Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

I frowned. "Here? But I thought-"

"That shabby room in the Subura? Her residence there was a pretense, part of the role she played. This was the house where she kept her possessions. It was to this house that she retreated whenever she felt she might be in danger, or whenever she grew too sick of her role as a pauper and needed a taste of luxury. I imagine she would have liked to bring you to this house, Gordianus, but that wasn't possible. Her room was just across the garden. It was in this room that I came to meet with her. I would sit here, and she would sit where you're sitting, in that very chair."

"You met with Cassandra?"

"On a regular basis, so that I could give her instructions, and so that she could deliver any valuable information she had uncovered since our last meeting."

I took this in. "Cassandra was your spy?"

"My husband's spy, to be more precise. It was Caesar who recruited her, Caesar who briefed her on what he expected from her, and Caesar who trained her-as a spy, I mean. Cassandra was already an accomplished actress, of course, but the arts of the spy are somewhat more specialized." She peered at me intently. "Are you grinding your teeth, Finder?"

"Always Caesar!" I said, staring up at the image of Alexander, then across to the image of Darius. Which would Caesar resemble more when the story of his life came to an end? The conqueror beloved by gods and storytellers, or the arrogant emperor who owned the world but lost it? On his journey to his destiny, Caesar had swept the whole world along in his wake. He loomed over everything, casting his shadow not just over armies and kings but over every thing and every person I loved. Now I found his shadow had covered Cassandra as well.

Calpurnia looked at me coolly. "I understand that you harbor some sort of grudge against my husband for having claimed the loyalty and affection of your son-"

"Meto is no longer my son!"

She nodded. "Even so, Caesar harbors no resentment against you, Gordianus. In time, he hopes that he may once again be able to count you among his friends." That was always Caesar's way, to mend breaches, to convert enemies, to draw everyone into his circle, even if later the need arose to destroy them.

"But we were talking of Cassandra," she said. "I know that her death has caused you great distress. I think Caesar would want me to reveal to you who Cassandra was, and how and why she came to Rome. What do you already know about her?"

That she was beautiful and tragic and doomed, I thought. That I fell in love with her, or thought I did, knowing nothing about her.

"That she came from Alexandria," I said. "That she performed in the mime shows there and knew Cytheris. That she suffered from seizures and falling sickness-unless that was a pretense. That she may or may not have possessed the gift of prophecy. That she used her reputation as a seeress to play a cruel joke on Antonia, at Cytheris's behest. That she may have done the same thing to a number of other powerful women in Rome who sought her out-unless she was black mailing them. Or spying on them."

Calpurnia nodded. "If I tell you that my husband has a number of agents who gather intelligence for him, I presume that will come as no surprise to you. Agents of all sorts, high and low-from street urchins and tavern keepers to centurions and senators. You never know who might overhear something of importance. It takes skill, patience, and experience to make sense of all the information that comes in, to scrutinize the sources, to disregard lies planted by the enemy, to decide between conflicting accounts. All those bits of information are like tiles in a mosaic; separately they signify nothing, but together, from the right perspective, they form a sort of picture.

"It's an intricate business, all the more complicated because it takes place in the shadows. That's what my husband calls it-the shadow war between himself and his enemies. The battles that everyone knows about take place in broad daylight between soldiers who fight with swords and spears. There are other battles that take place in the shadows, which no one sees or even knows about-but people die in those battles, nonetheless. I suppose one could think of Cassandra as a kind of Amazon, a woman warrior. It's the only way a woman can be a warrior, I suppose, fighting in the shadow war."

"Why did she fight for Caesar?"

"Why does any soldier fight for him? Because he paid her, of course. As part of the arrangement, she became a free woman, and she was very handsomely paid in regular installments that I held in trust for her. The work Cassandra did was dangerous, but she was well rewarded. She would have returned to Alexandria a wealthy woman… had she survived."

"How did Caesar recruit her?"

"As soon as Pompey was driven from Italy, Caesar set about reorganizing the Senate here in Rome and deciding whom to place in charge in his absence-Marc Antony, as it turned out. Everyone became a Caesarian overnight once Pompey was gone-but whom could Caesar really trust, and what sort of plots were being hatched against him? It was imperative that he should organize a network of agents to gather information. Some of those agents were already in place. Others had to be recruited. It was I who pointed out to him that his greatest weakness would be in obtaining information from the women of Rome-the wives and mothers and daughters and sisters who had been left behind by both allies and enemies. Such women always know more than they're given credit for, often more than they themselves realize. They know the most secret longings and most fervent loyalties of their men. A casual remark in a letter from a husband could lead to a secret hiding place or a cache of arms or a buried store of gold. But what sort of person could obtain access to so many diverse women and extract whatever valuable information they might possess?

"It was Caesar who hit upon the idea of recruiting an actress to play the part of a mad seeress. I told him that no Roman matron was that gullible and no actress that skillful. He proved me wrong on both counts. He dispatched an agent to Alexandria to find the right actress. Why Alexandria? Because the mime masters there are famous for training their players to perfection, and because it's far enough from Rome that the agent might find a suitable performer who would be unknown here. It was several months before the agent returned from Alexandria, bringing Cassandra with him. They entered the city in a covered litter, and the agent installed her, secretly, in this house.

"Only a few days later, Caesar returned to Rome after securing Spain and Massilia. As soon as he was able to take time from overseeing elections, he met with Cassandra. It was in this very room. I was with him. He said he wanted my opinion of her, but I'm sure he made up his mind before I could say a word."

"She auditioned for Caesar, like an actress auditioning for a mime show?"

"If you wish to put it that way. She was certainly beautiful; I could see that Caesar was duly impressed, but beauty was not the quality we were looking for. She spoke excellent Latin with only the faintest accent; she was quite a polyglot, you know. But she seemed rather nervous. That was understandable, perhaps, for a young woman meeting Caesar for the first time, but it worried me; this was the person we were counting on to keep a cool head even as she deceived some of the shrewdest women in Rome. Caesar commenced to explain what he wanted from her. She seemed distracted, and increasingly agitated. Suddenly she collapsed to the floor, writhing and foaming at the mouth. The agent had warned us that she suffered from the falling sickness. Caesar at once went to her assistance. He found a leather biting stick on her person and put it between her teeth, then held her until the spell subsided. I could see that he was moved by her suffering-Caesar himself has experienced such fits in the past-but I wondered if such a condition might rob her of her wits and cause her to fail in her mission. I was about to say as much when Cassandra suddenly sprang to her feet, laughing out loud.