Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

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Dawn had scarcely broken when Pompey, clad in glittering silver armor and flanked by his eighteen year old brother and by Varro, led a little party of clerks and scribes into the marketplace of Auximum. There he planted his father's standard in the middle of its open space and waited with ill concealed impatience until his secretariat had assembled itself behind a series of trestle tables, sheets of paper at the ready, reed pens sharpened, cakes of ink dissolved in heavy stone wells. By the time all this was done, the crowd had gathered so thickly that it spilled out of the square into the streets and lanes converging upon it. Light and lithe, Pompey leaped onto a makeshift podium beneath Pompey Strabo's woodpecker standard. "Well, it's come!" he shouted. "Lucius Cornelius Sulla has landed in Brundisium to claim what is rightfully his an uninterrupted imperium, a triumph, the privilege of depositing his laurels at the feet of Jupiter Optimus Maximus inside the Capitol of Rome! At just about this time last year, the other Lucius Cornelius he cognominated Cinna was not far away from here trying to enlist my father's veterans in his cause. He did not succeed. Instead, he died. Today you see me. And today I see many of my father's veterans standing before me. I am my father's heir! His men are my men. His past is my future. I am going to Brundisium to fight for Sulla, for he is in the right of it. How many of you will come with me?'' Short and simple, thought Varro, lost in admiration. Maybe the young man was correct about vaulting into the consul's curule chair on his spear rather than on a wave of words. Certainly no face he could discern in that crowd seemed to find Pompey's speech lacking. No sooner had he finished than the women began to drift away clucking about the imminent absence of husbands and sons, some wringing their hands at the thought, some already engrossed in the practicalities of filling kit bags with spare tunics and socks, some looking studiously at the ground to hide sly smiles. Pushing excited children out of the way with mock slaps and kicks, the men shoved forward to cluster about those trestle tables. Within moments, Pompey's clerks were scribbling strenuously. From a nice vantage spot high on the steps of Auximum's old temple of Picus, Varro sat and watched the activity. Had they ever volunteered so lightheartedly for cross eyed Pompey Strabo's campaigns? he wondered. Probably not. That one had been the lord, a hard man but a fine commander; they would have served him with goodwill but sober faces. For the son, it was clearly different. I am looking at a phenomenon, Varro thought. The Myrmidons could not have gone more happily to fight for Achilles, nor the Macedonians for Alexander the Great. They love him! He's their darling, their mascot, their child as much as their father. A vast bulk deposited itself on the step next to him, and Varro turned his head to see a red face topped by red hair; a pair of intelligent blue eyes were busy assessing him, the only stranger present. "And who might you be?" asked the ruddy giant. "My name is Marcus Terentius Varro, and I'm a Sabine." "Like us, eh? Well, a long time ago, at any rate." A horny paw waved in the direction of Pompey. Look at him, will you? Oh, we've been waiting for this day, Marcus Terentius Varro the Sabine! Be he not the Goddess's honeypot?" Varro smiled. "I'm not sure I'd choose that way of putting it, but I do see what you mean." "Ah! You're not only a gentleman with three names, you're a learned gentleman! A friend of his, might you be?" "I might be." "And what might you do for a crust, eh?" "In Rome, I'm a senator. But in Reate, I breed mares." "What, not mules?" "It's better to breed the mares than their mule offspring. I have a little bit of the rosea rura, and a few stud donkeys too.'' How old might you be?'' "Thirty two," said Varro, enjoying himself immensely. But suddenly the questions ceased; Varro's interlocutor disposed himself more comfortably by resting one elbow on the step above him and stretching out a Herculean pair of legs to cross his ankles. Fascinated, the diminutive Varro eyed grubby toes almost as large as his own fingers. "And what might your name be?" he asked, falling into the local vernacular quite naturally. "Quintus Scaptius." "Might you have enlisted?" "All Hannibal's elephants