Fortune's Favorites (47 page)

“I've known Metrobius since he was a boy,” he said curtly, his tone not inviting her to enquire further.

“Then why did you pretend you didn't know him before he came down from the stage?” she asked, frowning.

“He was wearing a mask until the end of the play!” Sulla snapped. “It's been a good many years, I wasn't sure.” Fatal! She had maneuvered him to the defensive, and he didn't like it.

“Yes, of course,” she said slowly. “Yes, of course.”

“Go away, Dalmatica, do! I've frittered away too much of my time since the games began, I have work waiting.”

She turned to go, looking less perturbed.

“One more thing,” he said to her back.

“Yes?”

“I shall need you when your daughter arrives, so don't go out or otherwise make yourself unavailable.”

How peculiar he was of late! she thought, walking through the vast atrium toward the peristyle garden and her own suite of rooms. Touchy, happy, labile. Up one moment, down the next. As if he had made some decision he couldn't implement at once, he who loathed procrastination. And that fine-looking actor ... What sort of place did he occupy in Sulla's scheme of things? He mattered; though how, she didn't know. Had there been even a superficial resemblance, she would have concluded that he was Sulla's son-such were the emotions she had sensed in her husband, whom she knew by now very well.

Thus it was that when Chrysogonus came to inform her that Aemilia Scaura had arrived, Dalmatica had not even begun to think further about why Sulla had summoned the girl.

Aemilia Scaura was in her fourth month of pregnancy, and had developed the sheen of skin and clearness of eye which some women did-no bouts of sickness here! A pity perhaps that she had taken after her father, and in consequence was short of stature and a little dumpy of figure, but there were saving echoes of her mother in her face, and she had inherited Scaurus's beautiful, vividly green eyes.

Not an intelligent girl, she had never managed to reconcile herself to her mother's marriage to Sulla, whom she both feared and disliked. It had been bad enough during the early years, when her brief glimpses of him had shown someone at least attractive enough to make her mother's passion for him understandable; but after his illness had so changed him for the worse she couldn't even begin to see why her mother apparently felt no less passionately about him. How could any woman continue to love such an ugly, horrible old man? She remembered her own father, of course, and he too had been old and ugly. But not with Sulla's internal rot; though she had neither the perception nor the wit thus to describe it.

Now here she was summoned into his presence, and with no more notice than to leave a hasty message for Glabrio in her wake. Her stepfather greeted her with pats of her hand and a solicitous settling on a comfortable chair-actions which set her teeth on edge and made her fear many things. Just what was he up to? He was jam-full of glee and as pregnant with mischief as she was with child.

When her mother came in the whole business of hand pats and solicitous settlings began all over again, until, it seemed to the girl, he had arranged some sort of mood and anticipation in them that would make whatever he intended to do more enjoyable to him. For this was not unimportant. This was going to matter.

“And how's the little Glabrio on the way?” he asked his stepdaughter, nicely enough.

“Very well, Lucius Cornelius.”

“When is the momentous event?”

“Near the end of the year, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Hmmm! Awkward! That's still a good way off.”

“Yes, Lucius Cornelius, it is still a good way off.”

He sat down and drummed his fingers upon the solid oaken back of his chair, lips pursed, looking into the distance. Then the eyes which frightened her so much became fixed upon her; Aemilia Scaura shivered.

“Are you happy with Glabrio?” he asked suddenly.

She jumped. “Yes, Lucius Cornelius.”

“The truth, girl! I want the truth!”

“I am happy, Lucius Cornelius, I am truly happy!”

“Would you have picked somebody else had you been able?”

A blush welled up beneath her skin, her gaze dropped. “I had formed no other attachment, Lucius Cornelius, if that's what you mean. Manius Acilius was acceptable to me.”

“Is he still acceptable?”

“Yes, yes!” Her voice held an edge of desperation. “Why do you keep asking? I am happy! I am happy!”

“That's a pity,” said Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Dalmatica sat up straight. “Husband, what is all this?” she demanded. “What are you getting at with these questions?”

“I am indicating, wife, that I am not pleased at the union between your daughter and Manius Acilius Glabrio. He deems it safe to criticize me because he is a member of my family,” said Sulla, his anger showing. “A sign, of course, that I cannot possibly permit him to continue being a member of my family. I am divorcing him from your daughter. Immediately.”

