When Brutus returned to Rome from Cilicia at the very beginning of February, he had of course first to face his wife, Claudia, and his mother, Servilia. The truth was that he infinitely preferred the company of Claudia’s father to Claudia, but he and Scaptius had done so well in the moneylending business in Cilicia that he had had firmly to decline Appius Claudius’s offer to keep him on as quaestor. Because that vile wretch Aulus Gabinius had passed a law which made it very difficult for Romans to lend money to non-citizen provincials, his return to Rome had become mandatory. As he was a senator now, and so superbly connected to at least half the House, he could procure senatorial decrees to exempt the firm of Matinius et Scaptius from the lex Gabinia. Matinius et Scaptius was a fine old company of usurers and financiers, but nowhere on its books did it record the fact that its real name ought to have been Brutus et Brutus. Senators were not permitted to engage in any business ventures unrelated to the ownership of land, a fribble which at least half the Senate had ways of getting around; most of Rome thought the worst senatorial offender in this respect was the late Marcus Licinius Crassus, but had Crassus been alive, he could have disillusioned most of Rome on that score. By far the worst offender was young Marcus Junius Brutus, who was also, thanks to a testamentary adoption, Quintus Servilius Caepio, heir to the Gold of Tolosa. Not that there was any gold; there had not been any gold for fifty and more years. It had all gone to purchase a commercial empire which was the inheritance of Servilia’s only full brother. Who had died without a male heir fifteen years ago, and made Brutus his heir.
Brutus loved not so much money itself—that had been poor Crassus’s abetting sin—as what money brought with it. Power. Perhaps understandable in one whose illustrious name could not fix its owner in the center of a blaze of brilliance. For Brutus was not tall, not handsome, not inspiring, not intelligent in the ways Rome admired. As to how he looked, that could not be very much improved, for the dreadful acne which had so diminished him as a youth had not gone away with maturity; the poor empustuled face could not endure a razor in a time and place when and where all men were invariably smoothly shaven. He did the best he could by clipping his dense black beard as closely as possible, but his large, heavy-lidded and very sad brown eyes looked out on his world from the midst of a facial shambles. Knowing it, hating it, he had retreated from any circumstances likely to make him the focus of ridicule, sarcasm, pity. Thus he had—or rather, his mother had—procured exemption from compulsory military service, and appeared but briefly in the Forum to learn the legalities and protocols of public life. This last was not something he was prepared to give up; a Junius Brutus could not do that. For he traced his lineage back to Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Republic, and through his mother to Gaius Servilius Ahala, who had killed Maelius when he tried to restore the monarchy.
The first thirty years of his life had been spent waiting in the wings to enter upon the only stage he craved: the Senate, and the consulship. Snug within the Senate, he knew that how he looked would not militate against him. The Conscript Fathers of the Senate, his peers, respected familial clout and money far too much. Power would bring him what his face and body could not, nor his pretensions to an intellectualism no deeper than the skin on sheep’s milk. But Brutus wasn’t stupid, though that was what the name Brutus meant—stupid. The founder of the Republic had survived the tyrannies of Rome’s last King by seeming to be stupid. A very big difference. No one appreciated that fact more than did Brutus.
He felt nothing for his wife, not even repugnance; Claudia was a nice little thing, very quiet and undemanding. Somehow she had managed to carve herself a tiny niche in the house her mother-in-law ran in much the same way as Lucullus had run his army—coldly, unswervingly, inhumanly. Luckily it was large enough to afford Brutus’s wife her own sitting room, and there she had set herself up with her loom and her distaff, her paints and her treasured collection of dolls. Since she spun beautifully and wove at least as well as professional weavers, she was able to draw favorable comment from her mother-in-law, and even allowed to make Servilia lengths of fine and filmy fabrics for her gowns. Claudia painted flowers on bowls, birds and butterflies on plates, then sent them to the Velabrum to be glazed. They made such nice presents, a serious concern for a Claudia Pulchra, who had so many aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces that a small purse did not extend far enough.
Unfortunately she was quite as shy as Brutus, so that when he returned from Cilicia—almost a stranger, in fact, as he had married her scant weeks before leaving—she found herself in no position to deflect his attention from his mother. So far he had not visited her sleeping cubicle, which had created a pillow damp from tears each morning, and during dinner (when Brutus attended) Servilia gave her no chance to say a word—had Claudia thought of a word to say.
Therefore it was Servilia who occupied Brutus’s time and Brutus’s mind whenever he entered the house which was actually his, though he never thought of it as his.
She was now fifty-two years old, Servilia. Little had changed about her in many years. Her figure was voluptuous but well proportioned, hardly an inch thicker in the waist than it had been before she produced her four children, and her long, thick black hair was still long, thick and black. Two lines had etched themselves one on either side of her nose and ran down past the corners of her small, secretive mouth, but her forehead was uncreased and the skin beneath her chin enviably taut. Caesar, in fact, would have found her no different. Nor did she intend that he would when he returned to Rome.
He still dictated the terms of her life, though she did not admit that even to herself. Sometimes she ached for him with a dry, awful longing she could not assuage; and sometimes she loathed him, usually when she wrote him an infrequent letter, or heard his name spoken at a dinner party. Ever more and more, these days. Caesar was famous. Caesar was a hero. Caesar was a man, free to do as he pleased, not trammeled by the conventions of a society which Servilia found quite as repressive as Clodia and Clodilla did, but which she would not transgress as they did every day of their lives. So whereas Clodia sat demurely on the bank of the Tiber opposite the Trigarium wherein the young men swam, and sent her rowboat across with a proposition for some lovely naked fellow, Servilia sat among the arid mustiness of her account books and her specially procured verbatim records of meetings of the Senate and plotted, and schemed, and chafed, and yearned for action.
But why had she associated action with the return of her only son? Oh, he was impossible! No handsomer. No taller. No less enamored of her hateful half brother, Cato. If anything, Brutus was worse. At thirty, he was developing a slight fussiness of manner which reminded Servilia too painfully of that underbred upstart from Arpinum, Marcus Tullius Cicero. He didn’t waddle, but he didn’t stroll either, and a stroll with shoulders back was mandatory for a man to look his best in a toga. Brutus took quick little steps. He was pedantic. A trifle absent. And if her inner eye filled suddenly with a vision of Gaius Julius Caesar, so tall and golden and brazenly beautiful, oozing power, she would snarl at Brutus over dinner, and drive him away to seek solace with that frightful descendant of a slave, Cato.
Not a happy household. In which, after three or four days had gone by, Brutus spent less and less time.
