The Triumph of Caesar (11 page)

The lump protruding from Cicero's throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed. He blinked. "Yes, well, run along, my honey."

"Your bride is utterly charming," I said, after Publilia had gone. "Did she bring a large dowry?" In the social circles to which Cicero aspired, this was not a rude question.

"Enormous!" he said. "But that is
not
why I married her."

"Oh, I can believe that," I assured him. "Still, it must have been painful, after so many years together, to end your marriage with Terentia."

Cicero smiled wryly. "I'm a strong man, Gordianus. I survived Sulla. I've survived Caesar—so far. And, by Hercules, I survived thirty years with Terentia!"

"Still, the divorce must have been painful for her, if not for you."

His smile vanished. "Terentia is a rock." The way he said it, the word was not a compliment. "She's indestructible. She'll live to be a hundred, mark my words. Don't worry yourself about Terentia."

If I were to worry,
I thought,
it would be about you, Cicero. What do the Etruscans say?
"
There is no fool like an old fool!
" I bit my tongue.

"I'm happy, don't you see?" Cicero crossed the room with a swagger. I had never seen him so cocky, not even in court, and Cicero orating before a jury could be very cocky indeed. "Despite the dismal state of the world, despite the end of everything I've fought for all my life, about my personal life I have no complaints. In that sphere—after so many reverses, disappointments, outright disasters—at last, everything is going my way. My debts are all paid. Terentia is finally out of my life. And I have a wonderful new bride who adores me. Oh!" His eyebrows lifted. "And at long last, my dear little Tullia is expecting a child. Soon my daughter shall make me a grandfather!"

"Congratulations," I said. "But I heard that her marriage to Dolabella—"

"Is finally over," he said. "And Tullia is well rid of the beast. He caused her nothing but heartbreak. He shall come to a bad end."

Under normal circumstances, a respectable public figure like Cicero would hardly boast that his daughter was about to give birth out of wedlock. But circumstances were no longer normal—not in a world where Calpurnia consulted a soothsayer and Cicero was married to a vapid teenager.

In such a world turned utterly askew, could the vacillating, timorous, stay-at-home Cicero pose a genuine threat to Caesar? It occurred to me that his new marriage might be both symptom and cause of a major shift in Cicero's behavior. Might the old goat be thinking like a young goat—stamping the ground and getting ready to take a reckless run at Caesar with horns lowered? With a new bride—and a grandchild—to impress, did the husband of Publilia feel sufficiently virile to take a stand as savior of the republic?

And if that were the case, could Cicero have been behind the killing of Hieronymus? When I spoke of the murder, his response had seemed entirely innocent. But Cicero was an orator—Rome's greatest—and what was an orator but an actor? I had heard him boast of throwing dust in a jury's eyes. Was he throwing dust in my eyes even now?

If I could stay a bit longer, conversing and drawing him out, he might yet let something slip. I nodded to Rupa, who reached into the shoulder bag he carried and pulled out some documents.

"I was wondering, Cicero, if you might take a look at something I found among Hieronymus's private papers."

"A literary work?" Cicero raised an eyebrow. "Was our friend secretly composing a tragedy? An epic poem?"

"No, this is something more in a scientific vein, I think, though I'm not really sure. That's why I want to show it to you. With your vast knowledge, drawn from your wide reading, perhaps you can make sense of it."

Cicero smiled broadly. Did Publilia find it this easy to lead him by flattery?

I handed him the documents. He pursed his lips, squinted, clucked his tongue, and hummed as he perused them. He was stalling, I thought; he could no more decipher the arcane symbols and calculations than could I.

But at last he nodded and slapped the documents with the back of his hand, as if to indicate he had cracked the code. "Well, I can't make it all out—I'm hardly an astronomical expert—but clearly this has something to do with the calendar."

"The Roman calendar?"

"The Roman, yes, but also the calendars of the Greeks and the Egyptians and perhaps of others as well. There are many calendars, Gordianus. Every civilization has come up with its own way of reckoning the passage of time, dividing years into seasons, seasons into months, months into days. It was King Numa who devised the Roman calendar and established the priesthoods to maintain it. Numa was both a holy man and a king. The whole point of his calendar was to make sure that religious rites were remembered and performed on time.

