A Mist of Prophecies

by Saylor, Steven

  Where was Meto now? Since that fateful parting in Massilia, I had heard no news of him. I assumed that he remained by Caesar’s side, that he had returned with him to Rome, then followed him to Brundisium for the attempted crossing of the Adriatic. Where was Meto at that very moment? For all I knew, he might be at the bottom of the sea along with Caesar himself. As a boy, when I first met him in the coastal town of Baiae, Meto couldn’t swim. At some point he must have learned – to please Caesar? – because swimming had saved his life in Massilia. But not even the strongest swimmer could hope to survive if his ship foundered in the middle of the Adriatic. I imagined Meto in the water, wounded, frightened, bravely attempting to stay afloat even while the waves closed over his head and cold, salty water filled his lungs . . .

  Hieronymus gave me a nudge. I looked past the skirmish between Canininus and Volcatius and saw two of my slaves on the far side of the Forum, heading our way. Little Androcles was in the lead, but his older brother, Mopsus, was running to catch up with him. From the heated competition between them, I knew they must be on a mission of some importance. I felt a tremor of intuition. A god must have whispered in my ear, as the poet says, for I knew they must be bringing news of that which was uppermost in my thoughts.

  Canininus and Volcatius, abruptly separated, each went about reasserting his dignity. Like mirror images, they straightened their tunics and threw back their chins. The gap between them afforded a space for Mopsus, now in the lead, to enter the group, followed by Androcles. Everyone knew the boys, for they frequently tagged along with me when I visited the Forum. Everyone liked them. Volcatius patted Androcles on the head. Canininus made a mock salute to Mopsus. Slightly out of breath from running. Mopsus struck his chest and saluted back.

  ‘What brings you here, boys?’ I said, trying to ignore the sudden fluttering in my chest.

  ‘News of Caesar!’ said Mopsus. His eyes lit up when he spoke the imperator’s name. Recently, Mopsus had decided that Caesar was his hero. His little brother, to be contrary, had become a confirmed Pompeian. Canininus and Volcatius aligned with them accordingly, playfully treating each boy as either an ally or a foe.

  ‘What news?’ I said.

  ‘He’s made the crossing! He reached the other side safely, along with almost all his men!’ said Mopsus.

  ‘But not all of them! There was trouble,’ said Androcles darkly.

  I drew a breath. ‘Mopsus, where did you hear this news?’

  ‘A messenger arrived at the Capena Gate an hour ago. I spotted him right away, and I remembered he was one of Calpurnia’s slaves.’

  ‘And Calpurnia is Caesar’s wife!’ added Androcles needlessly.

  ‘And I decided to follow him—’

  ‘We decided!’ insisted Androcles.

  ‘And sure enough, he headed straight to Caesar’s house. We stayed out of sight and watched him knock on the door. The slave who answered made a great show of patting her bosom and almost fainting, and she said, “Tell me straight out, before we bother the mistress, have you come with good news or bad?” And the messenger said, “Good news! Caesar made the crossing, and he’s safe on the other side!” ’

  I let out a sigh of relief and blinked away sudden tears. The surge of emotion caught me by surprise. I coughed and managed to speak despite the catch in my throat. ‘But, Androcles, you said something about trouble?’

  ‘And there was!’ He addressed himself as much to Volcatius as to me, drawn by the glimmer of hope in his fellow Pompeian’s rheumy eyes. ‘When Caesar reached the other side, it was the middle of the night; and right away he unloaded his troops and sent the ships back to Brundisium to pick up the rest of his men, including the cavalry. But some of those ships were waylaid and separated from the rest by some of Pompey’s ships, and Pompey’s men set fire to them and burned them right there on the water, with the captains and the crews still on board! They were burned alive; or if they managed to jump off, Pompey’s men killed them in the water, spearing them like fish.’

  ‘Burned alive at sea!’ gasped Manlius. ‘A horrible fate!’

  ‘How many?’ asked Volcatius eagerly. The news of Caesar’s successful crossing had visibly shaken him, but now he rallied at the prospect of a setback to Caesar.

  ‘Thirty! Thirty ships were captured by the Pompeians and burned,’ said Androcles proudly.