It hurt to have to pay good money for a bodyguard, but one glance at the environs of the Forum, followed by a conversation with Bibulus, had decided him to pay that money. Even Uncle Cato, so fearless that he had had the same arm broken several times in the Forum over the years, now employed a bodyguard.
“Times are fine for ex-gladiators,” Cato brayed. “They can pick and choose. A good man charges five hundred sesterces per nundinae, and then insists on plenty of time off. I exist at the beck and call of a dozen cerebrally deficient soldiers of the sawdust who eat me out of house and home and tell me when I can go to the Forum!”
“I don’t understand,” said Brutus, wrinkling his brow. “If we’re under martial law and Pompeius is in charge, why hasn’t the violence settled down? What’s being done?”
“Nothing whatsoever, nephew.”
“Why?”
“Because Pompeius wants to be made Dictator.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. He’s been after absolute power since he executed my father out of hand in Italian Gaul. And poor Carbo, whom he wouldn’t even accord privacy to relieve his bowels before he beheaded him. Pompeius is a barbarian.”
Cato’s ruined appearance devastated Brutus, a mere eleven years younger than Cato. Thus Cato had never seemed avuncular; more an older brother, wise and brave and so unbelievably strong in himself. Of course Brutus had not known Cato very well during his childhood and young manhood. Servilia would not permit uncle and nephew to fraternize. All that had changed from the day when Caesar had come round in the full regalia of the Pontifex Maximus and calmly announced that he was breaking the engagement between Julia and Brutus in order to marry Julia to the man who had murdered Brutus’s father. Because Caesar had needed Pompey.
Brutus’s heart had broken that day, never knit itself together again. Oh, he had loved Julia! Waited for her to grow up. Then had to see her go to a man who wasn’t fit for her to wipe her shoes on. But she would see that in time; Brutus had settled back to wait, still loving her. Until she died. He hadn’t seen her in months, and then she died. All he really wanted to believe was that somewhere, in some other time, he would meet her again, and she would love him as much as he loved her. So after her death he soaked himself in Plato, that most spiritual and tender of all philosophers, never having understood until she died what Plato was actually saying.
And now, gazing at Cato, Brutus understood what he was living through in a way no one else who was close to Cato could ever comprehend; for he gazed at a man whose love had gone to someone else, a man who couldn’t learn to unlove. Sorrow washed over Brutus, made him bend his head. Oh, Uncle Cato, he wanted to cry out, I understand! You and I are twins in a wilderness of the soul, and we cannot find our way into the garden of peace. I wonder, Uncle Cato, if at the moments of our deaths we will think of them, you of Marcia and I of Julia. Does the pain ever go away, do the memories, does the enormity of our loss?
But he said none of this, just looked at the folds of toga in his lap until the tears went away.
He swallowed, said rather inaudibly, “What will happen?”
“One thing will not happen, Brutus. Pompeius will never be made Dictator. I will use my sword to stop my heart in the middle of the Forum before I would see it. There is no place in the Republic for a Pompeius— or a Caesar. They want to be better than all other men, they want to reduce us to pigmies in their shadow, they want to be like—like—like Jupiter. And we free Romans would end in worshiping them as gods. But not this free Roman! I will die first. I mean it,” said Cato.
Brutus swallowed again. “I believe you, Uncle. But if we cannot cure these ills, can we at least understand how they began? Such trouble! It seems to have been there all my life, and it gets worse.”
“It started with the Brothers Gracchi, particularly with Gaius Gracchus. It went then to Marius, to Cinna and Carbo, to Sulla, and now to Pompeius. But it isn’t Pompeius I fear, Brutus. It never has been. I fear Caesar.”
“I never knew Sulla, but people say Caesar is like him,” said Brutus slowly.
“Precisely,” said Cato. “Sulla. It always comes back to the man with the birthright, which is why no one feared Marius in his day, nor fears Pompeius now. To be a patrician is better. We cannot eradicate that except as my great-grandfather the Censor dealt with Scipio Africanus and Scipio Asiagenus. Pull them down!”
“Yet I hear from Bibulus that the boni are wooing Pompeius.”
“Oh, yes. And I approve of it. If you want to catch the king of thieves, Brutus, bait your trap with a prince of thieves. We’ll use Pompeius to bring Caesar down.”
“I also hear that Porcia is to marry Bibulus.”
“She is.”
“May I see her?”
Cato nodded, fast losing interest; his hand strayed to the wine flagon on his desk. “She’s in her room.”
Brutus rose and left the study by the door opening onto the small, austere peristyle garden; its columns were severest Doric, of pool or fountain it had none, and its walls were unadorned by frescoes or hung paintings. Down one side of it were ranged the rooms belonging to Cato, Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus; down the other side were the rooms belonging to Porcia and her adolescent brother, Marcus Junior. Beyond them were a bathroom and latrine, with the kitchen and a servants’ area at the far end.
The last time he had seen his cousin Porcia was before he left to go to Cyprus with her father, and that had been six years ago; Cato didn’t encourage her to mix with those who called to see him. A thin, lanky girl, he remembered. Still, why try to remember? He was about to see her.
Her room was minute, and stunningly untidy. Scrolls, book buckets and papers literally everywhere, and in no sort of order. She was sitting at her table with her head bent over an unfurled book, mumbling her way through it.
“Porcia?”
She looked up, gasped, lumbered to her feet; a dozen pieces of paper fluttered to the terrazzo floor, the inkpot went flying, four scrolls disappeared down the gap at the back of the table. It was the den of a Stoic— dismally plain, freezingly cold, utterly unfeminine. No loom or furbelows in Porcia’s quarters!
But then Porcia was dismally plain and not very feminine, though no one could accuse her of coldness. She was so tall! Somewhere up around Caesar’s height, Brutus fancied, craning his neck. A mop of luridly red, almost kinkily waving hair, a pale yet unfreckled skin, a pair of luminous grey eyes, and a nose which bade fair to outrank her father’s.
“Brutus! Dear, dear Brutus!” she cried, folding him in a hug that squeezed all the breath out of him and made it difficult for him to touch his toes to the floor. “Oh, tata says it is a right act to love those who are good and a part of the family, so I can love you! Brutus, how good to see you! Come in, come in!”
Dumped back on the ground again, Brutus watched his cousin flounder about sweeping a stack of scrolls and buckets off an old chair, then hunt for a duster to render its surface less likely to leave grey smears all over his toga. And gradually a smile began to tug at the corners of his doleful mouth; she was such an elephant! Though she wasn’t fat, or even rounded. Flat chest, wide shoulders, narrow hips. Abominably dressed in what Servilia would have called a baby-cack-brown canvas tent.
