A Mist of Prophecies

by Saylor, Steven

  He was straightforward enough when he gave them, but as we were walking off, he yelled after us, ‘Mind you don’t let Antony catch you!’

  ‘Or the fat old banker, for that matter!’ added one of his companions, cracking his whip in the air to a chorus of raucous laughter.

  As Antonia had said, it was a very respectable-looking house, tucked away on a narrow, quiet side street. I noted the fig tree her slave must have used to climb onto the roof of the neighbouring house so as to look down into Cytheris’ garden, spying on the actress and Cassandra.

  Davus knocked. We waited. I told him to knock again. The sun was well up. Apparently Cytheris and her household kept late hours. I was not surprised.

  Finally a puffy-eyed young woman opened the door. She was strikingly beautiful and strikingly unkempt, with her auburn hair hanging unpinned and tangled and her sleeping tunica pulled off one shoulder. Her informality revealed much about the household. Women like Cytheris were rare: a slave from a foreign land who had managed, by cunning and beauty, to become an independent, successful freedwoman. Finding herself in Rome without blood relations, it was natural that she should surround herself with slaves who were almost as much friends as servants, companions whom she could trust and confide in and to whom she gave a far greater latitude than a haughty mistress like Antonia (or Fulvia or Terentia) would ever allow. Such slaves would share to some degree in their mistress’ notorious debauchery; they would stay up late with her and likewise sleep late, and think nothing of answering the door in dishabille.

  The woman who answered the door looked Davus up and down, eyeing him rather as he had eyed the stuffed dates at Antonia’s house. Though her hazel eyes eventually settled on me, acknowledging that the senior of the callers was more likely the one in charge, she seemed not really to see me, and certainly not with the riveting attention she had devoted to Davus, as if I were not a man but the shadow of one. Thus do we become more and more invisible as we grow older, until people fail to see us even when they look straight at us.

  And yet . . . Cassandra had seen me. To her, I had not been invisible; to her I was still a vivid presence, a man of flesh and blood, vital, robust, existing in the moment, teeming with life and sensation. No wonder I had been so vulnerable to her; no wonder I had fallen so completely under her spell . . .

  My thoughts, wandering, were drawn back to the moment by the young woman’s laughter, which was sharp but not cruel. ‘You look like you could use a drink!’ she said, evidence that I was visible to her after all – a grey, glum-looking man in a toga.

  ‘I’ll leave it to your mistress to decide whether she’ll offer me one,’ I snapped.

  ‘My mistress?’ She raised an eyebrow. Suddenly I knew that I was talking to Cytheris herself. She saw the moment of realization on my face and laughed again. Then her expression became more serious. ‘You’re Gordianus, aren’t you? I saw you at the funeral. I saw this one, too . . .’

  ‘This is Davus, my son-in-law.’

  ‘Married, then?’ She said the word as if it were a challenge, not a disappointment. ‘You’d both better come inside. My neighbours are endlessly fascinated by everyone who comes to this door; they’ve probably already seen you and run off to spread more gossip about me. Their own lives must be frightfully boring, don’t you think, for them to be so fascinated by a simple girl from Alexandria?’

  She swept us inside, slammed the door shut behind her, then led us through a small atrium and down a short hallway. The rooms we passed were small but exquisitely furnished. Dominating the little garden at the centre of the house was a statue of Venus on a pedestal, only slightly smaller than life-size. At each of the garden’s four corners were statues of satyrs in states of rampant excitement, partially concealed amid shrubbery as if they were lurking and stalking the goddess of love. Was this how Cytheris viewed herself and her suitors?

  ‘You’re wondering why I answered the door myself,’ she said breezily. ‘You Romans, always so strict about that sort of thing, so insistent on decorum! But really, if you knew what I’ve put the poor slaves through over the last two nights! It’s only fair to let them sleep a bit late this morning. Or is it still morning?’ She stopped beside the Venus and squinted up at the sun.