"But as you must know, no one has yet devised a perfect calendar—that is to say, a reckoning of days that works equally well for every year. Irregularities inevitably creep into the process, and no one quite knows why. You'd think the movements of the stars in the heavens would be as precise and predictable as the measurements of a water clock, but it's more complicated than that. Which is why Numa's calendar has become such a mess. For most of my lifetime and yours, it's been at least slightly out of step with the seasons, and nowadays it's worse than ever."

"But aren't there priests who fix the calendar as we go along?" I said. "Every year they decide whether to introduce an extra month, and the month is as long as they wish—they add however many days they deem necessary to bring the calendar back into alignment with the planets."

"That's correct, Gordianus," said Cicero in a patronizing tone, as if he were surprised that a fellow like myself could grasp such an abstract concept. "You may remember, in the year that Clodius was killed on the Appian Way, we had an intercalary month between Februarius and Martius; twenty-seven days, as I recall." He hummed thoughtfully and looked toward the doorway. "I wonder if I should invite Publilia to join us. She could learn a great deal from this discussion. It's good for a female to stretch her mind occasionally."

Cicero was in pedagogic mode, craving a worthy audience. It struck me that few topics were more likely to bore Cicero's honey than this one.

"Ah, but she's probably napping." Cicero sighed and shrugged. "Where was I? Oh, yes—even with the addition of intercalary months, the Roman calendar has grown more and more out of step, so that nowadays the harvest festivals of our ancestors occur during the summer, which makes no sense, and the holidays that are supposed to relieve the tedium of midwinter arrive in the autumn, when everyone is busy with the harvest. And so on. This is the middle of September, yet the weather is sweltering and the days are long."

I nodded to show I understood. Cicero continued.

"Which is why our esteemed dictator for life is planning to introduce a new calendar, the first real advance on King Numa's ever attempted. Apparently, when Caesar was trapped for all those months in Alexandria, under siege in the palace complex, he had rather a lot of time to kill."

"I know. Rupa and I were there as well. I passed the time by borrowing books from the famous library of the Ptolemies. I read them aloud to Rupa and the slave boys. I think I must have read every book ever written about Alexander the Great."

"Caesar also took advantage of his access to the library. When he wasn't diddling that dreadful queen, he consulted with her astronomers—the library boasts an impressive faculty of scientists and stargazers—and it occurred to him that he might use his spare time to devise a more accurate and durable calendar. Now Caesar is back in Rome, and so is the Egyptian queen, along with her retinue, including scholars from the library. Even now, Caesar is said to be putting the final touches to his calendar, intending to unveil it on the final day of his triumphs, when he dedicates his temple to Venus. We shall have a new calendar for the new age." Cicero scowled, as the dispassionate pedagogue gave way to the thwarted republican.

"But surely that's a good thing," I said. "Whatever you may think of Caesar's other accomplishments, if he can repair the Roman calendar, we shall all benefit."

"That is true. And if he can truly pull it off, it's only fitting that a Roman should be the man to give the world an accurate accounting of the movement of the heavens. I only regret that the man should be Caesar!"

This was as candid as I could wish. Throughout our conversation, not once had Cicero appeared to speak disingenuously. His guard seemed to be entirely down; he spoke to me as to a confidant. I was finding it hard to believe he could in any way be responsible for Hieronymus's death.

"All these notations and scribblings," I said, indicating the documents. "What do they mean, and why did Hieronymus possess them?"

Cicero pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Do you know what I think? I think Hieronymus made these calculations as a kind of mental exercise, a challenge to himself. He must have heard about Caesar's plan for a new calendar. Wouldn't it have been just like him to think,
if Caesar can do it, then so can I?
Or perhaps he somehow got hold of the proposed calendar and was attempting to find flaws. He was a very competitive sort of fellow. He had a high estimation of his talents and considerable cheek. Once, he told me that he thought he could quite easily become a finer orator than I. Can you believe that!"

