A Mist of Prophecies

by Saylor, Steven

  ‘But it was Agamemnon, asserting his privilege as leader of the Greeks, who claimed Cassandra as his booty. Mad or not, she was the most beautiful of Priam’s daughters, and Agamemnon wanted her. He had the audacity to bring her home with him and flaunt her in the face of his wife, Clytaemnestra, who was outraged. While Agamemnon and Cassandra slept, Clytaemnestra stabbed them both.

  ‘Cassandra foresaw her own death, of course, but she was powerless to do anything about it. Or perhaps, by that point in her miserable life, she welcomed her end and did nothing to stop Clytaemnestra. Ultimately, it was the god she blamed for her woes. In his play about Agamemnon, Aeschylus gives us Cassandra’s lament: “Apollo, Apollo, Lord of the ways, my ruin.” ’

  Poor Cassandra, I thought, first punished for preserving her chastity from a god, then made the concubine of the man who killed her family. Was the Cassandra I had seen that day yet another woman victimized by men’s war and gods’ cruelty? What misfortune had driven her mad? Or was she not mad at all, but cursed, like the original Cassandra, and truly able to perceive the future?

  If I were to ask her, what could she tell me about my fate and the fates of those I loved? And if I were to hear her answers, would I regret having asked?

  IV

  The day after Cassandra’s funeral, I spent the morning alone in the garden. The day was hot and the sky cloudless. I sat on a folding chair, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and watching my shadow recede until the sun was directly overhead.

  Bethesda felt unwell and was spending the morning in bed. Every now and again I heard the sound of her gentle snoring from the unshuttered bedroom window that opened onto the garden. Diana and Davus had gone out to do the day’s marketing. They had given up on finding radishes and were in search of fennel, which Bethesda was now certain would cure her. Hieronymus had gone down to the Tiber to fish, taking Mopsus and Androcles with him. No one had asked if I wanted to go along with them; they all sensed that I wished to be left alone.

  At length I heard Diana’s voice. She and Davus were back. I saw her hurry along the portico to the back of the house and step into the bedroom to look in on her mother. A little later she came to the garden and sat beside me.

  ‘Mother’s asleep. We should keep our voices low. I couldn’t find any fennel, but can you believe it – there were radishes everywhere! So many they were practically giving them away. By Juno, it’s hot out here! Papa, you shouldn’t be sitting in the sunlight.’

  ‘Why not? I’m wearing a hat.’

  ‘Has it kept that brain of yours from overheating?’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  She paused and assumed an expression she had inherited from her mother, a look at once pitying and presumptuous. She might as well have said aloud: I know exactly how your sluggish, tortuous thought processes play out, dear Papa. I’m well ahead of you, but I’m resolved to be patient. I shall wait for you to catch up to your own inevitable decision.

  Instead, she said, ‘You’ve been thinking about her all morning, haven’t you?’

  I sighed and readjusted my bottom on the folding chair, which was suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Your mother isn’t well. Of course she’s in my thoughts—’

  ‘Don’t be coy, Papa.’ My daughter’s voice assumed a stern edge. ‘You know what I meant. You’ve been thinking about her. About that woman, Cassandra.’

  I took a deep breath. I stared at a sunflower across the way. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You’re brooding.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must stop it. We need you, Papa. It’s getting harder every day just to get by, and Mother’s ill, and Davus does all he can to help, but still, sometimes I don’t know what we’re going to do . . .’ Her voice became grave, but there was no self-pity in it. Always hardheaded, always practical and forward thinking and resourceful, never despairing, that was Diana. She was truly our child, the inheritor of what was best in both Bethesda and myself.

  ‘What are you saying to me, Daughter?’

  ‘I’m saying that you must leave her behind. She’s dead now. You must stop thinking about her. It’s your family who need you now.’ Her tone was not reproachful, merely matter-of-fact. How much, exactly, did she know about Cassandra and me? What did she know for a fact, and how much had she guessed, rightly or wrongly?

