Colleen McCullough - 6. The October Horse - A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

The outcome of Octavian's second march on Rome had stunned Cicero, who had gone to the new senior consul and begged that he be excused from attending future meetings of the Senate. "I am tired and ill, Octavianus," he had explained, "and I would very much like to be able to go to my estates whenever I wish. Is that possible?" "Of course!" Octavian had said warmly. "If I can excuse my stepfather from meetings, I can certainly excuse you and Lucius Piso. Philippus and Piso are still suffering the aftermath of that terrible winter journey, you know." "I opposed the sending of that embassage." "Indeed you did. A pity the Senate ignored you." Looking at this beautiful young man, whose exterior had not changed one iota since landing in Brundisium all those months ago, Cicero suddenly realized that Octavian had dedicated himself to the pursuit of power at all costs. How had he ever deluded himself that he could influence this pitiless pillar of ice? Caesar had owned feelings, including a shocking temper, but Octavian mimed feelings. His likeness to Caesar was an acted-out sham. From that moment Cicero had abandoned all hope, even of persuading Brutus to come home. In his last letters Brutus had turned so critical and acerbic that Cicero felt no urge to write to him, apprise him what he thought of the consulship of Caesar Octavianus and Quintus Pedius. From his interview with the new senior consul, Cicero had gone at once to see Atticus. "I won't visit you again," he had said, "nor am I going to write to you. Truly, Titus, it is better this way, for both our sakes. Look after Pilia, little Attica and yourself. Do nothing to antagonize Octavianus! When he made himself consul, the Republic died for good. Neither Brutus nor Cassius nor even Marcus Antonius will prevail. Our old, clement master has had the last laugh. He knew exactly what he was doing when he made Octavianus his heir. Octavianus will complete his work, believe me." Atticus had gazed at him through a mist of tears. How old he was looking! Fallen away to skin and bone, those wonderful dark eyes as hunted as a deer's surrounded by baying wolves. Of the vast presence that had so dominated and awed Rome's law courts for forty years, nothing was left. When his dearest, most exasperating and impulsive friend had embarked upon that series of invectives aimed at Marcus Antonius, Atticus had hoped to see Cicero healed, back to normal after so many bitter disappointments, griefs, and that constant loneliness devoid of daughter and wife, of brotherly affection. But the advent of Octavianus had killed his revival; it is now Octavianus, thought Atticus, whom Cicero fears the most. "I shall miss our correspondence," Atticus had said, not knowing what else to say. "Not one of your letters to me isn't treasured and preserved." "Good. Publish them when you dare, please." "I will, Marcus, I will." After that, Cicero had retired completely from public life, nor wrote a single letter. When he learned of the triumviral pact in Bononia, he quit Rome, leaving the faithful Tiro behind to send him reports of everything that happened. First he went to Tusculum, but the old farmhouse was too full of memories of Tullia and Terentia and his pleasure-loving, martial son. Thank all the gods that young Marcus was now with Brutus! And pray to all the gods that Brutus would win! When Tiro sent an urgent note to tell him that proscription had come in and his was the first name on the list, he packed up and took the byways and lanes to his villa at Formiae, still using his litter, a painfully slow mode of transport, but the only one Cicero could bear. His intention was to take a ship from the nearest port, Caieta, to flee to Brutus or perhaps to Sextus Pompey in Sicily he wasn't sure, couldn't make up his mind. It seemed Fortuna favored him, for there was a ship for hire in Caieta harbor, and its master agreed to take him despite his proscribed status; the proscription notices had gone up in every town throughout Italy. "You're a special case, Marcus Cicero," the master said. "I can't condone the persecution of one of Rome's greatest men." But it was the beginning of December, and winter weather had arrived with gales, a little sleet; the ship put out to sea and was forced back inshore several times, though its master refused to give up, insisted they could make it at least to Sardinia. A terrible depression invaded Cicero, a weariness so draining that he understood its message: there was to be no leaving Italy for Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose very heartstrings were tied to it. "Put in to Caieta and set me ashore, he said. A servant was sent running to his villa, about a