A Pillar of Iron

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Where is Lucius?” she asked of Julius. The young man glanced at Marcus out of the corner of his eye.

  “He will be here in a moment,” he said.

  “Catilina?” said Marcus. Julius took his arm like a younger brother. “Do you not want to see Quintus?” he asked. He led Marcus away. He said, “Sulla is also named Lucius.”

  “Nevertheless, she came to see Catilina,” said Marcus, sick with his old hate. “Do not lie to me, Julius. I have been able to read you like a book since you were five years old.”

  “What matter these things to you, Pyramus?” said Julius.

  Marcus pulled away his arm. Julius was laughing softly at him. He took Marcus’ arm again. “Women are women,” he said. “Let them not distract us. They may be beautiful, but we are men.”

  As he was guided through long white halls glimmering with early winter dusk, he thought of the presence of Catilina in this house, and his mind was dark with dismay again. Catilina was vindictive and depraved, a man without conscience, a man much worse than Julius for Julius had a humorous attitude toward his own evil, and acknowledged it. Quintus was in danger in this house, from Catilina, for all his rescue by that man.

  Julius reached a tall brazen door and knocked quickly upon it. It was opened by an elderly man in an austere white toga, evidently the physician of whom Sulla had spoken. “Greetings, Antonius,” said Julius. “I have brought the brother of our Quintus to see the invalid.”

  The physician bowed to Marcus. “Greetings, noble Cicero. I fear you must be very quiet and not disturb my patient, who still lies close to the door of death after all these months. Only the Great Physician, Himself, has preserved him, and it is a miracle. There were many times when his breath stopped and I was certain he had died. Then his mighty heart rallied. He has a will that is almost superhuman; he refused to die. He is a true Roman.”

  It was a moment or two before Marcus could make his trembling voice articulate. “I can never repay you for your devotion, Antonius. Will he recognize me?”

  “That I do not know,” said the physician. “If not today, perhaps on another.” The physician was thin and tall and his bald head shone faintly in the pallid light behind him. He regarded Marcus with pity. “You must be prepared for a change in the noble soldier’s appearance.”

  Marcus tried to prepare himself, but his legs were soft and weak under him when he entered a magnificent bed chamber of white marble walls inlaid with lines of black stone; the floor was covered with thick warm rugs of dark red. A carved ebony screen, intricately pierced, partly hid the window. A big wide bed stood in the center of the room, made of the finest wood and strewn with fur robes. Chinese vases decorated the corners, dimly flashing their many bright colors, and a bust of Mars, huge and fierce, stood on a squat marble column near the bed, a votive light burning scarlet before it.

  Marcus ran to the bed and gazed at the face on the silken pillows of blue and gold. He had prepared himself for an immense change in his brother, due to his long and arduous recovery, but he could not believe that this emaciated man, hardly breathing, was his beloved Quintus. He appeared old and shrunken, very slight, diminished in body, barely raising the rugs which covered him. The flesh was gray, the sunken eyes closed in shadowy purple, the lips livid and fallen inwards, the brow bony and furrowed. A healed but twisted red scar ran from his left temple to his chin, and it glistened vilely.

  “No, no, it is not my brother,” whispered Marcus through his tears. His gaze traced the profile, aloof and strong, pure with its fleshlessness. Then he dropped to his knees and laid his head beside that of the unconscious man.

  “Quintus,” he said. “Quintus, can you hear me? Carissime, it is your brother, Marcus.”

  The snow hissed beyond the window; the winter wind growled against it. The votive light raised its scarlet beam, then dropped it. Marcus’ tears wet the pillow near his brother’s head. Quintus did not stir. Marcus took one cold and lifeless hand, all bones and heavy. He pressed it against his cheek. Then slowly the eyes fluttered open, the head turned and Marcus saw the far eyes, filmed and empty, the eyes of one who had looked upon death and still stared at it.

  “Carissime!” repeated Marcus. “Dearest of brothers!”

  He stared desperately at his brother’s skeletal face, and into the distant eyes. Then the hand in his moved only a little, like an infant’s hand, and into the eyes came the dimmest of gleams and the dry lips stirred. Marcus bent his ear to those lips and heard a sigh, “Marcus?”

