A Mist of Prophecies

by Saylor, Steven

  She happened to look down and saw us staring up at her. That was the first time I looked into her eyes and saw that they were blue. Her face was blank, without expression – the face of Athena as moulded by the Greek sculptors, I thought – and that in itself seemed odd, considering that she was watching a riot. I thought of a bird watching the activities of humans below her, apathetic to their violence against one another.

  She gave a jerk. I thought that we had frightened her somehow, and that she was about to bolt. Instead, her eyes rolled back, and her knees buckled under her. She swayed, lost her footing, and tumbled forward.

  To say that Cassandra quite literally fell into my arms would be true but misleading, lending the moment a romantic flair in no way evident at the time. In fact, when I saw that she was about to fall, I felt a quiver of panic – not for her, but for myself. When a man of my years sees a woman falling towards him from a considerable height, he thinks not of heroism but of his own frail bones. Still, I suspect that the instinct to catch a falling woman is strong in any man, no matter what his years. Hieronymus reacted just as I did, and it was into both our arms that she tumbled.

  The moment was painfully awkward. Hieronymus and I essentially collided, and an instant later Cassandra fell onto us, and all three of us very nearly collapsed to the ground in a heap. If we had been actors in a comedy by Plautus, the staging could not have been more hilarious. By some miracle of balance and counterbalance, Hieronymus and I both stayed on our feet. Together we managed to lower our dazed cargo to her own unsteady feet, supporting her arms to keep her upright.

  The breath was knocked out of me. A sharp pain shot up my spine. Spots swam before my eyes. None of this mattered when Cassandra fell swooning against me, one hand across her face and the other across her bosom.

  To observe the form of a beautiful woman at a distance is one thing. To abruptly feel a warm, solid, breathing body enclosed within your arms is another thing altogether. It was precisely for this, to experience such moments of human contact, that the gods made us. That was what I felt in that instant, even if I did not consciously realize it.

  Cassandra gradually came to her senses and drew back from me, but only slightly, still remaining in my embrace. Over her shoulder I saw Hieronymus looking rather envious of me. I looked in Cassandra’s eyes and saw again that they were blue, but not quite the shade I had thought. There was a bit of green in them, or was that only a momentary trick of the light? Her eyes fascinated me.

  ‘Was I . . . did I . . . fall?’ she asked. It seemed to me that her Latin carried a slight accent, but I couldn’t place it.

  ‘You did. From up there.’ I nodded towards the platform.

  ‘And . . . you caught me?’

  ‘We caught you,’ said Hieronymus, crossing his arms petulantly. Cassandra glanced at him over her shoulder. She gently pulled herself from my embrace.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘Can you stand?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What happened? Did you faint?’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right now. I should go.’ She turned away.

  ‘Go where?’ I reached for her arm, then stopped myself. Where she went was none of my business. Perhaps she thought so too, for she made no answer. Yet it seemed to me that there must be more to say. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘They call me Cassandra.’ She looked back at me. Her expression, briefly animated after she recovered from her daze, had become remote again – goddesslike, birdlike, or simply the affectless face of a madwoman?

  ‘But that can’t be your real name,’ I said. ‘You must have another.’

  ‘Must I?’ She looked confused for a moment, then turned and walked away with a slow, imperturbable stride, her head and shoulders erect, seemingly oblivious of the men who occasionally ran across her path in flight from the continuing mêlée before the tribunals of the rival magistrates.

  ‘What an extraordinary woman,’ said Hieronymus.

  I merely nodded.

  VI

  My interview with Terentia and the Vestal Fabia had yielded some new information about Cassandra, if not much. I decided next to consult Fulvia the twice-widowed; I had rendered her a service in the past by investigating the murder of her husband, Clodius – as partial payment she had given me Mopsus and Androcles – and I could expect at least a cordial welcome at her door. And so, after leaving Cicero’s house and returning to my own for a frugal midday meal and a fitful nap during the hottest part of the day, I set out as the sun was lowering to the house of Rome’s most famous widow.

