Book Two, Letter Six

To Cicero – Death Sentence

Dear Cicero,

What's two thousand years between friends, right?

You can hear me fine can't you, I can certainly hear your voice bright and true, still reverberating outwards from the forum as if yesterday were today. Your voice is full of love and noble striving and hope and some days your voice is more clear than my own thoughts.

I have been re-reading your biography, written by Anthony Trollope, getting swept up chapter after chapter in the adventure and importance of your life, in the value of your deeds and the wisdom of your principles. I could cheer sometimes at your triumphs and also I will admit to feeling your tears wet upon my cheek as again I read of the death of your daughter. I don't know why it effects me so, I have not known such loss, but I can feel your heart beating in my chest, Cicero. Your happiness and agony are alive in my blood.

But approaching the last chapter, my mind rebels against the words I read, as I turn the pages closer each night towards the tragic conclusion of your mortal story. I find myself excited, thrilled at your heroic deeds, and every moment, hoping, that this time the story will end differently. Half believing that this time you will escape! Wishing that I missed a part of the story last time I read this book, and that you didn't really die at Caieta.

But Romeo and Juliet die every time. Their story never changes either.

Yet your tragedy Cicero seemed to have had so many opportunities for a different ending. You contemplated sneaking into Augustus Caesar's house and slaying him on the hearthstone in revenge for his betrayal of you, but your fear of torture persuaded you to run for your life. Having lost everything, you still found reason enough to live, even if the instinct to fear pain was your only motivation. You did not submit to the violence of your desire for revenge, but sought only to live on in the hope, yes HOPE, that some good may yet still come of your life.

You fled, sailing to Caieta, aiming for the shore near a temple to Apollo, wherefrom a flock of crows descended upon your little boat and pecked at the sail ropes. The ill omen was felt by everyone on board, yet for some reason you went ashore to your villa to rest, draping your toga over your face as you collapsed on the couch. But the crows followed you, perching on the window sill and cawing tumultuously, one bird landing beside you and ever so carefully lifting the cloth from your face in an attempt to wake you. Your servants, ashamed that beasts of the wild should try to help you while they only looked on, picked you up and dragged you to your carriage, taking you towards the sea on December seventh, forty three years before the birth of Christ.

It would probably have been a cold day. Your servants took you along a path through the dark shelter of the woods towards the coast. The assassins, following close behind, came to your villa and found it empty. They might have lost your trail, they might have turned away and you might have escaped, had it not been for Phililogus, a freedman of your brother. Your brother Quintus, who had only days prior been slain, along with his son, while they packed what they could before leaving home for the last time.

Philologus betrayed you to your enemies, though I imagine that he was tortured by the men whose duty it was to slay you. I will not recount again the grisly moment of your death. We've talked about that in the past, but for this one last detail.

Of the two assassins, there was one Popilius, a tribune. Popilius, whom you had years before defended in court. Popillius whom you had acquitted of the accusation of parricide, a crime for which he most certainly would have himself, been executed, or at best, exiled.

Popilius whom you had saved, was ordered to stand witness at your assassination.

On a cold day in the woods, near the sea shore at Caieta.

Every time I read the story I hope that it will end differently.

But it doesn't.

*

I apologise old friend, for the gloomy airs I wear. The sun has been gone for days and each morning I find a new white hair has grown in my ever lengthening beard. I will write more when I am feeling better, for I have been reading many books and wish to discuss them with you, even if only briefly. I will not send this letter until I have written something else from a better mood.

Thank you for understanding....

*

A day with a saw in my hand, clearing away the old, crooked branches of a fig tree, cutting away the woody shoots sprouting like spears from the soil all around the trunk, opening the heart of the tree.

Opening the heart.

I cut back the wicked thorn branches of a winter green Bougainvillaea. In summer it is a riot of pink flowers. In winter, it is a thorn ridden tentacle beast disguised in green leaves.

Cutting back the reaching talons of a disguised beast

I haul away the discarded wood.

In the distance a bonfire roars the song of conflagration, but I cannot hear it. My rough hands are cut and bruised, my nails black rimmed with the paint of earth.

I know that the sun is up there, in the sky somewhere, and if I dive deep into my imagination I can feel the warmth of Spring on its way. But it is not here today.

Not here today at all.

...but if I dive deep into my imagination,

dare I say it?

Happiness glimmers at the bottom of the well, a second sun in the earth that mirrors the sun above me that I cannot see and cannot feel and sometimes do not believe is real.

But there it is, happiness looking up at me from the bottom of the well.

*

I am ever grateful, dear Cicero, to know you. It is enough sometimes to know that you lived and strove to be a good man against all odds, and to struggle for what you thought was right. Even though you failed. Even though you were killed for your efforts. There was never any other way for a man such as you to meet his end.

In this, my thirty eighth year upon the earth, I look at pictures of your tomb and weep.

Where have all the good men gone?

Morgan.