Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

Sulla waited for them in a sour mood rooted in the fact that he knew he had been tricked by a parcel of women, and angry because he hadn't been able to find the steel to resist them. It wasn't fair! Wife and daughter pleaded, cajoled, looked sad, made him aware that if he did this futile thing for them, they would be eternally in his debt and if he did not, they would be very put out. Dalmatica wasn't so bad, she had a touch of the whipped cur in her that Scaurus no doubt had instilled during those long years of imprisonment, but Cornelia Sulla was his blood, and it showed. Termagant! How did Mamercus cope with her and look so happy? Probably because he never stood up to her. Wise man. What we do for domestic harmony! Including what I am about to do. However, it was at least a change, a diversion in the long and dreary round of dictatorial duties. Oh, he was bored! Bored, bored, bored ... Rome always did that to him. Whispered the forbidden blandishments, conjured up pictures of parties he couldn't go to, circles he couldn't move in.... Metrobius. It always, always came back to Metrobius. Whom he hadn't seen in how long? Was that the last time, in the crowd at his triumph? Inauguration as consul? Could he not even remember that? What he could remember was the first time he had seen the young Greek, if not the last. At that party when he had dressed up as Medusa the Gorgon, and wore a wreath of living snakes. How everyone had squealed! But not Metrobius, adorable little Cupid with the saffron dye running down the insides of his creamy thighs and the sweetest arse in the world ... The delegation came in. From where he stood beyond the huge aquamarine rectangle of the pool in the middle of the vast room, Sulla's gaze was strong enough to absorb the entire picture they made. Perhaps because his mind had been dwelling upon a world of theater (and one particular actor), what Sulla saw was not a prim and proper Roman delegation but a gorgeous pageant led by a gorgeous woman all in shades of pink, his favorite color. And how clever that she had surrounded herself by people in white with the faintest touches of purple! The world of dictatorial duties rolled away, and so did Sulla's sour mood. His face lit up, he whooped in delight. "Oh, this is wonderful! Better than a play or the games! No, no, don't come an inch closer to me! Stand on that side of the pool! Aurelia, out in front. I want you like a tall, slender rose. The Vestals to the right, I think, but the youngest can stand behind Aurelia, I want her against a white background. Yes, that's right, good! Now, fellows, you stand to the left, but I think we'll have young Lucius Cotta behind Aurelia too, he's the youngest and I don't think he'll have a speaking part. I do like the touches of purple on your tunics, but Mamercus, you spoil the effect. You should have abandoned the praetexta, it's just a trifle too much purple. So you off to the far left." The Dictator put his hand to his chin and studied them closely, then nodded. "Good! I like it! However, I need a bit more glamor, don't I? Here I am all alone looking just like Mamercus in my praetexta, and just as mournful!" He clapped his hands; Chrysogonus popped out from behind the delegation, bowed several times. "Chrysogonus, send my lictors in crimson tunics, not stodgy old white togas and get me the Egyptian chair. You know the one crocodiles for arms and asps rearing up the back. And a small podium. Yes, I must have a small podium! Covered in purple. Tyrian purple, none of your imitations. Well, go on, man, hurry!" The delegation which had not said a word reconciled itself to a long wait while all these stage directions were seen to, but Chrysogonus was not chief administrator of the proscriptions and steward to the Dictator for nothing. In filed twenty four lictors clad in crimson tunics, the axes inserted in their fasces, their faces studiously expressionless. On their heels came the small podium held between four sturdy slaves, who placed it in the exact center at the back of the pool and proceeded to cover it neatly with a tapestry cloth in the stipulated Tyrian purple, so dark it was almost black. The chair arrived next, a splendid thing of polished ebony and gilt, with ruby eyes in the hooded snakes and emerald eyes in the crocodiles, and a magnificent multihued scarab in the center of the chair back. Once the stage was set, Sulla attended to his lictors. "I like the axes in the bundles of rods, so I'm glad I'm Dictator and have the power to execute within the pomerium! Now let me see.... Twelve to the left of me and twelve to the right of me in a line, boys, but close together. Fan yourselves away so that you're nearest to me next to me, and dribble off a bit into the distance at your far ends.... Good, good!" He swung back to stare at the delegation, frowning. "That's what's wrong! I can't see Aurelia's feet, Chrysogonus! Bring in that little golden stool I filched from Mithridates. I want her to stand on it. Go on, man, hurry! Hurry!" And finally it was all done to his satisfaction. Sulla sat down in his crocodile and snake chair on the Tyrian purple small podium, apparently oblivious to the fact that he should have been seated in a plain ivory curule chair. Not that anyone in the room was moved to criticize; the important thing was that the Dictator was enjoying himself immensely. And that meant a greater chance for a favorable verdict. "Speak!" he said in sonorous tones. "Lucius Cornelius, my son is dying " "Louder, Aurelia! Play to the back of the cavea!" "Lucius Cornelius, my son is dying! I have come with my friends to beseech you to pardon him!" "Your friends? Are all these people your friends?" he asked, his amazement a little overdone. "They are all my friends. They join with me in beseeching you to