He leaned against a cupboard, his chest heaving, eyes fixed on the flagstone floor, face and tunic speckled with scarlet. A girl approached, I forget her name, carrying a bucket of cool water and a large sponge. She curtsied and made to daub his sweaty brow, but he slapped her roughly away. She squeaked in surprise and fear. “See to him, fool!” Confused and terrified to have brought his displeasure down upon herself, she turned from Crassus toward the table where I lay, but he touched her arm and in a gentle voice repeated, “See to him.”
While Baltus, the doctor who had been with us for several years, prepared the next strip of balm and grease soaked cloth, I watched Crassus turn and leave the bloody scene of his own making. He did not look at me or speak to me. Walking away, he let slip the lorum, supple with gore. It lay on the ground like a scarlet viper. The hand that had wielded it gripped nothing but air, muscles fatigued, fingers locked as if they still held the instrument. At his passing, the culina once again came slowly alive, as if thawed by the magic in a child’s tale.
Almost more than the beating, I dreaded the next time I would be forced to look him in the eye. There was a pain here the doctor could not soothe and a wound that would forever be beyond healing. Later, I would mourn for what we each had lost, for it would never be the same between us.
Chapter XXVII
56 BCE — Spring, Luca Year of the consulship of Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus
“I’d say that was a good day’s work.” Gaius Julius Caesar, reclining in the dining room on the couch of lowest stature picked a bit of meat from his teeth with the sharp end of his spoon. A cold Aprilis wind whipped rain against the roof tiles of his villa in Luca, just within the southern border of his province of Cisalpine Gaul. No one knew that the estate, even though this was our first visit to it, was actually owned by my master. Rome was run on favors, and no one practiced the art better than these two statesmen.
The scars on my back had mended six years ago; white welts on a pale background. The man whose cruel arrogance and thoughtless lechery had instigated their manifestation had just now summoned a meeting of the real rulers of Rome, a conspiracy clandestine to none. Almost two hundred senators, accompanied by more than three times that many lictors, slaves and spouses had met to renew their vows, a marriage of power tenuously held together by the three leaders of the alliance: Caesar, Pompeius and Crassus. This was the end of the sixth day of the conference, but by now most had returned to the city. Crassus, Pompeius and their wives yet remained. When we had first arrived, Caesar laid eyes on me and smiled, after which, to him, I ceased to exist. He, however, had never left my thoughts, and my dread of this meeting had increased with every mile of our approach.
The only other men lingering in the triclinium at this late hour occupied places reserved for honored guests. One of them was drunk and dozing, his head tilted back on the arm of his lectus, his mouth hanging open as if he were waiting for more wine to be poured directly down his throat. The other, by Caesar’s reckoning, was not drunk enough. I stood behind my master against a wall which gave Crassus sufficient eye contact with me, but otherwise kept me well out of the way.
“Oh come, Marcus, surely you’re content with the arrangements? Try those boar-pasties before they get cold.” Caesar, at forty-four, had the knack of simultaneously appearing fastidious and soldierly. His dark brown eyes were quick to both assess and judge, and they could estimate with equal ease the tactics required for the battlefield or the senate floor. From his narrow face and patrician features to his taut, trim frame, everything about him said “advance!” His hairline was the only physical trait in retreat, but not a one of the hairs remaining was out of place. His garb for the evening was a coarse linen tunic with a fringed sleeve and a royal red military abolla. He wrapped the cloak about him against the chill.
“I would have been more content to have forged them privately in Ravenna. You asked that we meet there, alone. Tertulla and I make the arduous trip, wait three days, but you show up in the form of a letter saying that we must now trundle off instead to Luca. I am not a child’s ball to be bounced hither and yon. Why, Gaius, was it necessary to turn our private deliberations into a spectacle? Half the senate has come up from Rome. Yesterday, I would have wagered a million sesterces that the Circus Maximus lay between the Capitoline and the Aventine. But today I find that no, Caesar has had it transplanted to Luca.”
“A slight exaggeration,” Caesar said, not smiling.
“I could have suffered the rest, but who should be the first to meet us at the gate, full of smarmy smiles and feigned friendship?”
“Pompeius is genuinely fond of you.”
“Hmph. As a Vestal is fond of her virginity — what privileges she enjoys if she keeps it intact, but oh what rapture she would know if she were free of it!“
“Wine has made you a poet, Marcus.”
“Why, Gaius,” Crassus said, ignoring the compliment and accepting more wine from a servant, “why was it necessary to drag Tertulla and me across the entire breadth of Italy when we’d already made the trip from Rome to Ravenna?”
“Please extend my apologies to your wife. The additional miles cannot have been pleasant for her, even in a carriage as finely appointed as your own.”
“Tertulla goes where duty dictates, and gladly. As do I, Gaius.”
“How is she, Marcus? What with the business at hand, I have had little time for friends. I swear you are the only noble Roman I know who married for love, not political advantage.”
Crassus relaxed visibly. “If men knew the source of true happiness, Gaius, they would covet my wife, not my wealth. Thirty years, mark you, thirty years. I pray that you and Calpurnia may share such a union. I am blessed by many gods and Goddesses, but none greater than she.”
“Piso is one of your closest friends. I am fortunate that my marriage to his daughter has added both adhesive to our commitments and joy to my home. But Tertulla, Marcus! Polykleitos with his chisel could not have sculpted such an Aphrodite.”
My lord closed his eyes for a moment and smiled. “When my brother’s slaughter made her a widow at fourteen, I took her in; honor demanded it. Within a year, I was entranced. Another and… well, I can still smell the roses in the garden where she agreed to marry me. But even more than her beauty or her youth, it is her wisdom I treasure. I cannot count the times I have left home for some business dealing or another with her sage advice in my ears. You know it was she who convinced me to forsake Cataline, to spurn his conspiracy and advise you to do the same. She said, and I think this is exact, ‘You and Caesar will go no further than the point of a sword if you follow that brigand.’ You would be surprised how many times the mind of Tertulla has spoken through the mouth of Crassus.”
A momentary expression of surprise flitted across Caesar’s features. I doubt my lord would have confessed this tidbit had he been sober. From where I stood, I saw Caesar’s look change from surprise to gratification, then disappear.
Crassus yawned. “Gaius, these old bones are weary. But I will know before I retire why you unilaterally altered our agreed plans.”