A Pillar of Iron

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I agree,” said Julius again. He clapped his hands loudly on his knees, and could force himself to laugh. “What a comedy this is!”

  “Let it remain one,” said Marcus, and stood up and fastened his cloak. “I have refrained from arresting you and delivering you and your companions up to justice not out of fear of you but because I fear the rule of the military more. One remembers Sulla and his iron dictatorship. I recall Sulla with some affection, for he was a true soldier. But, Caesar, there are some generals who are not in the least like Sulla. They too lust for power. I have chosen the lesser evil.”

  He was encountered by Aurelia in the hall. He took her hand quickly and pressed it. She gazed in fear at his face and whispered, “All is well, Marcus?”

  “All is well, dear Aunt,” he replied kindly. And he added to himself, At least temporarily.

  Julius looked at Crassus, Pompey, Curius, Piso, and Catilina. “I told you all it was a hasty plot from the very beginning. A miserable one, as Pompey warned us. It was your impatience, Catilina, and yours, Piso and Curius, which forced us into it. We shall succeed, eventually, but not by childish recklessness and impulsiveness and boyish enthusiasm. We must move with a semblance of law and the weight of inexorable dignity. That will not come tomorrow. What we do must appear rightful, and in the course of human events and inevitable history. Murdering duly elected Consuls! Was there ever such a ludicrous idea! Piso and Curius: You were the ones to suggest it. You communicated your feverish imaginings to Catilina, who then challenged us. Now we see the whole absurdity in full.”

  “I cannot wait,” said Catilina through his teeth. “I have already alerted my followers.”

  But Julius ignored him, and shook his head, smiling, at Piso and Curius.

  “Crassus and Pompey and I never believed in success for a moment. I am glad Cicero discovered it all. He has done us a great service. Still, I am interested to know who sent Cicero that anonymous letter. Only we here knew of the plot.”

  “You, Caesar?” said Catilina in a furious voice.

  “I?” Julius looked at him with contempt.

  Catilina flung himself from the chair. They were all in the house of Crassus. “Someone did!” cried Catilina. “I will have his life!”

  “I wrote him no letter,” said the impassive Pompey. “I leave anonymous letters to cowardly rascals.”

  “I wrote him none,” said Crassus, with a faint dark smile. “Nor I. Nor I,” said the others.

  “Still, he knew,” said Julius. He turned to Catilina. “Murder Cicero, and you will have all Rome at our throats.”

  He said in the silence that followed, “Now, let us consider the way of sensible and courageous men, and not boys.”

  Later, when he was alone with Crassus and Pompey, Julius said, “I should order Catilina’s murder at once if he did not have that unspeakable rabble at his hand. He should have been poisoned, as he poisoned his wife and child, long ago before he became so powerful. Now we have to reckon with him.”

  “And, there are his friends, the fair-haired Piso and the drunken Curius,” said Crassus. “Am I dictator, or am I the tool of these reprobates?”

  “A dictator, dear lord, is the carrier of reprobates always,” said Julius. “He collects them as a great ship collects barnacles. But the day will come when we can scrape them away! After they have served our purpose.”

  *This whole speech by Catilina is no invention or fiction of the author’s. It is quoted verbatim from the writings of Sallust, who was present on this occasion.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  When Tullia, his daughter, had been born, the lucent light of Greece still illuminated Marcus’ thoughts, so that in spite of his deeper convictions he felt there was hope in the future and that many things could be accomplished by himself and his country which would be worthy. He had, then, been young, and the birth of his daughter seemed to him the very living continuity and brightness of life, the finger of hope pointing vividly to years still unborn, the ever-renewed promise of mornings as fresh as the rose.

  Now, this warm summer day Terentia lay in labor and Marcus tried to think with some interest of the coming child. He had joyfully anticipated the birth of Tullia; he had held her in his arms with pride and love. He shrank from the very thought of his second born, who had not been begotten in affection and hope but only in guilt and sadness. He said to his child, Why did I beget you, poor forlorn one, who deserves better of me? I do not long to see your small face. I have no future to offer you but your disintegrating and violated country. I have no joy to give you, out of my middle-aged heart which lies in darkness and fear. Even my father had more to lay at my feet than I have to lay at yours. Forgive me, that I have given you life.

