Caesar (22 page)

Poplicola was alongside Cloelius, but Antony, Bursa, Pompeius Rufus and Decimus Brutus hung back, uneasy; two were tribunes of the plebs, one recently admitted to the Senate, and one, Antony, not yet a senator. What Cloelius was saying affected them as much as it did the group who had fled from the Senate steps, but there was no stopping Cloelius now, nor any escape.“ Then let's show them what we mean to do to them!” Cloelius screamed. “Let's put Publius Clodius in the Senate House, and dare the rest of them to remove him!”

A convulsive movement thrust the front ranks onto the top of the rostra; Clodius's bier was hoisted shoulder-high and carried on a wave of arms up the Senate steps to its ponderous bronze pair of doors, unassailably strong. In one moment they were gone, torn from their enormous hinges; the body of Publius Clodius disappeared inside. Came the sounds of things being ripped apart, splintered, smashed, reduced to fragments. Bursa had somehow managed to get away; Antony, Decimus Brutus and Pompeius Rufus stood watching in horror as Cloelius fought his way up the Senate steps to the portico. In the midst of which Antony's eyes found little old Lucius Decumius, still on the rostra, still mourning. He knew him, of course, from Caesar's days in the Subura, and though Antony was not a merciful man, he always had a soft spot for people he liked. No one else was interested in Lucius Decumius, so he moved to the old man's side and cuddled him.“ Where are your sons, Decumius?” he asked.“ Don't know, don't care.”

“Time an old codger like you was home in bed.”

“Don't want to go to bed.” The tear-drenched eyes looked up into Antony's face and recognized him. “Oh, Marcus Antonius, they're all gone!” he cried. “She broke their hearts—she broke mine—they're all gone!”

“Who broke your heart, Decumius?”

“Little Julia. Knew her as a baby. Knew Caesar as a baby. Knew Aurelia since she was eighteen years old. Don't want to feel no more, Marcus Antonius!”

“Caesar's still with us, Decumius.”

“Won't ever see him again. Caesar said to me, look after Clodius. He said, make sure while I'm away that Clodius don't come to no harm. But I couldn't do it. No one could, with Clodius.” The crowd emitted a long cry; Antony glanced toward the Curia Hostilia and stiffened. It was so old it had no windows, but high in its side where the beautiful mural adorned it were big grilles to let in air; they glowed now with a red, pulsating light and trickled smoke.“ Jupiter!” roared Antony to Decimus Brutus and Pompeius Rufus. “They've set the place on fire!”

Lucius Decumius twisted like an eel and was away; aghast, Antony watched him struggle, old man that he was, through the hordes now retreating down the Senate steps and away from the conflagration. Flames were belching out of the doorway, but Lucius Decumius never paused. His figure showed black against the fire, then disappeared inside. Sated and exhausted, the crowd went home. Antony and Decimus Brutus walked together to the top of the Vestal Steps and stood to watch as the fire inside the Curia Hostilia consumed Publius Clodius. Beyond it on the Argiletum stood the offices of the Senate, wherein lay the precious records of meetings, the consulta which were the senatorial decrees, the fasti which listed all the magistrates who had ever been in office. Beyond it on the Clivus Argentarius stood the Basilica Porcia, headquarters of the tribunes of the plebs and offices for brokers and bankers, again stuffed with irreplaceable records of all descriptions. Cato the Censor had built it, the first such structure to adorn the Forum, and though it was small, dingy and long eclipsed by finer edifices, it was a part of the mos maiorum. Opposite the Curia Hostilia on the other corner of the Argiletum stood the exquisite Basilica Aemilia, still being restored to absolute magnificence by Lucius Aemilius Paullus. But they all went up in flames as Antony and Decimus Brutus watched.“ I loved Clodius, but he wasn't good for Rome,” said Mark Antony, utterly depressed.“ And I! For a long time I truly thought that Clodius might actually make the place work better,” said Decimus Brutus. “But he didn't know when to stop. His freedmen scheme killed him.”

“I suppose,” said Antony, turning away at last, “that things will quieten down now. I might be elected a quaestor yet.”

“And I'm going to Caesar in Gaul. I'll see you there.”

“Huh!” grumped Antony. “I'll probably draw the lot for Sardinia and Corsica.”

“Oh no,” said Decimus Brutus, grinning. “It's Gaul for both of us. Caesar's asked for you, Antonius. Told me in his letter.” Which sent Antony home feeling better.