  ‘Leave her behind, you say. Supposing that you’re right, that I’m sitting here brooding about . . . that woman . . . how do you suggest I stop brooding, Daughter?’

  ‘You know the answer to that, Papa! There’s only one way. You must find out who killed her.’

  I gazed long and hard at the sunflower. ‘What good will that do?’

  ‘Oh, Papa, you sound so hopeless. I hate to see you like this. It’s bad enough that Mother’s ill, but for you to be sick as well – sick at heart, I mean – and you’ve been this way ever since you came back from Massilia. We all know why. It’s because of what happened between you and—’

  I raised my hand to silence her. As a Roman paterfamilias, with the legal power of life and death over every member of my household, I was usually quite lax, allowing them all to speak their minds and do as they wished. But on this one subject, my break with Meto, I would allow no discourse.

  ‘Very well, Papa, I won’t speak of that. Still, I hate to see you this way. You’re like a man who thinks the gods have turned against him.’

  And haven’t they? I wanted to say, but such an expression of self-pity would have contrasted too glaringly with my daughter’s stoicism, and not to my credit. Besides, I had no reason to believe the gods had singled me out to vent their displeasure. It seemed to me lately that the gods had turned against all mankind. Or perhaps they had simply turned their backs on us, allowing the most ruthless among us, like Caesar and Pompey, to wreak unchecked havoc on the rest.

  ‘Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of men – and women – will die before this war is over, Diana. Not one of those restless lemures of the dead is likely to find anything resembling justice in this world or the next. If Cassandra was murdered—’

  ‘You know she was, Papa. She was poisoned. She told you so.’

  ‘If she was murdered, what good will it do to find out who killed her? No Roman court – presuming the courts ever return to normal – would be interested in prosecuting such a crime, perpetrated on a woman nobody knew or cared about.’

  ‘You cared enough to give her a decent funeral.’

  ‘That’s beside the point.’

  ‘And some of the most powerful women in Rome cared enough to come to her funeral. You saw them, skulking on the periphery, staying well away from the pyre as if the flames might scorch them – or show the guilt on their faces. It was one of them who killed her, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It might have been.’ Before her death, Cassandra had been courted by the highest circles of Roman society, summoned to the houses of the rich and powerful who had learned about her gift. Had she known the danger she might face by consorting with such women? What uncovered secrets from the past – or from the future – might have led one of those women to silence Cassandra forever?

  ‘Shall I do it for you, Papa?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Shall I do it in your stead – uncover the truth about her death?’

  ‘What a ridiculous idea!’

  ‘It’s not so ridiculous. I know how you work. I’ve watched you since I was a child. I’ve listened to all your stories about snooping for Cicero, and uncovering chariot races that were fixed, and going off to Spain or Syracuse to look for a murderer at some rich man’s behest. Do you think I’d be incapable of doing the same thing myself?’

  ‘You make it sound like baking a batch of flat bread, Diana. Mix this list of ingredients, bake for a certain length of time—’

  ‘Baking is harder than you make it sound, Papa. It takes skill and experience.’

  ‘Exactly. And you have neither when it comes to – well, to the sort of work you’re talking about.’

  ‘I
t’s because I’m a woman, isn’t it? You don’t think I could do it because I’m a woman. Do you really think I’m not as clever as a man?’

  ‘Cleverness has nothing to do with it. You have a three-year-old son to raise! Besides that, there are places a woman can’t go. There are questions a woman can’t ask. And don’t forget the danger, Diana.’

  ‘But I’d have Davus for all that! He’s big and strong. He can go anywhere. He could twist arms or break down doors—’

  ‘Diana, don’t be absurd!’ I took off my hat and fanned myself with it, squinting at the bright sunlight. ‘You’ve done some thinking about this, haven’t you?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Well, stop any such thoughts at once, and abandon any ambitions you may have in such a direction – “Diana the Finder,” indeed!’

  ‘No – Diana and Davus the Finders, plural.’

