Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

Catulus Caesar had his army back in the camp outside Verona before Boiorix was able to get the last of his wagons across the last of several rickety bridges, and commence the downhill trek to the lush plains of the Padus River. At first Catulus Caesar had insisted they stand and fight the Cimbri near Lake Benacus, but Sulla, firmly in the saddle now, would not countenance it. Instead, he made Catulus Caesar send word to every city and town and village from Aquileia in the east to Comum and Mediolanum in the west: Italian Gaul-across-the-Padus was to be evacuated by all Roman citizens, Latin Rights holders, and Gauls unwilling to fraternize with the Germans. The refugees were to move south of the Padus and leave Italian Gaul-across-the-Padus completely to the Cimbri. "They'll be like pigs in acorn mush," said Sulla confidently, veteran of a year of living among the Cimbri. “When they get a taste of the pastures and the peace between Lake Benacus and the north bank of the Padus, Boiorix won't be able to hold his people together. They'll scatter in a hundred different directions, you wait and see." "Looting, wrecking, burning," said Catulus Caesar. "That and forgetting what they're supposed to be doing, namely, invading Italy. Cheer up, Quintus Lutatius! At least it's the most Gallic of the Gauls on the Italian side of the Alps, and they won't cross the Padus until they've picked it as clean as a hungry man a chicken's carcass. Our own people will be gone well ahead of the Germans, carrying everything they value. Their land will keep; we'll get it back when Gaius Marius comes." Catulus Caesar winced, but held his tongue; he had learned how biting was Sulla's tongue. But more than that, he had learned how ruthless was Sulla. How cold, how inflexible, how determined. An odd intimate for Gaius Marius, despite the fact they were brothers-in-law. Or had been brothers-in-law. Did Sulla get rid of his Julia too? wondered Catulus Caesar, who in the many hours of thought he expended upon Sulla had remembered a rumor that had circulated among the Julius Caesar brothers and their families around the time Sulla had emerged out of obscurity into public life, and married his Julia-Julilla. That he had found the money to enter public life by murdering his mother? stepmother? mistress? nephew? Well, when the time came to return to Rome, thought Catulus Caesar, he would make a point of making inquiries about that rumor. Oh, not to use it blatantly, or even right away; just to have ready for the future, when Lucius Cornelius might hope to run for praetor. Not aedile, let him have the joy of that and the ruinous drain on his purse. Praetor. Yes, praetor. When the legions had marched into camp outside Verona, Catulus Caesar knew the first thing he had to do was send word posthaste to Rome of the disaster up the Athesis; if he didn't, he suspected Sulla would via Gaius Marius, so it was important that his be the first version Rome absorbed. With both the consuls in the field, a dispatch to the Senate was addressed to the Leader of the House, so to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus did Catulus Caesar send his report, including with it a private letter which more accurately detailed what had actually occurred. And he entrusted the report and letter, heavily sealed, to young Scaurus, son of the Princeps Senatus, ordering him to take the packet to Rome at the gallop. "He's the best horseman we've got," Catulus Caesar said blandly to Sulla. Sulla eyed him with the same ironic, superior derision he had shown during their interview about the mutiny. "You know, Quintus Lutatius, you own the most exquisitely refined kind of cruelty I've ever encountered," Sulla said. "Do you wish to countermand the order?" asked Catulus Caesar, sneering. "You have the clout to do so." But Sulla shrugged, turned away. "It's your army, Quintus Lutatius. Do what you like." And he had done what he liked, sent young Marcus Aemilius Scaurus posthaste to Rome bearing the news of his own disgrace. "I have given you this duty, Marcus Aemilius Junior, because I cannot think of a worse punishment for a coward of your family background than to bring to his own father the news of both a military failure and a personal failure," said Catulus Caesar in measured, pontifical tones. Young Scaurus pallid, hangdog, pounds lighter in weight than he had been two weeks earlier stood to attention and tried not to look at his general. But when Catulus Caesar named the task, young Scaurus's eyes a paler, less beautiful version of his father's green dragged themselves unwillingly to Catulus Caesar's haughty face. "Please, Quintus Lutatius!" he gasped. "Please, I beg of you, send someone else! Let me face my father in my own time!" "Your time, Marcus Aemilius Junior, is Rome's time," said Catulus Caesar icily, the contempt welling up in him. "You will ride at the gallop to Rome, and give the Princeps Senatus my consular dispatch. A coward in battle you may be, but you are one of the best horsemen