Lustrum

by Robert Harris

  'If you must – in the strictest confidence. And you may tell them – with Aulus here as a witness – that no harm will befall Marcus Tullius Cicero as long as Pompey the Great still breathes in Rome.'

  Cicero was very silent and thoughtful as we walked home. Instead of going straight to his library, he took several turns around his garden in the darkness, while I sat at a table nearby with a lamp and quickly wrote down as much of Pompey's conversation as I could remember. When I had finished, Cicero told me to come with him, and we went next door to see Metellus Celer.

  I was worried that Clodia might be present, but there was no sign of her. Instead Celer was sitting in his dining room alone, lit by a solitary candelabrum, chewing morosely on a cold chicken leg, with a jug of wine beside him. Cicero refused a drink for the second time that evening and asked me to read out what Pompey had just said. Celer was predictably outraged.

  'So I shall have Further Gaul – which is where the fighting will have to be done – and he Nearer, yet each of us is to have two legions?'

  'Yes, except that he will hold his province for an entire lustrum, while you will have to give up yours by the end of the year. You may be sure that if there's any glory to be had, Caesar will have it all.'

  Celer let out a bellow of rage and shook his fists. 'He must be stopped! I don't care if there are three of them running this republic. There are hundreds of us!'

  Cicero sat down on the couch beside him. 'We don't need to beat all three,' he said quietly. 'Just one will do. You heard what Pompey said. If we can somehow take care of Caesar, I don't think he'll do much about it. All Pompey cares about is his own dignity.'

  'And what about Crassus?'

  'Once Caesar is off the scene, he and Pompey won't be allies for another hour – they can't abide one another. No: Caesar is the stone that holds this arch together. Remove him and the structure falls.'

  'So what do you propose we should do?'

  'Arrest him.'

  Celer gave Cicero a sharp look. 'But Caesar's person is inviolable, not once, but twice – first as chief priest, and then as consul.'

  'You really think he'd worry about the law if he were in our place? When his every act as consul has been illegal? We either stop him now, while there's time, or we leave it until he's picked us all off one by one and there's nobody left to oppose him.'

  I was amazed by what I was hearing. Until that afternoon I am sure that Cicero would never have entertained for a moment the thought of such a desperate action. It was a measure of the chasm he now saw opening up before him that he should actually have given voice to it.

  'How would this be done?' asked Celer.

  'You're the one with an army. How many men do you have?'

  'I have two cohorts camped outside the city, preparing to march with me to Gaul.'

  'How loyal are they?'

  'To me? Absolutely.'

  'Would they be willing to seize Caesar from his residence after dark and hold him somewhere?'

  'No question, if I gave the order. But surely it would be better just to kill him?'

  'No,' said Cicero. 'There would have to be a trial. On that I insist. I want no “accidents”. We would have to put through a bill to set up a special tribunal to try him for his illegal actions. I'd lead for the prosecution. Everything would have to be open and clear.'

  Celer looked dubious. 'As long as you agree there could only be one verdict.'

  'And Pompey would have to approve – don't imagine for a moment you could go back to your old habit of opposing him on everything he wants. We would have to guarantee that his men could keep their farms, confirm his Eastern settlements – maybe even give him a second consulship.'

  'That's a lot to swallow. Wouldn't we just be swapping one tyrant for another?'

  'No,' said Cicero with great force. 'Caesar is of a different category of man altogether. Pompey merely wants to rule the world. Caesar longs to smash it to pieces and remake it in his own image. And there's something else.' He paused, searched for the words.

  'What? He's cleverer than Pompey, I'll give him that.'

  'Oh yes, yes, of course, he's a hundred times cleverer. No, it's not that – it's more – I don't know – there's a kind of divine recklessness about him – a contempt, if you like, for the world itself – as if he thinks it's all a joke. Anyway, this – whatever it is: this quality – it makes him hard to stop.'

  'That's all very philosophical, but I'll tell you how we stop him. It's easy. We put a sword through his throat, and you'll find he'll die the same as any man. But we have to do it to him as he would do it to us – fast, and ruthlessly, and when he least expects it.'

