A Mist of Prophecies

XVIII

I had never seen her so completely unguarded, so wracked with emotion. I could never have imagined her so vulnerable. The tears that ran down her cheeks gave her a curious kind of beauty that transcended any she had previously possessed. I gazed at Clodia in wonder.

"Tell me, then. Tell me what I don't know," I said.

She caught her breath. She covered her face for a moment. When she withdrew her hand, the tears had ceased. Her features were composed. She stared at the fish in the pond as she spoke.

"For years I hated Marcus Caelius. A part of me lived for that hatred, the way that one can live for love. I turned to it whenever I saw no other reason to go on existing in a world where everything gold had turned to lead. In a strange way, that hatred nurtured me. What a poem Catullus could have made of that! Catullus knew that passion is passion; whether it's love or hate, it drives the spirit. Hating Caelius gave me a reason to draw my next breath.

"As it turned out, Caelius had never forgotten me, either. Men have more ways than women do to distract themselves from such a passion-building a political career, traveling the world, fighting in battles. But when he returned with Caesar from Spain, something stirred him to come and see me. I think he was suddenly struck by the futility of all his frantic pursuits for money and power. Caesar had turned the world upside down, and for a little while anything seemed possible. Sheer exhilaration drove Caelius forward until he realized that nothing was going to change, except perhaps for the worse. He found himself back in Rome, stuck with a meaningless magistracy, bored out of his wits. He was dispirited, angry, depressed. On a whim, one afternoon he came to see me. I was here in the garden. When the slave announced him, I thought surely the slave was mistaken, or else someone was playing a joke on me. 'Show him in!' I said, and a few moments later, Caelius appeared. A thousand thoughts rushed through my head, not least that I wanted to murder him. I imagined stabbing him and pushing him into this fishpond. That thought filled me with immense pleasure. How it came about that he was sitting beside me on this couch, I can't tell you. Nor can I tell you how it happened that his lips were on mine, and our arms were around each other, and we both were weeping.

"You think that I hatched some insidious plot against him, Gordianus, that I schemed to seduce him. But Caelius came to me, and what happened between us was totally spontaneous and totally mutual. Years ago, before we fell out, I thought I was in love with him. But what I had felt for him then was nothing compared to what I felt when he came to me that day. Both of us had received some very hard blows. We had learned a few lessons about humility and survival and what really matters in the world. The Caelius who came to me that day was neither the Caelius I had loved nor the Caelius I had hated, but another man, larger than either of those others and infinitely more capable of loving me. And I was a different woman from the one who had loved and then hated Caelius, though I didn't know it until that moment when we were reunited."

"Yet I never heard a whisper of gossip about you and Caelius," I said. "Such a tale would have been just the thing to excite the chin-waggers in the Forum."

"We made no show of what happened between us. We were discreet. Others would never have understood. It was no one else's business."

"Yet Calpurnia knew that Caelius was seeing you," I said.

"As you say, she has spies everywhere. Perhaps she intentionally had Caelius followed, or perhaps one of her informants just happened to notice him coming or going. What happened between us may have piqued her curiosity, but surely she had more pressing affairs of state to worry about."

"Caelius eventually gave her plenty to worry about. After Caesar left Rome, when Caelius began to press his radical legislation and to agitate in the Forum-what role did you play in that?"

"You think I planted the idea in his head, encouraged him, spurred him on. Nothing could be further from the truth! Do you think, after seeing what became of my brother, that I wanted to see Caelius meet the same end? 'The Roman mob is fickle,' I told him. 'You can stir them up easily enough, but once there's blood on the ground, they'll scatter like dust. For the moment, the moneylenders and landlords hold Caesar and his Senate in the palms of their hands. Volumnius and his sort have rattled the dice and cast a Venus Throw. There's no beating them at their own game.' But Caelius wouldn't listen to me. Just as he'd found me at last-found the passion he'd been missing for years and desperately searching for-so he thought that he'd finally hit his stride as a politician. He was no longer Cicero's errant flunky, you see. No longer Milo's red-faced apologist. No longer Caesar's underutilized underling, fobbed off with a safe, useless post in the government. Caelius had become his own man, dreaming his own dream. I feared for him. I told him so. I begged him to stop, to make peace with Isauricus and Trebonius, but it did no good. He believed he had discovered his destiny. There was no stopping him.

"At last he went too far. The Senate passed the Ultimate Decree against him. They made Caelius an outlaw, and then he had no choice but to play his final gambit. He had been in communication with Milo for quite some time, encouraging him to break out of Massilia and to bring his troop of gladiators back to Italy. I think it was in Caelius's mind from the beginning to raise an armed revolt. He meant for it to begin in Rome, then spread across the countryside, but even his powers of persuasion couldn't incite the rabble to sacrifice themselves in such a hopeless cause.

