In the hallway, she drew back into a shadowy corner. Again I noticed her slight limp. Birria appeared, to show us out. He curled his lip and from under his bristling brow gave her a look that seemed to border on madness, until I realized it was lasciviousness I saw in his eyes. I looked at Fausta. Despite the shadows, I saw what she had been deliberately concealing by sitting against the light – a bruised, black crescent beneath one of her eyes.
I looked back at Birria and matched his glare with my own. ‘Fausta,’ I said, ‘do you need our help?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You limp. Your arm is in a sling.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s nothing, really. Certainly nothing to concern you. A small accident. I’m a bit clumsy sometimes.’
‘I find that hard to believe of Sulla’s daughter.’
‘What you believe is of no consequence, Finder. Go now. And, Birria, after you’ve shown these two out . . . come straight back to me.’
He gave her a snarling grin, but it was the crooked smile she flashed back at him that made my blood run cold. I turned and walked quickly to the front door, not waiting for Birria to lead the way. In the foyer I paused for a moment to gaze at the marble bust of Sulla and to wonder at the curious events it must have witnessed in that house.
XIII
The sixth time I saw Cassandra – and the seventh and eighth and ninth and all the other times before her death – are jumbled in my mind. Even the exact number of times eludes me. My memories of those meetings blur together, as the heated flesh of two lovers becomes blurred in the act of love, so that the lover cannot tell where his own body ends and that of the beloved begins.
After the first time we made love, we arranged to meet again in her room in the Subura, at a specific time, on a specific day. Thus our pattern was set. These arrangements were determined by Cassandra, partly, I think, to coincide with her mornings at the public baths, for I always found her fresh and clean, but also, I assumed, to make sure that Rupa would not be there when I came. Was he her lover? Her slave? A relative? I didn’t know. She never told me. I never asked.
What did we talk about in the spells between lovemaking? Nothing remotely to do with our complicated circumstances; nothing that might impinge upon the special world the two of us created in that room. I think I did speak sometimes of Diana, Davus and little Aulus, and Hieronymus, and Androcles and Mopsus, especially if one of them had just done something to frustrate me or to make me laugh. And I told her about Meto and the heartbreak I felt at losing him. But I never spoke of Bethesda or Bethesda’s illness. And Cassandra never spoke of Rupa or about her visits to the houses of the highborn and well-to-do women of Rome, nor did she tell me where she came from.
I didn’t care; I didn’t want her history, and I had no thought of the future. I wanted from her the thing that she gave me in that room, the joining of two bodies that filled the present moment to miraculous perfection. I expected nothing else from her. She seemed to expect nothing else from me.
She stirred in me sensations of youth almost forgotten. In flashes I imagined myself a young wanderer in Alexandria again. I was the young man I once had been, in love with the power of his own body; in love for the first time with the body of another; in awe of the extraordinary pleasures those two bodies could share and naive enough to think that no one else on earth had ever experienced sensations so exquisite. In Cassandra’s room, time and space lost all meaning. Together we conjured a kind of sorcery.
What did Cassandra see in me? Long ago I had accepted that the attractions of women would always be a puzzle to me; best to accept the inexplicable without question when it worked in my favour. Still, looking at my face one day in a mirror of polished silver – the last time I looked in that mirror, for soon after I sold it to get a few sesterces to feed the household – I saw a grey-bearded man whose face was lined with worries, and I wondered what Cassandra could find attractive in that weathered countenance. I gazed for a long time in that mirror. I squinted, I blurred my eyes, I looked sidelong, but I couldn’t catch even a fleeting glimpse of the man I became when I was with her.
There was some advantage in appearing so unlikely a lover. No one in my household suspected. When I reappeared after being gone for hours at a time, Diana, if she noticed, might chide me for going out without Davus to protect me. Hieronymus might ask what news I brought from the chin-waggers in the Forum. Bethesda, calling from her bed, might ask why I had failed to bring her the latest impossible-to-find item she had decided might cure her. They were scolding, or curious, or complaining, but not suspicious.
