Lustrum

by Robert Harris

  Around midnight the racket began to subside. The streets became quiet, apart from some loud snoring in odd parts of the forum, which rose from the darkness like the noise of bullfrogs in a swamp. I went gratefully to my bed. But an hour or two later, something woke me. The sound was very distant, and in the daytime one would never have paid it any attention: it was only the hour and the surrounding silence that made it ominous. It was the noise of hammers being swung against brick.

  I took a lamp and climbed the steps to the ground floor, unlocked the back door and went out on to the terrace. The city was still very dark, the air mild. I could see nothing. But the noise, which was coming from the eastern end of the forum, was more distinct outside, and when I listened hard I could pick out individual hammers being wielded – sometimes isolated, more often falling in a kind of peal, metal on stone, that rang out across the sleeping city. It was so continuous, I reckoned there must be at least a dozen teams labouring away. Occasionally there were shouts, and suddenly the sound of rubble being tipped. That was when I realised this was not building work I was hearing; it was demolition.

  Cicero rose soon after dawn, as was his habit, and as usual I went to him in his library to see if he needed anything. 'Did you hear that hammering noise in the night?' he asked me. I replied that I had. He cocked his head, listening. 'Yet now it's silent. I wonder what mischief has been happening. Let's go down and see what the rogues have been up to.'

  It was too early even for Cicero's clients to have begun assembling, and the street was empty. We went down to the forum accompanied by one of his burly attendants, and at first all seemed normal, apart from the heaps of rubbish left after the previous night's carousing, and the odd body sprawled in a drunken stupor. But as we approached the Temple of Castor, Cicero stopped and cried out in horror. It had been quite hideously disfigured. The steps leading up to the pillared façade had been taken down, so that anyone wishing to enter the building was now confronted by a ragged wall, twice the height of a man. The rubble had been formed into a parapet, and the only access to the temple was via a couple of ladders, each of which was guarded by men with sledgehammers. The newly exposed red brickwork was ugly and raw and naked, like an amputation. Various large placards were nailed to it. One read: 'P. CLODIUS PROMISES THE PEOPLE FREE BREAD.' A second proclaimed: 'DEATH TO THE ENEMIES OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE.' A third said: 'BREAD & LIBERTY.' There were other more detailed notices posted lower down at eye level that looked from a distance to be draft bills, and three or four dozen citizens were milling around reading them. Up above their heads on the podium of the temple was a line of men, motionless, like figures in a frieze. As we came closer, I recognised various of Clodius's lieutenants – Cloelius, Patina, Scato, Pola Servius: a lot of the rogues who had run with Catilina back in the old times. Further along I glimpsed Mark Antony and Caelius Rufus, and then Clodius himself.

  'This is a monstrosity,' said Cicero, shaking with anger, 'a sacrilege, an outrage …'

  Suddenly I realised that if we could see the men who had done this, they most assuredly could see us. I touched Cicero on the arm. 'Why don't you wait here, Senator,' I suggested, 'and let me go and see what those bills say? It might be unwise for you to stray too close. They are a rough-looking lot.'

  I made my way quickly across to the wall, beneath the gaze of Clodius and his associates. On either side, men with heavily tattooed arms and close-cropped heads leaned on their sledgehammers and stared at me belligerently. I quickly scanned the notices on the wall. As I guessed, they were new bills, a pair of them in fact. One was concerned with the allocation of consular provinces for the following year, and awarded Macedonia to Calpurnius Piso, and Syria (I think it was) to Aulus Gabinius. The other bill was very short, no more than a line: 'It shall be a capital offence to offer fire and water to any person who has put Roman citizens to death without a trial.'

  I stared at it stupidly, not grasping its significance at first. That it was directed against Cicero was obvious enough. But it did not name him. It seemed more designed to frighten and harass his supporters than to threaten him directly. But then, like a great turning inside-out of my heart, I saw the devilish cunning in it, and felt the gorge rise into my mouth, so that I had to swallow the bitter taste to stop myself from vomiting. I stepped back from that wall as if the jaws of Hades had opened before me, and I kept stumbling backwards, unable to take my eyes from the words, increasing the distance and willing them to disappear. When I glanced up, I saw Clodius very plainly looking down at me, a smile on his face, enjoying every moment, and then I turned and hurried back to Cicero.