"Caelius went underground, slipping in and out of Rome like a shadow, often wearing a disguise, rallying his supporters and trying to make alliances-'laying the groundwork for a revolution,' he called it-though I don't think he accomplished much. Eventually he arranged to rendezvous with Milo, secretly, here in Rome. He had the temerity to ask me if he could bring Milo here to my house. Absolutely not, I told him. To even suggest such a thing was an insult to the shade of my brother. So they met in that apartment building in the Subura, the one where Cassandra kept a room. I suppose it was Calpurnia who arranged for Cassandra to rent that room as a way to keep watch on Caelius and his supporters in the building?"

"I think so, yes."

Clodia nodded. "Caelius was suspicious of Cassandra, but he didn't know anything about her for certain-whether she was genuine or not, or a black mailer, or a spy or nothing more than a petty schemer. I think he was glad to have her in the building for the same reason in reverse, so that he could keep an eye on her and that mute companion of hers, Rupa. That was how I found out about you and Cassandra. Caelius's agents had observed you coming and going in a manner that suggested only one thing: that the two of you were lovers. Imagine my surprise! Gordianus, that pillar of rectitude and restraint, indulging his animal appetites at last! It amused me that you of all people should have been stung by Cupid's arrow. But secretly I was happy for you. I was in love myself. I wished for the whole world to be in love, including you. Why not?

"Caelius met twice with Milo, two days running. I saw him the night after the first meeting. He was very excited, very talkative. I knew it might be the last time I would see him. Let him talk all he wants, I told myself. You may never hear his voice again.

"He told me about Milo's fascination with Cassandra. Fausta had told Milo all about Cassandra, and he was desperate to meet her and receive a prophecy. It hadn't happened that day-Cassandra was out apparently, nowhere to be found. Caelius hoped she would be in the next day, because Milo seemed absolutely determined to hear what she had to say before he fully committed himself to the insurrection. Doesn't that sound just like Milo? Stubborn and stupid and superstitious. Caelius was almost certain Cassandra would be in her room the next day, because his agents had observed a certain pattern in her routine-that would be the day that you would be calling on her. Caelius took it into his head, not only to consult Cassandra, but to try to win you over to the cause. I told him that you'd never agree to such a thing. 'What if you approach Gordianus, and he refuses?' I said. 'Then we shall have no choice but to kill him,' said Caelius. I absolutely forbade him to do that. I made him give me his word that no harm would come to you, no matter how you responded when he and Milo tried to win you over."

I drew a sharp breath. "It was you to whom Caelius made that promise! I had thought-" I tried to remember exactly the exchange I had heard between Milo and Caelius as I lost consciousness…

"We should have put hemlock in the wine instead of that other stuff," said Milo. "We should lop his head off, here and now."

"No!" said Caelius. "I gave her my word. I promised, and you agreed-"

"A promise made to a witch!" said Milo.

"Call her that if you want since you're not worthy to utter her name! I gave her my word, and my word still means something, Milo. Does yours?"

I had thought it was Cassandra who had somehow extracted that promise from Caelius-but it was Clodia.

"What about Cassandra?" I asked. "When I woke the next day, she was gone, and so was Rupa, and her room was empty, as if she'd never been there."

"I'm not sure what happened. I didn't see Caelius again, but I did receive a message from him-a few scribbled words, obviously written in haste. I think he must have handed it to a messenger just as he was leaving Rome. He mentioned Cassandra, though not by name; he was careful to use no actual names, with the intention of protecting me, I suppose, should the message be intercepted. He ended by cautioning me to burn the parchment at once."

"Did you?"

Her smile seemed to arise from some ironic reflex, the only possible response to a question so foolish. Her fingers trembled as she reached into the bosom of her stola and pulled forth a small, rolled piece of parchment. She handed it to me, and I felt it still warm from its contact with her flesh. I unrolled it and read, squinting to make out some of the more hastily scribbled words:

LITTLE SPARROW, I AM OFF. WISH ME THE FAVOR OF THE GODS. DON'T SAY THAT THE CAUSE IS IMPOSSIBLE. A YEAR AGO, WOULD YOU NOT HAVE SAID THE SAME ABOUT ANY CHANCE THAT YOU AND I WOULD REDISCOVER THE JOY WE HAD LOST? MY SKITTISH PARTNER IS NOW BURSTING WITH CONFIDENCE, THANKS TO THE WORDS OF THAT TROJAN PRINCESS. SHE HAS PROMISED US SUCCESS BEYOND OUR WILDEST HOPES! I THINK THAT SHE TRULY IS A SEERESS, AND IT WAS APOLLO HIMSELF WHO SHOWED HER OUR GLORIOUS FUTURE. MAKE A SACRIFICE TO APOLLO IF YOU WISH TO DO SOMETHING USEFUL. BETTER YET, START WORKING ON THAT LIST, AND MAKE IT A LONG ONE. LOOK FOR GOOD NEWS FROM THE SOUTH. WHEN I SEE YOU NEXT, EVERYTHING SHALL BE DIFFERENT!

