Robert Harris - Lustrum

'What are you playing at?' he whispered angrily, when I got him into the atrium. His nerves were clearly stretched to breaking point. 'Where's Celer?'

'Gravely ill,' I replied. 'Perhaps dying. He wants you to come at once.'

Poor Cicero. That must have been a blow. He seemed literally to stagger back from it. Without exchanging a word we went straight round to Celer's house, where the steward was waiting for us, and he led us towards the private apartments. I shall never forget those gloomy passageways, with their dim candles and the sickly smell of incense being burned to cover the still more powerful odours of vomit and bodily decay. So many doctors had been called to attend upon Celer, they blocked the door to his bedchamber, talking quietly in Greek. We had to force our way inside. It was stiflingly hot, and so dark that Cicero was obliged to pick up a lamp and take it over to where the senator lay. He was naked apart from the bandages that marked where he had been bled. Dozens of leeches were attached to his arms and the insides of his legs. His mouth was black and frothy: I learned afterwards that he had been fed charcoal, as part of some crackpot cure. It had been necessary to tie him to his bed because of the force of his convulsions.

Cicero knelt beside him. 'Celer,' he said in a voice of great tenderness, 'my dear friend, who has done this to you?'

Hearing Cicero's voice, Celer turned his face to him, and tried to speak, but all that emerged was an unintelligible gurgle of black bubbles. He surrendered after that. He closed his eyes, and by all accounts he never opened them again.

Cicero lingered for a little while, and asked the doctors various questions. They disagreed about everything, in the way of medical men, but on one point they were unanimous: none had ever seen a healthy body succumb to a disease more quickly.

'A disease?' said Cicero incredulously. 'Surely he has been poisoned?'

Poisoned? The doctors recoiled at the very word. No, no – this was a ravaging sickness, a virulent distemper, the result of a snake bite: anything except poisoning, which was simply too appalling a possibility to be discussed. Besides, who would want to poison the noble Celer?

Cicero left them to it. That Celer had been murdered he never doubted, although whether Caesar had a hand in it, or Clodius, or both, he never discovered, and the truth remains a mystery to this day. There was, however, no question in his mind as to who had administered the fatal dose, for as we left that house of death we met coming in through the front door Clodia, accompanied by – of all people – young Caelius Rufus, fresh from his triumph over Hybrida. And although they both hastily assumed grave expressions, one could tell that they had been laughing a moment earlier; and although they quickly stood apart, it was clear that they were lovers.

Celer's body was burned on a funeral pyre set up in the forum as a mark of national mourning. His face in death was tranquil, that coal-black mouth as clean and pink as a rosebud. Caesar and all the senate attended. Clodia looked beautiful in mourning and shed many a widow's tear. Afterwards his ashes were interred in the family mausoleum, and Cicero sank into a deep gloom. He sensed that any hopes of stopping Caesar had died with Celer.

Seeing her husband's depression, Terentia insisted on a change of scene. Cicero had acquired a new property out on the coast at Antium, a day and a half's journey from Rome, and that was where the family went for the start of the spring recess. On the way we passed close to Solonium, where the Claudian family had long owned a great country estate. Behind its high ochre walls, Clodius and Clodia were said to be closeted together in a family conference with their two brothers and two sisters. 'Six of them all together,' said Cicero, as we rattled past in our carriage, 'like a litter of puppies – the litter from hell! Imagine them in there, tumbling around in bed with one another and plotting my destruction.' I did not contradict him, although it was hard to imagine those two stiff-necked older brothers, Appius and Gaius, getting up to any such mischief.

When we reached Antium, the weather was inclement, with squalls of rain blowing in off the sea. Cicero sat out on the terrace, regardless of the conditions, gazing over the thundering waves at the grey horizon, trying to find a way out of his predicament. Eventually, after a day or two of that, with his head much clearer, he retreated to his library. 'What are the only weapons I possess, Tiro?' he asked me, and then he answered his own question. 'These,' he said, gesturing to his books. 'Words. Caesar and Pompey have their soldiers, Crassus his wealth, Clodius his bullies on the street. My only legions are my words. By language I rose, and by language I shall survive.'

Accordingly we began work on what he called 'The Secret History of My Consulship' – the fourth and final version of his autobiography, and by far the truest, a book he intended to be the basis of his defence if he was put on trial, which has never been published, and which I have drawn on to write this memoir. In it, he set out all the facts about Caesar's relationship with Catilina; about the way in which Crassus had defended Catilina, financed him and finally betrayed him; and about how Pompey had used his lieutenants to try to prolong and worsen the crisis so that he could use it as an excuse to come home with his army. It took us two weeks to compile, and I made an extra copy as we went along. When we had finished, I wrapped each roll of the original in a linen sheet and then in oilcloth and put them in an amphora, which we sealed tight with wax. Then Cicero and I rose early one morning, while the rest of the household was asleep, and took it into the nearby woods and buried it between a hornbeam and an ash. 'If anything happens to me,' Cicero instructed, 'dig it up and give it to Terentia, and tell her to use it as she thinks fit.'

As far as he could see, he had only one real hope left of avoiding being put on trial: that Pompey's disenchantment with Caesar would widen into an open breach. Given their characters, it was not an unreasonable expectation, and he was constantly on the lookout for any scrap of promising news. All letters from Rome were eagerly opened. All acquaintances on their way south to the Bay of Naples were closely questioned. There were bits of intelligence that seemed encouraging. As a gesture to Cicero, Pompey had asked Clodius to undertake a mission to Armenia rather than stand for tribune. Clodius had refused. Pompey had thereupon taken offence and fallen out with Clodius. Caesar had sided with Pompey. Clodius had argued with Caesar, even to the extent of threatening, when he became tribune, to rescind the triumvirate's legislation. Caesar had lost his temper with Clodius. Pompey had rebuked Caesar for landing them with this ungovernable patrician-cum-plebeian in the first place. Some even whispered that the two great men had stopped speaking. Cicero was delighted. 'Mark my words, Tiro: all regimes, however popular or powerful, pass away eventually.' There were signs that this one might be collapsing already. And perhaps it would have done if Caesar had not taken a dramatic step to preserve it.

The blow fell on the first day of May. It was in the evening, after dinner, and Cicero had just nodded off on his couch, when a letter arrived from Atticus. I should explain that we were in the villa in Formiae by this time, and that Atticus had returned briefly to his house in Rome, whence he was sending Cicero more or less daily all the intelligence he could discover. Of course it was no substitute for actually seeing Atticus, but neverthless it was agreed between them that he should stay there, for he was of more service picking up gossip than counting waves on the seashore. Terentia was doing her embroidery in a corner of the room, all was peaceful, and I debated whether or not to wake Cicero. But he had already heard the noise of the messenger, and his hand rose imperiously from the couch. 'Give it me,' he said. I handed him the letter and went out on to the terrace. I could see a tiny light on a boat out at sea, and I was wondering what manner of fish had to be caught in darkness, or if this was the setting of traps for lobsters or whatnot – I am a terrible landlubber – when I heard a great groan from the couch behind me.