Lustrum

– 'all away' – then stumbled upstairs to his bedroom.

Once the clients had been thrown out, I gave orders for the front entrance to be locked and barred, and then I prowled around the empty public rooms, wondering what I should do. I kept waiting for Cicero to come down and give me orders, but the hours passed and there was no sign of him. Eventually Terentia sought me out. She was twisting a handkerchief between her hands, winding it tightly around her bony ringless fingers. She demanded to know what was going on. I replied that I was not entirely sure.

'Don't lie to me, slave! Why is your master collapsed on his bed and refusing to move?'

I quailed before her rage. 'He has – he has – made an error,' I stammered.

'An error? What manner of error?'

I hesitated. I did not know where to begin. There were so many errors: they stretched back like islands behind us, an archipelago of folly. Or perhaps 'errors' was the wrong word. Perhaps it was more accurate to call them consequences: the ineluctable consequences of a deed done by a great man for honourable motives – is that not, after all, how the Greeks define tragedy?

I said, 'He has allowed his enemies to take control of the centre of Rome.'

'And they are doing what, exactly?'

'They are preparing legislation that will make him an outlaw.'

'Well then, he must pull himself together and fight them!'

'It is very dangerous for him to venture out of the house.'

Even as I spoke, I could hear the mob in the street outside chanting, 'Death to the tyrant!' Terentia heard them too. As she listened, I could see the fear tauten her face. 'So what are we to do?'

'We could perhaps wait for nightfall and leave Rome,' I suggested. She stared at me and, frightened though she was, just for a moment I saw in her dark eyes a glint of that ancestor of hers – the one who had commanded a cohort against Hannibal. 'At the very least,' I went on hurriedly, 'we should restore all the precautions we took while Catilina was alive.'

'Send out messages to his colleagues,' she ordered. 'Ask Hortensius, Lucullus – any you can think – to come immediately. Fetch Atticus. Arrange everything else necessary to secure our safety. And summon his doctors.'

I did as she ordered. The shutters were fastened. The Sextus brothers hurried over. I even summoned the guard dog, Sargon, from his retirement on a farm just outside the city. By early afternoon the house had begun to fill with friendly faces, although most arrived shaken by the experience of passing through the chanting crowd. Only the doctors refused to come: they had heard about Clodius's bill and they claimed to fear prosecution.

Atticus went up to see Cicero and came down tearful. 'He has his face turned to the wall,' he told me. 'He refuses to speak.'

'They have robbed him of his voice,' I replied, 'and what is Cicero without his voice?'

A meeting was convened in the library to discuss what could be done: Terentia, Atticus, Hortensius, Lucullus, Cato. I forget who else was present. I sat there silent, stunned, in the room in which I had spent so many hours with Cicero. I listened to the others and wondered how they could hold a conversation about his future without his presence. It was as if he was already dead. The whole animating spark of that household – the wit, the quick intelligence, the guiding ambition – seemed to have fled out of the door, as it does when someone passes from the earth. Terentia had the coolest head present. 'Is there any chance that this law won't pass?' she asked Hortensius at one point.

'Very little,' he said. 'Clodius has copied Caesar's tactics to perfection, and clearly means to use the mob to control the popular assembly.'

'What about the senate?'

'We can adopt a resolution in his support. I'm sure we shall – I'll propose it myself – but Clodius will take no notice. Now if Pompey or Caesar were to come out against the bill, of course, that would make a difference. Caesar has an army less than a mile from the forum. Pompey's influence is immense.'

'And if it passes,' said Terentia, 'where will that leave me?'

'His property will all be seized – this house, its contents, everything. If you try to assist him in any way, you'll be arrested. I fear his only chance is to leave Rome at once, as soon as he is well, and get clear of Italy before the bill becomes law.'

'Could he stay at my house in Epirus?' asked Atticus.

