CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“It is easy enough for you to counsel patience, Julius,” said Lucius Sergius Catilina, “for you have more time. But I am thirty-one years old and I am impatient.”

The two young men sat in the hot and fragrant garden of the house on the Palatine which the money of Aurelia had purchased. Peacocks strutted and spread their fans in the dark-blue shade, which contrasted with the blinding light that lay on red gravel paths and flowerbeds and glittering fountains and on the tops of dusky cypresses and myrtle trees. A flock of birds as scarlet as blood fluttered in and through the fading leaves of an oak tree, chattering with vehemence as they discussed the coming migration. The first scent of evening jasmine rose on the warm air.

Julius and Lucius were sitting on a cool marble bench in the shade of a myrtle, drinking honey-sweet wine the color of pale roses, and eating figs and grapes and citrons.

“Observe that mountebank,” said Julius, chuckling and nodding toward a young peacock who, with an eye to an older one’s ire, was tentatively lifting his brilliant, argus-eyed tail. “He wishes to woo the damsels of the flock. But the old peacock looks sternly and warningly at him. His time has not yet come.”

“I judge that remark to mean that my time has not yet come, either. Nor yours,” said Catilina. “You are still but twenty-five. I am thirty-one. I do not look with equanimity on the fact that my time may arrive when I am a graybeard. We were certain of it under Sulla. But again it has evaded us. Now we have Lepidus. He is like water which runs through the hands before one can drink. Do you know what I have heard? The Senate is weary of him. He restricts their power in behalf of those whom he calls ‘the people.’ So, the Senate will banish him soon to his province Transalpine Gaul. They love the power Sulla gave them. What, then, of us?”

Julius drank reflectively, then paused to smile again on the young peacock. “Lepidus needs some advice. He is positive the people of Rome are with him. If he should be banished, what if he decides to raise up an army against Rome and march against her?”

Lucius studied him with a faint dark smile. “I assume he has been given this advice.”

“Has Lepidus asked my advice? No.”

“But you have friends.”

“I have friends.”

Catilina refilled his crystal goblet, then held it in his hands and looked down into the heart of the glimmering wine. “Well,” said Catilina after a moment. “What after that?”

Julius shrugged. “One must observe and consider. One throws the dice. It is in the hands of the gods which way they will fall.”

Catilina laughed. “But your dice are always loaded, Julius.”

“It is well to assist the gods occasionally.”

“You are ambiguous, Caesar. There are times when I do not trust you.”

“I am the most loyal of men,” said Julius.

“To yourself.”

Julius looked offended. “My stars have indicated that those who are born under them are suffused with the deepest devotion toward friends. What friends have I lost through betrayal?”

Catilina considered him. “You have told me that your dear friend, Cicero, has repeated to you that you will die betrayed, in your own blood. If he hints so of your murder, then he is plotting against you.”

Julius laughed out loud. “Cicero? Dear friend, you are mad. He may be subtle, as you have seen, but never vicious. He is, above all, amiable and kind and irenic. Jupiter has endowed me with the ability to look into the hearts of men.”

Catilina turned his beautiful and depraved face upon him with contempt. “He prophesied my murder, also. Did he not also speak so of Pompey? What is good about a man so openly vindictive?”

“Oracles are moved by no passion nor personalities, Lucius. They speak of the future they see.”

“You think him an oracle?”

“No. He has been prophesying the death of Rome for a long my son would kill me. Do I have a son? No.” time. Is she dead? Have we been murdered? No. He said.

Catilina smiled. “What of M. Junius Brutus? That little boy?”

Julius’ face became cold and he fixed his black and sparkling eyes upon his friend. “You defame his mother. And his father, whom I hold in high regard, and who is my friend.”

But Catilina smiled even more. “Your friends cannot destroy the rumors that young Brutus is your son. Before your advent, his mother was barren.”

“I hear she is devoted to Juno and made many visits to her shrine.” Julius’ eyes, which had the capacity to look like the points of presented blades on occasion, deadly and violent, now smiled again. “Rumor!” he exclaimed. “If one listened to rumor one would become mad. I prefer facts. On that foundation one can build cities.”

“You are building too slowly.”

“I build well.”

Catilina moved restively on the marble seat. “You are not bold, Julius.”

“When necessary I am a lion. The time to roar has not yet arrived. Let us wait until Lepidus has destroyed himself.”

