Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

I looked back at Birria and matched his glare with my own. "Fausta," I said, "do you need our help?"

"What do you mean?"

"You limp. Your arm is in a sling."

She shrugged. "It's nothing, really. Certainly nothing to concern you. A small accident. I'm a bit clumsy sometimes."

"I find that hard to believe of Sulla's daughter."

"What you believe is of no consequence, Finder. Go now. And, Birria, after you've shown these two out… come straight back to me."

He gave her a snarling grin, but it was the crooked smile she flashed back at him that made my blood run cold. I turned and walked quickly to the front door, not waiting for Birria to lead the way. In the foyer I paused for a moment to gaze at the marble bust of Sulla and to wonder at the curious events it must have witnessed in that house.

The sixth time I saw Cassandra-and the seventh and eighth and ninth and all the other times before her death-are jumbled in my mind. Even the exact number of times eludes me. My memories of those meetings blur together, as the heated flesh of two lovers becomes blurred in the act of love, so that the lover cannot tell where his own body ends and that of the beloved begins.

After the first time we made love, we arranged to meet again in her room in the Subura, at a specific time, on a specific day. Thus our pattern was set. These arrangements were determined by Cassandra, partly, I think, to coincide with her mornings at the public baths, for I always found her fresh and clean, but also, I assumed, to make sure that Rupa would not be there when I came. Was he her lover? Her slave? A relative? I didn't know. She never told me. I never asked.

What did we talk about in the spells between lovemaking? Nothing remotely to do with our complicated circumstances; nothing that might impinge upon the special world the two of us created in that room. I think I did speak sometimes of Diana and Davus, and Hieronymus, and Androcles and Mopsus, especially if one of them had just done something to frustrate me or to make me laugh. And I told her about Meto and the heartbreak I felt at losing him. But I never spoke of Bethesda or Bethesda's illness. And Cassandra never spoke of Rupa or about her visits to the houses of the highborn and well-to-do women of Rome, nor did she tell me where she came from.

I didn't care; I didn't want her history, and I had no thought of the future. I wanted from her the thing that she gave me in that room, the joining of two bodies that filled the present moment to miraculous perfection. I expected nothing else from her. She seemed to expect nothing else from me.

She stirred in me sensations of youth almost forgotten. In flashes I imagined myself a young wanderer in Alexandria again. I was the young man I once had been, in love with the power of his own body; in love for the first time with the body of another; in awe of the extraordinary pleasures those two bodies could share and naive enough to think that no one else on earth had ever experienced sensations so exquisite. In Cassandra's room, time and space lost all meaning. Together we conjured a kind of sorcery.

What did Cassandra see in me? Long ago I had accepted that the attractions of women would always be a puzzle to me; best to accept the inexplicable without question when it worked in my favor. Still, looking at my face one day in a mirror of polished silver-the last time I looked in that mirror, for soon after I sold it to get a few sesterces to feed the household-I saw a gray bearded man whose face was lined with worries, and I wondered what Cassandra could find attractive in that weathered countenance. I gazed for a long time in that mirror. I squinted, I blurred my eyes, I looked sidelong, but I couldn't catch even a fleeting glimpse of the man I became when I was with her.

There was some advantage in appearing so unlikely a lover. No one in my household suspected. When I reappeared after being gone for hours at a time, Diana, if she noticed, might chide me for going out without Davus to protect me. Hieronymus might ask what news I brought from the chin-waggers in the Forum. Bethesda, calling from her bed, might ask why I had failed to bring her the latest impossible-to-find item she had decided might cure her. They were scolding, or curious, or complaining, but not suspicious.

Nonetheless, they all noticed a change in me. I was more patient, less truculent. I no longer snapped at Hieronymus; once again his wit delighted me, and eventually I convinced him to again take dinner with the family. The antics of Mopsus and Androcles amused rather than rankled. When Davus seemed most slow-witted, I found him most charming and thought to myself, No wonder my daughter fell in love with such a fine fellow! Diana was more beautiful and intelligent than ever. And Bethesda…

Bethesda remained unwell. Her malady had settled into her body like a spiteful vagrant lurking in a house, careful never to be seen but leaving unnerving signs of his presence everywhere. At first, her illness had made her snappish and demanding. Then she became increasingly withdrawn and quiet, which was much worse because it was so out of character for her. Her spirits darkened even as mine became lighter.

In her presence I was torn with guilt, not so much because I had been with another woman-the physical act of sex conjured no shame in me-but because I had stumbled into something singular, wonderful, and wholly unexpected, even while Bethesda fell prey to something awful, uncertain, and lingering. All our lives, Bethesda and I had shared everything, as much as any two people could. Now we each had ventured to a place where the other could not follow-and in opposite directions. My experience was magical, hers miserable. I felt the guilt of the well-fed man watching his loved one choke on sawdust and bones.

In the meantime, news of the war continued to arrive from Greece. One heard all sorts of contradictory reports-that Caesar had outmaneuvered Pompey; that Pompey had outmaneuvered Caesar. For a while, from Aprilis to mid-Quinctilis, the two made their camps and built fortifications in the region of Dyrrachium, the principal seaport on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea. Both sides seemed set to make the rugged, mazelike hills and gorges around Dyrrachium the arena for a decisive battle. But after an engagement in which Pompey very nearly overran his forces, Caesar saw himself at a disadvantage and moved inland, toward the region of Thessaly. The decisive battle was yet to come.

My visits to Cassandra blur together in my memory, but two incidents stand out.

Just as she never spoke of her visits to highborn women, so she never spoke of the reason for those visits: her spells of prophecy. I did begin once to ask her about them, but she replied by placing her forefinger perpendicular to my lips and then distracting me in other ways. Why did I not press her for details? I can see reasons, but only in retrospect. If she were a fraud, I didn't want to know it. If she were genuine, and gazing into a flame could induce her to utter prophecies, I didn't want to hear them. Why seek a glimpse of the future when the future could hold only darkness? In Cassandra I had found a way to live in the present.

Nevertheless, on one occasion I saw the god pass through her.

We were lying naked side by side on her pallet, sweat lubricating our flesh where our bodies were pressed close together. I was watching the progress of a fly on the wall, its wings made iridescent by sunlight from the high window. Cassandra was humming softly, her eyes closed. For a moment I thought I recognized the tune-an Alexandrian lullaby Bethesda had sung to Diana-then decided I must be mistaken. The melody was close, but not quite the same…

The humming stopped. I heard only the buzzing of the fly across the room.