The Grass Crown (98 page)

“His mind is gone,” said Sulla.

“No! Lucius Cornelius, he is sane!”

“Then he’s not the man I thought he was.”

“He just wants to fight Mithridates!”

“Do you approve?”

Again Julia closed her eyes. “I think he should stay at home and leave the war to you.”

They could hear the Great Man coming, and fell silent.

“What’s amiss?” asked Marius as he entered the room. “What brings you here, Lucius Cornelius?”

“A battle in the Forum,” said Sulla.

“That was imprudent,” said Marius.

“Sulpicius is imprudent. He’s given the Senate nowhere to go except to fight for its existence in the only way left—with the sword. Young Quintus Pompeius is dead.”

Marius smiled, not a pretty sight. “that’s too bad! I don’t imagine his side won.”

“You’re right, it didn’t win. Which means that at the end of a long and bitter war—and facing yet another long and bitter war!—Rome is the poorer by a hundred or so of her best young men,” said Sulla harshly.

“Yet another long and bitter war? Nonsense, Lucius Cornelius! I’ll beat Mithridates in a single season,” said Marius complacently.

Sulla tried. “Gaius Marius, why can’t you get it through your head that Rome has no money? Rome is bankrupt! Rome cannot afford to field twenty legions ! The war against the Italians has put Rome into hopeless debt! The Treasury is empty! And even the great Gaius Marius cannot win against a power as strong as Pontus in one single season if he has only five legions to work with!”

“I can pay for several legions myself,” said Marius.

Sulla scowled. “Like Pompey Strabo? But when you pay them yourself, Gaius Marius, they belong to you, not to Rome.”

“Rubbish! It means no more than that I place my own resources at the disposal of Rome.”

“Rubbish! It means you place Rome’s resources at your disposal,” Sulla countered sharply. “You’ll lead your legions!”

“Go home and calm down, Lucius Cornelius. You’re upset at the loss of your command.”

“I haven’t lost my command yet,” said Sulla. He looked at Julia. “You know your duty, Julia of the Julii Caesares. Do it! To Rome, not to Gaius Marius.”

She walked with him toward the door, face impassive. “Please don’t say any more, Lucius Cornelius. I can’t have my husband upset.”

“To Rome, Julia! To Rome!”

“I am Gaius Marius’s wife,” she said as she held open the door. “My first duty is to him.”

Well, Lucius Cornelius, you lost that one! said Sulla to himself as he walked down onto the Campus Martius. He’s as mad as a Pisidian seer in a prophetic frenzy, but no one will admit it, and no one will stop him. Unless I do.

Taking the long way round, he went not to his own house but to the house of the junior consul. His daughter was now a widow with a newborn boy and a year-old girl.

“I have asked my younger son to take the name of Quintus,” said the junior consul, tears rolling unchecked down his face. “And of course we have my dear Quintus’s own little son, who will perpetuate the senior branch.”

Of Cornelia Sulla there was no sign.

“How is my daughter?” Sulla asked.

“Heartbroken, Lucius Cornelius! But she has her children, and that is some consolation.”

“Well, sad as this is, Quintus Pompeius, I’m not here to mourn,” said Sulla crisply. “We must call a conference. It goes without saying that at a time like this a man wants nothing to do with the outside world—I speak feelingly, having lost a son myself. But the outside world will not go away. I must ask you to come to my house at dawn tomorrow.”

Exhausted, Lucius Cornelius Sulla then plodded across the brow of the Palatine to his own elegant new house and his anxious new wife, who burst into tears of joy at seeing him unharmed.

“Never worry about me, Dalmatica,” he said. “My time isn’t yet. I haven’t fulfilled my destiny.”

“Our world is coming to an end!” she cried.

“Not while I live,” said Sulla.

He slept long and dreamlessly, the repose of a man much younger than he, and woke before the dawn with no idea exactly what he ought to do. This rudderless state of mind did not worry him in the least; I do best when I act as Fortune dictates on the moment, he thought, and found himself actually looking forward to the day.

“As far as I can estimate, the moment Sulpicius’s senatorial debt law is passed this morning, the number in the Senate will drop to forty. Not enough for a quorum,” said Catulus Caesar gloomily.

“We still have censors, do we not?” asked Sulla.

“Yes,” said Scaevola Pontifex Maximus. “Neither Lucius Julius nor Publius Licinius is in debt.”

