A Mist of Prophecies rsr-9

by Steven Saylor

  Above the roaring laughter and the hail of stones on shields-still distant, but drawing closer by the moment-I heard Caelius's stentorian parting words: "Shame on Caesar's lackeys who dare to call themselves elected magistrates! I give up my office! I give up my chair of state! But I shall return!" With that he hurled his chair of state high in the air. It landed in the midst of the crowd. Men swarmed to claim pieces as a souvenir. They tore the chair apart and snapped leather straps over their heads.

  When I looked back at the tribunal, Caelius had vanished.

  "But where…?" I whispered.

  "Into thin air," said Didius, "like a sorcerer!"

  A few moments later the armed troops pushed their way into the crowd around the tribunal. Isauricus arrived, surrounded by his lictors, looking furious.

  "Abolish all debts! Bankrupt the bankers!" cried the mob.

  Caelius was nowhere to be seen.

  I glanced at Cassandra, who was watching the spectacle below as raptly as the rest of us. It seemed to me that I saw a faint, elusive smile on her lips.

  A few more stones were thrown, but with Caelius gone, the adoring mob had no reason to stay, and neither did the soldiers who had come to arrest him. The crowd dispersed.

  When I looked again for Cassandra, she and Rupa had vanished, leaving as little trace as Marcus Caelius.

  I talked for a while longer with Didius, then took my leave. I felt an urge to return to Cassandra's apartment, but for what purpose? By now my family must have noticed my absence and would know about the disruption in the Forum. Bethesda would be worried.

  I hurried home, bracing myself for her reception. But when I arrived, a little out of breath from hurrying up the Palatine Hill, it was Diana who greeted me. Her brow was furrowed with worry as I had so often seen her mother's.

  "I suppose I'm in a bit of trouble," I said sheepishly. "Your mother-"

  "Mother's gone to bed," said Diana, quietly.

  "In the middle of the day?"

  "She became dizzy while we were in the market. She felt so poorly, she had to come home at once." Diana frowned. "I hope it's nothing serious."

  That was the first appearance of Bethesda's lingering illness, which was to cast such a deep shadow over my household in the months to come.

  X

  "I suppose you ate your fill of those stuffed dates at Antonia's house, and we needn't go looking for anything more to eat before our next stop?" I said to Davus.

  "They were very good," he said.

  "I'll have to take your word for it. I'm afraid our hostess spoiled my appetite."

  "She seemed like a very unhappy woman."

  "Typically, Davus, you understate. I suppose we should try to be sympathetic. It can't be easy being married to a fellow like Marc Antony."

  "Unhappy," he repeated thoughtfully, "and bitter. She spoke very harshly of Cassandra. She said she'd have killed Cassandra herself if someone else hadn't already done so."

  "Yes, Davus, I heard what she said."

  "So where are we off to now, Father-in-Law?"

  "I'm thinking it's time I paid a call on a certain famous actress who keeps a house near the Circus Maximus."

  Davus nodded, then reached inside his toga. He produced a stuffed date and popped it into his mouth.

  He saw me staring. "I'm sorry, Father-in-Law. Would you like one? I have plenty more."

  "Davus! What did you do, slip a handful into your toga while I wasn't watching?"

  "Antonia said to take as many I wanted," he said defensively.

  "So she did. You should have been an advocate, Davus. Cicero himself couldn't split a hair more finely."

  It wasn't hard to find the house we were seeking. Everyone in Rome knew who Cytheris was, and everyone in the neighborhood of the Circus Maximus knew where she lived. An old woman selling plums from a basket-they should have been made of gold for what she was asking-pointed us in the general direction, down the wide avenue that runs along the south wall of the circus. We passed a troupe of acrobats practicing in the street, much to the delight of a crowd of children. A team of chariot racers all dressed in green came walking by. They were covered with dust, with whips wrapped tightly around their forearms and snug leather caps on their heads. I asked their leader for more-specific directions.

  He was straightforward enough when he gave them, but as we were walking off, he yelled after us, "Mind you don't let Antony catch you!"