Both women gasped; Aemilia Scaura's eyes filled with tears.

“Lucius Cornelius, I am expecting his child! I cannot divorce him!” she cried.

“You can, you know,” the Dictator said in conversational tones. “You can do anything I tell you to do. And I am telling you that you will divorce Glabrio at once.” He clapped his hands to summon the secretary called Flosculus, who entered with a paper in his hand. Sulla took it, nodded dismissal. “Come over here, girl. Sign it.”

Aemilia Scaura sprang to her feet. “No!”

Dalmatica also rose. “Sulla, you are unjust!” she said, lips thin. “My daughter doesn't want to divorce her husband.”

The monster showed. “It is absolutely immaterial to me what your daughter wants,” he said. “Over here, girl! And sign.”

“No! I won't, I won't!”

He was out of his chair so quickly neither woman actually saw him move. The fingers of his right hand locked in a vise around Aemilia Scaura's mouth and literally dragged her to her feet, squealing in pain, weeping frantically.

“Stop, stop!” shouted Dalmatica, struggling to prise those fingers away. “Please, I beg of you! Leave her be! She's with child, you can't hurt her!”

His fingers squeezed harder and harder. “Sign,” he said.

She couldn't answer, and her mother had passed beyond speech.

“Sign,” said Sulla again, softly. “Sign or I'll kill you, girl, with as little concern as I felt when I killed Carbo's legates. What do I care that you're stuffed full with Glabrio's brat? It would suit me if you lost it! Sign the bill of divorcement, Aemilia, or I'll lop off your breasts and carve the womb right out of you!”

She signed, still screaming. Then Sulla threw her away in contempt. “There, that's better,” he said, wiping her saliva from his hand. “Don't ever make me angry again, Aemilia. It is not wise. Now go.”

Dalmatica gathered the girl against her, and the look of loathing she gave Sulla was without precedent, a genuine first. He saw it, but seemed indifferent, turned his back upon them.

In her own rooms Dalmatica found herself with an hysterical girl on her hands and a huge burden of anger to deal with. Both took some time to calm.

“I have heard he could be like that, but I've never seen it for myself,” she said when she was able. “Oh, Aemilia, I'm so sorry! I'll try to get him to change his mind as soon as I can face him without wanting to tear his eyes out of his head,”

But the girl, not besotted, chopped the air with her hand. “No! No, Mother, no. You'd only make things worse.”

“What could Glabrio have done to provoke this?”

“Said something he ought not have. He doesn't like Sulla, I know that. He keeps implying to me that Sulla likes men in ways men shouldn't.”

Dalmatica went white. “But that's nonsense! Oh, Aemilia, how could Glabrio be so foolish? You know what men are like! If they do not deserve that slur, they can behave like madmen!”

“I'm not so sure it is undeserved,” said Aemilia Scaura as she held a cold wet towel to her face, where the marks of her stepfather's fingers were slowly changing from red-purple to purple-black. “I've always thought there was woman in him.”

“My dear girl, I've been married to Lucius Cornelius for almost nine years,” said Dalmatica, who seemed to be shrinking in size, “and I can attest that it is an infamy.”

“All right, all right, have it your own way! I don't care what he is! I just hate him, the vile beast!”

“I'll try when I'm cooler, I promise.”

“Save yourself more of his displeasure, Mother. He won't change his mind,” said Aemilia Scaura. “It's my baby I'm worried about, it's my baby matters to me.”

Dalmatica stared at her daughter painfully. “I can say the same thing.”

The cold wet towel fell into Aemilia Scaura's lap. “Mother! You're pregnant too?”

“Yes. I haven't known for very long, but I'm sure.”

“What will you do? Does he know?”

“He doesn't know. And I'll do nothing that might provoke him to divorce me.”

“You've heard the tale of Aelia.”

“Who hasn't?”

“Oh, Mother, that changes everything! I'll behave, I'll behave! He mustn't be given any excuse to divorce you!”

“Then we must hope,” said Dalmatica wearily, “that he deals more kindly with your husband than he has with you.'

“He'll deal more harshly.”

“Not necessarily,” said the wife who knew Sulla. “You were first to hand. Very often his first victim satisfies him. By the time Glabrio arrives to find out what's the matter, he may be calm enough to be merciful.”

If he wasn't calm enough to be merciful, Sulla was at least drained of the worst of his anger at Glabrio's indiscreet words. And Glabrio was perceptive enough to see that blustering would only make his situation more perilous.

