Caesar's Women (55 page)

“Ho, soldier, who travels like Sampsiceramus the potentate?” Cato cried to a guard when the parade had nearly passed.

“Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos, brother-in-law of Magnus!” called the soldier.

“He's in a terrific hurry,” said Cato sarcastically.

But the soldier took the remark seriously. “Yes, he is, pilgrim! He's running for the tribunate of the plebs in Rome!”

Cato walked on a little way south, but before the sun was halfway down the western sky, he turned around.

“What's the matter?” asked Munatius Rufus.

“I must return to Rome and stand for the tribunate of the plebs,” said Cato through clenched teeth. “There must be someone in that buffoon's College to make life difficult for him—and for his all-powerful master, Pompeius Magnus!”

Nor had Cato done badly in the elections; he had come in second to Metellus Nepos. Which meant that when Metellus Nepos sat down, Cato got up.

“Death is the only penalty!” he shouted.

The room froze, every eye turned upon Cato in wonder. He was such a stickler for the mos maiorum that it had occurred to no one to doubt that his speech would follow along the line either of Caesar's or Tiberius Claudius Nero's.

“Death is the only penalty, I say! What is all this rubbish about law and the Republic? When has the Republic sheltered the likes of self-confessed traitors under her skirts? No law is ever made for self-confessed traitors. Laws are made for lesser beings. Laws are made for men who may transgress them, but do so with no harm intended to their country, the place which bred them and made them what they are.

“Look at Decimus Junius Silanus, weak and vacillating fool! When he thinks Marcus Tullius wants a death sentence, he suggests 'the extreme penalty'! Then when Caesar speaks, he changes his mind—what he meant was what Caesar said! How could he ever offend his beloved Caesar? And what of this Caesar, this overbred and effeminate fop who boasts he is descended from Gods and then proceeds to defaecate all over mere men? Caesar, Conscript Fathers, is the real prime mover in this business! Catilina? Lentulus Sura? Marcus Crassus? No, no, no! Caesar! It's Caesar's plot! Wasn't it Caesar who tried to have his uncle Lucius Cotta and his colleague Lucius Torquatus assassinated on their first day in office as consuls three years ago? Yes, Caesar preferred Publius Sulla and Autronius to his own blood uncle! Caesar, Caesar, always and ever Caesar! Look at him, senators! Better than all the rest of us put together! Descended from Gods, born to rule, eager to manipulate events, happy to push other men into the furnace while he skulks in the shade! Caesar! I spit on you, Caesar! I spit!”

And he actually tried to do so. Most of the senators sat with their jaws sagging, so amazing was this hate-filled diatribe. Everyone knew Cato and Caesar disliked each other; most knew Caesar had cuckolded Cato. But this blistering torrent of farfetched abuse? This implication of treason? What on earth had gotten into Cato?

“We have five guilty men in our custody who have confessed to their crimes and to the crimes of sixteen other men not in our custody. Where is the need for a trial? A trial is a waste of time and good State money! And, Conscript Fathers, wherever there is a trial, is also the possibility of bribery. Other juries in other cases quite as serious as this have acquitted in the face of manifest guilt! Other juries have reached out greedy hands to take vast fortunes from the likes of Marcus Crassus, Caesar's friend and financial backer! Is Catilina to rule Rome? No! Caesar is to rule, with Catilina as his master of the horse and Crassus free to do as he likes in the Treasury!”

“I hope you have proof of all this,” said Caesar mildly; he was well aware that calm drove Cato to distraction.

“I will get proof, never fear!” Cato shouted. “Where there is wrongdoing, one can always find proof! Look at the proof which found five men traitors! They saw it, they heard it, and they all confessed. Now that is proof! And I will find proof of Caesar's implication in this conspiracy and in the one of three years ago! No trial for the guilty five, I say! No trial for any of them! Nor ought they escape from death! Caesar argues for clemency on philosophical grounds. Death, he says, is merely an eternal sleep. But do we know that for certain? No, we do not! No one has ever come back from death to tell us what happens after we die! Death is cheaper. And death is final. Let the five die today!”

Caesar spoke again, still mildly. “Unless the treason be perduellio, Cato, death is not a legal penalty. And if you do not intend to try these men, how can you decide whether they committed perduellio or maiestas? You seem to argue perduellio, but are you?''

