Caesar's Women (68 page)

At dawn Silanus, Murena, Cicero, Bibulus and Lucius Ahenobarbus clustered at the top of the Vestal Steps and gazed at what looked like fifteen thousand people. Then someone below in that horrifying gathering saw them, shouted, pointed; the whole ocean of people turned as if beginning the first great encirclement of a whirlpool, and the little group of men stepped back instinctively, realizing that what they saw was a potential dance of death. Then as every face fixed on them, every right arm went up to shake a fist at them, seaweed oscillating in the swell.

“All that for Caesar!” whispered Silanus, shivering.

“No,” said the praetor Philippus, joining them. “All that for the Senatus Consultum Ultimum and the execution of citizens without trial. Caesar's just the final blow.” He gave Bibulus a scorching glare. “What fools you are! Don't you know who Caesar is? I'm his friend, I know! Caesar is the one person in Rome you daren't attempt to destroy publicly! All your lives you've spent up here on the heights looking down on Rome like gods on a seething pestilence, but all his life he's spent among them and been thought of as one of them. There's hardly a person in this enormous city that man doesn't know—or maybe it would be better to say that everyone in this enormous city thinks Caesar knows them. It's a smile and a wave and a cheerful greeting wherever he goes—and to the whole world, not merely to valuable voters. They love him! Caesar's not a demagogue—he doesn't need to be a demagogue! In Libya they tie men down and let ants kill them. Yet you're stupid enough to stir up Rome's ants! Rest assured, it's not Caesar they'll kill!”

“I'll order out the militia,” said Silanus.

“Oh, rubbish, Silanus! The militia are down there with the carpenters and bricklayers!”

“Then what do we do? Bring the army home from Etruria?''

“By all means, if you want Catilina in hot pursuit!”

“What can we do?”

“Go home and bar your doors, Conscript Fathers,” Philippus said, turning away. “That at least is what I intend to do.”

But before anyone could find the strength to take this advice, a huge roar went up; the faces and fists aimed at the top of the Vestal stairs swung away.

“Look!” squeaked Murena. “It's Caesar!”

The crowd was somehow compressing itself to create an empty corridor which began at the Domus Publica and opened before Caesar as he walked clad in a plain white toga in the direction of the rostra. He made no acknowledgment of the deafening ovation, nor looked to either side, and when he reached the top of the speaker's platform he made no movement of the body nor gesture of the hand which the watchers on the Palatine could classify as encouragement to the masses now turned to see him.

When he began to speak the noise died utterly away, though what he said was inaudible to Silanus and the rest, now standing with twenty magistrates and at least a hundred senators. He talked for perhaps an hour, and as he talked the crowd seemed to grow ever calmer. Then he dismissed them with a wave of his hand and a smile so wide his teeth flashed. Limp with relief and amazement, the audience at the top of the Vestal Steps watched that enormous crowd begin to disperse, to stream into the Argiletum and the area around the Markets, up the Via Sacra to the Velia and those parts of Rome beyond. Everyone obviously discussing Caesar's speech, but no one angry anymore.

“As Princeps Senatus,” said Mamercus stiffly, “I hereby call the Senate into session in the temple of Jupiter Stator. An appropriate location, for what Caesar has done is to stay open revolt. At once!” he snapped, rounding on a shrinking Silanus. “Senior consul, send your lictors to fetch Gaius Caesar, since you sent them to strip him of his office.”

When Caesar entered the temple of Jupiter Stator, Gaius Octavius and Lucius Caesar began to applaud; one by one others joined in, until even Bibulus and Ahenobarbus had at least to pretend they were clapping. Of Cato there was no sign.

Silanus rose from his seat. “Gaius Julius Caesar, on behalf of this House I wish to thank you for ending a most dangerous situation. You have acted with perfect correctness, and you are to be commended.”

“What a bore you are, Silanus!” cried Gaius Octavius. “Ask the man how he did it, or we'll all die of curiosity!”

“The House wishes to know what you said, Gaius Caesar.”

Still in his plain white toga, Caesar shrugged. “I simply told them to go home and be about their business. Did they want to be deemed disloyal? Uncontrollable? Who did they think they were, to gather in such numbers all because of a mere praetor who had been disciplined? I told them that Rome is well governed, and everything would turn out to their satisfaction if they had a little patience.”

“And there,” whispered Bibulus to Ahenobarbus, “is the threat beneath the fair words!”

