The Triumph of Caesar (9 page)

Over the years, my relations with the great lion of the Roman law courts had been mixed. Over thirty years ago, I ferreted out the truth for Cicero when he took on his first major case, defending a man accused of parricide in the gloomy days when Sulla's shadow covered Rome. I nearly got myself killed more than once in the course of that investigation, and Cicero had faced considerable danger as well, daring to take on one of the dictator's most dangerous henchmen in the court. His surprising success had redounded to the enduring benefit of us both.

But Cicero's meteoric rise in the political arena had revealed a darker side of his character. He was perfectly willing to sacrifice the reputations and even the lives of his rivals to attain success, though he was careful to do so by using (some would say twisting) the law. As he grew in fame and power, I hardened my heart toward Cicero. But when men like Caesar and Pompey elbowed him off the political stage, their terrifying ruthlessness made Cicero, even at his worst, look benevolent. My feelings about him had softened, but I had never quite patched up the strained relations between us.

Could Cicero be the menace to Caesar?

When civil war loomed, Cicero had wavered between Caesar and Pompey for as long as he possibly could, and would have avoided choosing either side had such an option been possible. Ultimately he sided with Pompey and the old establishment and fought against Caesar at Pharsalus. After a resounding victory, Caesar saw fit to pardon Cicero. Since then, the great orator, whatever his true feelings about the new dictator, had kept his mouth shut.

I could no more easily picture Cicero as a conspirator that I could picture Antony, for different reasons. If Antony was too brash and outspoken, Cicero was too cautious and indecisive. And, to his credit, he was a true defender of the republican virtues of debate, compromise, and consensus; a man like Cicero would pursue every possible legal channel, no matter how tortuous or tenuous, rather than resort to violence. But had not Caesar's victory closed all political and legal avenues of challenge to his authority? What was a true republican to do when faced with the prospect of a dictator for life?

These were strange days. If Calpurnia could fall under the spell of a haruspex, if Antony the man of action could wile away his days in a drunken stupor, if an Alexandrian dancer could take up residence in Pompey's house, could Cicero become a murderous conspirator?

What had he been up to in my absence and since my return to Rome? What had Fulvia been hinting at? Having kept so completely to myself, I truly had no idea. When I read the details in Hieronymus's report, my jaw dropped.

Could it be true? Marcus Tullius Cicero, the most pious advocate in Rome (now that Cato was dead), the defender of staid virtue and old-fashioned family values, had divorced his wife of more than thirty years and married his ward, a girl named Publilia—who was only fifteen!

Strange days, indeed! I laughed out loud, imagining Cicero married to a teenager. This I would have to see with my own eyes.

Laughter released the tension in me. Suddenly I was very sleepy. I extinguished the lamp and stumbled to bed, where Bethesda huffed and sighed and spooned her body to accommodate me beneath the thin coverlet.

The first Roman prison, called the Carcer and located at the foot of the Capitoline Hill above the Forum, was built hundreds of years ago by Ancus Marcius, fourth king of Rome. According to legend, it was the sixth king, Servius Tullius, who excavated a subterranean cell in the Carcer, which forever after bore his name: the Tullianum.

This dreadful word evoked dankness; darkness; an inescapable pit; a place of hopeless, helpless waiting for death. Yet it was also a word that politicians and military men uttered with pride, for the Tullianum had been the final destination of many of Rome's fiercest enemies over the centuries, where they met their end at the hands of a Roman executioner.

It had been the practice, begun by the kings, to parade their captives in a triumphal procession, stripped of all insignia and symbols of worldly status—sometimes stripped naked entirely—the better to demonstrate the utter humiliation of their defeat and the contempt of their conquerors. After being paraded for the amusement of the Roman populace, less important captives were destined for slavery. The more important were strangled in the Tullianum. Afterward, their bodies were thrown down a flight of steep steps to the Forum, so that the crowd could view their corpses.

As I made my way with Rupa across the Forum, heading for the Tullianum, all around us we saw preparations for the Gallic Triumph to be held the next day. Along the parade route, reviewing stands with awnings were being erected to accommodate important personages, and areas where vendors usually hawked their wares were already being cleared to make room for the anticipated crowds. From atop the Capitoline Hill I could hear the echo of workers shouting amid a din of hammering and creaking wood; a bronze statue of Caesar had been installed across from the Temple of Jupiter, and the scaffolding around it was being removed for its official unveiling the next day.

