A Mist of Prophecies

by Saylor, Steven

  ‘What happened to him?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, as I heard it . . .’ Hieronymus lowered his voice. His eyes glittered with excitement at being able to deliver the details to a virgin ear, but Davus, too agitated to hold his tongue, interrupted him.

  ‘They cut him down!’ said Davus. ‘When Caelius arrived at Thurii, he strode right through the open gates of the city – word hadn’t yet reached them to be on their guard against him. He walked through the market, into the forum, and up the steps to the porch of the town senate building. He clapped his hands and called to a group of soldiers to go and fetch their companions because he wanted to address them. A crowd gathered. Caelius started speaking. They say his voice was too big for the little forum at Thurii. People could hear him all over the city and even outside the walls and in fishing boats out on the water. More townspeople and soldiers gathered until the little forum was packed.

  ‘Apparently, most of the soldiers stationed at Thurii are Spaniards and Gauls from Caesar’s cavalry. Caelius tried to get them excited by reminding them of all the slaughter and destruction Caesar had brought to their native lands. But the soldiers would have none of it. They refused to hear a word against Caesar. They started booing and hissing and stamping their feet, but Caelius only raised his voice. He told them that Caesar had betrayed the people of Rome, and it was only a matter of time before he would betray them as well. The soldiers pelted Caelius with stones, but he kept talking, even with blood running down his face. Finally they rushed up the steps. They tore Caelius limb from limb. He screamed at the soldiers, calling them fools and lackeys. He never stopped talking until they threw him to the ground and crushed his windpipe by stamping on his throat.’

  Milo’s skull had been crushed. Caelius had been torn apart. What had become of their heads, which Calpurnia had so fervently desired to have brought to her? Only their heads could provide her with incontrovertible proof that the menace was over; only then could she write to Caesar with the good news without fear that her informants might be wrong. Would she gloat over those heads just a little, indulging her emotions in a manner unbecoming to a Roman matron?

  ‘. . . were crucified,’ I heard Davus say, jarring me back to the moment.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The gladiators at Neapolis and the field slaves who fought with Milo: they were crucified. The gladiators were already in custody. As for the field slaves, the soldiers from the garrison at Compsa hunted them down. Some died fighting, but most of them were rounded up and crucified alongside the roadways. They say so many slaves haven’t been crucified at one time since the days of Spartacus, when Crassus put down the great slave revolt and lined the whole length of the Appian Way with crucified slaves.’

  A silence fell over the garden. Hieronymus, sensing an opening, flashed a sardonic expression and began to say something, but I held up my hand. ‘I’ve heard enough,’ I said. ‘I want to be alone for a while. Davus, go to Diana. She’s with her mother, I think. Hieronymus, I heard a commotion in the kitchen a moment ago. Androcles and Mopsus are probably behind it. Would you go and have a look?’

  They departed the garden in separate directions and left me alone with my thoughts.

  I was surprised at how powerfully the news affected me. Milo had been a hotheaded brute and no friend of mine. Caelius had been either a mad visionary or a crass opportunist. Did it matter which, in the end? Together they had tried to bully me into joining their cause. When I refused, they had allowed me to escape with my life – but only, so far as I could make out, because Cassandra somehow compelled them to do so. What had been her connection to the two of them? Now that Milo and Caelius were both dead, in retrospect it seemed more impossible than ever that their mad scheme could have possibly succeeded.

  Cassandra had been murdered. Why? By whom?

  An idea came to me. How could it not have occurred to me already? It was so obvious, yet I had somehow tricked myself into overlooking it. The instant of revelation was so acute as to be palpable, almost painful, as if a spring inside my head suddenly uncoiled. I must have actually cried out, for Davus reappeared in the garden, quickly followed by Hieronymus and the boys.

  ‘Father-in-Law,’ said Davus, ‘you’re weeping!’

  ‘I had no idea he would take the news so hard,’ whispered Hieronymus.

  Androcles and Mopsus looked at me aghast. They had never seen me so shaken, even at Cassandra’s funeral.

  ‘Fetch my toga,’ I told them. ‘I must pay a formal visit.’

  ‘Where are you going, Father-in-Law? I’ll put on my toga, too—’

  ‘No, Davus, I shall go alone.’

  ‘Surely not on such a day,’ insisted Davus. ‘You don’t know what it’s like down in the Forum.’

  ‘The young man is right,’ said Hieronymus. ‘The streets aren’t safe. If Caelius’ supporters riot, and Isauricus calls on his own ruffians to keep order—’

  ‘I shall go alone,’ I insisted. ‘I won’t be going far.’

