Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

Fulvia had adjusted to life without Curio. Not happily, but adequately. Her three children by Publius Clodius were some years older than baby Curio: Publius Junior was now sixteen and would become a man at the festival of Juventas in December; Clodia was fourteen and had a head filled with dreams of husbands; and little Clodilla was eight, delightfully obsessed with baby Curio, who was now approaching a year in age and was walking and talking. She still kept up with Clodius's own two sisters, Clodia the widow of Metellus Celer, and Clodilla the divorced widow of Lucius Lucullus. Those two ladies had declined to marry again, preferring the freedom they enjoyed because they were wealthy and not in any man's custody. But to some extent Fulvia's interests became ever more divergent from Clodius's sisters'; she liked her children and she liked being married. Nor was she tempted to have affairs. Her best friend was not a woman. "At least," she grinned, "not in the anatomical sense." "I don't know why I put up with you, Fulvia," said Titus Pomponius Atticus, grinning back. "I'm a happily married man, and I have a delightful little daughter." "You needed an heir to all that money, Atticus." "Perhaps so." He sighed. "Bother these warring generals! I can't travel to Epirus with the freedom I used to have, nor do I dare show my nose in Athens, which is full of Pompeians of high birth strutting about obnoxiously." "But you maintain good relations with both sides." "True. However, lovely lady, it's more prudent for a rich man to rub noses with Caesar's adherents rather than Pompeius's. Pompeius is ravenous for money he asks anyone he thinks has any for a loan. And, candidly, I think Caesar's going to win. Therefore to be inveigled into lending Pompeius or his adherents money is tantamount to throwing it into the sea. Thus no Athens." "And no delicious boys." "I can live without them." "I know. I'm just sorry you have to." "So are they," said Atticus dryly. "I'm a generous lover." "Speaking of lovers," she said, "I miss Curio dreadfully." "Odd, that." "Odd, what?" "Men and women usually fall in love with the same kind of person every time. But you didn't. Publius Clodius and Curio are very different, in nature as well as looks." "Well, Atticus, that makes marriage an adventure. I missed being married very much after Clodius died, and Curio was always there. I never used to notice him as a man. But the more I looked, the more the differences between him and Clodius became interesting. The freckles, the homeliness. That awful mop of disobedient hair. The missing tooth. The thought of having a red-haired baby." "The way babies turn out has nothing to do with their sire," said Atticus thoughtfully. "I've come to the conclusion that their mothers force them in utero into whatever sort of baby they want." "Rubbish!" said Fulvia, chuckling. "No, it really isn't. If babies emerge a disappointment, that's because their mothers don't care enough to force. When my Pilia was pregnant with Attica, she was determined to produce a girl with tiny little ears. She didn't care about anything save the sex and those ears, though big ears run on both sides of the family. Yet Attica has tiny little ears. And she's a girl." These were the things the best friends spoke about; for Fulvia, a masculine view of feminine concerns, and for Atticus, a rarely accorded chance to be himself. They had no secrets from each other, nor any wish to impress each other. But the pleasure and inconsequence of that particular visit from Atticus was interrupted by Mark Antony, whose appearance inside the sacred boundary was so disturbing in itself that Fulvia paled at sight of him, began to shake. He looked very grim yet was curiously aimless couldn't sit, couldn't speak, looked anywhere except at Fulvia. Her hand went out to Atticus. "Antonius, tell me!" "It's Curio!" he blurted. "Oh, Fulvia, Curio is dead!" Her head seemed stuffed with wool, her lips parted, the dark blue eyes stared glassily. She got to her feet and went to her knees in the same movement, a reflex from somewhere outside; inside herself she couldn't assimilate it, couldn't believe it. Antony and Atticus lifted her, put her into a high-backed chair, chafed her nerveless hands. Her heart where was it going? Tripping, stumbling, booming, dying. No pain yet. That would come later. There were no words, no breath to scream, no power to run. Just the same as Clodius. Antony and Atticus looked at one another above her head. "What