The Gates Of Rome

CHAPTER 24

Gaius leaned on the stone window ledge and watched the sun come up over the city. He heard Cornelia stir on the long bed behind him and smiled to himself as he glanced back. She was still asleep, her long gold hair spilling over her face and shoulders as she shifted restlessly. In the heat of the night, they had needed little to cover them, and her long legs were revealed almost to the hip by the light cloth that she had gathered in one small hand and pulled closer to her face.

For a moment, his thoughts turned to Alexandria, but it was without pain. It had been hard for the first months, even with friends like Diracius to distract him. He could look back now and wince at his naïveté and clumsiness. Yet there was sadness too. He could never be that innocent boy again.

He had seen Metella privately and signed a document that passed Alexandria's ownership over to the house of Marius, knowing he could trust his aunt to be kind to her. He had also left a sum of gold pieces, taken from his estate funds, to be handed to her on the day she purchased her freedom. She would find out when she was free. It was a small gift, considering what she had given him.

Gaius grinned as he felt arousal stir once more, knowing he would have to be moving before the household came awake. Cornelia's father, Cinna, was another of the political heavyweights Marius was flattering and working to control. Not a man to cross, and discovery in his beloved daughter's bedroom would mean death even for Marius's nephew.

He glanced at her again and sighed as he pulled his clothes to him. She had been worth it, though, worth the risk many times over. Three years older than he, she had yet been a virgin, which surprised him. She was his alone and that gave him quiet satisfaction and more than a little of the old joy.

They had met at a formal gathering of Senate families, celebrating the birth of twin sons to one of the nobilitas. In the middle of the day, there was nothing like the free license of one of Diracius's parties, and at first Gaius had been bored with the endless congratulations and speeches. Then, in a quiet moment, she had come over to him and changed everything. She had been wearing a robe of dark gold, almost a brown, with earrings and a torque of the same rich metal at her throat. He had desired her from the first moments, and liked her as quickly. She was intelligent and confident and she wanted him. It was a heady feeling. He had sneaked in over the roofs to her bedroom window, looking on her as she slept, her hair tousled and wild.

He remembered her rising from the bed and sitting on it with her legs drawn up under her and her back straight. It had been a few seconds before he noticed she was smiling. He sighed as he pulled on his clothes and sandals.

With Sulla gone from the city for a whole year as the Greek rebellion grew in ferocity, it was easy for Gaius to forget that there had to be a reckoning at some point. Marius, though, had worked from the first day for the moment that Sulla's standards became visible on the horizon. The city was still buzzing with excitement and dread, as it had been for months. Most had stayed, but a steady trickle of merchants and families leaving the city showed that not every inhabitant shared Marius's confidence about the outcome. Every street had shops that were boarded closed, and the Senate criticized many of the decisions made, pushing Marius to rage when he came back to his home in the early hours of the morning. It was a tension Gaius could barely share, with the pleasures of the city to distract him.

He looked over at Cornelia again as he tightened his toga, and saw her eyes were open. He crossed to her and kissed her on the lips, feeling the rush of longing as he did. He dropped one hand to her breast and felt her start against him as he broke for air.

"Will you come to me again, Gaius?"

"I will," he replied, smiling, and found to his surprise that he actually meant it.

"A good general is prepared for every eventuality," Marius said as he handed the documents to Gaius. "These are money orders. They are as good as gold in your hand, drawn on the city treasury. I do not expect to have them repaid; they are a gift to you."

Gaius looked at the sums and fought to smile. The amounts were large, but would barely cover the debts he had run up with the moneylenders. Marius hadn't been able to keep a close eye on his nephew as the preparations for Sulla's return continued, and Gaius had run lines of credit in those first few months after Alexandria, buying women, wine, and sculpture-all to increase his standing in a city that had respect only for gold and power. With borrowed wealth, Gaius had come onto a jaded social scene as a young lion. Even those who distrusted his uncle knew Gaius was a man to be watched, and there was never a problem with the ever larger sums he required, as the rich struggled to be next to offer finance to Marius's nephew.

Marius must have caught a hint of Gaius's disappointment and interpreted it as worry for the future.

"I expect to win, but only a fool wouldn't plan for disaster where Sulla was involved. If it doesn't go as I have planned, take the drafts and get out of the city. I have included a reference that should get you a berth on a legion vessel to take you to some far post of the empire. I… have also written documents naming you as a son of my house. You will be able to join any regiment and make your name for a couple of years."

"What if you crush Sulla, as you expect?"

"Then we will continue with your advance in Rome. I will secure a post for you that carries life membership in the Senate. They are jealously guarded, come the elections, but it should not be impossible. It will cost us a fortune, but then you are in, truly one of the chosen. Who knows where the future will take you after that?"

Gaius grinned, caught up in the man's enthusiasm. He would use the drafts to pay off the worst of his debts. Of course, the horse sales were next week and the rumor was that Arabian princes were bringing new breeds of warhorses, huge stallions that could be guided with the gentlest touch. They would cost a fortune, a fortune very like the one he held in his hand. He tucked the papers inside his toga as he left. The moneylenders would wait a little longer, he was sure.

In the cool night outside Marius's town house, Gaius weighed up his options for the hours before dawn. As usual, the dark city was far from quiet and he didn't feel ready for sleep. Traders and cart drivers swore at each other, smiths hammered, somebody laughed in a nearby house, and he could hear crockery being smashed. The city was a place of life in a way the estate could never match. Gaius loved it.

He could go and listen to the orators in the forum by torchlight, perhaps joining in one of the endless debates with other young nobles until the dawn made them all go home. Or he could seek out Diracius's home and satisfy other appetites. Wiser not to venture alone through the dark streets, he thought, remembering Marius's warnings about the various raptores who lurked in the dim alleys, ready for theft or murder. The city was not safe at night and it was easy to become lost in the maze of unnamed, twisting streets. One wrong turning could lead a wanderer into an alley filled with piles of human filth and great pools of urine, though the smell was usually enough of a warning.

A month before, he might have gathered companions for a wild night, but the face of one girl had been appearing more and more in his thoughts. Far from dwindling, his longing for her seemed to be fired by contact rather than quenched. Cornelia would be thinking of him in her father's estate rooms. He would go to her and scale the outer wall, slipping past her father's house guards one more time.

He grinned to himself, remembering the sudden fear as he had slipped during the last climb, hanging above the hard stones of the street below. It was getting so he knew every inch of that wall, but one mistake would earn him a pair of broken legs or worse.

"Worth the risks for you, my girl," he whispered to himself, watching the night air frost his breath as he walked through the unlit city streets to his destination.