  'When would you suggest?'

  'Tomorrow night.'

  'No, that's too soon,' said Cicero. 'We can't do this entirely alone. We shall have to bring in others.'

  'Then Caesar is bound to get to hear of it. You know how many informants he has.'

  'I'm only talking about half a dozen men, if that. All reliable.'

  'Who?'

  'Lucullus. Hortensius. Isauricus – he still carries a lot of weight, and he's never forgiven Caesar for becoming chief priest. Possibly Cato.'

  'Cato!' scoffed Celer. 'We'll still be discussing the ethics of the matter long after Caesar has died of old age!'

  'I'm not so sure. Cato was the loudest in his clamour for action against Catilina's gang. And the people respect him almost as much as they love Caesar.'

  A floorboard creaked and Celer put a warning finger to his lips. He called out, 'Who's there?' The door opened. It was Clodia. I wondered how long she had been listening and how much she might have heard. The same thought had obviously occurred to Celer. 'What are you doing?' he demanded.

  'I heard voices. I was on my way out.'

  'Out?' he said suspiciously. 'At this time? What are you going out for?'

  'Why do you think? To see my brother the plebeian. To celebrate!'

  Celer cursed and grabbed the wine jug and hurled it at her. But she had already gone and it smashed harmlessly against the wall. I held my breath to see if she would respond, but then I heard the front door open and close.

  'How soon can you get the others together?' asked Celer. 'Tomorrow?'

  'Better make it the day after,' replied Cicero, who was plainly still marvelling at this exchange, 'otherwise it will seem as if there's some emergency, and Caesar may get wind of it. Let us meet at my house, at close of public business, the day after tomorrow.'

  The following morning Cicero wrote out the invitations himself and had me go around the city delivering them in person into the hands of the recipients. All four were mightily intrigued, especially because by then everyone had heard of Clodius's transfer to the plebs. Lucullus actually said to me, with one of his bleak, supercilious smiles, 'What is it your master wishes to plot with me? A murder?' But each agreed to come – even Cato, who was not normally very sociable – for they were all alarmed by what was happening. Vatinius's bill proposing that Caesar be given two provinces and an army for five years had just been posted in the forum. The patricians were enraged, the populists jubilant, the mood in the city was stormy. Hortensius took me aside and told me that if I wanted to know how bad things were becoming, I should go and look at the tomb of the Sergii, which stands at the crossroads just outside the Capena Gate. This was where the head of Catilina had been interred. I went and found it piled high with fresh flowers.

  I decided not to tell Cicero about these floral tributes: he was tense enough as it was. On the day of the meeting he shut himself away in his library and did not emerge until the appointed hour approached. Then he bathed, dressed in clean clothes, and fussed about the arrangement of the chairs in the tablinum. 'The truth is, I am too much of a lawyer for this kind of thing,' he confided to me. I murmured my assent, but actually I don't think it was the legality that was troubling him – it was his squeamishness again.

  Cato was the first to arrive, in his usual malodorous rig of unwashed toga and bare feet. H
is nose twitched with distaste at the luxury of the house, but he readily consented to take some wine, for he was a heavy drinker: it was his only vice. Hortensius came next, full of sympathy for Cicero's deepening worries about Clodius; he assumed that this was what the meeting had been called to discuss. Lucullus and Isauricus, the two old generals, arrived together. 'This is quite a conspiracy,' said Isauricus, glancing at the others. 'Is anyone else coming?'

  'Metellus Celer,' replied Cicero.

  'Good,' said Isauricus. 'I approve of him. I reckon he's our best hope in the times to come. At least the fellow knows how to fight.'

  The five sat in a circle. I was the only other person in the room. I went around with a jug of wine, and then retreated to the corner. Cicero had ordered me not to take notes but to try to remember as much as I could and write it up afterwards. I had attended so many meetings with these men over the years that no one any longer even noticed me.

  'May we know what this is about?' asked Cato.

  'I think we can guess,' said Lucullus.

  Cicero said, 'I suggest we wait until Celer arrives. He is the one with most to contribute.'

