A Pillar of Iron

by Taylor Caldwell

  “No. That is beyond me,” he said. “Livia, tell me that you remember me, that you think of me.”

  He felt, if she left him like this, he would die of his desolation. “I come here often to pray that Venus will have mercy on us,” he said. He spoke hoarsely, out of his anguish.

  “I pray that I will love Lucius,” said Livia. “What is fated must come to pass. Not even the gods can avoid fate.”

  Now she looked at him sternly. She seemed to tell him that she was no servant girl who could flee with a groom. The circumstances of their lives were inexorable.

  “Say only that you think of me,” he pleaded.

  Her eyes suddenly pulsed with tears; her raspberry lips quivered. But she said, very quietly, “I think of my bridegroom, Lucius.”

  “Livia!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands as if praying.

  Her lids covered her eyes, and her white face became rigid with suffering.

  “I beg of you, Marcus,” she whispered. “Depart from me.”

  “There is nothing impossible, so long as we live,” he said.

  Livia gathered her filmy cloak about her, and turned to her aunt, who was staring at Marcus in umbrage. The girl took the older woman’s arm gently. They passed Marcus and Livia did not glance back at him. A double litter awaited them below. They entered, and the slaves carried them away. Not once did the curtains move. Marcus watched the litter until it had been swallowed up in the press of traffic.

  He leaned his forehead against a pillar and he wept as he had not wept at his grandfather’s death. He knew now that the Lady of Cypress was the mightiest of all the goddesses, that she was mightier than Zeus. The cynics and the skeptics might sneer or utter profanities or obscenities. Venus remained unchallenged, immortal, never to be overcome.

  If only I were rich and powerful, he thought in his agony. If only I had a great name! But I am nothing, nothing.

  He returned home in a daze of torment. He could see nothing but Livia’s blue eyes.

  *From: Letters to Sallust.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The family did not notice Marcus’ pallor that night, for Tullius had again sickened with the prevailing malaria. Helvia had just returned from one of the three temples to the Goddess of Fever, and was in the kitchen hastily preparing the evening meal. Quintus was glowering miserably over his books. Only Archias saw Marcus’ face.

  “How goes it with the honorable Scaevola?” he asked in the atrium, shrewdly speculating about the reason for Marcus’ overwhelming aspect of distress.

  “I did not see him today. He was busy defending the Carpenters’ Guild from charges brought by the Senate for overcharging the government,” Marcus answered, listlessly. “There were other cases also, involving the Harness-makers Guild, and the Shoemakers. Extortion against the government in time of war.”

  “As the government practices extortion against almost everyone, it is only just that others engage in the practice against it,” said Archias.

  Marcus tried to smile. “Scaevola says the law is a donkey, and its only permitted rider is government,” he said.

  “But who won in this case, or cases?” asked Archias.

  “Scaevola.” Now Marcus truly smiled. “He has secret histories of all the Senators, most of the tribunes, and many of the Consuls. So they listen seriously to his arguments. The carpenters, the harness-makers, and the shoemakers were acquitted of extortion. Scaevola warned them privately, afterward, that they must be less greedy for a time. He received, as usual, vast gifts.” Marcus paused. “He has only to look straightly at the faces of the Senators for them to cower.”

  “It is well for a lawyer to have dossiers concerning the powerful,” said Archias. “Ah, men! An honest lawyer, believing in honest law, would die of starvation for lack of clients. He would never win a case.”

  Marcus frowned. “Then I shall starve,” he said.

  Archias chuckled. But his keen eyes dwelled on the youth’s face. He is sickening of something, he thought. And of what do men sicken the most? At his age? Love. It is foolish, but nevertheless it is true. He pulled Marcus aside and said, “Listen to me. You are approaching the age of seventeen. Yet never have you known a woman.”

  Marcus’ pale face colored deeply.

  “At your age,” said Archias, “one feels ready to die of love. I am a poet. I do not laugh at love; at least, I do not despise it. But it has other agreeable aspects. They soothe the flame; they temporarily quench the burning. They stun the feverish mind for a time, which is engaged in the contemplation of one image only.”