“This is not the time or the place for legal quibbling, even if you had no other reason behind your drive for clemency, Caesar!” blared Cato. “They must die, and they must die today!”

On he went, oblivious to the passage of time. Cato was in stride, the harangue would continue until he saw to his satisfaction that his sheer grinding monotony had worn everyone down. The House flinched; Cicero almost wept. Cato was going to rant on until the sun set, and the vote would not be taken today.

It wanted an hour before sunset was due when a servant sidled into the chamber and unobtrusively handed Caesar a folded note.

Cato pounced. “Ah! The traitor is revealed!” he roared. “He sits receiving treasonous notes under our very eyes—that is the extent of his arrogance, his contempt for this House! I say you are a traitor, Caesar! I say that note contains proof!”

While Cato thundered, Caesar read. When he looked up his face bore a most peculiar expression—mild anguish? Or amusement!

“Read it out, Caesar, read it out!” screamed Cato.

But Caesar shook his head. He folded the note, got up from his seat, crossed the floor to where Cato sat on the middle tier of the other side, and handed him the note with a smile. “I think you might prefer to keep its contents to yourself,” he said.

Cato was not a good reader. The endless squiggles unseparated save into columns (and sometimes a word would be continued onto the line below, an additional confusion) took a long time to decipher. And while he mumbled and puzzled, the senators sat in some gratitude for this relative silence, dreading Cato's resumption (and dreading that indeed the note would be construed as treasonous).

A shriek erupted from Cato's throat; everybody jumped. Then he screwed the piece of paper up and threw it at Caesar.

“Keep it, you disgusting philanderer!”

But Caesar didn't get the note. When it fell well short of where he sat, Philippus snatched it up—and immediately opened it. A better reader than Cato, he was guffawing within moments; as soon as he finished he handed it on down the line of praetors-elect in the direction of Silanus and the curule dais.

Cato realized he had lost his audience, busy laughing, reading, or dying of curiosity. “It is typical of this body that something so contemptible and petty should prove more fascinating than the fate of traitors!” he cried. “Senior consul, I demand that the House instruct you under the terms of the existing Senatus Consultum Ultimum to execute the five men in our custody at once, and to pass a death sentence on four more men—Lucius Cassius Longinus, Quintus Annius Chilo, Publius Umbrenus and Publius Furius—to become effective the moment any or all of them are captured.”

Of course Cicero was as eager to read Caesar's note as any other man present, but he saw his chance, and took it.

“Thank you, Marcus Porcius Cato. I will see a division on your motion that the five men in our custody be executed at once, and that the four other men so named be executed immediately after they are apprehended. All those favoring a death sentence, pass to my right. Those not in favor, pass to my left.”

The senior consul-elect, Decimus Junius Silanus, husband of Servilia, got the note just before Cicero put his motion. It said:

Brutus has just rushed in to tell me that my low-life half brother Cato has accused you of treason in the House, even admitting he has absolutely no proof! My most precious and darling man, take no notice. It's spite because you stole Atilia and put horns upon his head—not to mention that I know she told him he was pipinna compared to you. A fact that I am well able to vouch for myself. The rest of Rome is pipinna compared to you.

Remember that Cato is not so much as the dirt beneath a patrician's feet, that he is no more than the descendant of a slave and a cantankerous old peasant who sucked up to patricians enough to get himself made censor—whereupon he deliberately ruined as many patricians as he could. This Cato would love to do the same. He loathes all patricians, but you in particular. And did he know what lies between us, Caesar, he would loathe you more.

Keep up your courage, ignore the pernicious weed and all his minions. Rome is better served by one Caesar than half a hundred Catos and Bibuluses. As their wives could all testify!

Silanus looked at Caesar with grey dignity and no other emotion. Caesar's face was sad, but not contrite. Then Silanus rose and passed to Cicero's right; he would not vote for Caesar.

Nor did many vote for Caesar, though not everyone passed to the right. Metellus Celer, Metellus Nepos, Lucius Caesar, several of the tribunes of the plebs including Labienus, Philippus, Gaius Octavius, both Luculli, Tiberius Claudius Nero, Lucius Cotta, and Torquatus stood to Cicero's left, together with some thirty of the pedarii from the back bench. And Mamercus Princeps Senatus.

“I note that Publius Cethegus is among those voting for his brother's execution,” said Cicero, “and that Gaius Cassius is among those voting for his cousin's execution. The vote is near enough to unanimous.”