  ‘Double absurdity! I absolutely forbid it. You’ll follow the example of your mother. She began with every disadvantage, yet look at her now – she’s made herself into the very model of a Roman matron: modest, respectable, responsible, running a household, raising a family—’

  ‘Is that how you’d describe those model Roman matrons who showed up at Cassandra’s funeral?’

  I thought of some of those women and the scandals that attended them, and I had to cede the point to Diana. In such times, did any real standard of Roman womanhood exist any longer? It was the same for men and women alike – virtues had turned to vices and vices to virtues.

  I put on my hat and stood, listening to my knees crack as they straightened. ‘If your intention was to incite me to action, Diana, then you’ve succeeded. Fetch Davus for me, would you? I shall take him along with me – in case I have to break down some doors or twist some arms. And you, meanwhile, will stay home and tend to your ailing mother. I expect to smell radish soup bubbling on the hearth when I come home!’

  The easiest place to begin was also the closest – at the house of Cicero, just down the street from my own.

  With the assistance of Mopsus and Androcles, Davus and I put on our best togas. The two of us left the house and walked along the rim road that skirted the crest of the Palatine Hill, with a view of the Forum below and the Capitoline Hill surmounted by the Temple of Jupiter in the distance. It was a beautiful summer day.

  At Cicero’s house, Davus knocked politely on the door with his foot. An eye peered at us through a peephole in the door. I stated my name and asked to see the mistress of the house. The peephole slid shut. A few moments later the door opened.

  I had visited the house of Cicero many times over the years. At the zenith of his fortunes, in the year he served as consul and quashed the so-called conspiracy of Catilina, this house had arguably been the very centre of the Roman world, the site of the most important political meetings as well as the most dazzling cultural gatherings. Men of letters and men of affairs had passed through its portals; they had sipped wine and listened to one another’s poems and monographs in its gardens; they had shaped the future course of the Republic in Cicero’s study.

  At the nadir of Cicero’s fortunes, the house had been burned to the ground by Clodius and his gang, and its master had been sent into exile. But Cicero had eventually returned to Rome, regained his rights of citizenship and his place in the Senate, and rebuilt his house on the Palatine.

  Now the master of this house was again in a kind of exile, far away in Greece with Pompey. For months after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Cicero had procrastinated and vacillated, agonizing over his choices. Both sides had wooed him, not for his military skills, but for the political weight he carried; Cicero’s endorsement of either side would do much to sway the sentiments of those who considered themselves steadfast upholders of the Republic. On principle, Cicero sided with Pompey from the start, seeing him as the only possible protector of the status quo; but for as long as he could, Cicero hedged his bets, sending letters back and forth to both Pompey and Caesar, desperately trying to hew a middle course. But there was no middle course, and finally, when exaggerated news of a temporary setback to Caesar’s fortunes in Spain reached Rome in the month of Junius of the previous year, Cicero took the great leap and with his son Marcus, who was barely old enough to wear a manly toga, left Italy to join Pompey. A year had passed since then. I had to wonder if Cicero was now regretting his decision.

  I had known Cicero for over thirty years. My assistance in the murder trial that made his early reputation had done much to further my own fortunes. It was not long after I first met him that he married. His wife, Terentia, ten years his junior, had come from a family of considerable social standing and brought with her a substantial dowry. She was said to be an excellent household manager and devoutly religious. Unlike the wives of many powerful men, she took no interest in legal matters or affairs of state. While the fortunes of the Republic ebbed and flowed within the walls of Cicero’s house, and the fates of the accused men he represented hung in the balance, she went about her duties of honouring family ancestors, making sacrifices to household gods, and furthering the social advancement of their two children.

  In all the times I had visited Cicero, I had exchanged only a few words with Terentia. On the rare occasions when circumstances obliged her to speak to me, she had been polite but haughty, projecting the unmistakable message that my social standing was too insignificant to warrant more than the bare minimum of conversation. I think she found it unfortunate that her husband had to deal with a character as unsavoury as myself.