  He saw at once in my expression that it was bad. 'Well?' he said anxiously. 'What is it?'

  'Clodius has published a bill about Catilina.'

  'Aimed at me?'

  'Yes.'

  'It cannot surely be as bad as your face suggests! What in the name of heaven does it say about me?'

  'It doesn't even mention you.'

  'Then what kind of bill is it?'

  'It makes it a capital offence to offer fire or water to anyone who has put Roman citizens to death without a trial.'

  His mouth dropped open. He was always much quicker on the uptake than I. He understood the implications at once. 'And that is all? One line?'

  'That is all.' I bowed my head. 'I am very sorry.'

  Cicero grabbed my arm. 'So the actual crime will be to help keep me alive? They won't even give me a trial?'

  Suddenly his gaze flickered past me, over my shoulder, to the disfigured temple. I turned and saw Clodius waving at him – a slow and mocking gesture, as if he were waving goodbye to someone on a ship, leaving for a long journey. At the same time some of the tribune's henchmen started to climb down the ladders. 'I think we should get out of here,' I said. Cicero did not react. His mouth was working, but only a faint croak was emerging. It was as if he was being strangled. I looked back at the temple again. The men were on the ground now and moving towards us. 'Senator,' I said firmly, 'we really must get you out of here.' I gestured to his bodyguard to take his other arm, and together we propelled him out of the forum and back up the steps towards the Palatine. The gang of ruffians pursued us, and pieces of rubble from the temple started to fly past our ears. A sharp piece of brick caught Cicero on the back of his head, and he gave a cry. The cascade of missiles did not stop until we were halfway up the hill.

  When we reached the safety of the house, we found it full of his morning callers. Not knowing what had happened, they moved at once towards Cicero as they always did, with their wretched letters and their petitions and their humble beseeching faces. Cicero gazed at them, blank with shock, and bleakly told me to send them away – 'all away' – then stumbled upstairs to his bedroom.

  Once the clients had been thrown out, I gave orders for the front entrance to be locked and barred, and then I prowled around the empty public rooms, wondering what I should do. I kept waiting for Cicero to come down and give me orders, but the hours passed and there was no sign of him. Eventually Terentia sought me out. She was twisting a handkerchief between her hands, winding it tightly around her bony ringless fingers. She demanded to know what was going on. I replied that I was not entirely sure.

  'Don't lie to me, slave! Why is your master collapsed on his bed and refusing to move?'

  I quailed before her rage. 'He has – he has – made an error,' I stammered.

  'An error? What manner of error?'

  I hesitated. I did not know where to begin. There were so many errors: they stretched back like islands behind us, an archipelago of folly. Or perhaps 'errors' was the wrong word. Perhaps it was more accurate to call them consequences: the ineluctable consequences of a deed done by a great man for honourable motives – is that not, after all, how the Greeks define tragedy?

  I said, 'He has allowed his enemies to take control of the centre of Rome.'

  'And they are doing what, exactly?'

  'They are preparing legislation that will make him an outlaw.'

&nb
sp; 'Well then, he must pull himself together and fight them!'

  'It is very dangerous for him to venture out of the house.'

  Even as I spoke, I could hear the mob in the street outside chanting, 'Death to the tyrant!' Terentia heard them too. As she listened, I could see the fear tauten her face. 'So what are we to do?'

  'We could perhaps wait for nightfall and leave Rome,' I suggested. She stared at me and, frightened though she was, just for a moment I saw in her dark eyes a glint of that ancestor of hers – the one who had commanded a cohort against Hannibal. 'At the very least,' I went on hurriedly, 'we should restore all the precautions we took while Catilina was alive.'

  'Send out messages to his colleagues,' she ordered. 'Ask Hortensius, Lucullus – any you can think – to come immediately. Fetch Atticus. Arrange everything else necessary to secure our safety. And summon his doctors.'

