Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

Thermus, Lucullus, their legates, officials and tribunes returned to Rome at the end of June. The new governor of Asia Province, Gaius Claudius Nero, had arrived in Pergamum and taken over, and Sulla had given Lucullus permission to come home, at the same time informing him that he and his brother, Varro Lucullus, would be curule aediles the next year. "By the time you come home," ended Sulla's letter, "your election as curule aedile will be over. Please excuse me from the role of matchmaker I seem not to have my usual luck in that particular area. You will by now have heard that Pompeius's new wife has died. Besides, if your taste runs to little girls, my dear Lucullus, then you're better off doing your own dirty work. Sooner or later you'll find some impoverished nobleman willing to sell you his underaged daughter. But what happens when she grows up a bit? They all do!" It was Marcus Valerius Messala Rufus who arrived in Rome to find a marriage in the making. His sister of whom he was very fond had, as he knew from her tear stained letters, been summarily divorced by her husband. Though she continued to vow that she loved him with every breath she took, the divorce made it plain that he did not love her at all. Why, no one understood. Valeria Messala was beautiful, intelligent, well educated and not boring in any way; she didn't gossip, she wasn't spendthrift, nor did she ogle other men. One of the city's wealthiest plutocrats died late in June, and his two sons put on splendid funeral games to his memory in the Forum Romanum. Twenty pairs of gladiators clad in ornamental silver were to fight; not one after the other, as was customary, but in two conflicts of ten pairs each a Thracian pitted against a Gaul. These were styles, not nationalities the only two styles practiced at that time and the soldiers of the sawdust had been hired from the best gladiatorial school in Capua. Pining for a little diversion, Sulla was eager to go, so the brothers mourning their dead father were careful to install a comfortable enclosure in the middle of the front row facing north wherein the Dictator could dispose himself without being crushed up against people on either side. Nothing in the mos maiorum prevented women from attending, nor from sitting among the men; funeral games were held to be a kind of circus, rather than a theatrical performance. And her cousin Marcus Valerius Messala Niger, fresh from his triumph of having engaged Cicero to defend Roscius of Ameria, thought that it might cheer poor divorced Valeria Messala up if he took her to see the gladiators fight. Sulla was already ensconced in his place of honor when the cousins arrived, and the seating was almost filled; the first ten pairs of men were already in the sawdust cushioned ring, going through their exercises and flexing their muscles as they waited for the bereaved brothers to decide the games should start with the prayers and the sacrifice carefully chosen to please the dead man. But at such affairs it was very useful to have highborn friends, and especially to have an aunt who was both an ex Vestal and the daughter of Metellus Balearicus. Sitting with her brother, Metellus Nepos, his wife, Licinia, and their cousin Metellus Pius the Piglet (who was consul that year, and hugely important), the ex Vestal Caecilia Metella Balearica had saved two seats which no one quite had the courage to usurp. In order to reach them, Messala Niger and Valeria Messala had to work their way past those already sitting in the second row, and therefore directly behind the Dictator. He was, everyone noted, looking rested and well, perhaps because Cicero's tact and skill had enabled him to quash a great deal of lingering feeling about the proscriptions and eliminate a problem by throwing Chrysogonus off the Tarpeian Rock. All of the Forum was thronged, the ordinary people perched on every roof and flight of steps, and those with clout in the wooden bleachers surrounding the ring, a roped off square some forty feet along a side. It wouldn't have been Rome had not the latecomers been subjected to considerable abuse for pushing their way past those already comfortably seated; though Messala Niger didn't care a hoot, poor Valeria found herself muttering a series of apologies as she pressed on. Then she had to pass directly behind Rome's Dictator; terrified that she might bump him, she fixed her eyes on the back of his head and his shoulders. He was wearing his silly wig, of course, and a purple bordered toga praetexta, his twenty four lictors crouched on the ground forward of the front row. And as she passed Valeria noticed a fat and fleecy sausage of purple wool adhering to the white folds of toga across Sulla's left shoulder; without stopping to think, she picked it off. He never showed a vestige of fear in a crowd, always seemed above that, oblivious to danger. But when he felt the light touch Sulla flinched, leaped out of his chair and