to do with me?” asked Crassus, deeming it high time he intruded himself into what had become a duet.

“I have to get rid of him, Marcus Crassus. But as painlessly as possible, given the fact that somehow he has managed to turn himself into a hallowed Roman institution.”

“That's because he has become everybody's ideal of the dedicated political contortionist,” said the Piglet, grinning.

“Not a bad description,” said Sulla, nodding instead of trying to smile. “Now, my big and ostensibly placid friend Marcus Crassus, I am going to ask you a question. I require an honest answer. Given your sad reputation, are you capable of giving me an honest answer?”

This sally did not appear even to dent Crassus's oxlike composure. “I will do my best, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Are you passionately attached to your Spanish troops?”

“Considering that you keep making me find provisions for them, no, I am not,” said Crassus.

“Good! Would you part with them?”

“If you think we can do without them, yes.”

“Good! Then with your splendidly phlegmatic consent, my dear Marcus, I'll bring down several quarry with the same arrow. It is my intention to give your Spaniards to Philippus- he can take and hold Sardinia for me. When the Sardinian harvest comes in, he will send all of it to me,” said Sulla. He reached for the hide flask of pale sour wine tied to one horn of his saddle, lifted it, and squirted liquid expertly into his gummy mouth; not a drop fell on his face.

“Philippus will refuse to go,” said Metellus Pius flatly.

“No, he won't. He'll love the commission,” said Sulla, capping the birdlike neck of his wineskin. “He'll be the full and undisputed master of all he surveys, and the Sardinian brigands will greet him like a brother. He makes every last one of them look virtuous.”

Doubt began to gnaw at Crassus, who rumbled deeply in his throat, but said no word.

“Wondering what you'll do without troops to command?”

“Something like that,” said Crassus cautiously.

“You could make yourself very useful to me,” said Sulla in casual tones.

“How?”

“Your mother and your wife are both from prominent Sabine families. How about going to Reate and starting to recruit for me? You could commence there, and finish among the Marsi.” Out went Sulla's hand, clasped the heavy wrist of Crassus. “Believe me, Marcus Crassus, in the spring of next year there will be much military work for you to do, and good troops-Italian, if not Roman-for you to command.”

“That suits me,” said Crassus. “It's a deal.”

“Oh, if only everything could be solved so easily and so well!” cried Sulla, reaching once more for his wineskin.

Crassus and Metellus Pius exchanged glances across the bent head of silly artificial curls; he might say he drank to ease the itching, but the truth appeared more to be that nowadays Sulla couldn't go for very long without wetting his whistle. Somewhere down the nightmare alley of his physical torments, he had embraced his palliative with a permanent and enduring love. But did he know it? Or did he not?

Had they found the courage to ask him, Sulla would have told them readily. Yes, he knew it. Nor did he care who else knew it, including the fact that his deceptively weak-looking vintage was actually strongly fortified. Forbidden bread, honey, fruit and cakes, little in his diet did he truly like. The physicians of Aedepsus had been right to remove all those tasty things from his food intake, of that he had no doubt. When he had come to them, he knew he was dying. First he had endured an insatiable craving for sweet and starchy things, and put on so much weight that even his mule had complained about the burden of carrying him; then he began to experience numbness and tingling in both feet, burnings and pains too as time went on, so that the moment he lay down to sleep, his wretched feet refused to let him. The sensations crept into his ankles and lower legs, sleep became harder and harder to find. So he added a heavy; very sweet and fortified wine to his customary fare, and used it to drug himself into sleeping. Until the day when he had found himself sweating, gasping-and losing weight so quickly that he could almost see himself disappearing. He drank flagons of water one after the other, yet still was thirsty. And-most terrifying of all!-his eyes began to fail.

Most of that had disappeared or greatly eased after he went to Aedepsus. Of his face he wouldn't think, he who had been so beautiful in his youth that men had made absolute fools of themselves, so beautiful after he attained maturity that women had made absolute fools of themselves. But one thing which had not disappeared was his need to drink wine. Yielding to the inevitable, the priest-physicians of Aedepsus had persuaded him to exchange his sweet fortified wine for the sourest vintages available, and over the months since, he had come to prefer his wine so dry it made him grimace. When the itch was not upon him he kept the amount he drank under some sort of control, in that he didn't let it interfere with his thought processes. He just drank enough to improve them-or so he told himself.

“I'll keep Ofella and Catilina with me,” he said to Crassus and Metellus Pius, stoppering up the flask again. “However, Verres is the epitome of his name-an insatiably greedy boar. I think I will send him back to Beneventum, for the time being at least. He can organize supplies and keep an eye on our rear.”