  I looked around the garden and saw the aftermath of a drunken party. Chairs and little tripod tables were scattered about, some lying on their sides. Wine cups were abandoned here and there; flies buzzed above the crimson dregs. Various musical instruments – tambourines, rattles, flutes, and lyres – were piled helter-skelter against a wall. On the ground beneath one of the lurking satyrs, half-hidden amid the shrubbery, lay a handsome young slave, snoring softly.

  ‘It’s this one’s job to answer the door,’ said Cytheris, walking up to him. I thought she was going to give him a kick, but instead she looked down at him with a doting smile. ‘Such a sweet little faun. Even his snore is sweet, don’t you think?’ Then she did give him a kick, but gently, prodding him with her foot until he finally stirred and rose groggily to his feet, brushing leaves from his curly black hair. He saw that his mistress had company and without being told gathered three chairs and set them in the shade, then disappeared into the house, blinking and rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Bring the best Falernian, Chrysippus!’ Cytheris called after him. ‘Not the cheap swill I served to that rowdy gang of actors and mimes who were here last night.’

  She smiled and indicated that we should sit, then finally took a good look at me. I felt a bit uncomfortable under her scrutiny. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘now I see what it was that Cassandra saw in you. “It’s his eyes, Cytheris,” she said to me once. “He has the most extraordinary eyes – like a wise old king in a legend.” ’

  Did I stiffen? Did my face turn red? Cytheris looked from me to Davus and back and pursed her lips. ‘Oh, dear, was that indiscreet of me?’ she said. ‘You must tell me right away whether I can speak to you candidly or not. I’m not the sort to hold my tongue unless I’m asked to. Perhaps you should send your frowning son-in-law out of earshot for a while – though that would be a pity.’

  ‘No, Davus can stay. There’s no point in concealing anything about Cassandra . . . now that she’s dead. That’s why I’ve come to you. You must have known her quite well if she told you about herself . . . and me.’

  She looked at me sidelong. ‘As you say, now that she’s dead, there’s no point in hiding anything, is there? To whom else have you spoken about her?’

  ‘I’ve been calling on the women who came to her funeral: Terentia, Fulvia, Antonia . . .’

  ‘Ha! You’re not likely to discover anything important about Cassandra from any of those hens, unless it was one of them who murdered her.’ A frown pulled at her lips, but she brightened when Chrysippus reappeared bearing a pitcher and three cups. I had no craving for wine, but only a fool would pass up an offer of good Falernian, especially in such hard times. The dark flavour played upon my tongue and filled my head like a warm, comforting mist.

  ‘Terentia and Fulvia think Cassandra was a true seeress. They were both quite in awe of her,’ I said.

  ‘But not Antonia?’

  ‘Antonia has a very different opinion. She thinks Cassandra was an impostor.’

  ‘And Cassandra’s spells of prophecy?’

  ‘Merely part of an act.’

  Cytheris smiled. ‘Antonia is no fool, no matter what her dear husband says.’

  ‘Antonia was right about Cassandra?’

  Cytheris considered her answer before she spoke. ‘Up to a point.’

  I frowned. Cytheris smiled. She seemed to enjoy my puzzlement. Her smile widened into a yawn, and she stretched her arms above her head. The movement caused her torso to shift in a most intriguing way beneath the loose tunica. Even her most casual movements were marked by a dancer’s gracefulness. I would have cursed her condescending smile except that it made her even more remarkably beautiful. I looked at the stone satyrs lurking in the corners, gazing with lust upon the goddess they would
never touch, and felt a stab of sympathy for them.

  ‘Shall I explain?’ she said.

  ‘I’d be grateful if you would.’

  ‘Where to begin? Back in Alexandria, I suppose. That’s where I met her, when we were both hardly more than children. I was born to a slave mother; but early on someone saw in me a talent for dancing, and I was sold to the master of a mime troupe – not just any troupe, but the oldest and most famous in Alexandria. The master liked to say that his ancestors had entertained Alexander the Great. People in Alexandria are always making claims like that. Still, the troupe could trace its history back for generations. I was taught to dance and mime and recite by some of the finest performers in Alexandria, and that means the finest in the world.’

  ‘And Cassandra?’

  ‘The master acquired her and brought her into the troupe shortly after me. I was terribly jealous of her. Do you know, I think this is the first time I’ve ever admitted that to anyone.’