  I did as she ordered. The shutters were fastened. The Sextus brothers hurried over. I even summoned the guard dog, Sargon, from his retirement on a farm just outside the city. By early afternoon the house had begun to fill with friendly faces, although most arrived shaken by the experience of passing through the chanting crowd. Only the doctors refused to come: they had heard about Clodius's bill and they claimed to fear prosecution.

  Atticus went up to see Cicero and came down tearful. 'He has his face turned to the wall,' he told me. 'He refuses to speak.'

  'They have robbed him of his voice,' I replied, 'and what is Cicero without his voice?'

  A meeting was convened in the library to discuss what could be done: Terentia, Atticus, Hortensius, Lucullus, Cato. I forget who else was present. I sat there silent, stunned, in the room in which I had spent so many hours with Cicero. I listened to the others and wondered how they could hold a conversation about his future without his presence. It was as if he was already dead. The whole animating spark of that household – the wit, the quick intelligence, the guiding ambition – seemed to have fled out of the door, as it does when someone passes from the earth. Terentia had the coolest head present. 'Is there any chance that this law won't pass?' she asked Hortensius at one point.

  'Very little,' he said. 'Clodius has copied Caesar's tactics to perfection, and clearly means to use the mob to control the popular assembly.'

  'What about the senate?'

  'We can adopt a resolution in his support. I'm sure we shall – I'll propose it myself – but Clodius will take no notice. Now if Pompey or Caesar were to come out against the bill, of course, that would make a difference. Caesar has an army less than a mile from the forum. Pompey's influence is immense.'

  'And if it passes,' said Terentia, 'where will that leave me?'

  'His property will all be seized – this house, its contents, everything. If you try to assist him in any way, you'll be arrested. I fear his only chance is to leave Rome at once, as soon as he is well, and get clear of Italy before the bill becomes law.'

  'Could he stay at my house in Epirus?' asked Atticus.

  'Then you would be liable to prosecution in Rome. It will be a brave man who gives him shelter. He will have to travel anonymously, and keep moving from place to place before his identity is discovered.'

  'So that rules out any of my houses, I'm afraid,' said Lucullus. 'The mob would love to prosecute me.' He rolled his eyes, like a frightened horse. He had never recovered from his humiliation in the senate.

  'May I speak?' I asked.

  Atticus said, 'Of course, Tiro.'

  'There is another option.' I glanced towards the ceiling. I was not sure whether Cicero would want me to reveal it to the others or not. 'In the summer, Caesar offered to appoint the master his legate in Gaul, which would give him immunity.'

  Cato looked horrified. 'But that would put Cicero in his debt and make Caesar even more powerful than he is already! In the interests of the state, I very much hope Cicero would turn that down.'

  'In the interests of friendship,' said Atticus, 'I hope he takes it. What do you say, Terentia?'

  'My husband will decide,' she said simply.

  After the others had gone, promising to return the following day, she went up to see Cicero again, then came down and called me to her. 'He is refusing to eat,' she said. Her eyes were watery but she jabbed her narrow chin towards me as she spoke. 'Well, he may give in to despair if he must, but I have to safeguard the interests of this family, and we do not have much time. I want you to arrange to have all the contents of the house packed up and removed. Some we can store in our old home – there is plenty of room as Quintus is away – and the rest Lucullus is willing to look after for us. This place is being watched, so it needs to be done piece by piece, to avoid arousing suspicion, the most valuable items first.'

  And that was what we did, beginning that very evening, and continuing over the days and nights that followed. It was a relief to have something to do, while Cicero stayed in his room and refused to see anyone. We hid jewellery and coins in amphorae of wine and olive oil and carted them across the city. We concealed gold and silver dishes beneath our clothes and walked as normally as we could to the house on the Esquiline, where we divested ourselves with a clatter. Antique busts were swaddled in shawls and carried out cradled in the arms of slave girls as if they were babies. Some of the larger pieces of furniture were dismantled and wheeled away like firewood. Rugs and tapestries were wrapped in sheets and trundled off in the direction of the laundry, and then secretly diverted to their hiding place in Lucullus's mansion, which was beyond the Fontinalian Gate, just north of the city.