  She would not be at her horti, not on a day such as this, with so much uncertainty and the potential for violence in the city. She would be safely locked up in her house on the Palatine, only a short walk from my own. I kept to the smaller streets and saw hardly anyone afoot. Every now and then I heard echoes from the Forum – shouts of jubilation, as far as I could tell. Isauricus must have called up every partisan he could muster to make a show of celebrating the news from the south.

  Her house was situated at the end of a quiet lane. In recent years the trend among the wealthy and powerful had been to erect massive, ostentatious houses that brazenly proclaimed their owners’ status, but hers was a very old house and had been in her family for generations; it followed the old-fashioned custom of houses of the great patrician families by presenting an unassuming face to the street. The front was windowless and stained with a muted yellow wash. The doorstep was paved with glazed red and black tiles. The wash needed redoing, I noticed, and some of the tiles were cracked or missing. Framing the rustic oak door were two towering cypress trees. They, too, had an unkempt look; they were shot through with pockets of dead, brown foliage and masses of spiderwebs. Those trees were visible from the balcony at the back of my house. I never noticed them without thinking of Clodia.

  I expected a handsome young man or a beautiful girl to answer the door – Clodia had always surrounded herself with beautiful things – but it was an old retainer who greeted me. He disappeared for a few moments to announce me, then returned and escorted me deeper into the house. Once it had been among the most sumptuously appointed homes in Rome, but now I saw pedestals without statues, places on the walls where paintings should have been, cold floors that lacked rugs. Like so many others in Rome whose place in the world had once seemed unshakable, Clodia had fallen on hard times.

  She was in her garden, reclining on a couch beside a little fish-pond, dropping bits of meal into the water and watching the fish dart about, their scales flashing in the watery sunlight. This was the garden where years ago I had attended one of her infamous parties; Catullus had declaimed a poem of passion and grief while couples made love in the shadows. Now it was silent and empty except for Clodia and her fish.

  She looked up from the pond. The sunlight reflected from the surface of the water had a flattering effect; I caught a glimpse of Clodia as she had appeared when I had first met her years ago, when her beauty had been at the very end of its bloom.

  ‘Another visit, so soon?’ she said. ‘For years you forget me, then you come calling at my horti, and now at my house. So much attention is likely to spoil me, Gordianus.’ She seemed to produce this banter by rote; her voice had the proper lilt, but there was no spark in her eyes.

  ‘You’ve heard the news?’ I said.

  ‘Of course. Rome has been saved once again, and all good Romans must assemble in the Forum to shout, “Hurrah!” The Senate will pass a resolution to congratulate the consul. The consul will issue a proclamation to congratulate the Senate. The commander of
the garrison at Compsa will receive a promotion. The soldiers at Thurii—’ Abruptly she stopped. She gazed down at the hungry fish, who crowded together and gazed back at her.

  ‘For months you’ve been seeing Marcus Caelius,’ I said, ‘ever since he came back from Spain with Caesar. All spring and summer, while he was stirring up trouble in the Forum, he was also coming here to your house.’

  ‘How do you know that, Gordianus?’

  ‘Calpurnia told me. She has spies all over the city.’

  ‘Does she think I was in league with Caelius?’

  ‘Were you?’

  Clodia’s face drew taut. The flattering moment passed; she looked her age. ‘For people like Calpurnia, the world must seem such a simple place. Others are in league or not in league; allies or enemies; to be trusted or not. She has the mind of a man. She might as well not be a woman.’

  ‘Curious,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Calpurnia has an equally low opinion of you, but for opposite reasons. She says you’re driven by whims and emotions. She says you’re weak and have no control.’

  Clodia laughed without mirth. ‘We’ll see how long a woman like Calpurnia can hold Caesar’s interest, if and when he makes himself master of the world. Can you imagine making love to such a block of wood?’

  ‘You’ve changed the subject. Were you in league with Caelius?’

  ‘In league with him? No. In love with him . . .’ Her voice broke. She shut her eyes. ‘Yes.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe you. You were lovers once, but that was years ago. You prosecuted him for a murder. You did your best to destroy him, to have him driven out of Rome. Instead, he humiliated you in the court. He stood up for Milo after your brother was murdered. After all that, you can’t possibly—’

  ‘How would you know what I’m capable of, Gordianus?’

  I felt a sudden, cold fury in my chest. ‘I’m afraid I may know exactly what you’re capable of.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I don’t think you fell in love with Caelius all over again. That would make you as flighty and foolish as Calpurnia paints you. And you’re not a fool. You’re hard and shrewd and endlessly calculating. I think you hated Marcus Caelius more than ever when he came back to Rome with Caesar. There he was, the man you despised most in the world, standing proudly at Caesar’s side, rewarded with a magistracy, still a player in the great game despite all your efforts to destroy him – while you languished in obscurity, your fortune squandered, your reputation a joke, your beloved brother dead and gone. Vengeance must never be far from your thoughts. What else is there for you to think about now that everything that once brought you pleasure is gone, including your beauty?’

