Caesar's Women (50 page)

At which point, with Rome poised to repel an attack from the north, and Pompeius Rufus in Capua and Metellus Little Goat in Apulia ready to deal with anything in the south from a force of gladiators to a slave uprising, Cato chose to upset Cicero's stratagems and imperil the city's ability to cope after the coming changeover of consuls. November was drawing to an end when Cato got up in the House and announced that he would institute proceedings against the junior consul-elect, Lucius Licinius Murena, for gaining office through bribery. As tribune of the plebs-elect, he shouted, he felt he could not spare the time to run a criminal trial himself, so the defeated candidate Servius Sulpicius Rufus would prosecute, with his son (barely a man) as second prosecutor, and the patrician Gaius Postumius as third. The trial would take place in the Bribery Court, as the prosecutors were all patrician and therefore could not use Cato and the Plebeian Assembly.

“Marcus Porcius Cato, you can't!” cried Cicero, aghast, and leaping to his feet. “The guilt or innocence of Lucius Murena is beside the point! We have rebellion on our heads! That means we cannot afford to enter the New Year minus one of the new consuls! If you intended to do this, why now, why so late in the year?”

“A man's duty is his duty,” said Cato, unmoved. “The evidence has only just come to light, and I vowed months ago in this House that if it came to my attention that a consular candidate had bribed, I would personally make sure he was charged and prosecuted. It makes no difference to me what Rome's situation is at the New Year! Bribery is bribery. It must be eradicated at any cost.”

“The cost is likely to be the fall of Rome! Postpone it!”

“Never!” yelled Cato. “I am not your or anyone else's puppet on strings! I see my duty and I do it!”

“No doubt you'll be doing your duty and arraigning some poor wretch while Rome sinks beneath the Tuscan Sea!”

“Until the moment the Tuscan Sea drowns me!”

“May the gods preserve us from any more like you, Cato!”

“Rome would be a better place if there were more like me!”

“Any more like you and Rome wouldn't work!” Cicero shouted, arms raised, hands clawing at the sky. “When wheels are so clean they squeak, Marcus Porcius Cato, they also seize up! Things run a great deal better with a little dirty grease!”

“And isn't that the truth,” said Caesar, grinning.

“Postpone it, Cato,” said Crassus wearily.

“The matter is now entirely out of my hands,” said Cato smugly. “Servius Sulpicius is determined.”

“And to think I once thought well of Servius Sulpicius!” said Cicero to Terentia that evening.

“Oh, Cato put him up to it, husband, nothing surer.”

“What does Cato want? To see Rome fall all because justice must be done forthwith? Can't he see the danger in having only one consul take office on New Year's Day—and a consul as sick as Silanus into the bargain?” Cicero smacked his hands together in anguish. “I am beginning to think that one hundred Catilinas do not represent the threat to Rome that one Cato does!”

“Well, then you'll just have to see that Sulpicius doesn't convict Murena,” said Terentia, ever practical. “Defend Murena yourself, Cicero, and get Hortensius and Crassus to back you.”

“Consuls in office do not normally defend consuls-elect.”

“Then create a precedent. You're good at that. It's also lucky for you, I've noticed it before.”

“Hortensius is still in Misenum with his big toe padded.”

“Then get him back, if you have to kidnap him.”

“And get the case over and done with. You're quite right, Terentia. Valerius Flaccus is iudex in the Bribery Court—a patrician, so we'll just have to hope that he has the sense to see my side rather than Servius Sulpicius's.”

“He will,” said Terentia, grinning savagely. “It isn't Sulpicius he'll blame. It's Cato, and no patrician really esteems Cato unless he thinks himself cheated out of the consulship, like Servius Sulpicius.”

A hopeful but cunning gleam entered Cicero's eyes. “I wonder if Murena would be so grateful when I get him off that he'd give me a splendid new house?”

“Don't you dare, Cicero! You need Murena, not the other way around. Wait for someone considerably more desperate before you demand fees of that kind.”

So Cicero refrained from hinting to Murena that he needed a new house, and defended the consul-elect for no greater reward than a nice little painting by a minor Greek of two centuries ago. Grumbling and moaning, Hortensius was dragged back from Misenum, and Crassus entered the fray with all his thoroughness and patience. They were a triumvirate of defense counsels too formidable for the chagrined Servius Sulpicius Rufus, and managed to get Murena acquitted without needing to bribe the jury—never a consideration, with Cato standing there watching every move.

