Rivals of the Republic

by Annelise Freisenbruch

  “Forgive me, madam. I had forgotten there was a lady in the room. Caepio, you should take your wife home. This is no place for her.”

  Hortensia held up both her hands placatingly as though soothing a head-shy horse.

  “General Pompey, you must not.”

  “This is not for your eyes, my dear. Go home, you will be honored in the same breath as Cloelia for your bravery this day, but now you must leave this to us.”

  She turned to face her father and his companions. “Please, Papa, Cato – listen to me. Caecilius is right, this is not a law court.”

  The expression on Caecilius and Cato’s faces made it obvious they strongly disagreed with this statement. Impatience creased Pompey’s face.

  “Hortensius, you take her out.”

  But Hortensius didn’t move and Hortensia took advantage of her father’s silence.

  “I have a right to speak. You cannot kill him,” she insisted. “If you do, you will cause the very chaos that your own murder was intended to create.”

  Pompey snorted. “Don’t talk nonsense, my dear. Once people hear what this guttersnipe was planning and how narrow an escape the Republic has had, believe me, they will be celebrating and sacrificing in the name of Jupiter, not rioting in the streets.”

  “And then what?” she demanded. “What happens after he is dead? Will you accept another consul in his place?”

  Pompey’s hesitation was a fraction too long. “Of course.” He glanced around the room and nodded magnanimously at Hortensius. “Why, your own father would be just the man for the job. He’ll be consul anyway at the end of the year.”

  Hortensia looked at her father for a moment before turning back resolutely to Pompey. “And are you so sure that you and my father have the full support of the Senate?” she asked quietly. “That there will not be those who accuse the pair of you of corruption and conspiracy?”

  She received no reply. Hortensius was eying his daughter intently, and Caepio too looked thoughtful. After staring at her and evidently undergoing a severe internal struggle, Pompey at last muttered:

  “I may not be able to buy people’s loyalty like Crassus here, but we’ve proof haven’t we? There’s your testimony, the Vestals, the forger. Your man here told us about the slave-boy in the Temple – and we have this will, by Jupiter!” He held up the document scrunched in his fist.

  “Rumor doesn’t respect proof though, does it?” answered Hortensia gently. “And neither my testimony nor the forger’s nor the Vestals’ will carry as much weight as a man’s in a Roman court, not if enough of Crassus’s supporters cry foul. Do you really want Rome to split itself down the middle again? Brothers siding against brothers, fathers fighting on opposite sides from their sons? You have a duty to prevent that. You have the power to stop it. You are the greatest general in Rome, sir. Isn’t the only way to conquer to make peace?”

  Her vibrant voice filled the chamber with its warm timbre, leaving silence in its wake. The tip of Pompey’s sword wavered above Crassus’s heart like a silverfish suspended in a current.

  “What exactly is it that you want me to do then, madam?” he asked slowly, staring down at Crassus’s petrified face. “Pretend that nothing has happened? Smile and act as though this … this traitor and I are the best of friends?”

  “Yes,” she said baldly. “For the sake of the Republic, you must. What has happened tonight must never leave this room.”

  Every eye in the room was fixed on the hovering tip of the sword. The only sound emanated from Crassus’s throat as he sucked and wheezed. Slowly, very slowly, Pompey lowered his arm.

  Crassus began to stagger to his feet. “I’m indebted to you, madam,” he croaked. “I was beginning to think that common sense would never prevail in this discussion and I still protest that –”

  The words whimpered and died as Crassus found himself grabbed by the neck of his robes and slammed against the wall.

  “You listen to me you little shitbird,” growled Pompey. “If you so much as fart in a way that I don’t like the smell of, I’m going to cut out your scrotum and use what’s left of your prick as a door knocker. Do you understand? This isn’t over between you and me.”

  Releasing Crassus, who slid groggily down the wall, Pompey turned to Hortensius, Cato, Caepio and Caecilius, addressing them bullishly.

  “Gentlemen. You came here to expose a conspiracy and now you are being asked to join one. Do you agree to it?”