  The group sat in silence, until at last Cicero could stand it no longer and told me to go next door and find out why Celer was delayed.

  I do not pretend to possess powers of divination, but even as I approached Celer's house I sensed that something was wrong. The exterior was too quiet; there was none of the normal coming and going. Inside there was that awful hush that always accompanies catastrophe. Celer's steward, whom I knew tolerably well, met me with tears in his eyes and told me that his master had been seized by terrible pains the previous day, and that although the doctors were unable to agree what was wrong with him, they concurred that it could well be fatal. I felt sick myself at the news and begged him to go to Celer and ask if he had any message for Cicero, who was waiting at home to see him. The steward went away and came back with a single word, which apparently was all that Celer had been able to gasp: 'Come!'

  I ran back to Cicero's house. When I went into the tablinum, naturally the senators all turned to look at me, assuming I was Celer. There were groans of impatience when I gestured to Cicero that I needed to speak with him in private.

  'What are you playing at?' he whispered angrily, when I got him into the atrium. His nerves were clearly stretched to breaking point. 'Where's Celer?'

  'Gravely ill,' I replied. 'Perhaps dying. He wants you to come at once.'

  Poor Cicero. That must have been a blow. He seemed literally to stagger back from it. Without exchanging a word we went straight round to Celer's house, where the steward was waiting for us, and he led us towards the private apartments. I shall never forget those gloomy passageways, with their dim candles and the sickly smell of incense being burned to cover the still more powerful odours of vomit and bodily decay. So many doctors had been called to attend upon Celer, they blocked the door to his bedchamber, talking quietly in Greek. We had to force our way inside. It was stiflingly hot, and so dark that Cicero was obliged to pick up a lamp and take it over to where the senator lay. He was naked apart from the bandages that marked where he had been bled. Dozens of leeches were attached to his arms and the insides of his legs. His mouth was black and frothy: I learned afterwards that he had been fed charcoal, as part of some crackpot cure. It had been necessary to tie him to his bed because of the force of his convulsions.

  Cicero knelt beside him. 'Celer,' he said in a voice of great tenderness, 'my dear friend, who has done this to you?'

  Hearing Cicero's voice, Celer turned his face to him, and tried to speak, but all that emerged was an unintelligible gurgle of black bubbles. He surrendered after that. He closed his eyes, and by all accounts he never opened them again.

  Cicero lingered for a little while, and asked the doctors various questions. They disagreed about everything, in the way of medical men, but on one point they were unanimous: none had ever seen a healthy body succumb to a disease more quickly.

  'A disease?' said Cicero incredulously. 'Surely he has been poisoned?'

  Poisoned? The doctors recoiled at the very word. No, no – this was a ravaging sickness, a virulent distemper, the result of a snake bite: anything except poisoning, which was simply too appalling a possibility to be discussed. Besides, who would want to poison the noble Celer?

  Cicero left them to it. That Celer had been murdered he never doubted, although whether Caesar had a hand in it, or Clodius, or both, he never discovered, and the truth remains a mystery to this day. There was, however, no question in his mind as to who had administered the fatal dose, for as we left that house of death we met coming in through the front door Clodia, accompanied by – of all people – young Caelius Rufus, fresh from his triumph over Hybrida. And although they both hastily assumed grave expressions, one could tell that they had been laughing a moment earlier; and although they quickly stood apart, it was clear that they were lovers.

  XVIII

  Celer's body was burned on a funeral pyre set up in the forum as a mark of national mourning. His face in death was tranquil, that coal-black mouth as clean and pink as a rosebud. Caesar and all the senate attended. Clodia looked beautiful in mourning and shed many a widow's tear. Afterwards his ashes were interred in the family mausoleum, and Cicero sank into a deep gloom. He sensed that any hopes of stopping Caesar had died with Celer.

