I sat on my folding chair in the shade and leaned back against a pillar. I narrowed my eyes and watched a bee flit from flower to flower. I shut my eyes and listened to the buzzing of his wings as he circled the garden and flew over my head. I must have dozed, for the next thing I knew, Androcles had hold of my arm and was shaking me awake.
‘Master, there’s a man at the door asking for you, and a great litter out in the street, and bodyguards, lots and lots of bodyguards, and—’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘A visitor for you, Master.’
I blinked, cleared my throat, and brushed my fingers through my hair. ‘Very well, send him in.’
‘No, he says that you must come to the door.’
I felt a sudden chill. A great litter, an army of bodyguards, a high-handed summons to come to my own front door – who could it be? Only one person would be so presumptuous, I thought: the man who would own this house himself soon enough, once all my debts came due and I was found to be penniless. Why had Volumnius come to harass me now on this particular day?
‘Where’s Davus?’ I asked.
‘With Diana, in their room,’ said Androcles.
‘Napping?’
‘I don’t think so. The door’s shut, but I’m pretty sure they’re not asleep.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘All that noise they make! I’m surprised you can’t hear them out here. He grunts and squeals like a boar with a spear in his side, and then she—’
‘Enough, Androcles! Never mind fetching Davus. Surely even Volumnius won’t dare to have a Roman citizen beaten on his own doorstep,’ I declared; but as I rose, unbending my stiff knees, I had my doubts.
I made my way across the garden and through the atrium, with Androcles scurrying after me. The man in the foyer didn’t have the look of a debt collector; he was too old and too small. He had the self-assured, sophisticated air one associates with slaves who act as personal secretaries to citizens of wealth and taste. With relief, I knew that it was not Volumnius who had come calling on me. Who, then? Something in the slave’s manner suggested that he waited upon a mistress, not a master. A woman in a sumptuous litter, attended by many bodyguards . . .
In my experience, the gods in their whimsy so fashion the world that sometimes the thing that seems most unlikely is precisely the thing that occurs. I knew at once, and with absolute certainty, whom the slave represented.
‘Will your mistress do me the honour of stepping inside?’ I said.
The slave raised an eyebrow. ‘Alas, much as it would please her to grace your household with her presence, her schedule today will not permit it. But she very much wants to speak to you. If you’ll follow me, there’s a litter waiting. We think it best if you come alone.’
‘Of course. Androcles, when Davus and Diana . . . reappear . . . let them know that I’ve left in the company of Caesar’s wife. And I shall be returning . . .?’ I looked at the slave.
‘You should be gone for no more than an hour or so,’ he assured me. ‘That’s all the mistress can spare. May I?’ He extended his open hands, almost touching me, and I realized he intended to search my person. I nodded and allowed him to run his hands over my tunic. Satisfied that I carried no weapons, he stepped back and allowed me to walk out the door ahead of him.
Two identical litters were waiting in the street, each fitted with a resplendent canopy made of ivory poles and white draperies that shimmered with golden threads, hemmed with a purple stripe. The drapes of the first litter were closed, concealing its occupant. I was ushered into the litter behind it. The slave joined me, closed the drapes, and settled back into the pile of cushions opposite me.
With a steady gracefulness that did credit to the bearers, the litter rose and began to move forward.
‘Where are we going?’ I said.
The slave smiled. ‘We’ll be there very shortly.’
I felt the motion of the litter each time we took a sharp turn, but we never seemed to go downhill. That meant we were still somewhere on the Palatine Hill when the litter came to a stop. I heard the sound of a heavy bar being lifted on a hinge and gates swinging open. We moved forwards into a gravelled courtyard; I could hear the stones crunching under the bearers’ feet. The litter stopped. The gates swung shut, and the bar dropped back into place. The slave parted the drapes with his forefinger and peered out, awaiting a signal. At last he pushed back the drape and gestured for me to exit the litter.