  Caecilius, Caepio and Hortensius all nodded. After a long delay, Cato grudgingly followed suit.

  “Good. Then the pact is sealed. To sweeten the deal, old Crassus here promises to lend Hortensius and Caecilius his full support during their consulship – don’t you, Crassus? – and he’ll make an anonymous donation to the state treasury too. Five million sesterces should just about do it, what do you think?” He waved his sword in front of Crassus’s nose and received a mumbled reply.

  “What about Dolabella?” interjected Cato, clearly still disgruntled. “What are people going to think when they find his body on the Appian Way – and those of all your men?”

  “They will think precisely what they were supposed to think. That the pirate menace has struck again. I see it will behoove me to exercise some authority in that regard,” answered Pompey with a glint in his eye.

  He turned next to Hortensia, favoring her with a twisted little smile and a brief salute. Then he strode toward the door, pausing on the threshold with the bloodstained short sword still in his hand. He held it out to Lucrio, subjecting the Lusitanian to long, searching scrutiny as he did so.

  “You’re a useful man in a fight. Someone obviously taught you well. I’d give something to have you serve alongside me one day.”

  Lucrio took the sword and returned the look unblinkingly. Pompey’s piercing eyes wandered to his left forearm. Where the leather guard had been torn away, the skin there was lighter than the surrounding area and a faded circular mark was just visible. Pompey nodded purposefully.

  “Those come off, you know. Lime and gypsum. Old soldier’s trick. Some swear pigeon shit works too, not that I’ve never tried it. You might want to think about it though. A man needs to be able to forget his past sometimes.”

  He departed into the corridor. Beckoning the others to follow, Hortensius placed an arm around Hortensia’s shoulders and swept the entire party out of the room. As they emerged into the open air and began to walk steadily up the Palatine Hill, Caecilius glanced at Hortensius, a look of pithy disapproval on his face.

  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Hortensius. You should never have taught your daughter how to speak.”

  XXXVI

  Rome. January 1, 69BC

  HORTENSIA SAT ALONE IN HER FATHER’S STUDY. IT WAS A COOL DAY, even for the first month of the year, and a fire had been kindled in a brazier in the middle of the room, well away from her father’s precious papyri collection. She found it hard to tear her gaze from the twisting flames and wondered idly if this was how it felt to be a Vestal, the monotony of their daily duty by the hearth alleviated by the mesmeric comfort of gazing into the heart of the blaze. One of the lumps of wood settled slightly, sending a spark shooting out of the bronze basin, and she watched it glowing for several minutes on the tile floor before it slowly turned black and finally dissolved into grey ash.

  Her eye fell once more to the document unrolled across her knee. The thin red string that had kept it in its coil lay on the floor. It was a small scroll, covered with an uneven, scrawling hand as though its author were only half literate, and contained just two columns of text. The first appeared to be a statement from a landowner in the Roman province of Asia, who testified that he had never faced any intimidation at the hands of its provincial governor; the second was a description of a farm in the province, detailing its precise location and the delineation of its boundaries, and avowing the landowner’s willingness to see it pass into the hands of the governor, in the event of his own death.

  Holdin
g the document out over a low cedar table placed in front of her chair, Hortensia leaned forward and with the aid of a little make-up scoop from her mother’s dressing-table, levered up some of the crumbled ashes from below the brazier and tipped them over the bottom edge, letting the surplus fall on to the cedar table. With one finger, she lightly rubbed the grey powder into the papyrus. A word appeared, like a vein coming to the surface of the skin, written in what appeared to be a light, sepia ink. She stared at it for a few moments then let it drop to the ground where it joined a pile of other documents, many – though not all – with the same faint, one-word imprimatur inscribed across the corner.

  Hortensia sat back in her chair and stared deep into the flames. She did not hear the door opening behind her and started up quickly at the sound of it being closed. Caepio was standing there.

  “There you are. Your mama said you had gone into the garden.”

  “I did, but it was too cold.”

