The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough Page A

at the sullen sky. “Oh, I feel better!”

The Grass Crown
    5
    “Jupiter!” said Gaius Marius, putting Sulla’s letter down to stare at his wife.
    “What is it?”
    “Piggle-wiggle is dead.”
    The refined Roman matron her son thought would die if she heard anything cruder than Ecastor! didn’t turn a hair; she had been used to hearing Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus referred to as Piggle-wiggle since the first days of her marriage. “Oh, that’s too bad,” she said, not knowing what her husband wanted her to say.
    “Too bad! It’s almost too good—too good to be true!” Marius picked up the scroll again and spread it out to mumble his way through his initial reading. Once he had deciphered its endless scrawl, he read it out more loudly and coherently to Julia, his voice betraying his elation.
    The whole of Rome turned out for the funeral, which was the biggest I for one can remember—but then, I was not much interested in funerals when Scipio Aemilianus was popped on his pyre.
    The Piglet is beside himself with grief, and has definitely branded himself Pius forevermore by weeping and wailing from one gate of Rome to the next. The Caecilius Metellus ancestors were a homely lot if their imagines are anything to go by, which I presume they are. Some of the actors wearing them hopped and skipped and jumped like some sort of peculiar hybrid frog-cricket-deer, and I found myself wondering just where the Caecilii Metelli came from. An odd breeding ground, at any rate.
    The Piglet clings to me these days, probably because I was there when Piggle-wiggle died, and—since his dear tata wouldn’t leave go my hand—the Piglet is convinced all differences between me and Piggle-wiggle were at an end. I didn’t tell him my invitation to dinner was a spur of the moment thing. One fact of interest—all through the time his tata was dying and even afterward, the Piglet never stammered once. Mind you, he only developed his speech impediment after the battle of Arausio, so one must assume it is a nervous tic of the tongue rather than an innate defect. He says it bothers him most these days when he remembers it, or he has to give a formal speech. I keep visualizing him conducting a religious ceremony! How hard I’d laugh to see everybody shifting from one foot to another while the Piglet tripped over his tongue and was forced to start all over again.
    I write this on the eve of departing for Nearer Spain, and what hopefully will be a good war. From the reports, the Celtiberians are absolutely boiling and the Lusitani creating havoc in the Further Province, where my remote Cornelian cousin Dolabella has had a trifling success or two without stamping rebellion out.
    The tribunes of the soldiers have been elected, and Quintus Sertorius goes with Titus Didius too. Almost like old times. Except that our leader is a different—and a less outstanding—New Man than Gaius Marius. I shall write whenever there is news, but in return I expect you to write and tell me what sort of man is King Mithridates.
    “What was Lucius Cornelius doing, dining with Quintus Caecilius?” asked Julia curiously.
    “Currying favor, I suspect,” said Marius gruffly.
    “Oh, Gaius Marius, no!”
    “And why shouldn’t he, Julia? I don’t blame him. Piggle-wiggle is—was—in high fettle, and his clout is certainly greater than mine these days. Under the circumstances, poor Lucius Cornelius can’t attach himself to Scaurus, and I also understand why he has not tried to attach himself to Catulus Caesar.” Marius gave a sigh, shook his head. “However, Julia, at some time in the future I predict that Lucius Cornelius will mend all his fences, and stand on excellent terms with the lot of them.”
    “Then he is no friend to you!”
    “Probably not.”
    “I don’t understand it! You and he were so close.”
    “Yes,” said Marius, speaking deliberately. “However, my dear, it wasn’t the closeness of two men drawn together by a natural