Lustrum (51 page)

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.

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.

As usual there were demonstrators in the street, but far fewer than when the bill forbidding Cicero fire and water had first been promulgated. Most of the mob, like a cat at a mousehole, had grown weary of waiting for their victim to appear. Still, what the remainder lacked in numbers they made up for in venom, and they set up a great racket of 'Tyrant!' and 'Murderer!' and 'Death!' and as Cicero appeared they surged forwards. He stepped straight into the carriage, and I followed. A bodyguard was sitting up on the roof with the driver, and he leaned down to me to ask where we were to go. I looked at Cicero.

'To Pompey's house,' he said.

'But Pompey's not in Rome,' I protested. By this time, fists were pounding against the side of the carriage.

'Where is he, then?'

'At his place in the Alban Hills.'

'All the better,' replied Cicero. 'He will not be expecting me.'

I shouted up to the driver that we should head for the Capena Gate, and with a crack of his whip, and a final flurry of shouts and thumps on the wooden panels, we lurched forward.

The journey must have taken us at least two hours, and in the whole of that time Cicero did not utter a word, but sat hunched in the corner of the carriage, his legs turned away from me, as if he wished to compress himself into the smallest space possible. Only when we turned off the highway on to Pompey's long gravelled drive did he uncoil his body and peer out of the window at the opulent grounds, with their topiary and statuary. 'I shall shame him into protecting me,' he said, 'and if he still refuses I shall kill myself at his feet and he will be cursed by history for his cowardice for ever. You think I don't mean it? I am perfectly serious.' He put his hand in the pocket of his tunic and showed me a small knife, its blade no wider than his hand. He grinned at me. He seemed to have gone quite mad.

We pulled up in front of the great country villa, and Pompey's household steward sprang forward to open the carriage door. Cicero had been here countless times. The slave knew him very well. But his smile of greeting shrivelled as he saw Cicero's unkempt face and black tunic, and he took a step backwards in shock. 'Do you smell that, Tiro?' asked Cicero, offering me the back of his hand. He raised it to his own nostrils and sniffed. 'That's the smell of death.' He gave an odd laugh, then climbed down from the carriage and strode towards the house, saying to the steward over his shoulder, 'Tell your master I'm here. I know where to go.'

I hastened after him, and we went into a long salon filled with antique furniture, tapestries and carpets. Souvenirs of Pompey's many campaigns were on display in cabinets – red-glazed pottery from Spain, ebony carvings from Africa, chased silverware from
the East. Cicero sat on a high-backed couch covered in ivory silk while I stood apart, near to one of the doors, which opened on to a terrace lined with busts of great men from antiquity. Beyond the terrace a gardener pushed a wheelbarrow piled with dead leaves. I could smell the fragrance of a bonfire somewhere, out of sight. It was a scene of such settled order and civilisation – such an oasis in the wilderness of all our terrors – that I have never forgotten it. Presently there was a little patter of footsteps and Pompey's wife appeared, accompanied by her maids, all of whom were older than her. She looked like a doll in her dark ringlets and simple green dress. She had a scarf round her neck. Cicero stood and kissed her hand.

'I am very sorry,' said Julia, 'but my husband has been called away.' She blushed and glanced at the door. She was obviously not accustomed to lying.

Cicero's face sagged slightly, but then he rallied. 'That does not matter,' he said. 'I shall wait.'

Julia looked anxiously at the door again, and I had a sudden instinct that Pompey was just beyond it, signalling to her what she should do. She said, 'I am not sure how long he is going to be.'

'I am confident he will come,' said Cicero loudly, for the benefit of any eavesdroppers. 'Pompey the Great cannot be seen to go back on his word.' He sat, and after some hesitation she did the same, folding her small white hands neatly in her lap.

Eventually she said, 'Was your journey comfortable?'

'Very pleasant, thank you.'

There was another long silence. Cicero put his hand in the pocket of his tunic, where his little knife was. I could see that he was turning it round in his fingers.

Julia said, 'Have you seen my father recently?'

'No. I have not been well.'

'Oh? I am sorry to hear that. I have not seen him for a while either. He will be leaving for Gaul any day. Then I really don't know when I shall see him again. I am lucky I won't be left on my own. It was horrid when he was in Spain.'