The Rome Prophecy

Jon Trace
PROLOGUE

The Ancient Diary of Cassandra

Italy

Few people know the moment they will die.

Perhaps, for such privileged information, I should be grateful.

I am Cassandra, a proud and noble descendant of the house of Savyna, and I am not afraid to die.

I would rather die than tell them what I am involved in, what I am covering up, what secret I am prepared to take to my grave.

And that, I suppose, is what enrages this ragged mob.

You can see the blood lust in their wild eyes and hear it in their crazed baying. You can even smell it in their animal excitement.

May the gods of the inferno damn them all.

The people of Cosmedin are out in force today.

Out for me.

They line their piss-soaked streets and drip like grease from the windows of their shabby tenements, screaming and spitting as I am paraded before them.

What is my crime?

Not what I am accused of. That is the irony. They are to test me – and no doubt punish me – for sins of much lesser import than the secret I shelter within my bosom.

Graffiti writers suggest that I lie down with one other than my husband. The mimes show me with a nimble youth, cuckolding that fat and cruel senator whom my father made me marry.

Oh that it were the case! I should gladly plead to such an indiscretion, for no woman of Rome would condemn me. My husband is a man of high office and low morals. He is three times my age and half my equal.

I suppose it was my coldness towards him that first made him suspicious. To idiots like Lucius, a wife who will not give herself to his bestial whims and who demands time alone is bound to be adulterous .

Let him be deluded.

I would rather suffer endless agony than disclose to him the existence of the Tenth Book and those I call sisters.

And so the ignorant crowds of Cosmedin pelt me with old bread and rotten vegetables. Most miss the rickety chariot in which I am jolted to my death. Some find their mark, and though they sting and bruise, I will not cry.

I hold my head with chin tipped to Zeus and will not let them see the fear welling inside me.

I will not bow in shame as they want me to.

Not now.

Not even later, at the climax of this terrible ceremony.

I remind myself again – I am Cassandra. A noblewoman. Strangers’ hands now pull at my skirts. Hands not fit to wipe sweat from the brows of thieves and lepers. They tear at my garments, hoping nakedness will complete my humiliation. Fingers pull jewellery from around my neck. Only now do soldiers beat them away with shields. The thief looks at the strange stone he’s plundered, a dull black triangle on a plaited cord, and is dumbstruck by disappointment.

Fool.

He’ll never know what it’s worth.

The chariot rolls on, rocked by the crowd. Like a ship tossed on a sea of jeers.

On the horizon I see it.

La Bocca della Verita – the Mouth of Truth.

One of the justices leads me to it, turns me to the mob. ‘Cassandra, wife of the noble Lucius Cato. You are accused of infidelity, of tarnishing the good name of your husband, a senator of the great republic of Rome. The time has come to break your foolish silence, to name the man with whom you betrayed your husband and to atone for your sins. What say you?’

I make my face like clay.

If I told them the truth, they would let me go. Their plebeian shouts would turn to poison in their mouths.

But I shall not.

The truth must be kept secret, even if it means suffering for an indiscretion I did not commit.

The Justice stares through me. His eyes are as cold as the winter snows, his words as hot as the fires of Hades. ‘Then by the power invested in me, I today action the order to verify your honour and your loyalty to your husband.’

My arm is taken by a soldier.

I see his dark hairy fingers on my pale skin, dirt caked beneath thin slivers of bitten fingernails.

There is total silence now.

Even the fountain holds its water.

He pushes my right hand through the savage mouth of the giant disc .

I feel nothing.

Now – slowly – an amazing warmth creeps through me. A soldier appears from behind the Bocca and lifts a basket aloft.

The crowd roars.

My world goes dizzy. My legs buckle. As I fall, I see only the basket and in it my severed hand.

My secret is safe.