Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

On the Kalends of October the Dictator produced new shocks; he shifted the sacred boundary of Rome exactly one hundred feet in the vicinity of the Forum Boarium, and thus made Rome a little bit larger. No one had ever tampered with the pomerium after the time of the Kings of Rome; to do so was considered a sign of royalty, it was an un Republican act. But did that stop Sulla? Not in the least. He would shift the pomerium, he announced, because he now declared the Rubico River the official boundary between Italy and Italian Gaul. That river had been so regarded for a very long time, but the last formal fixing of the boundary had been at the Metaurus River. Therefore, said Sulla blandly, he could justifiably be said to have enlarged the territory of Rome within Italy, and he would mark the event by moving Rome's pomerium an infinitesmal hundred feet. "Which as far as I'm concerned," said Pompey to his new (and very pregnant) wife, "is splendid!" Aemilia Scaura looked puzzled. "Why?" she asked. She did a lot of asking why and might thus have irritated a less egotistical man, but Pompey adored being asked why. "Because, my darling little roly poly girl who looks as if she has swallowed a giant melon whole" he tickled her tummy with a leer and a wink "I own most of the Ager Gallicus south of Ariminum, and it now falls officially into Umbria. I am now one of the biggest landowners in all Italy, if not the very biggest. I'm not sure. There are men who own more land thanks to their holdings in Italian Gaul, like the Aemilii Scauri your tata, my delectable wee pudding and the Domitii Ahenobarbi, but I inherited most of the Lucilian estates in Lucania, and with the southern half of the Ager Gallicus added to my lands in Umbria and northern Picenum, I doubt I have a rival inside Italy proper! There are many going around deploring the Dictator's action, but he'll get no criticism from me." "I can't wait to see your lands," she said wistfully, putting her hand on the mound of her abdomen. "As soon as I am able to travel, Magnus you promised." They were sitting side by side on a couch, and he turned to tip her over with a gentle push in just the right place, then pinched her lips painlessly between his fingers and kissed her all over her ecstatic face. "More!" she cried when he finished. His head hung over hers, his impossibly blue eyes twinkled. "And who's the greedy little piggy wiggy?" he asked. "The greedy little piggy wiggy should know better, shouldn't she?" She fell into cascades of giggles, which provoked him to tickle her because he liked the sound of them so; but soon he wanted her so badly that he had to get up and move away. "Oh, bother this wretched baby!" she cried crossly. "Soon, my adorable kitten," he managed to say cheerfully. "Let's get rid of Glabrio before we try for our own." And indeed Pompey had been continent, determined that no one, least of all Aemilia Scaura's stiff and haughty Caecilius Metellus relatives, should be able to say that he was not the most considerate and kindest of husbands; Pompey wanted badly to join the clan. Learning that Young Marius had made an intimate of Praecia, Pompey had taken to visiting her sumptuous house, for he deemed it no comedown to sample someone else's leavings provided that the someone else had been famous, or stuffed with clout, or awesomely noble. Praecia was, besides, a sexual delight sure to please him in ways he knew very well Aemilia Scaura would not when her turn came. Wives were for the serious business of making babies, though poor Antistia had not even been accorded that joy. If he liked being married which he did it was because Pompey had the happy knack of knowing how to make a wife besotted. He paid her compliments galore, he didn't care how silly what he said might sound were Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus to overhear (he just made very sure he never said things like that in the hearing of Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus), and he maintained a jolly, good tempered attitude which disposed her to love him. Yet clever Pompey! he allowed her to have moods, to weep, to carp a trifle, to chastise him. And if neither Antistia nor Aemilia Scaura knew that he manipulated them while they thought they did the manipulating, then that was all for the good; all parties were satisfied, and strife was nonexistent. His gratitude to Sulla for bestowing Scaurus Princeps Senatus's daughter upon him knew almost no bounds. He understood that he was more than good enough for Scaurus's daughter, but it also reinforced his positive opinion of himself to know that a man like Sulla considered him good enough for Scaurus's daughter. Of course he was quite aware that it suited Sulla to bind him by a tie of marriage, and that too contributed to his positive opinion of himself; Roman aristocrats like Glabrio could be thrown aside at the Dictator's whim, but the Dictator was concerned enough about Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to give him what he had taken from Glabrio. Sulla might (for example) have given Scaurus's daughter to his own nephew, Publius Sulla, or to the much favored Lucullus. Pompey had set his heart against belonging to the Senate, but it was no part of his plans to alienate himself from the circle of the Dictator; rather, his dreams had taken a fresh direction, and he now saw himself becoming the sole military hero in the history of the Republic who would seize proconsular commands without being at the very least a senator. They said it couldn't be done. They had sneered at him, smirked at him, mocked him. But those were dangerous activities when they were aimed at Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus! In the years to come he would make every last one of them suffer and not by killing them, as Marius might have nor by proscribing them, as Sulla would have. He would make them suffer by forcing them to come to him, by maneuvering them into a position so invidious that the pain of being nice to him would well nigh kill their fine opinions of themselves. And that was far sweeter to Pompey than seeing them die! So it was that Pompey managed to contain his desire for this delectable sprig of the gens Aemilia, contented himself with many visits to Praecia, and consoled himself by eyeing Aemilia Scaura's belly, never again to be filled with any but his progeny. She was due to have her baby at some time early in December, but toward the end of October she went into a sudden and terrible labor. Thus far her pregnancy had been uneventful, so this very late miscarriage came as a shock to everyone, including her doctors. The scrawny male child who came so prematurely into the world died the day after, and was not long survived by Aemilia Scaura, who bled her way inexorably from pain to eternal oblivion. Her death devastated Pompey. He had genuinely loved her in his proprietary, unselective fashion; if Sulla had searched Rome for the right bride for Pompey in a conscious effort to please him, he could not have chosen better than the giggly, slightly dense, completely ingenuous Aemilia Scaura. The son of a man called The Butcher and himself called Kid Butcher, Pompey's exposure to death had been lifelong, and not conditioned by impulses of compassion or mercy. A man lived, a man died. A woman lived, a woman died. Nothing was certain. When his mother died he had cried a little, but until the death of Aemilia Scaura only the death of his father had profoundly affected him. Yet his wife's death smote Pompey almost to joining her upon her funeral pyre; Varro and Sulla were never sure afterward whether Pompey's struggle to leap into the flames was genuine or only partly genuine, so frantic and grief stricken was he. In truth, Pompey himself didn't know. All he did know was that Fortune had favored him with the priceless gift of Scaurus's daughter, then snatched the gift away before it could be enjoyed. Still weeping desolately, the young man quit Rome through the Colline Gate, a second time because of sudden death. First his father, now Aemilia Scaura. To a Pompeius from northern Picenum, there was only one alternative. To go home.