As soon as my feet touched the gravel, I was flanked by two bodyguards who escorted me across the narrow courtyard, up a short flight of steps, and into a small but elegantly appointed foyer. The white walls were trimmed with blue and gold. A small bronze statue of Venus occupied a scalloped niche. The floor was decorated with a mosaic of Venus emerging naked from the sea. I was reminded that Caesar claimed Venus as his ancestress. It was Venus his soldiers called upon for victory.
The guards escorted me through an atrium where goldfish darted across the sunken pool. Ahead I caught a glimpse of sunlit greenery, a garden surrounded by a portico, but the guards led me to one side, down a short hallway, and into a small library. The far wall was lined with a tall bookcase, its pigeonholes filled with scrolls. Paintings depicting a battle covered the walls on either side. Arrayed across the wall to the right was the army of the ancient Greeks led by Alexander the Great, instantly recognizable by his chiselled features and his golden mane of hair. On the opposite wall was the army of the Persian king Darius, whom Alexander had defeated to become master of the world.
Seated before the bookcase, dominating the room despite the massive, dramatic pictures, was Calpurnia. She was handsome enough, though not a great beauty. She seemed oblivious of the latest fashions, with their Eastern and Egyptian influences; from her clothing, jewellery, and hairstyle, she might have been an austere Roman matron of a century ago. Her countenance was as severe as her costume; she looked like a mistress about to rebuke a wayward slave, and I reflexively braced myself. But before she spoke, she smiled, just enough to put me at ease – or to put me off my guard? – and I saw that she possessed a certain charm not unlike her husband’s. Had she possessed it before Caesar met her, or had she learned it from him?
‘Sit,’ she said. I turned my head to see that a chair had been placed behind me. The guards had discreetly withdrawn to a post just outside the door.
She waited until I was seated, then paused for several heartbeats before she spoke again. That, too, was a technique of Caesar’s, never to seem rushed. ‘We’ve never met, Gordianus, but I know of your reputation and of my husband’s high regard for you. You’ve had a long and interesting career in this city. I had thought that you were retired, but I understand that for the last few days you’ve been rather busy, crisscrossing Rome with that burly son-in-law of yours.’
‘You’ve had someone following us?’
The brusqueness of the question left her unfazed. ‘Let us say that you have been observed. One by one, you’ve been visiting each of the women who came to Cassandra’s funeral. I was there, too. You must have seen my litter. Yet you haven’t yet called on me.’
‘I intended to do so.’
‘Why didn’t you come to me first?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Out of deference, I suppose. Great Caesar’s wife must be a very busy woman, with little time to answer the queries of a humble citizen like myself. Or so I thought. May I ask where we are?’
‘In a house tucked away on a little cul-de-sac on the Palatine Hill. You needn’t know the exact location. My husband has owned this place for years, but only a very select few have ever stepped inside it. Even some of his closest advisors are unaware of its existence. It seemed an appropriate place for you and I to meet, since this was where Cassandra resided.’
I frowned. ‘Here? But I thought—’
‘That shabby room in the Subura? Her residence there was a pretence, part of the role she played. This was the house where she kept her possessions. It was to this house that sh
e retreated whenever she felt she might be in danger, or whenever she grew too sick of her role as a pauper and needed a taste of luxury. I imagine she would have liked to bring you to this house, Gordianus, but that wasn’t possible. Her room was just across the garden. It was in this room that I came to meet with her. I would sit here, and she would sit where you’re sitting, in that very chair.’
‘You met with Cassandra?’
‘On a regular basis, so that I could give her instructions, and so that she could deliver any valuable information she had uncovered since our last meeting.’
I took this in. ‘Cassandra was your spy?’
‘My husband’s spy, to be more precise. It was Caesar who recruited her, Caesar who briefed her on what he expected from her, and Caesar who trained her – as a spy, I mean. Cassandra was already an accomplished actress, of course, but the arts of the spy are somewhat more specialized.’ She peered at me intently. ‘Are you grinding your teeth, Finder?’
