Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page A

tables, sheets of paper at the ready, reed pens sharpened, cakes of ink dissolved in heavy stone wells.
    By the time all this was done, the crowd had gathered so thickly that it spilled out of the square into the streets and lanes converging upon it. Light and lithe, Pompey leaped onto a makeshift podium beneath Pompey Strabo's woodpecker standard.
    “Well, it's come!” he shouted. “Lucius Cornelius Sulla has landed in Brundisium to claim what is rightfully his-an uninterrupted imperium, a triumph, the privilege of depositing his laurels at the feet of Jupiter Optimus Maximus inside the Capitol of Rome! At just about this time last year, the other Lucius Cornelius-he cognominated Cinna-was not far away from here trying to enlist my father's veterans in his cause. He did not succeed. Instead, he died. Today you see me. And today I see many of my father's veterans standing before me. I am my father's heir! His men are my men. His past is my future. I am going to Brundisium to fight for Sulla, for he is in the right of it. How many of you will come with me?”
    Short and simple, thought Varro, lost in admiration. Maybe the young man was correct about vaulting into the consul's curule chair on his spear rather than on a wave of words. Certainly no face he could discern in that crowd seemed to find Pompey's speech lacking. No sooner had he finished than the women began to drift away clucking about the imminent absence of husbands and sons, some wringing their hands at the thought, some already engrossed in the practicalities of filling kit bags with spare tunics and socks, some looking studiously at the ground to hide sly smiles. Pushing excited children out of the way with mock slaps and kicks, the men shoved forward to cluster about those trestle tables. Within moments, Pompey's clerks were scribbling strenuously.
    From a nice vantage spot high on the steps of Auximum's old temple of Picus, Varro sat and watched the activity. Had they ever volunteered so lightheartedly for cross-eyed Pompey Strabo's campaigns? he wondered. Probably not. That one had been the lord, a hard man but a fine commander; they would have served him with goodwill but sober faces. For the son, it was clearly different. I am looking at a phenomenon, Varro thought. The Myrmidons could not have gone more happily to fight for Achilles, nor the Macedonians for Alexander the Great. They love him! He's their darling, their mascot, their child as much as their father.
    A vast bulk deposited itself on the step next to him, and Varro turned his head to see a red face topped by red hair; a pair of intelligent blue eyes were busy assessing him, the only stranger present.
    “And who might you be?” asked the ruddy giant.
    “My name is Marcus Terentius Varro, and I'm a Sabine.”
    “Like us, eh? Well, a long time ago, at any rate.” A horny paw waved in the direction of Pompey. “Look at him, will you? Oh, we've been waiting for this day, Marcus Terentius Varro the Sabine! Be he not the Goddess's honeypot?”
    Varro smiled. “I'm not sure I'd choose that way of putting it, but I do see what you mean.”
    “Ah! You're not only a gentleman with three names, you're a learned gentleman! A friend of his, might you be?”
    “I might be.”
    “And what might you do for a crust, eh?”
    “In Rome, I'm a senator. But in Reate, I breed mares.”
    “What, not mules?”
    “It's better to breed the mares than their mule offspring. I have a little bit of the rosea rura, and a few stud donkeys too.”
    “How old might you be?”
    “Thirty-two,” said Varro, enjoying himself immensely.
    But suddenly the questions ceased; Varro's interlocutor disposed himself more comfortably by resting one elbow on the step above him and stretching out a Herculean pair of legs to cross his ankles. Fascinated, the diminutive Varro eyed grubby toes almost as large as his own fingers.
    “And what might your name be?” he asked, falling into the local vernacular quite