  I took sole charge of emptying Cicero's library, filling sacks with his most private documents and carrying them myself to the cellar of our old house. On these journeys I always took care to skirt Clodius's headquarters in the Temple of Castor, where gangs of his men loitered ready to chase down Cicero if he dared to show his face. Once I stood at the back of a crowd and listened to Clodius himself denounce Cicero from the tribunes' platform. His domination of the city was absolute. Caesar was with his army on the Field of Mars, preparing to march to Gaul. Pompey had withdrawn from the city and was living in connubial bliss with Julia in his mansion in the Alban Hills. The consuls were beholden to Clodius for their provinces. Clodius had learned how to stimulate the mob as a gigolo might caress his lover. He had them chanting in ecstasy. I could not bear to watch for long.

  We saved the transfer of the most valuable of Cicero's possessions until almost the very end. This was a citrus-wood table he had been given by a client, and which was said to be worth half a million sesterces. We could not dismantle it, so we decided to take it under cover of darkness to Lucullus's house, where it would easily fit in with all the other opulent furniture. We put it on the back of an ox cart, covered it in bales of straw, and set off on the journey of two miles or so. Lucullus's overseer met us at the door carrying a short whip, and told us that a slave girl would show us where to put it. It took four of us to lift that table down, and then the slave led us through the huge, echoing rooms of the house until she pointed to a spot and told us to set it there. My heart was beating fast, and not just from the weight of our burden, but because I had recognised her by then. How could I not? Most nights I had gone to sleep with her face in my mind. Of course I wanted to ask her a hundred questions, but I feared drawing attention to her in front of the overseer. We followed her back the way we had come, retracing our steps to the grand entrance hall, and I could not help noticing how underfed she seemed, the exhausted stoop of her shoulders, and the grey hairs that had appeared among the dark. She was clearly enduring a harsher existence than she had been used to in Misenum – a capricious life, the life of a slave, determined not so much by the status itself as the character of the master: Lucullus would not even have noticed she existed. The front door was open. The others passed through it. Just before I followed, I whispered, 'Agathe!' and she turned round wearily and peered at me in surprise that anyone knew her name, but there was no trace of recognition in those lifeless eyes.

  XIX


  The following morning I was talking to Cicero's steward when I glimpsed Cicero cautiously coming downstairs for the first time in two weeks. I caught my breath. It was like seeing a spectre. He had dispensed with his customary toga and was wearing an old black tunic to show he was in mourning. His cheeks were gaunt, his hair straggling, his growth of white beard made him look like an old tramp. When he reached the ground floor he stopped. By this time the house had been almost entirely emptied of its contents. He squinted in bewilderment at the bare walls and floors of the atrium. He shuffled into his library. I followed him and watched from the doorway as he inspected the empty cabinets. He had been left with only a chair and a small table. Without looking round, he said in a voice all the more awful for being so quiet, 'Who has done this?'

  'The mistress thought it a sensible precaution,' I replied.

  'A sensible precaution?' He ran his hand over the empty wooden shelving. It was all made of rosewood, beautifully carpentered to his own design. 'A stab in the back, more like!' He inspected the dust on his fingertips. 'She never did care for this place.' And then, still without looking at me, he said, 'Have a carriage made ready.'

  'Of course.' I hesitated. 'May I know the destination, so I can tell the driver where he is to go?'

  'Never mind the destination. Just get me the damned carriage.'

  I went and told the ostler to bring the carriage round to the front door, then I found Terentia and warned her that the master was planning to go out. She stared at me in alarm and hurried downstairs into the library. Most of the household had heard that Cicero had got out of bed at last, and they were standing around in the atrium, fascinated and fearful, not even pretending to work. I did not blame them: their fates, like mine, were all tied up with his. We heard the sound of raised voices, and soon afterwards Terentia ran out of the library with tears pouring down her cheeks. She said to me, 'Go with him,' and fled upstairs. Cicero emerged moments later, scowling, but at least looking much more his old self, as if having a heated argument with his wife had acted as a kind of tonic. He walked towards the front door and ordered the porter to open it. The porter looked at me, as if seeking my approval. I nodded quickly.