allow my son to come home before he dies," Aurelia enunciated clearly, playing to the back row of the cavea, and getting into her stride. If he wanted a Greek tragedy, he would get a Greek tragedy! She extended her arms to him, the rose colored draperies falling away from her ivory skin. Lucius Cornelius, my son is but eighteen years old! He is my only son!" A throb in the voice there, it would go over well yes, it was going over well, if his expression was anything to go by! "You have seen my son. A god! A Roman god! A descendant of Venus worthy of Venus! And with such courage! Did he not have the courage to defy you, the greatest man in all the world? And did he show fear? No!" "Oh, this is wonderful!" Sulla exclaimed. "I didn't know you had it in you, Aurelia! Keep it coming, keep it coming!" "Lucius Cornelius, I beseech you! Spare my son!" She managed to turn on the tiny golden stool and stretched out her hands to Fonteia, praying that stately lady would understand her part. "I ask Fonteia, Rome's Chief Vestal, to beg for the life of my son!" Luckily by this the rest were beginning to recover from their stupefaction, could at least try. Fonteia thrust out her hands and achieved a distressed facial expression she hadn't used since she was four years old. "Spare him, Lucius Cornelius!" she cried. "Spare him!" "Spare him!" whispered Fabia. "Spare him!" shouted Licinia. Whereupon the seventeen year old Julia Strabo upstaged everyone by bursting into tears. "For Rome, Lucius Cornelius! Spare him for Rome!" thundered Gaius Cotta in the stentorian voice his father had made famous. "We beg you, spare him!" "For Rome, Lucius Cornelius!" shouted Marcus Cotta. "For Rome, Lucius Cornelius!" blared Lucius Cotta. Which left Mamercus, who produced a bleat. "Spare him!" Silence. Each side gazed at the other. Sulla sat straight in his chair, right foot forward and left foot back in the classical pose of the Roman great. His chin was tucked in, his brow beetled. He waited. Then: "No!" So it began all over again. And again he said: "No!" Feeling as limp and wrung out as a piece of washing but actually improving in leaps and bounds Aurelia pleaded for the life of her son a third time with heartbroken voice and trembling hands. Julia Strabo was howling lustily, Licinia looked as if she might join in. The beseeching chorus swelled, and died away with a third bleat from Mamercus. Silence fell. Sulla waited and waited, apparently having adopted what he thought was a Zeus like aspect, thunderous, regal, portentous. Finally he got to his feet and stepped to the edge of his small Tyrian purple podium, where he stood with immense dignity, frowning direfully. Then he sighed a sigh which could easily have been heard in the back row of the cavea, clenched his fists and raised them toward the gilded ceiling's splendiferous stars. "Very well, have it your own way!" he cried. "I will spare him! But be warned! In this young man I see many Mariuses!" After which he bounced like a baby goat from his perch to the floor, and skipped gleefully along the side of the pool. "Oh, I needed that! Wonderful, wonderful! I haven't had so much fun since I slept between my stepmother and my mistress! Being the Dictator is no kind of life! I don't even have time to go to the play! But this was better than any play I've ever seen, and I was in the lead! You all did very well. Except for you, Mamercus, spoiling things in your praetexta and emitting those peculiar sounds. You're stiff, man, too stiff! You must try to get into the part!" Reaching Aurelia, he helped her down from her (solid) gold stool and hugged her over and over again. "Splendid, splendid! You looked like Iphigenia at Aulis, my dear." "I felt like the fishwife in a mime." He had forgotten the lictors, who still stood to either side of the empty crocodile throne with wooden faces; nothing about this job would ever surprise them again! "Come on, let's go to the dining room and have a party!" the Dictator said, shooing everybody in the chorus before him, one arm about the terrified Julia Strabo. "Don't cry, silly girl, it's all right! This was just my little joke," he said, rolled his eyes at Mamercus and gave Julia Strabo a push between her shoulder blades. "Here, Mamercus, find your handkerchief and clean her up." The arm went round Aurelia. "Magnificent! Truly magnificent! You should always wear pink, you know." So relieved her knees were shaking, Aurelia put on a fierce frown and said, her voice in her boots, 'In him I see many Mariuses!' You ought to have said, 'In him I see many Sullas!' It would have been closer to the point. He's not at all like Marius, but sometimes he's awfully like you." Dalmatica and Cornelia Sulla were waiting outside, utterly bewildered; when the lictors went in they hadn't been very surprised, but then they had seen the small podium go in, and the Tyrian purple cloth, and the Egyptian chair, and finally the gold stool. Now everyone was spilling out laughing why was Julia Strabo crying? and Sulla had his arm around Aurelia, who was smiling as if she would never stop. "A party!" shouted Sulla, pranced over to his wife, took her face between his hands and kissed her. "We're going to have a party, and I am going to get very, very drunk!" It was some time later before Aurelia realized that not one of the players in that incredible scene had found anything demeaning in Sulla's impromptu drama, nor made the mistake of deeming Sulla a lesser man because he had staged it. If anything, its effect had been the opposite; how could one not fear a man who didn't care about appearances? No one who participated ever recounted the story, made capital out of it and Sulla at dinner parties, or tittle tattled it over sweet watered wine and little cakes. Not from fear of their lives. Mostly because no one thought Rome would ever, ever believe it.