  “He knows you!” said the physician, joyfully. “For the first time, he recognizes another! Ah, we shall restore him, deliver him to the arms of his family again.”

  “Beloved Quintus,” said Marcus, his tears falling down his cheeks. “Rest. Sleep.” He held the cold hands between his two warm palms, to give them some of his own strength. “I shall take you home. Our mother and father await you. You are safe.”

  The lips stirred again in the slightest of smiles, the very shadow of Quintus’ amiable grin, and suddenly the soldier sighed deeply and with contentment and fell asleep. But his fingers had crept about Marcus’ fingers and the pulse was stronger in them. Marcus felt a compassionate hand on his shoulder and heard Julius’ voice, “He will live now.”

  Marcus had determined before seeing his brother that he would take him at once from this house but now he knew it was impossible. Quintus’ spark of life was too faint, too flickering for any movement. Any stress would blow it out. Then he became conscious that two young soldiers, armed and helmeted, stood behind the bust of Mars, watchful and silent. He said to them, controlling his voice, “Are you my brother’s legionnaires?”

  They came forward, saluting. “We are, lord. We guard him day and night, listening to his breathing, and assisting the physician who never leaves him either. He is our officer. He is more to us than our own lives.”

  “Is—anyone else your captain?” asked Marcus.

  “None, lord, save he.” Marcus studied the resolute young faces, the ferocious temper of the black eyes. “We love him more than a brother.”

  “May Mars guard you, and the blessing of Zeus fall upon you,” said Marcus, and now he loved all soldiers.

  Julius, the subtile and intuitive, said affectionately, after hearing this exchange, “Be not anxious. There is none to harm him. He is under Sulla’s eye and protection, for Sulla loves him as a son.”

  Marcus and Julius returned to Sulla’s room. Sulla looked at Marcus’ face and his own grimaced in sympathy. “Quintus will live,” he said, and poured wine for the young man. “Before the first spring day arrives you will take him home. Had you seen him but a few days ago you should have thought him dying, or dead. Be of good heart.”

  Marcus was so undone that he could only stammer, “I am grateful, I am grateful.” He accepted the wine but before he drank he closed his eyes. Then he said, “I must be truthful. I fear for my brother, that Catilina is in this house.”

  Sulla laughed shortly. “That is absurd. Catilina saved his life. He is proud that Quintus will live. They are brothers-inarms, and soldiers love each other. Moreover, I am here. I have promised my physician his freedom if Quintus lives, and a large competence. Do you think he will jeopardize them?”

  Julius led Marcus into the atrium again. “The litter is waiting. Go, and give your noble mother the joyous news. I have much affection for her, for she was as a mother to me, herself, when I was a child. Convey to her my greetings.”

  Marcus glanced behind him, longingly, wanting to return to his brother. Then he saw, in the shadow of columns at the end of the atrium, the Lady Aurelia and Catilina. They did not see him or cared not that he saw them. They were embracing passionately, and Aurelia was murmuring and laughing, her lips against those of Lucius.

  “A pretty picture,” said Julius, idly. “Ah, how lovely is love.”

  When Marcus had gone, after Julius had embraced him again, Julius returned to Sulla and Pompey. “Did I not tell you, lord, how inflexible our Marcus i
s in rectitude?”

  Sulla smiled darkly. “How is it possible that such a one can be your friend, Caesar? What magic do you possess? Ah, if only Rome held more of his kind!”

  Pompey said, “I had held that Cicero in low esteem, for he is a civilian and a lawyer. Now I feel a kindness for him.”

  *From Cicero’s On Moral Duties.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Helvia listened to Marcus’ story of his encounter with Sulla in silence and in attentiveness. Only the welling gray and olive lights in her large eyes and the convulsive clasping of her hands revealed her joy that her favorite son was safe and under Sulla’s protection. She said, “I must go to Quintus tomorrow.”

  “I have so arranged it,” said Marcus. “When he has recovered sufficiently we shall bring him home. Then we must all go to Arpinum. I am weary.”

  “Yes,” she said. She put her hand on his arm. She continued: “I cannot hate that Sulla now. I am a mother, and I rejoice that Quintus is safe. Yet, you hate him still.”

  “I loathe what he represents,” said Marcus.