happened?" asked Atticus, trembling. "Juba and Varus led Curio into a trap. He'd been doing well, but only because they didn't want him to do otherwise. Curio's not a military man. They cut his army to pieces hardly any of his men survived. Curio died on the field. Fighting." "He's one man we couldn't afford to lose." Antony turned to Fulvia, stroked the hair from her brow and took her chin in one huge hand. "Fulvia, did you hear me?" "I don't want to hear," she said fretfully. "Yes, I know that. But you must." "Marcus, I loved him!" Oh, why was he here? Save that he had to come, imperium or no. The news had reached him and Lepidus by the same messenger; Lepidus had gone galloping out to Pompey's villa on the Campus Martius, where Antony, following Caesar's example, had taken up residence when in the vicinity of Rome. Curio's best friend since adolescence, Antony took his death very hard, wept for those old days and for what Curio might have become in Caesar's government. The fool, with his laurel-wreathed fasces! Going off so blithely. To Lepidus, a rival had been removed from his path. Ambition hadn't blinded him, it simply drove him. And Curio dead was a bonus. Unfortunately he didn't have the wit to hide his satisfaction from Antony, who, being Antony, dashed his tears away as soon as Lepidus arrived and swore that he would have his revenge on Attius Varus and King Juba; Lepidus interpreted this swift change in mood as lack of love for Curio on Antony's part, and spoke his mind. "A good thing if you ask me," he said with satisfaction. "How do you arrive at that conclusion?" asked Antony quietly. Lepidus shrugged, made a moue. "Curio was bought, therefore he wasn't to be trusted." "Your brother Paullus was bought too. Does that go for him?" "The circumstances were very different," said Lepidus stiffly. "You're right, they were. Curio gave value for Caesar's money. Paullus swallowed it up without gratitude or return service." "I didn't come here to quarrel, Antonius." "Just as well. You're not up to my weight, Lepidus." "I'll convene the Senate and give it the news." "Outside the pomerium, please. And I'll give it the news." "As you wish. I suppose that means I inherit the job of telling the ghastly Fulvia." Lepidus produced a smile. "Still, I don't mind. It will be an experience to break that kind of news to someone. Especially someone I dislike. It won't cause me any grief at all to do so." Antony got to his feet. "Ill tell Fulvia," he said. "You can't!" gasped Lepidus. "You can't enter the city!" "I can do whatever I like!" roared Antony, unleashing the lion. "Leave it to an icicle like you to tell her? I'd sooner be dead! That's a great woman!" "I must forbid it, Antonius. Your imperium!" Antony grinned. "What imperium, Lepidus? Caesar gave it to me without any authority to do so beyond his own confidence that one day he'll be able to make it real. Until he does until I receive my lex curiata I'll come and go as I please!" He'd always liked her, always thought her the final touch in Clodius's world. Sitting at the base of old Gaius Marius's statue after that terrific riot in the Forum lying on a couch, adding her mite to Clodius's machinations shrewdly tempering Clodius's craziness by playing on it not so much transferring her affections to Curio as willing herself to live and love again and the only woman in Rome who didn't have an unfaithful bone in her delectable body. The gall of Lepidus, to apostrophize her as "ghastly"! And he married to one of Servilia's brood! "Marcus, I loved him!" she repeated. "Yes, I know. He was a lucky man." The tears began to fall; Fulvia rocked. Torn with pity, Atticus drew up his chair closer and cradled her head against his chest. His eyes met Antony's; Antony relinquished her hand and her care to Atticus, and went away. Twice widowed in three years. For all her proud heritage and her strength, the granddaughter of Gaius Gracchus couldn't bear to look at a life suddenly emptied of purpose. Was this how Gaius Gracchus had felt in the grove of Lucina beneath the Janiculum eighty-two years ago? His programs toppled, his adherents dead, his enemies baying for his blood. Well, they hadn't got that. He killed himself. They had had to be satisfied with lopping off his head and refusing his body burial. "Help me die, Atticus!" she mourned. "And leave your children orphans? Is that all you think of Clodius? Of Curio? And what of little Curio?" "I want to die!" she moaned. "Just let me die!" "I can't, Fulvia. Death is the end of all things. You have children to live for."