The Dictator (34 page)

He was anguished and blamed himself for allowing the mess to develop. “I should have insisted that she divorce him the moment I heard of the way he was carrying on. Now what is she to do? An abandoned mother of thirty-one with a weak constitution and no dowry is hardly the most marriageable of prospects.”

If there was any marrying to be done, he realised grimly, the person who would have to do it would be him. Nothing could have suited him less. He liked his new bachelor existence, preferred living with his books to the prospect of living with a wife. He was now sixty, and although he still cut a handsome figure, sexual desire—never a strong part of his character even in his youth—was waning. It is true that he flirted more as he got older. He liked dinner parties where pretty young women were present—he even once attended the same table as Mark Antony’s mistress, the nude actress Volumnia Cytheris, a thing he would never have countenanced in the past. But murmured compliments on a dining couch and the occasional love poem sent round by a messenger the next morning were as far as things went.

Unfortunately, he now needed to marry to raise some money. Terentia’s clandestine recovery of her dowry had crippled his finances; he knew Dolabella would never repay him; and although he had plenty of properties—including two new ones, at Astura on the coast near Antium and at Puteoli on the Bay of Naples—he could barely afford to run them. You might ask, “Well, why did he not sell some of them?” But that was never Cicero’s way. His motto was always “Income adjusts to meet expenditure, not the other way round.” Now that his income could no longer be expanded by legal practice the only realistic alternative was once again to take a rich wife.

It is a sordid story. But I swore at the outset to tell the truth, and I shall do so. Three potential brides were available. One was Hirtia, the elder sister of Hirtius. Her brother was immensely rich from his time in Gaul, and to get this tiresome woman off his hands he was prepared to offer her to Cicero with a dowry of two million sesterces. But as Cicero put it in a letter to Atticus, she was
quite remarkably ugly,
and it struck him as absurd that the cost of keeping his beautiful houses should be to install in them a hideous wife.

Then there was Pompeia, the daughter of Pompey. She had been the wife of Faustus Sulla, the owner of Aristotle’s manuscripts, recently killed fighting for the Senate’s cause in Africa. But if he married her, that would make Gnaeus—the man who had threatened to kill him at Corcyra—his brother-in-law. It was unthinkable. Besides, she bore a strong facial resemblance to her father. “Can you imagine,” he said to me with a shudder, “waking up beside Pompey every morning?”

That left the least suitable match of all. Publilia was only fifteen years old. Her father, M. Publilius, a wealthy equestrian friend of Atticus, had died leaving his estate in trust for his daughter until she married. The principal trustee was Cicero. It was Atticus’s idea—“an elegant solution,” he called it—that Cicero should marry Publilia and so gain access to her fortune. There was nothing illegal about this. The girl’s mother and uncle were all for it, flattered by the prospect of forming a connection with such a distinguished man. And Publilia herself, when Cicero hesitantly broached the subject, declared that she would be honoured to be his wife.

“Are you sure?” he asked her. “I am forty-five years older than you—old enough to be your grandfather. Do you not find that…unnatural?”

She stared at him quite frankly. “No.”

After she had gone, Cicero said, “Well, she seems to be telling the truth. I wouldn’t dream of it if she was repulsed by the very thought of me.” He sighed heavily and shook his head. “I suppose I had better go through with it. But people will be very disapproving.”

I could not help remarking, “It isn’t
people
you have to worry about.”

“What are you referring to?”

“Well, Tullia, of course,” I replied, amazed that he hadn’t considered her. “How do you think she is going to feel?”

He squinted at me in genuine puzzlement. “Why would Tullia be opposed? I’m doing this for her benefit as much as mine.”

“Well,” I said mildly, “I think you’ll find she
will
mind.”

And she did. Cicero said that when he told her of his intention she fainted, and for an hour or two he feared for her health and that of the baby. When she recovered, she wanted to know how he could possibly think of such a thing. Was she really expected to call this child her stepmother? Were they to live under the same roof? He was dismayed by the strength of her reaction. However, it was too late for him to back out. He had already borrowed from the moneylenders on the expectation of his new wife’s fortune. Neither of his children attended the wedding breakfast: Tullia moved to live with her mother for the final stages of her pregnancy, while Marcus asked his father for permission to go out and fight in Spain as part of Caesar’s army. Cicero managed to persuade him that such an action would be dishonourable to his former comrades, and instead he went to Athens on a very generous allowance to try to have some philosophy dinned into his thick skull.

I did attend the wedding, which took place in the bride’s house. The only other guests from the groom’s side were Atticus and his wife, Pilia—who was herself, of course, thirty years her husband’s junior but who seemed quite matronly beside the slender figure of Publilia. The bride, dressed all in white, with her hair pinned up and wearing the sacred belt, looked like an exquisite doll. Perhaps some men could have carried the whole thing off—Pompey I am sure would have been entirely at ease—but Cicero was so obviously uncomfortable that when he came to recite the simple vow (“Where you are Gaia, I am Gaius”), he got the names the wrong way round, an ill omen.

After a long celebratory banquet the wedding party walked to Cicero’s house in the fading daylight. He had hoped to keep the marriage secret and almost scuttled through the streets, avoiding the gaze of passers-by, gripping his wife’s hand firmly and seeming to drag her along. But a wedding procession always attracts attention, and his face was too famous for anonymity, so that by the time we reached the Palatine we must have been trailing a crowd of fifty or more. At least that number of applauding clients was waiting outside the house to throw flowers over the happy couple. I had worried that Cicero might injure his back if he tried to carry his bride over the threshold, but he hoisted her easily and swept her into the house, hissing at me over his shoulder to close the door behind us, quick. She went straight upstairs to Terentia’s old suite of rooms, where her maids had already unpacked her belongings, to prepare for her wedding night. Cicero tried to persuade me to stay up a little longer and take some wine with him, but I pleaded exhaustion and left him to it.