“The bastard! He always exaggerates!” growled Labienus.

“Why not?” asked Caesar, shrugging. “Memories are short and verbatim reports prone to reflect statements like that, as Gaius Cosconius and his scribes are not likely to want to record names.”

“Where's the note?” asked Labienus, avid to see it.

“Cicero's got it now.”

“Not for long!” said Labienus, turned, walked up to the senior consul pugnaciously, and wrested it from him. “Here, it belongs to you,” he said, holding it out to Caesar.

“Oh, do read it first, Labienus!” said Caesar, laughing. “I fail to see why you shouldn't know what everyone else knows, even the lady's husband.”

Men were returning to their seats, but Caesar stood until Cicero recognized him.

“Conscript Fathers, you have indicated that nine men must die,” said Caesar without emotion. “That is, according to the argument put forward by Marcus Porcius Cato, infinitely the worst punishment the State can decree. In which case, it should be enough. I would like to move that nothing more is done. That no property should be confiscated. The wives and children of the condemned men will never again set eyes on their faces. Therefore that too is punishment enough for harboring a traitor in their bosoms. They should at least continue to have the wherewithal to live.”

“Well, we all know why you're advocating mercy!” howled Cato. “You don't want to have to support gutter-dirt like the three Antonii and their trollop of a mother!”

Lucius Caesar, brother of the trollop and uncle of the gutter-dirt, launched himself at Cato from one side, and Mamercus Princeps Senatus from the other. Which brought Bibulus, Catulus, Gaius Piso and Ahenobarbus to Cato's defense, fists swinging. Metellus Celer and Metellus Nepos joined the fray, while Caesar stood grinning.

“I think,” he said to Labienus, “that I ought to ask for tribunician protection!”

“As a patrician, Caesar, you're not entitled to tribunician protection,” Labienus said solemnly.

Finding the fight impossible to break up, Cicero decided to break the meeting up instead; he grabbed Caesar by the arm and hustled him out of the temple of Concord.

“For Jupiter's sake, Caesar, go home!” he begged. “What a problem you can be!”

“That cuts both ways,” said Caesar, glance contemptuous, and made a move to re-enter the temple.

“Go home, please!”

“Not unless you give me your word that there will be no confiscation of property.”

“I give you my word gladly! Just go!”

“I'm going. But don't think I won't hold you to your word.”

He had won, but that speech of Caesar's swirled remorselessly through Cicero's mind as he plodded with his lictors and a good party of militia to the house of Lucius Caesar, where Lentulus Sura still lodged. He had sent four of his praetors to fetch Gaius Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius Capito and Caeparius, but felt he must collect Lentulus Sura himself; the man had been consul.

Was the price too high? No! The moment these traitors were dead Rome would quieten magically; any thought of insurrection would vanish from all men's imaginations. Nothing deterred like execution. If Rome executed more often, crime would diminish. As for the trial process, Cato was right on both counts. They were guilty out of their own mouths, so to try them was a waste of State money. And the trouble with the trial process was that it could so easily and deftly be tampered with, provided someone was prepared to put up enough cash to meet the jury's price. Tarquinius had accused Crassus, and though logic said Crassus could not be involved in any way—it had been he, after all, who gave Cicero the first concrete evidence—the seed was sown in Cicero's mind. What if Crassus had been involved, then thought better of it, and craftily engineered those letters?

Catulus and Gaius Piso had accused Caesar. So had Cato. None of them with one iota of proof, and all of them Caesar's implacable enemies. But the seed was sown. What about that item Cato produced about Caesar's conspiring to assassinate Lucius Cotta and Torquatus nearly three years before? There had been a wild rumor about an assassination plot at the time, though the culprit at the time had been said to be Catilina. Then Lucius Manlius Torquatus had shown his disbelief of the rumor by defending Catilina at his extortion trial. No hint of Caesar's name then. And Lucius Cotta was Caesar's uncle. Yet… Other Roman patricians had conspired to kill close relatives, including Catilina, who had murdered his own son. Yes, patricians were different. Patricians obeyed no laws save those they respected. Look at Sulla, Rome's first true dictator—and a patrician. Better than the rest. Certainly better than a Cicero, a lodger from Arpinum, a mere resident alien, a despised New Man.