And yet, he had decided by the time she had maneuvered both of them onto chairs, Porcia wasn’t dismally plain at all, nor did she, despite that masculine physique, give an impression of mannishness. She crackled with life, and it endowed her with a certain bizarre attractiveness that he fancied most men, once over the initial shock, would appreciate. The hair was fantastic; so were the eyes. And her mouth was lovely, deliciously kissable.
She heaved a huge sigh, slapped her hands on her knees (far apart, but unselfconsciously so), beamed at him in simple pleasure. “Oh, Brutus! You haven’t changed a bit.”
His look was wry, but it didn’t put her off-stride in the least; to Porcia, he was what he was, and that was not in any way a handicap. Very strangely brought up, deprived of her mother when she was six years old, unexposed since to the influence of women save for two years of Marcia (who hadn’t noticed her), she had no inbuilt ideas of what beauty was, or ugliness was, or any—to her—abstract state of being. Brutus was her dearly loved first cousin, therefore he was beautiful. Ask any Greek philosopher.
“You’ve grown,” he said, then realized how that would sound to her—oh, Brutus, think! She too is a freak!
But clearly she took him literally. She emitted the same neigh of laughter Cato did, and showed the same big, slightly protruding top teeth; her voice too was like his, harsh, loud and unmelodic. “Grown through the ceiling, tata says! I’m taller than he is by quite a bit, though he’s a tall man. I must say,” she whinnied, “that I’m very pleased to be so tall. I find that it gives me a great deal of authority. Odd, that people are awed by accidents of birth and nature, isn’t it? Still, I have found it to be so.”
The most extraordinary picture was forming in Brutus’s mind, and not the sort of picture that he was prone to conjure up; but it was quite irresistible to envision tiny, frosty Bibulus trying to cover this flaming pillar of fire. Had the incongruity of the match occurred to him?
“Your father tells me you are to marry Bibulus.”
“Oh, yes, isn’t it wonderful?”
“You’re pleased?”
The fine grey eyes narrowed, in puzzlement rather than anger. “Why would I not be?”
“Well, he’s very much older than you are.”
“Thirty-two years,” she said.
“Isn’t that rather a big gap?” he asked, laboring.
“It’s irrelevant,” said Porcia.
“And—and you don’t mind the fact that he’s a foot shorter than you are?”
“Irrelevant too,” said Porcia.
“Do you love him?”
Clearly this was the most irrelevant factor of all, though she didn’t say so. She said, “I love all good people, and Bibulus is good. I’m looking forward to it, I really am. Just imagine, Brutus! I’ll have a much bigger room!”
Why, he thought, amazed, she’s still a child! She has no idea of marriage whatsoever. “You don’t mind the fact that Bibulus has three sons already?” he asked.
Another neigh of laughter. “I’m just glad he doesn’t have any daughters!” she said when she could. “Don’t get on with girls, they’re so silly. The two grown-up ones—Marcus and Gnaeus—are nice, but the little one, Lucius—oh, I do like him! We have a marvelous time together. He’s got the most terrific toys!”
Brutus walked home in a fever of worry for Porcia, but when he tried to talk to Servilia about her, he got short shrift.
“The girl’s an imbecile!” snapped Servilia. “Still, what can you expect? She’s been brought up by a drunkard and a clutch of fool Greeks! They’ve taught her to despise clothes, manners, good food and good conversation. She walks round in a hair shirt with her head buried in Aristotle. I feel sorry for Bibulus.”
“Don’t waste your sympathy, Mama,” said Brutus, who knew these days how best to annoy his mother. “Bibulus is very well pleased with Porcia. He’s been given a prize above rubies—a girl who is absolutely pure and unspoiled.”
“Tchah!” spat Servilia.
*
The rioting in Rome continued unabated. February slipped away, a short month, then came Mercedonius, the twenty-two days intercalated by the College of Pontifices at Pompey’s instigation. Each five days a new interrex took office and tried to organize the elections, but without success. Everyone complained; no one got anywhere by complaining. Very occasionally Pompey demonstrated that when he wanted something done, it was done, as with his Law of the Ten Tribunes of the Plebs. Passed halfway through that stormy February, it gave Caesar permission to stand for the consulship four years hence in absentia. Caesar was safe. He would not have to give up his imperium by crossing Rome’s sacred boundary to register his candidacy in person, and thereby offer himself up for prosecution.
Milo continued to canvass for the consulship, but pressure to have him prosecuted was mounting. Two young Appius Claudiuses agitated constantly in the Forum on behalf of their dead uncle Publius, their chief grievance the fact that Milo had freed his slaves and that these slaves had disappeared into a fog of obscurity. Unfortunately Milo wasn’t receiving the support from Caelius he had enjoyed just after the murder; Cicero had gone obediently to Ravenna and succeeded in muzzling Caelius on his return. Not a good omen for Milo, a worried man.
Pompey was worried too; opposition in the Senate to his being appointed Dictator was as strong as ever.
“You’re one of the most prominent boni,” Pompey said to Metellus Scipio, “and I know you don’t mind my being made Dictator. I don’t want the post, mind you! That’s not what I’m saying at all. Only that I can’t understand why Cato and Bibulus won’t have it. Or Lucius Ahenobarbus. Or any of the others. Isn’t it better to have stability at any price?”
“At almost any price,” said Metellus Scipio cautiously; he was a man charged with a mission, and it had taken hours for him to rehearse it with Cato and Bibulus. Not that his intentions were quite as pure as Cato and Bibulus thought. Metellus Scipio was another worried man.
“What’s almost?” demanded Pompey, scowling.
“Well, there is an answer, and I’ve been deputed to put it to you, Magnus.”
The magical thing had happened! Metellus Scipio was calling him “Magnus”! Oh, joy! Oh, sweet victory! Pompey visibly expanded, a smile growing.
“Then put it to me, Scipio.” No more “Metellus.”
“What if the Senate were to agree to your becoming consul without a colleague?”
“You mean sole consul? No other?”
“Yes.” Frowning in an effort to remember what he had been told to say, Metellus Scipio went on. “What everyone objects to about the presence of a dictator is a dictator’s invulnerability, Magnus. He can’t be made to answer for anything he enacts while he is Dictator. And after Sulla, no one trusts the post. It isn’t merely the boni who object. The knights of the eighteen senior Centuries object far more, believe me. They were the ones who felt Sulla’s hand—sixteen hundred of them died in Sulla’s proscriptions.”
“But why should I proscribe anyone?” Pompey asked.
“I agree, I agree! Unfortunately many don’t.”
“Why? I’m not Sulla!”
