The First Man in Rome (21 page)

"Sixteen!" she said quickly.

“Fifteen, sixteen, what's the difference? You're a baby."

Flushed with indignation, her face grew set, sharp. "I am
not
a baby!" she cried.

"Of course you are." He laughed again. "Look at you, all swaddled up, a little roly-poly puppy." There! That was better! That ought to put her in her place.

It did, but more than that She was blighted, withered, killed. The light died in her. "I'm not pretty?" she said. "I always thought I was."

"Growing up is a cruel business," said Sulla harshly. "I suppose almost all families tell their girl-children they're pretty. But the world judges by different standards. You'll be passable when you're older, you won't lack a husband."

"I only want you," she whispered.

"That's now. Anyway, disabuse yourself, my fat puppy. Run away before I pull your tail. Go on, shoo!"

She ran, her servant girl left far behind, calling after her vainly. Sulla stood watching until they both disappeared over the brow of the slope behind.

The grass crown was still on his head, its tawny color a subtle contrast to his fiery curls; he reached up and plucked it off, but didn't throw it away, stood holding it between his hands and staring at it. Then he tucked it in his tunic, and turned to go.

Poor little thing. He had hurt her after all. Still, she had to be discouraged; the last complication he needed in his life was Clitumna's next-door neighbor's daughter mooning over the wall, and she a senator's daughter.

With every step he took as he walked away the grass crown tickled his skin, reminding him.
Corona Graminea.
Grass crown. Given to him here on the Palatine, where hundreds of years before the original city of Romulus had stood, a bevy of oval thatched huts like the one still lovingly cared for near the Steps of Cacus. A grass crown given to him by a personification of Venus—truly one of Venus's girls, a Julia. An omen.

"If it comes to pass, I will build you a temple, Venus Victorious," he said aloud.

For he saw his way clear at last. Dangerous. Desperate. But for one with nothing to lose and everything to gain, possible nonetheless.

Winter twilight lay heavy when he was admitted back into Clitumna's house and asked where the ladies were. In the dining room, heads together, waiting for him before summoning the meal. That he had been the subject of their talk was obvious; they sprang apart on the couch, tried to look idly innocent.

"I want some money," he said baldly.

"Now, Lucius Cornelius—" Clitumna began, looking wary.

"Shut up, you pathetic old drab! I want money."

"But Lucius Cornelius!"

"I'm going away for a holiday," he said, making no move to join them. "It's up to you. If you want me back— if you want more of what I've got—then give me a thousand denarii. Otherwise, I'm quitting Rome forever."

"We'll give you half each," said Nicopolis unexpectedly, dark eyes fixed on his face.

"Now," he said.

"There may not be so much in the house," Nicopolis said.

"You'd better hope there is, because I'm not waiting."

When Nicopolis went to his room fifteen minutes later, she found him packing. Perching herself on his bed, she watched in silence until he should deign to notice her.

But it was she who broke down first. "You'll have your money, Clitumna's sent the steward to her banker's house," she said. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know, and I don't care. Just so long as it's away from here." He folded socks together, thrust them into closed-toe boots, every movement as economical as it was efficient.

"You pack like a soldier."

"How would you know?"

"Oh, I was the mistress of a military tribune once. I followed the drum, would you believe it? The things one does for love when one is young! I adored him. So I went with him to Spain, and then to Asia." She sighed.

"What happened?" he asked, rolling his second-best tunic around a pair of leather knee breeches.

"He was killed in Macedonia, and I came home." Pity stirred her heart, but not for her dead lover. Pity for Lucius Cornelius, trapped, a beautiful lion destined for some sordid arena. Why did one love at all? It hurt so much. So she smiled, not a pretty smile. "He left everything he had to me in his will, and I became quite rich. There was plenty of booty in those days."

"My heart bleeds," he said, wrapping his razors inside their linen sheath and sliding it down the side of a saddlebag.

Her face twisted. "This is a nasty house," she said. "Oh, I do hate it! All of us bitter and unhappy. How many truly pleasant things do we say to each other? Precious few. Insults and indignities, spite and malice. Why am I here?"