I handed the message back to her. "He refers to a list," I said.

"A private joke. He used to say, 'Make a list of the people you want beheaded, Little Sparrow, and I shall see to it straightaway when I take over the city.' "

I felt a chill. The joke had been on Caelius. "But I don't understand what he says about Cassandra. He makes it sound as if she gave Milo the encouraging prophecy he was hoping for."

"I presume she did. 'Success beyond our wildest hopes,' he says."

"Yet Calpurnia gave her specific instructions to do quite the opposite. Cassandra was to do all she could to discourage them from mounting an insurrection. Why did Cassandra disobey Calpurnia?"

"Perhaps someone bribed her to do so. If she took money from Calpurnia, why not from someone else, if that person offered her more?"

I wrinkled my brow. Cassandra had disobeyed Calpurnia to placate her old friend Cytheris. She had disobeyed Calpurnia when she chose to see me. But those had been petty infractions. Would she have dared to disobey Calpurnia in a matter such as this, with so many lives at stake? Who would have encouraged or bribed or threatened her to do so? "Who knew how much Milo was depending on that prophecy?" I said. "Who wanted so desperately for Milo to embark on the insurrection? Caelius, of course…"

Clodia shook her head. "Caelius didn't bribe Cassandra. You read the note, Gordianus. He himself was persuaded by her. He believed she was a genuine seeress."

"Then it can have been only one person."

There was a black wreath on her door. I thought of the wreath that so recently had hung on my own door in memory of Cassandra, and the wreath I had seen on Fulvia's door still marking her grief months after Curio's death. This wreath made a mockery of those others. No doubt I would find her wearing black, with her hair undressed. Did it amuse her to put on the trappings of a bereaved widow? Did she think of her widowhood as an honor she had earned?

Even the gone-to-seed gladiator who answered the door was wearing black. "Hello, Birria," I said. "That color flatters you. It hides your fat."

He scowled at me, then saw I was not alone. It was not Davus who stood behind me, but a troop of Calpurnia's bodyguards. From Clodia's house, I had gone straight to Calpurnia's. After a brief audience with Calpurnia, I had come here.

"I'll tell the mistress you're here," Birria said, and skulked off.

A little later he returned and invited me to follow him. The bodyguards remained outside; but when Birria tried to close the door on them, one of them blocked it with his foot. The fellow was every bit as big as Birria and surrounded by ten more like him. After a brief staring contest, Birria relented and stepped back. The door remained open with the bodyguards standing at attention just outside.

Birria led me to the chamber called the Baiae room, then stepped across the hallway into the garden, looking nervous. Fausta stood just inside the room, dressed in black. Her masses of ginger hair were unpinned and hung about her shoulders. Beside her was a little tripod table set with a small pitcher of wine and a single cup. As on the previous occasion when I had called on her, she indicated that I should take a chair at the far end of the room.

"I'd rather stand," I said. "And I'd rather stay here where I can see you in the light. Black suits you, Fausta. It matches that bruise under your eye."

She winced at my rudeness and touched her face self-consciously. "You've come without that handsome son-in-law of yours, Gordianus?"

"I didn't have time to fetch him. I've come here straight from Calpurnia's house. She was very interested to hear what I had to tell her. She sent some of her men with me."

"So Birria told me. Is she trying to frighten me? I can't imagine why. My husband is dead. Poor Milo! He never posed much of a threat to the state, anyway."

"He incited a great many slaves to revolt. Along with Milo's gladiators, they caused considerable havoc in the region around Compsa."

"Yes, that was unfortunate. But all Milo's gladiators are dead now, and so are all those slaves, aren't they?"

"Yes. They either died fighting or else were crucified, thanks to Milo and the false hope he gave them."

"A tremendous waste of manpower, I'm sure."

"A tremendous amount of suffering!"

"Do slaves really suffer like the rest of us? I'm not sure the philosophers are agreed on that subject, Gordianus. But certainly Milo had a lot to answer for-property damage, lives lost, wasted slaves, not to mention the scare he threw into everyone! But he paid the price, didn't he? He cast the dice, and they came up dogs, and now his lemur is wandering about Hades without a head. But what has any of this to do with me? Since when is a wife held liable under Roman law for her husband's actions?"