What else could possibly happen after that? wondered Cicero as he trotted home from the Forum to see whether Murena had sent the painting round yet. What a good speech he had given! The last speech, of course, before the jury gave its verdict. One of Cicero's greatest assets was his ability to change the tenor of his address after he had gauged the mood of the jury—men he mostly knew well, naturally. Luckily Murena's jury consisted of fellows who loved wit and loved to laugh. Therefore he had couched his speech humorously, got huge fun out of deriding Cato's adherence to the (generally unpopular) Stoic philosophy founded by that awful old Greek nuisance, Zeno. The jury were absolutely thrilled, adored every word of it, every nuance—and especially his brilliant impersonation of Cato, from voice to stance to hand aping Cato's gigantic nose. As for when he managed to wriggle out of his tunic—the entire panel had fallen on the ground in mirth.

“What a comedian we have for senior consul!” said Cato loudly after the verdict came in ABSOLVO. Which only made the jury laugh more, and deem Cato a bad loser.

“Reminds me of the story I heard about Cato in Syria after his brother Caepio died,” said Atticus over dinner that afternoon.

“What story?” asked Cicero dutifully; he really wasn't at all interested in hearing anything about Cato, but he had cause to be grateful to Atticus, foreman of the jury.

“Well, he was walking down the road like a beggar, three slaves plus Munatius Rufus and Athenodorus Cordylion, when the gates of Antioch loomed in the distance. And outside the city he saw a huge crowd approaching, cheering. 'See how my fame goes ahead of me?' he asked Munatius Rufus and Athenodorus Cordylion. 'The whole of Antioch has come out to do me homage because I am such a perfect example of what every Roman should be— humble, frugal, a credit to the mos maiorum’” Munatius Rufus—he told me the story when we ran into each other in Athens—said he rather doubted this, but old Athenodorus Cordylion believed every word, started bowing and scraping to Cato. Then the crowd arrived, hands full of garlands, maidens strewing rose petals. The ethnarch spoke: 'And which of you is the great Demetrius, freed-man of the glorious Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus?' he asked. Whereupon Munatius Rufus and the three slaves fell on the road laughing, and even Athenodorus Cordylion found Cato's face so funny he joined in. But Cato was livid! Couldn't see the funny side of it at all, especially since Magnus's freedman Demetrius was such a perfumed ponce!”

It was a good story, and Cicero laughed sincerely.

“I hear Hortensius hobbled back to Misenum quick-smart.”

“It's his spiritual home—all those bumbling fish.”

“And no one has surrendered to take advantage of the Senate's amnesty, Marcus. So what will happen next?”

“I wish I knew, Titus, I wish I knew!”

That the next development should emerge from the presence in Rome of a deputation of Allobroges, Gallic tribesmen from far up the Rhodanus in Further Gaul, no one could have predicted. Led by one of their tribal elders known in Latin as Brogus, they had arrived to protest to the Senate against their treatment by a series of governors like Gaius Calpurnius Piso, and by certain moneylenders masquerading as bankers. Unaware of the lex Gabinia which now confined the hearing of such deputations to the month of February, they had not succeeded in getting a dispensation to speed up their petition. So it was either back to Further Gaul, or remain in Rome for two more months spending a fortune on inn charges and bribes to needy senators. They had therefore decided to go home, return at the beginning of February. Nor was the mood a happy one among them, from the meanest Gallic slave all the way up to Brogus. As he said to his best friend among the Romans, the freedman banker Publius Umbrenus, “It seems a lost cause, Umbrenus, but we will return if I can persuade the tribes to be patient. There are those among us who talk of war.”

“Well, Brogus, there is a long Allobrogan tradition of war on Rome,” said Umbrenus, a brilliant idea beginning to blossom in his head. “Look at how you made Pompeius Magnus hop when he went to Spain to fight Sertorius.”

“War with Rome is futile, I believe,” said Brogus gloomily. “The legions are like the millstone, they grind on relentlessly. Kill them in a battle and tell yourself you've defeated them, and there they are the next season to do it all over again.”

“What about,” said Umbrenus softly, “if you had Rome's backing in a war?”

Brogus gasped. “I don't understand!”

“Rome isn't a cohesive whole, Brogus, it's split into many factions. Right at this moment as you know, there is a powerful faction led by some very clever men which has chosen to dispute the rule of the Senate and People of Rome as they exist.”