  He sat in his gardens and did not hear the physician approaching him, and he started when the man spoke. “Lord, the Lady Terentia has given birth to a son! She asks for a moment with you.”

  A son, thought Marcus, heavily rising and going into his fine big house. My son, Marcus Tullius Cicero. Terentia, glowing with triumph and appearing almost young again, greeted him with joyous tears and showed him the child on her arm. “Marcus!” she cried. “I—we—have a son!” There was no sadness, no doubts, no fear in her. She thought of life as a thing which never moved, never changed, and was never ominous. The birth of her child was her personal victory.

  Marcus looked at the face of his son. He thought it appeared old and exhausted, as if the burden of its coming life had already drained it. Marcus bent over the child, and then he noticed the heavy marking and prominence of his brows, the firm little lips, the strongly molded chin, and he thought, The child resembles my grandfather! For the first time the bright wing of forgotten hope touched his heart. Romans were still being born.

  Marcus then suggested to Terentia, whose sallow cheek he had just kissed, that slaves be sent to the house of Quintus to announce the news. Terentia, raising an eyebrow and smiling indulgently, informed her husband that messengers had already been sent by her. “How I pity Quintus and Pomponia for the son they have!” she exclaimed. “Mischievous and sly, cruel and heartless even for his age!” This was quite true, but Marcus frowned and drew away from his wife. His newborn son opened his eyes, and they were a dark and shining blue with a star in their depths.

  Marcus encountered the young Tullia in the atrium, waiting for him. Seeing her, he took her in his arms and she looked up at him with tender mockery. “Am I still the first in your heart, my father?” she asked. “Always,” he replied, and kissed the soft pallor of her cheek. Then he said, “But I shall not always be first in yours.”

  In the coming days he was felicitated on the birth of his son. Grateful clients sent lavish gifts; relatives of the Helvii family, forgetting their innate frugality, became prodigal, and Terentia’s own relatives competed with each other. “It is as if they are signaling approval of me,” said Marcus, “after a long dereliction and an obstinate refusal to have a son.” Julius Caesar came in person with a purse of rubies, the purse itself being woven of gold. It was an awesome gift, and considering that Marcus and Julius had not met since that winter day at Julius’ house, it was in the nature of a peace offering.

  “I see that you have perfectly recovered your health, Julius,” said Marcus. The younger man raised a black eyebrow. “No doubt,” continued Marcus, “because I am still alive.”

  Julius answered blandly, “Is it never possible for you Cicero, to speak directly?”

  “Come,” said Marcus, smiling. “You are not that obtuse. By the way, when will the fair Pompeia bare you a son also?”

  Julius, who was yearly becoming more splendid, sighed and said, “She remains obdurately infertile. I am fated, it appears, never to have a son.” Marcus raised his own eyebrows, thinking of a certain young Brutus, but he held his tongue. After all, it was not every day that so magnificent a gesture as this gift was made. While they were speaking in Marcus’ garden, which was thronged with guests eating and drinking and gossiping, Pompey the Magnus arrive
d. At once the perceptive Marcus discerned that an apparent coolness existed between him and Julius, for though they embraced, their greetings were indifferent if polite. Ah, thought Marcus, it is always so when ambitious men grow suspicious of each other. But he felt kindly toward Pompey, who had saved his life, and accepted his gift for the infant with real gratitude, happy that he could indirectly express another gratitude of which he could not speak. As Marcus was rarely effusive, the sharp-eyed Julius felt a query pluck at his sleeve. It were as though Marcus were greeting one who was dear to him or who had conferred a great honor upon him. Pompey’s broad and impassive face lighted also, and his hand lingered for a moment on Marcus’ arm, and his full gray eyes beamed agreeably.

  Then Pompey turned to Julius and said, “Where is your slave, Mark Antony, that fatuous young man, Caesar?”

  “He is recovering today from a feast in my house last night,” said Julius. He paused. “And how fares my daughter, your wife, Pompey?”