“Gaius Julius Caesar,” said Silanus very formally, “assume your toga praetexta and return to your tribunal as praetor urbanus. It is clear to this House that you have acted in all ways as you ought, and that you did so at the meeting of the People the day before yesterday by noting the malcontents in that assembly and having the militia ready to act. There will be no trial under the lex Plautia de vi for the events of that day.”

Nor did one voice in the temple of Jupiter Stator raise itself to protest.

“What did I tell you?” said Metellus Scipio to Bibulus as they left the senatorial session. “He beat us again! All we did was spend a lot of money hiring ex-gladiators!”

Cato rushed up, breathless and looking very much the worse for wear. “What is it? What happened?” he asked.

“What happened to you?'' asked Metellus Scipio.

“I was ill,” said Cato briefly, which Bibulus and Metellus Scipio interpreted correctly as a long night with Athenodorus Cordylion and the wine flagon.

“Caesar beat us as usual,” said Metellus Scipio. “He sent the crowd home and Silanus has reinstated him. There will be no trial in Bibulus's court.”

Cato literally screamed, so loudly that the last of the senators flinched, turned to one of the pillars outside Jupiter Stator and punched it until the others managed to hold his arm down and pull him away.

“I will not rest, I will not rest, I will not rest,” he kept saying as they led him up the Clivus Palatinus and through the lichen-whiskered Porta Mugonia. “If I have to die to do it, I will ruin him!”

“He's like the phoenix,” said Ahenobarbus gloomily. “Rises out of the ashes of every funeral pyre we put him on.”

“One day he won't rise again. I'm with Cato, I'll never rest until he's ruined,” vowed Bibulus.

“You know,” said Metellus Scipio thoughtfully, eyeing Cato's swelling hand and freshly opened face, “at this stage you must bear more wounds due to Caesar than to Spartacus.”

“And you, Scipio,” said Gaius Piso savagely, “are asking for a drubbing!”

* * *

January was almost done when word came at last from the north. Since early December Catilina had been moving steadily into the Apennines, only to discover that Metellus Celer and Marcius Rex lay between him and the Adriatic coast. There was no escape from Italy, he would have to stand and fight—or surrender. Surrender was inconceivable, so he staked his all on a single battle within a narrow valley near the town of Pistoria. But Gaius Antonius Hybrida did not take the field against him; that honor was reserved for the Military Man, Marcus Petreius. Oh, the pain in his toe! Hybrida never left the safety of his cozy command tent. Catilina's soldiers fought desperately, over three thousand of them electing to die where they stood. As did Catilina, killed holding the silver eagle which had once belonged to Gaius Marius. Men said that when he was found among the bodies he wore the same glittering smile he had turned on everyone from Catulus to Cicero.

No more excuses: the Senatus Consultum Ultimum was finally lifted. Not even Cicero could summon up the courage to advocate that it be kept in force until the rest of the conspirators were dealt with. Some of the praetors were sent to mop up pockets of resistance, including Bibulus to the lands of the Paeligni in mountainous Samnium, and Quintus Cicero to equally craggy Bruttium.

Then in February the trials began. This time there would be no executions, nor any men condemned to exile out of hand; the Senate decided to set up a special court.

An ex-aedile, Lucius Novius Niger, was appointed its president after no one else could be found willing to take the job; those praetors remaining in Rome gleefully pleaded huge loads of work in their own courts, from Caesar to Philippus. That Novius Niger was willing lay in his nature and his circumstances, for he was one of those irritating creatures possessed of far more ambition than talent, and he saw the job as a certain way to attain the consulship. His edicts when he published them were most imposing: no one would be uninspected, no one would be cosseted, no one would buy his way out with bribery, the jury roster would smell sweeter than a bank of violets in Campania. His last edict did not find as much favor. He announced that he would pay a two-talent reward for information leading to a conviction—the reward to be paid out of the fine and property confiscation, of course. No cost to the Treasury! But, most people thought, this was too uncomfortably close to the techniques of Sulla's proscriptions. Thus when the president of the special court opened it, the professional Forum frequenters tended to think poorly of him.

Five men went on trial first, all certain to be condemned: the Brothers Sulla, Marcus Porcius Laeca, and the two who had tried to assassinate Cicero, Gaius Cornelius and Lucius Vargunteius. To assist the court, the Senate went into session with Quintus Curius, Cicero's secret agent, timing their cross-examination of Curius to coincide with Novius Niger's opening his hearings. Naturally Novius Niger attracted a far larger congregation, as he set himself up in the largest area of vacant Forum space.

