Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

He turned to point a finger at the bulk of the Curia Hostilia, the Senate House, on whose steps a small group of senators had assembled: Cicero, smiling in absolute joy; Cato, Bibulus and Ahenobarbus, sober but not grief stricken; Manlius Torquatus, Lucius Caesar, the stroke-crippled Lucius Cotta, looking troubled. "See them?" shrieked Cloelius. "See the traitors to Rome and to you? Look at the great Marcus Tullius Cicero, smiling! Well, we all know that he had nothing to lose by Milo's doing murder!" He swung aside for a moment; when he turned back, Cicero had gone. "Oh, thinks he might be next, does he? No man deserves death more than the great Cicero who executed Roman citizens without trial and was sent into exile for it by this poor, mangled man I show you here tonight! Everything that Publius Clodius did or tried to do, the Senate opposed! Who do they think they are, the men who people that rotting body? Our betters, that's who they think they are! Better than me! Better than Lucius Decumius! Better even than Publius Clodius, who was one of them!" The crowd was beginning to eddy, the noise of hate rising inexorably as Cloelius worked on its grief and shock, its dreadful sense of loss. "He gave you free grain!" Cloelius screamed. "He gave you back your right to congregate in your colleges, the right that man" pointing at Lucius Caesar "stripped from you! He gave you friendship, employment, brilliant games!" He pretended to peer into the sea of faces. "There are many freedmen here to mourn, and what a friend he was to all of you! He gave you seats at the games when all other men forbade that, and he was about to give you true Roman citizenship, the right to belong to one of those thirty-one exclusive rural tribes!" Cloelius paused, drew a sobbing breath, wiped the sweat from his brow. "But they," he cried, sweeping the sweat-smeared hand toward the Curia Hostilia steps, "didn't want that! They knew it meant their days of glory were over! And they conspired to murder your beloved Publius Clodius! So fearless, so determined, that nothing short of death would have stopped him! They knew it. They took it into account. And then they plotted to murder him. Not merely that ex-gladiator Milo all of them were in on it! All of them killed Publius Clodius! Milo was just their tool! And I say there is only one way to deal with them! Show them how much we care! Show them that we will kill them all before we're done!" He looked again at the Senate steps, recoiled in mock horror. "See that? See it? They're gone! Not one of them has the backbone to face you! But will that stop us? Will it?" The eddies were swirling, the torches spinning wildly. And the crowd with one voice shouted, "NO!" 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.