The Grass Crown (81 page)

“Im-per-a-tor! Im-per-a-tor! Im-per-a-tor!”

Over and over and over his soldiers roared it, the final accolade, the ultimate triumph, the victor hailed imperator on the field. Or so he thought, grinning broadly with sword above his head, his sweat-soaked thatch of brilliant hair drying in the dying sun, his heart so full he could not have said a word in return, had there been a word to say. I, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a man as able as I am can learn what isn’t in his bones—and win the hardest battle of this or any other war! Oh, Gaius Marius, just wait! Crippled hulk that you are, don’t die until I can get back to Rome and show you how wrong your judgment was! I am your equal! And in the years to come I will surpass you. My name will tower over yours. As it should do. For I am a patrician Cornelius and you no more than a rustic from the Latin hills.

But there was work to be done, and he was a patrician Roman. To him came Titus Didius and Metellus Pius, curiously subdued, their bright eyes looking upon him with awe, with a shining adoration Sulla had only seen before in the eyes of Julilla and Dalmatica as they had gazed at him. But these are men, Lucius Cornelius Sulla! Men of worth and repute—Didius the victor over Spain, Metellus Pius the heir of a great and noble house. Women were unimportant fools. Men mattered. Especially men like Titus Didius and Metellus Pius. Never in all the years I served Gaius Marius did I see any man look at him with so much adoration! Today I have won more than a mere victory. Today I have won the vindication of my life, today I have justified Stichus, Nicopolis, Clitumna, Hercules Atlas, Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle. Today I have proven that every life I have taken in order to stand here on the field at Nola was a lesser life than my own. Today I begin to understand the Nabopolassar from Chaldaea—I am the greatest man in the world, from Oceanus Atlanticus all the way to the River Indus!

“We work through the night,” he said crisply to Didius and Metellus Pius, “so that by dawn the Samnite corpses are stripped and heaped together, and our own dead prepared for the pyre. I know it’s been an exhausting day, but it isn’t over yet. Until it is over, no one can rest. Quintus Caecilius, find a few reasonably fit men and ride back to Pompeii as fast as you can. Bring back bread and wine enough for . everyone here, and bring up the noncombatants and set them to finding wood, oil. We have a veritable mountain of bodies to burn.”

“But there are no horses, Lucius Cornelius!” said the Piglet faintly. “We marched to Nola! Twenty miles in four hours!”

“Then find horses,” said Sulla, manner at its coldest. “I want you back here by dawn.” He turned to Didius. “Titus Didius, go among the men and find out who should be decorated for deeds in the field. As soon as we burn our dead and the enemy dead we return to Pompeii, but I want one legion from Capua posted here before the walls of Nola. And have the heralds announce to the inhabitants of Nola that Lucius Cornelius Sulla has made a vow to Mars and Bellona—that Nola will look down to see Roman troops sitting before it until it surrenders, be that a month of days from now, or a month of months from now, or a month of years from now.”

Before Didius or Metellus Pius could depart, the tribune of the soldiers Lucius Licinius Lucullus appeared at the head of a deputation of centurions; eight senior men, primi pili and pili priores. They walked gravely, solemnly, like priests in a sacred procession or consuls going to their inauguration on New Year’s Day.

“Lucius Cornelius Sulla, your army wishes to give you a token of its gratitude and thanks. Without you, the army would have been defeated, and its soldiers dead. You fought in the front rank and showed the rest of us the way. You never flagged on the march to Nola. To you and you alone is due this greatest victory by far of the whole war. You have saved more than your army. You have saved Rome. Lucius Cornelius, we honor you,” said Lucullus, stepping back to make way for the centurions.

The man in their midst, most senior centurion of them all, lifted both arms and held them out to Sulla. In his hands lay a very drab and tattered circlet made of grass runners plucked from the field of battle and braided together haphazardly, roots and earth and blades and blood. Corona graminea. Corona obsidionalis. The Grass Crown. And Sulla stretched out his own arms instinctively, then dropped them, utterly ignorant as to what the ritual should be. Did he take it and put it on his own head, or did the primus pilus Marcus Canuleius crown him with it on behalf of the army?

He stood then without moving while Canuleius, a tall man, raised the Grass Crown in both hands and placed it upon that red-gold head.