“Then we must act on the assumption that it has not occurred to Publius Sulpicius that the censors might have the courage to add to the Senate,” said Sulla. “When it does occur to him, he’ll bring in some other law, nothing is more certain. In the meantime, we can try to get our expelled colleagues out of debt.”

“I agree, Lucius Cornelius,” said Metellus Pius, who had made the trip from Aesernia the moment he heard what Sulpicius was doing in Rome, and had been talking with Catulus Caesar and Scaevola as they walked to Sulla’s house. He threw out his hands irritably. “If the fools had only borrowed money from men of their own kind, they might have secured a dispensation for their debts, at least for the time being! But we’re caught in our own trap. A senator needing to borrow money has to be very quiet about it if he can’t secure a loan from a fellow senator. So he goes to the worst kind of usurer.”

“I still don’t understand why Sulpicius has turned on us like this!” said Antonius Orator fretfully.

“Tace!” said every other voice, goaded.

“Marcus Antonius, we may never know why,” said Sulla with more patience than he was known for. “At this time it’s even irrelevant why. What is far more important.”

“So how do we go about getting the expelled senators out of debt?” asked the Piglet.

“A fund, as agreed to. There will have to be a committee to handle it. Quintus Lutatius, you can be the chairman. There’s no senator in debt would have the gall to conceal his true circumstances from you,” said Sulla.

Merula flamen Dialis giggled, clapped a guilty hand over his mouth. “I apologize for my levity,” he said, lips quivering. “It just occurred to me that if we were sensible, we’d avoid seeking to pull Lucius Marcius Philippus out of the mire! Not only will his debts more than equal the combined total of everyone else’s, but we could then lose him permanently from the Senate. After all, he’s only one man. His omission won’t make any difference except in the amount of peace and quiet.”

“I think that’s a terrifically good idea,” said Sulla blandly.

“The trouble with you, Lucius Cornelius, is that you are politically nonchalant,” said Catulus Caesar, scandalized. “It makes no difference what we think of Lucius Marcius—the fact remains that his is an old and particularly illustrious family. His tenure in the Senate must be preserved. The son is a far different man.”

“You’re right, of course,” sighed Merula.

“Very well, that’s decided,” said Sulla, smiling faintly. “For the rest, we can do no more than wait upon events. Except that I think it’s time to terminate the period of feriae. According to the religious regulations, Sulpicius’s laws are more than effectively invalidated. And I have an idea that it behooves us to allow Gaius Marius and Sulpicius to think they’ve won, that we’re powerless.”

“We are powerless,” said Antonius Orator.

“I’m not convinced of that,” said Sulla. He turned to the junior consul, very silent and morose. “Quintus Pompeius, you have every excuse to leave Rome. I suggest you take your whole family down to the seashore. Make no secret of your going.”

“What about the rest of us?” asked Merula fearfully.

“You’re in no danger. If Sulpicius had wanted to eliminate the Senate by killing its members, he could have done that yesterday. Luckily for us, he’s preferred to use more constitutional means. Is our urban praetor clear of debt? Not that it matters, I suppose. A curule magistrate can’t be ejected from his office, even if he has been ejected from the Senate,” said Sulla.

“Marcus Junius is clear of debt,” said Merula.

“Good, it’s unequivocal. He’s going to have to govern Rome in the absence of the consuls.”

“Both consuls? Don’t tell me you intend to leave Rome too, Lucius Cornelius!” said Catulus Caesar, aghast.

“I have five legions of infantry and two thousand horse sitting in Capua waiting for their general,” said Sulla. “After my precipitate departure the rumors will be flying. I must settle everyone down.”

“You really are politically nonchalant! Lucius Cornelius, in a situation as serious as this, one of the consuls must remain in Rome!”

“Why?” asked Sulla, raising a brow. “Rome isn’t under the administration of the consuls at the moment, Quintus Lutatius. Rome belongs to Sulpicius. And I intend that he be convinced it does.”

From that stand Sulla refused to be budged, so the meeting broke up soon afterward, and Sulla left for Campania.