  “We must be grateful to Catilina also,” said Helvia.

  “He did only as a soldier must,” said Marcus. “Do you think that I can forget Livia, his wife, and what he has done to her? Between us there is irrevocable enmity.”

  “What shall we tell your father?” asked Helvia.

  Marcus considered, and he considered with cool bitterness. He shrank from the prospect of his father’s lyric cries of joy, his emotionalism, his lavish gratitude to God and man, his sweeping aside of all prudence. He said to his mother, “We must be cautious, for my father is frail and happiness can sometimes be as dangerous as grief for such as he. Let us go to him and tell him that we have had a message from Quintus through a comrade-at-arms, and that Quintus is well and will be with us soon.”

  Helvia, understanding, smiled a little. “That is best,” she said.

  But still Tullius’ joy was extravagant and childlike. His emaciated face was filled with light. He talked animatedly. God was good; man was good, even in these days. He embraced Marcus during one of his paeans of thanksgiving. “You will see, all will be well,” he declared. “Rome is still Rome. Man is still good. But there has come a division between us lately, Marcus. Your face, though young, is often too sombre, your brow often too clouded. Do not expect too much of the world, my son,” said the man who had always expected that the world would be better than it had the capacity to be, and was grieved when it had refuted him. “Why do we talk together no longer, Marcus?” he asked, piteously.

  “I have the support of the family,” said Marcus. “I am no longer a youth. I am a man and a lawyer. When I return to this house at night I am very tired.” He watched Tullius for an expression of sympathy, but Tullius only nodded. Men of affairs were necessarily frequently tired.

  The winter insensibly began to flow into early spring. Marcus sedulously practiced law. At times he was filled with despair and a sense of the ludicrous. He argued Constitutional law before magistrates while he well understood that the old Constitution had been abrogated and an iron one of mercilessness and militarism substituted. He invoked the honor of judges, when he was aware that honor was dead. Often he felt that he was a grotesque actor in a ridiculous comedy written by a madman. The judges, hypocrites all, would nod seriously, for they liked to believe that they were still men in a world that had become chaotic and filled with beasts. Sometimes Marcus could hardly refrain from bursting into wild laughter. Still, he thought, was it not better for a criminal and a liar to pretend to honor law and justice than to have him openly defy it and sneer at it?

  One day Marcus received a letter from his old friend, Noë ben Joel. “Rejoice with me, that I now have a daughter, dearly beloved,” wrote Noë. “An infant as sweet as Jasmine. My parents have decided not to return to Rome. But I shall be with you before the heat is on the city, and I am filled with delight.” Noë’s letters were always discreet, for instinctively he mistrusted other men with good reason. “We hear many rumors of Rome, and Sulla. But still, Rome can be no worse now than it ever was.”

  One day Marcus returned from the courts in particularly low spirits. A law clerk told him that a mysterious lady had come to Scaevola’s house to see him. “She would not leave her name or a message,” said the clerk, who was very young and delighted in mysteries. “She arrived in a curtained litter, and did not lift her hood, so I did not see her face. But her voice was not old. She murmured something about her will.”

  “She will return,” said Marcus, wearily, and removed his cloak and contemplated his table heaped with briefs and books.

  “I do not think so, Master,” said the clerk. “When I told her you were not here she lifted her hands in resignation, and she departed like one who has been refused a last reprieve.”

  “You have too much imagination,” said Marcus. “Ladies are frequently theatrical, particularly ladies who have wills in mind.”

  The clerk was stubborn. He had undertaken the study of law because he had believed it was inherently dramatic. He thought Marcus prosy. He said, “Still, the lady was young and even her cloak could not fully conceal the beauty of her body. Her hair under the hood must have been disordered, for one loose lock escaped the hood and flowed over her bosom. It had a glorious color, though it may have been dyed. Her cloak was of rich stuff, and her litter magnificent.”

  Marcus leaned against his table, and his heart jumped. He tried to control his awful excitement. He tried to tell himself that vivid color in any lady’s hair was not unusual in Rome these days, when women experimented with curious hues on their locks. Even ladies of great family in Rome now dyed their hair golden, for all it was a sign of prostitution, and evoked shouts of “Yellow Hair!” But Marcus sat down suddenly and stared at his clerk.