  Seeing her husband's depression, Terentia insisted on a change of scene. Cicero had acquired a new property out on the coast at Antium, a day and a half's journey from Rome, and that was where the family went for the start of the spring recess. On the way we passed close to Solonium, where the Claudian family had long owned a great country estate. Behind its high ochre walls, Clodius and Clodia were said to be closeted together in a family conference with their two brothers and two sisters. 'Six of them all together,' said Cicero, as we rattled past in our carriage, 'like a litter of puppies – the litter from hell! Imagine them in there, tumbling around in bed with one another and plotting my destruction.' I did not contradict him, although it was hard to imagine those two stiff-necked older brothers, Appius and Gaius, getting up to any such mischief.

  When we reached Antium, the weather was inclement, with squalls of rain blowing in off the sea. Cicero sat out on the terrace, regardless of the conditions, gazing over the thundering waves at the grey horizon, trying to find a way out of his predicament. Eventually, after a day or two of that, with his head much clearer, he retreated to his library. 'What are the only weapons I possess, Tiro?' he asked me, and then he answered his own question. 'These,' he said, gesturing to his books. 'Words. Caesar and Pompey have their soldiers, Crassus his wealth, Clodius his bullies on the street. My only legions are my words. By language I rose, and by language I shall survive.'

  Accordingly we began work on what he called 'The Secret History of My Consulship' – the fourth and final version of his autobiography, and by far the truest, a book he intended to be the basis of his defence if he was put on trial, which has never been published, and which I have drawn on to write this memoir. In it, he set out all the facts about Caesar's relationship with Catilina; about the way in which Crassus had defended Catilina, financed him and finally betrayed him; and about how Pompey had used his lieutenants to try to prolong and worsen the crisis so that he could use it as an excuse to come home with his army. It took us two weeks to compile, and I made an extra copy as we went along. When we had finished, I wrapped each roll of the original in a linen sheet and then in oilcloth and put them in an amphora, which we sealed tight with wax. Then Cicero and I rose early one morning, while the rest of the household was asleep, and took it into the nearby woods and buried it between a hornbeam and an ash. 'If anything happens to me,' Cicero instructed, 'dig it up and give it to Terentia, and tell her to use it as she thinks fit.'

  As far as he could see, he had only one real hope left of avoiding being put on trial: that Pompey's disenchantment with Caesar would widen into an open breach. Given their characters, it
was not an unreasonable expectation, and he was constantly on the lookout for any scrap of promising news. All letters from Rome were eagerly opened. All acquaintances on their way south to the Bay of Naples were closely questioned. There were bits of intelligence that seemed encouraging. As a gesture to Cicero, Pompey had asked Clodius to undertake a mission to Armenia rather than stand for tribune. Clodius had refused. Pompey had thereupon taken offence and fallen out with Clodius. Caesar had sided with Pompey. Clodius had argued with Caesar, even to the extent of threatening, when he became tribune, to rescind the triumvirate's legislation. Caesar had lost his temper with Clodius. Pompey had rebuked Caesar for landing them with this ungovernable patrician-cum-plebeian in the first place. Some even whispered that the two great men had stopped speaking. Cicero was delighted. 'Mark my words, Tiro: all regimes, however popular or powerful, pass away eventually.' There were signs that this one might be collapsing already. And perhaps it would have done if Caesar had not taken a dramatic step to preserve it.

  The blow fell on the first day of May. It was in the evening, after dinner, and Cicero had just nodded off on his couch, when a letter arrived from Atticus. I should explain that we were in the villa in Formiae by this time, and that Atticus had returned briefly to his house in Rome, whence he was sending Cicero more or less daily all the intelligence he could discover. Of course it was no substitute for actually seeing Atticus, but neverthless it was agreed between them that he should stay there, for he was of more service picking up gossip than counting waves on the seashore. Terentia was doing her embroidery in a corner of the room, all was peaceful, and I debated whether or not to wake Cicero. But he had already heard the noise of the messenger, and his hand rose imperiously from the couch. 'Give it me,' he said. I handed him the letter and went out on to the terrace. I could see a tiny light on a boat out at sea, and I was wondering what manner of fish had to be caught in darkness, or if this was the setting of traps for lobsters or whatnot – I am a terrible landlubber – when I heard a great groan from the couch behind me.