we possess, and you have a name sufficiently illustrious to procure you good mounts all the way. You need have no fear, you know! The Germans are well to the north of us, so you'll find none to threaten you in the south." Young Scaurus rode like a sack of meal in the saddle for mile after mile after mile, down the Via Annia and the Via Cassia to Rome, a shorter journey but a rougher. His head bobbed up and down in time to the gait of his horse, his teeth clicking together in a kind of heartbeat, curiously comforting. At times he talked to himself. "If I had any courage there to screw up, don't you think I would have found it?'' he asked the phantom listeners in wind and road and sky. "What can I do when there is no courage in me, Father? Where does courage come from? Why did I not receive my share? How can I tell you of the pain and fear, the terror I felt when those awful savages came shrieking and screaming like the Furies? I couldn't move! I couldn't even control my bowels, let alone my heart! It swelled up and up and up until it burst, until I fell down inanimate, glad I was dead! And then I woke to find myself alive after all, still full of terror my bowels still loose the soldiers who carried me to safety washing themselves free of my stinking shit in the river under my very eyes, with such contempt, such loathing! Oh, Father, what is courage? Where did my share go? Father, listen to me, let me try to explain! How can you blame me for something I do not possess? Father, listen to me!" But Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus did not listen. When his son arrived with the packet from Catulus Caesar he was in the Senate, and when he came home his son had bolted himself in his room, leaving a message with the steward for his father that he had brought a packet from the consul and would wait in his room until his father read it, and sent for him. Scaurus chose to read the dispatch first, grim-faced, but thankful at least that the legions were safe. Then he read Catulus Caesar's letter, lips uttering word after dreadful word out loud, shrinking further and further into his chair until he seemed but half his normal size, and the tears gathered in his eyes and fell with great blurry splashes onto the paper. Of course he had Catulus Caesar's measure; that part did not surprise him, and he was profoundly thankful that a legate as strong and unafraid as Sulla had been on hand to protect those precious troops. But he had thought his son would discover in the throes of a vital, last-ditch emergency that courage, that bravery Scaurus truly believed lived inside all men. Or all men named Aemilius, anyway. The boy was the only son he had sired the only child, for that matter. And now his line would end in such disgrace, such ignominy ! Fitting it did, if such was the mettle of his son, his only child. He drew a breath, and came to a decision. There would be no disguise, no coat of whitewash, no excuses, no dissimulation. Leave that kind of ploy to Catulus Caesar. His son was a proven coward; he had deserted his troops in their hour of gravest danger in a way more craven, more humiliating than mere flight he had shit himself and fainted. His troops carried him to safety, when it should have been the other way around. The shame Scaurus resolved to bear with that courage he himself had always possessed. Let his son feel the scourge of a whole city's scorn! His tears dried, his face composed, he clapped his hands for his steward, and when the man came he found his master sitting erect in his chair, his hands folded loosely on the desk. "Marcus Aemilius, your son is most anxious to see you," said the steward, very aware something was wrong, for the young man was acting strangely. "You may take a message to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Junior," said Scaurus stiffly, "to the effect that though I disown him, I will not strip him of our name. My son is a coward a white-livered mongrel dog but all of Rome shall know him a coward under our name. I will never see him again as long as I live, you will tell him. And tell him too that he is not welcome in this house, even as a beggar at its door. Tell him! Tell him I will never have him come into my presence again as long as I shall live! Go, tell him! Tell him!" Shivering from the shock of it and weeping for the poor young man, of whom he was fond and about whom he could have told the father any time during these past twenty years that his son had no courage, no strength, no internal resources the steward went and told young Scaurus what his father had said. "Thank you," said young Scaurus, and closed his door, but did not bolt it. When the steward ventured into his room several hours later because Scaurus had demanded to know whether his no-son had quit the house yet, he found young Scaurus dead upon the floor. The only quarry his sword deemed too unworthy to live turned out to be himself, so he bloodied it at last upon himself. But Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus remained true to his words. He