Other things had happened during that awful night. Some in the crowd, gathered by Plancus Bursa, had gone out to the temple of Venus Libitina beyond the Servian Walls on the Campus Esquilinus, and there removed the fasces laid on their couches because there were no men in office to wield them. They then trudged all the way from the south side of the city to the Campus Martius, and there stood outside Pompey's villa demanding that he assume the fasces and the dictatorship. But the place was dark, no one answered; Pompey had gone to his villa in Etruria. Footsore, they plodded to the houses of Plautius and Metellus Scipio atop the Palatine and begged them to take the fasces. The doors were bolted, no one answered. Bursa had abandoned them after the fruitless mission to Pompey's villa, gone home anguished and afraid; at dawn the weary, leaderless group deposited the bundles of rods back in Venus Libitina. No one wanted to govern Rome—that was the opinion of every man and woman who went the next day to the Forum to see the smoking ruins of so much precious history. Fulvia's undertakers were there, gloved, booted and masked, poking through the still-hot embers to find little bits of Publius Clodius. Not much, just enough to cause a rattle inside the priceless jeweled jar Fulvia had provided. Clodius must have a funeral, though it would not be at the expense of the State, and Fulvia, crushed, had yielded to her mother's command that the Forum be avoided. Cato and Bibulus stared, appalled.“ Oh, Bibulus, Cato the Censor's basilica is gone, and I do not have the money to rebuild it!” wept Cato, looking at the crumbling, blackened walls. The column which had so inconvenienced the tribunes of the plebs stuck up through the charred beams of the collapsed roof like the stump of a rotten tooth.“ We can make a start with Porcia's dowry,” said Bibulus. “I can manage without it, and so can Porcia. Besides, Brutus will be home any day. We'll get a big donation from him too.”

“We've lost all the Senate records!” Cato said through his sobs. “There are not even those to tell future Romans what Cato the Censor said.”

“It's a disaster, yes, Cato, but at least it means we don't have to worry about the freedmen.” Which was the chief sentiment among Rome's senators. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who was married to Cato's sister and had given two of his own sisters to Bibulus as wives, hurried up. A short, squat man with not one hair on his head, Ahenobarbus had neither Cato's strength of principle nor Bibulus's sharpness of mind, but he was bullishly stubborn and absolutely faithful to the boni, the Good Men of the Senate's ultra-conservative faction.“ I've just heard the most amazing rumor!” he said breathlessly.“ What?” asked Cato apathetically.“ That Milo sneaked into Rome during the fire!”

The other two stared.“ He wouldn't have that kind of courage,” said Bibulus.“ Well, my informant swears that he saw Milo watching the blaze from the Capitol, and though the doors of his house are bolted, there's definitely someone home—and I don't mean servants.”

“Who put him up to it?” asked Cato. Ahenobarbus blinked. “Did anyone have to? He and Clodius were bound to clash personally sooner or later.”

“Oh, I think someone put him up to it,” said Bibulus, “and I think I know who that someone was.”

“Who?” asked Ahenobarbus.“ Pompeius, of course. Egged on by Caesar.”

“But that's conspiracy to murder!” gasped Ahenobarbus. “We all know Pompeius is a barbarian, but he's a cautious barbarian. Caesar can't be caught, he's in Italian Gaul, but Pompeius is here. He'd never put himself voluntarily in that kind of boiling soup.”

“Provided no one can prove it, why should he care?” asked Cato contemptuously. “He divorced Milo a year and more ago.”

“Well, well!” said Bibulus, smiling. “It becomes steadily more important that we acquire this Picentine barbarian for our cause, doesn't it? If he's obliging enough to wag his tail and turn cartwheels at Caesar's dictate, think what he could do for us! Where's Metellus Scipio?”

“Shut in his house since they begged him to take the fasces.”

“Then let's walk round and make him let us in,” said Cato.

After forty years of enduring friendship, Cicero and Atticus had a falling-out. Whereas Cicero, who had endured paroxysms of fear because of Publius Clodius, thought Clodius's death the best news Rome could possibly get, Atticus genuinely grieved.“ I don't understand you, Titus!” Cicero cried. “You're one of the most important knights in Rome! You have business interests in almost every sort of enterprise, therefore you were one of Clodius's chief targets! Yet here you are sniveling because he's dead! Well, I am not sniveling! I am rejoicing!”

“No one should rejoice at the untimely loss of a Claudius Pulcher,” said Atticus sternly. “He was brilliant and he was the brother of one of my dearest friends, Appius Claudius. He had wit and he had a good measure of erudition. I enjoyed his company very much, and I'll miss him. I also pity his poor little wife, who loved him passionately.” Atticus's bony face took on a wistful look. “Passionate love is rare, Marcus. It doesn't deserve to be cut off in its prime.”