  "Or the fat old banker, for that matter!" added one of his companions, cracking his whip in the air to a chorus of raucous laughter.

  As Antonia had said, it was a very respectable-looking house, tucked away on a narrow, quiet side street. I noted the fig tree her slave must have used to climb onto the roof of the neighboring house so as to look down into Cytheris's garden, spying on the actress and Cassandra.

  Davus knocked. We waited. I told him to knock again. The sun was well up. Apparently Cytheris and her household kept late hours. I was not surprised.

  Finally a puffy-eyed young woman opened the door. She was strikingly beautiful and strikingly unkempt, with her auburn hair hanging unpinned and tangled and her sleeping tunica pulled off one shoulder. Her informality revealed much about the household. Women like Cytheris were rare: a slave from a foreign land who had managed, by cunning and beauty, to become an independent, successful freedwoman. Finding herself in Rome without blood relations, it was natural that she should surround herself with slaves who were almost as much friends as servants, companions whom she could trust and confide in and to whom she gave a far greater latitude than a haughty mistress like Antonia (or Fulvia or Terentia) would ever allow. Such slaves would share to some degree in their mistress's notorious debauchery; they would stay up late with her and likewise sleep late, and think nothing of answering the door in dishabille.

  The woman who answered the door looked Davus up and down, eyeing him rather as he had eyed the stuffed dates at Antonia's house. Though her hazel eyes eventually settled on me, acknowledging that the senior of the callers was more likely the one in charge, she seemed not really to see me, and certainly not with the riveting attention she had devoted to Davus, as if I were not a man but the shadow of one. Thus do we become more and more invisible as we grow older, until people fail to see us even when they look straight at us.

  And yet… Cassandra had seen me. To her, I had not been invisible; to her I was still a vivid presence, a man of flesh and blood, vital, robust, existing in the moment, teeming with life and sensation. No wonder I had been so vulnerable to her; no wonder I had fallen so completely under her spell…

  My thoughts, wandering, were drawn back to the moment by the young woman's laughter, which was sharp but not cruel. "You look like you could use a drink!" she said, evidence that I was visible to her after all-a gray, glum-looking man in a toga.

  "I'll leave it to your mistress to decide whether she'll offer me one," I snapped.

  "My mistress?" She raised an eyebrow. Suddenly I knew that I was talking to Cytheris herself. She saw the moment of realization on my face and laughed again. Then her expression became more serious. "You're Gordianus, aren't you? I saw you at the funeral. I saw this one, too…"

  "This is Davus, my son-in-law."

  "Married, then?" She said the word as if it were a challenge, not a disappointment. "You'd both better come inside. My neighbors are endlessly fascinated by everyone who comes to this door; they've probably already seen you and run off to spread more gossip about me. Their own lives must be frightfully boring, don't you think, for them to be so fascinated by a simple girl from Alexandria?"

  She swept us inside, slammed the door shut behind her, then led us through a small atrium and down a short hallway. The rooms we passed were small but exquisitely furnished. Dominating the little garden at the center of the house was a statue of Venus on a pedestal, only slightly smaller than life-size. At each of the garden's four corners were statues of satyrs in states of rampant excitement, partially concealed amid shrubbery as if they were
lurking and stalking the goddess of love. Was this how Cytheris viewed herself and her suitors?

  "You're wondering why I answered the door myself," she said breezily. "You Romans, always so strict about that sort of thing, so insistent on decorum! But really, if you knew what I've put the poor slaves through over the last two nights! It's only fair to let them sleep a bit late this morning. Or is it still morning?" She stopped beside the Venus and squinted up at the sun.

  I looked around the garden and saw the aftermath of a drunken party. Chairs and little tripod tables were scattered about, some lying on their sides. Wine cups were abandoned here and there; flies buzzed above the crimson dregs. Various musical instruments-tambourines, rattles, flutes, and lyres-were piled helter-skelter against a wall. On the ground beneath one of the lurking satyrs, half-hidden amid the shrubbery, lay a handsome young slave, snoring softly.

