Lustrum

by Robert Harris

  The next day, the public assembly voted the bill of Servius and Cato into law. When Cicero returned home, he was met by Terentia. Her face was white and trembling but her voice was calm. She had just come from the Temple of the Good Goddess, she said. She had some terrible news. Cicero must brace himself. Her friend, that noble lady who had come to her to warn her of the plot against his life, had that morning been discovered dead in the alley beside her house. Her head had been smashed in from behind by a hammer, her throat cut and her organs removed.

  As soon as he had recovered from the shock, Cicero summoned Quintus and Atticus. They came at once and listened, appalled. Their first concern was for the consul's safety. It was agreed that a couple of men would stay in the house overnight and patrol the downstairs rooms. Others would escort him in public during the day. He would vary his route to and from the senate. A fierce dog would be acquired to guard the door.

  'And how long must I go on living like a prisoner? Until the end of my life?'

  'No,' responded Terentia, displaying her rare gift for getting to the heart of the matter, 'until the end of Catilina's life, because as long as he's in Rome, you'll never be safe.'

  He saw the wisdom of this, reluctantly grunted his assent, and Atticus went off to send a message to the Order of Knights. 'But why did he have to kill her?' Cicero wondered aloud. 'If he suspected she was my informant, why couldn't he simply have warned Curius not to speak openly in front of her?'

  'Because,' said Quintus, 'he likes killing people.'

  Cicero thought for a while, then turned to me. 'Send one of the lictors to find Curius, and tell him I want to see him, straight away.'

  'You mean to invite into your house someone who is part of a plot to murder you?' exclaimed Quintus. 'You must be mad!'

  'I won't be alone. You'll be here. He probably won't come. But if he does, at least we may find out something.' He glanced around at our worried expressions. 'Well? Does anyone have a better idea?'

  Nobody did, so I went out to the lictors, who were playing bones in a corner of the atrium, and ordered the most junior to find Curius and bring him back to the house.

  It was one of those endless hot summer days when the sun seems reluctant to sink, and I remember how still it was, the motes of dust motionless in the shafts of fading light. On such evenings, when the only sounds even in the city are the drone of insects and the soft trilling of the birds, Rome seems older than anywhere in the world; as old as the earth itself; entirely beyond time. How impossible it was to believe that forces were at work at its very heart – in the order of the senate – that might destroy it! We sat around quietly, too tense to eat the meal that had been set upon the table. The additional bodyguards ordered by Atticus arrived and stationed themselves in the vestibule. When, after an hour or two, the lengthening shadows made the house gloomy, and the slaves went round lighting the candles, I assumed that Curius either had not been found, or had refused to come. But then at last we heard the front door open and slam shut, and the lictor came in with the senator, who looked around him suspiciously – first at Cicero, then at Atticus, Quintus, Terentia and me, and then back at Cicero again. He certainly was a handsome figure: one had to give him that. Gambling was his vice, not drink, and I suppose throwing dice leaves less of a mark upon a man.

  'Well, Curius,' said Cicero quietly, 'this is a terrible business.'

  'I'll talk to you alone, not in front of others.'

  'Not talk in front of others? By the gods, you'll talk in front of the entire Roman people if I say so! Did you kill her?'

  'Damn you, Cicero!' Curius swore, and lunged towards the consul, but Quintus was on his feet in a moment and blocked his way.

  'Steady, Senator,' he warned.

  'Did you kill her?' repeated Cicero.

  'No!'

  'But you know who did?'

  'Yes! You!' Once more he tried to push his way past Quintus, but Cicero's brother was an old soldier, and stopped him easily. 'You killed her, you bastard,' he shouted again, struggling against Quintus's restraining arms, 'by making her your spy!'

  'I'm prepared to bear my share of guilt,' replied Cicero, gazing at him coolly. 'Will you?'

  Curius muttered something inaudible, pulled himself free of Quintus and turned away.

