Caesar's Women (51 page)

“Lead me through it again,” said Sanga.

Sighing, Cicero did so.

And by the end of the following day Cicero heard from Sanga that Brogus and his Allobroges had taken custody of three letters, one from Lentulus Sura, one from Gaius Cethegus, and one from Lucius Statilius. When asked to write, Lucius Cassius had refused and appeared uneasy. Did Cicero think three letters would be enough?

Yes, yes! Cicero sped back by his fleetest servant.

And so in the second quarter of the night a little cavalcade started out of Rome on the Via Lata, which turned into the great north road, the Via Flaminia, after it crossed the Campus Martius on its way to the Mulvian Bridge. With Brogus and the Allobroges traveled their guide, Titus Volturcius of Croton, as well as one Lucius Tarquinius and the knight Marcus Caeparius.

All went well until the party reached the Mulvian Bridge about four hours before dawn, and hastened onto its stone paving. As the last horse trotted onto the bridge proper, the praetor Flaccus at the south end flashed his lamp to the praetor Pomptinus at the north end; both praetors, each backed by a century of good volunteer city militia, moved swiftly to block the bridge. Marcus Caeparius drew his sword and tried to fight, Volturcius gave in, and Tarquinius, a strong swimmer, leaped off the bridge into the darkness of the Tiber. The Allobroges stood obediently in a huddle, the reins of their horses held as firmly as the letters Brogus carried in a pouch at his waist.

Cicero was waiting when Pomptinus, Valerius Flaccus, the Allobroges, Volturcius and Caeparius arrived at his house just before dawn. So too was Fabius Sanga waiting—not very bright, perhaps, but exquisitely conscious of his patron's duty.

“Have you the letters, Brogus?'' asked Fabius Sanga.

“Four of them,'' said Brogus, opening his pouch and producing three slender scrolls plus one folded and sealed single sheet.

“Four?” Cicero asked eagerly. “Did Lucius Cassius change his mind?''

“No, Marcus Tullius, The folded one is a private communication from the praetor Sura to Catilina, so I was told.”

“Pomptinus,” said Cicero, standing straight and tall, “go to the houses of Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, Gaius Cornelius Cethegus, Publius Gabinius Capita and Lucius Statilius. Command them to come here to my house at once, but don't give them any idea why, is that understood? And take your militia with you.”

Pomptinus nodded solemnly; the events of that night seemed almost dreamlike, he hadn't yet realized what had actually happened when he apprehended the Allobroges on the Mulvian Bridge.

“Flaccus, I need you here as a witness,” said Cicero to his other praetor, “but send your militia to take up station around the temple of Concord. I intend to summon the Senate into session there as soon as I've done a few things here.”

All eyes watched him, including, he noticed wryly, Terentia's from a dark corner. Well, why not? She had stuck by him through all of it; she had earned her backseat at the play. After some thought he sent the Allobroges (save Brogus) to the dining room for food and wine, and sat down with Brogus, Sanga and Valerius Flaccus to wait for Pomptinus and the men he had been ordered to summon. Volturcius was no danger—he huddled in the corner farthest from Terentia and wept—but Caeparius looked as if he might still have some fight left in him. Cicero ended in locking him into a cupboard, wishing he had sent him off under guard—if Rome had only possessed some secure place to put him, that is!

“The truth is,” said Lucius Valerius Flaccus, swinging the cupboard key, “that your impromptu prison is undoubtedly more secure than the Lautumiae.”

Gaius Cethegus arrived first, looking wary and defiant; not very many moments later Statilius and Gabinius Capita came in together, with Pomptinus just behind them. The wait for Lentulus Sura was much longer, but eventually he too came through the door, face and body betraying nothing beyond annoyance.

“Really, Cicero, this is too much!” he cried before he set eyes on the others. His start was minuscule, but Cicero saw it.

“Join your friends, Lentulus,” said Cicero.

Someone began hammering on the outside door. Clad in armor because of their nocturnal mission, Pomptinus and Valerius Flaccus drew their swords.

“Open it, Tiro!” said Cicero.

But it was not danger or assassins in the street; in walked Catulus, Crassus, Curio, Mamercus and Servilius Vatia.

“When we were summoned to the temple of Concord by express command of the senior consul,” said Catulus, “we decided it was better to seek out the senior consul first.”