At the western end of the Forum, with the steep slope of the Capitoline looming above us, we came to a flight of steps carved out of the stone. Two guards stood at the foot of the steps. I produced the pass I had received from Calpurnia—a small wooden disk with the seal of her ring impressed in red wax—and they let us pass without speaking a word.

The narrow steps ascended steeply. Behind us, the Forum was a jumble of columns, rooftops, and public squares. At some distance to the northeast, in a newly developed area adjacent to the Forum, I could see the glittering, solid marble Temple of Venus erected by Caesar in honor of his divine ancestress and the patroness of his victories. The temple had just been completed; it faced a vast open square surrounded by a colonnaded portico that was still under construction, with the pedestal in place for a monumental equestrian statue of Caesar. The Temple of Venus was to be dedicated on the last day of Caesar's four triumphs, providing a divine climax to the celebrations of his earthly conquests.

Such lofty thoughts fled when we came to the heavily guarded entrance to the Carcer. Again, the guards looked at my pass from Calpurnia and said nothing before admitting me. Rupa was made to wait outside. The heavy bronze doors swung open. I stepped into the Carcer, and the doors clanged shut behind me.

The chamber, perhaps twenty paces in diameter, had stone walls and a vaulted stone roof. The only natural light and ventilation came from a few small windows high in the wall facing the Forum, which were crisscrossed with iron bars. The place stank of human excrement and urine, as well as the odor of putrefaction; perhaps there were dead rats trapped in the walls. Even on a warm day such as this, the place was dank and chilly.

The warder, a grizzled bull of a man, insisted on seeing my pass again. He scowled at the pass, then at me. "Shouldn't be doing this," he muttered. "If the dictator finds out . . ."

"He won't find out from me," I said. "And I presume the dictator's wife has paid you quite well enough to keep your mouth shut."

He grunted. "I can hold my tongue. No one will know you were here—as long as you don't do anything stupid."

"Like try to help the prisoner escape? I'm sure that's impossible."

"Others have tried. And failed." He smiled grimly. "But I was thinking more along the lines of helping him escape his fate."

"By dying, you mean? Before Caesar has the chance to execute him?"

"Exactly. In this case, a dead Gaul is a useless Gaul. You wouldn't try to pull a trick like that, would you?"

"You've seen the seal I carry. What more do you want?"

"Your word as a Roman."

"As a Roman who sneaks behind Caesar's back and consorts with others who do the same?"

"Loyalty to Caesar isn't necessarily the same as loyalty to Rome. You don't have to be Caesar's lackey to have a sense of honor as a Roman."

I raised an eyebrow. "Who would have guessed? A Pompeian is in charge of the Tullianum."

"Hardly! I don't shed tears for losers. Couldn't do this job, if I did. Just swear by your ancestors that you're not up to something."

"Very well. By all the Gordianii who came before me, I swear that I have no intention either to harm or to help Vercingetorix."

"Good enough. And don't get yourself killed! I wouldn't be able to explain that either."

"Killed? Isn't the prisoner chained?"

The warder lowered his voice. "Druid magic! They say he can cast the evil eye. I never look him in the face. I put a bag over his head whenever I have to go down there and slosh his feces down the drain hole."

With that pleasant image in my mind, I sat on a wooden plank attached to a thick, padded rope; it was like a crudely made swing that a boy might hang from a tree branch. The warder handed me a small bronze lamp with a single wick, and then, using a winch, he slowly lowered me though a hole in the floor. This was the only entrance to the Tullianum.

As my head passed below the rim of the hole, I descended into a world that was darker, danker, and even more foul smelling than the room above. An odor of mold, sweat, and urine filled my nostrils. The dim lamplight faded to darkness before it could reach the surrounding walls. Below me, as I slowly descended, I heard the scurrying of rats. I looked down. I couldn't see the floor. For a moment I almost panicked; then I caught a glimmer of reflected lamplight on the glistening wet stone floor that drew nearer and nearer until my feet made contact.