“Fulvia?” squawked Cicero, outraged. “That vulgar strumpet who had the gall to barrack for Clodius in the Forum when she was so heavy with child she took up the space of two? Oh, Titus, really! She might be the daughter of Gaius Gracchus's daughter, but she's a disgrace to the name Sempronius! And the name Fulvius!”

Mouth pinched, Atticus got up abruptly. “Sometimes, Cicero, you're an insufferably puckered-up prude! You ought to watch it—there's still straw behind your Arpinate ears! You're a bigoted old woman from the outer fringes of Latium, and no Tullius had ventured to take up residence in Rome when Gaius Gracchus walked the Forum!”

He stalked out of Cicero's reception room, leaving Cicero flabbergasted.“ What's the matter with you? And where's Atticus?” barked Terentia, coming in.“ Gone to dance attendance on Fulvia, I presume.”

“Well, he likes her, always did. She and the Clodias have always been very broadminded about his affection for boys.”

“Terentia! Atticus is a married man with a child!”

“And what's that got to do with the price of fish?” demanded Terentia. “Truly, Cicero, you're an old woman!”

Cicero flinched, winced, said nothing.“ I want to talk to you.” He indicated the door to his study. “In there?” he suggested meekly. “Unless you don't mind being overheard?”

“It makes no difference to me.”

“Then here will do, will it, my dear?” She cast him a suspicious glance, but decided that bone was not worth a pick and said, “Tullia wants to divorce Crassipes.”

“Oh, what's the matter now?” cried Cicero, exasperated. Terentia's superbly ugly face grew uglier. “The poor girl is beside herself, that's what's the matter! Crassipes treats her like dog's mess on the sole of his boot! And where's the promise you were so convinced he showed? He's an idler and a fool!”

Hands to his face, Cicero gazed at his wife in dismay. “I am aware that he's a disappointment, Terentia, but it isn't you who has to find another dowry for Tullia, it's me! If she divorces Crassipes he'll keep the hundreds of thousands of sesterces I gave him along with her, and I'll have to find another lot on top of that! She can't stay single like the Clodias! A divorced woman is the target for every gossip in Rome.”

“I didn't say she intended to stay single,” said Terentia enigmatically. Cicero missed the significance of this, concerned only about the dowry. “I know she's a delightful girl, and luckily she's attractive. But who will marry her? If she divorces Crassipes, she'll be trailing two husbands behind her at the age of twenty-five. Without producing a child.”

“There's nothing wrong with her baby works,” said Terentia. “Piso Frugi was so sick he didn't have the energy before he died, and Crassipes doesn't have the interest. What Tullia needs is a real man.” She snorted. “If she finds one, it will be more than I ever did.” Why that statement should have caused a name to pop into his mind instantaneously, Cicero afterward didn't know. Just that one did. Tiberius Claudius Nero! A full patrician, a wealthy man—and a real man. He brightened, forgot Atticus and Fulvia. “I know just the fellow!” he said gleefully. “Too rich to need a big dowry too! Tiberius Claudius Nero!”

Terentia's thin-lipped mouth fell open. “Nero?”

“Nero. Young, but bound to reach the consulship.”

“Grrr!” snarled Terentia, marching out of the room. Cicero looked after her, bewildered. What had happened to his golden tongue today? It could charm no one. For which, blame Publius Clodius.“ It's all Clodius's fault!” he said to Marcus Caelius Rufus when Caelius walked in.“ Well, we know that,” Caelius said with a grin, threw an arm about Cicero's shoulders and steered him studyward. “Why are you out here? Unless you've taken to keeping the wine out here?”

“No, it's right where it always is, in the study,” Cicero said, sighing in relief. He poured wine, mixed it with water, sat down. “What brings you today? Clodius?”

“In a way,” said Caelius, frowning. He was, to use Terentia's phrase, a real man, Caelius. Tall enough, handsome enough and virile enough to have attracted Clodia and kept her for several years. And he had been the one to do the dropping, for which Clodia had never forgiven him; the result had been a sensational trial during which Cicero, defending Caelius, had aired Clodia's scandalous behavior so effectively that the jury had been pleased to acquit Caelius of attempting to murder her. The charges had been multiple and gone much further, but Caelius got off and Publius Clodius had never forgiven him. This year he was a tribune of the plebs in a very interesting College which was largely pro-Clodius, anti-Milo. But Caelius was pro-Milo, very definitely.“ I've seen Milo,” he said to Cicero.“ Is it true he came back to town?”