Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

And that, thought Sulla as he finished, is one letter I really did enjoy writing! But then he began to frown, and he sat thinking about what he ought to do with Kid Butcher for some time. This was one young man who would not easily let go of something once he had it in the center of his gaze. As he did this triumph. And anyone who could set himself up in all state in the public square of a non Roman town, complete with lictors and curule chair, then behave like a complete barbarian, was not going to appreciate the nuances of triumphal protocol. Perhaps even then in the back of his mind he knew that Kid Butcher was cunning enough to go after his triumph in ways which might make it hard to go on refusing the triumph; for Sulla started plotting. His smile grew again, and when his secretary came in, the man breathed an involuntary sigh of relief to see it; he was in a good mood! "Ah, Flosculus! In good time. Sit yourself down and take out your tablets. I am in a mood to behave with extraordinary generosity to all sorts of people, including that splendid fellow Lucius Licinius Murena, my governor of Asia Province. Yes, I have decided to forgive him all his aggressions against King Mithridates and his transgressions against me when he disobeyed my orders. I think I may need the unworthy Murena, so write and tell him that I have decided he is to come home as soon as possible and celebrate a triumph. You will also write to whichever Flaccus it is in Gaul across the Alps, and order him to come home at once so as to celebrate a triumph. Make sure to instruct each man to have at least two legions with him. ..." He was launched, and the secretary labored to keep up. All recollection of Aurelia and that uncomfortable interview had vanished; Sulla didn't even remember that Rome had a recalcitrant flamen Dialis. Another and far more dangerous young man had to be dealt with in a way almost too subtle almost, but not quite. For Kid Butcher was very clever when it came to himself.

The weather in Nersae had, as Ria predicted, set into real winter amid days of clear blue skies and low temperatures; but the Via Salaria to Rome was open, as was the road from Reate to Nersae, and the way over the ridge into the Aternus River valley. None of which mattered to Caesar, who had slowly worsened day by day. In the earlier, more lucid phase of his illness he had tried to get up and leave, only to discover that the moment he stood upright he was assailed by an uncontrollable wave of faintness which felled him like a child learning to walk. On the seventh day he developed a sleepy tendency which gradually sank to a light coma. And then at Ria's front door there arrived Lucius Cornelius Phagites, accompanied by the stranger who had seen Caesar and Burgundus in the accommodation house at Trebula. Caught without Burgundus (whom she had ordered to cut wood), Ria was powerless to prevent the men entering. "You're the mother of Quintus Sertorius, and this fellow asleep in bed here is Gaius Julius Caesar, the flamen Dialis," said Phagites in great satisfaction. "He's not asleep. He can't be woken," said Ria. "He's asleep." "There is a difference. I can't wake him, nor can anyone else. He's got the ague without a pattern, and that means he is going to die." Not good news for Phagites, aware that the price on Caesar's head was not payable if that head was not attached to its owner's breathing body. Like the rest of Sulla's minions who were also his freed men, Lucius Cornelius Phagites had few scruples and less ethics. A slender Greek in his early forties and one of those who had sold himself into slavery as preferable to eking out a living in his devastated homeland Phagites had attached himself to Sulla like a leech, and had been rewarded by being appointed one of the chiefs of the proscription gangs; at the time he arrived to take custody of Caesar he had made a total of fourteen talents from killing men on the lists. Presentation of this one to Sulla still alive would have brought that total to sixteen talents, and he didn't like the feeling that he was being cheated. He did not, however, enlighten Ria as to the nature of his commission, but paid his informer as he stood beside Caesar's bed and then made sure the man departed. Dead was no good for his income in Rome but perhaps the boy had some money with him. If he was clever enough, thought Phagites, he might be able to prise that money out of the old woman by pitching her a tale. "Oh well," he said, taking out his huge knife, "I can cut off his head anyway. Then I'll get my two talents." "You'd better beware, citocacia!" shrilled Ria, standing up to him fiercely. "There's a man coming back soon who'll kill you before you can jump if you touch his master!" "Oh, the German hulk? Then I tell you what, mother, you go and get him. I'll just sit here on the edge of the bed and keep the young master company." And he sat down beside the inanimate figure in the bed with his knife pressed against Caesar's defenseless throat. The moment Ria had gone scuttling out into the icy world crying for Burgundus, Phagites walked to the front door and opened it; outside in the lane there waited his henchmen, the members of his decury of ten. "The German giant's here. We'll kill him if we must, but some of us will have broken bones before we do, so