“Yes, I know that. But there is a kind of man who is convinced that it isn’t the person who fills the role, but the role itself at fault. Do you see what I mean?”
“Oh, yes. That anyone appointed Dictator would go mad with the power of it.”
Metellus Scipio leaned back. “Exactly.”
“I’m not that sort of man, Scipio.”
“I know, I know! But don’t accuse me, Magnus! The knights of the Eighteen won’t have another Dictator any more than Bibulus and Cato will. All one has to do is say the word ‘proscription’ and men turn white.”
“Whereas,” said Pompey thoughtfully, “a sole consul in office is still constrained by the system. He can be hauled into court afterward, made to answer.”
His instructions were to slip the next comment in as if it were a matter of course, and Metellus Scipio did well. He said, as if it were not important, “Not a difficulty for you, Magnus. You’d have nothing to answer for in a court.”
“That’s true,” said Pompey, brightening.
“Besides which, the very concept of a consul without a colleague is a first. I mean, there have been times when a consul has served without a colleague for a few months, due to deaths in office and omens forbidding the appointment of more than one suffect consul. Quintus Marcius Rex’s year, for example.”
“And the year of the consulship of Julius and Caesar!” said Pompey, laughing.
Since Caesar’s colleague had been Bibulus, who refused to govern with Caesar, this was not a comment which impressed Metellus Scipio; however, he swallowed and let it be. “You might say that to be consul without a colleague is the most extraordinary of all the extraordinary commands you’ve ever been offered.”
“Do you really think so?” asked Pompey eagerly.
“Oh, yes. Undoubtedly.”
“Then why not?” Pompey extended his right hand. “It’s a deal, Scipio, it’s a deal!”
The two men shook hands, and Metellus Scipio rose to his feet quickly, enormously relieved that he had acquitted himself to what would be the full satisfaction of Bibulus, and determined to remove himself before Pompey asked him some question not on the list he had memorized.
“You don’t look very happy, Scipio,” said Pompey on the way to the door.
Now how would he answer this? Was it dangerous ground? A fierce effort at thinking things through decided Metellus Scipio to be frank. “I’m not happy,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Plancus Bursa is making it generally known that he intends to prosecute me for bribery in the consular campaigning.”
“Is he?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Dear, dear!” cried Pompey, sounding cluckily concerned. “We can’t have that! Well, if I’m allowed to become consul without a colleague, Scipio, it will be a small matter to fix that up.”
“Will it?”
“No trouble, I assure you! I have quite a bit of dirt on our friend Plancus Bursa. Well, he’s no friend of mine really, but you know what I mean.”
A huge weight lifted off Metellus Scipio. “Magnus, I’d be your friend forever!”
“Good,” said Pompey contentedly. He opened the front door himself. “By the way, Scipio, would you care to come to dinner tomorrow afternoon?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“Do you think poor little Cornelia Metella would care to accompany you?”
“I think she’d like that very much.”
Pompey closed the door behind his visitor and strolled back to his study. How useful it was to have a tame tribune of the plebs who no one suspected was a tame tribune of the plebs! Plancus Bursa was worth every sestertius he was being paid. An excellent man. Excellent!
There loomed before his eyes an image of Cornelia Metella; he stifled a sigh. No Julia she. And she really did look like a camel. Not unhandsome, but insufferably proud! Couldn’t talk, though she spoke incessantly. If it wasn’t Zeno or Epicurus (she disapproved of both systems of thought), it was Plato or Thucydides. Despised mimes, farces, even Aristophanic comedy. Oh, well… she’d do. Not that he intended to ask for her. Metellus Scipio would have to ask him. What was good enough for a Julius Caesar was certainly good enough for a Metellus Scipio.
Caesar. Who didn’t have a second daughter or a niece. Oh, that one was riding for a fall! And the consul without a colleague was just the man to do the tripping-up. Caesar had his Law of the Ten Tribunes of the Plebs, but that wasn’t to say life was going to be smooth for him. Laws could be repealed. Or made redundant by other, later laws. But for the time being, let Caesar sit back and deem himself safe.
*
On the eighteenth day of intercalated Mercedonius, Bibulus got up in the House, meeting on the Campus Martius, and proposed that Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus be put up for election as consul, but without a colleague. The Interrex of the moment was that eminent jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus, who listened to the House’s reaction with the proper gravity becoming so famous a judge.
“It’s absolutely unconstitutional!” cried Caelius from the tribunes’ bench, not bothering to stand up. “There is no such man as a consul without a colleague! Why don’t you just make Pompeius the Dictator and be done with it?”
“Any kind of reasonably legal government is preferable to no government at all, provided it is answerable at law for every one of its actions,” said Cato. “I approve of the measure.”
“I call upon the House to divide,” said Servius Rufus. “All those in favor of permitting Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to stand for election as consul without a colleague, please stand to my right. Those against the motion, please stand to my left.”
Among the few men who stood to Servius Rufus’s left was Brutus, attending his first meeting of the Senate. “I cannot vote for the man who murdered my father,” he said loudly, chin up.
“Very well,” said Servius Rufus, surveying the bulk of the Senate to his right. “I will summon the Centuries for an election.”
“Why bother?” yelled Milo, who had also stood to the left. “Are we other consular candidates to be allowed to stand? For the same post, as consul without a colleague?”
Servius Rufus raised his brows. “Certainly, Titus Annius.”
“Why not save time, money and a walk out to the Saepta?” Milo went on bitterly. “We all know what the result will be.”
“I wouldn’t accept the commission on the Senate’s say-so,” said Pompey with immense dignity. “Let there be an election.”
“There should also be a law overriding the lex Annalis!” shouted Caelius. “It isn’t legal for a man to run again for consul until ten years have elapsed since his last consulship. Pompeius was consul for the second time only two years ago.”
“Quite right,” said Servius Rufus. “Conscript Fathers, I will see another division on the motion that the House recommend as a decree to the Popular Assembly a lex Caelia allowing Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to run for consul.”
Which turned the tables neatly on Caelius.
*
By the beginning of March, Pompey the Great was consul without a colleague, and things began to happen. In Capua was sitting a legion destined for Syria; Pompey summoned it to Rome and cracked down on the street wars. Not that much effort was necessary; the moment the Centuries elected Pompey, Sextus Cloelius called off his dogs and reported to Pompey to collect a fat fee, gladly paid.
The rest of the elections were held, which meant that Mark Antony was officially appointed Caesar’s quaestor—and that there were praetors in office to open the courts and start hearing the massive backlog of cases. No trials had been held since the end of the year before last, thanks to the violence which had prevailed during the five months last year’s praetors had been in office. So men like Aulus Gabinius, ex-governor of Syria, who had been acquitted of treason but still had to face charges of extortion, were finally tried.