  ‘Only thirty!’ scoffed his older brother. ‘Hardly any considering the size of Caesar’s fleet. His cavalry still managed to make it across. They just had to crowd more men and horses onto each ship, and some of the men had to sit on horseback the whole way. A good thing they had clear weather – that’s what the messenger said.’

  ‘Thirty ships lost,’ I muttered, imagining the agony of those thirty captains and thirty crews. Could Meto possibly have been among them? Surely not. He was a soldier, not a sailor. He would have been by Caesar’s side, safe on the farther shore. In any case, of what concern was Meto’s fate to me?

  Suddenly, all around us in the Forum, there was a sense of movement and occasion. I caught glimpses of messengers running across nearby squares. In the distance I saw a group of men gather before the steps leading up to the Temple of Castor and Pollux to listen to an elderly senator in a toga who had something to tell them – from such a distance, I could hear only a vague echo of his voice. From a house somewhere up on the Palatine – probably not far from my own house, from the sound – I heard a loud cheer and the banging of cymbals. A moment later a citizen came running by, shouting, ‘Have you heard? Caesar’s landed! He made the crossing! Pompey’s done for now!’ The news was spreading across the city as rapidly as voices could carry it.

  Then I heard another sound, jarringly out of place amid the swelling hubbub of excited male voices in the Forum. It came from nearby, from the little open square in front of the Temple of Vesta. It was a woman, wailing and shrieking.

  From the sounds she made, I thought she was being attacked. I stepped away from the group and circled around the temple until I saw her, kneeling on the paving stones at the foot of the temple steps. The others followed me.

  When he saw her, Canininus sneered. ‘Oh, it’s only her!’

  I stared at the woman in wonder. There was something unnatural about the way she rolled her shoulders and swung her head in a circle. She held her arms aloft, her palms raised to heaven. Her eyes were rolled upward. The wailing I had heard was actually a sort of incantation. As I listened, I began to hear words amid the grunts and shrieks.

  ‘Caesar – Pompey – it comes to this!’ she cried. And then, after a long keening moan: ‘Like vultures they circle over the carcass of Rome – eager to pick the bones clean – wheeling and wheeling until they collide!’

  ‘Who is she, Canininus?’ I said.

  ‘How in Hades should I know?’ he snapped. ‘I only know she’s been haunting the Forum for the last few days, begging for alms. She seems normal enough, but every now and then, this happens – she goes into a sort of trance and shouts nonsense.’

  ‘But who is she? Where did she come from?’

  I looked at the others. Manlius shrugged. Volcatius raised a bristling white eyebrow. ‘I haven’t a clue – but she’s certainly a tasty-looking morsel!’

  I looked back at the woman. She had risen to her feet, but her blue tunica had become tangled at her knees, pulling down the neck-line to reveal the cleavage of her breasts. No woman in her right mind would display herself so immodestly in the Forum, and certainly not before the Temple of Vesta. She shook her head back and forth, whipping the air with her unpinned blond tresses.

  ‘She’s called Cassandra,’ said Mopsus.

  Why had I even bothered to ask the other greybeards, when Mopsus was present? ‘Is there anything that goes on in Rome that you don’t know, young man?’

  He crossed his arms and grinned. ‘Not much. Cassandra – that’s what they call her on account of the way she can see the future. I heard some slaves at the butcher’s market talking about her just this morning.’ />
  ‘And what else do you know about her?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He was momentarily stumped, then brightened. ‘She’s very pretty.’

  ‘And if she’s Roman, she must not be married, or else she’d be wearing a stola instead of a tunica,’ observed Androcles. His older brother looked chagrined at having missed this deduction.

  As we watched, the woman suddenly went limp and collapsed. I was on the verge of going to help her when I saw a figure descending the steps of the temple. It was one of the Vestals, dressed in the traditional costume of the sisterhood that tends the sacred hearth fire of the Roman state. She wore a plain white stola and a white linen mantle about her shoulders. Her hair was cut short, and around her forehead she wore a white band decorated with ribbons. I caught a glimpse of her face and recognized Fabia, the sister-in-law of Cicero. She was quickly followed by two younger Vestals.

