Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

"Then I'll settle for finding the truth."

"How strange you are, Gordianus! They say each mortal has a guiding passion. Seeking pleasure seems endlessly more sensible to me, but if finding truth is yours, so be it." Clodia shrugged. Even though the gesture was almost swallowed by her voluminous stola, even though age and suffering had changed her outwardly, in that eloquent rise and fall of her shoulders I caught a glimpse of the essential Clodia. That shrug summed up everything about her in an instant. She had lived a life larger than most men dreamed of, had devoured every sensation flesh could offer, had followed every emotion to its utmost extremity-and in the end, Clodia shrugged.

I knew in that moment why I had succumbed to my desire for Cassandra, yet had never quite succumbed to Clodia. It was impossible to imagine Cassandra shrugging like that. The intensity with which she lived in the moment made such a gesture unthinkable. Once Clodia had seemed to me the most vital woman alive, but only because I mistook a raging appetite for a love of life, and I had no one to show me the difference until I met Cassandra.

"You can't tell me anything that might be of use to me?" I said.

"About Cassandra? Tell me what you know about her already."

It seemed to me that Clodia was intentionally avoiding my question. "I know that she was invited into the houses of some of the most powerful women in Rome," I said. "Some of those women think she was a genuine seeress. Others think she was a fraud. I know she came from Alexandria, where she acted in the mimes. But her seizures-at least some of them-were entirely real."

"What else do you know?"

I took a breath. "I think she may have been involved in some way-how, I'm not sure-in this business with Milo and Caelius."

Clodia raised an eyebrow. "I see. And why is that?"

"I have my reasons."

Clodia turned her gaze to Davus, who had swum a considerable distance up the river and was now swimming back. "What a pair of shoulders," she murmured. "I hope your daughter appreciates them."

"I think she does."

"He's going to be hungry when he climbs out. A good thing my pantry slave always packs more food into that box than I could possibly eat by myself. What else do you know about Cassandra? I think, Gordianus, that you're leaving something out."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you? The most important thing of all. You were in love with her. Hopelessly in love, from the look on your face. But did she love you? Ah! Really, you should go take a look at yourself in the water, Gordianus. You'd see the face of a man who's just been poked where he can least stand to be touched. That's what this is really about. Not, 'Who killed Cassandra?' but, 'Who was Cassandra?' What was she really up to? And most important of all, what did she really want-not just from those lofty Roman matrons, but from a humble fellow called the Finder. But if you don't already know the answer to that question, you'll never find it now."

Davus emerged from the water, glistening wet and shaking the water from his hair. "Magnificent arms," whispered Clodia, growling like a tigress. "The war has turned Rome into a city of old men and boys. I thought Pompey and Caesar had snatched up all the worthy specimens to feed to Mars, but they somehow overlooked this one."

Davus fetched his loincloth and covered himself, moving with a natural, unself-conscious grace that did him credit, given that he must have felt Clodia's eyes following his every move. Clodia sent him to fetch a third folding chair, then offered him the contents of her box. She gazed at him, enthralled, as if no better amusement could exist than watching a hungry young man devour a roasted chicken and suck the juice from his fingers.

I sensed that I would learn no more about Cassandra from her, at least not on this occasion. I decided not to press her. Only later would I realize how deftly she had avoided telling me anything of importance, and how completely she had disarmed me with the charms she still exerted over me.

"So," I said, "you think that Milo and Clodius are doomed to fail?"

A shadow crossed her face. "It seems impossible that they could succeed."

"Your brother's old nemesis and the man you hate most in the world, both destroyed once and for all. I should think that prospect would make you very happy."

Clodia made no reply. She continued to watch Davus eat, but the enjoyment I had seen on her face drained away, replaced by another emotion I could not decipher.

They met under a rose.

I looked from face to face, hardly believing what I saw: the two most dangerous men in Italy, their whereabouts and intentions the subject of every conversation, in a bare room in a shabby tenement in the heart of Rome. Bare, that is, except for the two chairs in which they had been sitting, a cupboard against one wall, and the room's single ornament, a pocket vase made of terracotta hung on the wall above their heads, and in that vase a single blood-red rose.

They were meeting sub rosa, invoking the ancient custom that all who meet under the rose are bound to silence. Following my gaze, Marcus Caelius glanced up at the rose.

"Milo's idea," he said. "He takes that sort of thing very seriously, you know-signs, portents, vows, omens. Thus, a rose to ensure discretion-as if either one of us could possibly benefit by betraying the other. Of course, it obliges you to keep silent as well, Gordianus. What's the matter? You look as if you'd seen Medusa. Come in! I'm afraid we have only the two chairs, so I suppose we should all remain standing."

I let the curtain fall behind me and stepped into the room, overwhelmed by the strangeness of the moment. What were they doing here in the Subura? More to the point, what were they doing in the room directly above Cassandra's, and on a day when Cassandra knew I would be coming?

They were dressed to suit the room and the neighborhood, in shabby tunics and worn shoes. Milo's hair was longer than I had ever seen it, pushed back from his face in a shaggy mane, and his beard was untrimmed. Caelius had a smudge of dirt on his cheek, like some common laborer. It was not the first time I had seen them in disguise. During one of the bloody riots following the murder of Clodius, Milo and Caelius had escaped together from an angry mob by taking off their togas and their citizenship rings and passing as slaves. On this occasion Caelius was wearing his ring, but Milo's finger was bare. He had been stripped of his citizenship and the right to wear a citizen's ring when he was exiled from Rome.

"Are these the disguises you use to go about Rome incognito?" I asked. "You pose as the poor master, Caelius? And you pose as his slave, Milo?"

Caelius smiled. "I told you he was clever, Milo. There's not much the Finder misses."

Milo grunted and peered at me with barely concealed hostility. He was no longer fat and dissipated, as when I had last seen him in Massilia, enduring his exile in a drunken stupor. The danger and difficulty of his escape and his return to Rome were written on his weathered features. His stocky wrestler's physique was back in fighting trim. There was a hard, desperate glint in his eyes.

"You said the Finder would be glad to see us, Caelius," said Milo. "He doesn't look glad to me. He looks rather distressed."

"Only because we've taken him by surprise," said Caelius. "But how else could we approach you, Gordianus? We could hardly have come calling at your house, could we? That would have put your dear family in danger. As it is, you've taken us a bit by surprise. We were thinking we would send someone down to fetch you in a bit, after your nap. But here you are of your own accord."

"I heard the two of you talking," I said. "I recognized Milo's voice."