It had been Gabinius who accepted the commission to restore Ptolemy Auletes of Egypt to his throne after the irate Alexandrians had ejected him—not a senatorial commission, more the seizing of an offer and an opportunity. For a price rumored to be ten thousand silver talents. Perhaps that much had been the agreed price, but what was sure was that Gabinius had never been paid anything like it. Which didn’t impress the extortion court; halfheartedly defended by Cicero, Gabinius was convicted and fined the sum of ten thousand talents. Unable to find a tenth of this fabulous sum, Gabinius went into exile.
But Cicero did better defending Gaius Rabirius Postumus, the little banker who had reorganized the finances of Egypt once its king was back on his throne. His original mission had been to collect the debts Ptolemy Auletes owed certain Roman senators for favors (Gabinius being one of them) and certain Roman moneylenders for contributing heavily to his support during his exile. Returned to Rome penniless, Rabirius Postumus accepted a loan from Caesar and bounced back. Acquitted because Cicero gave a defense as fact filled and damning as his prosecution of Gaius Verres had been years before, Rabirius Postumus was able now to devote himself to Caesar’s cause.
The breach between Cicero and Atticus had not lasted long, of course; they were back together, writing to each other whenever Atticus went away on business, huddled together whenever both of them happened to be in Rome or the same town.
“There’s a flurry of laws,” said Atticus, frowning; he was not an ardent Pompey supporter.
“Some of which none of us like,” said Cicero. “Even poor old Hortensius has started to fight back. And Bibulus and Cato, no surprise. The surprise was that they ever put up the suggestion that Magnus be elected consul without a colleague.”
“Perhaps,” said Atticus pensively, “they feared that Pompeius would take over the State without benefit of law. That’s basically what Sulla did.”
“Well, anyway,” said Cicero, brightening, “Caelius and I intend that some of the prime movers in all this should suffer. The moment Plancus Bursa and Pompeius Rufus are out of office as tribunes of the plebs, we intend to prosecute them for inciting violence.” He grimaced. “Since Magnus has put a new violence law on the tablets, we may as well use it.”
“I can name one man who isn’t pleased with our new consul without a colleague,” said Atticus.
“Caesar, you mean?” No Caesar lover, Cicero beamed. “Oh, it was prettily done! I kiss Magnus’s hands and feet for it!”
But Atticus, more rational about Caesar, shook his head. “It wasn’t prettily done at all,” he said sternly, “and it may be that one day we’ll suffer for it. If Pompeius intended that Caesar not be allowed to stand for the consulship in absentia, why did he have the ten tribunes of the plebs pass their law saying Caesar could? Now he legislates a fresh law which forbids any man to stand in absentia, including Caesar.”
“Huh! Caesar’s creatures screamed loud enough.”
Since Atticus had been one of those who screamed, he almost said something waspish, then bit his tongue. What was the use? Not all the advocates in history could persuade Cicero to see Caesar’s side of things. Not after Catilina. And, like most worthy country squires, once Cicero held a grudge, he held it. “Fine and good,” he said. “Why should they not? Everyone lobbies. But to say, ‘Ooops! I forgot!’ and tack a codicil onto his law which exempts Caesar, then neglect to have the codicil inscribed on bronze, is disgraceful. Sly and underhanded. I’d have liked the man better if he’d just shrugged and said, Too bad for Caesar; let him put up with it!’ Pompeius has a swollen head and too much power. Power which he isn’t using wisely. Because he’s never used power wisely, not since he marched down the Via Flaminia with three legions—a mere youth of twenty-two!—to help Sulla ride roughshod over Rome. Pompeius hasn’t changed. He’s simply grown older, fatter, and craftier.”
“Craft is necessary,” said Cicero defensively; he had always been Pompey’s man.
“Provided that the craft is aimed at men who’ll fall for it. Cicero, I don’t believe Caesar is the right man to choose as a target. Caesar has more craft in his little finger than Pompeius in his whole body, if for no other reason than that he employs it more rationally. But the trouble with Caesar is that he’s also the most direct man I know. Craft doesn’t become a habit, it’s only a necessity as far as Caesar is concerned. Pompeius tangles himself in a web when he practises to deceive. Yes, he manipulates its strands well. But it’s still a web. Caesar weaves a tapestry. I haven’t divined exactly what the pattern is yet, but I fear him. Not for the reasons you do. But I fear him!”
“Nonsense!” cried Cicero.
Atticus closed his eyes, sighed. “It looks as if Milo will come to trial. How are you going to reconcile your allegiances then?” he asked.
“That’s a way of saying that Magnus doesn’t want Milo to get off,” said Cicero uneasily.
“He doesn’t want Milo to get off.”
“I don’t think he cares one way or the other.”
“Cicero, grow up! Of course he cares! He put Milo up to it, you must see that!”
“I don’t see it.”
“Have it your own way. Will you defend Milo?”
“Not the Parthians and the Armenians combined could stop me!” Cicero declared.
*
The trial of Milo came on at dead of winter, which by the calendar (even after the insertion of those extra twenty-two days) was the fourth day of April. The court president was a consular, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and the prosecutors were the two young Appius Claudiuses assisted by two patrician Valerii, Nepos and Leo, and old Herennius Balbus. The defense was Olympian: Hortensius, Marcus Claudius Marcellus (a plebeian Claudian, not of Clodius’s family), Marcus Calidius, Cato, Cicero and Faustus Sulla, who was Milo’s brother-in-law. Gaius Lucilius Hirrus hovered on Milo’s side, but as he was Pompey’s close cousin he could do no more than hover. And Brutus came forward to offer himself in an advisory capacity.
Pompey had thought very carefully about how to stage this critical exercise, which was being conducted under his own violence legislation; the charge would not be murder, as no one had seen the murder. There were some innovations, among them the fact that the jury was not chosen until the final day of the case; Pompey personally drew the lots for eighty-one men, only fifty-one of whom would actually serve. By the time the final fifty-one were appointed by the lots and elimination, it would be too late to offer them bribes. The witnesses were to be heard on three consecutive days, after which, on the fourth day, their depositions were to be taken. Each witness was to be cross-examined. At the end of the fourth day, the entire court and all eighty-one potential jurors were to watch their names being inscribed on the little wooden balls, which were then to be locked up in the vaults under the temple of Saturn. And at dawn on the fifth day the fifty-one names would be drawn, with both prosecution and defense entitled to object to fifteen of the names produced.