mile away upon the heights of Formiae, and returned three hours after dawn on the seventh day of December with Cicero's litter and bearers. Wet and shivering, Cicero climbed into its cushioned, welcoming shelter and lay back to wait for whatever was to come. I am going to die, but at least I will die in the country I have worked so hard and so often to save. I succeeded with that cur Catilina, but then Caesar ruined my victory with his speech I did not act unconstitutionally by executing Rome's enemies without a trial! Even Cato said as much. But Caesar's speech stuck like a burr, and some men looked at me with contempt ever after. Even so, life since has been a shadow, a phantasm, except for my speeches against Marcus Antonius. I am tired of living. I no longer want to endure life's cruelties, its travesties. Gaius Popillius Laenas and his men caught the litter on its slow ascent of the hill, dismounted and encircled it. The centurion Herennius drew his sword, two feet of razor-sharp, double-edged efficiency. Cicero poked his head out of the litter to look. "No, no!" he called to his servants. "Don't try to fight! Submit quietly and save your lives, please." Herennius approached him and raised the sword to the boiling, sullen sky. Gazing at it, Cicero noted that its shade of grey was duller, darker than the vault, and did not glitter. He put his palms upon the litter's margin and pushed his shoulders out of it, then extended his neck as much as he could manage. "Strike well," he said. The sword descended and took Cicero's head from his body in one neat blow; the stump gouted blood, the body tensed and did a short, recumbent dance as the head hit the muddy path and rolled a little distance, then stopped. The servants were keening and weeping, but Popillius Laenas's party ignored them. Herennius bent to pick up the head by its back hair, grown long so Cicero could comb it forward over his bald spot. A soldier produced a box, the head was dropped into it. Concentrating upon this, Laenas didn't notice two of his men haul the rapidly exsanguinating body out of the litter until he heard the scrape of swords coming out of scabbards. "Here, what do you think you're doing?" he asked. "Was he right- or left-handed?" a soldier demanded. Laenas looked blank. "I don't know," he said. "Then we'll cut off both his hands. One of them wrote awful things about Marcus Antonius." Laenas considered this, then nodded. "Go ahead. Put them in the box, then let's get moving." The men rode back to Rome without stopping, their horses foamed and blown by the time they reached Antony's palace on the Carinae, where a startled steward let them into the peristyle. Carrying the box, Laenas strode into the atrium to find Antony and Fulvia waiting, wrapped in night robes, blinking the last of sleep from their eyes. "You wanted this, I believe," said Popillius Laenas, giving Antony the box. Antony withdrew the head and held it up, laughing. "Got you at last, you vindictive old cunnus!" he shouted. Far from being revolted, Fulvia snatched at the head. "Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me!" she shrilled while Antony kept holding it just out of her reach, laughing and teasing. "My men brought you something else," said Laenas. "Look in the box, Marcus Antonius." So Fulvia succeeded in grabbing the head; Antony was busy removing and inspecting the two hands. "We didn't know if he was right- or left-handed, so we brought you both of them to be sure. As my men said, they wrote awful things about you." "You've earned an extra talent." Antony grinned. He glanced at Fulvia, who had put the head down on a console table and was busy scrabbling among its untidy contents scrolls, papers, ink, pens, wax tablets. "What are you doing?" he asked her. "Ah!" she exclaimed, holding up a steel stylus. Cicero's eyes were closed, his mouth wide open. Antony's wife thrust her long-nailed fingers between the lips and fished about, then squeaked with triumph and yanked. Out came Cicero's tongue, held by her nails. She took the thick strap of flesh in a harder hold and skewered it with the stylus, which lay athwart the mouth and kept the tongue protruding. "That's what I think of his gift of the gab," she said, eyeing her work with huge satisfaction. "Fix up a wooden frame and nail it to the rostra," Antony ordered Laenas. "The head in the middle, a hand to either side." So when Rome awoke at dawn, it saw Cicero's head and hands nailed to the rostra on a wooden frame. The Forum frequenters were devastated. Since his twelfth birthday Cicero had walked the flags of the Forum Romanum without rhetorical peer. The trials! The speeches! The sheer wonder of his words! "But," said one frequenter, mopping his tears, "dear Marcus Cicero is still champion of the Forum."