"You conspired with Milo against the state."

"Nonsense!"

"You encouraged him to raise the insurrection. He might have balked at doing so, but for your meddling."

She looked at me coldly. "You can't prove that."

"Calpurnia didn't require proof. I merely had to convince her. I explained what I knew, and she insisted on sending those men along with me to make sure you don't try to slip away before Isauricus and his lictors come for you. Conspiring against the Roman state is a crime punishable by death."

Fausta laughed shrilly. "Will they put me on trial, then?"

"They won't have to. The Ultimate Decree is still in effect. The consul Isauricus has the authority to take any steps necessary to safeguard the state. That includes the summary execution of traitors."

She looked at me with fear in her eyes. "Damn you, Gordianus! Why are doing this to me?"

"You did it to yourself, Fausta. Why couldn't you leave Milo to his fate without interfering?"

"Because he was a hopeless bungler and a fool and a coward!" she cried. "Left to his own devices, he'd still be hiding in some hole in the Subura waiting for the right omen to come along. He needed a nudge-no, a kick in the back side! — to get him moving."

"And you gave him that kick by arranging for Cassandra to utter a prophecy of success for the insurrection."

"Yes! And it worked like a charm. What an actress she was! She delivered a performance that convinced even Caelius. It must have been quite magnificent. I only wish I'd been there to see it, but I'd surely have laughed and given her away."

"Where did it happen? When?"

"In her shabby little room in the Subura. She stalled them until nightfall-the visions she described were always more convincing by lamplight, she told me-and then she delivered the last performance of her life. While you were upstairs, sleeping off the drug they gave you, Cassandra was groveling on the dirt floor of her room, foaming at the mouth and uttering the words Milo most wanted to hear. I'd told her just what to say, of course. I knew the images that would appeal most to Milo's brutish imagination. Describe it thus, I told her: An endless triumphal procession with Milo and Caelius at the head, the acclamations of the people like thunder in their ears, Trebonius and Isauricus and all their other enemies in chains behind them, and statues of solid gold in their likenesses installed in the Forum, while somewhere in a gray void we see Pompey and Caesar reduced to the size of dwarves, ripping open each other's bellies with their teeth, devouring one another's entrails in an endless circle, like the worm that eats its own tail. Imagine the dreams that vision put into Milo's head! The next morning he could hardly wait to set out. Caelius was just as eager. They met with their closest supporters, took some with them, left others to manage affairs in their absence, and off they went, convinced that Fortune and the Fates were firmly on their side."

"While I still slept," I whispered, "alone in that room upstairs."

"Not alone. Before he left that morning, Caelius told Cassandra what had become of you. She looked in on you, then left Rupa to look after you."

"Where did she go?"

"She came to this house, of course, to collect her money."

"Money," I said dully. "That was how you persuaded her to go against Calpurnia's wishes? All it took was a little gold?"

"No. It also required a great deal of persuasion. When I told her what I wanted her to do-to encourage Milo to get on with his hopeless insurrection-she resisted. For a while she kept up her pretense of being a genuine seeress. I told her it was no use trying to fool me, and whatever Calpurnia was paying her-that was an educated guess on my part, that she was Calpurnia's agent-I would pay her more. I kept harrying her and offering more gold, until at last she weakened. Put yourself in her place, Gordianus. Here in Rome, thanks to all the skullduggery surrounding the war, Cassandra found herself in a position to make a great deal of money-probably the only chance in her lifetime for such a woman to make so much money. Can you blame her for seizing the opportunity to maximize her fortune? 'Where's the risk?' I asked her. 'If Milo wins, he'll shower you with riches and honors. If he dies, he'll be silent forever. Whatever happens, you'll receive your pay from both of us, with Calpurnia never the wiser.' "

I shook my head. "Then it's just as I said: in the end, all it took was a little gold."

"Not a little gold, Gordianus, a great deal of it! That's what I promised her, anyway. And it wasn't entirely for herself. She said she needed the money… for you."

"For me?"

"So she said. When she came here to collect her money, she seemed to think she had to justify herself to me-as if I cared about her sense of honor. 'I would never have done it,' she told me, 'except that I need more money. I need it for the man I love. He's in a great deal of trouble. He's accumulated an enormous debt. It's crushing the life out of him. If I can free him of it, I will.' You didn't know, Gordianus? Cassandra was thinking of you."

I felt a fire in my head. "But instead of paying her, you poisoned her. Why, Fausta?"