no fighting him unless we can't avoid it. The boy is dying, he's no use to us," Phagites explained. "What I'm going to try to do is get whatever money there is out of them. But the moment I do, I'll need you to protect me from the German. Understood?" Back inside he went, and was sitting with his knife held to Caesar's throat when Ria returned with Burgundus. A growl came rumbling up from Burgundus's chest, but he made no move toward the bed, just stood in the doorway clenching and unclenching his massive hands. "Oh, good!" said Phagites in the most friendly way, and without fear. "Now I tell you what, old woman. If you've got enough money, I might be prepared to leave this young fellow here with his head still on his shoulders. I've got nine handy henchmen in the lane outside, so I can go ahead and cut this lovely young neck and be out in the lane quicker than your German could get as far as this bed. Is that clear?'' "Not to him, it isn't, if you're trying to tell Burgundus. He speaks not one word of Greek." "What an animal! Then I'll negotiate through you, mother, if that's all right. Got any money?" She stood for a short while with her eyes closed, debating what was the best thing to do. And being as practical as her son, she decided to deal with Phagites first, get rid of him. Caesar would die before Burgundus could reach the bed and then Burgundus would die and she too would die. So she opened her eyes and pointed to the book buckets stacked in the corner. "There. Three talents," she said. Phagites moved his soft brown eyes to the book buckets, and whistled. "Three talents! Oh, very nice!" "Take it and go. Let the boy die peacefully." "Oh, I will, mother, I will!" He put his fingers between his lips, blew piercingly. His men came tumbling in with swords drawn expecting to have to kill Burgundus, only to find the scene a static one and their quarry one dozen buckets of books. "Ye gods, what weighty subjects!" said Phagites when the books proved difficult to lift. "He's a very intelligent young fellow, our flamen Dialis." Three trips, and the book buckets were gone. On the third time his men entered the room Phagites got up from the bed and inserted himself quickly among them. "Bye bye!" he said, and vanished. There was a sound of activity from the lane, then the rattle of shod hooves on the cobblestones, and after that, silence. You should have let me kill them,'' said Burgundus. I would have, except that your master would have been the first to die," said the old woman, sighing. "Well, they won't be back until they've spent it, but they'll be back. You're going to have to take Caesar over the mountains." "He'll die!" said Burgundus, beginning to weep. "So he may. But if he stays here he will surely die." Caesar's coma was a peaceful one, undisturbed by delirium or restlessness; he looked, Ria thought, very thin and wasted, and there were fever sores around his mouth, but even in this strange sleeping state he would drink whenever it was offered to him, and he had not yet been lying immobile for long enough to start the noises which indicated his chest was clogging up. "It's a pity we had to give up the money, because I don't have a sled, and that's how you'll have to move him. I know of a man who would sell me one, but I don't have any money now that Quintus Sertorius is proscribed. I wouldn't even have this house except that it was my dowry." Burgundus listened to this impassively, then revealed that he could think. "Sell his horse," he said, and began to weep. "Oh, it will break his heart! But there's nothing else." "Good boy, Burgundus!" said Ria briskly. "We'll be able to sell the horse easily. Not for what it's worth, but for enough to buy the sled, some oxen, and payment to Priscus and Gratidia for your lodging even at the rate you eat." It was done, and done quickly. Bucephalus was led off down the lane by its delighted new owner, who couldn't believe his luck at getting an animal like this for nine thousand sesterces, and wasn't about to linger in case old Ria changed her mind. The sled which was actually a wagon complete with wheels over which polished planks with upcurving ends had been fixed cost four thousand sesterces and the two oxen which pulled it a further thousand each, though the owner indicated that he would be willing to buy the equipage back in the summer for four thousand sesterces complete, leaving him with a profit of two thousand. "You may get it back before then," said Ria grimly. She and Burgundus did their best to make Caesar comfortable in the sled, piling him round with wraps. "Now make sure you turn him over every so often! Otherwise his bones will come through his flesh he hasn't enough of it left, poor young man. In this weather your food will stay fresh far longer, that's a help, and you must try to give him milk from my ewe as well as water," she lectured crabbily. "Oh, I wish I could come with you! But I'm too old." She stood looking over the white and rolling meadow behind her house until Burgundus and the sled finally disappeared; the ewe she had donated in the hope that Caesar would gain sufficient sustenance to survive. Then, when she could see them no more, she went into her house and prepared to offer up one of her doves to his family's goddess, Venus, and a dozen eggs to Tellus and Sol Indiges, who were the mother and father of all Italian things.