My Last Three Days by Adam Stanley

12th March 44BC

Dear Calpurnia,

It's been many days since I last saw you, that brisk morning just before you left for Pompeii. Since you left, I have done little except wander the Gardens of Lucullus in search of the source of my torture. I was shocked when I realised that Rome was dying. I often feel as if I have given birth to this city and its ever growing decadence worries me greatly, to the point where sleep eludes my stretched mind. I returned each day to the same garden, my nightmare has become an obsession. Even now, no matter how hard I think the solution remains hidden, basking in the shadow, taking some sadistic pleasure out of my suffering. On each return I leave fresh markers that I hope, in the full glare of my hopelessness, will have blossomed into inspiration and give this drowning city the rescue it deserves.

Perhaps I should describe to you the vision which burns my eyelids whenever they shut. I see from the eyes of a bird, a Wren I believe. In my beak I carry a sprig of Laurel which dances and pirouettes with each silent, rhythmic stroke of my wings. I fly, with grace and beauty like no other straight into the senate house – might I add that the detail of inside is exquisite as if this could all be real! I see a few men, who all face away until I tear the sprig of Laurel into shreds and let each torn piece rain upon the crowd gathered below. The look of absolute horror is strangely amusing, that is until I see a pale face amongst the chaotic screams of terror. The man looked as if something inside of him had died or was dying or was so ill that what little hope of survival had been sacrificed. It was only when I once again went to the Garden of Lucullus and saw in the crystal water of the central pond that same pale face. I had finally realised that man was me.

It was only yesterday that I revealed to Spurinna that the nightmare had so badly affected my mind and his reaction, my Calpurnia, is what drove me to record my activities and musings so that the truth could be told to you In the most direct and sincere way. Tomorrow I am to sacrifice to the gods and hope that in return for my loyalty, I receive favourable omens. Without them, I am sure to last only a few more days. As I write this down, rain pours from heavens and drowns any hope I might have of seeing you again. The moon crests a junction between two clouds and cast the shadow of our home across the street. It feels as though the divines sign their name in untidy handwriting, condemning my soul to an eternal void.

The flickering of my torch at night has kept me lucid and as before I will sit before its soft glow in despair, as I feel I will never understand how to keep Rome afloat. I have found myself to be as featureless as the ocean, as shallow and unoccupied as a far off bay, my mind a listless wreck with no hope of salvation. I drift in and out of my nightmare and let the unintelligible whispers of the night carry me off. Where? I cannot possibly say... But what can be said is that if Rome could see the state of its leader then all hope would be lost.

Julius


13th March 44BC

Dear Calpurnia,

A moments peace was once what I dreaded but now I warmly invite it to sit with me just a little longer. Today I revealed to the fellow senators and to the people of Rome that I had an idea. Finally, the idea I had searched for, the ambition I needed to give my emaciated mind a fresh burst of life had sprang forth from the most unlikely place. During my wanderings in the Garden of Lucullus I began to notice a small flower bed so densely populated by small purple and white daisies that the thick canopy obscured the ground itself. The little flowers began to lose their beauty, their lives folded over by the sheer weight of so many others.

When I observed my favourite patch today something was different. When the rain came last night a large purple flower had erupted forth and taken what was so densely populated and toppled the balance. It seemed that the gods willed and permitted such a capitalisation and it was then that I realised the solution lay not with well-crafted words or futile alliances but with the willingness to take what is rightfully yours. Once again the solution lies along the path of war but it is not without justification I equip both my mind and body with sharp, glistening tools. The tools of a master craftsman.

All this happened before the sacrifice and left me with some sublime elation. This stupid vulnerability, a crease in the fabric of my mind revealed too much to the senators I was now conspiring against. Why is ambition so becalmed? It beckons me to walk on its path yet I know that it will shatter under my feet and drag me under like a rough sea that thrashes an unwitting ship and shrouds it in its salty cloak before ripping it from the surface and hiding it within its bowels.