  "It's this one's job to answer the door," said Cytheris, walking up to him. I thought she was going to give him a kick, but instead she looked down at him with a doting smile. "Such a sweet little faun. Even his snore is sweet, don't you think?" Then she did give him a kick, but gently, prodding him with her foot until he finally stirred and rose groggily to his feet, brushing leaves from his curly black hair. He saw that his mistress had company and without being told gathered three chairs and set them in the shade, then disappeared into the house, blinking and rubbing his eyes.

  "Bring the best Falernian, Chrysippus!" Cytheris called after him. "Not the cheap swill I served to that rowdy gang of actors and mimes who were here last night."

  She smiled and indicated that we should sit, then finally took a good look at me. I felt a bit uncomfortable under her scrutiny. "Yes," she said, "now I see what it was that Cassandra saw in you. 'It's his eyes, Cytheris,' she said to me once. 'He has the most extraordinary eyes-like a wise old king in a legend.' "

  Did I stiffen? Did my face turn red? Cytheris looked from me to Davus and back and pursed her lips. "Oh, dear, was that indiscreet of me?" she said. "You must tell me right away whether I can speak to you candidly or not. I'm not the sort to hold my tongue unless I'm asked to. Perhaps you should send your frowning son-in-law out of earshot for a while-though that would be a pity."

  "No, Davus can stay. There's no point in concealing anything about Cassandra… now that she's dead. That's why I've come to you. You must have known her quite well if she told you about herself… and me."

  She looked at me sidelong. "As you say, now that she's dead, there's no point in hiding anything, is there? To whom else have you spoken about her?"

  "I've been calling on the women who came to her funeral: Terentia, Fulvia, Antonia…"

  "Ha! You're not likely to discover anything important about Cassandra from any of those hens, unless it was one of them who murdered her." A frown pulled at her lips, but she brightened when Chrysippus reappeared bearing a pitcher and three cups. I had no craving for wine, but only a fool would pass up an offer of good Falernian, especially in such hard times. The dark flavor played upon my tongue and filled my head like a warm, comforting mist.

  "Terentia and Fulvia think Cassandra was a true seeress. They were both quite in awe of her," I said.

  "But not Antonia?"

  "Antonia has a very different opinion. She thinks Cassandra was an impostor."

  "And Cassandra's spells of prophecy?"

  "Merely part of an act."

  Cytheris smiled. "Antonia is no fool, no matter what her dear husband says."

  "Antonia was right about Cassandra?"

  Cytheris considered her answer before she spoke. "Up to a point."

  I frowned. Cytheris smiled. She seemed to enjoy my puzzlement. Her smile widened into a yawn, and she stretched her arms above her head. The movement caused her torso to shift in a most intriguing way beneath the loose tunica. Even her most casual movements were marked by a dancer's gracefulness. I would have cursed her condescending smile except that it made her even more remarkably beautiful. I looked at the stone satyrs lurking in the corners, gazing with lust upon the goddess they would never touch, and felt a stab of sympathy for them.

  "Shall I explain?" she said.

  "I'd be grateful if you would."

  "Where to begin? Back in Alexandria, I suppose. That's where I met her, when we were both hardly more than children. I was born to a slave mother; but early on someone saw in me a talent for dancing, and I was sold to the master of a mime troupe-not just any troupe, but the oldest and most famous in Alexandria. The master liked to say that his ancestors had entertained Alexander the Great. People in Alexandria are always making claims like that. Still, the troupe could trace its history back for generations. I was taught to dance and mime and recite by some of the finest performers in Alexandria, and that means the finest in the world."

  "And Cassandra?"

  "The master acquired her and brought her into the troupe shortly after me. I was terribly jealous of her. Do you know, I think this is the first time I've ever admitted that to anyone."

  "Jealous? Why?"

  "Because she was so much more talented that I was-at everything! Her gifts were extraordinary. She could recite Homer and make men weep, or make them weep with laughter by enacting a fable by Aesop. She could dance like a veil floating on the breeze. She could sing like a bird, and do so in whatever language you pleased-because she picked up languages the way the rest of us picked up bits of jewelry from admirers in the audience. And she did all this without apparent effort. Beside her, I felt like a clumsy, sweating, squawking fool."

