Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

I began to feel like a prisoner in my own house. Small irritations grew into unbearable torments.

Androcles and Mopsus drove me to distraction with their constant bickering. One day I yelled at them so sharply that little Androcles began to cry, whereupon Mopsus began to tease him, which drove me into such a fury that I barely restrained myself from striking him. Afterward I felt so ill that I had to lie down, and found myself wondering if I had fallen victim to Bethesda's complaint.

Hieronymus, whose mordant wit had always amused me, began to strike me as a pretentious buffoon, always prattling on about Roman politics, a subject about which he knew next to nothing. One night, losing my temper over some particularly sarcastic observation of his, I remarked on the prodigious quantities he was able to consume at every meal, at my expense. He turned pale, put down his bowl, and said that from that point onward he would take all his meals alone, after the family ate, dining upon our scraps. He left the room, and nothing I could say would persuade him to return. This was the man who had taken me into his home in Massilia, sharing everything he had with me.

Davus, who had saved my life in Massilia, earned my wrath one day by knocking over a tripod lamp. Trying to pick it up, he tripped and stepped on it and damaged it even more. When he was done, all three of the bronze griffin heads were dented and the pole was bent. It was-or rather, had been-one of the most valuable objects remaining in the house, something I had counted on being able to sell if the direst need arose. I told him that his clumsiness had robbed the household of a month's worth of food.

Even with Diana, I became short-tempered. I found myself arguing with her about her mother's illness and what to do about it. Our disagreements were over small things-whether Bethesda should drink hot beverages or cold ones, whether or not she should be kept awake during the day (so that she might sleep more soundly at night, I argued), whether to heed the advice of a physician who had told us that the blood of a sparrow would be beneficial to her-but the words we exchanged were sharp and bitter. I accused Diana of having inherited her mother's worst traits of stubbornness and wrong-headedness. In a cruel moment she accused me of caring less about her mother than she did. I was cut to the quick, and for several days would hardly speak to her.

I looked to my son Eco for relief. Like Meto, he was my child by adoption. Unlike Meto, we had never had a falling-out of any sort, yet over the years we had grown apart. This was only natural; Eco had his own household. He also had his own livelihood, following in my footsteps, and although we had occasionally consulted one another professionally over the years, Eco had grown increasingly independent and kept his business and financial affairs to himself. Increasingly, he also kept his family to himself. Eco had married up, into an old but faded family desperate for fresh blood, the Menenii. His wife and Bethesda had never really gotten along.

The afternoon I invited Eco and his brood to my house turned into a disaster. Menenia said something to offend Bethesda-some nonsense about the women of her family "staring down" illness rather then submitting to it-and Bethesda promptly retired to her bed. Eco's golden-haired, eleven-year-old twins, who took after their mother, took shameless advantage of Mopsus and Androcles, ordering them to fetch this and that. When Androcles muttered a remark about "losing their heads someday"-a bit of inflammatory rhetoric he had picked up in the Forum, no doubt-Eco was appalled and insisted that I punish the boy like the slave he was; and when I refused, he took his family home. Goaded by his brother, Androcles gloated about his escape, whereupon I finally did deliver a few sound thwacks to his back side. Everyone in the household went to bed miserable that night.

In the past, there had always been someone to whom I could turn in troubled times, even though he was seldom present. Confused, unhappy, seeking solace, I would have locked myself away in my study, taken up my stylus, unlatched the cover of a spare wax tablet and rubbed it blank, and set about writing a letter to Meto. Knowing he might not read my words for many days-secretly fearing he might never read them, for he was a soldier and often in danger-I would nonetheless have set down my thoughts and feelings to share with my beloved son; and having done so, I would have felt a great relief and a lightening of my spirit. But now, by my own decree, that avenue was closed to me. In those dismal days, how bitterly I missed that source of solace!

Oppressed by the uncertain state of the world, anxious about my debts, worried by Bethesda's illness and the discord in my household, aching from the loss of the son I had disowned-such was the state of my mind when I decided to escape the safe confines of my house and go off wandering one day.

I had done much the same thing almost a month before, on the day I found myself at Cassandra's apartment and later witnessed Caelius's disappearing act in the Forum. But whereas on the previous occasion my feet had taken me straight to Cassandra's door, unwittingly or not, on this day I found myself taking a much longer walk as I trod a meandering course through the city. Having lived so long in Rome, knowing it so intimately, it was probably impossible for me literally to lose myself in the city. Nonetheless, I fell into a certain musing state of mind, forgetful of my bearings and direction and alert only to my immediate surroundings and the sensations they produced.

It was a fine day for such a walk, typical of late Maius, sunny but not too hot. The charm of Rome was everywhere. At a quaint neighborhood fountain, water poured from the mouth of a gorgon into a deep trough from which women scooped brimming buckets. (Water, if nothing else, was still plentiful and free in Rome.) Just around the corner, a huge bronze phallus projecting from the lintel of a doorway proclaimed the presence of a neighborhood brothel. The sun happened to catch the phallus at such an angle that it cast a shadow onto the street so absurdly enormous that I laughed out loud. On the doorstep an uncommonly plump prostitute sat sunning herself like a cat. As I walked by, she opened her eyes to slits, and I believe I heard her literally purring. A little farther on, I came to a long alley fronted by continuous walls on either side; both walls were overgrown with blooming jasmine, and the smell was so heady that once I reached the end of the alley, I turned around and retraced my steps, just to see if the scent was as sweet going in the opposite direction.

Every time I turned a corner, I was confronted by memories, sweet and bitter. I had lived so long in Rome that sometimes it seemed to me the city was a map of my own mind, its streets and buildings manifestations of my deepest memories.

In this austere little house, now painted yellow but bright blue when I last entered the door, I had once comforted a grieving widow who summoned me to solve the murder of her husband-and it turned out that she herself was the murderer…

Down that street a band of thieves, intent on cutting our throats, had once chased me and my slave Belbo-how I missed that faithful bodyguard! The two of us had escaped by ducking into a fountain and holding our breaths…

I crested a hill and saw in the distance the terraces and wings of Pompey's vast mansion atop the Pincian Hill outside the city walls; an intervening haze of heat and dust imbued the place with a slightly unreal, floating quality, like a palace seen afar in a dream. When Pompey slept at night, so far from home, was this how he saw the house he had left behind? The last time I had seen Pompey-making his escape by ship from Italy-he had tried to strangle me with his bare hands. The memory made my throat constrict. At that very moment, was the so-called Great One alive or dead? Was he standing over the slain body of Caesar, listening to his soldiers declare him Master of the World-or was he just another mortal turned to ashes like so many before him, whose ferocious ambitions counted for nothing when the jaws of Hades opened to claim them?