"Why did he come to visit you this morning?"
"He brought news from Pompey. 'The Great One is vacating Rome, heading south. The Great One says that any true friend of the Republic will do the same at once.' That was his message for me."
"It sounds almost like a threat," I said. "An ultimatum."
Cicero looked at me warily but said nothing.
"And then Numerius left?"
"Not immediately. We… talked a bit, about the state of the city and such. Pompey hasn't called on all his allies to leave immediately. The consuls and some of the magistrates will stay on, a sort of skeleton government, enough to keep the city from falling entirely into chaos. Even so, the treasury will be closed, the bankers will flee, everything will come to a standstill…" He shook his head. "We talked a bit… and then Numerius left."
"Was anyone with him?"
"He came alone and he left alone."
"Odd, that he should go abroad in the city on Pompey's business without even a bodyguard."
"You've just done the same, Gordianus, and after dark. I suppose Numerius wished to moved as quickly and freely as he could. There must have been plenty of other senators he had to call on, all over the city."
I nodded. "There were no harsh words between you, then?"
Cicero glared at me. "I may have raised my voice. Those damned guards! Did they tell you they heard me shouting?"
"No. Did you shout at Numerius that loudly? What was the altercation about?"
He swallowed hard. The knob in his throat bobbed up and down. "How do you think I felt, when Numerius told me to leave the city by daybreak? I've been away from Rome for a year and a half governing a miserable province, and now that I'm back I hardly catch a breath before I'm told to pack up and flee like a refugee. If I raised my voice, if I shouted a bit, what of it?"
"You're raising your voice now, Cicero."
He pressed a hand against his chest and took several deep breaths. I had never seen him so overwrought; it unnerved me. Whatever their flaws, Pompey and Cicero represented models of Roman self-assurance and self-discipline, the military giant and the political genius. Both had known setbacks, but always triumphed in the long run. Now something was different, and both seemed to sense it. Born the same year, they were a few years younger than I, yet I felt like the child who sees his parents in a panic: if they have lost control, then all must be chaos.
He went on at a lower pitch. "It's a mistake for Pompey to flee. If Caesar is allowed to enter the city without opposition, he'll break into the treasury and squander the wealth of our ancestors to bribe the street gangs. He'll call together whatever's left of the Senate- debtors, discontents, rabble-rousers- and claim it's the legitimate government. Then it will be Pompey and those who fled who are outlaws."
"Have you said as much to Pompey?"
"Yes. Do you know what he replied? 'Sulla could do it, why not I?' It always comes back to Sulla!"
"I don't understand."
"Sulla abandoned the city to his enemies and then retook it, with Pompey as one of his generals. Thirty years later, Pompey thinks he can do the same if the need arises. Can you imagine the city under siege? Disease, hunger, fires spreading out of control- and then the horror of the conquest…"
He stared into the flames of the brazier and again tried to calm himself. "For a long time now, Pompey's mind has been set on playing Sulla. Once Caesar is defeated, Pompey will do what Sulla did. He'll make himself dictator and purge the Senate. He'll draw up a list of enemies. Confiscations, heads on stakes in the Forum…"
"But surely not your head, Cicero." I tried to make light of his fear, but the look he shot back at me was ghastly.
"Why not? If I'm still in Rome tomorrow, Pompey will call me his enemy."
"Follow him, then."
"And make myself Caesar's enemy? What if Caesar wins? I shall never be able to return. I was exiled from Rome once. Never again!" He circled the brazier until he stood opposite me. His eyes flashed, catching the light. The flickering flames and shadows transformed his face into a grim mask. "We must all choose sides, Gordianus. No more argument, no more procrastination. This side, or that. But toward what end? No matter who wins, we shall end up with a tyrant. What a choice- beheaded if I pick the wrong side, a slave if I pick the right one!"
I stared back at him across the flames. "You sound as if you have yet to make up your mind between Caesar and Pompey."
He lowered his eyes. "In the next hour… I keep telling myself, before another hour passes, I shall cast the dice, and let Fortune choose for me!"
He stared at the floor with his hands tightly clasped before him, his brow rigid, his mouth turned down. He raised his eyes at a sound from the doorway. A female slave stole into the room and whispered in his ear.
"My wife calls me, Gordianus. Poor Terentia! Shall I leave her here, in charge of the household, or take her with me? And what of my daughter? While I was off in Cilicia, behind my back Tullia married that wastrel Dolabella! The young fool has both feet firmly in Caesar's camp. He'll do his best to drag her along with him. And now she's expecting his baby! What a world for my grandchild to be born into. And my son! Marcus turns sixteen this year. When the day comes for him to put on his toga of manhood, will we be in Rome for the ceremony? By Hercules, will we even be in Italy?"
On that abrupt note, Cicero left the room and the slave hurried after him.
I was left alone.
I took a deep breath. I warmed myself at the fire. I studied the images on the walls. The face of one shepherd in particular fascinated me; he reminded me of my old bodyguard, Belbo. I looked up at the ceiling, where firelight and shadow flickered across the black spot made by the smoke. I turned my eyes down and traced my toe over the geometric pattern of the carpet.
Alone and forgotten in another man's house, surrounded by silence, I felt overcome by a curious paralysis, unable to depart. It was the only moment of peace I had experienced all day. I was reluctant to give it up. To be abandoned and forgotten by the world, to be left alone, truly alone, without fears or obligations- for a few brief moments in that quiet room I indulged in a fantasy of what that would be like, and savored it, sank into it like a man into dark, deep, soothing water.
I pondered Cicero's dilemma. Pompey and Caesar were not only tearing apart the state; they were tearing apart families. Rome was not easily split into two factions. Rome was a hopelessly tangled skein of blood ties overlaid and interlinked with ties of politics, marriage, honor, and debt. How could such a complex web of mutual obligations be severed down the middle without being destroyed altogether? How many households in Rome that night mirrored Cicero's house, with the occupants rushing about in an agony of indecision? Without eyes to see the future, how could any man be sure of his choice?
In the end it came down to this: that a man might have a willful daughter who chose her own husband against her father's better judgment, and that fellow, intruding from the outside, might have a link- Dolabella to Caesar, Davus to Pompey- that might in the end prove the whole household's undoing. Cicero's Tullia and my Diana: we created them, and now they were out of our control, showing what vanity it was that any man should think to plot his destiny.
At last I forced myself to leave the peaceful room. I passed a few scurrying slaves as I made my way through the house, but none took notice of me. In the vestibule, the slave on duty lifted the bar and opened the door for me.
There was more activity in the street than there had been when I arrived. Handcarts and litters, messengers and torchbearers hurried back and forth. The Palatine Hill was home to many of Rome's richest and most powerful men, those who had the most to lose, or gain, in the event of civil war. Pompey's decision to abandon the city had stirred up the neighborhood like a stick poked into an anthill.