When I was told by Spurinna that my life would not extend beyond the Ides of March my greatest fears had been realised. I had hoped that I would be able to see you again and discuss the content of these letters in a comical tone, but the harsh readings of a corpse on a slab has opened up a premature death for me and like a boat without a bottom my heart sinks lower and lower. The realisation that I will never see you again has caused my mind to spiral deeper into my own nightmare and obsess about the power I need to save my dying city.

When Spurinna told me such things, I could do nothing but laugh. It appeared to the others as a laugh of disbelief but really, I laughed out of despair and delirium as I regarded my failure to protect the true nature of my ambition. I have seen the way Marcus Junius Brutus talks about me with Gaius Cassius Longinus and a handful of other senators. I heard the word 'Liberatores' being used but I don't yet understand its meaning or gratuity. I am left with only two true friends; Marcus and you. Assuming of course that you still love me despite the nightmares, despite me waking to false dawns only to find the landscape distorted by the steady trickle of tears. I am safe knowing that no matter where I am, your reaching is always upon me.

Julius


14th March 44BC

Dear Calpurnia,

I am now truly hated by my fellow senators. They all know I want rid of them and I'm sure they want rid of me. All I wanted was to unite the great nation of Rome and heal its sickness. Why has my own mind betrayed me? I sit here in front of my dimming lamp attempting to trace the lines of my ambition back to my shattered heart. The soft, melancholy glow of the full moon illuminates the ink that soaks through the fibres, the pulp of vegetation that holds the bulging enigma of my final three days.
My betrayal is inevitable and with only Marcus to watch my back I have little hope of survival.

Tomorrow I take a leap of faith, a plunge into the darkening abyss where I will meet the gods and ask them why they place such a curse upon me. This curse, this inability to drive out the terrors which haunt every dream and lurk behind every corner and every closed door in my mind has incapacitated me and left me ripe for the picking. The 'Liberatores' bear down on, the sharp blade of Brutus is what I fear will strike the final blow.

He was a man I thought was my friend has ruined my life. Rome will surely die without the idea the gods sent me. I must speak with Marcus before I am sent away and I must unveil to him what has torn my soul in two so that he can pursue my goals without his own mind collapsing like mine has. I have little time to waste as the night creeps on and my shoulders itch with the nascency of flight. It is certain that I will never see you again unless the heavens hold the promise of the preacher and there is indeed, a place where you and I can rest at long last.

I have drunk deep from the fountain of life until my body cannot take another drop of the poison. I leave you my heart, etched onto these pages as a series of black lines drawn from the depth of my suffering. As I take flight you become a nest to me, somewhere I might rest in your comforting presence whilst I watch Marcus use my idea and wield it like a true warrior. None will dare block his path, except Brutus of course but he will be carved from his throne and cast into the pages of history as a murderer and a fiend. From the idea that infected me springs hope, from my grief comes love for you and from my ambition only the painful end of a knife.

I have learned all too well that ambition can take one to sublime heights or harrowing depths and often they are one in the same. Vale uxor mea!

Julius

In this impressive short story in the form of three letters, 15 year old Adam Stanley imagines what thoughts might have filled the mind of Gaius Julius Caesar during his last three days on earth. Adam is from Cheadle Hulme School and this story took third place in the 2012 Golden Sponge-stick Writing Competition. 

The Perfect Crime

1: Nex-violent death, murder
“Laws are silent in times of war” Cicero

A quick, rapt, knock on the door - that was all it took for me to become embroiled in a crime like no other. Perfect, almost, in its attention to detail, its clues spanning decades, its conclusion leading me deep into the murky circumstances surrounding the end of the Roman republic. Julius Caesar is busy trying to find the conspirators, tearing his dictatorship apart from the inside, while Cicero bemoans the loss of his second wife and daughter - by the end of next year they will both be dead. It is the day before the Ides of March BC 44. This is the story of my life.

My name is Aulus Cornelius and on the day before the last flames of the dying republic flickered back into life again, I was sitting in my small, but pleasing garden, watching the light from the brazier quiver and then disappear. I felt my eyes begin to grow sleepy and then gradually close, the papers I had been reading earlier lying forgotten and forlorn on the dewy grass...