  "I find that hard to believe, Cytheris."

  "Only because you never saw the two of us perform side by side."

  "You must have hated her."

  "Hated her?" Cytheris sighed. "Quite the opposite. We were very, very close back in those days, Cassandra and I. Those lovely days in Alexandria…"

  "You call her Cassandra, yet that can't have been her real name."

  She smiled. "The curious thing is, that was what we called her, even then. But you're right. When she first arrived, she had another name. But do you know, I've completely forgotten it. Some totally unpronounceable Sarmatian name; she'd come from somewhere on the far side of the Euxine Sea. But very early on she played Cassandra in a new mime show the master had written. Just a vulgar little skit, really; can you imagine, a comic Cassandra? But she was hilarious, staggering around, harassing the other characters, making rude prophecies and double entendres about the city officials and King Ptolemy. People loved it so much they demanded that mime every time we performed. She made such an impression with the role that the name stuck, and Cassandra was what we called her from then on."

  Cytheris gazed thoughtfully into her cup, swirling the Falernian into a vortex. "We begin as we continue in this life. That's especially true of us performers. If we're lucky, we find a role that fits, and we play it to the hilt. I always specialized in playing the wanton woman, the seductress. Look where that role's taken me! Cassandra played… Cassandra. I imagine it must be the same for you, Gordianus. To some extent isn't the Finder a role you fell into early on, that you gradually perfected, that you'll keep playing until the end?"

  "Perhaps. But if I'm playing a role, where's the playwright? And if there is a playwright, I'd like to complain to him about the nasty surprises he keeps throwing at me."

  "Complain? You should be thankful for a life that keeps giving you surprises! Surprises keep you on your toes. You wouldn't want to grow stale in your part, would you?" She laughed, then sighed. "But we were talking about Cassandra. It's such a pity that women aren't allowed to be real actors, performing in the Greek tragedies or even in silly Roman comedies. Instead, only men can go on the legitimate stage. It doesn't matter if the role is a swaggering general or a virgin goddess, it's a man who performs it behind a mask. Women are allowed only to be dancers or to perform mime comedies in the street. It's criminal, really. When I think of what our Cassandra could have achieved performing the great female parts-the Antigone of So
phocles or Euripides' Medea. Or the Clytaemnestra of Aeschylus-imagine that! She'd have made your blood run cold. She'd have made strong men run whimpering from the theater! Perhaps that's why women aren't allowed to play women on the stage-the result might be too disturbing for you men in the audience, and too inspiring for the women.

  "Even so, we actresses sometimes manage to find the role that takes us where we want to go. We simply have to create it ourselves and live it day by day, instead of performing it on a stage. That's what I did. And that's what our Cassandra did."

  "Until the role killed her," I said. "You say you met her in Alexandria. What then?"

  "Dear old Volumnius came along. Fat, sweet, incredibly rich Volumnius. This was five years ago-yes, almost exactly five years to the day. Volumnius was in Alexandria on some sort of business trip. He just happened to be passing through the Rhakotis district with his entourage one day when we were performing near the Temple of Serapis. I spotted him in the audience right away, fiddling with his gold rings and his gold necklaces and biting his lips and watching me dance the way a cat watches a sparrow flit through the trees. I put on the performance of my life that day. I was doing the dance of seven veils, taking them off one by one-a bit of naughtiness to spice up the show in between all the clowning. You're supposed to take off only six veils, of course; that's the point, to tease the crowd and make them hang around for more, hoping you'll come back for an encore. But that day I didn't stop at six; I took off the seventh as well."

  Cytheris laughed. "Volumnius's eyes almost popped out of his head! As for the poor master, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. Even in Alexandria, women can't dance naked in the street, and the city authorities were always looking for some excuse to shut us down. But I took off that final veil as a gambit, and the gambit worked. The next day I had a new master. When Volumnius headed back to Rome on his private ship, I was with him. And I've never looked back."