  “Are you ready to go? Your mama has already set out with Quintus, we’d better hurry if you don’t want to miss your papa’s speech.”

  She hesitated, then nodded, touching the back of her hand to her cheek, which was red and flushed from the heat of the fire. “Yes. Just give me a moment. I’ll be out soon.”

  Caepio opened the door. Then he closed it again. He came over to his wife, scanning her face, seeing the redness in her eyes and the puffiness in her cheeks that owed nothing to the brazier’s warmth. Then he noticed the papyri scattered on the floor. Bending down to pick one up, he scanned the contents, and after a long, difficult pause, finally looked up at her again with sadness and regret in his face.

  “Don’t judge him too harshly, my dearest.”

  She shook her head, not looking at him. “No. I know …”

  “Your father was – and is – one of the finest advocates Rome has ever seen. He has won many cases by the sheer force of his rhetoric. But he cannot stand to lose. Even when there was little risk of failure, he felt he had to make sure of victory, he convinced himself it was necessary …”

  She nodded again, blinked away a few more tears and took a few aimless steps about the room, staring up at the rolls of papyri.

  “I don’t know if this will help,” Caepio continued, after another difficult pause, “but I think I know now why he was in such a strange mood at the time of Verres’s trial. He was worried Dolabella was going to expose his visits to the forger, that much we already know. The fear of humiliation weighed heavily with him. But I think he was ashamed too. In a way, it made him more determined to face Cicero, to prove that he could win without tricks, with just the power of his voice alone. The burden lifted from him just before your wedding, when he told Dolabella he wouldn’t give in to his blackmail.”

  “He only did that because he knew he could prove Petro’s letters for fakes,” said Hortensia quietly. Caepio did not answer immediately.

  “Perhaps. But you know, I still think it brought him back to himself. He was looking forward to the chance to prove his skill against that of a worthy opponent, even if only to himself. However of course Cicero proved himself a little too worthy, and your father didn’t get the chance. He realized from the first day of the trial that his days as king of the law court were over. And in a strange way, he accepted it.”

  He looked over at her, but she didn’t turn around. Slowly he gathered up the papers scattered on the floor, examining their corners, sorting them into two piles and retying them.

  “Where did you find these?”

  “With his other case files,” she said listlessly, nodding in the direction of the alcoves behind Hortensius’s writing-couch. Caepio took one pile and replaced them in the alcoves one by one. Then he took the other and dropped the scrolls in the brazier. “He won’t know,” he said in answer to Hortensia’s questioning look. “Once a case is over, he doesn’t tend to revisit it. He prides himself too much on his memory.”

  He extended a hand to her. She walked across the room and accepted his embrace. From within it came a muffled question:

  “You thought he might have been involved, didn’t you? When I told you about what Lucrio heard at Tiberius Dolabella’s house.”

  “It did occur to me,” he admitted. “The encounters with Dolabella, your father’s strange mood, the fact that there seemed to be a great deal of money involved in whatever was going on, which has always been Hortensius’s greatest weakness. I wanted to protect you. But on reflection I realized my own foolishness. Your papa is a flawed human being, Hortensia. Like you, like me. But in the end, he would never have betrayed the Republic. He loves it too much. More than that – he loves you. He sees himself through your eyes.”

  He felt her sigh and they both watched as the papyri softened and turned black in the glowing bronze bowl.

  THE STREETS LEADING to and from the forum were thronged with people. Flowers squashed underfoot stained the paving stones with splashes of crimson and yellow, while giggling children darted between the adults’ legs, hands linked so as not to lose touch with their friends. Sausage and oyster sellers did a busy trade along the Sacred Way, so too the sign sellers flogging wooden placards daubed with the names of both the incoming and outgoing consuls.

