Lustrum

are you playing at?' he whispered angrily, when I got him into the atrium. His nerves were clearly stretched to breaking point. 'Where's Celer?'
    'Gravely ill,' I replied. 'Perhaps dying. He wants you to come at once.'
    Poor Cicero. That must have been a blow. He seemed literally to stagger back from it. Without exchanging a word we went straight round to Celer's house, where the steward was waiting for us, and he led us towards the private apartments. I shall never forget those gloomy passageways, with their dim candles and the sickly smell of incense being burned to cover the still morepowerful odours of vomit and bodily decay. So many doctors had been called to attend upon Celer, they blocked the door to his bedchamber, talking quietly in Greek. We had to force our way inside. It was stiflingly hot, and so dark that Cicero was obliged to pick up a lamp and take it over to where the senator lay. He was naked apart from the bandages that marked where he had been bled. Dozens of leeches were attached to his arms and the insides of his legs. His mouth was black and frothy: I learned afterwards that he had been fed charcoal, as part of some crackpot cure. It had been necessary to tie him to his bed because of the force of his convulsions.
    Cicero knelt beside him. 'Celer,' he said in a voice of great tenderness, 'my dear friend, who has done this to you?'
    Hearing Cicero's voice, Celer turned his face to him, and tried to speak, but all that emerged was an unintelligible gurgle of black bubbles. He surrendered after that. He closed his eyes, and by all accounts he never opened them again.
    Cicero lingered for a little while, and asked the doctors various questions. They disagreed about everything, in the way of medical men, but on one point they were unanimous: none had ever seen a healthy body succumb to a disease more quickly.
    'A disease?' said Cicero incredulously. 'Surely he has been poisoned?'
    Poisoned? The doctors recoiled at the very word. No, no – this was a ravaging sickness, a virulent distemper, the result of a snake bite: anything except poisoning, which was simply too appalling a possibility to be discussed. Besides, who would want to poison the noble Celer?
    Cicero left them to it. That Celer had been murdered he never doubted, although whether Caesar had a hand in it, or Clodius, or both, he never discovered, and the truth remains amystery to this day. There was, however, no question in his mind as to who had administered the fatal dose, for as we left that house of death we met coming in through the front door Clodia, accompanied by – of all people – young Caelius Rufus, fresh from his triumph over Hybrida. And although they both hastily assumed grave expressions, one could tell that they had been laughing a moment earlier; and although they quickly stood apart, it was clear that they were lovers.

XVIII
    Celer's body was burned on a funeral pyre set up in the forum as a mark of national mourning. His face in death was tranquil, that coal-black mouth as clean and pink as a rosebud. Caesar and all the senate attended. Clodia looked beautiful in mourning and shed many a widow's tear. Afterwards his ashes were interred in the family mausoleum, and Cicero sank into a deep gloom. He sensed that any hopes of stopping Caesar had died with Celer.
    Seeing her husband's depression, Terentia insisted on a change of scene. Cicero had acquired a new property out on the coast at Antium, a day and a half's journey from Rome, and that was where the family went for the start of the spring recess. On the way we passed close to Solonium, where the Claudian family had long owned a great country estate. Behind its high ochre walls, Clodius and Clodia were said to be closeted together in a family conference with their two brothers and two sisters. 'Six of them all together,' said Cicero, as we rattled past in our carriage, 'like a litter of puppies – the litter from hell! Imagine them in there, tumbling around in bed with one another and plotting my destruction.' I did not contradict him, although it was hard to imagine those two stiff-necked older brothers, Appius and Gaius, getting up to any such mischief.
    When we reached Antium, the weather was inclement, withsqualls of rain blowing in off the sea. Cicero sat out on the terrace, regardless of the conditions, gazing over the thundering waves at the grey horizon, trying to find a way out of his predicament. Eventually, after a day or two of that, with his head