  'Does Catilina know you're here?'

  Curius shook his head.

  'Well, that at least is something. Now listen to me. I'm offering you a chance, if you've brains enough to take it. You've hitched your fate to a madman. If you didn't know it before, you must realise it now. How did Catilina know she'd been to see me?'

  Again Curius mumbled something no one could hear. Cicero cupped his hand to his ear. 'What? What are you saying?'

  'Because I told him!' Curius glared at Cicero with tearful eyes. He struck his breast with his fist. 'She told me, and I told him!' And he struck himself again – hard, hard, hard blows – in the manner of some Eastern holy man lamenting the dead.

  'I need to know everything. Do you understand me? I need names, places, plans, times. I need to know who exactly will strike at me, and in what location. It's treason if you don't tell me.'

  'And treachery if I do!'

  'Treachery against evil is a virtue.' Cicero got to his feet. He put his hands on Curius's shoulders and stared hard into his face. 'When your lady came to see me, it was your safety as much as mine that was her concern. She made me promise, on the lives of my children, that I would grant you immunity if this plot was ever exposed. Think of her, Curius, lying there – beautiful, brave, broken. Be worthy of her love and her memory, and act now as you know she would have wanted.'

  Curius wept; indeed, I could hardly restrain my own tears, such was the pitiful vision Cicero conjured up: that, and the promise of immunity, did the trick. When Curius had pulled himself together sufficiently, he promised to get word to Cicero the moment he heard any definite news of Catilina's plans. Thus Cicero's thin line of information from the enemy's camp remained intact.

  He did not have long to wait.

  The following day was election eve, and Cicero was due to preside over the senate. But because of the fear of an ambush, he had to follow a circuitous route, along the Esquiline and down to the Via Sacra. The journey took twice as long as usual, and it was mid-afternoon by the time we arrived. His curule chair was placed on the doorstep and he sat there in the shade, reading through some letters, surrounded by his lictors, waiting for the auguries to be taken. Several senators wandered over to ask if he had heard what Catilina was supposed to have said that morning. Apparently he had addressed a meeting in his house in the most inflammatory terms. Cicero replied that he had not, and sent me off to see if I could discover anything. I walked around the senaculum and approached one or two senators with whom I was on friendly terms. The place was certainly buzzing with rumours. Some said that Catilina had called for the richest men in Rome to be murdered, others that he had urged an uprising. I jotted a few sentences down, and was just returning to Cicero when Curius brushed past me and slipped into my hand a note. He was sickly white with terror. 'Give this to the consul,' he whispered, and before I could reply he was gone. I looked around. A hundred or more senators were talking in small groups. As far as I could tell, no one had seen the encounter.

  I hurried over to Cicero and handed him the message. I bent to his ear and whispered, 'It's from Curius.'

  He opened it, studied it for a moment, and his face tensed. He passed it up to me. It said, You will be murdered tomorrow during the elections. At just that moment the augurs came up and declared that the auspices were propitious. 'Are you certain about that?' asked Cicero in a grim voice. Solemnly they assured him that they were. I could see him weighing in his mind what best to do. Finally he stood and indicated to his lictors that they should pick up his chair, and he followed them into the cool shadows of the senate chamber. The senators filed in behind us. 'Do we know what Catilina actually said this morning?'

  'Not in any detail.'

 
As we walked up the aisle he said to me quietly, 'I fear this warning may have some substance to it. If you think about it, it's the one time when they can be sure precisely where I'll be – on the Field of Mars, presiding over the ballot. And with all those thousands of people milling around, how easy it would be for ten or twenty armed men to hack their way through to me and take me down.' By this time we had reached the dais and the benches were filling. He glanced back, searching the white-robed figures. 'Is Quintus here?'