  At the heart of the forum itself, on the steps of the Curia, Hortensius and Caecilius acknowledged the cheers of the public, flanked on either side by their consular predecessors Crassus and Pompey, and supported by a full cast of their fellow senators. Their pristine white togas, edged with purple, made them visible even to those toward the back of the vast crowd, and there were bursts of cheering every time one of the great men spied a pocket of supporters carrying their name aloft on a placard and raised an arm in hearty salute. Just off to the side of the Curia, the candidates’ families had been given their own place to stand, and they too nodded and smiled as they received the salutations of nearby well-wishers. For Caecilius, there was Claudia, splendidly arrayed in a new gown of saffron-yellow and almost bursting out of it with uxorial pride. Hortensius was represented by Lutatia, Quintus – wearing a stony expression and irritably refusing his mother’s quiet prompts to look a little happier for the sake of his father – and Hortensia, who was accompanied by Caepio.

  Looking out over the sea of animated, cheering faces, Hortensia spied six distant figures, also dressed in white, observing the scene from the steps of the Temple of Vesta. She whispered something in Caepio’s ear and he nodded; then she slowly made her way round the edge of the vast crowd until she reached the temple. Ascending the first step, she placed her hand in Cornelia’s outstretched one as she came down to greet her.

  “I am glad to see you. This is a happy day for your family,” said the Chief Vestal graciously.

  Hortensia nodded. “Yes it is. And for Rome.”

  “And for Rome.” Cornelia smiled. “After all, we – and only we – know what might have been.” She turned and beckoned to Fabia, who came down the steps to join them and bestowed the warmest of smiles upon Hortensia. They all contemplated the scene on the Curia steps for a few moments, then a small, freckled boy of nine or ten, wearing a white tunic that was too big for him, came tripping down from the temple.

  “Do you need a parasol, domina? For your guest?” he asked timidly. Cornelia shook her head in dismissal.

  “I know it’s odd, but I feel sorry for what happened to Felix,” Fabia confessed to Hortensia, as the little slave clambered back up the steps to the Temple. “He was just a boy. He must have felt important for the first time in his life …”

  “You have no reason to feel sorry for him,” chided Cornelia in a low undertone. “He is more fortunate than he deserved. If we had told the Pontifex the real reason we wanted him sent away, instead of saying we had caught him peeping again … A silver mine in Africa is a better fate than a sack in the Tiber.”

  Hortensia and Fabia exchanged glances but neither of them said anything. Another cheer went up from the crowd. “I had better go back,” said Hortensia. “I will come back and see you
all soon. I promise.”

  Fabia accompanied her to the bottom step. “I wish you could have met Helena,” she said in parting. “She was brave, like you.”

  “Then I’m not surprised you and she were such good friends,” said Hortensia.

  Fabia smiled wistfully. “Yes, we were. I hope now that you and I can call ourselves friends.”

  “Of course we can,” said Hortensia warmly.

  “I am glad. I told my sister all about you, how clever you are, how much spirit you have. She said she could see it in you too.”

  “Do I know your sister then?” asked Hortensia, much surprised. Fabia looked equally taken aback.

  “But surely I told you?”

  “No. Who is she?”

  “Well, I hope you won’t mind. I know your families are not the best of friends,” stammered Fabia. “She is Terentia. The wife of Marcus Tullius Cicero.”

  She examined Hortensia’s face anxiously for a reaction.

  “So that’s why … I knew your face reminded me of someone,” said Hortensia wonderingly.

  “Are you angry I spoke to her about you?”

  “No,” said Hortensia after a moment’s pause. “I’m just … surprised.”

  She smiled reassuringly and squeezed Fabia’s hand. “Goodbye. Come and visit me on the Palatine whenever you like.”

  “I wish it could be as often as that. But I will come one day.”

  They said their farewells again, and Hortensia slowly made her way back around the edge of the crowd toward the Curia. She could see that Caecilius was now addressing the crowd, his patrician, slightly reedy tones not quite commanding enough to reach beyond the first few rows of his supporters. As she threaded her way through the thickening crowd of spectators, her attention was caught by a dark-haired little girl sitting by herself on the steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, scratching away at the surface of a wax tablet with a stilus that was too big for her small hand. Hortensia went over to her and was greeted with a gap-toothed smile of delight.