Nonetheless, they all noticed a change in me. I was more patient, less truculent. I no longer snapped at Hieronymus; once again his wit delighted me, and eventually I convinced him to again take dinner with the family. The antics of Mopsus and Androcles amused rather than rankled. When Davus seemed most slow-witted, I found him most charming and thought to myself, No wonder my daughter fell in love with such a fine fellow! Diana was more beautiful and intelligent than ever, and little Aulus, no matter how noisy, was the best of all grandsons. And Bethesda . . .
Bethesda remained unwell. Her malady had settled into her body like a spiteful vagrant lurking in a house, careful never to be seen but leaving unnerving signs of his presence everywhere. At first, her illness had made her snappish and demanding. Then she became increasingly withdrawn and quiet, which was much worse because it was so out of character for her. Her spirits darkened even as mine became lighter.
In her presence I was torn with guilt, not so much because I had been with another woman – the physical act of sex conjured no shame in me – but because I had stumbled into something singular, wonderful, and wholly unexpected, even while Bethesda fell prey to something awful, uncertain, and lingering. All our lives, Bethesda and I had shared everything, as much as any two people could. Now we each had ventured to a place where the other could not follow – and in opposite directions. My experience was magical, hers miserable. I felt the guilt of the well-fed man watching his loved one choke on sawdust and bones.
In the meantime, news of the war continued to arrive from Greece. One heard all sorts of contradictory reports – that Caesar had outmanoeuvered Pompey; that Pompey had outmanoeuvered Caesar. For a while, from Aprilis to mid-Quinctilis, the two made their camps and built fortifications in the region of Dyrrachium, the principal seaport on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea. Both sides seemed set to make the rugged, mazelike hills and gorges around Dyrrachium the arena for a decisive battle. But after an engagement in which Pompey very nearly overran his forces, Caesar saw himself at a disadvantage and moved inland, towards the region of Thessaly. The decisive battle was yet to come.
My visits to Cassandra blur together in my memory, but two incidents stand out.
Just as she never spoke of her visits to highborn women, so she never spoke of the reason for those visits: her spells of prophecy. I did begin once to ask her about them, but she replied by placing her forefinger perpendicular to my lips and then distracting me in other ways. Why did I not press her for details? I can see reasons, but only in retrospect. If she were a fraud, I didn’t want to know it. If she were genuine, and gazing into a flame could induce her to utter prophecies, I didn’t want to hear them. Why seek a glimpse of the future when the future could hold only darkness? In Cassandra I had found a way to live in the present.
Nevertheless, on one occasion I saw the god pass through her.
We were lying naked side by side on her pallet, sweat lubricating our flesh where our bodies were pressed close together. I was watching the progress of a fly on the wall, its wings made iridescent by sunlight from the high window. Cassandra was humming softly, her eyes closed. For a moment I thought I recognized the tune – an Alexandrian lullaby Bethesda had sung to Diana – then decided I must be mistaken. The melody was close, but not quite the same . . .
The humming stopped. I heard only the buzzing of the fly across the room.
Cassandra gave a
lurch so violent that I almost fell from the narrow bed. She struck my nose with her elbow.
I rolled away, covering my face. I jumped to my feet and looked back. Cassandra remained on the bed, her head rolling, her trunk twisting, her limbs flailing. The effect was uncanny, as if every part of her had become a separate animal with a will of its own. Her eyes rolled upward, showing only white.
Suddenly, she sat bolt upright. I thought the spell was over. Then she fell back on the bed, arching her spine and convulsing. I had never seen anything like it. The fit she had suffered outside the Temple of Vesta had been nothing like this.
Something Meto had once said came back to me: He was always afraid he might swallow his tongue. He’s told me I must be prepared to put something in his mouth if his fits should ever recur . . .