He took his time upon the journey, riding upon a mule without an escort of any kind, his hat on his head, and his head down. All along the way people were talking; the news of Sulpicius and the demise of the Senate had spread almost as quickly as the news of the massacre in Asia Province. As he chose to travel on the Via Latina, Sulla passed through loyally Roman countryside the whole way, and learned that many of the local people considered Sulpicius an Italian agent, that some thought him the agent of Mithridates, and that no one was in favor of a Rome without the Senate. Even though the magical name of Gaius Marius was also being bruited about, the innate conservatism of countryfolk tended toward skepticism of his fitness to command in this new war. Unrecognized, Sulla quite enjoyed these conversations in the various hostelries he patronized along the way, for he had left his lictors in Capua and was dressed like any ordinary traveler.

And on the road he thought in time to the jogging of his mule, leisurely thoughts which whirled and swirled, inchoate almost—but not quite. Not quite. Of one thing he was sure. He had done the right thing in electing to return to his legions. For they were his legions—or four of them were. He had led them himself for close to two years, they had given him his Grass Crown. The fifth legion was another Campanian one, under the command of Lucius Caesar first, then of Titus Didius, then of Metellus Pius. Somehow when it had come time to select a fifth legion to go east with him against Mithridates, he found himself turned against his original idea, which had been to second a Marian legion from service with Cinna and Cornutus. And now I am very glad indeed that I have no Marian legion in Capua, thought Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

“That’s the problem with being a senator,” said Sulla’s loyal assistant Lucullus. “Custom dictates that all a senator’s money be tied up in land and property, and who is going to leave money idle? So it becomes impossible to lay one’s hands on sufficient cash when a senator suddenly needs it. We’ve got into the habit of borrowing.”

“Are you in debt?” asked Sulla, not having thought of it; like Gaius Aurelius Cotta, Lucius Licinius Lucullus had been hustled into the Senate after Sulla had given the censors a public kick up the backside. He was twenty-eight years old.

“I am in debt to the amount of ten thousand sesterces, Lucius Cornelius,” said Lucullus levelly. “However, my brother Varro will have seen to it, I imagine, with things in Rome the way they are. He’s the one with the money these days. I struggle. But thanks to my uncle Metellus Numidicus and my cousin Pius, I do manage to meet the senatorial census.”

“Well, be of good cheer, Lucius Licinius! When we get to the east we’ll have the gold of Mithridates to play with.”

“What do you intend to do?” asked Lucullus. “If we move very quickly, we can probably sail before Sulpicius’s laws are enforced.”

“No, I think I must remain to see what happens,” said Sulla. “It would be foolish to sail with my command in doubt.” He sighed. “Actually I think it’s time I wrote to Pompey Strabo.”

Lucullus’s clear grey eyes rested upon his general with a big question in their depths, but in the end he said nothing. If any man had ever looked in control of a situation, that man was Sulla.

Six days later a letter came from Flaccus Princeps Senatus, not officially couriered; Sulla broke it open and scanned its short contents carefully.

“Well,” he said to Lucullus, who had brought the note, “it seems there are only about forty senators left in the Senate. The Varian exiles are being recalled—but if in debt are no longer to be members of the Senate, and of course all of them are in debt. The Italian citizens and the freedman citizens are to be distributed across all thirty-five tribes.

And—last but not least!—Lucius Cornelius Sulla has been relieved of his command and replaced by Gaius Marius in a special enactment of the sovereign People.”

“Oh,” said Lucullus, flattened.

Sulla threw the paper down and snapped his fingers to a servant. “My cuirass and sword,” he said to the man, and then, to Lucullus, “Summon the whole army to an assembly.”

An hour later Sulla ascended the camp forum speaker’s platform in full military dress save for the fact that he wore his hat, not a helmet. Look familiar, Lucius Cornelius, he told himself—look like their Sulla.

“Well, men,” he said in a clear, carrying voice, but without shouting, “it looks as if we’re not going to fight Mithridates after all! You’ve been sitting here kicking your heels until those in power in Rome—and they are not the consuls!—made up their minds. They have now made up their minds. The command in the war against King Mithridates of Pontus is to go to Gaius Marius by order of the Plebeian Assembly. The Senate of Rome is no more, as there are not enough senators left to constitute a quorum. Therefore all decisions about matters martial and military have been assumed by the Plebs—under the guidance of their tribune, Publius Sulpicius Rufus.”

He paused to let the soldiers murmur among themselves and transmit his words to those too far away to hear, then began to speak again in that deceptively normal voice (Metrobius had taught him to project it years ago).