  As before, I took Davus with me for protection. As we walked down the familiar streets of the Palatine, I was reminded of the days when Davus first entered my household as a slave, only shortly after I first met Fulvia as a stunned and grieving widow. It seemed a memory from another age. Could it actually have been only four years ago that Clodius was murdered on the Appian Way? Rome had been wracked with riots. Clodius’ radical supporters had burned the Senate House. Pompey had been called upon to restore order and given almost dictatorial powers; he had exploited the situation to engineer a series of trials that banished many of his enemies from Rome, upsetting once and for all the precarious constitutional balance between his interests and those of Caesar. In retrospect, the murder of Clodius had been the temporal fulcrum between the moment when civil war seemed unthinkable and the moment when it became inevitable. The murder of Fulvia’s first husband had been the beginning of the end of our tattered Republic.

  Her grief for Clodius had been deep and genuine. They had been true lovers, I think, as well as partners in a broader sense; for Fulvia, as a politician’s wife, had always been the exact opposite of Cicero’s Terentia. She was a woman with opinions, plans, projects, allies, and enemies. She plotted and schemed alongside her husband and served as his closest advisor. His death had robbed her not only of a husband and a father to their two children; it had robbed her of her role in the political sphere. Women can play no part in the Senate or the magistracies. Women cannot vote. By law they cannot even own property in their own names, although clever women find ways around such technicalities, just as women who care about the course of worldly events find ways to wield their influence, usually through their husbands. While Clodius lived, Fulvia had been one of the most powerful people in Rome, male or female. When he died, she was like a strong man suddenly paralysed and stricken mute.

  But a woman as intelligent, wealthy, and ambitious as Fulvia – who was also a striking woman, if not beautiful – did not have to endure the helplessness of widowhood for long. To a certain kind of man, her combination of qualities must have been almost maddeningly attractive. When she consented to marry Gaius Curio, many people thought that she had found the perfect match. He had been a part of her circle for many years, one of that coterie of ambitious, bright young men with voracious appetites and endless schemes to remake the world in their own image, men like Dolabella, Clodius, Caelius, and Marc Antony. Some said that Fulvia actually would have preferred Antony, had he been available and not already married to his cousin Antonia, and that Fulvia had settled on Antony’s boyhood friend (some said lover) Curio as the next best thing; but most agreed that Curio was in fact the better choice because he was more malleable and less inclined to debauchery than Antony.

  Like Antony, Curio early on allied himself with Caesar and never wavered in his devotion or relented in proselytizing on Caesar’s behalf. Indeed, it was largely Curio’s influence that had brought Marcus Caelius into the fold. On the eve of the war, Caelius and Curio had ridden out together to be by Caesar’s side when he crossed the Rubicon. But while Caelius had ultimately been relegated to a minor praetorship in Rome, Curio had been given command of four legions. When Caesar headed for Spain, he dispatched Curio to take on the Pompeian forces led by Cato in Sicily. Cato, disorganized and unready like the rest of the Pompeians, abandoned the island without a fight. Curio, flush from an easy conquest, left two of his legions in Sicily and with his other t
wo pressed on to Africa – and that was where Curio’s troubles began.

  Some said his conquest of Sicily had been too easy, that it led to overconfidence and rash judgment. Some said it was Curio’s youth and lack of military experience that led him into King Juba’s trap. Others said it was simply bad luck.

  Curio’s African campaign began well enough. First, he set about taking the rich seaport of Utica, which was held by the Pompeian commander Varus. A small band of Numidian soldiers dispatched by King Juba attempted to come to the city’s aid, but Curio drove them off. He baited Varus to meet in battle outside the city. There Curio made his first mistake, which only by a stroke of good luck proved not to be fatal. He sent his foot soldiers into a steep ravine where they might easily have been ambushed; but in the meantime his cavalry managed to sweep away the enemy’s left wing, and Varus’s men – sent fleeing back to the city – missed an easy opportunity to destroy their enemy. Such a near miss might have given Curio pause, but instead it emboldened him. He prepared to lay siege to Utica.

