Imperium - Харрис Роберт - Страница 13

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“You will not find him here.”

“I shall be the judge of that.”

“And who are you?”

“Timarchides, freedman of Verres, and I shall not be kept talking while he escapes. You,” he said, turning to the nearest of his men, “secure the front. You two take the back. The rest of you come with me. We shall start with your study, senator, if you have no objection.”

Very soon the house was filled with the sounds of the search-boots on marble tile and wooden board, the screams of the female slaves, harsh male voices, the occasional crash as something was knocked and broken. Timarchides worked his way through the study upending document cases, watched by Cicero from the door.

“He is hardly likely to be in one of those,” said Cicero. “He is not a dwarf.”

Finding nothing in the study, they moved on up the stairs to the senator’s spartan bedroom and dressing room. “Be assured, Timarchides,” said Cicero, still keeping his cool, but obviously with greater difficulty as he watched his bed being overturned, “that you and your master will be repaid for this, one hundredfold.”

“Your wife,” said Timarchides. “Where does she sleep?”

“Ah,” said Cicero quietly, “now I really would not do that, if I were you.”

But Timarchides had his blood up. He had come a long way, was finding nothing, and Cicero ’s manner was chafing on his nerves. He ran along the passage, followed by three of his men, shouted “Sthenius! We know you’re in there!” and threw open the door of Terentia’s bedroom. The screech that followed and the sharp crack of her hand across the invader’s face rang through the house. Then came a volley of colorful abuse, delivered in such an imperious voice, and at such a volume, that Terentia’s distant ancestor, who had commanded the Roman line against Hannibal at Cannae a century and a half before, must surely have sat bolt upright in his tomb. “She fell on that wretched freedman,” Cicero used to say afterwards, “like a tigress out of a tree. I almost felt sorry for the fellow.”

Timarchides must have realized his mission had failed and decided to cut his losses, for in short order he and his ruffians were retreating down the stairs, followed by Terentia, with little Tullia hiding behind her skirts and occasionally brandishing her tiny fists in imitation of her mother. We heard Timarchides calling to his men, heard a running of feet and the slam of the door, and after that the old house was silent except for the distant wailing of one of the maids.

“And this,” said Terentia, taking a deep breath and rounding on Cicero, her cheeks flushed, her narrow bosom rising and falling rapidly, “this is all because you spoke in the Senate on behalf of that dreary Sicilian?”

“I am afraid it is, my darling,” he said sadly. “They are determined to scare me off.”

“Well, you must not let them, Cicero.” She put her hands on either side of his head and gripped it tight-a gesture not at all of tenderness but of passion-and glared furiously into his eyes. “You must crush them.”

The upshot was that the following morning, when we set out for the Basilica Porcia, Quintus was on one side of Cicero, Lucius was on the other, and behind him, magnificently turned out in the formal dress of a Roman matron and carried in a litter hired specially for the occasion, came Terentia. It was the first time she had ever troubled to see him speak, and I swear he was more nervous of appearing before her than he was of appearing before the tribunes. He had a big retinue of clients to back him up as he left the house, and we picked up more along the way, especially after we stopped off halfway down the Argiletum to retrieve Sthenius from his bolt-hole. A hundred or more of us must have surged across the Forum and into the tribunes’ hall. Timarchides followed at a distance with his gang, but there were far too many of us for him to risk an attack, and he knew that if he tried anything in the basilica itself he would be torn to bits.

The ten tribunes were on the bench. The hall was full. Palicanus rose and read the motion, That in the opinion of this body the proclamation of banishment from Rome does not apply to Sthenius, and Cicero stepped up to the tribunal, his face clenched white with nerves. Quite often he was sick before a major speech, as he had been on this occasion, pausing at the door to vomit into the gutter. The first part of his oration was more or less the same as the one he had given in the Senate, except that now he could call his client to the front and gesture to him as need arose to stir the pity of the judges. And certainly a more perfect illustration of a dejected victim was never paraded before a Roman court than Sthenius on that day. But Cicero ’s peroration was entirely new, not at all like his normal forensic oratory, and marked a decisive shift in his political position. By the time he reached it, his nerves were gone and his delivery was on fire.

“There is an old saying, gentlemen, among the merchants in the Macellum, that a fish rots from the head down, and if there is something rotten in Rome today-and who can doubt that there is?-I tell you plainly that it has started in the head. It has started at the top. It has started in the Senate.” Loud cheers and stamping of feet. “And there is only one thing to do with a stinking, rotten fish head, those merchants will tell you, and that is to cut it off-cut it off and throw it out!” Renewed cheers. “But it will require quite a knife to sever this head, for it is an aristocratic head, and we all know what they are like!” Laughter. “It is a head swollen with the poison of corruption and bloated with pride and arrogance. And it will need a strong hand to wield that knife, and it will need a steady nerve, besides, because they have necks of brass, these aristocrats, I tell you: brassnecks, all of them!” Laughter. “But that man will come. He is not far away. Your powers will be restored, I promise you, however hard the struggle.” A few brighter sparks started shouting out Pompey’s name. Cicero held up his hand, three fingers outstretched. “To you now falls the great test of being worthy of this fight. Show courage, gentlemen. Make a start today. Strike a blow against tyranny. Free my client. And then free Rome!”

Later, Cicero was so embarrassed by the rabble-rousing nature of this speech, he asked me to destroy the only copy, so I must confess I am writing here from memory. But I recollect it very clearly-the force of his words, the passion of his delivery, the excitement of the crowd as he whipped them up, the wink he exchanged with Palicanus as he left the tribunal, and Terentia not moving a muscle, simply staring straight ahead as the common people around her erupted in applause. Timarchides, who had been standing at the back, slipped out before the ovation ended, no doubt to ride at full gallop to Sicily and report to his master what had happened-for the motion, I need hardly add, was passed by ten votes to nil, and Sthenius, as long as he stayed in Rome, was safe.

ANOTHER OF CICERO’S maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity. Thus, although he had never previously expressed an opinion about Pompey or the tribunes, neither cause now had a more devoted adherent. And the Pompeians were delighted to welcome such a brilliant recruit to their ranks.

That winter was long and cold in the city, and for no one, I suspect, more than Terentia. Her personal code of honor required her to support her husband against the enemies who had invaded her home. But having sat among the smelly poor, and listened to Cicero haranguing her own class, she now found her drawing room and dining room invaded at all hours by his new political cronies: men from the uncouth north, who spoke with ugly accents and who liked to put their feet up on her furniture and plot late into the night. Palicanus was the chief of these, and on his second visit to the house in January he brought with him one of the new praetors, Lucius Afranius, a fellow senator from Pompey’s homeland of Picenum. Cicero went out of his way to be charming, and in earlier years, Terentia, too, would have felt it an honor to have a praetor in her house. But Afranius had no decent family or breeding of any sort. He actually had the nerve to ask her if she liked dancing, and, when she drew back in horror, declared that personally he loved nothing more. He pulled up his toga and showed her his legs and demanded to know if she had ever seen a finer pair of calves.

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