“You're very welcome indeed,” said Cicero gratefully.

“What's going on?” asked Crassus, looking at the conspirators.

As Cicero explained there were more knocks on the door; more senators piled in, bursting with curiosity.

“How does the word get around so quickly?” Cicero demanded, unable to conceal his jubilation.

But finally, the room packed, the senior consul was able to get down to business, tell the story of the Allobroges and the capture at the Pons Mulvius, display the letters.

“Then,” said Cicero very formally, “Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, Gaius Cornelius Cethegus, Publius Gabinius Capito and Lucius Statilius, I place you under arrest pending a full investigation of your part in the conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catilina.” He turned to Mamercus. “Princeps Senatus, I give these three scrolls into your custody and request that you do not break their seals until the entire Senate is assembled in the temple of Concord. It will then be your duty as Princeps Senatus to read them out.” He held up the folded sheet for all to see. “This letter I will open here and now, under all your eyes. If it compromises its author, the praetor Lentulus Sura, then there is nothing to stop our going ahead with our investigation. If it is innocent, then we must decide what we do with the three scrolls before the Senate meets.”

“Go ahead, Marcus Tullius Cicero,” said Mamercus, caught up in this nightmare moment, hardly able to believe that Lentulus Sura, once consul, twice praetor, could really be involved.

Oh, how good it was to be the center of all eyes in a drama as huge and portentous as this one! thought Cicero as, consummate actor that he was, he broke the wax seal everyone had identified as Lentulus Sura's with a hard, loud crack. It seemed to take him forever to unfold the sheet, glance at it, assimilate its contents before beginning to read it out.

“Lucius Sergius, I beg you to change your mind. I know you do not wish to taint our enterprise with a slave army, but believe me when I say that if you do admit slaves into the ranks of your soldiers, you will have a landslide of men and victory within days. All Rome can send against you are four legions, one each from Marcius Rex and Metellus Creticus, and two under the command of that drone Hybrida.

“It has been prophesied that three members of the gens Cornelia will rule Rome, and I know that I am the third of those three men named Cornelius. I understand that your name, Sergius, is much older than the name Cornelius, but you have already indicated that you would prefer to rule in Etruria than in Rome. In which case, reconsider your stand on slaves. I condone it. Please consent to it.”

He ended in the midst of a silence so profound that it seemed not even a breath disturbed the air of that crowded room.

Then Catulus spoke, hard and angry. “Lentulus Sura, you're done for!” he snapped. “I piss on you!”

“I think,” said Mamercus heavily, “that you should open the scrolls now, Marcus Tullius.”

“What, and have Cato accuse me of tampering with State's evidence?” asked Cicero, opening his eyes wide and then crossing them. “No, Mamercus, they stay sealed. I wouldn't want to annoy our dear Cato, no matter how right an act opening them might be!”

The praetor Gaius Sulpicius was there, Cicero noted. Good! Give him a job too, let it not look as if he played favorites, let there be absolutely nothing for Cato to find fault with.

“Gaius Sulpicius, would you go to the houses of Lentulus Sura, Cethegus, Gabinius and Statilius, and see if they contain any arms? Take Pomptinus's militia with you, and have them continue the search to Porcius Laeca's residence—also Caeparius, Lucius Cassius, this Volturcius here, and one Lucius Tarquinius. I say let your men continue the search after you personally have inspected the houses of the senatorial conspirators because I will need you in the Senate as soon as possible. You can report your findings to me there.”

No one was interested in eating or drinking, so Cicero let Caeparius out of the cupboard and summoned the Allobroges from the dining room. What fight Caeparius might have owned before being shut away had quite deserted him; Cicero's cupboard had proved to be almost airtight, and Caeparius came out of it gibbering.

A praetor holding office yet a traitor! And once a consul too. How to deal with it in a way which would reflect well upon that upstart New Man, that lodger, that resident alien from Arpinum? In the end Cicero crossed the room to Lentulus Sura's side and took the man's limp right hand in his own firm clasp.

“Come, Publius Cornelius,” he said with great courtesy, “it is time to go to the temple of Concord.”

“How odd!” said Lucius Cotta as the crocodile of men streamed across the lower Forum from the Vestal Stairs to the temple of Concord, separated from the Tullianum execution chamber by the Gemonian Steps.