  The air was soft and filled with the heat and fragrance and shine of summer, but Marcus, suddenly alert, thought that he had heard the clash of open swords under the din of laughter and voices in the gardens. Julius continued with lightness, “Though you may consider Antony fatuous, dear friend, he has notable qualities. He is an excellent soldier, and has a beguiling manner, and is a marvelous success with the ladies, endowments which must not be despised.”

  The mere presence of these men reminded Marcus acutely of the terrible plot against Rome and himself which had almost succeeded, and melancholy came to him. It seemed to him that the sun was less bright, and color less intense, and that his son was threatened. He had lived long enough with his premonitions not to scorn them any longer, and alarm lifted like a black wing before his eyes. Was the plot surely over at all? He knew these men well, and Crassus, and Catilina, and even Clodius. Why had he thought, these past months, that all was tranquil again, danger past, and a measure of peace restored? Men like Caesar were sleepless, and could wait like tigers in the dark of the forest for a larger prey to appear, if the smaller had escaped.

  Marcus, reflecting, did not know that his face had become very white and that his eyes had fixed themselves on a space as if seeing some terror unseen by others. He did not know that Julius and Pompey were both regarding him with a quick interest and gravity, and he started when Julius said, “What is that our augur sees, that has darkened the happiness of his expression?”

  Marcus started, then flushed. “I am no augur, Julius,” he replied with some vexation. “I was merely considering how dangerous a world this is into which I have brought a son.”

  “Is it not always dangerous?” asked Julius, smiling again but still watching his friend. “It was dangerous to our fathers, also.”

  “They did not know traitors,” said Marcus, and then was appalled at his own words which had been uttered in his own gardens to his own guests. Pompey and Caesar exchanged a glance, and all at once the coolness between them disappeared, and they laughed.

  “Our dear Marcus!” exclaimed Julius. “He is obsessed with plots. He is not only a praetor, but he was born one. Tell me, Marcus, what plot do you suspect now?”

  “A larger one than your conspiracy of before, Caesar.”

  “I know of no conspiracy, Marcus.”

  “Nor,” said Pompey, with an easy gesture, “do I.” His gray eyes were no longer beaming; it was as if some glaucous veil had fallen over them. So, thought Marcus, this time I shall not be warned. He tried to shake free of his despondency, but the small face of his son rose before him and his alarm cried louder, as a disturbed flock of crows cry as they wheel before the sun.

  “It is time for our daughter to be married,” said Terentia, after the family had returned from its annual sojourn on the island. Terentia saw none of the beauty of the island; she busied herself solely with the counting of sheep and the ordering of the slaves. She was an urban woman and grudged the weeks in the country.

  “She is only a child,” said Marcus, and then he said somewhat pettishly, “You, my wife, were a mature woman when we were married and not one just past her puberty.” Then he was ashamed of himself, for Terentia’s face, now so unattractive, colored. Her eyes, once mild and retiring, and her best feature, had narrowed and hardened over the years so that they resembled brown crystals between brownish lids.

  “I had family affairs to concern me, and the care of a younger sister,” she said.

  Because her tone was wounded and her hurt sincere, Marcus became penitent and wished to please her. “Let us discuss a husband, then,” he said. “Who?”

  “Young C. Piso Frugi,” said Terentia at once. “He is of an excellent family, and is seventeen years old, and his grandfather has left him a fortune. He will also inherit from his own parents, who are friends of my family.”

  Marcus knew the young man, who seemed fair enough of face and patrician enough of manner, but otherwise not distinguished. He considered only a prince or potentate worthy of his beloved Tullia.

  “Or,” said Terentia, who was very ambitious, “there is young Dolabella, who is a youth of much brilliance and of one of the greatest families of Rome.”

  “The gods forbid,” cried Marcus with real horror, and Terentia smiled with satisfaction. She gave a resigned sigh. “Then, it is Piso Frugi,” she said, and it was not until a little later that Marcus realized that Terentia, as usual, had cast a loaded die against him.

  Terentia, having won, continued: “But we shall delay the marriage until you are Consul of Rome.”

  “Then the marriage will be forever delayed,” said Marcus, restored to good humor.