“Let us return to that Cicero. He haunts my mind like an evil dream. He is powerful in Rome now. Moreover, he is studying politics. He may rise to confront and challenge us.”

“He is very sick. He may die.”

“Let us, then, end his pain.”

Julius carefully placed his goblet on the table before him. He said, “What do you recommend, Lucius? Poison?”

He raised his eyes slowly and fixed them on Catilina. Catilina’s blue eyes shifted, like the flick of a snake’s tongue. “Poison is a woman’s weapon.”

“Ah, so. Livia employed it. I should have remembered.”

“Are you threatening me, Caesar?”

Julius was astonished. “I? Why should I threaten you, Lucius?”

“To save your incredible friend, the Chick-pea.”

Julius laughed. “It is true that I have an affectionate regard for Cicero, who was my mentor in my youth, and who protected me against you, dearest friend. The loves of one’s childhood are not easily forgotten. However, if he rose in my way I should dispatch him. Do you not believe me?”

Catilina gazed at him thoughtfully. Then he said with reluctance, “I believe you. What, then, am I to conjecture? That you think the Chick-pea will be of some assistance to you.”

Julius, who was rarely startled, was not taken aback. But he stared into the eyes of Catilina with candor. “How could he assist me?”

“That is what is mystifying. But I feel that you think it.”

“You are as fanciful as a woman. My path is not the path of Cicero. They will never cross. I love Cicero, for many reasons which would seem absurd to you. My mother gave him an amulet—”

“Which I believe saved his life.”

“You are superstitious. Again, let us consider Cicero. He has many powerful advocates in Rome, if few intimates. Should he die, he would be avenged. His political ambitions, if any, are small. He has made no move to satisfy them. He is speaking of going to Greece. He is a scholar, a poet, an essayist, an orator, a lawyer. I admire him. And his brother is a soldier. Do you think Quintus, who is devoted to him, would accept his death meekly? Let us not complicate our affairs.”

“He spoke of his own death, you have told me,” said Catilina with satisfaction. “Did he see my face among his murderers?”

“He does not speak of you, Lucius. Now let us talk of realities.”

As the hot summer inclined toward autumn Marcus made little progress. His joints were suffused. The physician was alarmed at his heart sounds. “You must go at once to a milder clime,” he said.

Now Marcus knew he must go if he were to survive. His young lawyers came to his bedside for advice on law matters which must be brought to conclusion in the coming months. Quintus, eager to go with his brother, and to escape from his young wife, urged haste. He looked at his brother’s pale and haggard face with terror.

In the next month or so Marcus almost forgot his pain and his illness because of events. Aemilius Lepidus, the dictator of Rome, was indeed banished to his province of the Transalpine Gaul by the angered Senate. He agreed with apparent meekness. But he stopped at Etruria and began to levy an army amongst disgruntled veterans of many wars, who felt that they had been treated with disregard by the masters of Rome. The Senate declared him a public enemy, and rumor excitedly ran through the streets like a carried torch. Lepidus’ army grew daily, and it was said he would soon march against Rome, to seize ultimate power and avenge himself on the Senate.

Pompey was commissioned to meet him in arms, and taking Catulus Pompey met Lepidus on the Campus Martius and defeated him. Lepidus, escaping, fled to join Sertorius in the Spains.

But so long as he lived he was a menace to Rome. “Ah,” said Julius, to his many secret friends in the Senate, “If one only possessed a helmet from Hades, so one could be invisible and approach Lepidus at night and destroy this enemy of our nation!”

“We are a lawful body,” said the Senators. “Besides, Lepidus still has many friends in Rome, and in the provinces, among the military.”

“Am I not a soldier?” asked Julius. “Lepidus does not lack guards. Nevertheless, he must die. He is a traitor.”

“True,” said the Senators, averting their eyes from Julius’ face. “But he still has friends. We have been through a difficult and dangerous time. If he dies, it must be by accident, or in a way so mysterious that his death cannot be laid to our offense.”

Julius, satisfied, nodded in agreement. And so it was that Lepidus, who had considered himself a greater Sulla, died mysteriously in the very house of his friend Sertorius, who vowed to avenge his murder by someone unknown. The Senate issued a proclamation in Lepidus’ behalf, saying that though he had set himself against the Senate and the people of Rome he had been a noble soldier. It was obvious that he had become deranged. The Senate ordered a period of mourning for him, and publicly honored his family.

