Lustrum

to give him that. Gambling was his vice, not drink, and I suppose throwing dice leaves less of a mark upon a man.
    'Well, Curius,' said Cicero quietly, 'this is a terrible business.'
    'I'll talk to you alone, not in front of others.'
    'Not talk in front of others? By the gods, you'll talk in front of the entire Roman people if I say so! Did you kill her?'
    'Damn you, Cicero!' Curius swore, and lunged towards the consul, but Quintus was on his feet in a moment and blocked his way.
    'Steady, Senator,' he warned.
    'Did you kill her?' repeated Cicero.
    'No!'
    'But you know who did?'
    'Yes! You!' Once more he tried to push his way past Quintus, but Cicero's brother was an old soldier, and stopped him easily. 'You killed her, you bastard,' he shouted again, struggling against Quintus's restraining arms, 'by making her your spy!'
    'I'm prepared to bear my share of guilt,' replied Cicero, gazing at him coolly. 'Will you?'
    Curius muttered something inaudible, pulled himself free of Quintus and turned away.
    'Does Catilina know you're here?'
    Curius shook his head.
    'Well, that at least is something. Now listen to me. I'm offering you a chance, if you've brains enough to take it. You've hitched your fate to a madman. If you didn't know it before, you must realise it now. How did Catilina know she'd been to see me?'
    Again Curius mumbled something no one could hear. Cicero cupped his hand to his ear. 'What? What are you saying?'
    'Because I told him!' Curius glared at Cicero with tearful eyes.He struck his breast with his fist. 'She told me, and I told him!' And he struck himself again – hard, hard, hard blows – in the manner of some Eastern holy man lamenting the dead.
    'I need to know everything. Do you understand me? I need names, places, plans, times. I need to know who exactly will strike at me, and in what location. It's treason if you don't tell me.'
    'And treachery if I do!'
    'Treachery against evil is a virtue.' Cicero got to his feet. He put his hands on Curius's shoulders and stared hard into his face. 'When your lady came to see me, it was your safety as much as mine that was her concern. She made me promise, on the lives of my children, that I would grant you immunity if this plot was ever exposed. Think of her, Curius, lying there – beautiful, brave, broken. Be worthy of her love and her memory, and act now as you know she would have wanted.'
    Curius wept; indeed, I could hardly restrain my own tears, such was the pitiful vision Cicero conjured up: that, and the promise of immunity, did the trick. When Curius had pulled himself together sufficiently, he promised to get word to Cicero the moment he heard any definite news of Catilina's plans. Thus Cicero's thin line of information from the enemy's camp remained intact.
    He did not have long to wait.
    The following day was election eve, and Cicero was due to preside over the senate. But because of the fear of an ambush, he had to follow a circuitous route, along the Esquiline and down to the Via Sacra. The journey took twice as long as usual, and it was mid-afternoon by the time we arrived. His curule chairwas placed on the doorstep and he sat there in the shade, reading through some letters, surrounded by his lictors, waiting for the auguries to be taken. Several senators wandered over to ask if he had heard what Catilina was supposed to have said that morning. Apparently he had addressed a meeting in his house in the most inflammatory terms. Cicero replied that he had not, and sent me off to see if I could discover anything. I walked around the senaculum and approached one or two senators with whom I was on friendly terms. The place was certainly buzzing with rumours. Some said that Catilina had called for the richest men in Rome to be murdered, others that he had urged an uprising. I jotted a few sentences down, and was just returning to Cicero when Curius brushed past me and slipped into my hand a note. He was sickly white with terror. 'Give this to the consul,' he whispered, and before I could reply he was gone. I looked around. A hundred or more senators were talking in small groups. As far as I could tell, no one had seen the encounter.
    I hurried over to Cicero and handed him the message. I bent to his ear and whispered, 'It's from Curius.'
    He opened it, studied it for a moment, and his face tensed. He passed it up to me. It said,
You will be murdered tomorrow during the elections
. At just that moment the augurs came up and declared that the