  “You recommend a brothel?” said Marcus.

  “Not in these days, when the mob has gold and soldiers from every part of the world are frolicking in the city,” said Archias. He said, blandly, “I recommend my Eunice.”

  “You are not serious!”

  “I am very serious. I am not a young man, my innocent Marcus. And Eunice is young, amiable, and tender and versed in the arts of love. I taught her, myself, when I was potent. She is voluptuous and ripe life pulses in her. She is faithful to me; she adores me now as a father. But her nature will not be denied. Take her to your bed. I should prefer that to having her secretly romping with a gladiator or a slave, who might make her unclean and unsafe in this household.”

  Marcus stared at him. He felt violated. Archias stared back at him, smiling.

  “Are you a panderer?” said Marcus, almost hating him.

  Archias pursed his lips. “Your words are harsh. Therefore, it means that you are deeply wounded. Apparently the beloved maiden is unavailable. I would be your benefactor. I know, from experience, that women have a sameness when the lamps are out. You have only to pretend that you embrace your beloved. I will send Eunice to you tonight. You will be conferring a benefit upon her, and upon me.”

  Marcus was silent. Archias rapped his knuckles on the young man’s chest. “Aphrodite is the goddess of love. She is also the goddess of the arts of love, and concupiscence. As an experienced goddess, herself, she does not admire those who keep themselves inviolate because of the unavailability of one beloved woman. Such self-castration is abominable to her, and to all sensible gods—and men. Should you offer up your testes to her she would reject them, and rightly so. Go to, Marcus, and become a man.”

  Marcus thought, If I could lie with Livia but once! Perhaps then I could forget her! The very thought of embracing Livia set his loins on fire for the first time. He colored violently. Archias grinned under his long nose, and seeing this Marcus turned on his heel and left him.

  But when. Eunice was assisting Helvia at the table that night Marcus could not keep his glance from her. She was only a few years older than himself, and ripe and golden-haired and rich of lip. She caught his glance once and smiled at him affectionately. She caught his second glance, and her smile was no longer sisterly. At the third glance, her smile was provocative. Marcus then attended to his supper, despising himself. But he could not stop remembering that Eunice’s breasts were full, her hips rounded, her arms like those of a statue. Her cheeks were like pears. When she served the wine she leaned toward Marcus and exuded a fragrance like sweet clover. He became dizzy with his first true desire.

  When he lay in bed that night, his whole body throbbing, he tried sternness with himself. A Roman controlled his impulses. Still, they had female slaves. He, Marcus, had no wife. He would probably never possess one, because of Livia. Should he deny himself? Should he detest his natural nature?

  He struggled with these thoughts, wakeful and tossing. Then in the darkness he heard the rustling of his curtain, and the softest of laughs. A moment later the warmth and fullness of Eunice was against his body, and her arms about his neck and her lips pressed to his. There was an innocence about her, a lavish giving. There was no vileness. He forgot she was a slave, belonging to another. She was a gift, and she alone gave that gift. While he took it, awkwardly, he forgot Livia.

  A few days later Archias took Eunice to the praetor and gave her her freedom. He a
lso gave her—after some struggle with his Grecian thriftiness—one-third of his small fortune. The girl went to Helvia who felicitated her upon her good fate. “You can now procure a husband for yourself, Eunice,” she said. She had a great affection for this sweet if stupid young woman, whose delight it was to serve.

  “Permit me to remain with you, Lady,” Eunice implored.

  “I cannot pay you in these days, Eunice. You are no longer a slave. Would you work for your mere bread and bed, and an occasional mantle or sandals?”

  “Yes,” said Eunice with deep earnestness.

  Helvia shrugged. There was little in the household which escaped her.

  “I will keep my accounts,” she said. “One day we will not be so poor. I shall then repay you.”

  Eunice kissed her hands and was full of rejoicing. Helvia sighed. She went to her lonely cubiculum and studied herself in her silver mirror, a gift from her mother. I am old, old, she thought. I am thirty-three; the juice of life has left me.