Marcus, who had despised and feared Lepidus, who was of an unstable and violent character, was nevertheless greatly disturbed over the murder. It was another example, to him, of lawlessness overcoming law in the name of expediency. When Julius visited him Marcus expressed his alarm. Julius agreed with him.

Marcus looked at him with the acuteness of grave illness. “You never cared about law, dear young friend. There were some weeks, Julius, when you did not visit me. Were you in the Spains?”

Julius was all amazement and offense. “What are you implying, Marcus?”

“Nothing. I was merely wondering,” said Marcus, with weariness. Julius’ eyes narrowed on him. But he spoke no more of Lepidus.

Nor did Sertorius, the friend of the Consul. Rome subsided. Many old and disgruntled and crippled veterans were delighted to receive handfuls of gold sesterces from a treasury that was almost bare, and they forgot Lepidus also.

Two nights before Marcus left with his brother for Greece, the father visited the older son in his cubiculum. “I have discerned a sadness of spirit in you, Marcus, that seems even greater than your illness. You speak to me no longer of God; you turn from His name. Why is this?”

Marcus murmured, “I have considered if He is dead. He is silent in the face of enormities.”

“He is concerned with man, not with men,” said Tullius, seating himself and taking his son’s hand.

Marcus moved restively. But Tullius would not free his hand. “Let me repeat to you, Marcus, what Plotimus of Egypt said over a hundred years ago. ‘But mind contemplates its source, not because it is separated from it but because it is next after it and there is nothing between.’ This is true also in the case of soul and mind. Everything has a longing for and loves that which begot it, and especially when there are only the One that begot and the one begotten. And when the Supremely Good is the One who begot, the one begotten is necessarily joined to Him so intimately that it is separated only insofar as it is a second being.”

“The Greeks,” said Marcus, listlessly, “knew of Plotimus, and so invented the Unknown God, who would be begotten of the Godhead and would descend to earth. The Jews have that fable, also. It runs through our own religion.”

“Because God willed it so, for it is His truth.”

But Marcus felt defeated in his mind and his soul and his body, and he did not know why. Always, he had wanted to go to Greece. Now he contemplated the thought with dismay and without desire.

Helvia said to him, “When you return, with your health restored, you must marry. You have waited long enough.” He did not dispute with her, for he had no strength.

Atticus, in Athens, had expressed his joy in a letter to his author. Marcus and Quintus must be his honored and beloved guests. Marcus, in that benign climate of sea and sun and cerulean sky and wisdom, would regain his health rapidly. He would also begin to write again, for the edification of mankind. Marcus laughed.

His friends repeatedly brought news of the concern of Romans for the great lawyer and orator. But Marcus looked at them incredulously and said to himself, “Do they speak of me? What nonsense!” He would move his anguished limbs and it seemed to him that the pain of his body was less than the pain of his mind. As for himself, he should prefer to die here in his bed, defeated and alone, and join his spirit with that of Livia’s. Sometimes he became petulant in the face of his family’s concern and grief for him. It seems he must live for them. Have I not always? he thought, with bitterness. On the night before he left for Greece, he dreamed of his grandfather, who regarded him with sternness.

“Are you a dog, or a Roman?” asked the old man, who seemed of a towering height.

His strength was a little renewed during the night. In the morning he huddled in the family car while Quintus drove the fine horses. In a few hours they set sail for Greece.

Marcus sat on the deck of the galleon and the fair breezes of the sea struck his face and the sun lay on his cheeks. He was very exhausted. Syrius, who had accompanied the brothers, covered him with quilts against any chill. He lay back in his chair and closed his eyes and let himself be carried on the gentle swell. He had never been on the sea before. At last, he opened his eyes and looked upon the water, and for the first time in months he felt a quickening in his body. He said to his heart, Be still. And to his restless sick mind, Be quiet. It is enough that I have eyes.

When Quintus brought him wine Marcus smiled at him, and Quintus’ strong bright face jerked with emotion. “I feel much better,” said Marcus. “I am glad that you forced this journey upon me.”

He looked at the sea, which ran past the ship in foam and in millions of rainbows. The masts creaked; there was a smell of oil and tar and hot wood. The sails held the red sunlight cupped within them. Sailors sang. Marcus said, “I fear I shall live.” But he smiled.