Dictator

It was January when Tullia moved back into the house. She was brought to the door in a litter and had to be helped inside. I recall a cold winter’s day, everything very clear and bright and sharp. She moved with difficulty. Cicero fussed around her, telling the porter to close the door, ordering more wood for the fire, worrying that she would catch a chill. She said that she would like to go to her room to lie down. Cicero sent for a doctor to examine her. He came out soon afterwards and reported that she was in labour. Terentia was fetched, along with a midwife and her attendants, and they all disappeared into Tullia’s room.

The screams of pain that rang through the house did not sound like Tullia at all. They did not sound like any human being in fact. They were guttural, primordial – all trace of personality obliterated by pain. I wondered how they fitted in to Cicero’s philosophical scheme. Could happiness remotely be associated with such agony? Presumably it could. But he was unable to bear the shrieks and howls and went out into the garden, walking around and around it, for hour after hour, oblivious to the cold. Eventually there was silence and he came back in again. He looked at me. We waited. A long time seemed to pass, and then there were footsteps and Terentia appeared. Her face was drawn and pale but her voice was triumphant.

‘It’s a boy,’ she said, ‘a healthy boy – and she is well.’

She was well. That was all that mattered to Cicero. The boy was robust and was named Publius Lentulus, after his father’s adopted patronymic. But Tullia could not feed the infant and the task was assigned to a wet nurse, and as the days passed following the trauma of the birth, she did not seem to get any stronger. Because it was so cold in Rome that winter, there was a lot of smoke, and the racket from the Forum disturbed her sleep. It was decided that she and Cicero should go back to Tusculum, scene of their happy year together, where she could recuperate in the tranquillity of the Frascati hills while he and I pressed on with his philosophical writings. We took a doctor with us. The baby travelled with his nurse, plus a whole retinue of slaves to look after him.

Tullia found the journey difficult. She was breathless and flushed with fever, although her eyes were wide and calm and she said she felt contented: not ill, just tired. When we reached the villa, the doctor insisted she went straight to bed. Afterwards he took me to one side and said that he was fairly certain now that she was suffering from the final stages of consumption and she would not last the night: should he inform her father, or would it be better if I did it?

I said that I would do it. After I had composed myself, I found Cicero in his library. He had taken down some books but had made no attempt to unroll them. He was sitting, staring straight ahead at nothing. He didn’t even turn to look at me. He said, ‘She’s dying, isn’t she?’

‘I’m afraid she is.’

‘Does she know it?’

‘The doctor hasn’t told her, but I think she’s too clever not to realise, don’t you?’

He nodded. ‘That was why she was so keen to come here, where her memories are happiest. This is where she wants to die.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I think I shall go and sit with her now.’

I waited in the Lyceum and watched the sun sink behind the hills of Rome. Some hours later, when it was entirely dark, one of her maids came to fetch me, and conducted me by candlelight to Tullia’s room. She was unconscious, lying in bed with her hair unpinned and spread across her pillow. Cicero sat on one side, holding her hand. On her other side, her baby lay asleep. Her breathing was very shallow and rapid. There were people in the room – her maids, the baby’s nurse, the doctor – but they were in the shadows and I have no memory of their faces.

Cicero saw me and beckoned me closer. I leaned over and kissed her damp forehead, then retreated to join the others in the semi-darkness. Soon afterwards her breathing began to slow. The intervals between each breath became longer, and I kept imagining she must have died, but then she would take another gasp of air. The end when it came was different and unmistakable – a long sigh, accompanied by a slight tremor along the length of her body, and then a profound stillness as she passed into eternity.

XIII

THE FUNERAL WAS in Rome. Only one good thing came out of it: Cicero’s brother Quintus, from whom he had been estranged ever since that terrible scene in Patrae, came round to offer his condolences the moment we got back, and the two men sat beside the coffin, wordless, holding hands. As a mark of their reconciliation, Cicero asked Quintus to deliver the eulogy: he doubted he would be able to get through it himself.