Of slave witnesses there were very few, and none for Milo. On that first day the prosecution’s chief witnesses were Atticus’s cousin Pomponius and Gaius Causinius Schola: Clodius’s friends who had been with him. Marcus Marcellus did all the cross-examining for the defense, and did it superbly well. When he began to work on Schola, some of Sextus Cloelius’s gang members began a racket which prevented the court’s hearing what was said. Pompey was not present in the court; he was on the far side of the lower Forum, hearing cases for the fiscus just outside the Treasury doors. Ahenobarbus sent a message across to Pompey, complaining that he could not conduct his court under these circumstances, and adjourned.
“Disgraceful!” said Cicero to Terentia when he went home. “I sincerely hope that Magnus does something about it.”
“I’m sure he will,” said Terentia absently; she had other things on her mind. “Tullia is determined, Marcus. She’s going to divorce Crassipes at once.”
“Oh, why does everything have to happen at once? I can’t even begin to think about starting negotiations with Nero until my case is finished! And it’s important that I do start negotiating—I’ve heard that Nero is thinking of marrying one of the Claudia Pulchra troop.”
“One thing at a time,” said Terentia with suspicious sweetness. “I don’t think Tullia will be persuaded into another marriage hard on the heels of this one. Nor do I think that she likes Nero.”
Cicero glared. “She’ll do as she’s told!” he snapped.
“She’ll do as she wants!” snarled Terentia, sweetness gone. “She’s not eighteen anymore, Cicero, she’s twenty-five. You can’t keep shoving her into loveless marriages tailored to suit your own social-climbing ambitions!”
“I,” said Cicero, marching off to his study dinnerless, “am going to write my speech in defense of Milo!”
Rarely, in fact, did the consummate professional advocate Cicero devote the kind of time and care to a speech in someone’s defense that he did to the speech he wrote for Milo. Even in early draft it ranked with his best. Necessary that it do so, as the other members of the defending team had agreed that they would donate all their time to Cicero. On him, therefore, rested the entire onus of speaking so well that the jury voted ABSOLVO. He toiled for some hours rather pleasurably, nibbling on a plate of olives, eggs and stuffed cucumbers, then retired to bed well satisfied with how the speech was shaping up.
And went off to the Forum the next morning to discover that Pompey had dealt efficiently—if extremely—with the situation. A ring of soldiers stood around the area of open space in the lower Forum where Ahenobarbus had set up his court, and beyond those soldiers were patrols of soldiers moving incessantly; of a gang member there was no sign. Wonderful! thought Cicero, delighted. The proceedings could be conducted in absolute peace and quiet. Watch Marcus Marcellus destroy Schola now!
If Marcus Marcellus did not quite destroy Schola, he certainly managed to twist his testimony into knots. For three days the witnesses gave their evidence and endured cross-examination; on the fourth day they swore their depositions, and the court watched eighty-one little wooden balls inscribed with eighty-one different names of senators or knights or tribuni aerarii. Including the name of Marcus Porcius Cato, working for the defense and possibly a juror as well.
Cicero’s speech was perfect; he had rarely done better work. For one thing, it was not often that his co-advocates so generously yielded their time to him. The prosecution would have two hours to sum up, then the defense three hours. A whole three hours all to himself! Oh, what a man could do with that! Cicero looked forward with immense enjoyment to an oratorical triumph.
Walking home for a consular of Cicero’s standing was always a parade. One’s clients were there in droves; two or three of the fellows who collected Ciceronian witticisms hovered with wax tablets ready in case he uttered one; admirers clustered, talked, speculated about what he would say on the morrow. While he himself laughed, held forth, tried to think of some mot which would set the two or three collectors scribbling madly. Not a good time for the passing of a private message. Yet as Cicero started, puffing a little, up the Vestal Steps, someone brushed past him and slipped a note into his hand. How odd! Though why he didn’t produce the note and read it then and there he didn’t quite know. A feeling.
Not until he was alone in his study did he open it, peruse it, sit down with wrinkled brow. It was from Pompey, and merely instructed him to present himself at Pompey’s villa on the Campus Martius that evening. Unaccompanied, please. His steward informed him that dinner was ready; he ate it in solitude, not sorry that Terentia was annoyed with him. What could Pompey want? And why so furtive?
The meal concluded, he started out for Pompey’s villa by the shortest route, which took him nowhere near the Forum; he trotted down the Steps of Cacus into the Forum Boarium, and thus out to the Circus Flaminius, behind which lay Pompey’s theater, hundred-pillared colonnade, senatorial meeting chamber, and villa. Which villa, he remembered with a smile, he had likened to a dinghy behind a yacht. Well, it was. Not small, just dwarfed.
Pompey was alone, greeted Cicero cheerfully, mixed him an excellent white wine with special spring water.
“All ready for tomorrow?” the Great Man asked, turned sideways on the couch so that he could see Cicero at its far end.
“Never readier, Magnus. A beautiful speech!”
“Guaranteed to get Milo off, eh?”
“It will go a long way toward doing that, yes.”
“I see.”
For a long moment Pompey said nothing at all, just stared ahead past Cicero’s shoulder to where the golden grapes given to him by Aristobulus the Jew stood on a console table. Then he turned his eyes to Cicero and looked at him intently.
“I don’t want that speech given,” said Pompey.
Cicero’s jaw dropped. “What?” he asked stupidly.
“I don’t want that speech given.”
“But—but—I have to! I’ve been given the whole three hours allocated to the defense’s summing-up!”
Pompey got up and walked to the great closed doors which connected his study to the peristyle garden; they were of cast bronze and superbly paneled with scenes depicting the battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs. Copied from the Parthenon, of course, only those were marble bas-reliefs.
He spoke to the left-hand door. “I don’t want that speech given, Marcus,” he said for the third time.
“Why?”
“In case it does get Milo off,” said Pompey to a Centaur.
Cicero’s whole face was prickling; he felt sweat running down the back of his neck, became conscious that his hands were trembling. He licked his lips. “I would appreciate some sort of explanation, Magnus,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, and clenching his hands to still their shaking.
“I would have thought,” said Pompey casually to the vein-engorged hindquarters of the Centaur, “that it was obvious. If Milo gets off, he’ll be a hero to at least half of Rome. That means he’ll be elected consul next year. And Milo doesn’t like me anymore. He’ll prosecute me the moment I lay down my imperium, which is in three years’ time. As a respected and vindicated consular, he’ll have clout. I don’t want to have to spend the rest of my life doing what Caesar will spend the rest of his life doing—dodging prosecution on maliciously manufactured charges of everything from treason to extortion. On the other hand, if Milo is convicted, he’ll go into an irreversible exile. I’ll be safe. And that’s why.”
