John Roberts - Saturnalia

“I am Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger and I …”

“If you’re one of the aedile’s assistants, I’ve paid my fees.” By this she meant her bribe.

“For a fortune-teller your powers of anticipation are not great. I have nothing to do with the aediles.”

“Oh, good. I’ve had quite enough of them for this year. Bad enough having to look forward to the next lot.” She was a handsome, big-boned woman with straight features and the very slightly tilted eyes common to those of Etruscan descent. Her dark brown hair was pinned up beneath her headgear. “So what may I do for you? When folk of your class want to consult with me, they usually send their slaves.”

“Do they? Well, there are some things I prefer to do for myself. Things concerning certain, shall we say, very private matters.”

“Very wise. I don’t suppose you need medicinal herbs. I’ll wager you consult with a Greek physician to treat your ills.” She looked down her high-bridged nose as she said it, to show her contempt for such newfangled foreign practices.

“I enjoy excellent health at the moment.”

“An aphrodisiac, then? I have some excellent medicines to restore virility.”

“I’m afraid not; and before you suggest it, I do not require an abortifacient.”

She shrugged. “Then you’ve about exhausted my store.” Her attitude was strange. Vendors usually press their wares upon you whether you want them or not. This one seemed almost disdainful.

“Suppose I found myself plunged into deepest despair?”

“Try a skilled whore and a jug of wine. That should fix you up nicely. Improve your outlook no end.”

I was almost beginning to like her. “But this is a melancholy beyond bearing. I must end it.”

“Try the river.”

“That would be ungentlemanly. You get all bloated and fish nibble at you.”

“You look like you’ve spent some time with the legions. Fall on your sword. You can’t get nobler than that.” She was amused, but she also seemed angry.

“I want an easy and painless way out of my troubles. Is that so difficult to procure?”

“Senator, your talk may be good for making the flowers grow, but that’s all. What is it you’re after?”

“I want to know why you are so reluctant to sell me a perfectly legal means of suicide.”

She stood, unwinding gracefully from her cross-legged seat without using her hands. She was taller than I had expected. Standing in her bare feet she was able to look me straight in the eyes. Her own were green and startlingly direct. She stepped very close, within a few inches of me. As a trained rhetorician, I knew that she was making use of her great physical presence to intimidate me. It worked.

“Senator, go away. Words like ‘legal’ may have some sort of meaning in the Senate, but not among us.” Her breath smelled sweetly of cloves.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ll not end up like Harmodia, and neither will anyone else in this market. Try as you will, nobody will sell you what you want.”

“Who is Harmodia? And why this sudden coyness concerning poison?” But I was already talking to her back. She stepped delicately to her mat and pirouetted as gracefully as a dancer, then settled on it as gently as a cloud. I couldn’t do that without my knees popping like sticks in a fire.

“The subject is closed, Senator. Now leave. Unless you want your fortune told?” Now she showed a hint of a smile. I wondered if she were badgering me.

“Why not?”

“Then come sit here.” She gestured to the mat before her as graciously as a queen offering a seat to the Roman ambassador. I sank onto the reeds, trying not to make too awkward a job of it. We were almost knee to knee. She reached behind her and brought out a wide oval tray of very ancient design, made of hammered bronze with hundreds of curious little figures chased on its surface. I knew the work to be Etruscan. She balanced it across our knees and picked up a bronze bowl with a lid and handed it to me. Then she took off the lid.

“Shake this thirteen times, circling to the left, then pour it onto the tray.”

The bowl contained a multitude of tiny objects and I did as I was bidden, rotating the bowl violently in leftward circles thirteen times. Then I upended it and the things inside tumbled out. There were stones and feathers and a great many tiny bones; the reedlike bones of birds and the knucklebones of sheep. I recognized the skulls of a hawk and a serpent, and the yellow fang of a lion old enough to have been killed by Hercules. She studied these, muttering under her breath in a language I did not recognize. The light coming in over the door curtain seemed to dim, and a cold breeze touched me.

“You are rooted to Rome, but you spend much time away,” she said. “Your woman is high-placed.”

“What other sort of woman would I have?” I said, disappointed. “And what senator doesn’t spend half his time away from Rome?”

Furia smiled slyly. “She is higher than you. And there is something about her that you fear.” This took me aback. Julia was patrician. But fear her? Then I remembered what there was about Julia that I feared; I feared her uncle, Julius Caesar.

“Go on.”

“Oh, you want a special fortune told?” Now her smile was openly malicious. She gathered up her things and replaced them in the pot and covered them. Then she put away the tray. “Very well. But remember that you requested this.”

Now she settled herself and her face went blank, hieratic, like the face of an Asian priestess.

“Give me something to hold that is yours. Have you something that has belonged to you for a long time?”

All I had with me were my clothes, a small purse, my sandals, and the dagger I usually hid in my tunic when I went out during uncertain times. I took out the dagger.

“Will this do?”

Her eyes glowed eerily. “Perfectly. I won’t have to use a knife of my own.” That sounded ominous. She took the dagger and held it for a moment.

“You’ve killed with this.”

“Only to preserve my own life,” I said.

“You needn’t justify yourself to me. I don’t care if you murdered your wife with it. Give me your right hand.”

I held it out. She took it and gazed into my palm for a long time and then, before I could pull it back, she slashed the tip of the blade across the fleshy pad at the base of the thumb. The blade was so sharp that I felt no pain, just a thrum like a plucked lyre string that went all through my body. I made to jerk my hand away.

“Be still!” she hissed, and it was as if I was rooted to the spot. I had lost all power of motion. Swiftly, she drew the blade across her own palm, then she gripped our two hands together, with the hilt of my dagger between them. The bone grip grew slick with blood.

I was almost beyond astonishment, but she further amazed me. She raised her free hand to the neck of her gown and jerked it down, baring her left breast. It was larger than I would have expected, even on so Junoesque a woman, full and slightly pendulous. In the dimness the white of her flesh was almost luminous against the black fabric. She drew my hand toward her, and held both hands and dagger against the warm softness of her breast.

For a moment I thought, half-crazily, This beats gutting a sacrificial pig any day! Then she began to speak, in a rapid monotone, running her words together so that they were difficult to follow as her brilliant green eyes lost focus.

“You are a man who draws death like a lodestone draws iron. You are Pluto’s favorite, his hunting dog to chase down the guilty, a male harpy to rend the flesh of the damned and blight their days, as yours will be blighted.” She released my hand, almost throwing it back at me. As I fumbled the dagger back into its sheath, she contemplated the spiderweb of our mingled blood that nearly covered her breast, as if she read some significance in the pattern. A heavy drop gathered on the bulbous nub of her nipple, mine or hers, who could tell?