Meto had been talking about Caesar. I seemed to hear his voice in my ear: ‘Put something in her mouth!’ I jumped and looked over my shoulder, thinking for a moment that Meto was actually in the room. Anything seemed possible. A god was passing through Cassandra. The very air around me seemed to shudder and spark with intimations of the supernatural.
I remembered the leather baton I had noticed once before, the first time I came to see her. I reached under the mattress and found it almost at once, as if an invisible hand guided me to it.
I clambered atop Cassandra, holding her down with my weight. I tried to pin her wrists with one hand so that I could force the biting stick between her teeth, but she was too strong. As soon as I managed to contain one part of her, another part broke free. The bed itself seemed to come alive, pitching up and down and banging against the wall. From down the hall I heard someone shout, ‘For Venus’s sake, you two, keep it down in there!’
As suddenly as it had begun, the seizure ended. Beneathme, her body went limp. The change was so abrupt that for a moment I thought she might be dead. I pushed myself up and looked down at her, my heart in my throat. Then I saw her chest rise as she drew a deep breath. Her eyelids flickered. It seemed to me that the passage of the god had forced her spirit out of her, and for a moment, after the god passed through, there was no animation in her at all. Gradually reentering her body, her spirit seemed confused, uncertain it had returned to the right place.
She blinked and opened her eyes. She seemed not to recognize me.
‘Cassandra,’ I whispered, reaching out to wipe flecks of foam from her lips. I brushed my fingers against her cheek. She reached up to cover my hand with hers. Her grip was as weak as a child’s.
‘Gordianus?’ she said.
‘I’m here, Cassandra. Are you all right? Do you need anything?’
She closed her eyes. I felt a stab of fear, but she was only resting. She reached up and pulled me against her, embracing me, humming the lullaby she had been humming before, rocking me gently as if I were the one who needed comforting.
Where had she been? What had she seen? After that day, I understood the fascination she inspired in the rich and powerful women who thought they could harness for their own ends the power that coursed through Cassandra.
Later that day, when I returned to my house, everyone noticed my split lip, including Bethesda, who at dinner was in better spirits than she had been in for quite a while and in a mood to gently scold me.
‘Run afoul of some ruffians in the Forum, Husband?’ she asked.
‘No, Wife.’
‘A brawl in some shady tavern, then?’
‘Of course not.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps a beautiful woman gave you a slap for getting fresh with her?’
My face grew hot. ‘Something like that.’
Bethesda smiled and told Mopsus to bring her more stewed leeks, the latest cure in which she had vested her hopes. She seemed satisfied to allow the cause of my swollen lip to remain a mystery, but I noticed that Diana, reclining on one elbow beside Davus on their dining couch, had fixed me with a darkly questioning gaze.
Among those meetings with Cassandra that blur together in my memory, another incident stands out, not least because it occurred on the last day we met in her room in the Subura. It was the last day we would be alone together; the last time we would make love.
I had no way of knowing that at the time. Had I known, would I have held her more tightly, made love to her more passionately? That hardly seems possible. I fear I might have done the opposite, become remote and drawn away from her – doing as many men do when they realize they must lose the thing they love, looking for a shortcut around their suffering. They push away the thing they love before it can be snatched from them.
I never had to confront that dilemma; I never saw what was coming.
It was a warm early afternoon, the day before the Nones of Sextilis. Not a breeze stirred in all of Rome. A stifling haze had settled over the city. Cassandra’s room in the Subura was like a heated cubicle at the baths. Warmth radiated from the walls. A shaft of sunlight entered through the high window and struck the opposite wall, so thick with motes of dust that it seemed a solid thing, a strangely glowing beam lodged above our heads.
I had thought the heat would stifle our lovemaking, but it had the opposite effect, acting on us like a drug. The normal limitations on my body melted away. I transcended myself. I entered a state of rapture so complete I no longer knew where or who I was. Afterwards, I felt as light and insubstantial as one of those motes of dust riding the sunbeam above our heads.