"Because, my dear, you're getting a bit frayed around the edges," he said, reinforcing her observation. "You're not the girl you used to be when you trudged all over Spain and Asia."

"And you hate us all," she said. "Is that where the atmosphere originates? In you? I swear it's getting worse."

"I agree, it is. That's why I'm going away for a while." He strapped the two bags, hefted them easily. "I want to be free. I want to spend big in some country town where no one knows my wretched face, eat and drink until I spew, get at least half a dozen girls pregnant, pick fifty fights with men who think they can take me with one arm tied behind their backs, find every pretty-boy between here and wherever I end up and give them sore arses." He smiled evilly. "And then, my dear, I promise I'll come tamely home to you and Sticky Stichy and Auntie Clittie, and we'll all live happily ever after."

What he didn't tell her was that he was taking Metrobius with him; and he wouldn't tell old Scylax, either.

Nor did he tell anyone, even Metrobius, just what he was up to. For it wasn't a holiday. It was an investigative mission. Sulla was going to make inquiries into subjects like pharmacology, chemistry, and botany.

He didn't return to Rome until the end of April. Dropping Metrobius off at Scylax's elegant ground-floor apartment on the Caelian Hill outside the Servian Walls, he then drove down into the Vallis Camenarum to surrender the gig and mules he had hired from a stable there. Having paid the bill, he slung his saddlebags over his left shoulder and set out to walk into Rome. No servant had traveled with him; he and Metrobius had made do with the staff of the various inns and posting houses they had stayed in up and down the peninsula.

As he trudged up the Via Appia to where the Capena Gate interrupted the twenty-foot-high masonry of Rome's ramparts, the city looked very good to him. Legend had it that Rome's Servian Walls had been erected by King Servius Tullus before the Republic was established, but like most noblemen, Sulla knew these fortifications, at least, had not existed until three hundred years ago when the Gauls had sacked the city. The Gauls had poured down in teeming hordes from the western Alps, spreading across the huge valley of the Padus River in the far north, gradually working their way down peninsular Italy on both east and west. Many settled where they fetched up, especially in Umbria and Picenum, but those who came down the Via Cassia through Etruria headed purposely toward Rome—and having reached Rome, almost wrested the city permanently off her rightful owners. It was only after that the Servian Walls went up, while the Italian peoples of the Padus Valley, all Umbria, and northern Picenum mingled their blood with the Gauls, became despised half-castes. Never again had Rome suffered its walls to lapse into disrepair; the lesson had been a hard one, and the fear of barbarian invaders could still provoke horrified chills in every Roman.

Though there were a few expensive insula apartment towers on the Caelian Hill, the scene in the main was pastoral until Sulla reached the Capena Gate; the Vallis Camenarum outside it was given over to stockyards, slaughterhouses, smokehouses, and grazing fields for the animals sent to this greatest market in all Italy. Inside the Capena Gate lay the real city. Not the congested jumble of the Subura and the Esquiline, yet urban nonetheless. He strolled up along the Circus Maximus and took the Steps of Cacus onto the Germalus of the Palatine, after which it was only a short distance to the house of Clitumna.

Outside its door he took a deep breath, then sounded the knocker. And entered a world of shrieking women. That Nicopolis and Clitumna were delighted to see him was very plain. They wept and whinnied, draped themselves about his neck until he pushed them off, after which they kept circling close about him and would not leave him in peace.

"Where do I sleep these days?" he asked, refusing to hand his saddlebags to the servant itching to take them.

"With me," said Nicopolis, glittering triumphantly at the suddenly downcast Clitumna.

The door to the study was tightly shut, Sulla noted as he followed Nicopolis out onto the colonnade, leaving his stepmother standing in the atrium wringing her hands.

"I take it Sticky Stichy's well ensconced by now?" he asked Nicopolis as they reached her suite of rooms.

"Here," she said, ignoring his question, so bursting was she to show him his new quarters.

What she had done was to yield up her very spacious sitting room to him, leaving herself with a bedroom and a much smaller chamber. Gratitude filled him; he looked at her a little sadly, liking her in that moment more than he ever had.

"All mine?" he asked.

"All yours," she said, smiling.