One Lucius Vettius was the first—and last—informer. A minor knight of bare tribunus aerarius status, he went to Novius Niger and announced that he had more than enough information to earn that tidy fifty thousand sesterces of reward money. Testifying before the court, he confessed that in the early stages of the conspiracy he had toyed with the idea of joining it, but, “I knew where my allegiance belonged,” he said, sighing. “I am a Roman, I couldn't harm Rome. Rome means too much to me.”

After a great deal more of the same, he dictated a list of men he swore had been involved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Novius Niger sighed too. “Lucius Vettius, not one of these names is very inspiring! It seems to me that this court's chances of securing sufficient evidence to start proceedings are slim. Is there no one against whom you can produce really concrete evidence? Like a letter, or unimpeachable witnesses other than yourself?”

“Well…” said Vettius slowly, then suddenly shivered and shook his head emphatically. “No, no one!” he said loudly.

“Come now, you're under the full protection of my court,” said Novius Niger, scenting prey. “Nothing can happen to you, Lucius Vettius, I give you my word! If you do know of any concrete evidence, you must tell me!”

“Big, big fish,” muttered Lucius Vettius.

“No fish is too big for me and my court.”

“Well…”

“Lucius Vettius, spit it out!”

“I do have a letter.”

“From whom?”

“From Gaius Caesar.”

The jury sat up straight, the onlookers began to buzz.

“From Gaius Caesar, but to whom?”

“Catilina. It's in Gaius Caesar's own handwriting.”

Whereupon a small group of Catulus's clients in the crowd began to cheer, only to be drowned by boos, jeers, invective. Some time elapsed before the court's lictors could establish order and allow Novius Niger to resume his cross-examination.

“Why have we heard nothing of this before, Lucius Vettius?”

“Because I'm afraid, that's why!” the informer snapped. “I don't fancy the thought of being responsible for incriminating a big fish like Gaius Caesar.”

“In this court, Lucius Vettius, I am the big fish, not Gaius Caesar,” said Novius Niger, “and you have incriminated Gaius Caesar. You are in no danger. Please go on.”

“With what?” asked Vettius. “I said I had a letter.”

“Then you must produce it before this court.”

“He'll say it's a forgery.”

“Only the court can say that. Produce the letter.”

“Well…”

By now almost everybody in the lower Forum was either around Novius Niger's court or hurrying to it; the word was flying that as usual Caesar was in trouble.

“Lucius Vettius, I command you to produce that letter!” said Novius Niger in a goaded voice; he then went on to say something extremely foolish. “Do you think that men like Gaius Caesar are above the power of this court because they have an ancestry a thousand years old and multitudes of clients? Well, they are not! If Gaius Caesar wrote a letter to Catilina in his own hand, I will try him in this court and convict him!”

“Then I'll go home and get it,” said Lucius Vettius, convinced.

While Vettius went on his errand, Novius Niger declared a recess. Everyone not busy talking excitedly (Caesar watching was becoming the best entertainment in years) rushed off to buy a little something to eat or drink, the jury sat at ease being waited on by the court servants, and Novius Niger strolled over to chat with the jury foreman, tremendously pleased with his idea to pay for information.

Publius Clodius was somewhat more purposeful. He hied himself across the Forum to the Curia Hostilia, where the Senate was sitting, and talked his way inside. Not a very difficult business for one who next year would be strolling through its portals as of right.

Just inside the doors he paused, discovering that Vettius's alto in court was keeping perfect harmony with Curius's baritone in the Senate.

“I tell you I heard it from Catilina's own lips!” Curius was saying to Cato. “Gaius Caesar was a central figure in the whole conspiracy, from its beginning right up to its end!”

Seated on the curule dais to one side of the presiding consul, Silanus, and slightly behind him, Caesar rose to his feet.

“You're lying, Curius,” he said very calmly. “We all know which men in this revered body will stop at nothing to see me permanently ejected from it. But, Conscript Fathers, I give leave to tell you that I never was and never would have been a part of such a hole-in-the-corner, appallingly bungled affair! Anyone who credits this pathetic fool's story is a bigger fool than he is! I, Gaius Julius Caesar, willingly to consort with a raggle-taggle lot of wine bibbers and gossips? I, so scrupulous in my attention to duty and to my own dignitas, to stoop to plotting with the likes of Curius here? I, the Pontifex Maximus, to connive at handing Rome to Catilina! I, a Julian descended from the founders of Rome, to consent to Rome's being governed by worms like Curius and tarts like Fulvia Nobilioris?”