that blew around the chamber. 'I have been informed' was exactly the formulation he had used twice before when raising the spectre of Catilina, and it had become a kind of satirical catchphrase. Wags in the street would shout it after him as he went by: 'Oh, look! There goes Cicero! Has he been informed?' His enemies in the senate yelled it out while he was speaking: 'Have you informed yourself yet, Cicero?' And now inadvertently he had said it again. He smiled weakly and affected not to care, but of course he did. Once a leader starts to be laughed at as a matter of routine, he loses authority, and then he is finished. 'Don't go out without your armour!' someone called as he processed from the chamber, and the house was convulsed with mirth. He locked himself away in his study soon after that and I did not see much of him for several days. He spent more time with my junior, Sositheus, than he did with me; I felt oddly jealous.
There was another reason for his gloom, although few would have guessed it, and he would have been embarrassed if they had. In October his daughter was to be married – an occasion, he confided to me, that he was dreading. It was not that he disliked her husband, young Gaius Frugi, of the Piso clan: on the contrary, it was Cicero, after all, who had arranged the betrothal, years earlier, to bring in the votes of the Pisos. It was simply that he loved his little Tulliola so much that he could not bear the thought of their being parted. When, on the eve of the wedding, he saw her packing her childhood toys away as tradition demanded, tears came into his eyes and he had to leave the room. She was just fourteen. The following morning the ceremony took place in Cicero's house, and I was honoured to be asked to attend, along with Atticus and Quintus, and a whole crowd of Pisos (by heavens, what an ugly and lugubrious crowd they were!). I must confess that when Tullia was led down the stairs by her mother, all veiled and dressed in white, with her hair tied up and the sacred belt knotted around her waist, I cried myself; I cry now, remembering her girlishly solemn face as she recited that simple vow, so weighted with meaning: 'Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia.' Frugi placed the ring on her finger and kissed her very tenderly. We ate the wedding cake and offered a portion to Jupiter, and then at the wedding breakfast, while little Marcus sat on his sister's knee and tried to steal her fragrant wreath, Cicero proposed the health of the bride and groom.
'I give to you, Frugi, the best that I have to give: no nature kinder, no temper sweeter, no loyalty fiercer, no courage stronger, no-'
He could not go on, and under cover of the loud and sympathetic applause he sat down.
Afterwards, hemmed in as usual by his bodyguards, he joined the procession to Frugi's family home on the Palatine. It was a cold day. Not many people were about; few joined us. When we reached the mansion, Frugi was waiting. He hoisted his bride into his arms and, ignoring Terentia's mock entreaties, carried her over the threshold. I had one last glimpse of Tullia's wide, fearful eyes staring out at us from the interior, and then the door closed. She was gone, and Cicero and Terentia were left to walk slowly home in silence, hand in hand.
That night, sitting at his desk before he went to bed, Cicero remarked for the twentieth time on how empty the place seemed without her. 'Only one small member of the household gone, and yet how diminished it is! Do you remember how she used to play at my feet, Tiro, when I was working? Just here.' He gently tapped his foot against the floor beneath his table. 'How often did she serve as the first audience for my speeches – poor uncomprehending creature! Well, there it is. The years sweep us on like leaves before a gale, and it cannot be helped.'
Those were his last words to me that evening. He went off to his bed and I, after I had blown out the candles in the study, retired to mine. I said good night to the guards in the atrium and carried my lamp to my tiny room. I placed it on the night-stand beside my cot, undressed, and lay awake as usual thinking over the events of the day, until slowly I felt my mind beginning to dissolve into sleep.
It was midnight – very quiet.