The Piglet giggled. “He might like that, the honey-boy!”

This provoked a brief grin in Crassus. “What about yon Cethegus?” he asked, legs aching from hanging down limply; they were very heavy legs. He shifted his weight a little.

“Cethegus I shall retain for the moment,” said Sulla. His hand strayed toward the wine, then was snatched away. “He can look after things in Campania.”

Just before his army crossed the river Volturnus near the town of Casilinum, Sulla sent six envoys to negotiate with Gaius Norbanus, the more capable of Carbo's two tame consuls. Norbanus had taken eight legions and drawn himself up to defend Capua, but when Sulla's envoys appeared carrying a flag of truce, he arrested them without a hearing. He then marched his eight legions out onto the Capuan plain right beneath the slopes of Mount Tifata. Irritated by the unethical treatment meted out to his envoys, Sulla proceeded to teach Norbanus a lesson he would not forget. Down the flank of Mount Tifata Sulla led his troops at a run, hurled them on the unsuspecting Norbanus. Defeated before the battle had really begun, Norbanus retreated inside Capua, where he sorted out his panicked men, sent two legions to hold the port of Neapolis for Carbo's Rome, and prepared himself to withstand a siege.

Thanks to the cleverness of a tribune of the plebs, Marcus Junius Brutus, Capua was very much disposed to like the present government in Rome; earlier in the year, Brutus had brought in a law giving Capua the status of a Roman city, and this, after centuries of being punished by Rome for various insurrections, had pleased Capua mightily. Norbanus had therefore no need to worry that Capua might grow tired of playing host to him and his army. Capua was used to playing host to Roman legions.

“We have Puteoli, so we don't need Neapolis,” said Sulla to Pompey and Metellus Pius as they rode toward Teanum Sidicinum, “and we can do without Capua because we hold Beneventum. I must have had a feeling when I left Gaius Verres there.” He stopped for a moment, thought about something, nodded as if to answer his thought. “Cethegus can have a new job. Legate in charge of all my supply columns. That will tax his diplomacy!”

“This,” said Pompey in disgruntled tones, “is a very slow kind of war. Why aren't we marching on Rome?”

The face Sulla turned to him was, given its limitations, a kind one. “Patience, Pompeius! In martial skills you need no tuition, but your political skills are nonexistent. If the rest of this year teaches you nothing else, it will serve as a lesson on political manipulation. Before ever we contemplate marching on Rome, we have first to show Rome that she cannot win under her present government. Then, if she proves to be a sensible lady, she will come to us and offer herself to us freely.”

“What if she doesn't?” asked Pompey, unaware that Sulla had already been through this with Metellus Pius and Crassus.

“Time will tell” was all Sulla would say.

They had bypassed Capua as if Norbanus inside it did not exist, and rolled on toward the second of Rome's consular armies, under the command of Scipio Asiagenus and his senior legate, Quintus Sertorius. The little and very prosperous Campanian towns around Sulla did not so much capitulate as greet him with open arms, for they knew him well; Sulla had commanded Rome's armies in this part of Italy for most of the duration of the Italian War.

Scipio Asiagenus was camped between Teanum Sidicinum and Cales, where a small tributary of the Volturnus, fed by springs, provided a great deal of slightly effervescent water; even in summer its mild warmth was delightful.

“This,” said Sulla, “will be an excellent winter camp!” And sat himself and his army down on the opposite bank of the streamlet from his adversary. The cavalry were sent back to Beneventum under the charge of Cethegus, while Sulla himself gave a new party of envoys explicit instructions on how to proceed in negotiating a truce with Scipio Asiagenus.

“He's not an old client of Gaius Marius's, so he'll be much easier to deal with than Norbanus,” said Sulla to Metellus Pius and Pompey. His face was still in remission and his intake of wine was somewhat less than on the journey from Beneventum, which meant that his mood was cheerful and his mind very clear.

“Maybe,” said the Piglet, looking doubtful. “If it were only Scipio, I'd agree wholeheartedly. But he has Quintus Sertorius with him, and you know what that means, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Trouble,” said Sulla, sounding unworried.

“Ought you not be thinking how to render Sertorius impotent?”

“I won't need to do that, Piglet dear. Scipio will do it for me.” He pointed with a stick toward the place where a sharp bend in the little river drew his camp's boundary very close to the boundary of Scipio's camp on the far shore. “Can your veterans dig, Gnaeus Pompeius?”

Pompey blinked. “With the best!”

“Good. Then while the rest are finishing off the winter fortifications, your fellows can excavate the bank outside our wall, and make a great big swimming pool,” said Sulla blandly.