The Dictator by Robert Harris Page B

dear.”
    Pomponia put down her napkin, rose with dignity from her couch and announced that she would go and check on the boys. Terentia, after a sharp look at Cicero, said that she would join her. She beckoned to Tullia to follow.
    When the women had gone, Cicero said to Quintus, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken in that way. I’ll go and find her and apologise. Besides, she’s right: I’ve brought trouble on your house. We’ll move out in the morning.”
    “No you won’t. I’m master here, and my roof will be your roof for as long as I’m alive. Insults from that rabble are of no concern to me.”
    We listened again.
Bumfucker Cicero where’s our bread?
Bumfucker Cicero sold our bread!
    Cicero said, “It’s a marvellously flexible metre, I’ll give them that. I wonder how many more versions they can come up with.”

    “You know we could always send word to Milo. Pompey’s gladiators would clear the street in no time.”
    “And put myself even further in their debt? I don’t think so.”
    We went our separate ways to bed, although I doubt any of us slept much. The demonstration did not cease as Cicero had predicted; if anything, by the following morning it had increased in volume, and certainly in violence, for the mob had started digging up the cobblestones and were hurling them against the walls, or lobbing them over the parapet so that they landed with a crash in the atrium or the garden. It was clear our situation was becoming parlous, and while the women and children sheltered indoors, I climbed up on to the roof with Cicero and Quintus to estimate the danger. Peering cautiously over the ridge tiles, it was possible to see down into the Forum. Clodius’s mob was occupying it in force. The senators trying to get to the chamber for the day’s session had to run a gauntlet of abuse and chanting. The words drifted up to us, accompanied by the banging of cooking utensils:
Where’s our bread?
Where’s our bread?
Where’s our bread?
    Suddenly there was a scream from the floor beneath us. We scrabbled down from the roof and descended to the atrium in time to see a slave fishing out a black-and-white object, like a pouch or a small bag, that had just dropped through the aperture in the roof and fallen into the impluvium. It was the mangled body of Myia, the family dog. The two boys crouched in the corner of the atrium, hands over their ears, crying. Heavy stones battered against the wooden door. And now Terentia turned on Cicero with a bitterness I had never before witnessed: “Stubborn man! Stubborn, foolish man! Will you do something at last to protect your family? Or must I crawl out yet again on my hands and knees and plead with this scum not to hurt us?”
    Cicero swayed backwards in the face of her fury. Just then there was a fresh bout of childish sobbing and he looked across to where Tullia was comforting her brother and cousin. That seemed to settle the issue. He said to Quintus, “Do you think you can smuggle a slave out through a window at the back?”

    “I’m sure we can.”
    “In fact best send two, in case one doesn’t get through. They should go to Milo’s barracks on the Field of Mars and tell the gladiators we need help immediately.”
    The messengers were dispatched, and in the meantime Cicero went over to the boys and distracted them by putting his hands around their shoulders and telling them stories of the bravery of the heroes of the republic. After what seemed a long interval, during which the assault on the door increased in fury, we heard a fresh wave of roars from the street, followed by screaming. The gladiators controlled by Milo and Pompey had arrived, and in this way Cicero saved himself and his family, for I do believe that Clodius’s men, finding they were unopposed, were fully intending to break into the house and massacre us all. As it was, after only a short battle in the street, the besiegers, who were not nearly so well armed or trained, fled for their