—

The marriage was a disaster from the start. Cicero had no idea how to treat his young wife. It was as if a friend’s child had come to stay. Sometimes he played the role of kindly uncle, delighting in her playing of the lyre or congratulating her on her embroidery. On other occasions he was her exasperated tutor, appalled at her ignorance of history and literature. But mostly he tried to keep out of her way. Once he confided to me that the only workable basis for such a relationship would have been lust, and that he simply did not feel. Poor Publilia—the more her famous husband ignored her, the more she clung to him, and the more irritated he became.

Finally Cicero went to see Tullia to plead with her to move back in with him. She could have the baby at his house, he said—the birth was imminent—and he would send Publilia away, or rather he would get Atticus to send her away for him, as he found the situation too upsetting to deal with. Tullia, who was distressed to see her father in such a state, agreed, and the long-suffering Atticus duly found himself having to visit Publilia’s mother and uncle to explain why the young woman would have to return home after less than a month of married life. He held out the hope that once the baby was born the couple might be able to resume their relationship, but for now Tullia’s wishes took priority. They had little option but to agree.

It was January when Tullia moved back into the house. She was brought to the door in a litter and had to be helped inside. I recall a cold winter’s day, everything very clear and bright and sharp. She moved with difficulty. Cicero fussed around her, telling the porter to close the door, ordering more wood for the fire, worrying that she would catch a chill. She said that she would like to go to her room to lie down. Cicero sent for a doctor to examine her. He came out soon afterwards and reported that she was in labour. Terentia was fetched, along with a midwife and her attendants, and they all disappeared into Tullia’s room.

The screams of pain that rang through the house did not sound like Tullia at all. They did not sound like any human being in fact. They were guttural, primordial—all trace of personality obliterated by pain. I wondered how they fitted in to Cicero’s philosophical scheme. Could happiness remotely be associated with such agony? Presumably it could. But he was unable to bear the shrieks and howls and went out into the garden, walking around and around it, for hour after hour, oblivious to the cold. Eventually there was silence and he came back in again. He looked at me. We waited. A long time seemed to pass, and then there were footsteps and Terentia appeared. Her face was drawn and pale but her voice was triumphant.

“It’s a boy,” she said, “a healthy boy—and she is well.”

—

She was well.
That was all that mattered to Cicero. The boy was robust and was named Publius Lentulus, after his father’s adopted patronymic. But Tullia could not feed the infant and the task was assigned to a wet nurse, and as the days passed following the trauma of the birth, she did not seem to get any stronger. Because it was so cold in Rome that winter, there was a lot of smoke, and the racket from the Forum disturbed her sleep. It was decided that she and Cicero should go back to Tusculum, scene of their happy year together, where she could recuperate in the tranquillity of the Frascati hills while he and I pressed on with his philosophical writings. We took a doctor with us. The baby travelled with his nurse, plus a whole retinue of slaves to look after him.

Tullia found the journey difficult. She was breathless and flushed with fever, although her eyes were wide and calm and she said she felt contented: not ill, just tired. When we reached the villa, the doctor insisted she go straight to bed. Afterwards he took me to one side and said that he was fairly certain now that she was suffering from the final stages of consumption and she would not last the night: should he inform her father, or would it be better if I did it?

I said that I would do it. After I had composed myself, I found Cicero in his library. He had taken down some books but had made no attempt to unroll them. He was sitting, staring straight ahead at nothing. He didn’t even turn to look at me. He said, “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

“I’m afraid she is.”

“Does she know it?”

“The doctor hasn’t told her, but I think she’s too clever not to realise, don’t you?”

He nodded. “That was why she was so keen to come here, where her memories are happiest. This is where she wants to die.” He rubbed his eyes. “I think I shall go and sit with her now.”

I waited in the Lyceum and watched the sun sink behind the hills of Rome. Some hours later, when it was entirely dark, one of her maids came to fetch me, and conducted me by candlelight to Tullia’s room. She was unconscious, lying in bed with her hair unpinned and spread across her pillow. Cicero sat on one side, holding her hand. On her other side, her baby lay asleep. Her breathing was very shallow and rapid. There were people in the room—her maids, the baby’s nurse, the doctor—but they were in the shadows and I have no memory of their faces.

Cicero saw me and beckoned me closer. I leaned over and kissed her damp forehead, then retreated to join the others in the semi-darkness. Soon afterwards her breathing began to slow. The intervals between each breath became longer, and I kept imagining she must have died, but then she would take another gasp of air. The end when it came was different and unmistakable—a long sigh, accompanied by a slight tremor along the length of her body, and then a profound stillness as she passed into eternity.

The funeral was in Rome. Only one good thing came out of it: Cicero’s brother, Quintus, from whom he had been estranged ever since that terrible scene in Patrae, came round to offer his condolences the moment we got back, and the two men sat beside the coffin, wordless, holding hands. As a mark of their reconciliation, Cicero asked Quintus to deliver the eulogy: he doubted he would be able to get through it himself.

That apart, it was one of the most melancholy occasions I have ever witnessed—the long procession out on to the Esquiline Field in the freezing winter dusk; the wail of the musicians’ dirges mingled with the cawing of the crows in the sacred grove of Libitina; the small enshrouded figure lying on its bier; the racked face of Terentia, like Niobe’s seemingly turned to stone by grief; Atticus supporting Cicero as he put the torch to the pyre; and finally the great sheet of flame that suddenly shot up, illuminating us all in its scorching red glow, our rigid expressions set like masks in a Greek tragedy.