Colleen McCullough - 2. The Grass Crown

When the riding party assembled the following afternoon, Gaius Marius was punctiliously correct in his manner toward Publius Claudius Pulcher, a dark and rather hangdog-looking young man who obviously wished he was anywhere but where he was. As the men moved out Marius fell in alongside Cinna, with Cinna's legate Marcus Caecilius Cornutus riding behind them with Young Caesar, and the cadets bringing up the rear. After he established the fact that none of the others knew the area very well, Lucius Decumius took the lead. "There's a magnificent view of Rome about a mile away," he said, "just the right distance for Gaius Marius to ride." "How do you know Tibur so well?" asked Marius. "My mother's father came from Tibur," said the leader of the expedition as its members strung themselves out along a narrow path winding steadily and steeply upward. "I wouldn't have thought you had a rural bone in your whole disreputable body, Lucius Decumius." "Actually I don't, Gaius Marius," said Decumius cheerfully over his shoulder. "But you knows what women are like! My mother used to drag us up here every summer." The day was fine and the sun hot, but a cool breeze blew in the riders' faces and they could hear the tumbling Anio in its gorge, now louder, now dying to a whisper. Lucius Decumius set a slow pace and the time went by almost imperceptibly, only Marius's evident enjoyment making the rest of the party feel this activity was at all worthwhile. Deeming the ordeal of meeting Young Marius's father intolerable before it had actually happened, Publius Claudius Pulcher gradually relaxed enough to converse with the other two cadets, while Cinna, escorting Marius, wondered if Marius would try to make overtures to his son's accuser. For that, Cinna was convinced, was the true purpose of this ride. A father himself, he knew he would have tried every ploy he could think of if his son ever got into such trouble. "There!" said Lucius Decumius proudly, reining his steed back out of the way so that the rest of the party could precede him. "A view worth the ride, isn't it?" It was indeed. The riders found themselves on a small shelf in the side of a mountain, at a place where some massive cataclysm had pared a great slice of the flank away and a cliff fell sheer to the plains far below. They could trace the hurrying, white-flecked waters of the Anio all the way to its confluence with the Tiber, a blue and snaky stream coming down from the north. And there beyond the point where the two rivers joined lay Rome, a vivid sprawl of colored paints and brick-red roofs, the statues atop her temples glittering, and the clear air permitting even a glimpse of the Tuscan Sea on the knifelike edge of the horizon. "We're much higher than Tibur here," said Lucius Decumius from behind them; he slid off his horse. "How minute the city is from so far away!" said Cinna in wonder. Everyone was pressing forward to see except Lucius Decumius, and the riders intermingled. Determined Marius was not going to get a chance to talk to Publius Claudius, Cinna pushed both of their mounts away as the cadets approached. "Oh, look!" cried Young Caesar, kicking his horse hard when it balked. "There's the Anio aqueduct! Isn't it like a toy? And isn't it beautiful?" He directed his questions at Publius Claudius, who seemed quite as entranced by the view as Young Caesar, and just as eager to sample its delights. The two of them edged as close to the brink as their horses were prepared to take them and gazed out to Rome, smiling at each other after their eyes were sated. Since it truly was a magnificent view, the whole party save for Lucius Decumius directed all their attention forward. Thus no one noticed Lucius Decumius withdraw a small, Y-shaped object from the purse tethered to the belt of his tunic, nor saw him slip a wicked little metal spike into a slot in the middle of a band of soft, stretchy kid connected between the open ends of the Y-shaped piece of wood. As casually and openly as he might have yawned or scratched himself, he raised the wooden object to eye level, stretched the kid to its utmost, sighted carefully, and let the leather go. Publius Claudius's horse screamed, reared up, its front legs flailing; Publius Claudius clutched instinctively at its mane to stay on its back. Oblivious to his own danger, Young Caesar came forward of his saddle onto his horse's neck and grabbed for the other animal's bridle. It all happened so quickly that no one afterward could be sure of more than one glaring fact that Young Caesar acted with a cool bravery far beyond his years. His mount panicked and reared too, cannoned broadside into Publius Claudius, and found its front legs coming down on nothing. Both horses and both riders went over the cliff, but somehow Young Caesar, even in the act of falling, had balanced upright on the tilting edge of his saddle and leaped for the shelf. He landed more on it than off it and scrabbled like a cat to safety. Everyone was clustered on the ground at the brink of the precipice, faces white, eyes goggling, only concerned at first to see that Young Caesar was all right. Then, Young Caesar in the lead (breathing more easily than any of the rest), they looked over the edge. There far below lay the disjointed heaps of two horses. And Publius Claudius Pulcher. A silence fell. Straining to hear a cry for help, they heard only the sighing of the wind. Nothing moved, even a hawk in midair. "Here, you come away!" said a new voice. Lucius Decumius took Young Caesar by the shoulder and yanked him further away from the cliff. On his knees, he shakily patted the boy all over to make sure there were no broken bones. "Why did you have to do that?" he whispered too softly for anyone but Young Caesar to hear. "I had to make it look convincing," came an answering whisper. "For a moment I didn't think his horse was going to go. It was best to be sure. I knew I'd be safe." "How did you know what I was going to do? You weren't even looking my way!" Young Caesar heaved a sigh of exasperation. "Oh, Lucius Decumius! I know you! And I knew why Gaius Marius sent for you the instant he did. Personally I don't care much what happens to my cousin, but I won't have Gaius Marius and our own family disgraced. Rumor is one thing. A witness is quite another.'' Cheek against the bright gold hair, Lucius Decumius let his eyes close in an exasperation easily the equal of Young Caesar's. "But you risked your life!" "Don't worry about my life. I can look after it. When I let it go, it will be because I have no further use for it." The boy extricated himself from Lucius Decumius's embrace and went to make sure that Gaius Marius was all right.

Shaken and confused, Lucius Cornelius Cinna poured wine for himself and Gaius Marius the moment they reached his tent. Lucius Decumius had taken Young Caesar off to fish in the Anio cascades, and the rest of the party was regrouping to form another party one deputed to bring the remains of the cadet Publius Claudius Pulcher back for his own funeral. "I must say that as far as my son and I are concerned, that was a very timely accident," said Marius bluntly, taking a deep draft of his wine. "Without Publius Claudius you have no case, my friend." "It was an accident," said Cinna in the tones of a man most preoccupied with convincing himself. "It couldn't have been anything except an accident!" “Quite right. It couldn't have been anything else. I nearly lost a better boy than my son." "I didn't think the lad had a hope." "I think that particular lad is hope personified," said Marius with a purr in his voice. "I'll have to keep my eye on him in the future. Or he'll be eclipsing me." "Oh, what a mess!" sighed Cinna. "Not an auspicious omen for a man just promoted to the general's tent, I agree," said Marius affably. "I shall acquit myself better than Lucius Cato did!" Marius grinned. "It would be hard to do worse. However, I do sincerely think you will acquit yourself well, Lucius Cinna. And I am very grateful for your forbearance. Very grateful!" Somewhere in the back of his mind Cinna could hear the tinkling cascade of coins or was it the Anio, where that extraordinary boy was happily fishing as if nothing ever banished his composure? "What is one's first duty, Gaius Marius?" Cinna asked suddenly. "One's first duty, Lucius Cinna, is to one's family." "Not to Rome?" "What else is our Rome, than her families?" "Yes .. . Yes, I suppose that's true. And those of us who are born to it or have risen to find our children born to it must strive to ensure that our families remain in a position to rule." "Quite so," said Gaius Marius.