Robert Harris - Lustrum

'Well, Curius,' said Cicero quietly, 'this is a terrible business.'

'I'll talk to you alone, not in front of others.'

'Not talk in front of others? By the gods, you'll talk in front of the entire Roman people if I say so! Did you kill her?'

'Damn you, Cicero!' Curius swore, and lunged towards the consul, but Quintus was on his feet in a moment and blocked his way.

'Steady, Senator,' he warned.

'Did you kill her?' repeated Cicero.

'No!'

'But you know who did?'

'Yes! You!' Once more he tried to push his way past Quintus, but Cicero's brother was an old soldier, and stopped him easily. 'You killed her, you bastard,' he shouted again, struggling against Quintus's restraining arms, 'by making her your spy!'

'I'm prepared to bear my share of guilt,' replied Cicero, gazing at him coolly. 'Will you?'

Curius muttered something inaudible, pulled himself free of Quintus and turned away.

'Does Catilina know you're here?'

Curius shook his head.

'Well, that at least is something. Now listen to me. I'm offering you a chance, if you've brains enough to take it. You've hitched your fate to a madman. If you didn't know it before, you must realise it now. How did Catilina know she'd been to see me?'

Again Curius mumbled something no one could hear. Cicero cupped his hand to his ear. 'What? What are you saying?'

'Because I told him!' Curius glared at Cicero with tearful eyes. He struck his breast with his fist. 'She told me, and I told him!' And he struck himself again – hard, hard, hard blows – in the manner of some Eastern holy man lamenting the dead.

'I need to know everything. Do you understand me? I need names, places, plans, times. I need to know who exactly will strike at me, and in what location. It's treason if you don't tell me.'

'And treachery if I do!'

'Treachery against evil is a virtue.' Cicero got to his feet. He put his hands on Curius's shoulders and stared hard into his face. 'When your lady came to see me, it was your safety as much as mine that was her concern. She made me promise, on the lives of my children, that I would grant you immunity if this plot was ever exposed. Think of her, Curius, lying there – beautiful, brave, broken. Be worthy of her love and her memory, and act now as you know she would have wanted.'

Curius wept; indeed, I could hardly restrain my own tears, such was the pitiful vision Cicero conjured up: that, and the promise of immunity, did the trick. When Curius had pulled himself together sufficiently, he promised to get word to Cicero the moment he heard any definite news of Catilina's plans. Thus Cicero's thin line of information from the enemy's camp remained intact.

He did not have long to wait.

The following day was election eve, and Cicero was due to preside over the senate. But because of the fear of an ambush, he had to follow a circuitous route, along the Esquiline and down to the Via Sacra. The journey took twice as long as usual, and it was mid-afternoon by the time we arrived. His curule chair was placed on the doorstep and he sat there in the shade, reading through some letters, surrounded by his lictors, waiting for the auguries to be taken. Several senators wandered over to ask if he had heard what Catilina was supposed to have said that morning. Apparently he had addressed a meeting in his house in the most inflammatory terms. Cicero replied that he had not, and sent me off to see if I could discover anything. I walked around the senaculum and approached one or two senators with whom I was on friendly terms. The place was certainly buzzing with rumours. Some said that Catilina had called for the richest men in Rome to be murdered, others that he had urged an uprising. I jotted a few sentences down, and was just returning to Cicero when Curius brushed past me and slipped into my hand a note. He was sickly white with terror. 'Give this to the consul,' he whispered, and before I could reply he was gone. I looked around. A hundred or more senators were talking in small groups. As far as I could tell, no one had seen the encounter.

I hurried over to Cicero and handed him the message. I bent to his ear and whispered, 'It's from Curius.'

He opened it, studied it for a moment, and his face tensed. He passed it up to me. It said, You will be murdered tomorrow during the elections. At just that moment the augurs came up and declared that the auspices were propitious. 'Are you certain about that?' asked Cicero in a grim voice. Solemnly they assured him that they were. I could see him weighing in his mind what best to do. Finally he stood and indicated to his lictors that they should pick up his chair, and he followed them into the cool shadows of the senate chamber. The senators filed in behind us. 'Do we know what Catilina actually said this morning?'

'Not in any detail.'

As we walked up the aisle he said to me quietly, 'I fear this warning may have some substance to it. If you think about it, it's the one time when they can be sure precisely where I'll be – on the Field of Mars, presiding over the ballot. And with all those thousands of people milling around, how easy it would be for ten or twenty armed men to hack their way through to me and take me down.' By this time we had reached the dais and the benches were filling. He glanced back, searching the white-robed figures. 'Is Quintus here?'

'No, he's canvassing.' Indeed, a great many senators were absent. All the candidates for consul, and most of those for tribune and praetor – including Quintus and Caesar – had chosen to spend the afternoon meeting voters rather than attending to the business of the state. Only Cato was in his place, reading his treasury accounts. Cicero grimaced and tightened his fist, crushing Curius's message. He stood that way for quite some time until he became conscious that the house was watching him. He mounted the steps to his chair.

'Gentlemen,' he announced, 'I have just been informed of a grave and credible conspiracy against the republic, involving the murder of your leading consul.' There was a gasp. 'In order that the evidence may be examined and debated, I propose that the start of the elections tomorrow be postponed, until the nature of this threat has been properly assessed. Are there any objections?' In the excited murmur that followed, no clear voice could be heard. 'In that case, the senate will stand adjourned until first light tomorrow,' and with these words he swept down the aisle followed by his lictors.

Rome was now plunged into a state of great confusion. Cicero went straight back to his house and immediately set about trying to find out precisely what Catilina had said, dispatching clerks and messengers to potential informants across the city. I was ordered to fetch Curius from his house on the Aventine. At first his doorkeeper refused to admit me – the senator was seeing no one, he said – but I sent a message to him on behalf of Cicero and eventually was allowed in. Curius was in a state of nervous collapse, torn between his fear of Catilina and his anxiety not to be implicated in the murder of a consul. He flatly refused to go with me and meet Cicero face to face, saying it was too dangerous. It was only with great difficulty that I persuaded him to describe the meeting at Catilina's house.

All Catilina's henchmen were there, he said: some eleven senators in total, including himself. There were also half a dozen members of the Order of Knights – he named Nobilior, Statilius, Capito and Cornelius – as well as the ex-centurion Manlius and scores of malcontents from Rome and all across Italy. The scene was dramatic. The house was stripped entirely bare of possessions – Catilina was bankrupt and the place mortgaged – apart from a silver eagle that had once been the consul Marius's personal standard when he fought against the patricians. As for what Catilina had actually said, according to Curius it went something like this (I took it down as he dictated it):