"Because I had no more money! The partial payment I had given her in advance was all I had. She came here looking for the balance, but I had nothing to give her, not even a token payment. I stalled her for as long as I could; I told her I was sending a slave to fetch the money for her. In fact, I dispatched the fellow to the Subura to finish off Rupa. The slave I sent was a big, burly fellow, a former gladiator like Birria. I thought he'd have no trouble, but it seems that Rupa was more than a match for him."

"That was the dead body I found when I woke! Rupa killed him-there in the room while I lay unconscious. Cassandra left Rupa to watch over me. When your man arrived, there must have been a struggle, and Rupa broke his neck. Then Rupa must have panicked. He gathered up everything in Cassandra's room and ran off." Everything, I thought, except her biting stick, which he must have dropped or over looked.

"So far as I know, the mute is still in hiding," said Fausta.

"And even as I woke, Cassandra was here, in this house…"

"Waiting with me in the garden. When one of the slaves brought in a cold porridge for the midday meal and served a portion to each of us, Cassandra suspected nothing."

"What poison did you use?"

"How should I know? I bought it from a fellow who's been in that sort of business a long time; Milo used to go to him occasionally. Painful, or painless, he asked me. I told him I didn't care so long as it was guaranteed to work quickly. But it didn't. The poison acted very slowly. We both finished our porridge and put the bowls aside. Nothing happened. I began to think I had misjudged the dose, or perhaps I'd even given her the wrong portion. Had I poisoned myself? I sat there imagining a burning in my gut as I watched her, unable to take my eyes off her, waiting to see the first sign of distress on her face. Finally-finally! — the poison began to take effect. At first she merely felt ill. She said she thought something in the porridge had disagreed with her. Then a look came over her face-shock, panic-as she realized what was happening. She screamed and threw her empty bowl at me and ran from the garden. I tried to stop her. We struggled. I tore her tunica. She escaped and ran from the house. Birria went after her, but she lost him. He didn't know which way she'd gone.

"I was frantic with worry. Who might she see before the poison finished her? What might she tell them? Finally, later that day, I heard the report of her death in the marketplace. She died in your arms, I was told. Had she told you what happened? Surely not, because hours passed, then days, and you did nothing about it. Still, I was torn by doubts. That was why I dared to come to see her funeral pyre. You were there. So were Calpurnia and some of the other women who had known Cassandra. Everyone saw me, yet no one reacted. That was when I knew for certain that no one suspected I had killed her. I watched her burn, and I was finally satisfied that I had gotten away with it. At last I could turn my thoughts to Milo and wait for the delicious news of his destruction."

I shook my head. "I thought it was Clodia! I thought Clodia would stop at nothing to destroy Marcus Caelius, but in the end she was desperate to save him-from himself! And I thought that you would do whatever you could to stop Milo from carrying out such a mad scheme, but your only desire was to see him destroy himself."

"Paradoxes amuse you, don't they, Finder? I told you, I've no patience with playwrights' devices, similes, metaphors, and such. Ironies and enigmas displease me even more. But I do know when the final act is over." Fausta reached for the pitcher on the table beside her and filled the cup to the brim. "You'll forgive me if I don't offer you a cup as well," she said, lifting it to her lips.

I gave a start and reached for the cup, but too late. She had swallowed the contents in a single draught.

Fausta put down the cup. Her eyes glittered. She blinked and swayed slightly. "The poison merchant promised me that this one would act much more quickly and without… too much… pain." She grimaced. "The liar! It hurts like Hades!" She gripped her belly and staggered out of the room, into the portico off the garden. "People will say I did it out of grief. It's an honorable thing for a widow to take her own life… after her husband dies in battle. Sulla's daughter shall bring no shame to his memory!"

Fausta collapsed to the floor. Birria, who had been pacing the garden, gave a cry and rushed to her. He knelt and scooped her up. Her eyes were open, but she was as limp as a sack of grain in his arms, already dead. He threw back his head and let out a howl. Tears streamed down his face. "No!" he cried. He stared up at me. "What have you done to her?"

"She did it to herself," I said, pointing to the doorway and the little tripod table just inside.

Birria spied the pitcher and the cup. For a long moment he stared into Fausta's lifeless eyes. Finally he released her. I heard a slither of metal as he pulled his short sword from its scabbard. I started back, but the blade was not for me. Kneeling over Fausta, he turned the sword against his belly and braced himself. A look came over his features such as one sometimes sees on the face of a gladiator in the arena at the end-a look at once resigned and defiant, contemptuous of life itself.

Birria drew a last breath and fell onto his sword. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he let out a gasp. Blood poured from the wound and trickled from his lips. He pitched and heaved for a moment, then stiffened, then collapsed across the body of his mistress.