  ‘Jealous? Why?’

  ‘Because she was so much more talented that I was – at everything! Her gifts were extraordinary. She could recite Homer and make men weep, or make them weep with laughter by enacting a fable by Aesop. She could dance like a veil floating on the breeze. She could sing like a bird, and do so in whatever language you pleased – because she picked up languages the way the rest of us picked up bits of jewellery from admirers in the audience. And she did all this without apparent effort. Beside her, I felt like a clumsy, sweating, squawking fool.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe, Cytheris.’

  ‘Only because you never saw the two of us perform side by side.’

  ‘You must have hated her.’

  ‘Hated her?’ Cytheris sighed. ‘Quite the opposite. We were very, very close back in those days, Cassandra and I. Those lovely days in Alexandria . . .’

  ‘You call her Cassandra, yet that can’t have been her real name.’

  She smiled. ‘The curious thing is, that was what we called her, even then. But you’re right. When she first arrived, she had another name. But do you know, I’ve completely forgotten it. Some totally unpronounceable Sarmatian name; she’d come from somewhere on the far side of the Euxine Sea. But very early on she played Cassandra in a new mime show the master had written. Just a vulgar little skit, really; can you imagine, a comic Cassandra? But she was hilarious, staggering around, harassing the other characters, making rude prophecies and double entendres about the city officials and King Ptolemy. People loved it so much they demanded that mime every time we performed. She made such an impression with the role that the name stuck, and Cassandra was what we called her from then on.’

  Cytheris gazed thoughtfully into her cup, swirling the Falernian into a vortex. ‘We begin as we continue in this life. That’s especially true of us performers. If we’re lucky, we find a role that fits, and we play it to the hilt. I always specialized in playing the wanton woman, the seductress. Look where that role’s taken me! Cassandra played . . . Cassandra. I imagine it must be the same for you, Gordianus. To some extent isn’t the Finder a role you fell into early on, that you gradually perfected, that you’ll keep playing until the end?’

  ‘Perhaps. But if I’m playing a role, where’s the playwright? And if there is a playwright, I’d like to complain to him about the nasty surprises he keeps throwing at me.’

  ‘Complain? You should be thankful for a life that keeps giving you surprises! Surprises keep you on your toes. You wouldn’t want to grow stale in your part, would you?’ She laughed, then sighed. ‘But we were talking about Cassandra. It’s such a pity that women aren’t allowed to be real actors, performing in the Greek tragedies or even in silly Roman comedies. Instead, only men can go on the legitimate stage. It doesn’t matter if the role is a swaggering general or a virgin goddess, it’s a man who performs it behind a mask. Women are allowed only to be dancers or to perform mime comedies in the street. It’s criminal, really. When I think of what our Cassandra could have achieved performing the great female parts – the Antigone of Sophocles or Euripides’s Medea. Or the Clytaemnestra of Aeschylus – imagine that! She’d have made your blood run cold. She’d have made strong men run whimpering from the theatre! Perhaps that’s why women aren’t allowed to play women on the stage – the result might be too disturbing for you men in the audience, and too inspiring for the women.

  ‘Even so, we actresses sometimes manage to find the role that takes us where we want to go. We simply have to create it ourselves and live it day by day, instead of performing it on a stage. That’s what I did. And that’s what our Cassandra did.’

  ‘Until the role killed her,’ I said. ‘You say you met her in Alexandria. What then?’

  ‘Dear old Volumnius came along. Fat, sweet, incredibly rich Volumnius. This was five years ago – yes, almost exactly five years to the day. Volumnius was in Alexandria on some sort of business trip. He just happened to be passing through the Rhakotis district with his entourage one day when we were performing near the Temple of Serapis. I spotted him in the audience right away, fiddling with his gold rings and his gold necklaces and biting his lips and watching me dance the way a cat watches a sparrow flit through the trees. I put on the performance of my life that day. I was doing the dance of seven veils, taking them off one by one – a bit of naughtiness to spice up the show in between all the clowning. You’re supposed to take off only six veils, of course; that’s the point, to tease the crowd and make them hang around for more, hoping you’ll come back for an encore. But that day I didn’t stop at six; I took off the seventh as well.’