  The last time I had been in the house, Caesar had just crossed the Rubicon, and Cicero and Terentia had been frantically preparing to leave Rome, ordering secretaries to pack up scrolls in the library and issuing last-minute instructions to the slaves who would look after the house in their absence. On this day the house was almost ominously quiet and still.

  Davus and I waited in the foyer only a short time before Terentia herself appeared. She wore a simple yellow stola and no jewellery. Her grey hair was pulled back in a tight bun, a severe style that suited her austerely handsome face.

  ‘Gordianus,’ she said, giving me a curt nod of recognition. ‘Isn’t this your son-in-law?’

  ‘Yes, this is Davus,’ I said.

  Terentia appraised him coolly. She herself had so far been notoriously unlucky with sons-in-law. Her daughter, Tullia, still in her twenties, had already been once widowed and once divorced and was now on her third marriage, to a dissolute but dashing young aristocrat named Dolabella. The betrothal had taken place while Cicero was off governing a province and without his approval. Dolabella had apparently swept both mother and daughter off their feet. As I watched Terentia’s eyes linger on my brawny son-in-law a little longer than necessary, I gathered that she was not immune to male charms. Cicero himself was said to have been heartbroken by the marriage, having once defended Dolabella on a murder charge and knowing what a vicious character the fellow was. To compound Cicero’s embarrassment, Dolabella had since taken up arms for Caesar; he had been put in charge of Caesar’s fleet in the Adriatic, where he had consistently been outmanoeuvered and outnumbered by Pompey’s navy. Like so many families of the ruling class, Cicero’s had been split down the middle by the civil war. And if that were not enough, rumour had it that Dolabella had been utterly faithless as a husband, carrying on a dalliance with Marc Antony’s wife, Antonia.

  ‘You haven’t come to talk about this business with Milo and Caelius, I hope?’ She referred to the insurrection rumoured to be developing in the countryside south of Rome led by two of Cicero’s old associates, Marcus Caelius and Titus Annius Milo.

  ‘As a matter of fact, no.’

  ‘Good! Because everyone thinks I should have an opinion about it, and I refuse to give one. Both of those fellows have brought my husband nothing but grief over the years, but at the same time, who can blame them for reaching the end of their patience? Of course they shall both get themselves killed, poor fools . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Then I suppose you’
ve come about Cassandra,’ she said, forestalling any apprehensions I might have had about coming directly to the point. Unlike her husband, who could speak for hours and say nothing, Terentia was not a woman to mince words.

  When I nodded, she indicated with a gesture that we should follow. She took us to the same room to which Cicero had shown me on my last visit, a secluded little chamber off the central garden. But the room seemed different and strangely empty. What was it Cicero had told me? ‘This was one of the first rooms Terentia decorated when we came back and rebuilt after Clodius and his gang burned down the house and sent me into exile . . .’

  Cicero had been quite proud of this room and its exquisite furnishings, but where were those objects now? I vaguely recalled a sumptuous carpet with a geometrical Greek design; now there was only cold stone underfoot. There had been several fine chairs carved from terebinth with inlays of ivory; now there were only a couple of folding chairs of the simplest sort. There had been a finely wrought bronze brazier with griffin heads; that, too, was gone. The only decorations that remained were the ones that couldn’t be removed, the pastoral landscapes painted on the walls that depicted herdsmen dozing amid sheep and satyrs peeking from behind little roadside shrines.

  Terentia sighed. ‘Ah, how Marcus loved this room! This was where he entertained his most important visitors – senators and magistrates and suitors for Tullia’s hand. My husband brought you to this room the last time you called on him, did he not? His study was too crowded, as I recall – all those secretaries running about in a panic, packing up his confidential papers.’ There was a note of disapproval in her voice that implied the room was really too good for the likes of me and, at the same time, a note of resignation. Now that the room had been stripped of its exquisite furnishings and reduced to a shadow of its former luxury, why not meet with me here?