No further word was spoken. Titus Didius, Metellus Pius, Lucullus and the centurions saluted Sulla reverently, gave him shy smiles, and got themselves away. He was left alone to face the setting sun, the Grass Crown so insubstantial he scarcely felt its weight, the tears pouring down his bloodstained face, and no room inside himself for anything beyond an exaltation he wondered if he had steel enough to live through. For what was on its other side? What could life possibly offer him now? And he remembered his dead son. Before he had had time to truly relish the infinite extent of that joy it was vanished. All he had left was a grief so profound he fell to his knees and wept desolately.

Someone helped him to his feet, wiped the muck and the tears from his face, put an arm about his waist and helped him walk to a block of stone beside the Nola road. There he was lowered gently until he sat upon it, then his rescuer sat alongside him; Lucius Licinius Lucullus, the senior tribune of the soldiers.

The sun had set into the Tuscan Sea. The greatest day of Sulla’s life was coming to its end in darkness. He dangled his arms down between his legs limply, drew in great breaths, and came to ask himself the old, old question: Why am I never happy?

“I have no wine to offer you, Lucius Cornelius. Nor water, for that matter,” said Lucullus. “We ran from Pompeii without a thought for anything except catching Cluentius.”

Sulla heaved an enormous sigh, straightened himself. “I’ll live, Lucius Lucullus. As a woman friend of mine says, there is always work to do.”

“We can do the work. You rest.”

“No. I am the commander. I can’t rest while my men work. A moment more, and I’ll be right. I was right until I thought of my son. He died, you know.” The tears came back, were suppressed.

Lucullus said nothing, just sat quietly.

Of this young man Sulla had seen little so far; elected a tribune of the soldiers last December, he had gone first to Capua and only been posted to command his legion days before it marched for Pompeii. Yet though he had changed enormously—grown from a stripling to a fine specimen of man—Sulla recognized him.

“You and your brother Varro Lucullus prosecuted Servilius the Augur in the Forum ten years ago, am I not right?” he asked.

“Yes, Lucius Cornelius. The Augur was responsible for the disgrace and death of our father, and the loss of our family fortune. But he paid,” said Lucullus, his long homely face growing brighter, his humorous mouth turning up at the corners.

“The Sicilian slave war. Servilius the Augur took your father’s place as governor of Sicily. And later prosecuted him.”

“That is so.”

Sulla got up, extended his right hand to take the right hand of Lucius Licinius Lucullus. “Well, Lucius Licinius, I must thank you. Was the Grass Crown your idea?”

“Oh no, Lucius Cornelius. Blame the centurions! They informed me that the Grass Crown has to come from the army’s professionals, not the army’s elected magistrates. They brought me along because one of the army’s elected magistrates must be a witness.” Lucullus smiled, then laughed. “I suspect too that addressing the general formally isn’t quite in their line!. So I got the job.”

Two days later Sulla’s army was back inside its camp before Pompeii. Everyone was so exhausted even decent food had no lure, and for twenty-four hours a complete silence reigned as the men and their officers slept like the dead they had burned against the walls of Nola, an insult to the nostrils of the flesh-famished inhabitants.

The Grass Crown now resided within a wooden box Sulla’s servants had produced; when Sulla had the time, it would be put in the hair of the wax mask of himself he was now entitled to commission. He had distinguished himself highly enough to join the imagines of his ancestors, even though he had not yet been consul. And his statue would go into the Forum Romanum wearing a Grass Crown, erected in memory of the greatest hero of the war against the Italians. All of which hardly seemed real; but there in its box lay the Grass Crown, a testament to reality.

When, rested and refreshed, the army went on parade for the awarding of battle decorations, Sulla put his Grass Crown upon his head and was greeted with prolonged and deafening cheers as he climbed upon the camp tribunal. The task of organizing the ceremony had been given to Lucullus, just as Marius had once given the same task to Quintus Sertorius.

But as he stood there acknowledging the army’s adulation, a thought occurred to Sulla that he didn’t think had ever crossed the mind of Marius during those years in Numidia and Gaul—though perhaps it had while he commanded against the Italians. A sea of faces in parade order, parade dress—a sea of men who belonged to him, to Lucius Cornelius Sulla. These are my legions! They belong to me before they belong to Rome. I crafted them, I led them, I have given them the greatest victory of this war—and I will have to find their retirement gratuity. When they gave me the Grass Crown, they also gave me a far more significant gift—they gave me themselves. If I wanted to, I could lead them anywhere. I could even lead them against Rome. A ridiculous idea; but it was born in Sulla’s mind at that moment on the tribunal. And it curled itself up beneath consciousness, and waited.

