Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

Twice the man, but half the monster, I wanted to say, but bit my tongue. I had the feeling she was teasing me, but it was hard to read her expression. She sat with her back to the door, so the light came from behind her and cast her face in shadow.

"You think it will be Pompey who triumphs, then?" I said. "I might have thought, in light of recent events…"

"You mean this business with my husband and Caelius?" I couldn't see her face, but I could hear the disgust in her voice. "As soon as word reached Rome that Milo had slipped out of Massilia, Isauricus himself came here to question me. He assumed, since I'm still married to Milo, that I would be able to tell him exactly what my husband was up to, even though I hadn't seen Milo in years or exchanged a letter in months. 'Do you think I can read Milo's mind at a distance of several hundred miles?' I asked him. 'Do you think that I can predict what the fool will do next?' I ran Isauricus out of the house, and he hasn't come back."

I nodded. Considering the state of Fausta's household, the consul had probably decided that she posed no threat and wasn't worth keeping an eye on. I shifted uneasily in my chair, frustrated at being unable to see her face clearly.

Fausta sighed. "Fortune was cruel to Milo. Cruel to us both. To be perfectly candid-and I'll be more candid with you than I was with Isauricus-I wasn't the least bit surprised when I heard about Milo escaping from Massilia and coming back to Italy. Nor was I surprised to learn that he had taken up with Marcus Caelius. Each chose to follow a different leader. Both of those leaders cruelly let them down; Pompey abandoned Milo, and Caesar shunted Caelius aside. Milo and Caelius are like two orphans, taking up with each other so they won't be alone. There must be many more like them, big men and little men, all feeling abandoned by whichever leader they chose, all feeling angry and cheated at the prospect of either of those leaders winning. Why not turn away from Caesar and Pompey both, and find a third way to the future? It makes perfect sense-if they can pull it off."

"Can they?"

"How should I know. Do I look like Cassandra?"

I drew a breath. "How well did you know her?"

"Did anyone really know Cassandra? That's why you've come, of course. Not to ask after Milo, or me, but because I came to Cassandra's funeral, and you want to talk about her. Am I right?"

"Yes."

She nodded. "I sought her out one day in the market. I invited her here. She stared at a flame and had a fit. I listened to what she had to say, gave her a few coins, and sent her on her way. Why not? Every woman in Rome was desperate to hear what Cassandra had to tell them."

"And what did she tell you?"

Fausta laughed. "A bunch of garbled nonsense. Truthfully, I couldn't make sense of it. I suppose I'm too literal minded for that sort of thing. Why do oracles and portents always have to be so obscure? Call a truffle a truffle, that's what I say! I never much liked plays or poetry for the same reason. I've no patience for metaphors and similes."

"Cassandra didn't foretell Milo's return and his alliance with Caelius?"

Fausta shrugged and winced a bit-I heard her hiss-as she rearranged her arm in the sling. "Oh, there was something about a bear and a snake, I think. And two eagles. Was the bear Milo? Was the snake Caelius? Were the eagles Pompey and Caesar? Or was it all the other way around? Your guess is as good as mine." She sighed. "Milo was always so much more interested in that sort of thing than I was."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. He always took omens very seriously. More now than ever, I should think."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because"-she sighed heavily-"on that fateful day when Clodius died, Milo saw all sorts of bad omens before we ever set out on the Appian Way. He saw a vulture flying upside down, and then a duck with three feet crossed our path, or so he claimed. Later, when everything started going wrong that day, Milo kept muttering, 'I should have paid attention to the signs; I should have known there would be trouble; we should never have set out; we should have stayed home.' You probably never saw that side of him. He didn't talk much about premonitions and such, except to me, because Cicero would make such fun of him for being so superstitious. But Milo was always on the look out for portents. A lot of good it ever did him! What's the use of seeing a falling star if it's careening straight toward you?"

I nodded. "You say that I came only to ask after Cassandra, not you and Milo, but that's not entirely true. Would you take it amiss if I asked you a personal question?"

"Ask and find out."

"Why are you still married to Milo? You didn't go with him to Massilia; you stayed here, with no prospect of his ever returning to you. Why not divorce him so that you might remarry?"

She snorted, and for a moment I thought I had offended her. But her exasperation was with her fate, not with me. Like many people burdened with regrets, she was not averse to voicing her bitterness to a relative stranger. "One divorce has pretty much become the standard these days, hasn't it? Among the fashionable set, I mean. But two divorces-well, that begins to look a bit careless, don't you think? My first husband divorced me as a sort of punishment for cuckolding him. That wasn't a problem with Milo. Milo rather liked being cuckolded, I think. It gave him an excuse to vent his rage. It… stimulated him. He was never such a tiger in bed as he was right after catching me with another man. So strong. So… violent. I'm afraid I rather developed a taste for that sort of thing."

She readjusted her sling, and hissed. "But I digress. I stayed married to Milo because it was the respectable thing to do. Believe it or not, that still matters to me. I am Sulla's daughter. I won't have people saying I abandoned my husband simply because he ran into a bit of trouble."

A murder conviction and lifelong exile hardly seemed to me to be a "bit of trouble," but my standards differed from those of Fausta in many matters. "Or could it be," I said, "that in the long run you had faith in Milo? That you could foresee a time when he might return to Rome in triumph, beheading his enemies as your father beheaded his, making himself the first man in Rome and yourself the first among women?" Such a thing might actually come to pass, I realized with a chill. Whether Caesar or Pompey eventually returned, in the meantime Milo and Caelius might pull off their mad scheme and make themselves masters of Rome. Such a thing would never happen without the spilling of much blood.

She made a derisive sound deep in her throat. "Don't compare Milo to my father! He knew how to make this town come to heel, instead of letting the she-wolf bite him in the ass. We shall never see his like again-not in Caesar, not in Pompey, certainly not in Milo. The best I can hope for"-she hesitated, but a sudden burst of emotion was too much for her to contain-"the best I can hope for is to become Milo's widow. People shall pity me then. And respect me! They shall say, 'Poor Fausta! She suffered greatly from her second marriage. But she stood by that fool to the very end, didn't she? She proved her mettle. She was truly Sulla's daughter!' "

I considered this for a long moment, wishing I could see her face more clearly. But the light from outside was growing stronger as the morning drew on, casting her features even deeper into shadow. "I don't quite understand," I confessed.

"I wouldn't expect you to. You're not one of those who count-not one of us."

"Not a noble, you mean?"

She shook her head. "Not a woman!" She stood, indicating that the interview was at an end.

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.