  In the meantime, King Juba had mustered his army and was marching to relieve Utica. Juba had close ties to Pompey, having been a patron of Pompey’s father. And he had cause to hate Curio, who in recent years had proposed that Rome should annex Numidia by force.

  Curio received news of Juba’s approach. Alarmed, he sent to Sicily for his other two legions. But deserters from Juba’s army told him that only a small body of Numidians were advancing. Curio sent out his cavalry, who skirmished with Juba’s vanguard. From the intelligence he received, Curio thought that this vanguard was the whole Numidian force. Thinking to destroy it so that he could get on with the siege, he hurried out with his legions to do battle. The season was blisteringly hot; the march over burning sands. The Romans blundered into the entire Numidian army. They were surrounded and slaughtered.

  A handful of Curio’s men managed to escape. Curio, too, might have fled and saved himself, but he refused to desert his men. A survivor, bringing news of the disaster to Caesar shortly after Caesar’s return from Spain, reported Curio’s last words: ‘I’ve lost the army Caesar entrusted to me. How could I face him?’

  Curio fought until the Numidians killed him. They cut off his head and sent the trophy to King Juba. Fulvia was once again a widow.

  Pondering her situation, imagining her mood, I felt some hesitation as I approached her house. The structure itself presented a daunting aspect – the giant, fortresslike monstrosity that Clodius had erected on the Palatine, the opulent headquarters from which he had directed the street gangs under his command. Steep terraces overgrown with roses and glimmering with many-coloured marble veneers flanked the huge forecourt that had served as a rallying place for Clodius to address his supporters. The iron gate stood open, and as Davus and I strode across the forecourt, gravel crunching under our feet, I gazed ahead at the flight of steps leading up to the broad porch and saw a black wreath upon the massive bronze door. Nine months into her widowhood, Fulvia was still in mourning for Curio.

  We mounted the steps. A huge bronze ring on the door served as a knocker. Davus lifted it and let it fall, delivering a dull, reverberating clang. We waited. So far as I could see, no peephole opened in the door, but I had the uncanny sensation of being observed. Clodius’ passion for installing secret passages, concealed doors, and hidden spy holes had been notorious.

  Eventually I heard the sound of a bar being thrown back on the other side of the door, and then it slowly opened, creaking slightly on its hinges. An athletic-looking slave ushered us inside, then quickly closed the door and let the heavy wooden beam fall back into place, barring it securely.

  I had been in this foyer before, in the hours and days that followed the murder of Clodius. It appeared that Curio, in becoming the new master of the house, had made no changes. The floors and walls were of highly polished marble. Red draperies shot with gold threads framed the passageway that led to the atrium, where the ceiling, supported on soaring black marble columns, rose to the height of three storeys. In the centre of the atrium, a shallow pool was decorated with shimmering mosaic tiles of blue-black and silver, picturing the night sky and the constellations. The actual sky, visible through an opening far above, was just beginning to deepen to the rich blue of twilight.

  I turned to the slave who had admitted us. ‘Tell your mistress that Gordianus—’

  ‘The mistress knows who you are and why you’ve come,’ he said, with a sardonic smile. ‘Follow me.’

  He led us through halls and galleries decorated with wall paintings and statues. Slaves moved quietly about, lighting braziers and lamps set in sconces on the walls. I was fairly certain that I had traversed the same passageways before, but the house was so sprawling that I couldn’t be sure. Eventually we mounted a flight of steps and were shown into a room with large windows, their shutters thrown open to admit the last of the day’s light. The walls were stained green and decorated with blue-and-white borders in a geometrical Greek design. Through the windows I saw the golden light of the lowering sun glinting across Palatine rooftops and lending a warm glow to the west-facing temples atop the distant Capitoline Hill. The reflected glow flooded the room, giving it a cosy feeling despite its lofty ceiling and spectacular view.