I nodded. "I can believe it, indeed." It was easy enough to imagine Hieronymus obtaining information about the calendar from Calpurnia, or someone in her household, or perhaps from the household of Cleopatra, whom he had visited and whose scholars were working with Caesar on the project. But if Hieronymus had hoped to show up Caesar's calendar with one of his own, that dream, like all his others, had come to an abrupt end.

Cicero looked past me. The slave who had admitted me stood in the doorway.

"Speak," said Cicero.

"You have another visitor, Master."

"Who is it?"

"Marcus Junius Brutus."

Cicero smiled broadly and clapped his hands. "Ah, Brutus! He must have just arrived in the city. Show him in at once! And bring more wine and a basin of water and some food. Brutus will be hungry after his journey."

The slave hurried to obey.

"Thank you for the hospitality," I said, "and for your thoughts about Hieronymus." I began to rise from my chair, but Cicero gestured for me to sit.

"Please, Gordianus, stay for a while. I've shared your sadness for the loss of one friend; now you can share my joy at being reunited with another. By Hercules, not only is Brutus still breathing—a miracle!—but Caesar appointed him governor of Cisalpine Gaul. You do know Brutus, don't you?"

"Only by name," I said. "I don't think our paths have ever crossed."

Cicero nodded thoughtfully. "I always assume you know everyone, but that's not true, is it? You never did have any ties to Cato and his circle, did you? You were always too busy fetching and finding for Pompey or for Caesar. Well, then, you must stay, so that I can introduce you."

Brutus stepped into the room. His tunic and his shoes were still dusty from traveling. He and Cicero greeted each other and embraced. Rupa and I rose while Cicero introduced us, then we all sat. Brutus washed his face and hands in a basin of water held by a slave, then enthusiastically accepted a cup of wine.

He was a handsome man with a long face and keen eyes, not quite forty years old. Throughout his adult life, Brutus's family connections and political affiliations had repeatedly put him at odds with Caesar. Brutus had been the protégé of his uncle Cato, who was the champion of the most hidebound conservative clique and one of Caesar's most relentless enemies. When the civil war erupted, Brutus did not hesitate to side with Pompey. But on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus, Caesar explicitly ordered his officers to spare Brutus and take him alive. After the battle, he not only pardoned Brutus but took him into his entourage as an honored companion.

Why did Caesar show such special favor to Brutus? For a number of years, Brutus's widowed mother, Servilia, had carried on a torrid love affair with Caesar (despite the consternation of her brother, Cato). Brutus was only a boy when the affair began, and came of age with Caesar coming and going in his house. The bond that formed between Caesar and Brutus survived the eventual cooling of Caesar's passion for Servilia and also survived their political differences.

When Caesar sailed off to Africa to deal with the last defiant survivors of Pharsalus—including Cato—he sent Brutus in the opposite direction. The appointment to govern Cisalpine Gaul not only rewarded Brutus but also got him out of Rome and away from the battlefront. Caesar could hardly expect Brutus to be in at the kill of his beloved uncle.

Caesar had no son, unless he intended to acknowledge Cleopatra's child. Perhaps he thought of Brutus as a surrogate son. Perhaps, as some people speculated, he even intended to make Brutus his heir.

"How was the journey?" asked Cicero.

"Long, hot, and dusty! Thanks for asking and thanks for the wine. Awfully good of you." Even in casual conversation, Brutus spoke with a clipped, cultured accent. His family claimed to be descended from the famous Brutus who led the revolt against King Tarquin the Proud and helped to found the republic. I found myself comparing him to Antony, who was every bit as aristocratic but seemed far less pretentious.

"So, how are things in the hinterland?" said Cicero.

Brutus snorted. "Cisalpine Gaul is practically Italy, you know. The Rubicon isn't the Styx. We
do
have the rudiments of civilization—books, brothels, and garum. On a fast horse, Rome is only a few days away."

"You made it just in time for the triumphs."

"Yes, for better or worse. Caesar didn't exactly demand my attendance, but he made his desire clear enough in his last letter. I suppose I shan't mind watching him parade the spoils of Egypt and Asia and further Gaul, but if he uses the African Triumph to crow about his victory over Uncle Cato, I'm not sure I can stomach that. Oh, dear, have I just made the most awful pun?"