Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

I nodded, taking in all that Fulvia had told me. "That was the last you saw of her, then?"

Something in her eyes changed, as if a door that had been open was abruptly shut. She seemed evasive. "Thraso reported to me later that she had become something of a fixture in the Forum and the markets, and that people had given her a name: Cassandra. I asked him to find out more about her, but there was very little he could discover, except that others in the city besides myself were availing themselves of Cassandra's gifts."

"Others?"

"You saw them-the women who appeared at her funeral. If you want to find out what they knew about Cassandra, ask them yourself. If you do discover something of interest about her-if you do find out who killed her-come tell me, Gordianus. I'll pay you well for the information. I'd like to know, simply out of curiosity. I've been entirely open with you, after all." As if to contradict her words, the faint smile that had been absent from her face since she began the tale of how she met Cassandra returned, and I had the feeling that she was holding something back from me.

"You never saw her again, face-to-face?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps, briefly. But that meeting was of no particular consequence. There's nothing more of any significance I can tell you." She sighed. "I'm tired now. I think I shall rest a bit before taking dinner. I'm afraid I must say farewell, Gordianus, to you and to your taciturn but very ornamental young son-in-law. Thraso will show the two of you out." She turned her gaze from me to the window. After a moment, her mother did likewise. Together they stared at the framed image of a distant cloud lit by the twilight's last blush of lurid pink against a back drop of lapis lazuli. A scattering of faint, early stars twinkled in the darkening firmament.

The slave showed us down the stairs and through the long hallways. We had reached the soaring atrium when another slave, running at a trot, caught up with us and told us to wait. Thraso raised an eyebrow, then saw the reason we were being detained. At the far end of the hallway we had just traversed, coming toward us at a surprisingly fast clip for a woman her age, was Sempronia. As she drew closer, her gaze fixed on me as if I were a rabbit and she a descending hawk.

With a curt wave she dismissed the slaves. We stood at the base of one of the immense black marble columns that supported the skylight far above our heads. Sempronia drew close to me, speaking in a hoarse whisper. The vast space swallowed up her voice without giving back an echo.

"My daughter was not entirely forthcoming with you, Gordianus."

I raised an eyebrow, afraid that any comment might put her off. For some reason, despite her earlier suspicion, she had decided to trust me. What did she want to tell me?

Sempronia frowned. "My daughter has endured a great deal of suffering in her life. It's because she's so ambitious, of course; even more ambitious than I was at her age." She flashed a thin smile that contained no warmth. "I sometimes think: If only she'd been born a boy. But of course, if that were the case, she'd probably have gotten herself killed already-like Clodius, like Curio-or perhaps not. Fulvia is smarter than either of those fellows were. That's a curse for a woman, to be smarter than her husband. Fulvia's carried that curse twice in a row. Clodius and Curio-at least their ambitions and their dreams matched hers, if not their wits." She shook her head. "Now she's a widow again, with children from both her marriages, children who must be given the best possible chance in the world that's about to be created on some battlefield far from Rome."

"What if Pompey wins that battle?" I said.

She drew a sharp breath through her nostrils. "Such a disaster doesn't bear considering. No, Caesar will win. I'm sure of it."

"Because Cassandra said so?"

Sempronia gave me another chilly smile. "Perhaps."

"And if Caesar does triumph, what then?"

"My daughter will need another husband of course. And this time she must choose the right one, a man as shrewd and ruthless as she is, a man who knows how to seize an opportunity, a survivor! A man who can give my grandchildren their rightful place in the new world about to be born."

I nodded. "Fulvia saw Cassandra a second time, didn't she?"

"Yes."

"Because Cassandra could give her a glimpse of the future."

"Exactly! The witch could see across time as well as space. But it wasn't Fulvia who brought Cassandra here the second time. I sought her out. Fulvia didn't want her here. She was afraid to know her future, afraid it would match the misery of her past. But I told her that a woman must use whatever tools she can to make her way in the world. If the witch could give us even a faint glimpse of what lay in store, then we must seize that knowledge and use it!"

"When did you bring her here?"

"A little less than a month ago."

"And what did Cassandra foresee for Fulvia?"

"Glory! Power! Riches! My daughter shall rise to the first place among all the women of Rome."

"Even ahead of Calpurnia?"

"Caesar will triumph, but he can't live forever. He must have a successor."

I frowned. "You mean to say that Caesar will be a king and pass his crown to another? That was what Cassandra foresaw?"

"Nothing that specific. When her visions came, she didn't always see them clearly or understand what she saw. She couldn't even recall them afterward; she could only describe them as they came to her."

"And when you brought her here the second time, what did she see?"

A look close to rapture crossed Sempronia's face. Rather than softening her features, it made them even more severe and intimidating. "She saw Fulvia in a stola of purest purple, striped with gold, with a golden diadem on her head. Beside Fulvia, but in her shadow, stood a man-a great brawny beast of a man dressed in battle armor spattered with blood and holding a bloody sword. He, too, wore a diadem on his head. The witch was unable to see his face clearly, but she saw the image on his breastplate and on his shield-the head of a lion."

"Marc Antony," I whispered.

"Who else? It's their destiny to marry. I could have told Fulvia that myself without the witch's help." The fact that Antony was already married seemed to be of no consequence to her.

"What else did Cassandra see?"

The look in Sempronia's eyes made my blood run cold. "Like Antony, Fulvia was holding a bloody sword in one hand."

"And in the other?"

Sempronia bared her teeth. "A head, severed at the neck!"

"As Curio's head was severed?" I whispered.

"Yes, but this was the head of another, the head of the man my daughter hates most in all the world."

Was she speaking of Milo, who had been exiled for the murder of Clodius, and who at that moment was said to be raising a revolt in the south with Marcus Caelius? Or King Juba, who had laughed when he received Curio's head? I whispered their names, but Sempronia shook her head and looked at me scornfully.

"The witch described him clearly enough. Not as a portrait painter or a sculptor might, but in symbols. Lips dripping with honey, she said; a tongue like a snake's, eyes like a ferret's, a nose with a cleft like a chick pea-"

"Cicero," I whispered. His name was taken from the word for chick pea.

"Yes! It was Cicero's head that Fulvia held aloft!"

Caesar triumphant but dead, Marc Antony a king and Fulvia his queen, and Cicero beheaded-was that to be the future of Rome? My heart sank. I suddenly realized why Sempronia had confided in me. It was not that I had somehow won her trust. She still suspected me of being Cicero's lackey, perhaps his spy. In the next moment she made her desire explicit.

"Go, then, Gordianus! Go back to that bitch Terentia's house and tell her what I've just told you. Soon enough, my daughter will put away her mourning garb to put on a bridal stola. Then it shall be Terentia who'll be dressed in mourning! Long ago, Cicero made himself the enemy of this household. He never missed a chance to slander Clodius while Clodius lived, and he slandered him even more viciously after he was dead. He defamed Curio as well, even as he pretended to be his friend-casting aspersions on Curio's love for Marc Antony, telling Pompey that Curio had sided with Caesar because he was a craven opportunist-when the truth is that Curio died a hero's death, loyal to his cause until the very end. But soon enough Cicero shall regret the suffering his words have caused in this house. My daughter shall see to that!"