  'No, he's canvassing.' Indeed, a great many senators were absent. All the candidates for consul, and most of those for tribune and praetor – including Quintus and Caesar – had chosen to spend the afternoon meeting voters rather than attending to the business of the state. Only Cato was in his place, reading his treasury accounts. Cicero grimaced and tightened his fist, crushing Curius's message. He stood that way for quite some time until he became conscious that the house was watching him. He mounted the steps to his chair.

  'Gentlemen,' he announced, 'I have just been informed of a grave and credible conspiracy against the republic, involving the murder of your leading consul.' There was a gasp. 'In order that the evidence may be examined and debated, I propose that the start of the elections tomorrow be postponed, until the nature of this threat has been properly assessed. Are there any objections?' In the excited murmur that followed, no clear voice could be heard. 'In that case, the senate will stand adjourned until first light tomorrow,' and with these words he swept down the aisle followed by his lictors.

  Rome was now plunged into a state of great confusion. Cicero went straight back to his house and immediately set about trying to find out precisely what Catilina had said, dispatching clerks and messengers to potential informants across the city. I was ordered to fetch Curius from his house on the Aventine. At first his doorkeeper refused to admit me – the senator was seeing no one, he said – but I sent a message to him on behalf of Cicero and eventually was allowed in. Curius was in a state of nervous collapse, torn between his fear of Catilina and his anxiety not to be implicated in the murder of a consul. He flatly refused to go with me and meet Cicero face to face, saying it was too dangerous. It was only with great difficulty that I persuaded him to describe the meeting at Catilina's house.

  All Catilina's henchmen were there, he said: some eleven senators in total, including himself. There were also half a dozen members of the Order of Knights – he named Nobilior, Statilius, Capito and Cornelius – as well as the ex-centurion Manlius and scores of malcontents from Rome and all across Italy. The scene was dramatic. The house was stripped entirely bare of possessions – Catilina was bankrupt and the place mortgaged – apart from a silver eagle that had once been the consul Marius's personal standard when he fought against the patricians. As for what Catilina had actually said, according to Curius it went something like this (I took it down as he dictated it):

  'Friends, ever since Rome rid itself of kings it has been ruled by a powerful oligarchy that has had control of everything – all the offices of state, the land, the army, the money raked in by taxes, our provinces overseas. The rest of us, however hard we try, are just a crowd of nobodies. Even those of us who are high-born have to bow and scrape to men who in a properly run state would stand in awe of us. You know who I mean. All influence, power, office and wealth are in their hands; all they leave for us is danger, defeat, prosecutions and poverty.

  'How long, brave comrades, will we endure it? Is it not better to die courageously and have done with it, than to drag out lives of misery and dishonour as the playthings of other men's insolence? But it need not be like this. We have the strength of youth and stout hearts, while our enemies are enfeebled by age and soft living. They have two, three or four houses joined together, when we have not a home to call our own. They have pictures and statues and fish ponds, while we have destitution and debts. Misery is all we have to look forward to.

  'Awake, then! Before you glimmers the chance for liberty – for honour and glory and the prizes of victory! Use me in whatever way you like, as a commander or as a soldier in your ranks, and remember the rich spoils that can be won in war! This is what I shall do for you if I am consul. Refuse to be slaves! Be masters! And let us show the world at last that we are men!'

  That, or something very like it, was the burden of Catilina's speech, and after he had delivered it he withdrew to an inner room for a more private discussion with his closest comrades, including Curius. Here, with the door firmly closed, he reminded them of their solemn blood oath, declared that the hour had come to strike, and proposed that they should kill Cicero on the Field of Mars during the confusion of the elections the following day. Curius claimed to have stayed only for part of this discussion before slipping away to pass on the warning to Cicero. He refused to swear an affidavit confirming this story. He absolutely insisted he would not be a witness. His name had to be kept out of it at all costs. 'You must tell the consul that if he calls on me, I shall deny everything.'