'Then you would be liable to prosecution in Rome. It will be a brave man who gives him shelter. He will have to travel anonymously, and keep moving from place to place before his identity is discovered.'

'So that rules out any of my houses, I'm afraid,' said Lucullus. 'The mob would love to prosecute me.' He rolled his eyes, like a frightened horse. He had never recovered from his humiliation in the senate.

'May I speak?' I asked.

Atticus said, 'Of course, Tiro.'

'There is another option.' I glanced towards the ceiling. I was not sure whether Cicero would want me to reveal it to the others or not. 'In the summer, Caesar offered to appoint the master his legate in Gaul, which would give him immunity.'

Cato looked horrified. 'But that would put Cicero in his debt and make Caesar even more powerful than he is already! In the interests of the state, I very much hope Cicero would turn that down.'

'In the interests of friendship,' said Atticus, 'I hope he takes it. What do you say, Terentia?'

'My husband will decide,' she said simply.

After the others had gone, promising to return the following day, she went up to see Cicero again, then came down and called me to her. 'He is refusing to eat,' she said. Her eyes were watery but she jabbed her narrow chin towards me as she spoke. 'Well, he may give in to despair if he must, but I have to safeguard the interests of this family, and we do not have much time. I want you to arrange to have all the contents of the house packed up and removed. Some we can store in our old home – there is plenty of room as Quintus is away – and the rest Lucullus is willing to look after for us. This place is being watched, so it needs to be done piece by piece, to avoid arousing suspicion, the most valuable items first.'

And that was what we did, beginning that very evening, and continuing over the days and nights that followed. It was a relief to have something to do, while Cicero stayed in his room and refused to see anyone. We hid jewellery and coins in amphorae of wine and olive oil and carted them across the city. We concealed gold and silver dishes beneath our clothes and walked as normally as we could to the house on the Esquiline, where we divested ourselves with a clatter. Antique busts were swaddled in shawls and carried out cradled in the arms of slave girls as if they were babies. Some of the larger pieces of furniture were dismantled and wheeled away like firewood. Rugs and tapestries were wrapped in sheets and trundled off in the direction of the laundry, and then secretly diverted to their hiding place in Lucullus's mansion, which was beyond the Fontinalian Gate, just north of the city.

I took sole charge of emptying Cicero's library, filling sacks with his most private documents and carrying them myself to the cellar of our old house. On these journeys I always took care to skirt Clodius's headquarters in the Temple of Castor, where gangs of his men loitered ready to chase down Cicero if he dared to show his face. Once I stood at the back of a crowd and listened to Clodius himself denounce Cicero from the tribunes' platform. His domination of the city was absolute. Caesar was with his army on the Field of Mars, preparing to march to Gaul. Pompey had withdrawn from the city and was living in connubial bliss with Julia in his mansion in the Alban Hills. The consuls were beholden to Clodius for their provinces. Clodius had learned how to stimulate the mob as a gigolo might caress his lover. He had them chanting in ecstasy. I could not bear to watch for long.

We saved the transfer of the most valuable of Cicero's possessions until almost the very end. This was a citrus-wood table he had been given by a client, and which was said to be worth half a million sesterces. We could not dismantle it, so we decided to take it under cover of darkness to Lucullus's house, where it would easily fit in with all the other opulent furniture. We put it on the back of an ox cart, covered it in bales of straw, and set off on the journey of two miles or so. Lucullus's overseer met us at the door carrying a short whip, and told us that a slave girl would show us where to put it. It took four of us to lift that table down, and then the slave led us through the huge, echoing rooms of the house until she pointed to a spot and told us to set it there. My heart was beating fast, and not just from the weight of our burden, but because I had recognised her by then. How could I not? Most nights I had gone to sleep with her face in my mind. Of course I wanted to ask her a hundred questions, but I feared drawing attention to her in front of the overseer. We followed her back the way we had come, retracing our steps to the grand entrance hall, and I could not help noticing how underfed she seemed, the exhausted stoop of her