  Cytheris laughed. ‘Volumnius’ eyes almost popped out of his head! As for the poor master, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. Even in Alexandria, women can’t dance naked in the street, and the city authorities were always looking for some excuse to shut us down. But I took off that final veil as a gambit, and the gambit worked. The next day I had a new master. When Volumnius headed back to Rome on his private ship, I was with him. And I’ve never looked back.’

  ‘Now you’re a freedwoman.’

  ‘Yes. Antony helped with that. I still have certain . . . contractual obligations . . . to Volumnius, but this house and everything and everyone in it are mine.’ She snorted. ‘No wonder a woman like Antonia hates me so much. What has she ever accomplished on her own merit? Everything comes to her because of her family and her name. She couldn’t even find a husband outside her family! I should feel desperately trapped, living such a cramped little life. I’ve made my own way in the world, using what the gods gave me.’

  ‘What about Cassandra?’

  ‘That was the hardest thing about leaving Alexandria – saying good-bye to Cassandra. I wept. So did she. I was sure I’d never see her again. When you’re young, the world seems such a big place, so easy to get lost in. But it’s not so big after all, is it? All roads lead to Rome. I came by one road. Cassandra came by another. Earlier this year I began to hear the rumours about a madwoman down in the Forum who had the gift of prophecy. People said she was called Cassandra. I thought, Could it possibly be my Cassandra? I piled into that gaudy litter Antony gave me and went to have a look. And of course it was her, standing in front of the Temple of Vesta wearing a ragged tunica, muttering to herself and begging for alms. What in Hades is she up to? I asked myself. Then I began to worry. What if she really had gone mad? What if she had taken it into her head that she really was her namesake? Perhaps the gods had punished her – had looked down and seen her making a mockery of the Trojan princess whom Apollo tormented, and for her hubris they had driven her mad. Half the lunatics and religious fanatics in the world make their way to Rome; why not Cassandra, if she had gone crazy? You see . . .’

  Cytheris hesitated. I gave her a questioning look.

  ‘Even now, all these years later, this isn’t easy to talk about,’ she said. ‘When we were young, I promised her I would tell no one. She was always so frightened that it would happen while she was performing, that her secret a
ffliction would be exposed . . .’

  ‘She has no need of secrets now,’ I said.

  Cytheris nodded. ‘You’re right; I’ll tell you. Cassandra was subject to spells of falling sickness. In the time I knew her in Alexandria, it happened only twice that I knew of. But it was frightening to watch. I’ll never forget the first time. We were alone in the room we shared at the master’s house. We were talking, laughing – then suddenly she was thrown to the floor. It was uncanny, bizarre, as if a giant, invisible hand had cast her down and was holding her there while she thrashed and writhed. Her eyes rolled up in her head. She foamed at the mouth. She muttered something incomprehensible. I had the presence of mind to put something in her mouth to keep her from swallowing her tongue, and I did my best to hold her down so that she wouldn’t hurt herself.

  ‘When it was over, she gradually came to her senses. She remembered nothing. I told her what had happened. She said it had happened to her before, and she begged me to tell no one. I told her the master would have to know, that he’d find out sooner or later. But she made me promise not to tell him. She said perhaps it would never happen again. But it did, at least once more before I left Alexandria. That time, too, it was in our room, and no one but me saw it.’

  Cytheris studied my face. ‘This is familiar to you, isn’t it, Finder? Did something similar happen to Cassandra on one of your visits to her? She told me about your visits. I know that you called on her more than once.’

  I took a deep breath and evaded the question. ‘I was thinking of something my son—’ I stopped myself from speaking Meto’s name. ‘I was thinking of something I once was told about Caesar. For a period of time, during his youth, he suffered from such seizures. He, too, tried to keep them secret. Gradually they stopped, and they’ve never recurred. A priest once told him his seizures were a sign of the gods’ favour. Caesar himself believes they were the result of a blow to his head when he was kidnapped by pirates as a young man.’