“There is no need for this, Lucius Cornelius,” he said. “If I have offended you, I will strive mightily to remove the cause of that offense. I wouldn't put my wife's position in jeopardy, I assure you.”

“Oh, your ex-wife is in no jeopardy,” said Sulla, smiling mirthlessly. “Aemilia Scaura-who is a member of my family!-is quite safe. But she cannot possibly stay married to a man who criticizes her stepfather and spreads stories about him that are manifest lies.”

Glabrio wet his lips. “My tongue ran away with me.”

“It runs away with you very often, I hear. That is your privilege, of course. But in future you'll let it without the insulation of claiming to be a member of my family. You'll let it and take your chances, just like everyone else. I haven't proscribed a senator since my first list. But there's nothing to stop my doing so. I honored you by appointing you to the Senate ahead of your thirtieth birthday, as I have a great many other young men of high family and illustrious forebears. Well, for the moment I will leave your name among the senators and will not attach it to the rostra. Whether in future I continue to be so clement depends on you, Glabrio. Your child is growing in the belly of my children's half sister, and that is the only protection you have. When it is born, I will send it to you. Now please go.”

Glabrio went without another word. Nor did he inform any of his intimates of the circumstances behind his precipitate divorce. Nor the reasons why he felt it expedient to leave Rome for his country estates. His marriage to Aemilia Scaura had not mattered to him in an emotional way; she satisfied him, that was all. Birth, dowry, everything as it ought to be. With the years affection might have grown between them. It never would now, so much was sure. A small twinge of grief passed through him from time to time when he thought of her, mostly because his child would never know its mother.

What happened next did nothing to help heal the breach between Sulla and Dalmatica; Pompey came to see the Dictator the following morning, as directed.

“I have a wife for you, Magnus,” said Sulla without delay.

There was a quality of sleepy lion about Pompey that stood him in good stead when things happened he wished to think about before acting or speaking. So he took time to ingest this piece of information, face open rather than guarded; but what was going on inside his mind he did not betray. Rather, thought Sulla, watching him closely, he just rolled over in some metaphorical sun to warm his other side, and licked his chops to remove a forgotten morsel from his whiskers. Languid but dangerous. Yes, best to tie him to the family-he was no Glabrio.

Finally, “How considerate of you, Dictator!” said Pompey. “Who might she be?”

This unconscious grammatical betrayal of his Picentine origins grated, but Sulla did not let it show. He said, “My stepdaughter, Aemilia Scaura. Patrician. Of a family you couldn't better if you looked for a millennium. A dowry of two hundred talents. And proven to be fertile. She's pregnant to Glabrio. They were divorced yesterday. I realize, it's a bit inconvenient for you to acquire a wife who is already expecting another man's child, but the begetting was virtuous. She's a good girl.”

That Pompey was not put off or put out by this news was manifest; he beamed foolishly. “Lucius Cornelius, dear Lucius Cornelius! I am delighted!”

“Good!” said Sulla briskly.

“May I see her? I don't think I ever have!”

A faint grin came and went across the Dictator's face as he thought of the bruises about Aemilia Scaura's mouth; he shook his head. “Give it two or three market intervals, Magnus, then come back and I'll marry you to her. In the meantime I'll make sure every sestertius of her dowry is returned, and keep her here with me.”

“Wonderful!” cried Pompey, transported. “Does she know?”

“Not yet, but it will please her very much. She's been secretly in love with you ever since she saw you triumph,” lied Sulla blandly.

That shot penetrated the lion's hide! Pompey almost burst with gratification. “Oh, glorious!” he said, and departed looking like a very well-fed feline indeed.

Which left Sulla to break the news to his wife and her daughter. A chore he found himself not averse to doing. Dalmatica had been looking at him very differently since this business had blown up out of a tranquillity almost nine years old, and he disliked her disliking him; as a result, he needed to hurt her.

The two women were together in Dalmatica's sitting room, and froze when Sulla walked in on them unannounced. His first action was to study Aemilia Scaura' s face, which was badly bruised and swollen below her nose. Only then did he look at Dalmatica. No anger or revulsion emanated from her this morning, though her dislike of him was there in her eyes, rather cold. She seemed, he thought, ill. Then reflected that women often took refuge in genuine illnesses when their emotions were out of sorts.