  She knew that Eunice would do Marcus no harm. She hoped, however, that he would do Eunice no harm, either. That would be unpardonable.

  In the meantime, Marcus’ pallor lessened. He appeared less abstracted. He grew in stature. His voice steadily deepened, and the brows over his eyes became more marked. There was an authority, even a tranquillity about him which pleased’ his mother.

  Old Scaevola resembled a gigantic coin. He had an enormous round bald head, no discernible neck, three vast chins which rolled on his broad chest, a huge belly, and short fat legs. He had a remarkably small satyr’s face, full of lewd knowledge and intellect. His eyes were excessively minute, but resembled pieces of brilliant blue glass, and overlooked nothing. It pleased him to be told that he had the ugly snubbed nose of Socrates above thick and smacking lips. His complexion glowed like a pomegranate, and was full of winey threads. He possessed a voice like a bull and though he had grandsons he had an intense passion for life and a bounding zest.

  He thought earnest and sincere young men to be fools; he thought those who believed man had the capacity for virtue to be even greater fools. He did not hold the wicked in contempt, nor did he revile them or denounce them. He accepted the evil that was man with good humor and laughter. To him law was an exciting game, even more exciting than his beloved dice. It was a matching of the wits. If he loaded his dice against magistrates and Senators with his knowledge concerning them, he did so genially. He knew they carried loaded dice themselves. His were only infinitely better and he could throw more shrewdly. He loved his clients though he rarely believed in their innocence. “You say you are no murderer, my dear,” he would remark to a man who had been caught almost red-handed by the guards. “I am prepared to believe that, though we both know it is a lie. Let us see what we can do.”

  He defended everyone who came to him, even those who had no money. He was rich, himself, and a patrician. He was adored by multitudes for what was believed his charity and his ardor in defending the accused. He accepted plaudits happily. He had won his game. There was not the most obscure of regulations, invented by some faceless bureaucrat, of which he did not know. His library was famous even among other illustrious lawyers. He had concocted a game of his own—a board on which pellets of various colors could be moved or taken on the throw of a die. It was hard to say which he preferred more: winning a lawsuit or winning a game at his own table. His students, like Marcus Tullius Cicero, were always forced to play with him after lessons. He invariably beat them, to his almost childish delight.

  In the beginning he had looked incredulously at Marcus who sincerely believed that law was the foundation of nations, and that rule by law was true civilization. He would shake his head over and over, as if dazed. Once he said to the youth, “You quote your grandfather copiously. He must have been remarkably innocent, as well as a good man. But he put his trust in what does not exist; disinterested justice. By Apollo, my child! That has never been so in man’s history! Is not justice depicted as blind? You speak like a drooling infant.”

  He thought he had disposed sensibly of this nonsense. But Marcus returned to it obdurately and finally Scaevola had to take him seriously. The old man was aghast.

  “You have been with me in the courts. You have seen me defend all manner of men. Did you believe my clients innocent? One in a thousand, my dear, one in a thousand! I was merely more adroit than the magistrate, or those infernal Senators. Law is a harlot; she smiles on those with the fattest purse.”

  “It should not be so,” said Marcus, stubbornly.

  Scaevola threw up his hands and his eyes. “It is a fact of life!” he roared. “Am I, or you, to oppose it? What an imbecile you are. Retire to the desert, or go to the Indus and contemplate your navel. You are not of the stuff of lawyers.”

  “I am,” said Marcus, setting his mouth firmly.

  The tiny blue eyes studied him with diamond hardness and thought.

  “Why do you want to be a lawyer, my dear?”

  “Because I believe in law, and justice. I believe in our Twelve Tables of Law. I believe that all men have a right to be represented before their accusers. If we have no law then we are beasts.”

  “That is the very point,” said the old man. “We are beasts.”

  “You have said yourself, Master, that one in a thousand of your clients is innocent. Is that not enough, that one man escape injustice and punishment? Is that not why law was written?” Marcus hesitated. “My grandfather always asserted that when Romans are governed by men and not by law, then Rome must fall.”