couldn't stop me!" "Might you be a veteran?" "Joined his daddy's army when I was seventeen. That was eight years ago, but I've already served in twelve campaigns, so I don't have to join up anymore unless I might want to," said Quintus Scaptius. "But you did want to." "Hannibal's elephants, Marcus Terentius, Hannibal's elephants!" Might you be of centurion rank?'' "I might be for this campaign." While they talked, Varro and Scaptius kept their eyes on Pompey, who stood just in front of the middle table joyfully hailing this man or that among the throng. "He says he'll march before this moon has run her course," Varro observed, "but I fail to see how. I admit none of these men here today will need much if any training, but where's he going to get enough arms and armor? Or pack animals? Or wagons and oxen? Or food? And what will he do for money to keep his great enterprise going?'' Scaptius grunted, apparently an indication of amusement. "He does not need to worry about any of that! His daddy gave each of us our arms and armor at the start of the war against the Italians; then after his daddy died, the boy told us to hang on to them. We each got a mule, and the centurions got the carts and oxen. So we'd be ready against the day. You'll never catch the Pompeii napping! There's wheat enough in our granaries and lots of other food in our storehouses. Our women and children won't go hungry because we're eating well on campaign." "And what about money?" asked Varro gently. "Money?" Scaptius dismissed this necessity with a sniff of contempt. "We served his daddy without seeing much of it, and that's the truth. Wasn't any to be had in those days. When he's got it, he'll give it to us. When he hasn't got it, we'll do without. He's a good master." "So I see." Lapsing into silence, Varro studied Pompey with fresh interest. Everyone told tales about the legendary independence of Pompey Strabo during the Italian War: how he had kept his legions together long after he was ordered to disband them, and how he had directly altered the course of events in Rome because he had not disbanded them. No massive wage bills had ever turned up on the Treasury's books when Cinna had them audited after the death of Gaius Marius; now Varro knew why. Pompey Strabo hadn't bothered to pay his troops. Why should he, when he virtually owned them? At this moment Pompey left his post to stroll across to Picus's temple steps. "I'm off to find a campsite," he said to Varro, then gave the Hercules sitting next to Varro a huge grin. "Got in early, I see, Scaptius." Scaptius lumbered to his feet. "Yes, Magnus. I'd best be getting home to dig out my gear, eh?" So everyone called him Magnus! Varro too rose. "I'll ride with you, Magnus." The crowd was dwindling, and women were beginning to come back into the marketplace; a few merchants, hitherto thwarted, were busy putting up their booths, slaves rushing to stock them. Loads of dirty washing were dropped on the paving around the big fountain in front of the local shrine to the Lares, and one or two girls hitched up their skirts to climb into the shallow water. How typical this town is, thought Varro, walking a little behind Pompey: sunshine and dust, a few good shady trees, the purr of insects, a sense of timeless purpose, wrinkled winter apples, busy folk who all know far too much about each other. There are no secrets here in Auximum! "These men are a fierce lot," he said to Pompey as they left the marketplace to find their horses. "They're Sabines, Varro, just like you," said Pompey, "even if they did come east of the Apennines centuries ago." "Not quite like me!" Varro allowed himself to be tossed into the saddle by one of Pompey's grooms. "I may be a Sabine, but I'm not by nature or training a soldier." "You did your stint in the Italian War, surely." "Yes, of course. And served in my ten campaigns. How quickly they mounted up during that conflagration! But I haven't thought of a sword or a suit of chain mail since it ended.'' Pompey laughed. "You sound like my friend Cicero." "Marcus Tullius Cicero? The legal prodigy?" "That's him, yes. Hated war. Didn't have the stomach for it, which my father didn't understand. But he was a good fellow all the same, liked to do what I didn't like to do. So between us we kept my father mighty pleased without telling him too much." Pompey sighed. "After Asculum Picentum fell he insisted on going off to serve under Sulla in Campania. I missed him!"