Clash! The fierce pounding at the door awoke me from a dream of chariots at the Circus Maximus exploding along the well-trodden, scorching sand... I splashed a little water onto my face to fully waken me from the dream, before, dressed only in my tunica belted at the waist, I hurried to the atrium to see who my nearly-blind door slave had let in this time. Praying that my wife had not been disturbed, I saw a man, lacking a toga (probably a slave), a grey band on his finger (confirmed slave), looking agitated and in a definite hurry.

Realising time was of the essence, I made a move to quickly change in to my toga, but the man waved his hand (mute), indicating this wasn’t important. With his other tired hand, he thrust a ragged piece of parchment in the vague direction of me, which I carefully unfurled. The message shocked me to my very core.

Stopping on the way only to grab a snack ladled with a generous helping of garum (fish sauce) and to utter a hurried prayer to Jupiter, we soon arrived at the house of Cicero. I took another quick look at the message, in disbelief - “Come quickly Aulus!” Scribbled at the side, almost illegible - a single word. NEX.

2: rhetor - orator, speechmaker
“All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.” Cicero

The mute slave escorted me quickly through the handsome back-courtyard of the Cicero household, up a sharply curving staircase and through a wooden door, attended by a dim glow of light from a brazier (lit around 5 hours ago.) Cautiously, I rounded a corner, finding myself abandoned by my guide and stepped into the triclinium. Mosaics of cavorting fish and all manner of other sea-life glistened all over the floors, accompanied by a simple geometric pattern as a border. A single rose stood in one corner of the room, but, paying this no heed, I was transfixed by the two men in front of me. One sat in the corner (Name: Tiro, Cicero’s freedman), calmly ready to take notes on a wax tablet (Tironian Shorthand, a method formulated himself), while the other, a man known as the finest undisputed orator to cross the face of the world, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who, in a change to his usual manner, was frantically  pacing back and forth.

Cicero explained in detail the strange events plaguing his household over the past few days, which I will summarise for you here. On the Nones of March, his papers were scattered all over his house, like the shattered remnants of the Pompeian forces, dispersed after the Civil War. Only a few papers were too badly damaged to be repaired, those containing notes on Sextus Roscius (Cicero’s first major defence.) A few days later, a statue of the Goddess Minerva was stolen from his house; similar to how Verres (a successful prosecution for Cicero) had pilfered whatever he pleased from his unfortunate Sicilian people. Finally, and here being the crux of the matter, just this very day, a slave of Cicero’s was found dead, stabbed repeatedly in the sizable garden of the house (again representative of a case of Cicero’s, namely, this time Clodius killed on The Appian Way.) Someone was terrorising Cicero and they must have had help from the inside. I was on the case.

Lightning illuminated the inky black sky, enveloping the city of Rome, as I carefully reclined next to Cicero to quiz him on how he had let evil run amok in his very household.

“Why can I believe you?” I asked him, taking a sip from a glass of water, thankfully placed by my side.

“If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?” he replied, before reinforcing his respectability as an orator.

“Anyway, what reason would I have to lie?” He queried, “Did I ruin my (which he emphasised) own papers and kill a trusted slave of my household, just for the sheer fun of it?” he demanded

I left the question unanswered.

Next, I prompted him further, taking him back through the mists of time to the fateful incident a few hours ago. “When did you last speak to your slave?”

“It must have been a few hours ago... yes... yes... it was, around the third hour of the night (it being around the 5th hour now), while he was going around lighting the braziers. I had passed him on the stairs, paying him no attention...and the next thing I knew he was lying dead in the garden.”

“Can I see the body?”I asked.

“Of course, of course,” he answered (he seemed to be averting the topic), “But surely you need to talk to the witnesses first?”

“Ah, yes...the witnesses,” I said humouring him slightly (I’ve done this job for 20 years, as if, I’ve never come across a witness before) and let him usher me out of the room and down the corridor. As I walked, I pondered why Cicero, the great orator, he who had stood up to Sulla, he who had fought for the rights of the Sicilians, the last honest man in the republic, had lied to me.