“Catilina?”

“Catilina. What if I could secure a guarantee from Catilina that after he is Dictator in Rome, the Allobroges are awarded full possession of all the Rhodanus Valley north of, say, Valentia?”

Brogus looked thoughtful. “A tempting offer, Umbrenus.”

“A genuine offer, I do assure you.”

Brogus sighed, smiled. “The only trouble is, Publius, that we have no way of knowing how high you stand in the estimation of a man like the great aristocrat Catilina.”

Under different circumstances Umbrenus might have taken exception to this assessment of his clout, but not now, not while that brilliant idea continued to grow. So he said, “Yes, I see what you mean, Brogus. Of course I see what you mean! Would it allay your fears if I were to arrange that you meet a praetor who is a patrician Cornelius, whose face you know well?''

“That would allay my fears,” said Brogus.

“Sempronia Tuditani's house would be ideal—it's close and her husband is away. But I don't have time to guide you there, so it had better be behind the temple of Salus on the Alta Semita two hours from now,” said Umbrenus, and ran from the room.

How he managed to get the thing together in those two hours Publius Umbrenus couldn't recollect later, but get it together he did. It necessitated seeing the praetor Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, the senators Lucius Cassius and Gaius Cethegus, and the knights Publius Gabinius Capito and Marcus Caeparius. As the second hour ended, Umbrenus arrived in the alley behind the temple of Salus—a desolate spot—with Lentulus Sura and Gabinius Capito.

Lentulus Sura stayed only long enough to give Brogus a lordly greeting; he was clearly uneasy and very anxious to get away. It was therefore left to Umbrenus and Gabinius Capito to deal with Brogus, Capito acting as spokesman for the conspirators. The five Allobroges listened attentively, but when Capito finally finished the Gauls hedged, looking timid and wary.

“Well, I don't know …” said Brogus.

“What would it take to convince you we mean what we say?” asked Umbrenus.

“I'm not sure,” Brogus said, looking confused. “Let us think on it tonight, Umbrenus. Could we meet here at dawn tomorrow?”

And so it was agreed.

Back went the Allobroges to the inn on the Forum's edge, a curious coincidence, for just uphill from it on the Sacra Via was the triumphal arch erected by Quintus Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, who had (temporarily) conquered this selfsame tribe of Gauls many decades ago, and taken their name to add to his own. Brogus and his fellow Allobroges therefore gazed at a structure which reminded them that they were in the clientele of Allobrogicus's descendants. Their present patron was Quintus Fabius Sanga, the great-grandson.

“It sounds attractive indeed,” said Brogus to his companions as he stared at the arch. “However, it could also mean disaster. If any of the hotbloods learn about this proposal, they won't stop to think, they'll go to war at once. Whereas my bones say no.”

As the deputation contained no hotbloods, the Allobroges decided to see their patron, Quintus Fabius Sanga.

A wise decision, as things turned out. Fabius Sanga went straight to Cicero.

“We have them at last, Quintus Fabius!” cried Cicero.

“In what way?” asked Sanga, who was not bright enough to seek higher office, and in consequence needed to have everything explained.

“Go back to the Allobroges and tell them that they must ask for letters from Lentulus Sura—I was right, I was right!—and from three other high-ranking conspirators as well. They must insist they be taken to see Catilina himself in Etruria—a logical request, considering what they're being asked to do. It also means a trip out of Rome, and the presence of a guide from among the conspirators.”

“What's the importance of the guide?” asked Sanga, blinking.

“Only that having one of the conspirators with them will make it more prudent for the party to leave Rome by stealth and in the middle of the night,” said Cicero patiently.

“Is it necessary that they leave by night?”

“Very necessary, Quintus Fabius, believe me! I'll post men at either end of the Mulvian Bridge, easier to do at night. When the Allobroges and their conspirator guide are on the bridge, my men will pounce. We'll have hard evidence at last—the letters.”

“You don't intend to harm the Allobroges?” asked Sanga, quite alarmed at anyone's pouncing on anyone.

“Of course not! They'll be party to the plan, and make sure you instruct them not to offer any resistance. You might also tell Brogus to insist he keep the letters himself, and surround himself with his own tribesmen in case any conspirator who goes along tries to destroy my hard evidence.” Cicero looked sternly at Fabius Sanga. “Is it all clear, Quintus Fabius? Can you remember all that without getting muddled?”