  He was devoted to his children. Like most fathers he considered his own offspring extraordinary. Little Marcus, he was convinced, would be a great philosopher, though the child each day was displaying a certain obstinacy which did not augur well for a pale man of the colonnades. Terentia delighted in him. “He will be a great soldier and athlete,” she said, and Marcus, so perceptive when considering others outside his family, laughed at her. “He will speak Greek fluently before he is three,” he told his wife. He did not really see the strong color in little Marcus’ face, and the new laughter in the infant’s eyes. He told himself he had seen the grave soul of his son when the child had only just emerged from the womb.

  “You have seen your father?” said Terentia, as she nursed her son with the outright honesty of an “old” Roman mother. “Surely Quintus was too much alarmed when he wrote you while we were on the island?”

  Marcus was ashamed again. Quintus had written him twice during the summer, saying that Tullius was “declining hourly and the physician says that his heart will not endure much longer.” But Marcus had told himself that he could not remember a time from his own childhood that Tullius had not been “dying,” and that it was an old story, and the Tullii lived to great ages. But the truth was that Marcus did not want to think of his father, or even to see him. The old sense of guilt and exasperation was always alive in him when his father was mentioned. He had seen him only twice during Terentia’s pregnancy, and only once thereafter. Tullius had congratulated him in a faint voice, and with imploring eyes, when the little Marcus had been born, but Marcus had had the impression that Tullius was not fully aware—as he had never been aware—of natural events, and that the birth of another grandson had not been a momentous occasion to him. Resentfully, Marcus had told himself: My father was always straining after the stars and forgetting the boulders in his path, and had never truly placed his feet upon the earth. As Marcus, himself, suspected that this was not entirely true, his own sense of guilt only exasperated him the more. It was too painful for him to analyze his own emotions with regard to Tullius, for then he would remember days when his father had appeared to him as a pale and slender god, with lighted eyes and a tender hand and a voice filled with love and understanding. But one’s childish impressions are always a delusion, he would remind himself, and would resolutely think of a Tullius who had depended upon a father for s
trength, a wife for comfort and guidance, a son for paternal solicitude and help, and a younger son, at the last (with his wife) for a parentage. Quintus had taken his father into his house as one takes an orphaned child, and had sturdily nurtured him and with his particular easy affection.

  Marcus said, in reply to Terentia’s questions, “I have never known a time in my life, from the earliest childhood, when my father was not expiring. If it was not congestion of the lungs it was malaria. Quintus knew of the day of our returning from the island, and three days have elapsed, and we have heard no word. Were my father in danger we should know it.”

  But Terentia had great sense of family. She said, with reproof, “Nevertheless, as you have not seen your father for months, you should go to him at once.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Marcus, impatiently. “My father is only sixty years old, and I assure you that he will survive for much longer.”

  But the next morning, a cold autumnal dawn, Marcus received an imperative summons from his brother, Quintus. Tullius was on his deathbed, and unconscious. Marcus rose, not believing the news in the least. But he went to the house of Quintus on the Carinae, yawning in his litter and shivering a little, and feeling impatient. Beyond the curtains of the litter the mighty city was awakening and the thunder of traffic and feet and voices had begun. It was an old and familiar sound, and no longer exciting. That is the trouble with growing older, thought Marcus gloomily. There is no more newness in the world, no more surmise. No more wonder. What can console one for the loss of these? Life for me now is only a retreat, and what is a sunrise for the young is a sunset for me. As for adventure, I can no longer expect it, if indeed it ever came to me at all. After forty, a man is hardly alive. I live now only for my children, and it must be enough.

  Marcus was still yawning when his litter arrived at the old house on the Carinae, which was at once so familiar to him and yet now so strange. It was a house of dreams and of the past, and every room was known to him, and the garden, and it was full of memories clear and sharp, or dimmed and unreal. He was always a little astonished when he saw it again, as if he had believed that it no longer existed, as his childhood and his youth no longer existed. Yet here he had wept for Livia, and here his grandfather had died, and here his future had seemed full of excitement and passion and hope. Here his old friends had walked, friends gone forever. The house remained. Yet it was not quite the house he remembered, and he could not explain it. It breathed the very subtlety of time.