‘This sounds ominous! You’d better go on. Are you ill again?’
‘No, but I need to tell you I have decided not to accompany you to Greece.’
‘Ah.’ He stared at me for what felt like a very long time, his jaw moving slightly as it often did when he was trying to find the right word. Finally he said, ‘Where will you go instead?’
‘To the farm you so kindly gave me.’
His voice was very quiet: ‘I see, and when would you want to do that?’
‘At any time convenient to you.’
‘The sooner the better?’
‘I don’t mind when it is.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘It can be tomorrow if you like. But that is not necessary. I don’t want to inconvenience you.’
‘Tomorrow then.’ And with that he turned back to his Aristotle.
I hesitated. ‘Would it be all right if I borrowed young Eros from the stables and the little carriage, to transport my belongings?’
Without looking up he replied, ‘Of course. Take whatever you need.’
I left him alone and spent the remainder of the day and the evening packing my belongings and carrying them out into the courtyard. He did not appear for dinner. The next morning there was still no sign of him. Young Quintus, who was hoping for a place on Brutus’s staff and staying with us while his uncle tried to fix an introduction, said that he had gone off very early to visit Lucullus’s old house on the island of Nesis. He put a consoling hand on my shoulder. ‘He asked me to tell you goodbye.’
‘He didn’t say more than that? Just goodbye?’
‘You know how he is.’
‘I know how he is. Would you please tell him I’ll come back in a day or two to say a proper farewell?’
I felt quite sick, but determined. I had made up my mind. Eros drove me to the farm. It was not far, only two or three miles, but the distance seemed much greater as I moved from one world to another.
The overseer and his wife had not been expecting me so soon but nonetheless seemed pleased to see me. One of the slaves was called from the barn to carry my luggage into the farmhouse. The boxes containing my books and documents went straight upstairs into the raftered room I had selected earlier as the site for my little library. It was shuttered and cool. Shelves had been put up as I requested – rough and rustic, but I didn’t care – and I set about unpacking at once. There is a wonderful line in one of Cicero’s letters to Atticus in which he describes moving into a property and says: I have put out my books and now my house has a soul. That was how I felt as I emptied my boxes. And then to my surprise in one of them I discovered the original manuscript of On Friendship. Puzzled, I unrolled it, thinking I must have brought it with me by mistake. But when I saw that Cicero had copied out at the top of the roll in his shaking hand a quotation from the text, on the importance of having friends, I realised it was a parting gift:
If a man ascended into heaven and gazed upon the whole workings of the universe and the beauty of the stars, the marvellous sight would give him no joy if he had to keep it to himself. And yet, if only there had been someone to describe the spectacle to, it would have filled him with delight. Nature abhors solitude.
I allowed two days to pass before I returned to the villa in Puteoli to say my proper goodbye: I needed to be sure I was strong enough in my resolve not to be persuaded out of it. But the steward told me Cicero had already left for Pompeii and I returned at once to the farm. From my terrace I had a sweeping view of the entire bay, and often I found myself standing there peering into the immense blueness, which ran from the misty outline of Capri right round to the promontory at Misenum, wondering if any of the myriad ships I could see was his. But then gradually I became caught up in the routine of the farm. It was almost time to harvest the vines and the olives, and despite my creaking knees and my soft scholar’s hands, I donned a tunic and a wide-brimmed straw hat and worked outside with the rest, rising with the light and going to bed when it faded, too exhausted to think. Gradually the pattern of my former life began to fade from my mind, like a carpet left out in the sun. Or so I thought.
I had no cause to leave my property save one: the place had no bath. A good bath was the thing I missed most, apart from Cicero’s conversation. I couldn’t bear to wash myself only in the cold water from the mountain spring. Accordingly I commissioned the construction of a bathhouse in one of the barns. But that couldn’t be done until after the harvest, and so I took to riding off every two or three days to use one of the public baths that are found everywhere along that stretch of coast. I tried many different establishments – in Puteoli itself, in Bauli and in Baiae – until I decided Baiae had the best, on account of the natural hot sulphurous water for which the area is famous. The clientele was sophisticated and included the freedmen of senators who had villas nearby; some of whom I knew. Without even meaning to, I began to pick up the latest gossip from Rome.
Brutus’s games had passed off well, I discovered: no expense spared, even though the praetor himself was not present. Brutus had amassed hundreds of wild beasts for the occasion and, desperate for popular acclaim, he gave orders that every last one of them should be used up in fights and hunts. There were also musical performances and plays, including Tereus, a tragedy by Accius that contained copious references to the crimes of tyrants: apparently it received knowing applause. But unfortunately for Brutus, his games, although generous, were quickly overshadowed by an even more lavish set that Octavian gave immediately afterwards in honour of Caesar. It was the time of the famous comet, the hairy star that rose every day an hour before noon – we could see it even in the brilliantly sunny skies of Campania – and Octavian claimed it was nothing less than Caesar ascending into heaven. Caesar’s veterans were greatly taken with this notion, I was told, and young Octavian’s fame and reputation began to soar with the comet.
Not long after this I was lying one afternoon in a hot pool on a terrace overlooking the sea when some men joined me who I soon gathered by their talk were on the staff of Calpurnius Piso. He had a veritable palace about twenty miles away at Herculaneum and I suppose they must have decided to break their journey from Rome and complete their travelling the next day. I didn’t consciously eavesdrop but I had my eyes closed and they may have thought I was sleeping. At any rate, I quickly pieced together the sensational intelligence that Piso, the father of Caesar’s widow, had made an outspoken attack on Antony in the Senate, accusing him of theft, forgery and treason, of aiming at a new dictatorship and of setting the nation on the road to a second civil war. When one of them said, ‘Aye, and there’s not another man in Rome with the courage to say it, now that our so-called liberators are all either hiding or have fled abroad’, I thought with a pang of Cicero, who would have hated to know that he had been supplanted as an upholder of liberty by Piso, of all people.
I waited until they’d moved on before I climbed out of the pool. I remember I thought I would have a massage while I pondered what I’d just heard. I was moving towards the shaded area where the tables were set out when a woman appeared carrying a pile of freshly laundered towels. I cannot say I recognised her at once – it must have been fifteen years since I had last set eyes on her – but a few paces after we had passed one another I stopped and looked round. She had done the same. I recognised her then all right. It was the slave girl Agathe whose freedom I had bought before I went into exile with Cicero.
This is Cicero’s story, not mine; it is certainly not Agathe’s. Nevertheless, our three lives were entwined, and before I resume the main part of my story I believe she deserves some mention.