He threw the saddlebags down on his bed. "Stichus?" he asked, impatient to know the worst.

Of course she wanted him to kiss her, make love to her, but she knew him well enough to understand that he was in no need of sexual solace simply because he had been away from her and Clitumna. The lovemaking would have to wait; sighing, Nicopolis reconciled herself to the role of informant.

"Stichus is very well entrenched indeed," she said, and went over to the saddlebags to unpack for him.

He put her aside firmly, dropped the saddlebags down behind one of the clothes chests, and moved to his favorite chair, which stood behind a new desk. Nicopolis sat on his bed.

"I want all the news," he said.

"Well, Stichy's here, sleeping in the master's cubicle and using the study, of course. It's been better than expected in one way, really, because Stichy at close quarters every day is hard to take, even for Clitumna. A few more months, and I predict she'll throw him out. It was clever of you to go away, you know." Her hand smoothed the stack of pillows beside her absently. "I didn't think so at the time, I admit, but you were right and I was wrong. Stichy entered the place like a triumphing general, and you weren't here to dim his glory. Oh, things sailed around, I can tell you! Your books went into the rubbish bin—it's all right, the servants rescued them—and whatever else you left in the way of clothing and personal stuff went into the rubbish bin after the books. Since the staff like you and loathe him, nothing of yours was lost—it's all here in this room somewhere."

His pale eyes traveled around the walls, across the lovely mosaic floor. "This is nice," he said. And then, "Continue."

"Clitumna was devastated. She hadn't counted on Stichy's throwing your things out. In fact, I don't think she ever really wanted him to move in, but when he said he wanted to, she couldn't find a way to refuse. Blood and the last of her line and all the rest of it. Clitumna's not very bright, but she knew perfectly well his only reason for demanding to move in here was to get you moving in the direction of the street. Stichy's not hard up. But when you weren't even here to see your stuff being thrown out, it rather took the edge off Stichy's pleasure. No quarrels, no opposition, no—
presence.
Just a passively surly staff, a very weepy Auntie Clittie, and me—well, I just look through him as if he isn't there."

The little servant girl Bithy came sidling through the door bearing a plate of assorted buns, pasties, pies, and cakes, put it down on the corner of the desk with a shy smile for Sulla, and spied the leather band connecting the two saddlebags, poking up from behind the clothes chest. Off she went across the room to unpack.

Sulla moved so quickly Nicopolis didn't see him intercept the girl; one moment he was leaning back comfortably in his chair, the next the girl was being moved gently away from the clothes chest. Smiling at her, Sulla pinched Bithy gently on the cheek and thrust her out the door. Nicopolis stared.

"My, you are worried about those bags!" she said. "What's in them? You're like a dog guarding a bone."

"Pour me some wine," he said, sitting down again, and selecting a meat pasty from the plate.

She did as he asked, but she was not about to let go of the subject. "Come, Lucius Cornelius, what's in those bags that you don't want anyone to see?" A cup of unwatered wine was put in front of him.

Down went both corners of his mouth; he threw out his hands in a gesture indicating growing exasperation. "What do you think? I've been away from both my girls for almost four months! I admit I didn't think of you
all
the time, but I did think of you! Especially when I saw some little thing I thought might please one or the other of you."

Her face softened, glowed; Sulla was not a gift giver. In fact, Nicopolis could never remember his presenting her or Clitumna with a single gift, even of the cheapest kind, and she was a wise enough student of human nature to know this was evidence of parsimony, not of poverty; the generous will give, even when they have nothing to give.

"Oh, Lucius Cornelius!" she exclaimed, beaming. "Truly? When may I see?"

"When I'm good and ready," he said, turning his chair to glance through the big window behind him. "What's the time?"

"I don't know—about the eighth hour, I think. Dinner isn't due yet, anyway," she said.

He got up, went across to the clothes chest, and hooked the saddlebags out from behind it, slinging them over his shoulder. "I'll be back in time for dinner," he said.

Jaw dropped, she watched him go to the door.
"Sulla!
You are the most annoying creature in the entire world. I swear it! Just arrived home, and you're off somewhere! Well, I doubt you need to visit Metrobius, since you took him with you!"