Pompeii surrendered the day after its citizens watched Sulla’s decoration ceremony from their walls; Sulla’s heralds had shouted the news of the defeat of Lucius Cluentius before the walls of Nola, and word had come confirming it. Still being relentlessly bombarded with flaming missiles from the ships in the river, the city was suffering badly. Every fiery breath of wind seemed to carry the message that the Italian and Samnite ascendancy was crumbling, that defeat was inevitable.

From Pompeii, Sulla moved with two of his legions against Stabiae, while Titus Didius took the other two to Herculaneum. On the last day of April Stabiae capitulated, and shortly afterward so too did Surrentum. As May reached its middle, Sulla was on the move again, this time heading east. Catulus Caesar had bestowed fresh legions upon Titus Didius before Herculaneum, so Sulla’s own two legions were returned to him. Though it had held out the longest against joining the Italian insurrection, Herculaneum now demonstrated that it understood only too well what would happen if it surrendered to Rome; whole streets burning as the result of a naval bombardment, it continued to defy Titus Didius long after the other Italian-held seaports had given in.

Sulla moved his four legions past Nola without a sideways glance, though he sent Metellus Pius the Piglet to the commander of the legion sitting before it with a message to the effect that the praetor Appius Claudius Pulcher was not to shift himself for any reason short of Nola’s complete submission. A dour man—and recently widowed—Appius Claudius merely nodded.

At the end of the third week in May, Sulla arrived at the Hirpini town of Aeclanum, which lay on the Via Appia. The Hirpini had begun to mass there, his intelligence sources had informed him; but it was not Sulla’s intention to allow any further concentrations among the insurgents of the south. One look at the defenses of Aeclanum caused Sulla to smile his deadliest smile, long canines on full display—the town walls, though high and well built, were wooden.

Well aware that the Hirpini had already sent to the Lucanian Marcus Lamponius for help, Sulla sat his forces down without bothering to put them into a camp. Instead, he sent Lucullus to the main gate to demand Aeclanum’s surrender. The town’s answer came in the form of a question: please, would Lucius Cornelius Sulla give Aeclanum one day to think things over and come to a decision?

“They’re playing for time in the hope that Lamponius will send them reinforcements tomorrow,” said Sulla to Metellus Pius the Piglet and Lucullus. “I’ll have to think about Lamponius, he can’t be allowed to run rampant in Lucania any longer.” Sulla shrugged, looked brisk, got back to the business of the moment. “Lucius Licinius, take the town my answer. They may have one hour, not more. Quintus Caecilius, take as many men as you need and scour every farm around the town for firewood and oil. Pile the wood and oil-soaked rags along the walls on either side of the main gates. And have our four pieces of artillery positioned in four different places. As soon as you can, set fire to the walls and start lobbing flaming missiles into the town. I’ll bet everything inside is made of wood too. Aeclanum will go up like tinder.”

“What if I’m ready to start burning in less than an hour?” asked the Piglet.

“Then start burning,” said Sulla. “The Hirpini aren’t being honorable. Why should I be?”

As the wood of which they were composed was aged and dry, Aeclanum’s fortifications burned fiercely, as did the buildings inside. All the gates were thrown open in a panic and the people streamed out crying surrender.

“Kill them all and sack the place,” said Sulla. “It’s time the Italians understood they’ll get no mercy from me.”

“Women and children too?” asked Quintus Hortensius, the other senior tribune of the soldiers.

“What, not got the stomach for it, Forum advocate?” Sulla enquired with a mocking look.

“You mistake the intent of my question, Lucius Cornelius,” said Hortensius evenly in his beautiful voice. “I have no feelings to spare for Hirpini brats. But like any other Forum advocate, I like everything clarified. Then I know where I stand.”

“No one must survive,” said Sulla. “However, tell the men to use the women first. Then they can kill them.”

“You’re not interested in taking prisoners to sell as slaves?” asked the Piglet, practical as always.