‘Always Caesar!’ I said, staring up at the image of Alexander, then across to the image of Darius. Which would Caesar resemble more when the story of his life came to an end? The conqueror beloved by gods and storytellers, or the arrogant emperor who owned the world but lost it? On his journey to his destiny, Caesar had swept the whole world along in his wake. He loomed over everything, casting his shadow not just over armies and kings but over every thing and every person I loved. Now I found his shadow had covered Cassandra as well.
Calpurnia looked at me coolly. ‘I understand that you harbour some sort of grudge against my husband for having claimed the loyalty and affection of your son—’
‘Meto is no longer my son!’
She nodded. ‘Even so, Caesar harbours no resentment against you, Gordianus. In time, he hopes that he may once again be able to count you among his friends.’ That was always Caesar’s way, to mend breaches, to convert enemies, to draw everyone into his circle, even if later the need arose to destroy them.
‘But we were talking of Cassandra,’ she said. ‘I know that her death has caused you great distress. I think Caesar would want me to reveal to you who Cassandra was, and how and why she came to Rome. What do you already know about her?’
That she was beautiful and tragic and doomed, I thought. That I fell in love with her, or thought I did, knowing nothing about her.
‘That she came from Alexandria,’ I said. ‘That she performed in the mime shows there and knew Cytheris. That she suffered from seizures and falling sickness – unless that was a pretence. That she may or may not have possessed the gift of prophecy. That she used her reputation as a seeress to play a cruel joke on Antonia, at Cytheris’ behest. That she may have done the same thing to a number of other powerful women in Rome who sought her out – unless she was blackmailing them. Or spying on them.’
Calpurnia nodded. ‘If I tell you that my husband has a number of agents who gather intelligence for him, I presume that will come as no surprise to you. Agents of all sorts, high and low – from street urchins and tavern keepers to centurions and senators. You never know who might overhear something of importance. It takes skill, patience, and experience to make sense of all the information that comes in, to scrutinize the sources, to disregard lies planted by the enemy, to decide between conflicting accounts. All those bits of information are like tiles in a mosaic; separately they signify nothing, but together, from the right perspective, they form a sort of picture.
‘It’s an intricate business, all the more complicated because it takes place in the shadows. That’s what my husband calls it – the shadow war between himself and his enemies. The battles that everyone knows about take place in broad daylight between soldiers who fight with swords and spears. There are other battles that take place in the shadows, which no one sees or even knows about – but people die in those battles, nonetheless. I suppose one could think of Cassandra as a kind of Amazon, a woman warrior. It’s the only way a woman can be a warrior, I suppose, fighting in the shadow war.’
‘Why did she fight for Caesar?’
‘Why does any soldier fight for him? Because he paid her, of course. As part of the arrangement, she became a free woman, and she was very handsomely paid in regular instalments that I held in trust for her. The work Cassandra did was dangerous, but she was well rewarded. She would have returned to Alexandria a wealthy woman . . . had she survived.’
‘How did Caesar recruit her?’
‘As soon as Pompey was driven from Italy, Caesar set about reorganizing the Senate here in Rome and deciding whom to place in charge in his absence – Marc Antony, as it turned out. Everyone became a Caesarian overnight once Pompey was gone – but whom could Caesar really trust, and what sort of plots were being hatched against him? It was imperative that he should organize a network of agents to gather information. Some of those agents were already in place. Others had to be recruited. It was I who pointed out to him that his greatest weakness would be in obtaining information from the women of Rome – the wives and mothers and daughters and sisters who had been left behind by both allies and enemies. Such women always know more than they’re given credit for, often more than they themselves realize. They know the most secret longings and most fervent loyalties of their men. A casual remark in a letter from a husband could lead to a secret hiding place or a cache of arms or a buried store of gold. But what sort of person could obtain access to so many diverse women and extract whatever valuable information they might possess?
