Lustrum

laid down their arms. The motion carried in the senate, but many outside whispered that the rebels' cause was just.
    October gave way to November. The days began to be dark and cold; the people of Rome grew weary and depressed. The curfew had put a stop to many of those entertainments with which they normally warded off the encroaching gloom of winter. The taverns and the baths closed early; the shops werebare. Informers, eager for the huge rewards for denouncing traitors, took the opportunity to pay back scores against their neighbours. Everyone suspected everyone else. Matters became so serious that eventually Atticus bravely took it upon himself to talk to Cicero.
    'Some citizens are saying you've deliberately exaggerated the threat,' he warned his friend.
    'And why would I do that? Do they think it gives me pleasure to turn Rome into a gaol in which I'm the most closely guarded prisoner?'
    'No, but they think you're obsessed with Catilina and have lost all sense of proportion; that your fears for your own personal safety are making their lives intolerable.'
    'Is that all?'
    'They believe you're acting like a dictator.'
    'Do they really?'
    'They also say you're a coward.'
    'Well then, damn the people!' exclaimed Cicero, and for the first time I saw him treat Atticus coldly, refusing to respond to his further attempts at conversation with anything more than monosyllables. Eventually his friend wearied of this frosty atmosphere, rolled his eyes at me and went away.
    Late on the evening of the sixth day of November, long after the lictors had gone off for the night, Cicero was reclining in the dining room with Terentia and Quintus. He had been reading dispatches from magistrates all over Italy, and I was just handing him some letters for his signature when Sargon started barking furiously. The noise made us all jump; everyone's nerves were shredded by then. Cicero's three guards all got to their feet. We heard the front door open and the sound of an urgent male voice, and suddenly into the room strode Cicero'sformer pupil, Caelius Rufus. It was his first appearance on the premises for months, all the more startling because he had gone over to Catilina at the start of the year. Quintus jumped up, ready for a fight.
    'Rufus,' said Cicero calmly, 'I thought you were a stranger to us these days.'
    'I'll never be a stranger to you.'
    He took a step forward, but Quintus put his hand on his chest and stopped him. 'Arms up!' he commanded, and nodded to the guards. Rufus hastily raised both hands, while Titus Sextus searched him. 'I expect he's come to spy on us,' said Quintus, who had never cared much for Rufus, and often asked me why I thought his brother tolerated the presence of such a tearaway.
    'I've not come to spy. I've come to warn: Catilina's back.'
    Cicero banged his fist on the table. 'I knew it! Put your hands down, Rufus. When did he return?'
    'This evening.'
    'And where is he now?'
    'At the home of Marcus Laeca, on the street of the scythemakers.'
    'Who's with him?'
    'Sura, Cethegus, Bestia – the whole gang. I've only just got away.'
    'And?'
    'They're going to kill you at sunrise.'
    Terentia put her hand to her mouth.
    'How?' demanded Quintus.
    'Two men, Vargunteius and Cornelius, will call on you at dawn to pledge their loyalty and claim they've deserted Catilina. They'll be armed. There'll be others at their backs to overpower your guards. You mustn't admit either of them.'
    'We won't,' said Quintus.
    'But I'd have admitted them,' said Cicero. 'A senator and a knight – of course I would. I'd have offered them the hand of friendship.' He seemed amazed at how close to disaster he had come despite all his precautions.
    'How do we know the lad isn't lying?' said Quintus. 'It could be a trick to divert us from the real threat.'
    'He has a point, Rufus,' said Cicero. 'Your loyalty is as fixed as a weathercock.'
    'It's the truth.'
    'Yet you support their cause?'
    'Their cause, yes, not their methods – not any longer.'
    'What methods are these?'
    'They've agreed to carve up Italy into military regions. The moment you're dead, Catilina will go to the rebel army in Etruria. Parts of Rome will be set alight. There'll be a massacre of senators on the Palatine, and then the city gates will be opened to Manlius and his mob.'
    'And Caesar? Does he know all this?'
    'He wasn't there tonight, but I sense he knows what's planned. Catilina talks to him quite often.'
    This was the first time Cicero had received direct