  Fulvia and her mother, Sempronia, sat before one of the long windows, dressed in stolas of darkest blue. A tiny child – Curio’s son – was attempting to walk on a blanket at the women’s feet. Fulvia’s other children, her son and daughter by Clodius, were not in the room.

  ‘Your visitors, mistress,’ said the slave.

  ‘Thank you, Thraso. You may go.’ As Fulvia turned her gaze to me, she lifted a stylus from the wax tablet upon which she had been writing and laid the stylus and tablet aside. There was a popular catchphrase regarding Fulvia and her ambition: ‘She was not born to spin’. Indeed, it was hard to imagine walking into her presence and finding her in the midst of some common female occupation. Instead, like a man of affairs with numerous ideas and projects to keep track of, she kept a wax tablet and stylus about her.

  Her mother, Sempronia, despite her hard features, seemed the more maternal of the two. She ignored Davus and me while she clucked and cooed and reached out to the little boy on the blanket, encouraging him to rise to his feet and attempt another faltering step.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, Fulvia. But I’m curious – how did you know it was me, when I never announced myself?’

  She glanced at her son, who managed to stand upright for a moment before tumbling forwards onto his hands and knees, then she turned her gaze back to me. ‘There’s a hidden peephole at one end of the porch. Thraso took a good look at you, then ran to give me your description. It could only have been you, Gordianus. “Nose like a boxer’s; a full head of iron grey hair shot with silver, but eyes that sparkle like those of a man half his age; a beard trimmed by a wife to suit herself.” ’

  ‘Actually, my daughter, Diana, trims my beard these days. But I feared you might have forgotten me, Fulvia.’

  ‘I never forget a man who might be useful to me.’ She turned her gaze to Davus. ‘But I don’t think I’ve met this other fellow. “Shoulders like a Titan’s,” said Thraso, “but a face like Narcissus.” ’

  ‘This is Davus, my son-in-law. Thraso also told me that you know why I’ve come. Surprising, since I’m not sure of that myself.’

  She smiled. ‘Aren’t you? I saw you at the funeral; you must have seen me. I’ve been half-expecting you to call on me. This is about Cassandra, I presume?’

  Sempronia abruptly clapped her hands. A slave girl came running. Sempronia planted a kiss on her grandchild’s forehead, then told the girl to take him from the room. As he was carried out, the boy began to cry. His wails echoed and receded down the hallway. Sempronia bit her forefinger and fidgeted, but Fulvia showed no reaction.

  ‘I hope you didn’t send the boy away on my account,’ I said.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Sempronia, finally looking at me and raising an eyebrow at
the notion that I could consider myself important enough to merit any action regarding her grandson. Since I had last seen her, one of her eyes had become cloudy white; if anything, it seemed to fix on me more penetratingly than the other. Under her gaze, I quailed a bit. Strange, that a woman who could be so tender to a child could be so intimidating to a grown man. ‘If we’re going to talk about the witch, it isn’t fitting for a man-child to be present,’ she said.

  ‘Is that what Cassandra was? A witch?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sempronia. ‘Did you think she was a mere mortal woman?’

  ‘She was most certainly . . . mortal,’ I said quietly.

  ‘She was murdered, wasn’t she?’ said Fulvia. With both of them now looking at me, I realized that the daughter’s gaze was no less piercing than her mother’s, yet somehow it gave me no displeasure to be looked at so openly by Fulvia. Sempronia’s gaze was caustic; it stripped a man naked. Fulvia’s gaze seemed cleansing, as if its purpose was to strip away whatever veils of confusion or misunderstanding might intervene between us. Her eyes were intelligent, lively, inviting. No wonder she had secured two of Rome’s best and brightest, if unluckiest, to become her husbands.

  ‘Why do you think Cassandra was murdered?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I know the curious circumstances of her death. How she died suddenly . . . in the marketplace . . . in your arms. Was it poison, Gordianus? They say she was wracked with convulsions.’