  She stared at me blankly. ‘You needn’t speak so cruelly, Gordianus.’

  ‘You dare to call me cruel when it was you who deliberately snared Marcus Caelius a second time in your net, all the while plotting how finally to destroy him? I said your beauty was gone, and it’s true. But Caelius knew you when you still possessed it. He was under its spell once, and he never forgot. He remembered you as you were – as I remember you. You sought him out. You seduced him a second time; you managed to make him fall in love with you all over again. You made him trust you. And then what? How did you plant the seeds of discontent in his heart? Very subtly, I imagine, with a well-placed word here and there. You cast aspersions on Caesar – mild at first, then more and more caustic. You reminded him of the power of the Roman mob and the fact that no one since your brother had successfully harnessed their power. I can hear you: “Caesar doesn’t know your value, Marcus. He’s wasting your talents! Why does he reward mediocrities like Trebonius above you? Because he’s jealous of you, that’s why! Because he secretly fears you! If only my dear brother were still alive. What an opportunity he could make of this situation! The people are miserable, they’ve lost their faith in Caesar, they despise him – all they need is a man who can harness their anger, a man with the gift of speech and the nerve to pit himself against the lapdogs Caesar has left in charge of the city. Such a man could make himself ruler of Rome!” ’

  Clodia stared at me, her eyes flashing, but she said nothing.

  ‘Shall I go on? Very well. You encouraged him to make wilder and wilder promises to the mob, to bait his fellow magistrates, to insult the Senate, to speak words of sedition against Caesar himself. When he finally went too far and Isauricus tried to arrest him, how that must have delighted you! But Caelius slipped the net. He went into hiding. Then he made common cause with Milo – the convicted killer of your brother – and how that must have galled you! Meanwhile, you never ceased plotting Caelius’ destruction. I think you were still in touch with him, still guiding him towards his ruin. Perhaps he balked, seeing the hopelessness of the prospect before him. Did you goad him on, telling him the gods were on his side? Did you cast aspersions on his manhood? Did you tell him only a coward would stop in midcourse? And when Milo – superstitious, omen-fearing Milo – sought out a seeress to show him the future, what did you do about that, Clodia?’

  I waited for her to answer, wanting to hear the truth from her own lips, but she only continued to stare at me with a wild look in her eyes.

  ‘Cassandra was Calpurnia’s spy,’ I said. ‘Did you know that?’

  She wrinkled her brow and spoke at last. ‘No. But I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Milo wanted to seek her out for a prophecy. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you were still in touch with Caelius, even after he went into hiding?’

  ‘Yes. After his escape from Isauricus, he came to this house a few times, always in disguise. False beards. False bosoms!’ A smile crept over her lips, though she seemed to fight it. ‘He loved that sort of thing, going about in disguises. He was mad, completely mad, from the first day I knew him to the last. You might have thought he was taking part in some adolescent prank, not trying to bring down the state. He told me that he’d been in contact with Milo, and Milo was almost ready to join forces with him. “I know how much you hate him,” he said to me, “but it’s the only way. Together we can pull it off!” There was only one catch. Milo had heard of what he called “this half-mad seeress, this woman called Cassandra” – it was Fausta who told him about her – and he was determined first to hear what Cassandra had to say. Milo had latched onto the idea that Cassandra, and only Cassandra, could tell him the future. He was utterly convinced of it. He refused to take another step until he heard from Cassandra’s own lips that the enterprise would succeed.’

  I shook my head. ‘But Cassandra had explicit instructions from Calpurnia to tell Milo no such thing. She was to predict only doom for the insurrection. She was to send Milo and Caelius scrambling to throw themselves on Caesar’s mercy. From what you’ve just told me, if Cassandra had succeeded in carrying out Calpurnia’s instructions, then Milo would never have ridden south with Caelius that day. Someone must have prevented her from delivering that prophecy, someone who wanted the insurrection to go ahead, knowing that it could end only in the destruction of both Milo and Caelius. And that was what you wanted above all else, wasn’t it, Clodia?’ I shook my head. ‘I understand your hatred for both of those men. I don’t doubt that you wanted to see them humiliated and dead, their memories disgraced, their heads delivered to Calpurnia as trophies. But why did Cassandra have to die? Was there no other way?’

  Clodia’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Is that what you think? That I wanted Caelius to die? That I murdered Cassandra? You think you know everything, Gordianus, yet you know nothing!’

  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 cover
ed 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, travelling 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 forwards 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.’