“But—but—Magnus, I can’t!” Cicero gasped.
“You can, Cicero. What’s more, you will.”
Cicero’s heart was behaving strangely, there was a webby mist before his eyes; he sat with them closed and drew a series of deep, strong breaths. Though he was a timid man, he was not at heart a coward. Once a sense of unfairness and injury entered into him, he could develop a surprising steeliness. And that crept into him now as he opened his eyes and stared at Pompey’s podgy back, covered by a thin tunic. This was a warm room.
“Pompeius, you’re asking me to give of less than my best for a client,” he said. “I do understand why, truly. But I cannot consent to rigging the race as if we were driving chariots at the circus! Milo is my friend. I’ll do my best for him no matter what the outcome might be.”
Pompey transferred his gaze to a different Centaur; this one had a javelin wielded by a Lapith embedded in its human chest. “Do you like living, Cicero?” he asked conversationally.
The trembling increased; Cicero had to wipe his brow with a fold of toga. “Yes, I like living,” he whispered.
“I imagined you did. After all, you haven’t had a second consulship yet, and there’s the censorship as well.” The wounded Centaur was obviously interesting; Pompey bent forward to peer at the spot where the javelin entered. “It’s up to you, Cicero. If you speak well enough to get Milo off tomorrow, it’s all over. Your next sleep will be permanent.”
Hand on one knob, Pompey tugged it, opened half the door, and went out. Cicero sat on the couch panting, lower lip held firmly in his teeth, knees vibrating. Time passed, he was not sure how much of it. But finally he put both hands on the couch and levered himself upright. His legs held. He extended a foot, began to walk. And kept on walking.
It was only at the bottom of the Palatine that he fully understood what had just transpired. What Pompey had actually told him. That Publius Clodius had died at his behest; that Milo had been his tool; that the tool’s usefulness was now blunted; and that if he, Marcus Tullius Cicero, did not do as he had been told, he would be as dead as Publius Clodius. Who would do it for Pompey? Sextus Cloelius? Oh, the world was full of Pompey’s tools! But what did he want, this Pompeius from Picenum? And where in all of this was Caesar? Yes, he was there! Clodius could not be allowed to live to be praetor. They had decided it between them.
In the darkness of his bedroom he began to weep. Terentia stirred, muttered, rolled onto her side. Cicero retreated, wrapped in a thick blanket, to the icy peristyle, and there wept as much for Pompey as for himself. The brisk, competent, oddly offhand seventeen-year-old he had met during Pompey Strabo’s war against the Italians in Picenum had long, long gone. Had he known as far back as then that one day he would need the wretched youth Cicero as his tool? Was that why he had been so kind? Was that why he had saved the wretched youth Cicero’s life? So that one day far in the future he could threaten to remove what he had preserved?
*
At dawn Rome woke to bustle and hum, though all through the night the heavy wheeled carts drawn by oxen lumbered through the narrow streets delivering goods. Goods which at dawn were put on display or put to work in some factory or foundry, when Rome rose, yawning, to begin the serious business of making money.
But on the fifth day of Milo’s trial in Lucius Ahenobarbus’s specially convened violence court, Rome cowered as the sun nudged upward into the sky. Pompey had literally closed the city. Within the Servian Walls no activity began; no snack bar opened its sliding doors onto the street to offer breakfast, no tavern rolled up its shutters, no bakery kindled the ovens, no stall was erected in any marketplace, no school set itself up in a quiet corner, no bank or brokerage firm tuned its abacuses, no purveyor of books or jewels opened his door, no slave or free man went to work, no crossroads college or club or brotherhood of any description met to while away the hours of a day off.
The silence was stupendous. Every street leading to the Forum Romanum was cordoned off by sour, untalkative bands of soldiers, and within the Forum itself pila bristled above the waving plumes of the Syrian legion’s helmets. Two thousand men garrisoned the Forum itself, three thousand more the city, on that freezing ninth day of April. Walking like somnambulants, the hundred-odd men and few women who were compelled to attend the trial of Milo assembled amid the echoes, shivering with cold, staring about twitchily.
Pompey had already set up his tribunal outside the doors of the Treasury beneath the temple of Saturn, and there he sat dispensing fiscal justice while Ahenobarbus had his lictors collect the wooden balls from the vaults and brought out the lot jars. Mark Antony challenged the jurors for the prosecution, Marcus Marcellus for the defense; but when Cato’s name was drawn, both sides nodded.
It took two hours to choose the fifty-one men who sat to hear the summing-up. After which the prosecution spoke for two hours. The elder of the two Appius Claudiuses and Mark Antony (who had remained in Rome to act in this trial) each spoke for half an hour, and Publius Valerius Nepos for an hour. Good speeches, but not in Cicero’s league.
The jury leaned forward on its folding stools when Cicero walked forward to begin, his scroll in his hand; it was there merely for effect, he never referred to it. When Cicero gave an oration it seemed as if he were composing it as he went along, seamlessly, vividly, magically. Who could ever forget his speech against Gaius Verres, his defenses of Caelius, of Cluentius, of Roscius of Ameria? Murderers, blackguards, monsters, all grist for Cicero’s undiscriminating mill. He had even made the vile Antonius Hybrida sound like every mother’s ideal son.
“Lucius Ahenobarbus, members of the jury, you see me here to represent the great and good Titus Annius Milo.”
Cicero paused, stared at the pleasurably expectant Milo, swallowed. “How strange it is to have an audience composed of soldiers! How much I miss the clangor of business as usual….” He stopped, swallowed. “But how wise of the consul Gnaeus Pompeius to make sure that nothing unseemly happened—happens….” He stopped, swallowed. “We are protected. We have nothing to fear, and least of all does my dear friend Milo have anything to fear….” He stopped, waved his scroll aimlessly, swallowed. “Publius Clodius was mad; he burned and plundered. Burned. Look at the places where our beloved Curia Hostilia, Basilica Porcia…” He stopped, he frowned, he pushed the fingers of one hand into the sockets of his eyes. “Basilica Porcia—Basilica Porcia…”
By this, the silence was so profound that the chink of a pilum brushing against a scabbard sounded like a building crashing down; Milo was gaping at him, that loathesome cockroach Marcus Antonius was grinning, the rising sun was reflecting off the oily bald pate of Lucius Ahenobarbus the way it did off snowfields, blindingly—oh, what is the matter with my mind, why am I seeing that?