“Odd? What's odd?” asked Cicero, still leading the nerveless Lentulus Sura by the hand.

“Right at this moment the contractors are putting the new statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on its plinth inside his temple. Long overdue! It's nearly three years since Torquatus and I vowed it.” Lucius Cotta shivered. “All those portents!”

“Hundreds of them in your year,” said Cicero. “I was sorry to see the old Etruscan wolf lose her suckling babe to lightning. I used to love the look on her face, so doggy! Giving Romulus her milk, but not a bit concerned about him.”

“I never understood why she didn't give suck to two babes,” said Cotta, then shrugged. “Oh well, perhaps among the Etrusci the legend only called for one child. The statue certainly predates Romulus and Remus, and we still have the wolf herself.”

“You're right,” said Cicero as he helped Lentulus Sura mount the three steps to the porch of the very low temple, “it is an omen. I hope orienting the Great God to the east means good!” At the door he came to an abrupt halt. “Edepol, what a crush!”

The word had flown. Concord was bursting at the seams to contain every senator present in Rome, for the sick came too. This choice of venue wasn't entirely capricious, though Cicero had a tic about concord among the orders of Roman men; no meeting dealing with the consequences of treason was supposed to be held in the Curia Hostilia, and as this treason ran the full gamut of the orders of Roman men, Concord was a logical place to meet. Unfortunately the wooden tiers put inside temples like Jupiter Stator when the Senate assembled there just did not fit inside Concord. Everyone had to stand where he fetched up, wishing for better ventilation.

Eventually Cicero managed to produce some kind of crowded order by having the consulars and magistrates sit on stools in front of the senators of pedarius or minor rank. He sent the curule magistrates to the middle rear, then between the two rows of stools facing each other he put the Allobroges, Volturcius, Caeparius, Lentulus Sura, Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius Capita and Fabius Sanga.

“The arms were stored in the house of Gaius Cethegus!” said the praetor Sulpicius, entering breathless. “Hundreds and hundreds of swords and daggers. A few shields, no cuirasses.”

“I am an ardent collector of weapons,” said Cethegus, bored.

Frowning, Cicero pondered on another logistical problem this confined space had generated. “Gaius Cosconius,” he said to that praetor, “I hear you're brilliant at shorthand. Candidly, I can see no room whatsoever in here for half a dozen scribes, so I'll dispense with the professionals. Choose three pedarii who are also capable of taking down the proceedings verbatim. That divides the task among four of you, and four will have to be enough. I doubt this will be a long meeting, so you'll have time after it to compare notes and get a draft together.”

“Will you look at him and listen to him?'' whispered Silanus to Caesar—an odd choice of confidant given the relationship between them, but probably, Caesar decided, there was no one else jammed near Silanus he deemed worth speaking to, including Murena. “In his glory at last!” Silanus made a noise Caesar interpreted as disgust. “Well, I for one find this business unspeakably sordid!”

“Even squires from Arpinum must have their day,” said Caesar. “Gaius Marius started a tradition.”

Finally and fussily Cicero opened his meeting with the prayers and the offerings, the auspices and the salutations. But his prior assessment was right; it was not a protracted affair. The guide Titus Volturcius listened to Fabius Sanga and Brogus testify, then wept and demanded to be allowed to tell all. Which he did, answering every question, incriminating Lentulus Sura and the other four more and more heavily. Lucius Cassius, he explained, had departed very suddenly for Further Gaul, Volturcius guessed on his way to Massilia and a voluntary exile. Others too had fled, including the senators Quintus Annius Chilo, the Brothers Sulla, and Publius Autronius. Name after name tumbled out, knights and bankers, minions, leeches. By the time Volturcius got to the end of his litany, there were some twenty-seven Roman men importantly involved, from Catilina all the way down to himself (and the Dictator's nephew, Publius Sulla—not named—was sweating profusely).

After which Mamercus Princeps Senatus broke the seals on the letters and read them out. Almost an anticlimax.

Looking forward to playing the role of great advocate in howling chase of the truth, Cicero questioned Gaius Cethegus first. But, alas, Cethegus broke down and confessed immediately.

Next came Statilius, with a similar result.

After that it was Lentulus Sura's turn, and he didn't even wait for the questioning to begin before he confessed.

Gabinius Capito fought back for some time, but confessed just as Cicero was getting into stride.