  “Not yellow hair, but hair like an autumn leaf?” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” said the clerk, happily. “And her voice was aristocratic and most sweet, though faint and slow.”

  Livia, thought Marcus. He fought against this incredible idea. Always, even when they had been very young in Arpinum, she had been aloof, strange, not to be reached by touch or voice, a nymph so elusive and enigmatic that she escaped from between one’s urgent hands like a mist. There had been a few rumors, coming to Marcus’ ears, over the years, that the wife of Catilina was mad, and certainly her manner in the temple, her exclamations, had been disordered and incoherent.

  Marcus thought furiously, and with growing emotion. There were many rumors about Lucius Sergius Catilina now, the aristocrat, the consort of the vilest creatures of Rome: the undisciplined sons and grandsons of slaves and freedmen, actors, criminal gladiators, pugilists, wrestlers, thieves, owners of many prostitutes, moneylenders to whom he owed a fortune, dicers, malcontents, gamblers, proprietors of horses and racing chariots, and all the vast and murky underworld of Rome. Roman law stated that a man became the owner of his wife’s fortune on marriage, and could dispose of it as he willed. But it also stated that in the event of a divorce the husband must return his wife’s dowry.

  Rumor said that Catilina had spent the last of his own fortune, and all of his wife’s. If he divorced her he must return her dowry. But rumor had not said he was to divorce Livia, for all of his widely known infatuation for the dissolute woman with the wicked child’s face, Aurelia Orestilla, “in whom no good man, at any time of her life commended anything but her beauty,” as Sallust was to remark later. Even the benefits Catilina had derived from his apparent devotion to Sulla had been dissipated with gay abandon. He had the patrician’s disdain for, or unawareness of, the rules of conduct of more plebeian men, which kept them in order. It was notorious that he and his friends, Cneius Piso and Q. Curius, lived a life in Rome that made even the most indulgent frown. Curius, though loved by Sulla, had lost his hereditary seat in the Senate. Piso was a profligate gambler of many vices. Marcus thought of these sinister three, as he remembered them.

  Aurelia Orestilla was a very
rich woman, and she loved Catilina. She would marry him, if he divorced Livia. But he must return Livia’s dowry. Why then did not Aurelia give Catilina the amount of the dowry, so he could be free? However, the rich, even when touched by the power of love, were prudent concerning their wealth. Too, it was possible that Aurelia did not know that Catilina had dispersed all his money. Wealthy ladies might dally in bed with paupers, but they rarely married them.

  Marcus’ thoughts rushed on. Livia’s fortune had been spent by her husband. But in the event she divorced Catilina she would demand that her dowry be returned, which she could dispose of in her will. In that event Catilina’s bankruptcy would be exposed, and Aurelia would be lost to him. Moreover, the law would be punitive. Sulla invariably proclaimed that he had restored the dignity of law in Rome. An exigent man, he would not protect Catilina, for all he was a soldier.

  Marcus dismissed his clerk and became absorbed in his thoughts. If Livia divorced Catilina, or he her, then she would be free for another marriage. If he, Marcus, could just reach her! He would tell her that her dowry was of no consequence to him, that he would consider that Venus, herself, had stooped to honor him if Livia consented to be his wife. He would take her and her son to Arpinum, and they would live in peace and joy and ecstasy. He clenched his hands together in the excess of his rapturous thoughts. The spring day invaded his room like a glory, like a shouted promise of delight and hope. He thought of Livia in his arms, her lips against his. He would remove from Livia’s memory all the horror of her marriage to Catilina, all her agony. He would hold the elusive nymph to his breast and know the sweetness of her kiss. He sprang to his feet, and looked about him wildly.

  He had thought that he had put some restraint on his thoughts and his longings for Livia. Now he knew that the restraint had been false, that the fury of his love had only waited under his self-control for this moment. What had his life been, all these years, but a dullness and a monotony? He had not been alive at all. He had pursued duty, but duty was a grim and penurious mistress, with no flowers in her hands, no light in her hair, no song in her eyes. Men who espoused only duty became eunuchs. They begot no poetry, no grandeur, no splendid deeds. They lived in a gray cell, barred against the morning, and their fingers were smudged with dust.