Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

I pushed past him and hurried on. I tripped on an uneven paving stone and heard laughter behind me.

"She's crippled him!" cried Volcatius. "I want to meet this Amazon."

"You needn't be rude," Manlius called after me.

"Gordianus thinks he's too good for the likes of us," said Canininus. "He never comes around anymore. When we do see him, he goes stalking off in a huff like a…"

His voice receded behind me. I walked as fast as I could, heading for the steep pathway at the far side of the Forum that would take me home. Inside the folds of my tunic, I clutched Cassandra's biting stick.

"Where in Hades have you been?"

The tone-frantic, furious, and relieved all at once, implicitly warning me never to do such a thing again-reminded me of Bethesda. How many times over the years had I heard that precise tone when I returned home from some scrape I had gotten myself into? But it wasn't Bethesda who rushed up to me in the foyer, looking fit to be tied. It was Diana.

I told my daughter the truth-or part of it. That I had met unexpectedly (for me, if not for them) with Milo and Caelius in the Subura on the previous day, that they had put forward a proposition that I refused, that they had forced me to swallow a soporific of some sort, that I had only just awakened and had made my way straight home.

"What were you doing in the Subura in the first place?" asked Diana, frowning. "How is it that Milo and Caelius were able to find you? Did they have you followed, or did they just happen to come upon you? What sort of drug did they give you?" Diana had inherited my own inquisitive nature, but she had yet to master the rules of a successful interrogation. Ask too many questions at once and you invite the overwhelmed subject to shrug helplessly and give no answer. That was exactly what I did.

"Everyone in the household is out looking for you," she said. "Davus is down at the fish market. Hieronymus is at the Senian Baths. I sent Mopsus and Androcles over to Eco's house to find out if he'd turned up anything. We've all been mad with worry."

"What about your mother? This must have been especially hard on her."

Diana sighed. "I managed to keep it from her. She didn't come out of her room even once yesterday, so she didn't see the rest of us all flustered and in a panic when you didn't show up for dinner. But she did ask for you later, and I had to make up something on the spot-a lie about you spending the night away from the city because an old client needed to tap your memory about a trial from years ago. I don't think I could have fooled her if she wasn't so unwell. As it was, she just nodded and turned her face away and pulled the coverlet around her neck. How can she be cold when the weather's so hot? But at least she didn't realize you were missing, so she didn't have that worry to add to her illness."

"How is she today?"

"Better, I suppose, because she's determined to go out. A little while ago she sent for one of the slave girls to come help her dress. She says she wants to go to the market. She says she's thought of something that might make her better-radishes. She says she must have radishes."

A few moments later, Davus arrived home. He was so glad to see me, he let out a roar and lifted me high in the air, squeezing the breath out of me. Diana shushed him and told him to put me down at once because Bethesda was coming and mustn't see him making such a fuss. Davus obediently put me down, but couldn't stop grinning at me.

Bethesda stepped into the room. Dressed in a freshly laundered stola, with her hair combed and pinned, she looked slightly pale but better than I had seen her in quite some time. She gave Davus a sidelong look but said nothing and shook her head ruefully, no doubt wondering once again how her daughter had come to marry such a grinning simpleton.

"Radishes!" she announced. Her voice was hoarse, but surprisingly strong.

And so we made our way-slowly, to accommodate Bethesda-down to the market, in search of the latest commodity Bethesda imagined might provide a cure for her malaise.

We walked from vendor to vendor, searching in vain for a radish that would satisfy Bethesda's discriminating gaze. I suggested that Bethesda might look for carrots instead. She insisted that the soup she had in mind would allow no substitutions.

At last Bethesda cried, "Eureka!" Sure enough, she held in her hands a truly admirable bunch of radishes-firm and red, with crisp, green leaves and long, trailing roots.

The price the vendor named was exorbitant.

"Perhaps I could manage with just two radishes," said Bethesda. "Or perhaps only one. Yes, one would do, I'm sure. I imagine we can afford one, can't we, Husband?"

I looked into her brown eyes and felt a pang of guilt, thinking of Bethesda's suffering, thinking of Cassandra…

"I shall buy you more than one radish, Wife. I shall buy you the whole bunch of them. Davus, you're carrying the money bag. Hand it to Diana so that she can pay the man."

"Papa, are you sure?" said Diana. "It's so much."

"Of course I'm sure. Pay the scoundrel!"

The vendor was ecstatic. Bethesda, clutching the radishes to her breast, gave me a look to melt my heart. Then a shadow crossed her face, and I knew that she suddenly felt unwell. I touched her arm. "Shall we go home now, Wife?"

Just then, there was a commotion from another part of the market. A man yelled. A woman shrieked: "It's her! The madwoman!"

I turned about to see Cassandra staggering toward me. Her blue tunica was torn at the neck and pulled awry, her golden hair wild and unkempt. There was a crazed expression on her face, and in her eyes, a look of utter panic.

She ran to me, reaching forward, her gait uneven. "Gordianus, help me!" She fell into my arms and dropped to her knees, pulling me down with her.

"Cassandra!" I gasped. I lowered my voice to a whisper. "If this is some pretense-"

She clutched my arms and cried out. Her body convulsed.

Diana knelt beside me. "Papa, what's wrong with her?"

"I don't know."

"It's the god in her," said Bethesda. "The same god that compels her prophecies must be tearing her apart inside."

A crowd gathered. "Draw back, all of you!" I shouted. Cassandra clutched at me again, but her grip was weakening. Her eyelids flickered and drooped.

"Cassandra, what's wrong? What's happened?" I whispered.

"Poison," she said. "She's poisoned me!"

"Who? What did she give you?" Our faces were so close that I felt her shallow breath on my lips. Her eyes seemed huge, her blue irises eclipsed by the enormous blackness of her pupils.

"Something-in the drink…" Cassandra said.

A moment later, she was dead.

Davus and I left Clodia on the banks of the Tiber, gazing at the sunlight on the water, alone with her memories. We retraced our steps past the riverside gardens of the rich and back into the city.

Davus was refreshed from his swim, but the heat of the day oppressed me. I was weary in mind and body. By the time we made our way up the slope of the Palatine to my house, I wanted nothing more than a few quiet hours of rest in a shady corner of my garden.

I had spoken to them all now-all the women who'd come to see Cassandra end in flames-except one.

Would Caesar's wife deign to see me? The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed. Calpurnia would be surrounded by an army of advisors and attendants and bodyguards to protect her both from those who sought her husband's favors and those who sought his destruction. There was the complication that she might consider me an enemy since I had turned my back on Caesar along with Meto in Massilia.

From what I knew of Calpurnia, she was not the sort to act on a sudden whim or a sentimental impulse or out of prurient interest. She was sensible, discreet, and utterly respectable-precisely the qualities that had convinced Caesar to marry her. Everyone knew his famous quip about his previous wife, whom he had summarily divorced after she became the subject of gossip: "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." Calpurnia was said to be so devoid of even petty vices that no scandal could ever be attached to her; not the sort of woman, I thought, to admit the likes of myself into her presence, even for a formal audience. People might talk.