  The old man belched loudly and Marcus was enveloped in a wind of garlic. Scaevola scratched himself through his soiled tunic. He contemplated Marcus again.

  “Rome has already fallen,” he said at last. “Did you not know that?”

  Marcus was silent.

  “Even if you become a lawyer you will have no clients—if you take only those you believe are innocent. Why, then, do you study law?”

  “I have told you: I believe in the rule of established law. I also wish to make an honorable living.”

  Scaevola shook a thick finger in his face. “You are doomed to bitterness, and probably to suicide, or even to be murdered,” he said. “That is always the fate of men who espouse virtue, or believe in justice. You are also doomed to penury. You are wasting your money sitting with me here and in the courts.”

  “Do you wish me, then, to leave?” asked Marcus.

  Scaevola grunted, scratched his head. Then he said at last, “No. I have had all the amusements that men know in my life, and still have them. Save one. I have not seen an honest lawyer in my life.” He laughed uproariously.

  He disliked his students on principle. He found himself disliking Marcus less than he did the others. This was because he admired intelligence, and he found intelligence in Marcus’ eyes, stern lips, and wide brow. Once he even said, as if conceding a game, “It is possible that without the little law we do honor we should have chaos, and even a bought harlot is better than no woman at all. But I tell you that the day is coming when Rome will have no law whatsoever but the decree of tyrants.”

  Once Marcus brought up the subject of the Ten Commandments of Moses. Scaevola knew all about them. “You will notice,” he observed, “that almost all of them say ‘Thou shalt not.’ If there were any virtue in men this would not be necessary. If men were not by nature murderers, thieves, adulterers, liars, enviers, blasphemers, betrayers, the Commandments would not have been given to that Moses. If any men obey them it is out of superstitious fear, and not from any good inclination of their hearts. Let the pious once be deprived of superstition and religion, then you will see chaos, indeed. The tiger is not more fierce than man, the lion not more terrible, the rat not more cunning and bloodthirsty, the leopard not more wild. Let us bless the gods, even though they do not exist,” said Scaevola, rolling up his eyes solemnly.

  In the meantime, Marcus heard of the marriage of Livia Curius to Lucius Catilina. He heard of it even over the thunder o
f the war. Scaevola and his family were invited to the festivities, and the old man spoke approvingly of the viands. Usually so acute, so instantly aware of any change of expression in anyone, he did not see Marcus’ whiteness of face nor the agony in his eyes. “I do not decry ambition, for did it not raise me to my present eminence? But the young Catilina is without a single virtue, except for his appearance. He does not even pretend to have a virtue! So long as men pretend to some goodness we can plod along in a measure of safety, if only by appealing to pride. Even a demon wishes to stand well in the estimation of others. The young Catilina does not even desire that.”

  “Yet, he is greatly loved,” said Marcus.

  Scaevola nodded, and frowned. “Perhaps it is because a totally evil man has an irresistible charm, and excites the envy and admiration of those who dare not display themselves so completely.”

  “Then total evil has a kind of virtue of its own,” said Marcus. “An honesty.”

  Scaevola was delighted, and struck Marcus on the shoulder so heavily that the youth reeled in his chair. “My dear, you have spoken words of wisdom! An old man is enlightened by a youth who is still comparatively beardless! For this, I shall reward you with three of my games instead of one.”

  Marcus was so wrapped in his anguish and so abstracted that he was not aware of the boring game and the fall of the dice. In consequence, he actually won two games out of three. Scaevola was astonished; his lips pouted as if he were about to weep. He said, “I am becoming old. I am not so keen any longer.”

  It was the last game with his mentor that Marcus won, for in a sort of revenge Scaevola plied him with books and took him on an endless round of the courts. It seemed to him that he came to know every stone in the Basilica of Justice, and the face of every magistrate.

  But regardless of what Scaevola never ceased from informing him, he never was diverted from his belief that law was inviolate—in spite of the evidence. It was a matter, he was convinced, of proper presentation. It was a matter of believing in the ultimate triumph of justice, however it was perverted. It was a matter of truth.