He tried again. “Are we to exist in perpetual misery? No! We have not since the day Publius Clodius burned! On the day Publius Clodius died, we received a priceless gift! The patriot we see here before us simply defended himself, fought for his life. His sympathies have always been with true patriots, his anger directed against the gutter techniques of demagogues….” He stopped, swallowed. “Publius Clodius conspired to take the life of Milo. There can be no doubt of it, no doubt of it at all— no doubt at all—no doubt, no doubt… no—doubt…”
Face twisted with worry, Caelius crossed to where Cicero stood alone. “Cicero, you’re not well. Let me get you some wine,” he said anxiously.
The brown eyes staring at him were dazed; Caelius wondered if they even saw him.
“Thank you, I am well,” said Cicero, and tried again. “Milo does not deny that a fight broke out on the Via Appia, though he does deny that he instigated it. He does not deny that Clodius died, though he does deny that he killed Clodius. All of which is quite immaterial. Self-defense is not a crime. Never a crime. Crime is premeditated. That was Clodius. That was premeditation. Publius Clodius. Him. Not Milo. No, not Milo….”
Caelius moved back to him. “Cicero, take some wine, please!”
“No, I am well. Truly, I am well. Thank you…. Take the size of Milo’s party. A carpentum. A wife. The eminent Quintus Fufius Calenus. Baggage. Servants galore. Is that the way a man plots to do murder? Clodius had no wife with him. Isn’t that in itself suspicious? Clodius never moved without his wife. Clodius had no baggage. Clodius was unencumbersome—unencrumbed—unen—unencumbered….”
Pompey was sitting on his tribunal hearing cases against the fiscus. Pretending the court of Ahenobarbus didn’t exist. I never knew the man. Oh, Jupiter, he will kill me! He will kill me!
“Milo is a sane man. If it happened the way the prosecution alleges it happened, then we are looking at a madman. But Milo is not mad. It was Clodius who was mad! Everyone knew Clodius was mad! Everyone!”
He stopped, wiped the sweat out of his eyes. Fulvia swam before his gaze, sitting with her mother, Sempronia. Who was that standing with them? Oh, Curio. They were smiling, smiling, smiling. While Cicero died, died, died.
“Died. Died. Clodius died. No one denies that. We all have to die. But no one wants to die. Clodius died. Clodius brought it on himself. Milo didn’t kill him. Milo is—Milo is…”
For a hideous half hour Cicero battled on, stumbling, stopping, faltering, tripping over simple words. Until in the end, his vision filled by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus dispensing fiscal justice outside Saturn, he stopped for the last time. Couldn’t start again.
No one on Milo’s side was angry, even Milo. The shock was too enormous, Cicero’s health too suspect. Perhaps he had one of those frightful headaches with flashing lights? It wasn’t his heart; he didn’t have that grey look. Nor his stomach. What was the matter, with him? Was he having a stroke?
Marcus Claudius Marcellus stepped forward. “Lucius Ahenobarbus, it is clear that Marcus Tullius cannot continue. And that is a tragedy, for we all agreed to give him our time. Not one of us has prepared an address. May I humbly ask this court and its jurors to remember the kind of oration Marcus Tullius has always given? Today he is ill; we will not hear that. But we can remember. And take to your hearts, members of the jury, an unspoken oration which would have shown you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where the guilt in this sorry business lies. The defense rests its case.”
Ahenobarbus shifted in his chair. “Members of the jury, I require your votes,” he said.
The jury busied itself inscribing its little tablets with a letter: A for ABSOLVO, C for CONDEMNO. Ahenobarbus’s lictors collected the tablets and Ahenobarbus counted them with witnesses peering over his shoulder.
“CONDEMNO by thirty-eight votes to thirteen,” Ahenobarbus announced in a level voice. “Titus Annius Milo, I will appoint a damages panel to assess your fine, but CONDEMNO carries a sentence of exile with it according to the lex Pompeia de vi. It is my duty to instruct you that you are interdicted against fire and water within five hundred miles of Rome. Be advised that three further charges have been laid against you. You will be tried in the court of Aulus Manlius Torquatus on charges of electoral bribery. You will be tried in the court of Marcus Favonius on charges of illegally associating with members of colleges banned under the lex Julia Marcia. And you will be tried in the court of Lucius Fabius on charges of violence under the lex Plautia de vi. Court closed.”
Caelius led the almost prostrate Cicero away. Cato, who had voted ABSOLVO, crossed to Milo. It was very strange. Not even that showy termagant Fulvia was shrieking victory. People just melted away as if numbed.
“I’m sorry for it, Milo,” Cato said.
“Not as sorry as I am, believe me.”
“I fear you’ll go down in the other courts as well.”
“Of course. Though I won’t be here to defend myself. I’m leaving for Massilia today.”
For once Cato wasn’t shouting; his voice was low. “Then you’ll be all right if you’ve prepared for defeat. I hope you noticed that Lucius Ahenobarbus issued no order to seal your house or garnish your finances.”
“I am grateful. And I’m prepared.”
“I’m thunderstruck at Cicero.”
Milo smiled, shook his head. “Poor Cicero!” he said. “I think he’s just discovered some of Pompeius’s secrets. Please, Cato, watch Pompeius! I know the boni are wooing him. I understand why. But in the end you’d do better to ally yourself with Caesar. At least Caesar is a Roman.” But Cato drew himself up in outrage. “Caesar? I will die first!” he shouted, then marched away.
*
And at the end of April a wedding took place. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus married the widow Cornelia Metella, twenty-year-old daughter of Metellus Scipio. The charges Plancus Bursa had threatened to bring against Metellus Scipio never eventuated.
“Don’t worry, Scipio,” said the bridegroom genially at the wedding dinner, a small affair. “I intend to hold the elections on time in Quinctilis, and I promise that I’ll have you elected as my junior consul for the rest of this year. Six months is long enough to serve without a colleague.”
Metellus Scipio didn’t know whether to kick him or kiss him.
*
Though he kept to his house for a few days, Cicero bounced back, pretended even inside his own mind that it had never happened. That Pompey was the Pompey he had always been. Yes, a headache had struck, one of those ghastly things which warped the mind, snarled the tongue. That was how he explained it to Caelius. To the world he explained that the presence of the troops had thrown him off—how could anyone concentrate in that atmosphere of silence, of military might? And if there were those who remembered that Cicero had endured worse things without being rattled, they held their tongues. Cicero was getting old.
Milo had settled down to exile in Massilia, though Fausta had gone back to her brother in Rome.
To Milo in Massilia went a couriered gift: a copy of the speech Cicero had prepared, amended to incorporate rings of soldiers and flowery references to the consul without a colleague.
“My thanks,” Milo wrote to Cicero. “If you’d actually had the gumption to deliver it, my dear Cicero, I might not at this moment be enjoying the bearded mullets of Massilia.”