I was woken by fists pounding on the front door. I sat up with a start. I could only have been asleep for a few moments. The distant hammering came again, followed by ferocious barking, shouts and running feet. I seized my tunic and pulled it on as I hurried into the atrium. Cicero, fully dressed, was already descending the stairs from his bedroom, preceded by two guards with drawn swords. Behind him, wrapped in a shawl, was Terentia, with her hair in curlers. The banging resumed again, sharper now – sticks or shoes beating against the heavy wood. Little Marcus started howling in the nursery. 'Go and ask who it is,' Cicero told me, 'but don't open the door,' and then, to one of the knights: 'Go with him.'
Cautiously I advanced along the passage. We had a guard dog by this time – a massive black and brown mountain dog named Sargon, after the Assyrian kings. He was snarling and barking and yanking on his chain with such ferocity I thought he would tear it from the wall. I called out, 'Who's there?'
The reply was faint but audible: 'Marcus Licinius Crassus!'
Above the noise of the dog I called to Cicero: 'He says it's Crassus!'
'And is it?'
'It sounds like him.'
Cicero thought about it for a moment. I guessed he was calculating that Crassus would cheerfully see him dead, but also that it was hardly likely that a man of Crassus's eminence would try to murder a serving consul. He drew back his shoulders and smoothed down his hair. 'Well then, if he says it's Crassus, and it sounds like Crassus, you'd better let him in.'
I opened the door a crack to see a group of a dozen men holding torches. The bald head of Crassus shone in the yellow light like a harvest moon. I opened the door wider. Crassus eyed the snarling dog with distaste, then edged past it into the house. He was carrying a scruffy leather document case. Behind him came his usual shadow, the former praetor Quintus Arrius, and two young patricians, friends of Crassus who had only lately taken their seats in the senate – Claudius Marcellus and Scipio Nasica, whose names had featured on the most recent list of Catilina's potential sympathisers. Their escort tried to follow them in but I told them to wait outside: four enemies at one time was quite enough, I decided. I relocked the door.
'So what's all this about, Crassus?' asked Cicero as his old foe stepped into the atrium. 'It's too late for a social call and too early for business.'
'Good evening, Consul.' Crassus nodded coldly. 'And good evening to you, madam,' he said to Terentia. 'Our apologies for disturbing you. Don't let us keep you from your bed.' He turned his back on her and said to Cicero, 'Is there somewhere private we can talk?'
'I'm afraid my friends get nervous if I leave their sight.'
'Are you suggesting we're assassins?'
'No, but you keep company with assassins.'
'Not any longer,' said Crassus with a thin smile, and patted his document case. 'That's why we're here.'
Cicero hesitated. 'All right, in private, then.' Terentia started to protest. 'Don't alarm yourself, my dear. My guards will be right outside the door, and the strong arm of Tiro will be there to protect me.' (This was a joke.)
He ordered some chairs to be taken to his study, and the six of us just about managed to squeeze into it. I could see that Cicero was nervous. There was something about Crassus that always made his flesh crawl. Still, he was polite enough. He asked his visitors if they would like some wine, but they declined. 'Very well,' he said. 'Sober is better than drunk. Out with it.'
'There's trouble brewing in Etruria,' began Crassus.
'I know the reports. But as you saw when I tried to raise the matter, the senate won't take it seriously.'
'Well, they need to wake up quickly.'
'You've certainly changed your tune!'
'That's because I've come into possession of certain facts. Tell him, Arrius.'
'Well,' said Arrius, looking shifty. He was a clever fellow, an old soldier, low-born, and Crassus's creature in all matters. He was much mocked behind his back for his silly way of speaking, adding an 'h' to some of his vowels, presumably because he thought it made him sound educated. 'I was in Hetruria up till yesterday. There are bands of fighters gathering right across the region. I hunderstand they're planning to hadvance on Rome.'
'How do you know that?'
'I served with several of the ringleaders in the legions. They tried to persuade me to join them, and I let them think I might – purely to gather hintelligence, you hunderstand,' he added quickly.
'How many of these fighters are there?'
'I should say five thousand, maybe ten.'
'As many as that?'
'If there aren't that many now, there will be soon enough.'
'Are they armed?'