refused to see his son, even in death. And in the Senate he gave the litany of the disasters in Italian Gaul with all of his customary energy and spirit, including the hideously frank, unvarnished story of his son's cowardice and suicide. He didn't spare himself, nor did he show grief. When after the meeting Scaurus made himself wait on the Senate steps for Metellus Numidicus, he did wonder if perhaps the gods had meted out so much courage to him that there was none left in the family cupboard for his son, so great was the fund of courage it took to wait there for Metellus Numidicus while the senators hustled themselves past him, pitying, anxious, shy, unwilling to stop. "Oh, my dear Marcus!" cried Metellus Numidicus as soon as there were no ears to hear. "My dear, dear Marcus, what can I possibly say?” "About my son, nothing," said Scaurus, a thin splinter of warmth piercing the icy wastes inside his chest; how good it was to have friends! "About the Germans, how do we manage to keep Rome from panicking?" "Oh, don't worry your head about Rome," said Metellus Numidicus comfortably. "Rome will survive. Panic today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and by the next market day business as usual! Have you ever known people to move because the place where they're living is unusually prone to suffer earthquakes, or there's a volcano belching outside the back door?" "That's true, they don't. At least, not until a rafter falls down and squashes Granny, or the old girl falls into a pool of lava," said Scaurus, profoundly glad to find that he could conduct a normal discussion, and even smile a little. "We'll survive, Marcus, never fear." Metellus Numidicus swallowed, then demonstrated that he too was not without his share of courage by saying manfully, "Gaius Marius is still waiting for his share of the Germans to come. Now if he goes down to defeat then we had better worry. Because if Gaius Marius can't beat them, nobody can." Scaurus blinked, deeming Metellus Numidicus's gesture so heroic he had better not comment; furthermore, he had better instruct his memory to forget for all eternity that Metellus Numidicus had ever ever ever admitted Gaius Marius was Rome's best chance and best general. "Quintus, there is one thing I must mention about my son, and then we can close that book," said Scaurus. "What's that?" "Your niece your ward, Metella Dalmatica. This wretched episode has caused you and her great inconvenience. But tell her she's had a lucky escape. It would have been no joy to a Caecilia Metella to find herself married to a coward," said Scaurus gruffly. Suddenly he found himself walking alone, and turned to see Metellus Numidicus standing looking thunderstruck. "Quintus? Quintus? Is anything the matter?" Scaurus asked, returning to his friend's side. "The matter?" asked Metellus Numidicus, returning to life. "Good Amor, no, nothing's the matter! Oh, my dear, dear Marcus! I have just been visited by a splendid idea!" "Oh?" "Why don't you marry my niece Dalmatica?" Scaurus gaped. "I?" "Yes, you! Here you are, a widower of long standing, and now with no child to inherit your name or your fortune. That, Marcus, is a tragedy," said Metellus Numidicus in tones of great warmth and urgency. "She's a sweet little girl, and so pretty! Come, Marcus, bury the past, start all over again! She's very rich, into the bargain." "I'd be no better than that randy old goat Cato the Censor," said Scaurus, just enough doubt in his voice to signal Metellus Numidicus that he might be won round if the offer was really a serious one. "Quintus, I am fifty-five years old!" "You look good for another fifty-five years." "Look at me! Go on, look at me! Bald a bit of a paunch more wrinkled than Hannibal's elephant getting stooped plagued by rheumatics and haemorrhoids alike no, Quintus, no!" "Dalmatica is young enough to think a grandfather exactly the right sort of husband," said Metellus Numidicus. "Oh, Marcus, it would please me so much! Come on, what do you say?" Scaurus clutched at his hairless pate, gasping, yet also beginning to feel a new wellspring trickle through him. "Do you honestly think it could work? Do you think I could have another family? I'd be dead before they grew up!" "Why should you die young? You look like one of those Egyptian things to me preserved well enough to last another thousand years. When you die, Marcus Aemilius, Rome will shake to her very foundations." They began to walk across the Forum toward the Vestal Steps, deep in their discussion, right hands waving emphasis. "Will you look at that pair?" asked Saturninus of Glaucia. "Plotting the downfall of all demagogues, I'll bet." "Coldhearted old shit, Scaurus," said Glaucia. "How could he get up and speak that way about his own son?" Saturninus lifted his lip. "Because family matters more than the individuals who make up family. Still, it was brilliant tactics. He showed the world his family's not lacking in courage! His son almost lost Rome a legion, but no one is going to blame Marcus Aemilius, nor hold it against his family."