Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

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Curio was watching Fulvia, but he had been doing that for so many years that no one noticed. Admittedly she was eminently watchable, with her ice-brown hair, her black brows and lashes, her huge dark blue eyes. Several children had only added to her charms, as did a good instinct for what clothing became her. The granddaughter of the great demagogue aristocrat Gaius Gracchus, she was so sure of her place in the highest stratum of society that she felt free to attend meetings in the Forum and barrack in the most unladylike way for Clodius, whom she adored. "I hear," said Curio, wrenching his eyes away from his best friend's wife, "that the moment you're elected praetor you intend to distribute Rome's freedmen across the thirty-five tribes. Is that really true, Clodius?" "Yes, it's really true," said Clodius complacently. Curio frowned, an expression which didn't suit him. Of an old and noble plebeian family, Scribonius, at thirty-two Curio still had the face of a naughty little boy. His eyes were brown and gleamed wickedly, his skin was smothered in freckles, and his bright red hair stood up on end no matter what his barber did to smooth it down. The urchin look was strengthened when he smiled, for he was missing a front tooth. An exterior very much at odds with Curio's interior, which was tough, mature, sometimes scandalously courageous, and ruled by a first-class mind. When he and Antony, always boon companions, had been ten years younger, they had tormented Curio's ultra-conservative consular father unmercifully by pretending to be lovers, and between them had fathered more bastards than, said rumor, anyone else in history. But now Curio frowned, so the gap in his teeth didn't show and the mischief in his eyes was quite missing. "Clodius, to distribute the freedmen across all thirty-five tribes would skew the whole of the tribal electoral system," he said slowly. "The man who owned their votes that's you, if you do it would be unstoppable. All he'd have to do to secure the election of the men he wanted would be to postpone the elections until there were no country voters in town. At the moment the freedmen can vote in only two urban tribes. But there are half a million of them living inside Rome! If they're put in equal numbers into all thirty-five tribes, they'll have the numbers to outvote the few permanent residents of Rome who belong to the thirty-one rural tribes the senators and knights of the First Class. The true Roman Head Count are confined to the four urban tribes they don't vote across all thirty-five tribes! Why, you'd be handing over control of Rome's tribal elections to a pack of non-Romans! Greeks, Gauls, Syrians, ex-pirates, the detritus of the world, all of them slaves in their own lifetimes! I don't grudge them their freedom, nor do I grudge them our citizenship. But I do bitterly grudge them control of a congress of true Roman men!" He shook his head, looked fierce. "Clodius, Clodius! They'll never let you get away with it! Nor, for that matter, will I let you get away with it!" "Neither they nor you will be able to prevent me," Clodius said with insufferable smugness. A dour and silent man who had recently entered office as a tribune of the plebs, Plancus Bursa spoke up in his passionless way. "To do that is to play with fire, Clodius," he said. "The whole First Class will unite against you," Pompeius Rufus, another new tribune of the plebs, said in a voice of doom. "But you intend to do it anyway," said Decimus Brutus. "I intend to do it anyway. I'd be a fool if I didn't." "And a fool my little brother is not," mumbled Clodia, sucking her fingers lasciviously as she ogled Antony. Antony scratched his groin, shifted its formidable contents with the same hand, then blew Clodia a kiss; they were old bedmates. "If you do succeed, Clodius, you'll own every freedman in Rome," he said thoughtfully. "They'll vote for whomever you say. Except that owning the tribal elections won't procure you consuls in the centuriate elections." "Consuls? Who needs consuls?" asked Clodius loftily. "All I need are ten tribunes of the plebs year after year after year. With ten tribunes of the plebs doing whatever I command them to, consuls aren't worth a fava bean to a Pythagorean. And praetors will simply be judges in their own courts; they won't have any legislative powers. The Senate and the First Class think they own Rome. The truth is that anyone can own Rome if he just finds the right way to go about it. Sulla owned Rome. And so will I, Antonius. Through freedmen distributed across the thirty-five tribes and the ten tame tribunes of the plebs they'll return because I'll never let the elections be held while the country bumpkins are in Rome for the games. Why do you think Sulla fixed Quinctilis during the games as the time to hold elections? He wanted the rural tribes which means the First Class to control the Plebeian Assembly and the tribunes of the plebs. That way, everybody with clout can own one or two tribunes of the plebs. My way, I'll own all ten." Curio was staring at Clodius as if he'd never seen him before. "I've always known that you're not quite right in the head, Clodius, but this is absolute insanity! Don't try!" The women, who respected Curio's opinions greatly, began to shrink together on the couch they shared, Fulvia's beautiful brown skin paler by the moment. Then she gulped, tried to giggle, thrust out her chin pugnaciously. "Clodius always knows what he's doing!" she cried. "He's got it all worked out." Curio shrugged. "Be it on your own head, then, Clodius. I still think you're mad. And I'm warning you, I'll oppose you." Back came the overindulged, atrociously spoiled youth Clodius had been; he gave Curio a look of burning scorn, sneered, slid off the couch he shared with Decimus Brutus, and flounced out of the room, Fulvia flying after him. "They've left their shoes behind," said Pompeius Rufus, whose intellect was on a par with his sister's. "I'd better find him," said Plancus Bursa, departing too. "Take your shoes, Bursa!" cried Pompeius Rufus. Which struck Curio, Antony and Decimus Brutus as exquisitely funny; they lay flat out and howled with laughter. "You shouldn't irritate Publius," said Clodilla to Curio. "He'll sulk for days." "I wish he'd think!" growled Decimus Brutus. Clodia, not as young as she once had been but still a most alluring woman, gazed at the three men with dark eyes wide. "I know you're all fond of him," she said, "which means that you really do fear for him. But should you? He's bounced from one mad scheme to another all his life, and somehow they work to his advantage." "Not this time," said Curio, sighing. "He's insane," said Decimus Brutus. But Antony had had enough. "I don't care if they brand the mad sign on Clodius's forehead," he growled. "I need to be elected quaestor! I'm scratching for every sestertius I can find, but all I do is get poorer." "Don't tell me you've run through Fadia's money already, Marcus," said Clodilla. "Fadia's been dead for four years!" cried Antony indignantly. "Rubbish, Marcus," said Clodia, licking her fingers. "Rome is full of ugly daughters with plutocrat fathers scrambling up the social ladder. Find yourself another Fadia." "At the moment it's probably going to be my first cousin, Antonia Hybrida." They all sat up to stare, including Pompeius Rufus. "Lots of money," said Curio, head to one side. "That's why I'll probably marry her. Uncle Hybrida can't abide me, but he'd rather Antonia married me than a mushroom." He looked thoughtful. "They say she tortures her slaves, but I'll soon beat that out of her." "Like father, like daughter," said Decimus Brutus, grinning. "Cornelia Metella is a widow," Clodilla suggested. "Old, old family. Many thousands of talents." "But what if she's like dear old tata Metellus Scipio?" asked Antony, red-brown eyes twinkling. "It's no trouble dealing with someone who tortures her slaves, but pornographic pageants?" More laughter, though it was hollow. How could they protect Publius Clodius from himself if he persisted in this scheme?