"All steady?" the warder called down from above. "No, don't look up at the hole! You'll get vertigo. Besides, the light will blind you. Close your eyes for a bit. Let them adjust."

Closing my eyes was the last thing I intended to do in that place. I stepped away from the rope, holding it to steady myself, and raised the lamp so as to illuminate the chamber without dazzling my eyes. Slowly I began to perceive the dimensions of the place. It seemed larger than the chamber above, but perhaps that was an illusion of the darkness.

Huddled against a wall, I saw a human figure. The lamplight reflected dully off the chains binding his wrists and ankles. He wore a filthy, ragged tunic. His hair and beard were long and tangled. When he turned his face toward me, the lamplight flashed in his eyes.

So this was Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, the man who had accomplished the almost impossible task of unifying the fiercely independent tribes under a single command. He had very nearly succeeded in throwing off the Roman yoke, but Caesar's tactical genius and sheer good luck defeated him in the end. Caesar's utter ruthlessness had also played a part in his victory. Even my son Meto, who loved Caesar, was haunted by the cruelties inflicted on the Gauls—villages burned, women and children raped and enslaved, old men hacked to death. During the revolt of Vercingetorix, Caesar laid siege to the city of Avaricum and took no prisoners; the entire population—forty thousand men, women, and children—were massacred. Caesar boasted of this atrocity in his memoirs.

The last stand of the Gauls had been at the fortress of Alesia. Vercingetorix believed he could hold the position until reinforcements arrived, then destroy the Roman legions with the combined armies of the Gauls. But the reinforcements were insufficient, and the Roman choke hold on the fortress proved impenetrable; the starving survivors were ultimately forced to surrender. A Roman commander would have killed himself, but Vercingetorix rode out from Alesia and surrendered to Caesar. If he thought that Caesar would treat him with honor and respect, he had been mistaken.

Vercingetorix must still be a young man—Meto told me the Gaul was only a teenager when he began his campaign to unify his people—but I would never have guessed it from the broken figure huddled against the wall, the gaunt face sharply shadowed by the lamplight, or the haunted eyes that flashed like shards of obsidian.

"Is this the day?" he whispered hoarsely. His Latin had a strong Gallic accent.

"No. Not yet," I said.

He pressed himself against the wall, as if he wished to disappear into the stone.

"I'm not here to harm you," I said.

"Liar! Why else are you here?"

If he could see my face, I thought, he might be reassured. I held the lamp before me. The light shone into my eyes. He could see me, but I could no longer see him in the darkness.

His breathing quickened. The chains rattled. When I flinched and stepped back, he barked out a noise that must have been a laugh.

"
You
fear
me,
Roman? That's rich! After all the beatings you've given me . . ."

"I'm not here to beat you. I only want to talk."

"Talk about what?"

"I'm a friend of a man who came to visit you not too long ago."

"A visitor? No one visits me."

"He was a Massilian. His name was Hieronymus."

"Ah!" I heard him breathe in the darkness. There was a rattle in his throat, as if phlegm had settled in his lungs. "The Scapegoat, you mean. I wasn't sure if he existed or not. I thought perhaps I only dreamed about him."

"Hieronymus was real. He was my friend."

"Excuse my poor Latin, Roman, but I think you're speaking in a past tense."

"Yes. Hieronymus is dead."

More breathing in the darkness. More rattling from his throat. Then an explosion of laughter. He muttered something in his native tongue.

I shook my head. "What are you saying?"

"The man who was famous for cheating death is dead. And I, Vercingetorix, am still alive. At least I think I am. For all I know, this is the Roman underworld. And yet I don't remember dying. . . ."

Unable to see his expression or gauge the tone of the words cloaked by his thick accent, I couldn't tell whether he was serious or not. I felt an urge to see his face, but I kept the lamp before me, illuminating myself. As long as he could see me and look into my eyes, he might keep speaking.

"I think I like that idea—that I'm already dead," he said. "That means the ordeal is over. The thing I dreaded so much, for so long—it's behind me now. Yes, that's good. And for all I know, you're the Roman god of the dead, here to welcome me. Pluto is the name, I think. Isn't that right?"