  The three of them gathered around the prostrate form of the woman called Cassandra. They put their heads together and conferred in low voices. Cassandra stirred and rose to her knees, using her arms to steady herself. She looked dazed. She seemed hardly to notice the Vestals as the three of them helped her to her feet. I could see that Fabia was speaking to her, apparently asking her questions, but Cassandra made no reply. She blinked like a woman waking from a deep slumber and seemed finally to register the presence of the three women surrounding her. She straightened her tunica and her disarrayed hair with awkward, halting movements.

  Taking her by the elbows and gently guiding her, talking to her in low voices, the three Vestals led her up the steps and into the Temple of Vesta.

  ‘Well!’ said Canininus. ‘What do you make of that?’

  ‘Perhaps the old virgin wants to ask the young madwoman what it’s like to take a man,’ said Volcatius, leering. ‘I’ll bet that one’s had more than her share of men between her legs!’

  ‘Who knows what women talk about when there aren’t any men around?’ said Manlius.

  ‘Who cares?’ said Canininus. ‘Now that Caesar’s about to give Pompey a good thrashing . . .’

  And with that, the conversation turned away from the madwoman, for now, at last, there was the fresh news of Caesar’s crossing to give us men something to talk about.

  Later that day, at the evening meal, I happened to mention the incident of the madwoman. The family was gathered in the dining room. Shutters were drawn to keep out the cold air from the garden at the centre of the house, and a brazier had been lit to heat the room. Bethesda and I shared a couch. Davus and Diana, having already put little Aulus to bed, shared the one to our left. Hieronymus reclined alone on the couch to our right.

  ‘Yes, yes, the woman called Cassandra,’ said Bethesda, putting down her bowl of chickpea soup and nodding. This was before her malady set in, when her appetite was still strong. The soup smelled strongly of black pepper. ‘I’ve seen her down in the marketplace.’

  ‘Have you? How long has she been about?’

  Bethesda shrugged. ‘Not long. Perhaps a month.’

  ‘Have you seen her experience one of these fits?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A bit unnerving the first time you see it. After it passes, she doesn’t seem to know what’s happened. She gradually comes to her senses and carries on with whatever she was doing before. Begging for alms, usually.’

  ‘No one helps her?’

  ‘What’s to be done? Some people are frightened by her and move away. Others want to hear what she says and move closer. They say she utters prophecies when she’s like that, but I can’t make sense of the noises she makes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ever mention her to me?’

  ‘What possible interest could you have in such a wretched woman, Husband?’ asked Bethesda, lifting her bowl of soup to take another sip.

  ‘But where does she come from? Has she no family? How long has she been experiencing these spells?’

  ‘If you were to ask after every odd character who wanders about the markets nowadays begging for scraps, you should find yourself very busy indeed, Husband. These are hard times. Maimed soldiers, widows, farmers and shopkeepers who’ve lost everything to greedy creditors – there’s no end to the beggars and vagrants. Cassandra’s just one more.’

  ‘Mother’s right,’ said Diana. ‘Sometimes you see whole families wandering about with no place to go, especially down by the river. You feel sorry for them, of course, but what can anyone do? And some of them are dangerous. They look dangerous, anyway. That’s why I always take Davus along when we go to the markets.’

  ‘Victims of the war,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It was the same when I was your age, Diana, during the first civil war. Refugees from the countryside, runaway slaves, orphans running wild in the streets. Of course, things got even worse after the war.’ I was remembering Sulla’s bloody dictatorship and the heads of his enemies mounted on spikes all over the Forum. ‘Who named this woman Cassandra, anyway?’ I asked, wanting to change the subject.

  ‘Some wag in the market, I imagine,’ said Bethesda.

  ‘People give nicknames to the more colourful characters,’ noted Davus. ‘There’s one they call Cerberus because he barks like a dog; a fellow they call Cyclops because he’s got only one eye; and a woman they called the Gorgon because she’s so ugly.’

  ‘She’s not that ugly,’ objected Diana.

  ‘Oh, yes she is,’ insisted Davus. ‘She’s as ugly as Cassandra is beautiful.’

