Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

Not long after nightfall he was ready to leave. Lucius Decumius and his sons had trundled the seventy six thousand sesterces Aurelia had managed to scrape up in a handcart to the Quirinal Gate, while two other loyal Brethren of the college had gone to the stables on the Campus Lanatarius where Caesar kept his horses and brought them the long way round, outside the Servian Walls. "I do wish," said Aurelia without displaying a sign of her terrible inward anxiety, "that you'd chosen to ride a less showy animal than that chestnut you gallop all over Latium." He gasped, choked, fell about laughing; when he could, he said, wiping his eyes, "I don't believe it! Mater, how long have you known about Bucephalus?" "Is that what you call it?" She snorted. "My son, you have delusions of grandeur not in keeping with your priestly calling." A spark of amusement glittered. "I've always known. I even know the disgracefully long price you paid for it fifty thousand sesterces! You are an incorrigible spendthrift, Caesar, and I don't understand where you get that from. It is certainly not from me." He hugged her, kissed her wide and uncreased brow. "Well, Mater, I promise that no one but you will ever keep my accounts. I'd still like to know how you found out about Bucephalus." "I have many sources of information," she said, smiling. "One cannot but, after twenty three years in the Subura." Her smile dying, she looked up at him searchingly. "You haven't seen little Cinnilla yet, and she's fretting. She knows something is amiss, even though I sent her to her room." A sigh, a frown, a look of appeal. "What do I tell her, Mater? How much, if anything?" "Tell her the truth, Caesar. She's twelve." Cinnilla occupied what used to be Cardixa's room, under the stairs which ascended to the upper storeys on the Vicus Patricius side of the building; Cardixa now lived with Burgundus and their sons in a special room it had amused Caesar to design and build with his own hands above the servants' quarters. When Caesar entered on the echo of his knock, his wife was at her loom diligently weaving a drab colored and rather hairy piece of cloth destined to form a part of her wardrobe as flaminica Dialis, and for some reason the sight of it, so unappealing and unflattering, smote at Caesar's heart. "Oh, it isn't fair!" he cried, swept her off her stool into his arms and sat with her on his lap in the one place available, her little bed. He thought her exquisitely beautiful, though he was too young himself to find her burgeoning womanhood attractive in itself; he liked females considerably older than he was. But to those who have been surrounded all their lives by tall, slender, fair people, a slightly plump mite of night dark coloring held an irresistible fascination. His feelings about her were confused, for she had lived inside his house for five years as his sister, yet he had always known she was his wife, and that when Aurelia gave her permission he would take her out of this room and into his bed. There was nothing moral in this confusion, which might almost have been called a matter of logistics; one moment she was his sister, the next moment she would be his wife. Of course all the eastern kings did it married their sisters but he had heard that the family nurseries of the Ptolemies and the Mithridatidae resounded with the noises of war, that brothers fought sisters like animals. Whereas he had never fought with Cinnilla, any more than he had ever fought with his real sisters; Aurelia would not have let that kind of attitude develop. "Are you going away, Caesar?" asked Cinnilla. There was a strand of hair drifting across her brow; he smoothed it back into place and continued to stroke her head as if she were a pet, rhythmic, soothing, sensuous. Her eyes closed, she settled into the crook of his arm. "Now, now, don't go to sleep!" he said sharply, giving her a shake. "I know it's past your bedtime, but I have to talk to you. I'm going away, that's true." "What is the matter these days? Is it all to do with the proscriptions? Aurelia says my brother has fled to Spain." "It has a little to do with the proscriptions, Cinnilla, but only because they stem from Sulla too. I have to go away because Sulla says there is a doubt about my priesthood." She smiled, her full top lip creasing to reveal a fold of its inside surface, a characteristic all who knew Cinnilla agreed was enchanting. "That should make you happy. You'd much rather not be the flamen Dialis." "Oh, I'm still the flamen Dialis," said Caesar with a sigh. "According to the priests, it's you who are wrong." He shifted her, made her sit upright on the edge of his knees so he could look into her face. "You know your family's present situation, but what you may not have realized is that when your father was pronounced sacer an outcast he ceased