A delicious lethargy overcame me. I felt heavy, solid, inert. My limbs turned to lead. Even a finger was too heavy to lift. I seemed to dream, yet the images conjured by Somnus slipped away before I could apprehend them, like shadows glimpsed from the corner of one’s eye. I neither slept nor woke.
Slowly, gradually, I heard voices.
They seemed to come from somewhere above me, muffled by distance. Two men were speaking. Their words were indistinct, but I could tell that their discussion was heated. ‘Keep your voice down!’ one of them said, loud enough for me to hear.
I knew that voice.
I stirred. I seemed to be waking from a dream. For a long moment, I thought the voices had been part of that dream. Then I heard them again. They came from the room above. Partly I heard them through the floor, but mostly from the high window, which must have been directly below a window of the room above.
I sensed that Cassandra was gone even before I reached for her and found the place beside me empty. The spot was still warm from her body.
The speakers in the room above lowered their voices. I heard them now only as a murmur. Surely I had only imagined that I recognized one of those voices . . .
I got out of bed, reached for my loincloth and stepped into it, then put on my tunic. I stepped past the curtain that covered Cassandra’s doorway, into the hallway beyond. Around a bend, past other curtained doorways, I came to a flight of wooden steps. I took them slowly, trying to make no noise. Even so, the very last step before I arrived at the next floor made a loud creak. The murmur of voices that came from the room at the end of the hall abruptly ceased.
I took another step. The floorboard creaked. From the room at the end of the hall there came only silence. I stood motionless for a long time. Then I heard a voice, the one I had recognized before, say quite distinctly, ‘Do you think that’s him?’
‘It must be,’ said the other man. With a start, I recognized his voice as well.
I had to be mistaken. My imagination was running away with me. To prove it I walked steadily down the hallway, heedless of creaking floorboards. I confronted a curtain much like the curtain that covered Cassandra’s doorway.
I stared at the curtain. From beyond came only silence – or rather, not quite silence, but the sound of men breathing. Did I only imagine that, or could they hear me breathing as well?
I raised my hand to grip the curtain’s edge and imagined someone on the other side doing the same. Would he be holding a dagger in his other hand?
I yanked the curtain aside, hardening my nerves to confront a face star
ing back at me, nose-to-nose. But I was alone at the threshold. The occupants – just the two of them, without a bodyguard in sight – were seated in the middle of the small room. At the sight of me they rose from their chairs. After the dim hallway, the light from the window dazzled me for a moment. I saw them only as two very different silhouettes, one broad and stocky, the other tall and elegantly slender. Gradually their faces came into focus.
‘You see,’ said Marcus Caelius to his companion, ‘it’s Gordianus, just as I said.’
‘So it is,’ said Milo, crossing his brawny arms. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, Finder. Drop the curtain and come inside. And keep your voice down!’
XIV
My interview with Fausta left me in a foul mood. I almost decided to leave off for the day and return home. But what would I do there except brood? There was plenty to brood about – Cassandra dead and my investigations leading me no nearer to the reason; Bethesda ill and growing weaker, with no cure in sight; Rome tottering on a narrow precipice with a chasm on either side, one called Pompey and the other Caesar, and two mastiffs called Milo and Caelius biting at her heels . . .
The day was in direct counterpoint to my mood. The sun shone bright and warm, its intensity relieved by a succession of magnificent clouds that advanced slowly across the azure sky, spaced apart as evenly as if some parade master had arrayed them like elephants in an imperator’s triumphal procession.
‘That one looks like a tragedy mask. You can even see the holes for the eyes and mouth,’ said Davus.
‘What?’
‘That cloud up there. Isn’t that what you’re staring at?’
We sat on a stone bench in a little square not far from Fausta’s house. I had told Davus that I needed to rest for a moment. In fact, it was my mind that was weary and needed to come to a complete stop. I had been staring at the parade of clouds and emptying my head of every thought.
‘Yes, Davus, a tragedy mask.’
A Mist of Prophecies Page 19