  ‘And there are even those,’ said Diana, raising an eyebrow but snuggling closer to him, ‘who call a certain fellow “mighty Hercules” behind his back.’

  ‘No!’ said Davus.

  ‘Oh, yes, Husband. I’ve heard them: admiring women; envious men.’ She smiled and reached up to squeeze one of his bulging biceps. Davus blushed and assumed a particularly stupid expression.

  I cleared my throat. ‘The original Cassandra was a Trojan princess, as I recall.’

  ‘Indeed she was,’ said Hieronymus, ready to assert his authority on the subject. As a boy he had received a fine Greek education at one of the renowned academies for which Massilia was famous. He could recite long passages from the Iliad and knew many of the Greek tragedies by heart.

  ‘Cassandra was the fairest daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba,’ he said, ‘and she was the sister of Paris, the prince who started all the trouble by stealing Helen and carrying her back to Troy. Cassandra could foretell the future. That was her terrible curse.’

  ‘But why call it a curse?’ asked Diana. ‘I should think that knowing the future would be rather useful. I could tell whether or not I’d be able to find anything decent to buy at the markets, instead of trekking down there only to come back empty-handed.’

  ‘Ah, but you see, there’s the rub,’ said Hieronymus. ‘Knowing the future doesn’t mean that you can alter it. Suppose in the morning you had a vision of yourself down at the markets later that afternoon finding not a thing to buy. You’d still be destined to make that trip down to the market, only now you’d know ahead of time that you were doomed to accomplish nothing.’

  ‘And that would be doubly frustrating,’ acknowledged Diana.

  Hieronymus nodded. ‘Foreknowledge is a curse. Imagine knowing the circumstances of your own death, as Cassandra did, and being able to do nothing about it.’

  Davus frowned. ‘Imagine knowing ahead of time your greatest joys as well. Wouldn’t that spoil them? Everyone loves a good surprise, even small surprises. When someone tells you a story, you don’t want to guess the ending beforehand. You want to be surprised.’ Every now and then Davus said something to make me seriously doubt that he was as simple as he looked. ‘But how did the Trojan Cassandra come to have this gift, or curse?’ he said. ‘Was she born with it?’

  ‘No, but she had it from a very early age,’ said Hieronymus. ‘When she was only a small child, her parents left her alone in the sanctuary of Apollo at a place called Thymbra, near Troy. When Priam and Hecuba returned, they found Cassandra entwined by two serpen
ts flicking their tongues in the child’s ears. Afterwards, Cassandra was able to understand the divine sounds of nature, especially the voices of birds, which told her of the future. But the child kept this gift to herself, not trusting it and uncertain of how to use it. When she grew older, she returned on her own to Thymbra and spent a night alone in the sanctuary, hoping for guidance from Apollo.

  ‘The god appeared to her in human form. Cassandra was beautiful. Apollo wanted her. He made a deal with her: in return for his instruction, Cassandra would allow him to make love to her, and she would bear him a child. Cassandra agreed. Apollo was as good as his word. That night he initiated her into the arts of prophecy. But afterward, when he moved to touch her, she resisted. When he embraced her, she struggled and fought against him. Who knows why? Perhaps he overawed her. Perhaps she feared the agony of giving birth to a demigod. Apollo was insulted. He grew furious. Cassandra was afraid he would strip her of the gift of prophecy, but he did something far worse: he ordained that no one should ever believe her prophecies.

  ‘Poor Cassandra! As one calamity after another befell Troy, she saw them all coming and tried to warn her loved ones, but no one would listen to her. King Priam thought she was mad and locked her away. Perhaps in the end she truly was mad, tormented to distraction by the curse Apollo had put upon her.

  ‘Of course, everyone knows about the end of Troy – by the stratagem of hiding in a giant horse the Greeks gained access to the city and then torched it, killing the men and taking the women into slavery. During the sack of the city, Cassandra fled to the sanctuary of Athena and embraced the statue of the goddess as a suppliant. Little good that did her; Athena had no sympathy for any Trojan. Ajax broke into the temple and dragged Cassandra from the statue, tearing her fingers from the cold marble. He raped her there in the sanctuary.