‘It was Caesar who hit upon the idea of recruiting an actress to play the part of a mad seeress. I told him that no Roman matron was that gullible and no actress that skilful. He proved me wrong on both counts. He dispatched an agent to Alexandria to find the right actress. Why Alexandria? Because the mime masters there are famous for training their players to perfection, and because it’s far enough from Rome that the agent might find a suitable performer who would be unknown here. It was several months before the agent returned from Alexandria, bringing Cassandra with him. They entered the city in a covered litter, and the agent installed her, secretly, in this house.
‘Only a few days later, Caesar returned to Rome after securing Spain and Massilia. As soon as he was able to take time from overseeing elections, he met with Cassandra. It was in this very room. I was with him. He said he wanted my opinion of her, but I’m sure he made up his mind before I could say a word.’
‘She auditioned for Caesar, like an actress auditioning for a mime show?’
‘If you wish to put it that way. She was certainly beautiful; I could see that Caesar was duly impressed, but beauty was not the quality we were looking for. She spoke excellent Latin with only the faintest accent; she was quite a polyglot, you know. But she seemed rather nervous. That was understandable, perhaps, for a young woman meeting Caesar for the first time, but it worried me; this was the person we were counting on to keep a cool head even as she deceived some of the shrewdest women in Rome. Caesar commenced to explain what he wanted from her. She seemed distracted, and increasingly agitated. Suddenly she collapsed to the floor, writhing and foaming at the mouth. The agent had warned us that she suffered from the falling sickness. Caesar at once went to her assistance. He found a leather biting stick on her person and put it between her teeth, then held her until the spell subsided. I could see that he was moved by her suffering – Caesar himself has experienced such fits in the past – but I wondered if such a condition might rob her of her wits and cause her to fail in her mission. I was about to say as much when Cassandra suddenly sprang to her feet, laughing out loud.
‘She had been acting, you see. It was all a performance – the nervousness, the fidgeting, the fit. I was furious, at first. Caesar was delighted. She won him over on the spot. If she could fool both of us, then surely she could fool anyone.’
‘I don’t understand. Did she truly suffer from the falling sickness or not?’
‘Oh, yes, she was subject to fits. She suffered more than one, staying in this house. But she had also learned
to mimic those fits so convincingly that no one could tell the difference. That skill, among her others – not least her intelligence, for I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman more intelligent than Cassandra – made her ideal for the role Caesar had in mind.
‘Before he left for Greece, Caesar briefed her very closely, taking more time with her than with any of his other agents. She learned the name and family history of every important woman in Rome. More than that, she learned everything we could glean about those women’s personal habits, their eccentricities and superstitions, their dreams and fears. She took copious notes on wax tablets, but kept them only long enough to memorize every detail. Then she would rub the tablets clean. She kept everything in her head.
‘When Caesar was satisfied, she left this house and made her first appearances in the city. It wasn’t long before people were talking about the madwoman in the Forum. I remember being at a dinner party and trying not to smile the first time I heard her mentioned. Overnight, everyone seemed to know about the mysterious woman who could see the future, even though no one had any idea who she was or where she came from. It was said that if she stared into a flame, she could induce such visions at will.
‘Her method was simple. She would wait until a woman invited her home, or in some cases, practically kidnapped her. Inducements would be offered – money, food, shelter. Soon the lamp would be produced. Cassandra would oblige by staring at the flame, suffering a fit and going into a trance, then uttering cryptic but transparent prophecies based on what she knew about her hostess. Cassandra would tell each woman what that woman wanted to hear. There’s no surer way to gain a person’s confidence. With Cassandra, they let down their guard. They became naked before her – vulnerable, frightened, ambitious, boastful. They said things they would never have said to anyone else. Many more women consulted her than the handful who came to see her burn. Half the senators’ wives in Rome have had Cassandra in their houses.’
I thought of the women I had spoken to. Terentia, Tullia, and the Vestal Fabia had all accepted Cassandra’s prophetic powers without question. What bits of information about Cicero and Dolabella, not to mention the inner workings of the Vestal Virgins, had they inadvertently let slip while Cassandra was in their presence?
A Mist of Prophecies Page 23