3:  perfectus – perfect
“It is a true saying that “One falsehood leads easily to another” Cicero

I was sitting in a room I didn’t want to be in, sipping a cup of well-watered wine I didn’t want to drink, speaking to a man who very clearly did not want to speak. Marcus Tullius Cicero had led me across an inner courtyard, the sound of gravel cracking under my feet and into a room, which, at first sight, appeared to be a slave’s quarters.

I interviewed Tiro in this room, allowing the bad omens of things to come (the increasingly darkening sky) to not cloud my judgement. He couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already and I began to pine for the warm, heavenly covers of my bed with my wife beside me. Before another (so-called) witness of minimal importance could be forced upon me, I slammed the cup of wine heavily down onto the table (but spilling little) and demanded I see the body. Cicero received me with as much courtesy as he could muster, before leading me back down the same corridor and into a small recess. My disillusions with the case were beginning to fester - how many more lies would I have to stomach before the night was up?
Cicero drew back the sheet lying in the alcove and with a convincing gasp announced that the body was gone. I had had enough. “You blithering blockhead, “I ridiculed him, “Gods immortal, why didn’t you leave (I stressed this) someone guarding the body?”

Cicero tried to reply but I cut him off, with a swift cut of my hand through the air, “What’s more, you don’t seem to want this case to be solved at all! Surely you of all people would know that the killer could be at loose at this very moment, hidden within these very walls. Do you want me to solve the case or not?”

And suddenly, it all clicked into place.

4: Idus -The Ides
“The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.” Cicero

The sun gradually pulled itself from the horizon, poking its tender head over the trees on the Field of Mars. “At first, I suspected Tiro,” I began, “After all, who knows you better than Tiro himself? But on reflection, it couldn’t have been Tiro; he would never have harmed your works no matter what.”

Watching the red and orange embers climb higher in to the sky, I continued, “The first thing that drew my suspicions was the red rose in the triclinium. It couldn’t have been placed there for me, as if I hadn’t found you, I would probably have met you in the tablinum. Thus I assumed it was put there before, but not too long, as if I remember, the petals hadn’t wilted yet, so maybe, a private discussion between you and your slaves.”

Cicero smiled, but faintly. “Another point of interest - the lighting of the braziers. You told me you last saw the dead slave two hours ago, lighting the braziers, but I clearly remarked to myself the flames were dim - thus lit around 5 hours ago.”

“Couldn’t he have lit some lamps first before becoming distracted?”

“He could have done,” I replied “but I found it unlikely. Why on earth would he light the braziers three hours after the setting of the sun?”

“Let us assume, therefore, you were having a secret meeting with your slaves (sub Rosa = secret) before I arrived and from then on proceeded to lie to me at various intervals. I wouldn’t call you a stupid man Marcus, so you must have been planning something and lying deliberately. You said to me, if I can’t trust you, who can I trust? The answer was no-one and the conclusion? A hoax.” I took a breather, exhausted.

Cicero, a morose twinkle in his eye replied, “The law courts are rendered useless because of Caesar. I abandoned my wife for some young, arrogant play-thing, who mocked the death of my only daughter. I am a bitter man Aulus. I’ve engaged you and I’ve entertained myself with this charade, why can’t you allow an old orator a bit of fun once in a while?”

“I could have had other cases, important cases going on,” I protested.

“In the middle of the night?” he queried.

“As a matter of fact,” I answered and it being the last thing I ever said to him, “I was meant to be assessing Caesar’s safety for tomorrow; today, now.”

“I’m sure it was of no importance,” he sighed, “Well, I really must grab some sleep now. I’ll see you for the senate meeting in a few hours, I trust?” He swept out of the room, the twinkle back in his eye.

And despite, all my workings, my deductions, my cleverness and my reasoning, I realised I had been played by Marcus Tullius Cicero after all.

This very clever and assured piece of writing (with a twist!) by Adam Cunnane from Cheadle Hulme School, Cheshire shows the young author's admiration of the orator Cicero and of Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa series. Nothing wrong with that; it's how we all learn to write. It took third prize for the over 14s in the 2011 Golden Sponge-stick Competition. (It must have been hard to choose, Jerry!) Well done, Adam!