turned around so quickly that Valeria stepped back onto someone's toes. The last ember of terror still dying out of his eyes, he took in the sight of a badly frightened woman, red haired and blue eyed and youthfully beautiful. "I beg your pardon, Lucius Cornelius," she managed to say, wet her lips, sought for some explanation for her conduct. Trying to be light, she held out the sausage of purple fluff and said, "See? It was on your shoulder. I thought if I picked it off, I might also pick off some of your luck." Her eyes filled with quick tears, resolutely blinked away, and her lovely mouth shook. "I need some luck!" Smiling at her without opening his lips, he took her outstretched hand in his and gently folded her fingers around the innocent cause of so much fear. "Keep it, lady, and may it bring you that luck," he said, and turned away to sit down again. But all through the gladiatorial games he kept twisting around to look at where Valeria sat with Messala Niger, Metellus Pius and the rest of that party; and she, very conscious of his searching scrutiny, would smile at him nervously, then blush and look away. "Who is she?" he asked the Piglet as the crowd, well pleased with the magnificent display, was slowly dispersing. Of course the whole party had noticed (along with a lot of other people), so Metellus Pius did not dissimulate. Valeria Messala," he said. "Cousin of Niger and sister of Rufus, who is at the moment returning from the siege of Mitylene." "Ah!" said Sulla, nodding. "As wellborn as she is truly beautiful. Recently divorced, isn't she?" "Most unexpectedly, and for no reason. She's very cut up about it, as a matter of fact." "Barren?" asked the man who had divorced one wife for that. The Piglet's lip curled contemptuously. "I doubt it, Lucius Cornelius. More likely lack of use." "Hmm!" Sulla paused to think, then said briskly, "She must come to dinner tomorrow. Ask Niger and Metellus Nepos too and yourself, of course. But not the other women."

So it was that when the junior military tribune Marcus Valerius Messala Rufus arrived in Rome he found himself summoned to an audience with the Dictator, who didn't mince matters. He was in love with Rufus's sister, he said, and wished to marry her. What could I say?'' asked Rufus of his cousin Niger. "I hope you said, delighted," said Niger dryly. "I said, delighted." "Good!" "But how does poor Valeria feel? He's so old and ugly! I wasn't even given a chance to ask her, Niger!" "She'll be happy enough, Rufus. I know he's nothing much to look at, but he's the unofficial King of Rome and he's as rich as Croesus! If it doesn't do anything else for her, it will be balm to the wound of her undeserved divorce," said Niger strongly. "Not to mention how advantageous the marriage will be for us! I believe he's arranging for me to be a pontifex, and you an augur. Just hold your tongue and be thankful." Rufus took his cousin's sound advice, having ascertained that his sister genuinely thought Sulla attractive and desirable, and did want the marriage. Invited to the wedding, Pompey found a moment to have some private speech with the Dictator. "Half your luck," said that young man gloomily. "Yes, you haven't had too much luck with wives, have you?" asked Sulla, who was enjoying his wedding feast immensely, and feeling kindly disposed toward most of his world. "Valeria is a very nice woman," Pompey vouchsafed. Sulla's eyes danced. "Left out, Pompeius?" "By Jupiter, yes!" "Rome is absolutely stuffed with beautiful noblewomen. Why not pick one out and ask her tata for her hand?" "I'm no good at that sort of warfare." "Rubbish! You're young rich handsome and famous," said Sulla, who liked to tick things off. "Ask, Magnus! Just ask! It would be a fussy father who turned you down." "I'm no good at that sort of warfare," Pompey repeated. The eyes which had been dancing now surveyed the young man shrewdly; Sulla knew perfectly well why Pompey wouldn't ask. He was too afraid of being told that his birth wasn't good enough for this or that patrician young lady. His ambition wanted the best and his opinion of himself insisted he have the best, but that niggling doubt as to whether a Pompeius from Picenum would be considered good enough held him back time after time. In short, Pompey wanted someone's tata to ask him. And nobody's tata had. A thought popped into Sulla's mind, of the sort which had led him to dower Rome with a stammering Pontifex Maximus. "Do you mind a widow?" he asked, eyes dancing again. "Not unless she's as old as the Republic." "I believe she's about twenty five." "That's acceptable. The same age as me." "She's dowerless." "Her birth concerns me a lot more than her fortune." "Her birth," said Sulla happily, "is absolutely splendid on both sides. Plebeian, but magnificent!" "Who?" demanded Pompey, leaning forward. "Who?" Sulla rolled off the couch and stood looking at him a little tipsily. "Wait until I've had my nuptial holiday, Magnus. Then come back and ask me again."