  By the time I got back to Cicero's house, the door was barred and only those visitors who were known and trusted were being admitted. A crowd had gathered in the street. When I went into his study, Quintus and Atticus were already there. I relayed Curius's message, and showed Cicero his description of what Catilina had said. 'Now I have him!' he said. 'He's gone too far this time!' And he sent for the leaders of the senate. At least a dozen came during the course of that afternoon and evening, among them Hortensius and Catulus. Cicero showed them what Catilina was supposed to have said, along with the unsigned death threat. But when he refused to divulge his source ('I have given my word'), I could see that several – particularly Catulus, who had at one time been a great friend of Catilina – became sceptical. Indeed, knowing Cicero's cleverness, they obviously wondered if he might be making the whole thing up in order to discredit his enemy. Unnerved by their reaction, Cicero began to lose confidence.

  There are times in politics, as in life generally, when whatever one does is wrong; this was just such an occasion. To have gone ahead with the elections and said nothing would have been a mad gamble. On the other hand, postponing them without adequate evidence now looked jittery. Cicero passed a sleepless night worrying about what he should say in the senate, and for once in the morning it showed. He looked like a man under appalling strain.

  That day when the senate reassembled there was not an inch of space on the benches. Senators lined the walls and crammed the gangways. The auspices had been read and the doors opened soon after daybreak. It was the earliest session that anyone could remember. Yet already the summer heat was building. The question was: would the consular election go ahead or not? Outside, the forum was packed with citizens, mostly Catilina's supporters, and their angry chants, demanding to be allowed to vote, could be heard in the chamber. Beyond the city walls on the Field of Mars the sheep pens and ballot urns were set up and waiting. Inside the senate house it felt as if two gladiators were about to fight. As Cicero stood, I could see Catilina in his place on the front bench, his cronies around him, as coolly insolent as ever, with Caesar close by, his arms folded.

  'Gentlemen,' Cicero began, 'no consul lightly intervenes in the sacred business of an election – especially not a consul such as I, who owes everything he has to election by the Roman people. But yesterday I was given warning of a plot to desecrate this most holy ritual – a plot, an intrigue, a conspiracy of desperate men, to take advantage of the tumult of polling day to murder your consul, foment chaos in the city, and so enable them to take control of the state. This despicable scheme was hatched not in some foreign land, or low criminal's hovel, but in the heart of the city, in the house of Sergius Catilina.'

  The senators listened in absolute stillness as Cicero read out the anonymous note from Curius ('You will be murdered tomorrow during the elections'), followed by Catilina's words ('How long, brave comrades, will we endure it? …') and when he had finished there was not a pair of eyes directed anywhere other than at Catilina. 'At the end of this sediti
ous rant,' concluded Cicero, 'Catilina retired with others to consider, not for the first time, how best I might be killed. Such is the extent of my know ledge, gentlemen, which I felt it my duty to lay before you, so that you might decide how best to proceed.'

  He sat down, and after a pause someone called out, 'Answer!' and then others took up the cry, angrily hurling the word like a javelin at Catilina: 'Answer! Answer!' Catilina gave a shrug, and a kind of half-smile, and heaved himself to his feet. He was a huge man. His physical presence alone was sufficient to intimidate the chamber into silence.

  'Back in the days when Cicero's ancestors were still fucking goats, or however it is they amuse themselves in the mountains he comes from—' He was interrupted by laughter; some of it, I have to say, from the patrician benches around Catulus and Hortensius. 'Back in those days,' he continued, once the racket had died down, 'when my ancestors were consuls and this republic was younger and more virile, we were led by fighters, not lawyers. Our learned consul here accuses me of sedition. If that is what he chooses to call it, sedition it is. For my part, I call it the truth. When I look at this republic, gentlemen, I see two bodies. One,' he said, gesturing to the patricians and from them up to Cicero, sitting dead still in his chair, 'is frail, with a weak head. The other' – he pointed to the door and the forum beyond it – 'is strong, but has no head at all. I know which body I prefer, and it won't go short of a head as long as I'm alive!'