to be a Roman citizen." "Well, I do understand why Sulla can take away all of our property, but my father died a long time before ever Sulla came back," said Cinnilla, who was not very clever, and needed to have things explained. "How can he have lost his citizenship?" "Because Sulla's laws of proscription automatically take away a man's citizenship, and because some men were already dead when Sulla put their names on his proscription lists. Young Marius your father the praetors Carrinas and Damasippus and lots of others were dead when they were proscribed. But that fact didn't stop their losing their citizen rights." "I don't think that's very fair." "I agree, Cinnilla." He ploughed on, hoping that he had been dowered with the gift of simplifying. "Your brother was of age when your father was proscribed, so he retains his Roman status. He just can't inherit any of the family property or money, nor stand as a curule magistrate. However, with you, it's quite different." "Why? Because I'm a girl?" "No, because you are under age. Your sex is immaterial. The lex Minicia de liberis says children of a Roman and a non Roman must take the citizenship of the non Roman parent. That means at least according to the priests that you now have the status of a foreigner." She began to shiver, though not to weep, her enormous dark eyes staring into Caesar's face with painful apprehension. "Oh! Does that mean I am no longer your wife?" No, Cinnilla, it does not. You are my wife until the day one of us dies, for we are married in the old form. No law forbids a Roman to marry a non Roman, so our marriage is not in doubt. What is in doubt is your citizen status and the citizen status of all the other children of a proscribed man who were under age at the time of proscription. Is that clear?'' "I think so." The expression of frowning concentration did not lighten. Does that mean that if I give you children, they will not be Roman citizens?" "Under the lex Minicia, yes." "Oh, Caesar, how terrible!" "Yes." "But I am a patrician!" "Not any longer, Cinnilla." "What can I do?" "For the moment, nothing. But Sulla knows that he has to clarify his laws in this respect, so we will just have to hope that he does so in a way which allows our children to be Roman, even if you are not." His hold tightened a little. "Today Sulla summoned me and ordered me to divorce you." Now the tears came, silently, tragically. Even at eighteen Caesar had experienced women's tears with what had become boring regularity, usually turned on when he tired of someone, or someone discovered he was intriguing elsewhere. Such tears annoyed him, tried his sudden and very hot temper. Though he had learned to control it rigidly, it always flashed out when women produced tears, and the results were shattering for the weeper. Whereas Cinnilla's tears were pure grief and Caesar's temper was only for Sulla, who had made Cinnilla cry. "It's all right, my little love," he said, gathering her closer. "I wouldn't divorce you if Jupiter Optimus Maximus came down in person and ordered it! Not if I lived to be a thousand would I divorce you!" She giggled and snuffled, let him dry her face with his handkerchief. "Blow!" he commanded. She blew. "Now that's quite enough. There's no need to cry. You are my wife, and you will stay my wife no matter what." One arm stole round his neck, she put her face into his shoulder and sighed happily. "Oh, Caesar, I do love you! It's so hard to wait to grow up!" That shocked him. So did the feel of her budding breasts, for he was wearing only a tunic. He put his cheek against her hair but delicately loosened his hold on her, unwilling to start something his honor wouldn't let him finish. "Jupiter Optimus Maximus doesn't have a person to come down in," she said, good Roman child who knew her theology. "He is everywhere that Rome is that's why Rome is Best and Greatest." "What a good flaminica Dialis you would have made!" "I would have tried. For you." She lifted her head to look at him. If Sulla ordered you to divorce me and you said no, does that mean he will try to kill you? Is that why you're going away, Caesar?" "He will certainly try to kill me, and that is why I'm going away. If I stayed in Rome, he would be able to kill me easily. There are too many of his creatures, and no one knows their names or faces. But in the country I stand a better chance." He jogged her up and down on his knee as he had when she had come first to live with them. "You mustn't worry about me, Cinnilla. My life strand is tough too tough for Sulla's shears, I'll bet! Your job is to keep Mater from worrying." "I'll try," she said, and kissed him on his cheek, too unsure of herself to do what she wanted to do, kiss him on his mouth and say she was old enough. "Good!" he said. He pushed her off his lap and got to his feet. "I'll be back after Sulla dies," he said, and left.