Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough

and the itchy torment would begin. Ointment. He must concentrate upon the idea of the ointment. Morsimus had found it in some forgotten village somewhere near the Pyramus River of Cilicia Pedia, and it had soothed, healed him.
    Six months ago he had sent to Morsimus, now an ethnarch in Tarsus, and begged him to find that ointment, even if he had to search every settlement in Cilicia Pedia. Could he but find it again-and, more importantly, its recipe-his skin would return to normal. And in the meantime, he waited. Suffered. Became ever greater. Do you hear that, Pompey the Great?
    He turned in his saddle and beckoned to where behind him rode Metellus Pius the Piglet and Marcus Crassus (Pompey the Great was bringing up the rear at the head of his three legions).
    “I have a problem,” he said when Metellus Pius and Crassus drew level with him.
    “Who?” asked the Piglet shrewdly.
    “Oh, very good! Our esteemed Philippus,” said Sulla, no expression creasing his face.
    “Well, even if we didn't have Appius Claudius along, Lucius Philippus would present a problem,” said Crassus, the abacus of his mind clicking from unum to duo, “but there's no denying Appius Claudius makes it worse. You'd think the fact that Appius Claudius is Philippus's uncle would have kept him from expelling Appius Claudius from the Senate, but it didn't.”
    “Probably because nephew Philippus is some years older than uncle Appius Claudius,” said Sulla, entertained by this opinion.
    “What exactly do you want to do with the problem?” asked Metellus Pius, unwilling to let his companions drift off into the complexities of Roman upper-class blood relationships.
    “I know what I'd like to do, but whether or not it's even possible rests with you, Crassus,” said Sulla.
    Crassus blinked. “How could it affect me?”
    Tipping back his shady straw hat, Sulla looked at his legate with a little more warmth in his eyes than of yore; and Crassus, in spite of himself, felt an uplift in the region of his breast. Sulla was deferring to him!
    “It's all very well to be marching along buying grain and foodstuffs from the local farmers,” Sulla began, his words a trifle slurred these days because of his lack of teeth, “but by the end of summer we will need a harvest I can ship from one place. It doesn't have to be a harvest the size of Sicily's or Africa's, but it does have to provide the staple for my army. And I am confident that my army will increase in size as time goes on.”
    “Surely,” said Metellus Pius carefully, “by the autumn we'll have all the grain we need from Sicily and Africa. By the autumn we will have taken Rome.”
    “I doubt that.”
    “But why? Rome's rotting from within!”
    Sulla sighed, his lips flapping. “Piglet dear, if I am to help Rome recover, then I have to give Rome a chance to decide in my favor peacefully. Now that is not going to happen by the autumn. So I can't appear too threatening, I can't march at the double up the Via Latina and attack Rome the way Cinna and Marius descended upon her after I left for the east. When I marched on Rome the first time, I had surprise on my side. No one believed I would. So no one opposed me except a few slaves and mercenaries belonging to Gaius Marius. But this time is different. Everyone expects me to march on Rome. If I do that too quickly, I'll never win. Oh, Rome would fall! But every nest of insurgents, every school of opposition would harden. It would take me longer than I have left to live to put resistance down. I can't afford the time or the effort. So I'll go very slowly toward Rome.”
    Metellus Pius digested this, and saw the sense of it. With a gladness he couldn't quite conceal from those glacial eyes in their sore sockets. Wisdom was not a quality he associated with any Roman nobleman; Roman noblemen were too political in their thinking to be wise. Everything was of the moment, seen in the short term. Even Scaurus Princeps Senatus, for all his experience and